Any individual large hit?
Like literally any time a boss looks at me and wants to hit me with something?
If I wait and use the heal after the fact, I get no benefit from DR. If I use the heal up front so the DR is active, I don’t get the heal. It feels bad in either case.
The only time I’d benefit from both is if I’m at half health and about to be hit by a not-terribly-threatening attack at the same time, and even then, I could just try not taking unnecessary damage before a telegraphed hit.
But if you’re at full health, like you said, and as long as the ability won’t 1-shot you, why would you need to use Exhil preemptively for a DR in that case? Just wait until it hits, use Exhil to heal yourself back up, and gain benefit from the DR while getting the health back to full.
Preemptive use of a DR is mostly worth it if there’s a high chance of you either getting 1-shot by the first hit, or if you know that shortly after, you’re going to take additional damage that could be lethal.
Again, I would MUCH rather have these options, over something like Binding Shackles that requires me to use utility like a 5sec stun, or a Binding Shot, just to gain a DR from it.
Wouldn’t it be the same with what you said first? The only time you would gain a truly substantial benefit from preemptive use of a DR, would be if it was against a near-1 shot-ability, or in preparation for a window of extreme amounts of incoming damage that would make it risky to delay the use of said DR, by even X sec.
And yes, ofc preemptive use would allow you to require less healing in total. But we’re talking a 20% DR here, and not even in a constant passive form, but during a short window of time. Like you hinted at yourself, unless the incoming damage is a serious threat to your survival, it becomes nothing more than a case of how much healing is required in total. And again, we’re talking a 20% difference here, for a very short window.
Ok let me break it down.
I’m fighting a boss. I’m the telegraphed target for Big Hit. I’m at full health. I use hy heal to proc the DR, take less damage from Big Hit, and my healers top me up shortly after.
Alternately, I take the full Big Hit, use Exhil to heal up, watch the DR tick down for 8 seconds while I take zero additional damage, and my healers top me up shortly after.
In order for it to be worthwhile after the fact, you have to make the assumption that I’m going to be taking additional damage after Big Hit (which isn’t usually the case).
While this is true, the retroactive heal will in 99% of the cases be worth much more. In most cases the retroactive heal will heal you up to full (30% max hp heal) while the DR will only remove a small portion (20% for example) of the incoming damage, leaving more damage done for my healers to heal. So while it would feel bad to have both DR and Heal baked into the same ability (retroactive or proactive possibilities) it will still feel bad, because it’s almost always going to be the retroactive use that is most effective.
So, just give us a separate DR ability. Done.
(Sorry, long post)
Again, unless the incoming damage could be lethal, and unless the damage prevented, from that 20% DR, would be more than the total heal from Exhilaration+RW, it wouldn’t be worth a preemptive use. Keep in mind that, if that 20% DR would accomplish that much, you’d most likely die anyway from the damage taken that wasn’t prevented.
Scenario 1
Let’s say you have 100k health. 1 use of Exhilaration would heal you for 30k. And with my suggested design of Rejuvenating Wind, you’d get a HoT for an additional 10-20k health over 8 seconds, for a total of 40-50k health.
Here, a boss targets you to cast an ability that deals 90k damage to you in a single hit. That, by all accounts, would qualify as a potential 1-shot. In such a scenario, you’d definitely want to use a DR preemptively. If you do this, you would waste a 30k heal, to prevent 18k damage taken from that hit. So the boss then hits you for 72k(90-18), 10-20 of which is healed up within 8 sec by the HoT. This leaves you at around 40-50% health total.
40-50% health remaining obviously isn’t the same as 70-80%(what it would’ve been if you had been able to fully benefit from the Exhil heal as well, in that particular situation). But it’s not by any means an immediate life-threatening situation. And in a case where such a mechanic is followed up by more incoming damage in larger amounts, you could just do what you said yourself:
And then, scenario 2.
Here, you’d still have 100k health. Exhilaration + RW would still heal for a total of 50k.
But let’s say you get targeted by an ability that, if you preemptively use that DR to take away 20% of the total damage it would deal, and if that would be more than 50k, it then means that the ability would’ve hit you for a total of 250k. So even if you did benefit from the DR when it hit, you’d still be dead, by an excess of 100k.
In short, would it have been useful to have gained benefit from the Exhil instant heal as well? Sure, obviously. But again, in scenario 1, unless there’s a big risk of you taking lethal damage shortly after, to which you said…
…and unless you have nothing else to help you there(what you said about other defensives or externals), it’s just a matter of you requiring to be healed up for an additional 30k health during a period where you take no/little additional damage.
Is it perfect? No. Would it feel good? Obviously not.
But, like you said:
Summary:
By your suggestion, you want us to rely on a DR that is tied to utility which, at times, is typically reserved for mechanics/situations that if not handled correctly, could potentially wipe your raid. In such a scenario, you’d be standing there with nothing but SotF or Turtle, or an external. Assuming that those are still available at that particular time.
By my suggestion, you’d rely on a DR that’s tied to a heal that you can use once every minute or so. A heal that could, on occasion, be wasted for a particular mechanic because you needed to use it preemptively for the DR, resulting in you needing a bit more healing for that one time. Your argument of relying on SotF, Turtle, or an external for additional incoming damage would apply here as well ofc.
