*Edit - when I wrote this I was referring to Hero talents.
Hero talents that modify damage are pointless. The end result is always balanced around a target number.
We could have a talent that says “Increase kill command damage by 10,000%”. And it would make no difference. At the end of the day, whatever the final damage numbers are, there will be tuning to reduce the base damage of kill command until the overall output matches the desired target.
It might mean that your rotation changes slightly. But it it not a meaningful change.
Why can’t we see real changes that are fun? What are your ideas of fun talents and not just damage talents? Here are some of mine:
A spirit tree/talent where you call on the spirit of a beast to perform actions (example: Spirit of Misha - call upon the spirit of Rexxar’s beloved pet to stun your target, replaces Intimidation)
Double Trouble - allow sv to dual wield or mm to have 2 pets
Beloved companion - some of our pets are old enough to drink. We love them. We want to bring them into battle with us. Now you can train your companion in a major skill and a minor skill… Major skills are the current pet major skills (bloodlust/leech, freedom/speed, etc) minor skills are the current pet minor skills (triggered defense, mortal wounds, etc) 24 hour cooldown
Disengage now has 2 charges
Feign death also applies 3 seconds of camouflage
Add survival tactics talent to PVE tree. It’s such an amazing ability that actually takes skill/knowledge to use properly and fills a major gap in hunter survivability
I’d love a talent that lets us go into camouflage from combat.
I’d love if disengage could be talented to break combat.
I think it would be hilariously awesome if we could somehow combine FD and EOTB to have our pet drag our feigned body somewhere.
Or, and this could be interesting, there’s that new talent I think for monks, Transcendence: Linked Spirits, imagine if we could use EOTB to move our pet somewhere, and then we could automatically MOVE to our pet’s location. Yeah, it’s klunky and complicated, but could be really interesting in certain situations. Maybe? Eh, I dunno.
Maybe be able to fire a zip line that we could cross gaps with?
Make crossbows a one-handed item, and allow hunters to wield two of them.
Give us a talent like “blindfolded master” or something for maybe MM that allows moving while firing a wailing arrow or something, I don’t really know MM that well.
I wouldn’t say damage modifier talents entirely pointless, so long as they’re not gating anything more interesting (and do not exist as merely and purposefully always-taken non-choices to then, in essence, free up the choices after them, such as Warrior’s movement speed and Leech talents, which one would otherwise always want, but might not want to be charged for if it were avoidable).
They exist as ways to “opt out” of additional complexity or simplifications (see Savagery), sticking with just what you had up to that point. Optional damage talents / opt-outs shouldn’t ever be optimal over complexity, but the punishment shouldn’t be that significant, either, as to make simpler playstyles real choices.
Fun thought exercise. Look at the class and spec trees of Retribution Paladin or Fire Mage and count how many damage modifier talents without secondary effects they have. Then go and look at any of the Hunter specs and the class tree. Its simply depressing because Blizzard has shown capability in creating interesting and fun talent trees, but a lot of thought going into Hunter talents are “Kill Command damage increased by 5%.”
Barrage choice node with Bazooka wich fires 1 giant shot that looks like a Evokers dragon breath in a smaller linear area.
Survival Beastmode where you smash with your hands akin to a bear druids Thrash.
MM jump high in the air and sniper shot a target.
Falcon landing for better visuals on the crow/raven talent. Survival could transform or jump on a falcon to land on a targeted area creating an earthquake.
Eagle swoop, an eagle comes and swoop your target letting them fall to their possible death.
I think more passive flavor talents would be more fun.
Sorry I was referring to Hero talent trees. You get all of them so there are no meaningful opt-out choices, just a lot of “increase x ability by x damage” nodes.
I think at least one damage-modifying talent may be an inevitability (as a tuning knob) unless you want aura modifiers hidden from the players (or, hopefully, included in the tooltip for the hero spec at least).
I want something that either solves problems that hunters currently have, or has a distinct and obvious visual component that’s new and interesting.
Better dps is great, but we all know that we’ll get nerfed to the ground anyway, so let’s at least have entertaining and fun options.
Be able to attack while using Turtle. Or having two charges of turtle. Or a heal during turtle.
How about getting Wild Spirits back, but having it target on a mob instead of a particular spot on the ground. (that things always move out of the way of)
Or having a new dire beast visual, where the beast from our stables is bigger and celestrial colored? (blue and glowy or green and glowy, something!) when it’s triggered by one of the new talents?
How about giving cammo a shorter cool down or none at all?
Because right now, the way things are I’d rather they scrap Hero Talents and just give me extra points to put into the current trees.
Ehh… visually, it’s the old level 10 Priest Racial ability Starshards. Gameplay-wise, it’s a basically non-optimizable DoT; you just do as you would have done without it.
This is my biggest issue. We have so many of these talents that don’t change what you do. They don’t have visuals. And their end damage will be balanced anyway around a final number. They are basically non-existent, they have no impact on the game whatsoever.
I didn’t say 1:1 I said it’s evocative. I am not the first nor will I be the last to see the similarities of blue hunter AoE circle that does a lot of damage fast.
Right. My point was that I don’t see anything more in common between Lunar Storm and Wild Spirits than, say, Lunar Storm and Volatile Bomb or Lunar Storm and Malefic Rapture. They’re just… not very similar.
Lunar Storm is bonus DoT damage and a 10% damage amp against already DoTed enemies near your target every time you Rapid Fire / Wildfire Bomb.
That’s not a CD, let alone one remotely like Wild Spirits. It’s just a WFB/RF buff that encourages their frequency/pacing.
Which can be fine, but… let’s not pretend it’s Wild Spirits.
Compare:
Each hit is decently hard.
Tickles a little per hit. (At least, going off the numbers actually visible from alpha footage.)
2-minuteactual CD.
Not a cooldown, but triggered by an accelerable and instantly-rechargeable 18- or 20-secondinternal CD.
Indirectly increases damage per action by a flat amount.
Percentile damage buff.
Large area of effect.
Small area of effect.
Deals damage to any enemies in the area, reduced after 5, regardless of using ST or MT abilities.
Affects only targets afflicted with a particular DoT.
Visually filled area of effect indicator field.
Empty area of effect indicator ring, copied from Resonant Arrow.
VFX hits with bursts reminiscent of Night Fae spirits.
Uses the starfall/starshards VFX.
I feel like one has to have a vested interest, be that from clicks or whatever else, to pretend there’s any meaningful connection between them. There’s not. Anyone who’d played with Wild Spirits would know there’s not.
Lunar Storm doesn’t exactly tickle? It’s 75% attack power every .4 seconds for 8 seconds every 15 seconds. You can use that 8 times as often in the same two minute period you’d be waiting for Wild Spirits.
Not including the 10% damage amp.
Which was terrible to play with as soon as there were any sort of ground mechanics to avoid.