Hunter Base Tree Feedback
Caveat: I’m mostly focused on Mythic raiding and M+
TL;DR The base class tree for hunter is underwhelming, feels a little empty, messy and uninspired. I have a lot of feedback after pouring over it today, however I’ll focus specifically on the survivability side of things where I think things are lacking the most.
Hunters are widely known for being one of the squishiest classes in the game. Their defensive options are tied to really long cooldowns, are generally pretty weak comparatively and in some cases are tied to our pet’s specialization. This tree does very little to address these issues, in fact, IMO I think our survivability is going backwards by featuring very little defensive options.
There are a bunch of talents that in my opinion are wasted opportunities and could be rolled into the base kit, removed entirely or add more talent nodes to dilute their commanding presence on the tree.
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Thick Hide (Increase our pets health). Very little use in end game PVE content unless you need it for your pet to simply survive (feels awful).
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Improved mend pet (increase mend pets healing throughput). Again terrible choice unless we need to heal our pets for them to survive passive cleave (awful).
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Improved Exhilaration (Exhil heals your pet to 100% too). This was baked into Exhil for BM. Why has this been split?
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Fogged crystal (misdirect cast on pets decreases its damage taken). What situation outside of world content is this an interesting talent choice smack bang in the middle of the tree?
These four appear to be designed for hunters in solo content. They are somewhat avoidable talents on the tree, however they are essentially uninteresting choices and eat away at our limited options. These talents make up 9 (
) talent points on the tree. When the hunter has very little in their kit to save themselves, spending points and taking up limited space on the utility tree to buff our pet survivability feels bad. Not to mention they are all dead on arrival for a Lone wolf MM hunter.
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Trailblazer (increased movement speed while not attacking). This is an existing talent and so it has a place on the tree, IMO, its just sitting in a very high valued spot on the tree for a talent very few people take - immediately below Kill Command.
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Agile movement 3 ranks of more movement speed.
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Posthaste (get out of roots and increase movement speed after disengage). Good talent but is in this list to prove a point.
There are 3 talents (7 points in total) which all increase our movement speed either all the time, after a CD or out of combat. I love playing classes with speed just as much as the next guy but surely this many is overkill when there aren’t viable and competing options.
Speed is nice and has some very minor defensive benefit, but its incredibly minor and incalculable.
Possible Solutions
Buffing our pets survivability is not very interesting currently. Either we need to take them for our pets to survive passive cleave damage or they are useless in endgame PVE content.
One way to keep these talents would be to add a node around where Scare beast currently is. This new node would read something like:
“Spiritual bonds: Heighten the bond between you and your pet. Your active pet will shoulder 5/10/15% of the damage you take.”
This would make any points we spend in pet survivability worth it and culminate in a narrative - we’re building our pets up with larger health pools so we can increase our own survivability. Inevitably there would need to be some re balancing to make sure it’s not OP and to give Lone Wolf hunters viable defensive alternatives to this Pet side of the tree.
Alternatively, massively reduce the pet survivability nodes on the tree and add more options which increase the hunters survivability. I noticed there are no nodes on the tree for our current defensive conduits or Azerite traits. IE where’s the node like Rejuvenating Wind (HoT tied to Exhil), or Duck and Cover (AZ trait - absorb after feign)?
Instead of so many movement speed options, why not add more leech options?
As I mentioned, I’ve mostly focused on the survivability side of things. There’s lots of potential, imo there are just way too many points tied up on the base class tree on pet survivability and movement speed which do very little to help a class which is but clenching at the best of times hoping for a heal.
One of Blizzards stated philosophies with these trees is that you’ll feel torn between talent options and by taking one you’re painstakingly not taking another. The top half of the hunter base tree goes no where near that feeling.
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) and multi-shot does so little damage for BM a 10% increase is laughable.