Community Council discussion on Hunter design

Classes Hunter
466

The others are talking about melee BM as in it plays the same, except instead of barbed shot giving frenzy to your pet and multi-shot triggering cleave it’s mongoose and carve, with raptor as a spammable filler and KC on cooldown. Occasionally you get to press Beast Within, as a treat.

The problem is, that works for ranged but would be even more boring than current MSV bomb fishing and definitely not what you want. However anything else would be changing BM beyond recognition and current BM mains would be very unhappy, especially with the ridiculous amount of time and tweaking it would require to balance and the inevitable bleedover into ranged BM as the devs desperately try to cater to two completely different audiences: button mashy melee who want their pet to buff them and slow & steady frenzy-stacking/cobra-spamming ranged who want to buff their pet. As sympathetic as I am to RSV people who want their spec back, please stop pushing the melee people to BM - we don’t want to be melee either.

467

No doubt. I was giving an example of what my melee hunter idea would be :+1:t5:

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468

Whether they admit it or not, they have gone back on things they’ve done, or even said in the past, MANY times before. What they said initially about the idea of Classic WoW, this being one of the biggest.

You mean current SV? I’d like to think that it’s possible to learn from mistakes, and that they wouldn’t do what they did to RSV, going into Legion, yet again. Bring RSV back as a 4th spec, and make a point to develop current SV according to what the players of the spec want from it. Whether that is the Wildfire Bombs-route, or dual-wield gameplay, or a spear(2h build) or something like that.

Not exactly sure what you’re after when you mention those examples.

But, in lore, Shadow Hunters aren’t what you’d call actual hunters(as we see the class in-game). Shadow Hunters are a form of high shaman, with powers of voodoo, hexes, and shadow magic.

I do agree that a modern version of RSV could certainly have a partial focus on magic, although, the focus should be on simply firing shots where the projectiles/arrows have been infused with magic. Nothing throughout the history of the class speaks to how you actually go full on magic archer, infusing your shots with magic mid-combat.

If you ask me, in light of what the theme/fantasy of RSV was, that being a munitions expert and trapper, I’d simply call it, the new spec, “Munitions”. It fits the theme/fantasy, and it follows a common theme of the names assigned to our hunter specs, in their original sense. That’s just me though…

The 4 specs:

Beast Mastery - Primary focus on empowering pets, or other wild beasts. Ranged.
Marksmanship - Primary focus on sharpshooting. Ranged.
Survival - Primary focus on melee. Considering their focus character for SV seems to be Rexxar in Dragonflight. I’d simply just rework it to not share any signature elements with BM, but rather develop its own identity.
Munitions - Primary focus on augmented shots, projectiles/arrows. Like old RSV. Ranged.

It wouldn’t be. Assuming he’s not thinking of some other fantasy that isn’t the same as Shadow Hunters, or Arcane Archers(beings with a primary focus on magic, which they infuse into their shots during combat).

I probably got it wrong though, what he actually meant.

Again, noone here have asked them to bring back a carbon copy of old RSV, and to then do nothing else to it. What we want is for them to make a modern spec that is based on the core of what RSV was. We want them to return RSV, but to give it a similar treatment to what was done to all other specs, going into Legion. Where they set out to add a complete set of spec specific talents, with a much more defined, much deeper fantasy.

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469

Nothing, literally, is as boring as the WFB fishing with KC “gameplay”… Its a whole specs rotation and its two abilities! Its disgustingly boring and bad (not as in numbers but from a design point of View)…

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470

Spellbow is the name, and they already exist in WoW, but those are mages that use bows, I think.

If RSV were to happen (which it probably isn’t), it should be built around “magic” damage that doesn’t require mana to cast. Fire from explosives, Nature from poisons, bleeds (though physical) - that kind of stuff. Could use better defensives or heals built around salves, balms, tincture, and bandages. Things you’d expect from a seasoned woodsman, Resourcefulness and cunning.

471

Honestly, i dont trust blizz to do anything right these days and it shows with the current msv alpha build. Do i think blizz would make rsv right if they brought it back? NOPE. Not one little bit. Im guessing they would just put their heads up their backsides and continue off where they left rsv in legion. That would be the worst way ot doing it, but i expect they think it would be the easiest. To do it right they would have to go back to lk, cata, and mop.

As of right now, they keep throwing money into the msv pit of garbo and evemtually they will stop. It hasnt gotten any better, nor has it gotten any closer to being playable. They would have to basically rebuild the entire tree from the ground up to even remotely get close to the expectations of any spec.

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472

Here comes some minor hyperbole again.
I am not disagreeing that its in a bad state and needs more work preferably in another direction. But you might be exaggerating a wee bit.

473

Jesus is crying, how about actually discussing something other than RSV. Game has moved on from it and devs have been pretty clear it isn’t happening. Went back a week in this thread and it’s been nothing but bickering about RSV!

