I'll start off with the fact that it made me really happy that this event made it into this year's event rooster.
To continue further, I legitimately do not know whose dumb idea was it to alter the event. Who in the right mind decided that
gear should be upgradable by healing/dealing damage and only weapons being looted from chests. And to top it off that
adding custom class/weapon specific bonuses would be fun to add (to an already extremely difficult to balance game).
As someone who enjoys playing hunter the most, I have to say it's utterly disgusting and not-fun to play due to the following two reasons:
First, your class requires 2 types of weapons to function normally, as missing a melee weapon(the event does not provide you even with a basic one) will prevent you for using defensive spells such as deterrence, and not looting a decent ranged one makes you almost useless in a fight.
Second, the buffs a hunter gains from those weapons are almost useless, compared to what other classes gain. Move speed on concussive shot(almost okay),
resetting Disengage cd on a trap trigger(from the gun bonus) also okay, until you realize you're basically stuck with 5k mana till the end of the event since gear does not give intellect so you basically have as much as a ret, but without all the mana sustain from judgement. Given that aspect of the viper restores mana on a % based value recovering your mana in a fight while casting spells is utterly impossible.
Then you think okay, its still something I can manage...
Then come the other classes' bonuses, death grip basically pinning you in one place, getting ranged stun on a warrior, instant holy light on a paladin, thunder clap rooting, druid applying all hots at once, and others... how in the rightful hell is this supposed to be fun when your class seems almost nerfed compared to the others...
To be honest i got my 10 wins as a prist and when i got a hunter and dk was almost 100% win....first advantage is that if you hunter sees enemys and if hes good he wil ping minimap nonstop so you dont get suprised attack. Also the dmg from hunter is insane..when you get dk hunt together they can kill anyone so quick. So i suggest you play duo premade.But 10wins for a casual player is hard to get if you are not very good at pvp.
This is not even the worst aspect since hunter are extremly strong in open world pvp and need some balancing, but I understand your stance when you are on the receving end.
I also agree that they shoudln't had tried to tweak stuff with weapons perks since this kind of implements would requier extensive testing (with a PBE), because it led to one of the worst aspect possible : Rdrood sneaking around until they find a epic/legend hammer, and then run far into the storm spamming Wild Growth on themself.
I lost multiple game where I killed everyone, and unstead of getting my hard-earned win (I solotag as Fire Mage), I lose against a fatherless rdrood who's only achievement was to discard any shred of integrity and gatekeep top1 from other genuine players so he can forget about his own miserable existence for 20mn.
Is it too hard to just add a 5-10% nature damage increase per storm tics on players ? This would at least fix some of the worst abuse possible (which have 0 counterplay without abusing it too).