Hello Blizzard,
11.1 has been an absolute disaster for hero tree balance. as of time writing this post there are 2 DR BM parses on mythic 1st boss only and 3 mythic logs on the first 2 bosses (one of them is myself) if there was not a deranged player who actually enjoys DR play style trying to make it work, then the split would be 100% in favor of sentinel. I will list some points below as to why this is for MM only as i do not know a lot about BM.
DR has seen a return of a bug that cut shadow surge damage in half, this bug occurred during 11.07 and was fixed, this was re-pushed to live on 11.1 and has yet to be addressed.
Precise shots increase autoshot swing timer by 2 seconds for no reason (this impacts MM as a whole but mostly affects DR as it benefits greatly from bleak arrow damage and death blow procs from bleak arrows)
Withering fire is less than .5% of your damage (the change to it make it not autofired was required to combat the rng swings and balance issues presented) however in doing so you made it so the 2ndary black arrows do not benefit from any of the killshot damage amps such as razorfragments and precise shot (headshot) it is unacceptable for a hero treeās capstone to have next to 0 impact in both ST and AOE. This needs to be buffed drastically or just reworked (i liked someone idea to make it turn aimedshot into wailing arrow, this would make DR do around 8% more damage alone which makes it viable and fits thematically)
The good from 11.1
Dark Hounds now work properly and do their correct damage.
Razor fragments now work properly with ebon bow string resets.
Headshot amped up black arrow damage and allows you to use it to generate streamline.
The bad from 11.1
Removal of killer accuracy removed 20% crit damage and crit chance from black arrow/killshot
Bugs to shadow surge and withering fire (unsure if the no damage amps is a bug or intention)
Overall i feel DR is almost there from a rotation standpoint and flavor of actually playing a dark ranger. it is just slightly lacking.
Some key changes i would like to see.
Withering fire re-design or 2nd arrows now benefit from all damage amps that the primary had.
Bleak powder can hit a primary target again (not sure why this change was made for mm)
Precise shot 2 second autoshot increase removed (this opens up talents like obsidian arrow heads and improves drastically on our autoshot reliant kit)
Return of the bombardment effect (killshot now grants trickshots) tack this onto headshot or a choice node with it. this would make DR aoe feel so much better, currently having to multishot before every black arrow is extremely focus draining in aoe.
7 Likes
I check the hunter forum every day looking for a blue post saying theyāre at least aware of the MM/DR problems.
Crickets.
Youāre 100% right. You only raid/M+ with MM/DR right now if you really want it to work at a severe handicap. Itās unfortunate too. MM/DR was a lot of fun in 11.07.
I do hope Blizzard acknowledges the issues with Dark Ranger. I would love to play it, but as it stands, to play it is to put yourself behind a very large 8 ball, then work to get around it and compete.
I am siming with new gear, and I am hoping the numbers gap closes a bit. But alas it does not. Sentinal is so far ahead of it for MM it is rather disheartening.
Blizzard take a look, give us a hotfix, do not let an entire season go by and let BM and MM Hunters only have one viable hero tree.
2 Likes
Iāve reported all of these issues probably 10 times with the PTR āreport issueā button and then also almost every day in-game with āSupportā ā āReport bugā during the first 11.1 week
I stopped doing it a few days ago as I thought they must have gotten the memo and at this point they either donāt care, or are planning to fix it some time later
Sad really
Blizzard has heard our pleaās.
However they didnt really address the issues, just combat it with insane number tuning lol.
I welcome it greatly.
3 Likes
Just saw the article. Ok. Those numbers are like whoa. I guess we better enjoy it while it last. Heh Iāll pop in my Dark Ranger build and see how it goes after the patch. But yeah those numbers are INSANE
Its still behind in a MDT sim by 9% however thats better than 23% before. now DR MM is competeing with BM in ST for raid though. so i suspect DR to find a good spot in raiding and possibly m+.
Can you please share some links, if you have them?
Iām not good with simming and stuff, no idea how to do it for patch notes updates
The changes to bleak powder and phantom pain will change the AOE builds by a bit. I think it may be the kick in the butt it needed for AOE.
@Tassili where were you able to SIM with the new changes?
1 Like
Raid bots with overrides from trueshot lodge discord
1 Like
Even with the Class Tuning tomorrow, what the OP said remains true with additions from me that needs improvement.
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Lock & Load and Bleak Arrow proc chance needs to be better than 8%. 30 auto shots on a target dummy after 2 minutes will only net you 2 procs from each talent. The reward for the procs add up to almost nothing or at least not worth the 2 talent points spent on them. Even the S2 Set 4p hardly satisfies me with the Explosive Shot proc. Unlearning Lock & Load makes me feel like the point may be better used else where and ignore my 4p set bonus. This criticism is based around single target. It seems AE scenarios is the niche for 4p bonus.
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Shadow Surge and Withering Fire are also very weak compared to other Hero Talent trees. The trend for most is that the last talents in the tree are at the peak of enhancements yet this is not true for Dark Ranger.
Withering fire does indeed suck. but shadow surge is currently bugged and doing half damage. while i dont think DR needs it fixed after all the buffs we getting tomorrow.
They forgot to buff withering fire after they removed the auto black arrows 
Now, after the upcoming buffs, withering fire will only serve to spread the black arrow dot to as many enemies as possible, for the benefit of the buffed Phantom pain. Whether we like it or not, this is the new purpose of our cap stone talentā¦
i think it would be better if blizzard completely deleted dark ranger spec from the bm spec, since bm is supposed to be about pets, not kill shot spam. if you wanna play dark ranger push that for MM instead, not bm.
I mean, they easily could have had Black Arrow remain a separate action that provides ramps of whatevertf buff to each, or had it replace different abilities on each (Aimed Shot vs Barbed Shot), or even made certain Hero talents a far larger portion of overall contribution (Dread Hounds, etc.) on one spec than they are on the other spec.
You can still largely have two different playflows and profiles from the same Hero talents across its two different source specs. Every node is wholly conditional to oneās spec, after all. Nothing is actually shared by necessity, only ever by choice.
They have basically done this already. DR is not viable for BM.
However its really good for MM now.
1 Like
Played DR in pvp after the buffs and pvp nerf went live, and Dark Ranger will not be used again by me without more buffs or at least the pvp modifier/nerf removed. Sentinel is far more effective for me. Hope DR works well for pve folks, but Sentinel feels like the best pvp option for MM.
Currently, DR is horrible for PVP:
- BA damage isnāt great, kill shots as Sentinel hit for as much as BA due to the 10% buff from the lunar storm
- Smoke screen makes you actually weaker: if you use Survival of the fittest (gives you 25% DR for 8 sec) and then you use Exhilaration, real SotF buff is replaced by a 12.5% DR buff for 4sec. If you use Exhilaration and then you use Survival of the Fittest, the normal Rejuvenating wind buff is replaced by a half-strength buff. Absolutely troll talent. The other defensive option is even worse
- The buffed Bleak powder damage is irrelevant for PVP
- The sentinel root is super OP
1 Like
That was pretty much my line of thinking as well. With using Kill shot talents, Iām seeing up 1.2 million kill shot crits without Dark Ranger. Barely more than that with dark ranger. And I donāt have nearly the mastery I will when I have the appropriate BiS gear.