I am just at a lost here.
I just looked through all the other classes at their trees for that line. They are numerous things from dps to heals to defensives to movement speed. Mostly dps and movement speeds such as shimmer or roar or w/e. But we get talent that increases one of two choice nodes right before it. However, if we dont choose one of those nodes, we are not getting to predator, yet, if we choose to go through tranq we miss massive amounts of dps and heals.
I just attempted to go around the two choice nodes and the improved traps (again, why is this here?) and you can make it around them but you have to take ALL of the points above the choice nodes, plus you cant get to 3/4 of the latter nodes and you dont have enough points to go up both sides.
Issue found:
Why is it i can take improved traq shot without taking traq shot?
Why are we locked behind 3 key choices in row 6? Either int/trap, cuncus/trap, or improved traps?
In row 7, why are we locked behind improved binding shot/ind?
If I may, let me reference the rogue’s tree since its makes much more sense.
In row 6, they have 6 nodes, and 5, yes, 5 of them are dps oriented. 1 of them is a versitility node, which can still be argued is better then dodge or avoidance…
In row 7, they have 3 nodes. 2 are MAJOR dps talents and 1 increased ranged talent like lunge, pretty much useless now that they are 3 yards.
So how is it we are forced into traps for 2/3rds of our middle section and healing in 1/3rrd of our middle section when other classes are getting dps oriented nodes throughout the entire middle section of their trees?
Not sure about placement, but the choice nodes should be:
Scatter/Intimidation
Steel Trap/Binding Shot
HE Trap should be where Steel Trap is currently
In my opinion you should be choosing between two similar things, not two very different things. Stun or incap, bind one or bind many, and then displacement by itself. The choices have seemed weird to me through this entire process.
Speaking of weird choices, I will again say that KC should NOT BE IN THE CLASS TREE. It should be BM’s first row in spec and SV should have Barbed. Serpent sting is way down the tree. What? Make that the first option in the upper left of the class tree. Lets get some real identity going here.
I realize this is BM focused, but the changes I want effect everything, so sorry for the rambles. That said, giving SV Barbed Shot would fulfill the requests for a bleed as Lacerate.
I’m talking about mechanics that require you to break LOS to avoid boss damage, like when you need to LOS the shriek. You can drop this on the boss, LOS the mechanic, and continue DPSing as normal, while others would have to wait (and this lose DPS during this portion of the encounter). You could also use it with the group LOS ignore choice node to help your healers by dropping it on other raid members who may be out of LOS of the healers.
After spending a bit of time trying out different path variations.
I have reached the point where I would rather they just delete pathways entirely just leave the prerequisite points per block and allow us to just use our remaining point budgets as we would want.
Agreed it’s underwhelming to say the least. My point is that it doesn’t have to be, depending on how the encounters are designed.
Aspect of the Turtle for example would be similarly underwhelming if there weren’t so many soak mechanics where we can use it.
I don’t think designing a bunch of fights around a niche cooldown for a single class that will result in everyone else sitting on their hands is necessarily good for the game overall, but maybe there could be one or two fights per tier with this mechanic instead of one or two per expansion.
People absolutely hated Azshara for the LOS part of the fight.
Owl is just weird in terms of tuning/design.
If say it was a 30-60sec cd with a shorter duration, it would probably be decent against those mechanics, but as it stands right now, usually when you doing those mechanics frequently, but for a short duration.
At the same time, it would be weird to have 1 hunter fully negate a mechanic.
I got that. It’s just not a very common thing in raid encounters.
Yep.
You mean like the original talent “trees”, from the early days?
Well, ofc they could do that. Though, I think it would be the wrong move to make a comparison with something like Sentinel’s LoS mechanic, to that of an immunity. I get your point, just that I’m far from convinced that it would turn out well, in a raid setting. Especially if you design multiple encounters per raid tier to have mechanics where you’d benefit from an ability that lets you ignore LoS.
Yeah, no, that part of the encounter wasn’t received particularly well.
It fits more thematically with the identity I have in my mind for that spec. Ranged or melee, I think it should be bleeds and poisons and such. SS would definitely fall into that category, but I’m still a sucker for nostalgia and think that should be a very early skill like it used to be. Level 4 was when you got it, I want to say, followed by Arcane Shot. To me, they’re both iconic spec-agnostic abilities.
This won’t be a specific list of everything that has changed, but some notes on changes coming to the next build.
Class Tree:
Some minor changes have been made to some node connections.
Lone Survivor’s cooldown reduction has been lowered from 60 to 30 seconds.
Death Chakram should work in non-Shadowlands zones, and should increase all damage taken rather than just Physical damage taken
Master Marksman should work with melee abilities as well.
Marksmanship
Lots of bug fixes.
