Dragonflight - Feedback for Generic Hunter Talent Tree

Classes Hunter
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Hi! My name is Podra and I have been playing hunter since I started playing the game in TBC. I have been raiding in Limit/Complexity Limit/Liquid since the Uldir raid in BfA, and recently I jumped on Max’s stream to discuss the Hunter Dragonflight Talent Preview with him and a couple other hunter players. We had a great conversation and were hoping to provide some quality feedback for the development team.

I am making this post to put some of the feedback that I discussed on stream into writing. In this post, I will largely discuss the generic Hunter Tree and save the spec specific trees for other posts. Please keep in mind that my opinions largely pertain to hunter gameplay in a PvE environment (open world/M+/raiding). I will try to keep PvP in mind with my feedback, but I am no PvP expert so I would like to avoid making any outlandish claims.

Hunter Class Talent Tree

Overall, I think the team did an incredible job with this tree. While maybe not a popular opinion, I like the fact that these trees make people choose whether or not they want some of the abilities that were previously baseline.

For hunters, you are able to select all of your utility spells (Concussive Shot, Counter Shot, Tar Trap, Tranq Shot, etc.) while still being able to reach the DPS throughput talents at the bottom of the tree (see this example tree that I would use for MM). On the other hand, depending on the type of content you are doing, you might choose to ignore some of the utility spells in favor of buffing the other spells you have selected. One might not need Tar Trap or Concussive Shot for raiding, and those points might be better spent in Born To Be Wild instead, which reduces the cooldown of your Aspect abilities.

A lot of members of the community might not be thrilled about the left side of the tree (at least the upper two-thirds of it). However, I think these talents are fine to include since they buff pet survivability, which is critical to open world content and PvP. It is important to remember that these trees have to be designed with all forms of content in mind. I absolutely love that the anima power Fogged Crystal has found its way into being a talent. It has very obvious uses in all forms of content and is a very welcome new addition!

It is pretty clear that the bottom left of the tree is tailored towards pet use (BM/SV gameplay) and the bottom right of the tree is more generic, although it will be largely be chosen by MM hunters since they typically are not ones to use pets. Given the drastic differences in playstyle between each of the specs and how some specs rely on pets while others do not, I think the bottom part of the tree flows well.

Like I said, there is a lot more that I like about this tree than there are things I dislike. However, I think it is important to mention them since we are still very early on in the feedback phase. I will group my feedback into three separate areas:

  1. Undesirable Talents

  2. Lack of Defensives

  3. Lack of Raid Utility

Undesirable Talents

Chakrams - I love this choice node at the bottom of this tree, however I think Chakrams is the wrong talent to pair with Death Chakrams. These abilities are too similar in what they do, so this will always come down to which one does the most damage. I think a lot of the community was disappointed to see Flayed Shot, the Venthyr covenant ability, not return. Having to choose between Flayed Shot & Death Chakrams is not as simple as “Which ones does more damage?”, since each ability might be favored over the other based on the type of content being done. It also opens the door to implement the covenant legendary affects for these abilities in some capacity, although then this choice node would not be able to be at the very bottom of the tree.

Binding Shackles - This is an existing talent for MM hunters (however, it currently activates when Binding Shot expires) that is never taken. I do not see a practical use for this talent, and it is required to be taken since it is the only link to Keen Eyesight, which provides 6% critical strike chance. If this talent worked despite the target being immune to Explosive Trap or Intimidation, it would be a solid option as a defensive talent, although I think there are better alternatives.

Nessingwary’s Trapping Apparatus - This is a legendary for hunters in Shadowlands that activated on successfully using any of your traps. For a while, this was the best single target legendary for Survival and led to a very unflattering playstyle, where Survival hunters were required to use their utility traps on cooldown to maximize their DPS. I will not speak for everyone, but this was really not a fun way to play the spec. Now, it is limited to Freezing trap only, and requires 3 points for full benefit. I think this talent will see incredibly little play, and could be removed in favor of some of the additional defensive/utility talents I will mention below.

Lack of Defensives

One of the issues hunters have long faced is their relative lack of survivability compared to other pure DPS specs. This has been alleviated in the previous two expansions with some borrowed power, but those have not been carried over to this talent tree. Everything so far focuses on pet survivability, buffing Exhilaration, and reducing the cooldown of your Aspects.

