Does anyone find the theme still somewhat lacking in the Dark Ranger Hero Talent tree?
You have made a pact with dark magic and have embraced hatred and necromancy for your own personal benefit. Strike from the shadows and assault your enemies with necrotic/shadow empowered abilities. Enemies who fall from your abilities further empower your dark energies
Some of this is present, but just not enough.
Where’s the necromancy? We should be turning those killed with Black Arrow into skeletons.
Where is the visual flair outside of Trueshot? Why aren’t our auto-shots shadowy? Or Survival of the Fittest surround us in a shadowy embrace.
THIS. Not only do the Dark Hounds not proc often enough, but they also DON’T scream “necromancy”. The model used has also been used for Demons and regular Beasts… they just seem like “hounds”.
I agree 100%. And when I do see the Dark Hounds at the training dummies (because nothing is overlapping them), they are just regular looking dogs that sometimes I mistake them for another Hunter’s pet who happens to be passing by. And the dark tentacles are too opaque to ever notice.
Herne watching all the Dark Rangers summon “Shadow Hounds” : “You call those Undead hounds?!? THESE are Undead hounds!” proceeds to summon half a dozen:
Personally I don’t think Dark Ranger or Sentinel should’ve been the themes for hunters. They’re both elf centric while elves are only a small portion of hunters as a class.
There is so much more to hunters than elves. And if you really want to go further, dark rangers are even more niche in the sense that they’re elves who are also raised into undeath. That probably happens to like 1% of all hunters in Azeroth.
I think Blizz chose themes that are very niche and race specific, but cannot fully lean into them because they’re so niche and specific. They have to keep them more broad and general to make it work with every hunter race, and that disconnect is showing.
I mean really, why would a mecha gnome be a dark ranger? Or a Lightforged Draenei? It makes no sense.
Fantasy-wise, elves are the most wise, advanced, and creative race in middle earth and extends to other iterations of their history due to Tolkien’s influence. Every race, no matter who they are, are mesmerized by what they forge and would very much love to possess them. Frodo was given an Elven sword called Sting. Sauron had to trick the elves specifically to forge the first rings. Dwarf Lords let the Elves enchant their doorways to the mountain to keep their homes and mines safe. They were the first magic users in many stories, and on and so on. So yeah, Dark Ranger or Sentinel, is not farfetched that non-elves like Gnomes would want to wield their power. In fact, they are the only race possible in all fantasy worlds and Universes that I know can have this much influence, including Marvel.
I agree. Especially as Beast Master. I much prefer Pack Leader in terms of lore & it fits much better but unfortunately lags behind tremendously. Hoping the 11.1 pack leader rework scales as good as dark ranger.
I think one thing I would suggest is that, if hero talents are here to stay, they (hero talents) should come with specific spell visuals as well. Like DR should change most (if not all) of hunter’s spell visuals: hunter and their pets should have a dark (think shadow priests), smokey aura, aim shot is just black arrow with heavier visuals, etc.
I think Dark Ranger should have been its own class like DH and like DH keep it in the elvish realm. Sentinal should also have been a spec for the dark ranger class. But that didn’t happen so now we go to this point.
Personally I think hunters should be completely reworked. Make MM more a Sylvanas type class. And either adding a Shadow spec like Alleria where all damage is Shadow Damage even auto attacks and as stated give us a shadow form type look. Completely make Survival a Rexxar spec. And BM hunter is a unknown at least to me I do not know of a Hero BM spec hunter. But this is just my thoughts.
Well MM is supposed to be the sniper spec. This came straight from blizzard that we are the lone sniper thats what they stated in legion when LW was introduced. You can make long shots with bows but longer with better guns so IMO its what you want it to be. Do you want to make the long shot with a gun or bow. Do you want to rp having to get closer with a bow than you would with a gun. Personally for me its mixxed. With MM we were given a bow in legion and BM was the gun so thats how I look at it
So there are suggestions and speculations that the changes to MM is causing a gunslinger type class. there was also a survey I dont remember what region and it was asking what classes people would love to see Tinker and a gunslinger type class and maybe a few others. I also remember one was like a spear and shield class.
Tinker class has been suggested since legion. IMO if they bring Tinker it will be just turning engineering into a class. I would rather see a thrown weapon class or even a thrown weapon spec like make that 3rd spec for dh.
Don’t get why Black Arrow doesn’t do the second part of what it is meant to:
Black Arrow — Curses an enemy, inflicting periodic Shadow damage over 8 sec. If the target dies while afflicted by Black Arrow, a Skeleton will be summoned from the target’s corpse.
Dark Ranger/Shadow Hunter class would be amazing. Needs a melee spec in there that covers the fantasy of both via talents.