A general list of changes that would be good for Hunter, many have been said before but need to be said again. These talents/suggestions are lacking detail and balance right now because I’m working on something bigger;
Bloodlust baseline not on a pet
Leech function more beneficially for BM
Feign Death ‘delay’ removed to make it more responsive (like shadowmeld speed or somewhere between)
Talent added to use Feign Death as a defensive like it was used in BFA and Shadowlands (Duck and Cover: absorb or DR or other when FD)
Steel Trap changed to be more CC and less dps, more useable like druid roots
Talent added to make pet taunting a skill expression (Endurance Training : After your pet uses growl it takes 35% less damage for 2.5 seconds)
Bursting shot added to the Class tree
Wailing arrow added to the class tree. reduce/remove cast time. add blanket silence to this spell (reduce damage if needed)
Sentinel Owl reworked into a useful utility spell
Binding Shackles reworked : ‘Targets hit by Scatter shot or Binding shot are tethered to the location by dragging chains, When the duration of scatter or binding is finished, enemies are dragged back to the location for 3.5 seconds. (abilities that break roots also break this effect) (Sylvanas chains visual)’
Pod Tender talent added
Marksman’s Advantage Talent : You take 3% less damage from the target of your Hunter’s Mark
Hunter’s Mark reworked/less annoying to use (This is not a raid buff imo)
Ghilli Suit Talent : While Camoflauged your Cool Downs refresh 15% faster
Roar of Sacrifice made useful for PvE situations (10% DR possibly)
AoE stop added (Possibly a Hi Explosive trap talent to knock up instead of away)
Flash Bang Talent : Allies hit by your flare have their interupt cooldown reduced by 4 seconds (Flare’s cooldown is 1.5mins)
Reduce overall number of 2 point talents on ALL Hunter trees
Reduce number of ‘boring’ % damage increase talents on all talent tree (ie. Beast Master, Imp Kill Command, Killer Command, Training Expert, Sweeping Spear, Spear focus, hunter’s knowledge, Focused Aim, Sharpshooter)
Remove Improved Tranq Shot Talent
Buff Lone Survivor (Additional charge added)
Make Misdirection work better with BM Hunters
Make Muzzle and Counter shot a choice node
Aspect of the Pack Talent : (Make Aspect of the Cheetah a raid speed boost utility button)
Rework Aspect of the Chameleon into weaker versions of other classes raid buffs (Like the BFA scrolls but make it hunter talents, non stacking of course)
Rework Stampede
Buff Binding shot back to a root (instead nerf it’s CD or it’s duration)
Allow BM and MM Hunters to have some/any minimal cleave/aoe damage in their pure single target talent builds. (Full cleave or zero cleave is frustrating, MM Hunter tier set allows this but not usually)
Punish MM Hunter’s less for having no pet
Dark Ranger Hero Talent build needs to be more themeatic and more interesting gameplay than just being Flayed Shot
Rework Pack Leader to, Leading a pack
Swap Dark Ranger to SV/MM and Sentinel to BM/MM (Although I’m personally not fussed tbh)
Make Sentinel and Dark Ranger gameplay more different to each other
I’m sure you guys can all add 100 more changes you’d like to see.
I did a Hunter Rework in 10.1.5 on ‘Talent Tree Manager’ here;
I plan to do another one for TWW which I will go into more detail and create trees.
I look forward to reading your criticisms
May I also add to that list more animations and visuals? I mean, even warriors, a class that is something as basic as “hack and slash” has waaaaay more visuals than us and astronomically cooler animations.
Good summary of what the majority of the Hunter playerbase wants tho
If this remains in the bottom third of the talent tree it has to remain a DPS talent or nobody will pick it. I agree rotational traps for damage is a sucky idea, but “just make this capstone talent a CC instead” is a bad take.
We already have a number of pets across all 3 specs with 50% DR on a 50% cooldown. Further, Growl is almost always on auto cast outside of group PvE, where you don’t want the pet taking hits unless you are intentionally saccing it for some gambit.
We have several already.
I like the flash bang idea, but have it be a 3 second AoE disorient or something rather than buffing party members CDR.
Yes awesome do this now.
In what world is turning a stun into a root a buff?
Is this meant to be a consolidation of common asks from the Hunter community? Cause it looks a lot like your personal wishlist.
Steel Trap would of course have to move out of the capstone area. or possibly even not have the whole bottom 3rd of the Hunter Class tree be all throughput because I think every other class tree design is better than Hunter’s in this way. I don’t know why Hunter has 21 talents of dps in it’s class tree.
I am indeed suggesting intentionally saccing it in group PvE combat. I would like a talent that prevents it having to be rezzed in that situation. It is a high level pve tank saving move to pet taunt before tank buster abilities. Not many hunter’s do it. The 50% DR on 50% is not a solution to this
We do not have an ‘aoe stop’ I’m pretty confused why you would say we have several.
