As in gameplay implications (different directions you can pursue in weaving those spells together)?
Again, unless you have competing options of how to use a skill—and that skill is itself more than just setup for those options—combos will only ever be “clunky” or “bloated”.
Agreed. Most instances of the recent ‘unpruning’, for instance, have been aimed more at rose-tinted hype than anything advancing quality.
Agreed, and that tends to result in the spec feeling like it lacks depth and ways to, like you said, improve your gameplay and your choices to better adapt to specific types of content and encounters.
As with the example of having a lot of talents provide purely stand-alone abilities with no real attachments to the spec itself beyond the general theme/fantasy of being “wilderness-oriented”.
Well said.
Most of what we got back is pointless and is essentially just a waste of time to focus on. Not saying that all other classes saw perfection to their unpruning. But considering how the class is purely focused on weapon-based combat, both melee and ranged, based on history there isn’t a ton they can do/unprune in terms of damaging abilities unless they set out to also redesign or add new elements in for the old things to actually work on a class-wide level.
As an example…
What’s the point of unpruning abilities if the intent is that they should then just be replaced by something spec-specific once you reach a certain level?
I’ve got a box in the back of my mind that just says “Don’t open; you’ll only get mad again”. I’m going to leave my thoughts on this subject in there for now…
I’ll agree, but I think Tainted has actually given a pretty cool clue, even if it may be a bit more of a ‘third option’. Granted, it wouldn’t be anything “returned” to us like wonderful old BM Arcane Shot, Fury Slam, or Primal Strike, but it could at least be… reminiscent.
For instance, let’s say we “brought back” certain capacities in a way that allows for synergies and “spell-combos”.
To facilitate this, let’s add one subtle feature:
Okay, some spitball random ideas:
Sorry, sleep deprivation is hitting me hard right now, so that list ended up much shorter than I’d hoped…
Anyways, the idea is that if spell combos were actually used well (i.e., opposite to their use in most MMOs, especially—gag—XIV), we could give a sense of Hunters as sort of masters of their toolkit (SV), pet synergy (BM) or techniques (MM), off surprisingly few and uninvasive buttons.
But again, such is easier promised than delivered. I’m sure most games that ended up having forming linear series that at best telegraphed incoming effects for PvP and offered in-the-moment denials really did aim to have true “combos” at first. Making sure each skill feels like a skill in its own right, and each combo among other forking possibilities, is no easy feat.
Hmm…
I mean, fair enough. I’m not a big fan of games that work with combo-styled fighting. Or at least, not a fan of the ones I’ve seen so far. The latest one being…can’t remember it’s name but quite a few streamers tested it a while back.
And, besides, this all sounds like it would amount to quite an extensive rework involving the very fundamentals of class design(or is it only intended to be a part of Hunter gameplay?).
My goal with the OP above(suggestions) is essentially to allow for the spec to get some proper changes done to it to make it feel more worth it in e.g. content, as well as simply providing more thematically distinct and more “involved” options to pick between. Without it becoming a major/total rework of the spec.
Why? Because I think that the devs are quite satisfied with where the spec is, in terms of it’s core theme/design. My hope is that these things are added to give us a bit more to what is already there.
I like this and am going to bookmark this, a lot of these ideas sound really good and help flesh out the spec in some areas, I hope the class devs see this and think so too and put it on a planning board for 9.1, because I love this spec, and I want to see it be unique and interesting.
if possible try to post ideas on this thread im tryin to keep it updated for all specs the idea is to have on big post with all the info so we can all give feedback and maybe we get a response
These suggestions are already linked in your topic.
I did not copy-paste all of them, just the link(as it’s quite a long post), but I’ll add them in a compressed state.
Appreciate the kind words. And while I don’t think that we’ll see anything like this in 9.1(any mid-expansion patch), I hope that it can in some way inspire changes in the future.
Especially for 10.0 as that is the closest we can expect bigger changes to be made, in terms of design.
Until then, most likely we’re only gonna see some tuning passes or perhaps smaller reworks to specific elements/powers(like Lego’s).