Outside of Aspect of the Turtle, which is used for its immunity effect as opposed to its 30% damage reduction effect, hunters have no damage reduction tool. The exception to this is Survival of the Fittest, which requires a Tenacity pet (or Lone Wolf MM), but if you compare this ability to Feint, Barkskin, or any number of other DR defensives, its very bad. It’s a 20% DR that lasts 6 seconds and is on a 3 minute cooldown - that is bad. I would love to see the development team re-introduce some form of active/passive DR. Some great examples from the past two expansions are Resilience of the Hunter (DR after using Feign Death), Marksman’s Advantage (DR on the target you have Hunter’s Mark on), Survival of the Fittest (Legion Artifact trait - DR after using Disengage), and Duck and Cover (shield after using Feign Death). Each of these was a unique way to provide some much needed durability for hunters. Ironhawk is a talent many people have mentioned, but I am not a huge fan since it’s purely passive. At least Marksman’s Advantage requires you to choose the target you want to take less damage from.

Another interesting suggestion that was brought to my attention is an entirely new talent that allows overhealing from Exhilaration to be converted to a shield. This would provide hunters with the ability to pre-emptively use their Exhilaration as a form of additional HP prior to a hard-hitting mechanic.

Lack of Raid Utility

This might be the most controversial topic, but we appear to be moving back to a design paradigm where every class is providing unique raid utility that no other class or spec can provide. With rogues receiving two additional forms of utility that no other class can provide, I believe that hunter is now the only class that has zero unique raid utility. Now, I do not necessarily think hunters need to have unique utility, but they certainly need more than they have now.

Currently, hunters using a pet can bloodlust/heroism. Hunters used to be able to combat res with a crane pet - I would love to see that added back. Aspect of the Fox has long been an ability the hunter community wants back. Even the Warlords of Draenor style pet raid buffs could be brought back - each family of pet could provide one of the raid buffs that only warriors, priests, and mages can bring. It is a near requirement to have one of each of those classes in your raid. What is the harm in letting hunters provide one of those buffs (tenacity could be Fortitude, ferocity could be Battle Shout, cunning could be Arcane Intellect)?

A crazy idea could be making the Survival version of Aspect of the Eagle raid-wide, temporarily letting melee classes in your raid use their abilities, or at the very least auto-attack, from range.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot to like about the generic tree. From interesting new talents like Fogged Crystal to the inclusion of talents that are useful to players across all forms of WoW content, it is a great first iteration. That being said, it would be nice to see some less desirable talents be re-worked, more survivability added, and hopefully some form of raid utility added.

One final note - I am not sure what the design philosophy is for having talents be 1 vs 2 vs 3 points to fill out. I think a lot of the 2 and 3 point talents need to be looked at again. For example, does Agile Movement really need to be 3 points to get 6% movement speed? Meanwhile, rogues can use a single talent point for 15% movement speed. Not that everything needs to be equitable, but surely it should not cost 3 talent points to get less than half of the value that another class gets.

Lowering the cost of some of these talents would open the door for a lot more interesting single talent points to be added, which would provide players more meaningful choice when creating their builds. As an example for hunters, there is a rich history of interesting abilities that could be added as a talent. There are even some great ideas from Shadowlands - Acrobat’s Rations (Disengage CDR), Craven Stratagem (Feign Death CDR), Chelonian Crust (can attack during Turtle, but reduce duration instead of extend). Go back across half a dozen expansions, and you can find even more fantastic utility that could be re-introduced talents.

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This would probably be my pick. Especially, seeing as they’re improving the talent ‘Natural Mending’ for us, if you spend the full 2 points in it. Which will equate to the possibility of more frequent use of Exhilaration.

While, admittedly, it was indeed a very powerful piece of utility. I would argue that, with a few changes to it, this would allow the entire class to have raid/group-wide utility that, at times would still be very strong, but albeit a situational thing.

Aspect of the Fox - Instant - 3 min cooldown/30 sec global(shared) cooldown
Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells and abilities for 6 sec.

I would love to see something like this put back, as an option in the class tree. As per the tooltip, it would have a substantially longer shared cooldown, however long is required to not heavily promote class stacking or other things similar to that.

For positioning in the class tree, there are a few things I would do at the same time.

