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

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

@Tanais-kilrogg

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Here it is again: Code to import into the TalentTreeManager

1. First, I love the flow to these capstones and the average point-cost of these talents.

Appreciate it.

@Tanais-kilrogg

I take it the “Is Talent Pre-Filled” should have been checked on for Animal Companion?

It’s not intended to be a part of the talent tree at all. I kept it there so that people would be able to check the tooltip for what I would like the devs to do with AC, as opposed to keeping it as a talent option.

Basically, it shouldn’t be a talent, it should be turned into a baseline effect that anyone who play Beast Mastery have access to, regardless of their chosen talents. I intend for it to work similarly to how Lone Wolf works as a baseline passive for MM on live right now, where it(AC) has no effect whenever you only play with one pet out, but if you choose to play with two pets, the AC baseline passive simply causes both those pets to deal 50% of normal damage each. And as such, if you choose to play with only one pet out, that pet deals 100% of normal damage by itself.

@Tanais-kilrogg

While this is the case in the original (Blizzard) version, too, it’s kinda of annoying that One with the Pack is literally just a 50% efficiency Wild Call… (20%/pt for WC; 10%/pt for OwtP).

From what I can tell, the devs never intended for OWTP to double the effect of Wild Call itself. The big difference here is that both of them are now available as talent options, rather than how it is on live where Wild Call is a baseline passive, and OWTP simply augments that passive effect.

In short, I wouldn’t compare OWTP to Wild Call itself, but instead compare OWTP to other talent nodes in the tree that are meant to augment/enhance the more central, key talents.

@Tanais-kilrogg

Why constrain Bloodseeker’s KC reset to when Beast Cleave is active?
An alternative:

I intended for that talent to be an AoE-version of a KC reset. To allow for a bit more burst potential. If you compare the other talents, for a ST build, you have plenty of options to either add CDR effects to KC, or talents that allow you to completely reset the CD of KC, in a somewhat reliable fasion.

Those other talents aren’t necessarily as attractive in a cleave/AoE-scenario, so I thought something like this could be a fun addition for those types of encounters. (Obviously you do have some leeway in terms of what talents to choose on both sides of the spectrum, but it’s mostly about providing multiple choices, for everyones’ preferences)

@Tanais-kilrogg

We’ll be pretty Focus-starved all the way til level 25 given the position of Pack Tactics. Given how vital Pack Tactics is for our playflow, it also shouldn’t look optional.

I thought of this as well. I eventually decided to keep it as is, much because removing Pack Tactics from that position does somewhat restrict your options for how to make your way down to Bestial Wrath, or just continue downwards in the tree.

Having said that, while I haven’t looked into every scenario for leveling, prior to level 25, would it really be that much of an issue?

@Tanais-kilrogg

Nitpick, but, because Scent of Blood doesn’t path to anywhere that would be of use even when avoiding Bestial Wrath that AMoC/Bloodshed and Dire Beast don’t path to already themselves, it makes little sense not for it to be pathed solely from the talent it’s completely dependent on, Bestial Wrath (via Barbed Wrath)

While I personally can’t imagine anyone not wanting to pick Barbed Wrath to get the CDR for Bestial Wrath, I mostly made those paths available in case there was someone who would like to make their build a bit differently. Perhaps they prefer the more static gameplay where, arguably, what is the major CD has more of a fixed uptime.

[Targ-fenris (Targ)]

Ground effect abilities can be awful in pugs. In coordinated groups - or pug groups where the tank has half a brain - they are just fine.

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

It’s not intended to be a part of the talent tree at all.

I realize. But right now, one has to spend a point in order to take it.

The spec passives look to be gone with DF. If you want it for BM, it’ll be in the BM tree. If you don’t want it to cost BM players a point, you’ll want it to be “Pre-Filled”.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Having said that, while I haven’t looked into every scenario for leveling, prior to level 25, would it really be that much of an issue?

It’d depend on whether BM retains access to Steady Shot, instead of using the trade of Steady Shot for added Passive Focus regeneration (not to replace StS’s Focus Regen, which is only on MM, but simply for its place it damage over time and reduced downtime) to further differentiate the spec.

