I have to agree. The changes are in a good direction. A couple of things noted:
We are still spending too many points in the top of the tree. Having Crack Shot and Precise Shots as two-point nodes means we spend 6 points just to move to the third row. We end up spending up to 14 points at the top of the tree before moving on to the next tier (15 if you’re BM). Freeing up two or three points would go far in improving the flexibility of choice at the bottom of the tree.
Dead eye does need to be adjacent to the other Kill Shot modifier nodes. I keep preaching that it also needs to be usable on targets with 30-35% health remaining. This would make Kill Shot execute similar to Warrior.
Bullseye is gated behind Serpentstalker’s Trickery. This feels bad since we are already having Serpent Sting in the class tree and having no option to skip it for the buff in execute crit feels bad.
Sharpshooter is gated under Volley. It may be necessary to add a path from True Shot. You could swap Dead Eye and Volley putting the Kill Shot nodes adjacent, move Serpentstalker’s Trickery to the space between the current Volley and Sharpshooter, add a line from True Shot to Sharpshooter allowing Serpentstalker’s to be skipped. This free’s up a node at the current Serpentstalker’s location. This could be used to buff Arcane Shot since there is nothing for it, and we have the buffs to Multi-Shot on the other side.
Please read the ‘notes’ section under the “Tree Information” for both trees.
The goal is to present tree and node ideas for the alpha trees. The alpha trees are significantly lacking in anything ‘fun’ and I think a plethora of cool ideas can be drawn from these trees. So take your time, enjoy building different builds, and pull some ideas from it.
I know this sounds like a lot, however, it’s a wonderful resource to use when dealing with these talent trees.
Finally, I give you the authorization to share both trees in the Alpha forums, as well as individual talents.
awesome feedback 100% agreed. I also think we have too many talents focused on % crit and I feel like they are quite underwhelming and should be replaced with some cool abilities from the MM artifact weapon like Winburst and Cyclonic Burst
I think the first part of this do able. Many of us have been asking for this very thing. The second half I dont think will happen sadly. I dont see them extending Mongoose Fury ever.
Honestly replacing Barrage with Chakrams would be perfect. I like the added affect but i could see adding a talent that let Chakrams could spread SS like FoK spreads rogues poisons before adding a bleed to it.
I’d just like to point out that Watermist has a job and a life in conjunction with a passion for hunters in WoW. I imagine signing up for the Community Council to offer feedback was done without knowing that hunters would have limited interaction on DF feedback, since many of us can not post in the Alpha forums and that is where most of the communication is occurring.
Watermist has become one of our unofficial spokespersons and has put a tremendous effort into taking the multitude of opinions and concerns and consolidating them in a logical and presentable way. Many hours of free time have put into all this research and organization, as far as I can tell. And I’m seeing very little of their own preferences in an attempt to represent us all.
It’s encouraging to see so many players with such passion presenting ideas and offering solutions and not just complaining. However, please bear in mind there is a limit to how much one person can do. For all I know, they are reading every link and evaluating every tree and all the new ideas and happily for every single poster….but if they can’t do all that, Watermist has done an amazing job.
Just a couple quick notes, before I leave for work.
Remember that the icon for Wailing Arrow used on the trees is the Black Arrow icon. So I absolutely won’t be surprised if they got it mixed up due to the two abilities sharing the same icon.
And secondly, I really like seeing all the trees that different posters come up with on here! They’re very creative, and I’m just in awe.
But I can’t help but feel that if I share those fan-made trees in my posts, I would end up shooting myself (and us) in my feet. In the past, Blizzard — especially this current crop of devs — has always shown (however unintentionally) mild disdain for fan-made talent trees.
So what I’ve been doing so far, and I plan on keep doing, is look at the player-made trees, write down active abilities (either new or old) with strong Hunter-y themes, and share them.
Maybe I’m being overly cautious, but I do feel like a shift has happened between Blizzard and the Hunter community, on both alpha and here. Over the past month, I can only recall two long-lasting arguments in here, and they weren’t even that long. The Hunter community is very focused on feedback, a lot more than I saw during the Legion/BFA/SL alpha and beta.
So yeah, I’m treading carefully here! I am definitely using the player-made trees as resources, but I’m not gonna link them in the alpha feedback. I just can’t shake the feeling that it would immediately turn off Blizzard’s attention…
Blizz has this superiority complex when it comes to classes. They SAY they want feedback, but only in the context that it can be modified so they can fit it into their trees. I have seen in the past where devs would be quite frustrated, even angry at players who link trees and systems that would, by far, be better then what blizz has created. Of course, the trees are presented in a meaningful and helpful manner, for the goal of making the game better. However, blizz does not speak in the same language as players do.
Mist, you are correct. There is a past between hunters and the devs, and the primary cause for the animosity is the removal of ranged survival. hands down. When they removed it, it split the hunter playerbase and it also sparked substantial lashback at the devs. Ever since then there has often been undercurrents between us. Along with removing rsv, they completed dismantled the pet system, they have yet to provide ranged weapons with illusions that everyone else gets for their weapons, they have over time removed iconic spells from the hunter toolkit (lacerate anyone), which has also pissed people off. Lets not forget that blizz gets substantial backlash from the community nearly every time they release class sets bc the visuals are nearly all the same, and are ALWAYS a step or two, or ten, below that of the shaman’s steps.
Ill make a list and share it with you from my trees. However, i was pretty focused on not creating new active on-use spells bc we dont need anymore on-use spells. In fact, i would argue that the biggest empty spots in our trees are the dead “increases focus by x” spells. My trees heavily focus on correcting that huge issue. Ill add some in my list, although it does sort of piss me off that i cant share Terminator Kitteh because it involves multiple nodes, not just one.