  • Aspect of the Fox has been added in the place where we can currently find Counter Shot, to allow for the class to bring some additional utility, other than Primal Rage(which isn’t exactly a massive perk in group-based content). A lot of other classes/specs are getting additional raid/group utility, and atm, I think hunters are the only ones left out in this department.
  • Tar Trap has been taken out of the tree, the intent is that it should be given to us as a baseline ability, when we level up. Same as it works currently with Freezing Trap.
  • Improved Exhilaration has been moved out to take the place of the placeholder node they mentioned in the post, the one they wanted to be about utility(where Scare Beast was previously placed).
  • Misdirection + Fogged Crystal have both been moved one row to the left, to where Tar Trap and Improved Exhilaration was previously placed. And, a path has been added from Fogged Crystal, to connect to the new position of Improved Exhilaration.
  • Counter Shot has been moved down one row, to where Misdirection was previously placed. To make room for Aspect of the Fox.
  • Wailing Arrow has been added below the new position of Counter Shot. Again, I would prefer it to be about the utility(silence effect), not damage.
  • The new position of Scare Beast, is as a tangent node that extends out from the choice node for Scatter Shot/Binding Shot. I think that would be much more useful for any scenario where you would find value in picking Scare Beast.
  • Keen Eyesight + Master Marksman. And lastly, You can see the path added as a connection from Keen Eyesight, downwards to Master Marksman.

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There’s a very good reason why this is not a popular opinion.

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So, i read your post and some thoughts come to mind.
I do think hunters severely lack respectable defenses and are quite squishy. I think breaking exhilaration into different pieces made things 10x worse. I think exhilaration needs to be returned to its former state, and the talent lost would be made up for exhilaration also providing a healing dot that overall heals for 50% of health. Furthermore, i would add a damage reduction aspect to thick skin, decreasing damage taken by 15%.
Second, you are absolutely correct when you pointed out surv’s horrific trap rotation in SL. It was disgustingly bad. I hated it. I tried it and immediately said nope and went to mm. I think it just needs deleted. Seriously. No one likes or wants it. Whoever made the tree had ZERO clue on how surv works. What i would do:
Delete nesingwarys.
Move steel trap to intimidation’s location.
Move intimidation to scare beast location.
Delete scare beast.
Move improved traps to fogged crystal location (whoever decided THAT talent needs fired.)
Delete fogged crystal.
In the old improved traps place add move chimera shot.
In the old chimera place add one of the three other covenant abilities.
Delete both chakrums.
In chakrums place add covenant leggo for whatever ability is chosen.
Add a line between keen insight and predator.
Add a line between new chimera shot and keen.
This fixes ALOT of issues with the tree. It deletes all the crap no one wants on the tree.

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You are insane if you think fogged crystal is a good talent let alone one worth two points.

Imo the entire middle section of the tree needs to be shredded and rebuilt.

Improved tranq shot is quite literally the only way down the tree with how bad the other talents are and even that isnt a good talent. 2 points for 10 focus on an ability that is pretty niche in most scenarios?? Why not just make it the conduit to give focus on successful interrupts at least that will have more practical use.

The fact that there are ZERO defensive talents on the tree at all is WILD. You could easily import the two DR conduits we use currently and they would be infinitely better than most of the talents in the middle section.

Also you mentioned it above but rogue getting 15% ms from a 1 point talent and Hunter getting 6% from a 3 point talent is beyond dumb. Its the same thing in the survival tree rogue get 3% melee range on a 1 point talent and survival has to put 3 points to get 3%.

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If you are thinking purely from a raid perspective, sure, Fogged Crystal is not a particularly strong talent (although it will certainly have some niche use where a pet will be able to taunt a tank mechanic from an add that can be taunted). That being said, raiding is not the only form of content - Fogged Crystal has extremely strong applications in M+ and PvP.

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THere are a couple of changes I would like to see done with the class tree.

1:Switch Master Marksman with Barrage so that Barrage become more of an optional talent plus I see a greater need for the Master ability.

2: Swap Serpent Sting and Explosive shot. I say this because most likely in the MM tree people are going to take the path that gives Serpentstalker Trickery , which adds a Serpent Sting shot to an aimed shot.

Also as far as Death Chakram being in the class tree instead of Flayed Shot. Flayed Shot is actually in the MM spec tree as a passive called Deathblow and it is just above Lonewolf.

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Nimox: A change has already been made to no longer have Serpent Sting be the only path to Explosive Shot.

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That’s good but I still think the Master Marksman needs to be above Barrage since Barrage seems to be a trouble maker when used .

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Aside from some of the other changes suggested, what about swapping Barrage with Keen Eyesight, then adding a line from the new Keen Eyesight location to Chimaera Shot? This would allow for MM (no pet) builds to not even have to go through the Intimidation/Hi-Explosive Trap selection down through Binding Shackles.

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Roar of Sacrifice would cover both these points while also following along with Blizzard’s design philosophy they claimed on their blog post.

The summary of what they claimed to be after is to provide increased player control over builds, communicate build dependencies and magnitude intuitively, and allow for a degree of hybridity drawing from other specs. They also want utility to be in a “very careful” spot - bit wary of the road block that is the middle hunter section.

