[Feedback - Build 45480] Hunter Class Talents + Beast Mastery

Classes Hunter
478

The more that BM changes the worse it gets, especially the bottom left and right hand side of the tree.

Dire Pack gives you a KC reduction of max 3.5 seconds and depending when you hit Dire Beast may give you nothing at all, and tops 60 focus every minute. And this is a capstone, pathetic.

Dire Beast needs to be of the GCD or it just becomes a maintenance buff. And still is either way. Exciting is it not?

Wailing Arrow, what is this even doing in the BM tree it should be in the class tree. Plus it’s on the single target side of the tree WTH?

Brutal Companion give you 1 special attack once you get 3 stacks of Frenzy. Can’t wait for that 1 whole attack…

Aspect Of The Wild, now we are just straight stealing Havoc off warlocks, and could’t even make it decent. So we lost 30 % Crit plus energy regen to boost our Single target and aoe burst for a double Cobra Shot for 20 secs, really Cobra shot, no one cares about Cobra Shot. We will be pumping as many KC’s in as possible in our burst even in AOE now. Can this be worse, probably not.

Call Of The Wild on a 3 min CD, the absolute best profile for a burst window. So I get to press this button a whole 3 times in a raid fight. How many other spec have a 3 min cd window that people like? O wait…

Wild Instincts/Bloodly Frenzy but wait theres more… lets double down on the 3 min cd window that everyone loves and asked for.

General Rant: Why is this whole zoo build being rammed down our throuts? Why cant there be a “few” talents for a zoo build “if” people want it. Aside for the fact that pet pathing isn’t great, how are melee going to see a damn thing with 1 Demo lock and 2 BM’s with 10 pets in there? You will now have 3-4 times more pets in the melee hit box than there are melee themselves.

Developers: Who ever came up with this barbage please move on to something else from class design. For and the amount of “feedback” that has gone back and forth you think this would be a decent spec. Each time you touch it, it get worse and worse. Roll it back to the version before you changed Aspect Of The Wild to the abomination it is now and you have a pretty decent spec. AOE was solid with KC and AOTW/BW cd reducable burst and single target as always been decent with tuning.

Last Note: Artic Bola, what can there even be left to say at this point. A snare in front of a damage capstone. This really says everything that needs to be said about the state of BM.

For the most popluar spec in Warcraft, you’re doing a great job of destroying it.

479

It’s every Barbed Shot after reaching 2 stacks of Frenzy, iirc. Pretty sure a Blue Post clarified this earlier. Refreshing 3 stacks of Frenzy will likewise trigger Brutal Companion.

Also, is this copy-pasta from another thread or am I just getting unwarranted deja vu?

2 Likes
480

Either way still a horrid talent, and yes you are correct I had to copy paste it as it was removed.

481

Ahh, right. Then, if memory serves correctly, you’ve likely already heard how and why some of those points conflate points (Wailing Arrow), misconstrue them (Dire Beast), or miss them entirely (AotW), yes?

Else I can summarize what I remember from your previous thread before its removal if you didn’t get a chance to read those comments before its closure. But let’s be sure to avoid using any language or the like that may have gotten the other shut down.

  • That said, I suspect that was due simply to one reference in your earlier OP that you’ve since left out in the recopy above, so we should be fine.
482

No, I missed all but 1 comment. Can’t remember what exactly it was. There where 2 point the poster disagreed on but indicate he agreed with the rest. Cheers

483

New stuff for the class tree and Beast Mastery

We wanted to discuss some changes coming in a build next week.

Class Tree:

  • Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been removed.
  • Serrated Shots has moved to where Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus was.
  • Sentinel Owl and the choice node below it have moved up 1 row.
    • Sentinel Owl and its choice node are no longer NYI, but still have some issues to be work out.
    • Sentinel’s Wisdom has changed in design. It now grants your party 5% leech and 10% magic damage reduction (everything except Physical) while the Sentinel Owl is active.
  • Binding Shot is now a 3 sec stun (see earlier post about Binding Shot)
  • New 1-point Talent: Entrapment. When your Tar Trap is activated, all enemies in the Tar Trap’s area are rooted for 4 sec. This root can break from taking damage, and is magic dispellable.

Beast Mastery

  • Wailing Arrow silence lowered from 5 to 3 sec, and the tooltip now clarifies it only silences non-player targets.
  • Qa’pla, Eredun War Order should now work.
  • The pet damage reduction from Animal Companion no longer reduces the damage dealt by other summoned creatures. How Animal Companion pet damage modifier works with Call of the Wild is still being worked out.
4 Likes
484

Has hell frozen over? Now, if only they would just pop over to Live and do a quick fix there, so we can mess around with new builds for the next month or two.

6 Likes
485

Makes me truly happy that they removed NTA.

2 Likes
486

The AC damage aura fix is huge. Kind of wish they’d done it in BFA but what the hey, I’m not a computer lady, I have no idea how complicated a fix it was.