If Steady Shot is to be replaced by Cobra Shot, as in Shadowlands, then I’d say that’d feel pretty bad for levels 10-25, yeah. And so long as the talent is to be obligatory anyways, just as you’ve made Animal Companion… why hold it back for until level 25?

I could see something like that for certain specs—just because the given capacity should feel like a milestone—such as for Exploiter, Titan’s Grip / Single-Minded Fury, Berserk: Recklessness, and perhaps even Aspect of the Beast or Animal Companion—but one that’s central to the spec’s basic playflow?

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

While I personally can’t imagine anyone not wanting to pick Barbed Wrath to get the CDR for Bestial Wrath, I mostly made those paths available in case there was someone who would like to make their build a bit differently.

Right, but those paths are pure traps. You allow players to take Scent of Blood and Rylak’s/Killer Cobra without taking Bestial Wrath… but those two talents do absolutely nothing without Bestial Wrath. That’s not a pathing advantage; that’s just poor visual feedback.

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

@Tanais-kilrogg

I realize. But right now, one has to spend a point in order to take it.

The spec passives look to be gone with DF. If you want it for BM, it’ll be in the BM tree. If you don’t want it to cost BM players a point, you’ll want it to be “Pre-Filled”

As I recall, they are in fact adding in/keeping some specific passives for certain specs.

Example:

Fire

• Hot Streak has been moved to be baseline.

It was a talent in the Fire spec tree, but was made into a baseline effect. One that only has use for Fire itself, as only that spec has access to Pyroblast/Flamestrike/Ignite. And while on the topic of mage, I don’t see Ignite in either the class tree or the spec tree, so I assume that is another Fire specific passive effect that it gets baseline?

I’m not exactly invested in the mage class though, so I might’ve misunderstood how they intend for those abilities/effects to work for the Fire spec.

@Tanais-kilrogg

It’d depend on whether BM retains access to Steady Shot, instead of using the trade of Steady Shot for added Passive Focus regeneration (not to replace StS’s Focus Regen, which is only on MM, but simply for its place it damage over time and reduced downtime) to further differentiate the spec.

If Steady Shot is to be replaced by Cobra Shot, as in Shadowlands, then I’d say that’d feel pretty bad for levels 10-25, yeah. And so long as the talent is to be obligatory anyways, just as you’ve made Animal Companion… why hold it back for until level 25?

It wouldn’t keep it no. As I recall, Steady Shot is replaced by Cobra Shot for BM, which in Shadowlands happens at level…14(?), and in Dragonflight, will happen as soon as you pick your first talent as BM(level 11).

Having said that, in my concept, you do also get access to both Wild Call, and OWTP fairly early. You can have both of those as early as level 15 and 17. And while Wild Call is a baseline passive on live right now, you don’t get it until level 24, and OWTP on live requires level 25.

Would the combination of Wild Call + OWTP be as good as 100% boost to passive Focus regen? Maybe not, but it wouldn’t be that far off in terms of overall Focus gain.

@Tanais-kilrogg

Right, but those paths are pure traps. You allow players to take Scent of Blood and Rylak’s/Killer Cobra without taking Bestial Wrath… but those two talents do absolutely nothing without Bestial Wrath. That’s not a pathing advantage; that’s just poor visual feedback

Fair enough. Though, why would you choose a talent without reading what it actually does?

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

It was a talent in the Fire spec tree, but was made into a baseline effect.

Right, but iirc, it was made baseline for the whole class. They can do that because only Fire uses its generators. That wouldn’t be true for Animal Companion, which has no trigger, so the talent would most likely be found instead as a pre-filled R1 talent or isolated talent (off to the corner, as seen on some of the in-progress versions of certain talent trees). In that way, there’s no hidden shenanigans; what you see on the spec tree is what the spec gets.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Having said that, in my concept, you do also get access to both Wild Call, and OWTP fairly early. You can have both of those as early as level 15 and 17. And while Wild Call is a baseline passive on live right now, you don’t get it until level 24, and OWTP on live requires level 25.

Would the combination of Wild Call + OWTP be as good as 100% boost to passive Focus regen? Maybe not, but it wouldn’t be that far off in terms of overall Focus gain.