Fogged Crystal is a natural progression from Misdirection to enhance its “magnitude.”
A 90% DR would have application in some scenarios - to taunt an M+ mechanic, to prevent someone murdering it in PvP. This is probably not worth 3 talent points though if we cross compare to some other trees.

One point for Misdirection, one point for a 90% DR on the pet, one point for Roar of Sacrifice to add a utility defensive to the tree (20% of incoming damage to the target is redirected to the pet).

I could be okay with that. Though I hesitate to say that as I feel other trees are putting high impact talents upfront.
Edit; because someone down below is like “wuh wuh why be okay with daht” - because it adds a defensive in a tree with zero, and breaks a linear tine down into a branch that is optional instead of mandatory.

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This concern is also part of their blog post. They would like for people to not necessarily have to choose if they want abilities that were previously baseline. So they say.
(So in this example, Misdirection should be very accessible, with Fogged Crystal/RoS being optional magnitude enhancers for a “build choice”, without roadblocking other abilities in later talent tiers)

After starting with your basic class and spending 61 points in a tree, will you feel “pruned”? Openly, our goal is that you don’t. We’ll be watching for feedback on this.

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Looking at the class tree I would make a slight change

Swap Barrage and Chimera.

Barrage is most likely not to be taken by MM but Chimera is a possibility . Plus it leads right into Master Marksman .

Not sure either will take Chakram/Death Chakram but if they do the change does provide a path for both that make sense , seeing how Barrage has been the go to BM AOE. Surv I see mainly being on the left side of the tree with the animal and trap abilities . I see that as their path if they take chakrams.

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For alpha predator maybe but nta reads as it only effects frost trap and really doesn’t seem worth it.

Serpent sing with vipers venom/explosive shot will prob be the go too for the other side

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Barrage has quite literally never been the go to for BM aoe

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I dont see why people are ok with “i think it will be ok if they did this…”

Honestly, the trees are supposed to enhance the playstyle, not lock you into making decisions you dont want to make. But thats what they are doing. Instead of providing realistic trends down the tree, they add garbage spells every 2 or so nodes so your FORCED to take them to take the good nodes.

I really think this is their way of trying to break up meta builds. They are saying, “ok well if we provide a reasonable way down the tree they wont take anything else so how about we put those things in their way and force them out of the line?” Well, cotton, that isnt going to work bc we will ALWAYS find the besy way down the tree. Then we will just take the extra garbo bloat off our action bars.

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My main concern is that many activated abilities (the square ones) are required to keep going down, which pretty much obligates you to have another button. For example, I must get Barrage to go down to Master Marksman, even though I’ll never use Barrage and in fact I simply don’t want another button on my bar. Same with Serpent Sting being required to reach Explosive Shot.

IMO, they should make all activated abilities optional, putting then in the end of the tree or at least to the sides as optional paths.

Another issue (related only to leveling in this case) is that all good activated abilities are down the tree. This means you’ll be using very few abilities for most of your leveling experience, and suddenly near cap you’ll have Barrage, Explosive Shot and Volley, for instance.

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I don’t think people are okay with it by any stretch, more like “I think this sucks but alpha isn’t out to actually test and give more specific feedback, plus they’ve already confirmed several changes to the currently posted previews in the CC forum”.

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TLDR some abilities should be core to the hunter specs I.E. harpoon for survival, etc.

My god does Hunter spec trees look so upsetting the MM and Surv trees are just ridiculous.
I don’t want to rant for too long but for example picking either harpoon(mobility) or pet damage(damage) for survival seems ridiculous plus the tree is just split so hard. The MM tree is just all over the place. The BM tree is somewhat fine compared to the other 2 hunter trees BUT going into dragonflight in theory they will have less then what they have currently. That just feels awful.
A lot is getting taken away from hunters putting it into the tree making you now choose what abilities you want when you alrdy have them all currently in SLands. It’s like a kid having all his toys he alrdy owns and come Christmas time Mom and Dad take all of his toys away and instead of getting new ones to add onto what he alrdy owns he now has to choose half the toys he once had and the other half get put into a closet and he can never play with them at the same time.
Hunter compared to the Rogue tree and all 3 specs is literally night and day. Meaning rogue gets almost everything and anything, plus some vs hunter really having to pick and choose from core abilites we alrdy have currently in SLands. From the looks of it Hunter is going to be a skeleton of what it is now.
I know the trees aren’t set and stone and choses should be important and impactful but I wish these trees weren’t even shown or released.

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True that lol