Still not sold on Sentinel’s, but that might just be a skillcap thing. I’m not used to having a party-wide defensive and knowing me I won’t remember to pop it til the group’s already dead, lol.

Still really want Hunting Party in the class tree. Or a monk debuff. Come on, give us our pvp-only Stampeding Roar in raids! Half my casual team’s going Evoker and we’re looking at genuinely running 0 warriors, druids, monks and demon hunters in DF.

3 Likes
487

Sentinel Owl - or at the very least Sentinel’s Wisdom - needs to be raid wide to be good. That’s obviously just my opinion, but lack of raid utility is still a concern.

4 Likes
488

Some Welcome changes.
Good AC is fixed. Will be great if tuning makes it an option not a Must take.

Would like to know their reasoning as to why Dev is reducing Wailing Arrow to a 3 second Silence for BM only not MM.

Qa’Pla now works. Good Now make it a 1 Point Talent. Same with Stomp. at the Very least… Plus 2 other 2 point Nodes reduced to singles.
I suggest One With the Pack and Scent of Blood.

Also Reduce Thrill of the Hunt OR Dire Command to 2 Point Nodes.

Binding shot Change will only make sense if the stun is Instant not movement related.

I also would have rather NtA have been replaced by another new Talent the Location of Serrated Shots was fine. I would have preferred Serrated Shots apply to Barbed Shot over Cobra Shot. It is starting to look like we will fire of far more BS over CS Shots.

It’s new location does however allow Steel trap to be a Lower cost Bleed uptick alternative {3 Points} As opposed to the 4 point investment to fully Acquire a poison based Cobra Shot centric Serpent Sting. Via Master Marksman and Latent Poison Injectors.
These further emphasizes Taking AC then Flamewalker’s Cobra Sting to increase CS base damage.

All the above however remain ST focused. There is No way provided to spread either the Bleed or Poison in an AOE format other than Target Swapping.

This would have been a good opportunity to reintroduce a Lynx Rush or Arrow/shot splash type talent to spread either a bleed or Poison to other Targets similar to SV.

Sentinel Owl is still lackluster for most raid and party scenarios. Plus still gated by 2 point BtbW talent.
Same goes for the new Entrapment Talent. would have much preferred it be a Tar trap radius increase passive.

2 Likes
489

MM is also getting the Wailing Arrow nerf.

A 1pt Qa’pla becomes mandatory, it may be already at 2 with One with the Pack, and one of the most impactful single points in the tree. Stomp is kinda up there too so I don’t see the need to reduce their costs.

Thrill needs to come down, and so does the fire beast lower stuff (remove all 3 pointers).

If you trimmed out as many points as you suggest then you would have nearly the entire tree. There’s no choice left at that point.

3 Likes
490

Onostoolan suggested 4, you seem to be at 4. Over in beta thread suggested Kindred rolled into Pack Tactics (2) and reduce Thrill (1). And here, that there should be no 3 point nodes, so 1 more via DC.

Seems to me you two concur on points to lose, with difference being which nodes.

As to new talents, I’d really be shocked if Blizzard added any new nodes to BM tree. They have a solid tree, just needs some cost reduction.

2 Likes
491

While I agree that it’s becoming less and less likely that they’ll proceed to add more/new talents to the BM tree, I would sort of disagree with the rest.

First off, the BM tree does have a semi-decent base, and it is possible to make a build to achieve what our base is on live. The main issue, like others here have said, is how the BM tree is too expensive, point-wise. It’s one of the most expensive trees of all. This, considering how it only consists of 35 talent nodes, compared to many other trees which come in at 40+, severely limits the ability to achieve build “depth”, and it lends itself to promote thoughts of how your points feel less valuable(and no, I’m not necessarily talking about what can be achieved in terms of throughput).

On top of this, lookin at pathing structure/layout, I’m skeptical to certain decisions. For one, the entire top right section of the tree has only 1 way in, and one way out. Going in through Barbed Shot, and proceeding to exit through Qa’pla. I also find the placement of Qa’pla itself to be a bit odd.

If you’re making a single-target build, the only way for you to get to Bestial Wrath is through Thrill of the Hunt. You have 2 different AoE talents, both connecting/pathing down to Bestial Wrath. This removes some accessibility options. Ideally, especially since both the AoE nodes(Beast Cleave and Kill Cleave) build on one another, there should be more pathing options leading to Bestial Wrath, from different sections of the tree.

Considering how important Wild Call is for the playflow of the spec, I find it odd how they chose to put it so far down the tree, rather than further up, in a central position/crosspoint.

Call of the Wild, realistically, now only has one viable path, going through Wild Call + OwtP. It’s a single-target cooldown, and I can’t imagine that you’d ever want to make your way down to it by going through the reworked Aspect of the Wild. At least not in a pure ST scenario.