Whether it’s equal, via the 20 Focus per Barbed, or not isn’t my chief concern. It’s mostly that something so foundational—simultaneously basic but also noticeable—feels like it should be the baseline and then the complicating additions should be talents. They’re the more fun and selective milestones, while the baseline Focus regeneration was literally just the compensation for losing Steady Shot upon acquiring Cobra Shot.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Fair enough. Though, why would you choose a talent without reading what it actually does?

You wouldn’t, generally, but there’s still zero affordances, only traps, for allowing AMoC and Dire Beast to path to something useless.

In the same way you wouldn’t want to avoid AMoC in pathing to a talent that has no benefit without having first taken AMoC, why would you want to open up the Bestial-Wrath-Required talents to not require Bestial Wrath?

When it’d come at no cost to remove the trap, why leave it there?

Nevermind, yes, there would technically be some cost to removing the “trap”. I was being dumb. Pathing through Scent does at least allow one to go from Dire Beast to Brutal Companion or AMoC to Wailing Arrow. It just still feels very contradictory to tree design seen elsewhere, especially since BW is obligatory regardless, and if the point were to get as many other capstones as possible diagonal from DB/AMoC you’d still just buy the other end, too, and path downward.

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

@Tanais-kilrogg

Right, but iirc, it was made baseline for the whole class. They can do that because only Fire uses its generators.

Isn’t Hot Streak based on landing two critical strikes in a row with fire spells that deal direct/upfront damage?

So, doesn’t that mean that a non-Fire mage could, if they wanted to, take either Blast Wave/Dragon’s Breath/Meteor in the class tree, and they would def be able to trigger Hot Streak, without gaining anything from doing so.

Anyway…

@Tanais-kilrogg

It’s mostly that something so foundational—simultaneously basic but also noticeable—feels like it should be the baseline and then the complicating additions should be talents.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind it if Pack Tactics was made baseline for BM. But I do still want something in that spot, in the tree, to preserve the pathing options.

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Ghorak

A quick mock-up of what your tree might look like if

• Multi-Shot were made baseline (lvl 8),
• Kill Command was made BM-specific (SV gets its own focus generator to avoid confusion),
• basic damage amps talents were trimmed,
• and then a couple talents were added for symmetry.

@ Stomp → Onrush

I like the idea of actually speccing our pets and those chosen pet skills being significant. This allows for those skills, themselves, to show once added back, instead of each pet using a generic Thunder Clap.

WIP; thematic pathing isn’t quite ideal yet. (15-minute slap-together to illustrate earlier pipedream suggestions.)

A bit more of a funnel damage / snowballing niche provided via said added talents.

https://pastebin.com/Y9whZvYM

[Ingvaeonic-dalaran]

What did they just do to call of the wild…

[Onostoolan-zangarmarsh (Onostoolan)]

@Targ-fenris

Ground effect abilities can be awful in pugs. In coordinated groups - or pug groups where the tank has half a brain - they are just fine.

It was not the Initial Ground effect that bugged me It was the Now you need to stop and stand in the Field of Blossoms for the haste buff. Seemed counter intuitive for a Fully mobile spec That got a damage penalty because we are Mobile.

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Onostoolan-zangarmarsh

It was not the Initial Ground effect that bugged me It was the Now you need to stop and stand in the Field of Blossoms for the haste buff.

Tbf, that and crazy tea vamp’s parasol were just… terrible design, altogether. It sucked for normally hyper-mobile ranged, certainly, but even more for anyone melee.

As for the ground effects, I’m glad they’re gone, but I feel like their problems were often overestimated. They worked by applying debuffs specifically to targets in them, after all, and therefore continued to function (for up to 3s, at least) even after enemies had left the area of effect.

[Bepples-barthilas]

@Terranox-stonemaul

I asked for exotic pets on survival because there are so many cool pet models that I would like to use on survival.

You asked for exotic pets because you’re a greedy melee player who thinks melee specs should be given design preference. Exotic pets are a BM thing. It’s not yours. I don’t give a damn if you think BM would be more fun with melee, which is why I told you to go fight in melee as BM for all I care. It’s actually even more a valid option now than it was in Cataclysm, contrary to your warped and misinformed take on the history of the class. Survival has stolen far more than enough from BM. Exotic pets must remain BM only.

@Terranox-stonemaul

I even said they could introduce them without their special pet utility and let that be a bm thing.

Not enough. The cosmetic distinction is important for BM.