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474

the best thing they could have done was allow the tree for survival to be ranged or legion-type melee but not with the issues, I mean the melee skills like lacerate and flanking strike and such. that would be a clear win for both sides but blizzard said no. they need to listen to us and give us what we want to play. I miss legion survival! the hybrid now is not really my thing, but I love hunter so I play it. I am a ranged mostly class with like 2 melee skills. kill command is not something that should be in our kit. they gave us flanking strike and that concept was great. but now we are weaker beast masters with fewer pets. no matter what i will play hunter cause i love the fantasy so i will play what they give me :stuck_out_tongue:

475

Legion was horrible for hunters. This half ranged, half melee they have going on is just an attempt to please the ReXxAr fanbois and has no legitimate place in the spec. They burn resources on that crap and then when the community gets mad bc the spec isnt ready when df launce, they blame the whole community for requesting it.

Blizz has a hard enough time meeting deadlines. They need to put their nose to the grindstone and focus on melee only playstyle.

If rsv is to return, it should be its own spec, not some half way mess in the worst and smallest spec tree in alpha.

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476

I will start by saying that I don’t really keep up on other classes as I don’t really moonlight. I’ve played my hunter since TBC and have no interest in playing any other class as my main. I play BM, Cata was the last time I played/enjoyed MM.

Yes, losing borrowed power always felt bad. So now we get back talent trees. The problem I have with the implementation of these talent trees is they feel worse than losing borrowed power ever did for me. I literally get zero AoE without talents. We are losing so much more baseline than what we would lose from borrowed power being removed.

I really have to spend a talent point to get Multi-Shot? I have to spend 2 points to keep beast cleave? Another 2 points to keep stomp? I have played since Vanilla so I am very familiar with talent trees.

The way it used to work is you had a baseline kit for your class and 90% of your talent tree simply improved your baseline abilities and 10% were single point talents to add an ability (think Aimed Shot, Bestial Wrath, Adrenaline Rush ect.)

There are so many things that have been moved from baseline hunter kit that now require talent points to retain them on both sides of the tree. I think the Hunter Tree is actually alright. The specialization tree (BM) is not very good.

TLDR:

Multi-Shot should be baseline and not cost a talent point.
Thrill of the Hunt should NOT be 3 talent points
Beast Cleave should be 1 talent point or just baseline.

Those are my 3 biggest gripes in the tree.

477

HIgh Elfers have been crying since TBC (lot longer then rsurv fans) and they are slowly getting what they want.

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478

I gotta be honest, after looking at the Warrior trees I’m totally bummed. That’s such a great design.

How hard would it be to have a similar layout as the spec tree for SV with Splodies on the left, DoT and Bleed amps in the middle, and Melee abilites on the right? Barbed Shot as the top option, KC goes to the top of the BM tree, and Serpent Sting goes in the upper left of the class tree. Get rid of Muzzle and have only Counter Shot. Make all the skills usuable with melee or ranged, but must have weapon equipped (so disarming has value.)

Explosive Shot (old style for maximum bangs) as the focus dump option in upper left of the spec tree, Raptor in the upper right, so you choose your method early, but still have crossover options with things like Harpoon in the second V down (if you look at the warrior tree you’ll see what I mean) - you’d be able to still have bombs and stuff, but also Harpoon as ranged IF you wanted it.

I mean, coming up with options to make LITERALLY everyone happy would be SUPER easy. Like, minimal brain power here. I should just get a template and make some trees. Blizzard out here reinventing the wheel when all they need to do is put a little air in the tires.

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479

I’d love it if they brought back RSV but also kind of made it a hybrid aka have a bow with dual wielding/single polearm OR have the ability to equip them at seperate times but it changes your abilities.
Obviously they wouldn’t like it because every weapon would be a hunter weapon again but I think it would be cool being able to change play style depending on the weapon equiped or having the ability to do both at once.

480

Everyone thinks its cool until blizz pushes the trash they create.

481

Btw, anyone notice that blizz just destroyed beast cleave’s dmg on alpha? 100% to 35% and lowered it to 3 sec.

482

To be fair, High Elfers as you put it have been crying for high elves since Vanilla.

483

Hey I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt of not crying that long

484

It’s 35/40% dmg and 3 sec duration per rank.

Total = 75% dmg and 6 sec duration. At 2/2.

…unless something have changed with that one that isn’t shown on wowhead.

485

I’m kinda let down with the talent trees. I was expecting the trees to give players a way to customize their playstyle and bring back abilities from previous xpacs (Titan’s Thunder, Black Arrow, Aspect of the Fox, etc).

Instead they literally took all the skills you learn while leveling and just gated them behind multiple skill points. Most, if not all choice nodes are not balanced. There will still be cookie cutter builds that you see 99% of hunters using.

I’m not mad, just disappointed.

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