TLDR:

For me, if they were to make several point reductions to individual talents, around 6-7 points in total, and then added in several more(5-6) talents to allow for more choices/variety, and generally made some changes to allow for more accessibility to certain key functions that are more fundamental to how we play…

…then I would call it a solid tree. Right now, it still feels like a tree that is in the mid-alpha stages of development. Based on what their goals are with these reworks for Dragonflight, and how they’ve realised this for other specs.

Side-note, we will find out with the next build, but they seem to have fixed the issues with the deficit aura of Animal Companion, the implementation. That’s good ofc, but I find that this talent, now, is in a similar position for BM as Lone Wolf is for MM. Some players really do like playing with 2 pets, while others do not. Making it a choice of throughput, rather than purely a baseline choice of aesthetic preferences, I find to be the inferior one.

1 Like
492

In my opinion, it looks strong compared to current Live. However, when compared to what other classes/specs are getting, it’s not looking so hot. I foresee a lot of complaints coming when they settle on a final talent tree, because I agree that it’s unlikely they will add more talent options.

2 Likes
493

I didn’t suggest 4, no one is going to pick Kindred the entire expansion. Kindred is a QOL node that serves no real purpose and can now be pathed around. You don’t pick a very minor QOL node in a sea of throughput if you don’t have to. What I actually suggested is removing the DOA/trap node (there’s a few in the tree but Kindred cannot get tuned up to be good like the others can) and trimming 2 more points.

Ultimately what I suggested is 2, the 3 point nodes. He’s suggesting to drop 2 more points from already powerful nodes, Qa’pla and Stomp. Of the 4 nodes he suggested, 3 of the nodes will be used in almost every build in the current tree. The only way you can realistically drop 4 high value points in a tree as light in nodes as ours is if you add several high value nodes to go along with it, I do think we need around 5-10 more good nodes. If they did add those then I could agree with cutting those additional 2 points down, and more if they went as high as 10 new nodes.

With just 3 more points you basically pick up every good node while avoiding the Cobra Shot ones. Your build becomes the same for ST and AE which is bad; even though I believe you are going to run an AE build in 90%+ of all content you still want 2 distinct setups.

Right now everything related to Cobra Shot is a dead node, we’re just not casting it any more. You think the BM 3 button memes are bad now? We’re about to become a 2 button rotation (Kill Command and Barbed Shot) with no major CD (unless they tune CotW way up) and a bunch of middle of the pack short CD buttons (Death Chakram, Explosive Shot/Steel Trap, Bestial Wrath, and sometimes Bloodshed).

CotW is a bad button except if you take Wild Instincts. With Wild Instincts it feeds you a TON of Barbed Shot casts, it seems to be giving you casts based on pet focus spent which is really high during the CD thanks to Brutal Companion.

2 Likes
494

Thank you for clarifying position on node costs.

If no BM hunter should take Kindred, does your opinion change if it is a one point node?

Cobra shot is supposed to be a filler, not sure why they made AotW only about Cobra shot, maybe an attempt to improve filler or some burst on 2 target cleave???

That CotW/Wild Instincts interaction is really bad blow a 3 minute cooldown to use a 2 minute cooldown.

You have good points, have you posted these over in Beta thread? (yes I am too lazy to go look thru entire thread)

1 Like
495

Ghorak, well thought out, wish they had invited you back at Alpha!

1 Like
496

Kindred being a two point talent is just laughable.

At one point, Focus generators gave us a percentage of our total Focus returned, so having 20 extra Focus meant each tick gave more Focus. Now our Focus generators are static; ie, Barbed Shot regens 20 Focus over 8 sec, rather than 20% Focus over 8 sec. If they swapped this back to a percentage increase and did the same with Haste, Kindred would be a great talent.

As it stands, nobody is going to choose Kindred Spirits. Not only is it a bad talent, it costs two points and is replacing a base passive that nobody pays attention to. Who knows though. Maybe they will make Focus regen percent based before release.

3 Likes
497

I was unaware of the Focus change… Good to know.

The extra Focus would however still be good for PVP where it might be required as an on demand focus dump attack to finish a cripple.

Stomp Currently is being outperformed by Brutal Companion a single point Talent accessible Via our Must Have!!! Bestial Wrath, Barbed Wrath, Scent of Blood. Trifecta.

My reasoning Is… We have a near desperate budget deficit at level 70 of 2 points minimum.
I chose Stomp as the Tool Tip shows no Change when second point added and Stomp at 1 point adds in the 20th point to proceed lower for a single Target build allowing one to bypass AC talent if wished.

Right now in Beta already we are in a Bargaining with the Dev situation… Ask for 6 Maybe get 2-3 freed up.

Till Now they seem unwilling to adjust the remaining 3 point Nodes, Even though Advocacy has been asking since Early Alpha.
Qa’Pla was added as I do not believe we will get a reduction from 3 2 point For Thrill of the Hunt. and we needed a second 1 point reduction in the 6th or 7th row.

1 Like