@Terranox-stonemaul

I am interested in having them cosmetically as pet options. Because I don’t always want to play bm.

I don’t care.

They are a unique part of BM. It’s bad enough that SV stole Spirit Bond, a formerly iconic BM trait. If you don’t play BM, you don’t get BM’s stuff. Simple as that. I know SV’s design has conditioned you to the contrary but enough is enough.

@Terranox-stonemaul

My favorite version of bm was when it used 3 weapons. I do miss the melee spells and part of the kit but that was put into survival. I still miss going and jumping into battle with stuff like devilsaurs or rhinos.

Cool story but you’re out of your mind if you think this was a thing in Cataclysm. Hunters were significantly crippled by going into melee range back then. They aren’t now. Try to break your fixation on whether or not it’s using a real melee weapon or not and take note of the fact that when BM doesn’t have a minimum range restriction (MoP onwards) that means it’s more capable in melee range, not less. What you described is a valid playstyle option now when it wasn’t in Cataclysm so you have it completely backwards.

@Vitwolfen-nazjatar

Couldn’t possibly be the feel of the burst windows, the use of DoTs, the proc interplay, the hefty bomb burst, the mobility, the faster interrupt, or anything gameplay related.

Nothing here is inherently dependent on being melee. The only thing that’s a result of being melee is the interrupt cooldown and that’s not even an inherent factor but rather a compensation via tuning. It’s not like people are flocking to SV for a 16 second interrupt instead of 24 secs and this obviously isn’t the motivation behind melee BM.

You seemed to have missed the part where it says “99% of the reason the niche melee Hunter faction genuinely enjoys the concept” i.e. the concept of a melee Hunter. The first sentence, mind you.

@Vitwolfen-nazjatar

Surely, surely, it must just be RP, which is why any SV player shouldn’t give a damn about their capacity and any idea of BM having additional options beyond stacking Frenzy, Bloodshed, and zookeeping must be quelled.

I know it’s nearly impossible for a melee player to comprehend that a spec doesn’t have to be melee to be interesting but try to grasp the fact that it’s perfectly possible to give BM a more in-depth playstyle without making it melee.

Yes most people who are specifically interested in Survival due to it being melee (which is a minority of even Survival’s own playerbase, let alone the Hunter playerbase as a whole) are in it for the role play. Being melee is, by default, worse than being ranged. It requires a lot of compensation and then even more factors on top of that such as boss design to make melee catch up/exceed ranged. It’s an inherent, objective fact that being able to deal full damage at 40 yards is better than not being able.

So yes the melee lovers are there for the roleplay factor and as far as I’m concerned they can roleplay as a melee BM Hunter. We don’t need to make BM melee just to satisfy these people (a handicap by the way), and yes even adding just one or two melee “options” is just as well as making the spec melee. If you have to be in melee range to deal your full damage potential it’s a melee spec. As I said, making SV melee was already far beyond the limits of acceptability and this is why melee players feel bold enough to demand even more concessions from the class. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. If the class were fully ranged again people like you and Terranox would ignore it and take your bad takes to one of the 12 other melee specs which would be ideal.

@Vitwolfen-nazjatar

…What need would I have to word carefully that, "No, the fact that BM can shoot arrows from 3 yds away does not make it potentially “melee.”

No that’s actually not what the part said. You are trying to make it look like an appealing option for BM Hunters by repeating that “you won’t just be having to go in melee without compensation”. I don’t give a damn about compensation or not; melee for BM Hunter isn’t welcome. Stop trying to sell melee to us.

@Vitwolfen-nazjatar

Having the options by which to take on the constraints and affordances of being melee makes something melee, not someone wastefully using a 40-yd shot from melee range.

Like I said I don’t care about that because most of the melee Hunter lovers are there for the roleplay factor. They can just fight in melee and pretend they’re using a sword or something. Redesigning the spec and screwing the rest of us… again… isn’t an acceptable approach.

@Tanais-kilrogg

Its reasons for being played have never just been “solely RP” as Bepples claims.

Nice dishonesty but the claim was actually that most people who are specifically there for the melee combat are interested in the roleplay factor. In fact that’s true for most melee in general; people are interested in the fantasy factor. Yes there are some that like the idea of overcoming a handicap but as we can see with melee SV being so starkly unpopular for most of its existence that this is a niche faction.

