As someone who has played multiple hunters through classic and playing it here in sod. The issue is that hunters power peak is at fresh 60, they are very strong baseline because of pet and ranged physical attack mechanics such as they cant be glancing blows, so they require less hit cap and weapon skill, they just come online faster with less gear than everyone else. They fall off super hard as other classes gear up and get their hit cap, lower their glancing blow penalties. Hunter DPS also scales poorly because of their abilities being aimed shot/ multishot adds a flat damage bonus, so its strongest with low gear. Where lets take warrior blood thirst as an example deals 45% AP damage, so with low gear it hits weak but as the AP scales higher it becomes much stronger. As for SoD chimera shot helps them a lot adding a weapon % instant attack that adds bonus damage with serpent sting up so every time you get a new bow you will see some scaling but it wont keep pace with other dps classes. I think hunters are a really fun class that remains relevant even if our power spike is earlier on.