Legacy of the Windrunners has changed into a 2-point node again, each point will add 3 wind arrows. Also any buffs to Aimed Shot now applies to these Wind Arrows.
New talent in the bottom left area: Bulletstorm. Extra targets your Aimed Shot or Rapid Fires ricochet to from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to your Multi-Shot damage.
Bombardment has changed to a 1 point node and is located right below Multi-Shot
There has been some discussion about how Bombardment should work, or perhaps that it should just work like the current 4-piece set bonus with alternate numbers. Tracking resources spent is difficult in the default UI, and most people feel it is necessary to get an addon to track how much more Focus they have to spend to get a Trick Shots effect.
With the current design of X Arcane/Chimaera shots required as opposed to Focus Spent, why require a Multi-Shot instead of just granting Trick Shots? Most of the purpose of this talent is to provide some limited options for Trick Shots when you don’t have 3+ targets to consistently gain Trick Shots. If the fight has one target most of the time, and occasionally some adds spawn, getting a buff that guarantees your next Multi-Shot to grant you a Trick Shots regardless of targets hit should grant you increased control over when you want to use the effect. The Bombardment buff currently lasts 2 minutes, so there is no rush to try to jam in some extra shots right as some adds spawn, you have time to prepare and use this.
Calling the Shots has had its design adjusted to grant cooldown reduction for Trueshot from Focus Spent, rather than require specific shots.
Beast Mastery and Survival have also had some bug fixes, but no notable design changes this week. That doesn’t mean things are final.
edit: To clarify the point about Legacy of the Windrunners gaining bonuses from Aimed Shot, this is any buffs to crit chance or damage to Aimed Shot. Trick Shots will not be sending Wind Arrows all over the place.
In the class tree
The change to Lone Survivor, obviously not a fan of it. If it was done to bring it more in line with Nature’s Endurance, I’d much rather see them increasing that talent by a bit. It’s not like Hunter survivability is going to be at the top anyway(looking at warlocks…)
The rest is okay, not much to talk about in terms of design.
Spec trees
Some changes/bugfixes to MM. And a new talent: Bulletstorm.
Nothing mentioned about BM or SV, other than that they aren’t final, and more things will be done, in addition to bugfixes.
Such a fight-specific talent feels like kinda bad design, either way. At least in this case it’s off on the side of the tree, but even then, it’d be better, imo, if it at least had alternate use cases that didn’t require raids be designed around it or give it at best some 3 bosses per expansion for which its useful (never mind all of M+, etc.).
Just saw it as well. Really dont understand their apparent intention for Hunter to be a) squishiest class and b) the one with least/weakest utility. Really hope they have some good stuff coming because Hunter used to be so good for defensives and especially utility but with time as other classes got more Hunters got continually stripped down.
Also nothing for BM and SV seems rather worrisome. Lets really hope its because they got some actual, big changes coming in later weeks. Because especially SV need it, that spec is still on life support.
with SOTF in the class tree and the new last stand for tenacity pets that puts us miles ahead of where we were. If we get back a sensible passive dr instead of that dodge nonsense we’ll be a pretty solid position.
For raid utility we’re still in a rough spot, anything as niche as LOS has to be intentionally designed around otherwise it’s essentially pointless, not to mention how badly leech works as a defensive stat for BM hunters(it’d be ludicrous to have a raidwide defensive that doesnt benefit a spec that uses it is hilarious
Agreed. I think we’re in a much better spot defensively. It would be nice to get that Avoidance node back or some extra Leech, and it would be super nice to get Exhilaration off the GCD, but those are pretty minor requests.
As for raid utility, Nimox even acknowledged that Sentinel Owl is a very niche ability. It’s cool, but certainly not going to solve our lack of widely applicable utility.
I think an ability where we can give our pet passive to the raid for a short period would be fantastic—basically a Rally for Tenacity pets, raid-wide Leech for Ferocity pets, and Stampeding Roar for Cunning pets.
While this might be really strong, we’re honestly not stepping on too many toes—Warriors still have Battle Shout and Druids are getting Mark of the Wild back. The Leech would be a little unique, which is cool, not problematic.
For Marksmanship, I can see either giving them all three abilities with a shared cd, or the option to take Aspect of the Fox instead. On that note, it’d be great to have Aspect of the Fox or a raidwide Aspect of the Eagle for Survival-specifically.
It’s funny seeing people bemoaning that the talent trees are mostly talenting into stuff you get baseline now in Shadowlands. That’s pretty much what talent trees were before MoP and a big reason why they were replaced with talent tiers in the first place.
These trees look like a much better approach than the original talent trees but I’ll always be sceptical of them. I’m already seeing a lot of design challenges coming up that are largely avoided by the pre-Dragonflight design.