Gameplay flow and playstyle, from the perspective of what the rotation/APL look like, are not dependent on being melee. Ranged SV also flowed well and had distinct gameplay.

@Tanais-kilrogg

Similarly, if one wanted a Melee option for BM, that would not be accomplished simply by, as Bepples put it above, having the BM hunter shoot his gun from 3 yds away. All Ranged classes can attack from melee range; that does not make them “Melee”.

I know it’s not to the satisfaction of the melee fanatics. That’s ideal. They’re not the target audience. If they want BM’s stuff let them be content with playing BM and sticking to melee range if that’s what they enjoy so much. Otherwise they can get lost in one of the 13 melee specs in this game.

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

@thread

Can we please stop talking about Survival in this topic? If you guys want to continue your conversation on the subject, please do so in a topic that is about Survival.

---

@Tanais-kilrogg

A quick mock-up

A few things…

• There are only 2 total specs in the alpha where their trees start off with multi-node options. And no spec tree starts with pre-filled talents. I’m not the biggest fan of the dual starter nodes.
• There are several places where you have paths crossing eachother. While it’s not necessarily a major issue, there are no such occurrences for any other spec, and as such, I doubt that this would become a reality.
• You seem to have changed Beast Cleave to a 1-point node, and also reduced it’s effect down to 40% of damage, as opposed to the 75% it says on alpha. Why?
• The talents that are Go for the Throat and Bloodtrails aren’t really useful as our pet never really runs out of Focus. At least not based on how it currently works.
• You’ve made a choice node out of Aspect of the Beast + Animal Companion? I hate to say it, but I can’t get on-board with that. Mostly because I don’t want AC to be a talent option at all.
• You’ve made it so that, if you pick Wild Call, and then also pick OWTP, you’d effectively end up with how your auto shot critical strikes have a 53% chance to grant you a charge of Barbed Shot. That’s a bit too much. Especially when looking at certain other talent options, and the fact that our base crit will go up quite a lot over the course of an expansion.
• You have a different approach to Bloodseeker, fair enough. Though, I really don’t like that it makes you consume a bleed on the primary target for a chance of a KC reset.
• Driven Prey is abit confusing, at least in terms of the wording of the tooltip.

@Tanais-kilrogg

A bit more of a funnel damage / snowballing niche provided via said added talents.

Feel free to add your motivation for the aforementioned changes.

[Vitwolfen-nazjatar (Vitwolfen)]

Gobbie

@Bepples-barthilas

You seemed to have missed the part where it says “99% of the reason the niche melee Hunter faction genuinely enjoys the concept” i.e. the concept of a melee Hunter. The first sentence, mind you.

No, I saw it. I simply tend to dismiss unevidenced claims that come from clearly biased sources and regard a matter they have a long history of making uninformed claims about.

@Bepples-barthilas

I know it’s nearly impossible for a melee player to comprehend

Primary specs I played this expansion: Marksmanship, Elemental, Arms, Arcane, Shadow, Restoration, Blood.

But alas, true, there was a single melee in there. Two, actually—woe be me, there’s a tank! So long, my mental capacity. Oonga boonga now.

@Bepples-barthilas

So yes the melee lovers

@Bepples-barthilas

most people who are specifically there for the melee combat are interested in the roleplay factor.

@Bepples-barthilas

Give them an inch and they will take a mile.

You know, I haven’t heard stuff quite like this since the last time there was a drunk racistly ranting at the bus stop. Been a while. Been a while.

---

We started on this trail in—if ignoring certain of your comments against MM and BM simply over RSV being undertuned at the time—late-WoD, when we first heard that SV was turning into a spearhunter spec? A time when I agreed with you that it makes little sense to turn Survival into melee—the difference merely being that I can play all roles and it wasn’t therefore world-ending that the themes available to hunters was expanded, only that another part of it was lost.

Since then have you… played any other class? Or even any build outside of your narrow conception for the class (pet user with zero constraints to mobility)? Stepped out of your 1 meter-radius hole even a little?

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

@Bepples-barthilas

@Terranox-stonemaul

I asked for exotic pets on survival because there are so many cool pet models that I would like to use on survival.