I think the second half is just to solve for the issue of never wanting to press Kill Shot during a Mongoose Fury window. If you don’t ever want to press it during that window, Lacerate and Kill Shot would just become two buttons that you press in between Mongoose Fury windows, and if you get a proc early in the window, it would feel pretty bad because you’re just sitting on it for 10+ seconds, and Lacerate is losing half of the functionality it has in my proposal.
All of this said, I like the recent idea on the Alpha feedback thread that calls for Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus to be replaced with the Flayed Shot mechanic for each spec and Razorpouch Fragments in the class tree. If this were to happen, what I think the single target rotation could use is some cd reduction on Flanking Strike in single target situation (i.e. not just from Carve/Butchery) such that with optimal play, Flanking Strike fits into each Mongoose Fury window, and again, I think we would need a talent on the single target side that makes Kill Shot do something special with Mongoose Fury, otherwise we’d be back in a similar situation where we end up holding the proc until after the Mongoose Fury window. Of course, that’s easier to do if it’s tied to Kill Command resets than a DoT naturally ticking away, but still would not feel great.
My main strategy at this point is to try to ask for what I want in the simplest implementation possible.
Goal: I do want another button or two to press in the single target rotation.
Simplest Implementation: *of course, I’m no computer programmer, so this is my layman’s opinion of “simple implementation”
I think the best first step is implementing the Flayed Shot mechanic. It doesn’t necessarily add a new bind because it could be tied to Kill Command resets like the tree originally did, but it does add a new button to press – Kill Shot.
I think that we then would need to tackle the issue of not wanting to press Kill Shot in a Mongoose Fury window. Here’s where my suggestion that Kill Shot increase the Mongoose Fury window comes in.
If the reset is tied to Kill Command resets and not a new button like Lacerate, I again think that we could use another button to press in single target, and would like to see a cooldown reduction on Flanking Strike in the single target rotation to be used in every Mongoose Fury window with optimal play – and maybe even have the talent nodes that increase its damage have its damage increased by Mongoose Fury stacks instead.
There is feedback, and then there is telling the devs straight up “your design sucks, throw it all out, use my design instead as a drop in replacement”.
We should be aiming for iterative feedback leading to an evolution of Hunter as it is on live and as we’ve seen from alpha releases this far, not a complete revolution that upends everything the devs have built.
Regardless of your opinions on the matter, regardless of how good your concept tree might be, the devs are not going to throw out their work wholesale and replace it with your ideas. Period.
Focus on the achievable. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.
To add, As I said before, the hardest part of a developer is trying to find the balance in the product. Their will always be a “better vision” when your vision does not match the “other vision”. There is indeed a fine line to tread.
Also there are legalities, balance, a flury of other things that goes into why a dev might not use a idea or a “fan created content” it sounds strange, but its strange times.
Adding RS/MB to Frenzy Strikes would go a long way to tying together st rotation as well as helping to compress it during low haste. If you can throw that in there thatd be great!
Your assumption that i want them to “throw it out and replace it with mine” is completely false.
Do i think their design sucks? For survival? Without a doubt in my mind. I dont think ive ever seen a tree as bad as the one survival has in alpha.
Do i think mine is better? Of course, i am biased. I built it.
Do i think blizz should replace theirs with mine? Absolutely not.
Do i think blizz needs to get knocked off their pedistal? Yep
Do i ultimately think if blizz put their hatred for some of the hunter playerbase aside and accepted the player-made trees and really incorporated parts of their trees into the alpha tree that the alpha survival tree could be as good as some of the other trees? Absolutely.
My point is that whatever mess they have designed for survival is coming out as that… a mess. There is countless player trees including mine that have wonderful and fun ideas that would make survival at least playable again. Having to tippy toe around feelings to get ideas across is counterproductive.
Plus, look at some of the feedback. Blizz has stymied sooooo many of the ideas in here that players beg for the smallest changes that have little to no effect on the spec/class then act like its some big thing. I aint buying it. Major changes need to happen for the hunter/surv trees to get them beta ready.
the lack of pet specs and being unable to pick what spec for your pet so you can use whatever you like is a personal pain point for me. i want to be able to enjoy more pets, and not be gimped because i chose a cunning pet in m+/raid because they don’t have leech. in PVP they can use the more strictly enforced system they’ve got now so there’s no issue of recognition/being able to tell what an enemy hunter has and can do.
Thank you, Watermist, for spending the time carefully reviewing the feedback!
It is also encouraging that you are looking at the player talent tree mockups. While many have created and shared these tree’s, we understand that they are fan-made projects and by no means feel that Blizzard should be forced to comply with the individual vision these represent.
If the feedback from the player base continues to be constructive, I’m confident we will arrive at a reasonable compromise on the talents and their interactions. As long as the group keeps an open mind about it and maintains a bit of humility, we should be alright for DF.
Do you really expect anyone to take your tree seriously when you claim its better than the proposed Blizzard tree when you name a talent “Kombat Kitteh from the Future”? All of your talents read like fanfiction essays. Seriously, how would you expect any player to comprehend the talents in this tree?
To echo an earlier sentiment, suggesting Blizzard re-invent the wheel is not going to work. Development is too far along for Dragonflight at this point, and there is no chance an entire spec redesign happens anytime in Dragonflight. The proposed spec is not unfixable by any means. Sure there are problems, but it is a lot more constructive to provide feedback on the talents that have been given than to say “everything sucks, use my tree because it’s better”.