I know which option I would prefer.
The abilities I would tie DR to (which, by the way, Blizzard has already tied DR to, for several expansions, albeit in a way that’s useless in PvE) have codowns ranging from 30 sec to 1 min, half or less of Exhilaration’s base cooldown. Further, in what scenario are you going to be required to use both of your CCs to handle an add wave to prevent a wipe and then also be required to use both of your CCs to apply DR and soak a mechanic?
To be clear, I’d much prefer Binding Shackles to be replaced with Deterrence, or SotF (with you getting a second charge if you are Lone Wolf or Tenacity), or Survival Tactics (DR during and for a few seconds after Feign Death), but Blizz seems tied to Binding Shackles despite it being a never pick talent for the last 4 years. If they won’t replace it, and they are going to force me to take it to get key throughput, I at least want it not to be completely useless.
A soak mechanic specifically? Not sure.
Having said that, here are some fights where it was very useful to have access to both Binding Shot + Intimidation. If I would’ve used those for a DR, some times where I felt that I needed it(and had the option), they wouldn’t have been up for the actual adds, once that was required. Not saying that it was always a common strat, nor a requirement. It would often vary from one attempt to another, especially early on in progression.
The Hivemind in Ny’alotha.
Sun King in Castle Nathria(not very common).
Soulrender in SoD.
Anduin in Sepulcher(not very common).
Jailer in Sepulcher.
Anyway…
Agreed.
Heck no!
Those conduits/effects, like that one, or Marksman’s Advantage, or tied to for example Disengage. No thanks.
Hopefully not.
Honestly, for Survival, you can just add DR onto the Mastery
% Damage Reduction based on how far you are from your pet.
Fits the Spirit Bond and fighting in tandem with your pet mentality.
Safeguards you when you are fighting in melee for pve and pvp.
But if not just for Survival and instead for everyone else Devs can add 2 point node in the middle somewhere
Wilderness Training-
5%/10% Damage Reduction
it definitely feels like the defensive and utility capabilities hunter has is geared for phys ranged, rather than melee. compare what other melees have vs sv and you’ll notice a glaring difference
Flayed Shot/Razor Frags is the only reason I played my hunter as my 2nd main this xpac. Super disappointed they are using Chakram as the last row in the hunter tree instead of flayed shot/Razor Frags.
BM feels super stupid and boring without those mechanics. I know some of it is baked into the spec tree but looks really weak relative to SL.
SV… Butchery needs more interactions to set up a huge aoe nuke or spread bleeds or something rather than it just existing. Happy we can choose it over carve without a net loss though!
Thanks.
how about a talent that lets just cast aim shot while moving??? honestly i feel like the spec is being pruned down again. we are going to have to choose between binding shot or scatter shot. its nice we are finally getting a stun but we have to spec for it and have a pet out while other classes have it baseline!
Can we please just have some sort of raid or party utility so hunters aren’t the only class without something unique they can bring to the group? I don’t count lust because shamans and mages can bring that and have their own unique party/raid utility.
Color me shocked that out of all the talents Chakram is the one they picked…
I’m liking the changes I’m seeing to the hunter tree. I no longer feel quite as frustrated about having to take spells / skills that feel like utter filler to get to the ones I will actually need and use!
Nothing will be perfect, and we’ll need to see how things flow and interact but I’m actually feeling rather hopeful!
I’m feeling the exact opposite… I feel like some of them are okay but others are just… why…and the placement of the talents makes 0 logical sense that I can make out. Furiously putting together revisions…
Make Marksman have a mobile option(Either make Aimed Shot castable while moving again, or turn Rapid fire into a Spendor replacement for Aimed shot and be effected by all its talents)
Make Survival not reliant on the pet at all. Design it so its a Hybrid Melee/Ranged Class, similar to Red Mage in FFXIV with the option to take Lone Wolf as well.
SV seems to be improved, just as they said. I am going to go through the tree now. I notice there is no more bloat. Lunge is a 1pt skill 
Thats a plus and shows, they are listening. Perhaps a little
im with you on this the its kind of better in a way but god some of the placement of node is a big wtf.
The hunter trees look really abysmal, they stripped all of our rotation out and scattered it amongst the talent trees to where we will spec into a full tree that is gimped.
Hunters already had alot of bloat utility that is somewhat outdated now that other classes have CC, as stated hunters need something to bring to raids, we used to have trueshot aura as an actual raid aura, but in similar fashion it was recycled into a cd…
I feel like its too late for a complete hunter overhaul, will wait to see what the finished product is for hunter in DF, i hope its worth it, or i might sit this expansion out like i did most of bfa/sl.
(would reroll, but hunter/archer playstyle is it for me)
I really like the Class Tree in the latest build. I’d change some minor things (baseline Scare Beast, remove Nesingwary’s), but if the class tree went live how it is now I’d be fine with it.
The MM tree on the other hand is worse than the last build IMO. I like the new talents but they moved other stuff and changed pathing in a way that makes it really hard to get to Wailing Arrow or Lock and Load.