You asked for exotic pets because you’re a greedy melee player who thinks melee specs should be given design preference. Exotic pets are a BM thing. It’s not yours. I don’t give a damn if you think BM would be more fun with melee, which is why I told you to go fight in melee as BM for all I care. It’s actually even more a valid option now than it was in Cataclysm, contrary to your warped and misinformed take on the history of the class. Survival has stolen far more than enough from BM. Exotic pets must remain BM only.

No I asked for it to be available to all hunter specs. But in a weakened capacity. BM hunters already use double pets and I suggested they keep the extra exotic buffs. You hating on melee players is something else. Yes I used to play wotlk and cata bm hunters. We would go in melee while questing sometimes and to save ammo for dungeons/raids.

@Bepples-barthilas

@Terranox-stonemaul

I even said they could introduce them without their special pet utility and let that be a bm thing.

Not enough. The cosmetic distinction is important for BM.

BM is a pet specialist and range only. They are distinguishable with berzerk, pet summoning, two pets etc. Them having the only exotics feels bad for the whole class since only one spec can use them and not all the exotics are fully appreciated that we collect.

@Bepples-barthilas

@Terranox-stonemaul

I am interested in having them cosmetically as pet options. Because I don’t always want to play bm.

I don’t care.

They are a unique part of BM. It’s bad enough that SV stole Spirit Bond, a formerly iconic BM trait. If you don’t play BM, you don’t get BM’s stuff. Simple as that. I know SV’s design has conditioned you to the contrary but enough is enough.

Your opinion vs mine is all this is. I have a right to voice my opinion same as you. I enjoyed the melee parts of the kit. It’s reflective of alot of horde cultures. SV in legion highlights the highmountain, tauren, and trolls cultures like in BFA with head hunters, orcs like rexxar and the hunter culture they brought. And some of the ranger culture blood elves had. Fighting with a bow and two one handers.

@Bepples-barthilas

@Terranox-stonemaul

My favorite version of bm was when it used 3 weapons. I do miss the melee spells and part of the kit but that was put into survival. I still miss going and jumping into battle with stuff like devilsaurs or rhinos.

Cool story but you’re out of your mind if you think this was a thing in Cataclysm. Hunters were significantly crippled by going into melee range back then. They aren’t now. Try to break your fixation on whether or not it’s using a real melee weapon or not and take note of the fact that when BM doesn’t have a minimum range restriction (MoP onwards) that means it’s more capable in melee range, not less. What you described is a valid playstyle option now when it wasn’t in Cataclysm so you have it completely backwards.

The balancing was made for a weaker melee, but they could easily make it good damage now. Just like how many shooters have good melee weapon options that are better suited for close range combat.

What you suggest isn’t melee since mlee is about hand to hand or melee weapon combat. The closest thing to that is shotguns and that isn’t reflected at all with the hunter fantasy, you are using the same gun for everything that it probably isn’t designed for. Different weapons’ do and specialize in different things. Doint point blank shots isn’t melee. It’s being close ranged not the same thing dude.

@Bepples-barthilas

I know it’s nearly impossible for a melee player to comprehend that a spec doesn’t have to be melee to be interesting but try to grasp the fact that it’s perfectly possible to give BM a more in-depth playstyle without making it melee.

Yes most people who are specifically interested in Survival due to it being melee (which is a minority of even Survival’s own playerbase, let alone the Hunter playerbase as a whole) are in it for the role play. Being melee is, by default, worse than being ranged. It requires a lot of compensation and then even more factors on top of that such as boss design to make melee catch up/exceed ranged. It’s an inherent, objective fact that being able to deal full damage at 40 yards is better than not being able.

Melee is a fantasy and part of the wow culture for many races. Guns/bows is there but it is less direct. The hunter class made more to reflect many certain parts of races. Blizz decided to bring back the melee fantasy and take it away from other specs that had it. Which like I enjoyed being able to use exotics when I was a bm hunter and use 3 weapons from a fantasy point of view. It felt like something real, switching weapons is something we do alot in shooters. Often different weapons are bound to 1,2,3 and you do different things. You might not be interested in that part of hunter fantasy or shooters, but it really feels good to be able to do that stuff. Survival hunter is like that using melee weapons, ranged guns (animations), launching yourself with harpoons, using traps, and fighting alongside a nice pet. Exotics would be appreciated on sv too. As well as MM. Since we can collect those pets but they will be sitting in our stables. Not to mention that other classes get to share there formerly unique utility in there class trees for many df trees.