Then you suggest an aoe disorient which is exactly the utility you claimed we had in your previous point so that’s also confusing. I think buffing party members CDR would be more unique and interesting utility than your suggestion. However I think that Flare becoming an aoe disorient is a decent utility addition to Hunter also so fair enough.
your later point about Binding Shot makes it seem like you aren’t familiar with Binding shot’s history of what it does now and what it used to do. Which makes me think it’s odd you would reply to this post at all. But no matter.
Thanks for responding and giving feedback. have a great day
I am a recent SV Hunter player and tbh its the only class that I am actually decent at. I have a lot of changes that I wanted to see in the SV talent tree, but you have made a lot of valid points and changes here.
Swap Dark Ranger to SV/MM and Sentinel to BM/MM (Although I’m personally not fussed tbh)
IDK how I feel about this. I do like the Sentinel HT and I really don’t like Pack Leader as much but I think that I can agree with this. I wouldn’t be disappointed with going either DR or Sentinel as an SV hunter.
For the SV tree the Ranger Talent needs to change in my opinion. Its a talent that buffs two skills that SV hunters don’t have on rotation and that feels like a waste.
I also think that the SV hunter offensive CD’s need a rework. I can literally take a no CD build and pump based on my Tier set and have only a 0.5~1.0% dps difference. This is true for both SpearHead and Coordinated Assault. That doesn’t feel great. Currently, the marauder build is doing 0.4% more dps than the CA or SH builds. Also, for CA to work properly, you need a macro. That doesn’t feel great tbh.
While I do like the theme of SV hunter, I do feel that at times the talent tree feels like its lacking. Wild fire bomb isn’t bad, I do enjoy pressing the button. However, the damage breakdown for it is very unsatisfactory. When you look at other specs details, you can tell which skills that is doing the most damage. It isn’t as clear for SV, but that isn’t a big issue for me.
Lastly, what the actual heck is up with the TWW Hunter Tier set? Do ya’ll hate us over there at blizz?
So, at least for SV hunter. I can’t speak on the other two specs, but I would actually agree with the points made above! I hope blizzard takes notes and listens to some of the things that the players are suggesting.
Changing it so all our utility like anti heal, sac, freedom, pet stun, lust no longer requires a pet when using lone wolf. Ideally when i play MM hunter i dont want to deal with pets. If i wanted to deal with them i would play BM or survival.
Updated mobility (disengage is fun but not good enough, need a dash or something melee have infinite mobility now its impossible to kite)
Just because BM hunter can’t use it doesn’t make it worthless to Survival/MM or the rest of the party to gain 10% leech which is some 20k hps. I take it over the 2 points of extra healing from Exhil which tends to be mostly overhealing anyway.
The last time I recall going out of my way to pet taunt something was NW for the big guy’s tenderize which melted tanks at ~4 stacks. This isn’t adding skill, it’s just adding frustration and unnecessary skill expectations. I guess it’s a little easier these days with weakauras telling you when mobs are gonna cast things.
People hated tar trap lego, this sounds equally annoying and will likely only benefit melee which already have a short 12s CD but points for creativity.
Add this to Tranq shot baseline*
They’re in different spec trees? This is pretty much just giving BM a tree 12 CD kick if I’m understanding it correctly.
Nope. Survival would like to keep the only half-decent hunter tree. It’s probably the only thing keeping me from rolling to Blizzard’s favorite child mage or committing to becoming a tank main.
One revolves around a 30s CD, the other is passive. They’re different.
Never really had issues with this generally, some spells just cancel when you’re full down on the ground.
So ice trap 2.0? Not sure what the point of this is.
This has been suggested before and doesn’t solve the massive problem with travel time of the trap.
You’d have to be a lot more specific on which cooldowns. All of them like mage’s Shifting Power or all the aspect CDs?
I’m going to provide specific feedback regarding talents related specifically to survival.
At this time, we still have 6 talents that read increase the damage of x ability by x percent at this time. Additionally to this, our tree has the lowest amount of useable nodes for any melee dps and the highest amount of point investment for said talents. Other then this, we also have direct movement or personal utility such as Aspect of the Hawk and Harpoon on our spec tree which clog up the tree tier 2 and 3 nodes on the right side. Normally this would be okay, but the fact that there are so few nodes to actually apply points makes these nodes worth significantly less to put points into.
Other then this, when comparing to other melee specs such as a ret Paladin, there are inefficiencies that survival’s tree has. For example: Paladin’s currently have a talent for one point that reads Your abilities deal 5% increased critical strike damage and then an additional effect. Our talent node is a 2 POINT node that increases our critical strike damage by 2% PER POINT. This type of issue is all over survival’s tree and honestly feels pretty crappy when you compare survival to something like ret pal.