I think BM could be made viable in PvP by 2 simple changes.
Kill Command damage increased. Not only does this increase damage but also makes Qa’pla, Eredun War Order more viable.
Kill Shot damage increase to give hunters more of a punch in execute range.
Basically, if the skill has “kill” in it, shouldn’t it be a threat!
What’s a lowest-cost skill on a 10-second cooldown or so that you feel packs a lot of punch (among other specs)?
Personally, dealing the Attack Power of a Templar’s Verdict (an up to per-3 GCD spender) or a 30-Rage Execute (about 4.3 seconds of autoattack time) via an instant ranged attack as the lowest of all Focus spenders doesn’t seem particularly weak. We’re talking one and a half Pyroblasts here, albeit as physical damage.
Now, if we wanted to just up both the damage and the cost, that’d seem pretty reasonable, but otherwise the damage buff ought to be fairly small (if not merely part of a broader aura buff).
The problem is, as a BM Hunter Kill Shot damage can only be increased by Vers, maybe if they allowed Mastery to increase Kill Shot damage. I think Kill Shot is fine for MM and SV.
BM mastery could get changed to be similar to Survival mastery, giving a boost to all abilities from hunter and pet, or make a pet version of Kill Shot so it does benefit (“Rip and Tear”?)
I don’t think we’ll see these changes not because of an unwillingness to change the spec, but because people who don’t play BM always seem to complain when its a “good” spec. There are a lot of stigmas behind hunters, and BM is historically disliked when its strong because pets are deemed annoying AF (in PVP). If I recall, a lot of nerfs BM has gotten in more recent memory are because of or likely because of PVP, which is interesting considering we ended 8.3 as one of the weakest specs for PVP.
And Crit and Haste. You may as well complain about Blade of Justice not being affected by Ret’s Mastery, or Ambush and Shadowstrike not being affected by Subtlety’s (and the latter is far more vital).
The larger issue to me is the excessively all-encompassing Animal Companion aura debuff, which excludes otherwise clutch, mastery-affected tools that could compensate for Kill Shot not being affected by our mastery—such as Spitting Cobra (if it was changed to be more immediately usable) or Murder of Crows.
As a master of beasts, I don’t need to be able to shoot a kill shot like a Marksman. But I do need to be able to kill things… via my beasts.
But they are tuned to do more damage because of that which is what said needs to happen. Increase the damage of Kill Shot for BM hunters so it does comparable damage to SV and MM.
Also, not a direct comparison because BoJ isn’t casted by Holy and Prot Paladins, so nothing to compare it to.
i didnt paste them all here, that is just the link for the post it picks up the 1st post, and the 1st post contains all the suggestions
To do so, the “Master of Beasts” specs would need to have higher baseline damage on… Kill Shot… than the actual “Marksman” spec.
It’s a element about which Mastery does not scale. The difference is that BoJ is actually core to Ret playflow while Kill Shot is not core to BM’s playflow.
But if you like, make instead the obvious distinction that HoW scales with Ret Mastery, but not with Holy or Prot’s. Oddly enough, a Healer being unable to scale its execute via Mastery is no less relevant than, say, a DPS (notably, one that already gives greater dps per point increase than the meta builds of all but 5 other DPS specs) themed around its portion of damage opposite that execute.
If you want Kill Shot to be as significant as it is on MM and SV, despite a theme that has nothing to do with Kill Shot, do so via procs, such as by having it add a charge to and empower your next Kill Command. You know, make it have something to actually do with BM.
Another change that would be nice is to make The Beast Within PvP Talent baseline (Bestial Wrath makes you immune to Fear and Horror) and add that it breaks those effects upon use. You can currently use Bestial Wrath while feared but it won’t break it even with the talent. Interestingly, Bestial Wrath in Classic currently does make your pet immune to fear i believe.
It does, and Beast Within then shares that property with you, the hunter.
I still have my wishes of them basically buffing pets like they used to be with unique and individual perks per Family. With that, it’d be nice for them to fix Animal Companion’s bugs since I’ve seen 2-3 dead Loques in a single day because of it.