So first and foremost, I’m going to admit that I’m just an average, possibly trash player, so if I say anything dumb, attribute it to that.
When the Dark Ranger re-work was announced, my thoughts were like “Why? Who wanted this?” and sure enough now that it is live, I do not like it as much as having a button for Black Arrow that gave me a on-demand Kill Shot and a huge DoT. However, I told myself that the people who really know how to play MM hunter well, and the game designers know what they’re doing, so maybe having an extra button in the rotation is bad. Fair enough.
However, other than just disliking how it plays now. I am seeing some stuff that is weird or maybe bugged?
Here are my complaints or issues with my MM hunter right now, and what I’m hoping is that good hunters will explain how I’m wrong or what I’m missing.
The new Kill Shot (Black Arrow) doesn’t do any damage if it is your first attack on a fresh mob. Like NONE. The first thing to show in your combat log is “Bleak Arrows”. Did my reading comprehension fail me somewhere? Is this a bug or intended?
Why doesn’t Precise Shots stack anymore? I remember thinking back when the expansion started that it felt really weird and kind of bad to get 2 stacks of Precise Shots every Aimed Shot. After 11.0.5 it’s only 1 stack per Aimed Shot cast, and it can’t stack beyond 1 stack if you do back to back Aimed Shots. That feels even worse. Am I just wrong about that I should never do back to back Aimed Shots?
For world mobs that don’t have tens of millions of health - The Bell Tolls Hero talent seems at odds with how Aimed Shot works with doing bonus damage to mobs over 70% health. Am I supposed to open with Kill Shot (Black Arrow) and miss out on my increased Aimed Shot damage, or am I supposed to go ahead and open with Aimed Shot and lose a free Kill Shot because the AS drops them below 80%?
This is a bug byproduct of the “fixes” they implemented to prevent Black Arrow from pulling more mobs in dungeons randomly. At least I am almost certain that’s the root cause of this issue.
I don’t play a lot of MM but it appears that it only gives 1 stack now from the brief time I played it. I dislike the entire flow and feel of MM though so I can’t comment.
You’re kind of in that damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation there. Whichever hits harder is the better choice so just play around with it and see which one works better.
Aimed Shot has a cast time. Black Arrow does not. You can fire Black Arrow after Aimed Shot while the latter is still traveling to the target. If the Black Arrow doesn’t deal any damage since the hotfix, that’s just a result of the wonderful new bug.
Precise Shots was revised down to one stack to remove the RNG aspect of it and to make it more usable with the current MM rotation, particularly during Trueshot Aura (in effect, it just means you don’t lose as many PS procs as you would have since you still never cast Arcane Shot during Trueshot anyways).
This is from a bm main but my experience since the rework had been -overall- positive.
In terms of numbers, it really depends whom I’m grouped with; if I’m with meta classes in M+, then I’m floating around number two in dps and shifts in overall dps. I can top the chart every two minutes and in most boss fights.
In terms of game play, I like the reactivity of the new changes. Black Arrow is now my top damaging ability and I love the proc. The difficulty I’m having is that sometimes I’m having trouble maintaining my Frenzy buff; it’s too dependent on Barb Shots’ reset. If I get one before my Frenzy falls off, then I’m good but there are more than a handful of times where I’d get no proc and end of losing my stack.
My experience of the DR/Hunter rework has been good. I’m still cheesed that my ST has been nerfed but meh, it could have been worse.
I dont know all the tuning and design math behind why, but DR MM is moving players healthbars a bit less now. Fairly large nerf to effectiveness from 2 weeks ago.
I wish they would move damage back into Aimed Shot rather than it feeling like a “filler” while we’re waiting to be a Dark Ranger only when we have true shot.
BM and MM are keeping up with SV in every type of content in the game right now. They are all actually pretty even. Unless you are talking about how they feel which is subjective and irrelevant in that context.
SV is ahead in everything and has universal gear and more on-demand damage outside of cds. Not just anecdotal from my own raiding and m+ but my sims show this as well. Plus SV plays 50%+ range as well.
BM and MM have fallen, they have no idea how to balance hero talents. Everything nearly needs to be scrapped and reworked - maybe next xpac.