Additionally to this, 2/3 survival’s major cooldowns in Spearhead and Coordinated Assault are unable to be used while rooted which can lead to very awkward situations where even though the ability does not state so, you can be caught unable to activate the ability.
I don’t care if the spec returns to ranged or stays melee anymore, but the spec tree is so downright uninspired and janky to use that its no wonder there are so few survival hunters to begin with.
P.S., In the current patch, Our S4 tier was not re-buffed after its nerfed form and it is a damage positive to use our season 3 tier set in ANY AoE scenario.
This type of absolute negligence on the spec has been common for years. I don’t care what they do with the spec anymore. I just wish they would do SOMETHING.
As an adendum to your wants, i would like lone wolf to no longer affect AoE spells, so lone wolf is closer to net neutral to using a pet.
I like using a pet, but you are literally forced to use lone wolf in PVE
It should be a choice- so i agree with you as well
i think the fact that having a pet makes it so much easier to play just goes to show how lackluster MM is without one. MM should not be built around pet at all
It should be built around both, i rolled hunter to use a pet personally. but i understand people not wanting to use one, so making changes to the kit would be good for everyone
Plus, being able to use pet utility without a pet would mean killing the pet in pvp doesn’t cripple the class
generally for me i play hunter for bow since its the only class that can use it, but my issue with pets is just the amount of keybinds i need to micromanage it and it basically doing nothing at all impact wise (which i want on MM i dont want my pet to be impactful). Pet revive,Pet heal, Pet summons and pet dismiss, then pet move to (out of ring of frost), pet follow, pet attack. Its just so much buttons in order to basically use utility.
If the pet couldnt be micromanaged and it just ran around as a spirit whacking things or taunting things then it would be a bit different. But keeping it un’cced by running it away when a priest comes in to fear, or keeping it alive in pvp is just so annoying would rather focus on my core bow dps loop.
You made so many good additional points to the many issues with the Survival Class tree.
This type of absolute negligence on the spec has been common for years. I don’t care what they do with the spec anymore. I just wish they would do SOMETHING.
I personally like Survival being a melee class, since I suck at every range class for whatever reason. Also, if any changes are being made I would like them to be good changes. Whether they make the class a ranged class again or if they keep it melee. What matters is that the give the spec a good identity and game play so the people who enjoy the spec can enjoy playing it more.
Survival’s mastery was changed from interacting with mongoose fury stacks (fine, whatever) to being the exact mastery that marksmanship had that they felt was too limited. So they changed marksmanship’s mastery to affect ALL their shots and gave survival the same garbage marksmanship had? No effort to put something worthwhile as a stat for them, thus the spec desires literally 0 mastery, and yet windwalker/ret who have decent enough mastery that they aren’t flat out avoided are getting theirs buffed.
Survival also has no abilities they can use with a melee weapon until level 11. You cannot level as a survival until you get your first spec talent point to buy raptor strike. No other spec has to gain 10 levels effectively as a different spec entirely.
There’s a reason people say survival has no direction and it’s because there’s minimal development put into the spec. The spec’s identity left with Ghostcrawler, he took it with him.
Binding Shot originated in MoP, as a stun after targets moves away from the targeted location.
Binding Shot was later changed to a root, with an effect to not break immediately on damage.
It was then reverted back to a stun.
Stun is better than root, always, unless you are in PvP running a stun heavy comp and trying to avoid diminishing returns. Stun is literally “root, but also the enemy can’t act”.
Survival’s Mastery was changed because it did nothing that Haste couldn’t do better.
Haste equally increased the generation of Mongoose Bite charges (for others: this was back when it did not replace Raptor Strike, cost no Focus, and had 3 charges) but also conveyed all the normal benefits of Haste atop that.
SV’s Legion Mastery provided about 40% the value of what the next-worst stat provided.
Legion MM’s Mastery (increasing the damage of focus spenders), meanwhile, was Legion MM’s best secondary stat, especially preferable for PvP since it focused more on its burst windows instead of having its effect equally split on its time between them.
The difference was BfA simultaneously adding Wildfire Bomb, a no-Focus cost skill… and its tuning just being outright reduced. We got the stat nerf and more than Legion MM needed to balance it for Legion MM, and then had more of our damage siphoned towards unaffected components than Legion MM had.
Individually, either could be fine: Had the tuning been raised in compensation the lost portion of affected damage and those components held roughly equally portions of damage in both ST and AoE, the stat would have been build-splitting but competitive, while if it had its affected portion of damage broadened and its tuning not nerfed it would have done fine (even if it would have then become redundant with Versatility). But no stat can survive simultaneously low scalars and a low portion of damage affected.