I would be more interested in using exotics then stuff like stampede. Bm hunters would and should get better pets, All other hunters losing out on the extra buffs they provide would be fair.

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

You seem to have changed Beast Cleave to a 1-point node, and also reduced it’s effect down to 40% of damage, as opposed to the 75% it says on alpha. Why?

Sorry, the Talent Tree descriptors which housed all this explanation must have been removed somehow.

This was due to pet AAs being replaced with a far shorter ICD on their filler spenders and all pets natively getting a multi-target attack on a very short CD (say, 4s, pre-Haste). Additionally, Dash would instead be a variable Focus-drain instead of a CD, further improving their available uptime (in terms of being able to interact with the enemy, though without any further benefit, really, to attacks pumped out against enemies who’d otherwise have avoided them).

As such, less of BM’s consistent cleave would then be dependent on Beast Cleave, and pets would have a larger use for Focus. Still should have been 55% or so.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

The talents that are Go for the Throat and Bloodtrails aren’t really useful as our pet never really runs out of Focus. At least not based on how it currently works.

(Above.)

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

There are only 2 total specs in the alpha where their trees start off with multi-node options. And no spec tree starts with pre-filled talents. I’m not the biggest fan of the dual starter nodes.

Aye. It was messy decision. The main idea here is that Cobra is just basically a reskin of Arcane outside of PvP (wherein it then has more damage on clothies, less on plate). As such it felt really awkward to charge BM a point just to turn the blue filler damage arrow into a green filler damage arrow (especially given that the Cobra Shot synergies could all just be put on Arcane instead).

If Arcane were simply Quick Shot, with purely physical damage and Cobra then added some extra Nature damage AND had Cobra Senses baked in from the start, I would have put it under Kill Command instead.

Which is what I would likely have done regardless if I’d had another 10 min or so to think about the mock-up and correct the pathing.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

There are several places where you have paths crossing eachother. While it’s not necessarily a major issue, there are no such occurrences for any other spec, and as such, I doubt that this would become a reality.

True. I’ve removed three of those crossings (swapped position of Wild Call and Qa’pla; forget why I had them switched initially) but still want the remaining cross on Wild Strikes → Kindred Spirits (crossing Go for the Throat → Bloodtrails) for freedom of pathing.

• This is because I want Kindred to be reachable from Pack Tactics. If I uncross them, then any augmenting node from Beast Cleave blocks pathing for more general-purpose talents.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

You’ve made it so that, if you pick Wild Call, and then also pick OWTP, you’d effectively end up with how your auto shot critical strikes have a 53% chance to grant you a charge of Barbed Shot.

OwtP increases it “to” 33%, not “by”. Wild Call is therefore 20% per point and One with the Pack 13% per point, with a simple one third chance between the two.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

You have a different approach to Bloodseeker, fair enough. Though, I really don’t like that it makes you consume a bleed on the primary target for a chance of a KC reset.

Generally, anything that “consumes” a DoT’s “duration instantly” does so by having it deal its full remaining damage and effects likewise instantly. As such, it’s not a cost, but a benefit. I’ll make that more clear in the tooltip, though.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Driven Prey is abit confusing, at least in terms of the wording of the tooltip.

I’ll revise it. But the simple idea is that…

• While you have buff (Wild Call)…
  • Killing an enemy makes it inflict stacking debuff to enemies in 8 yds.
  • Said debuff increases their chance to be crit by your attacks by 5% per stack.
  • Each enemy can only take up to 6 stacks.

Obviously not well tuned yet.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Feel free to add your motivation for the aforementioned changes.

This is partly just because I’ve never quite thought that “consistent cleave” is a sufficient theme or niche. It’s… fine, but seems only a neutral (or even negative) descriptor, not a selling point.

• “Consistent,” as a damage profile, is only ever a weakness, in that it can’t be manipulated for greater effect to the extent that burst can; it requires compensation (higher total damage over time) to be effective.

On the other hand, the idea of sort of stampede, of this ramping momentum (above and beyond Frenzy stacks alone), really appeals to me for BM. The on-kill effects and chance from %AP dealt over duration are both heavy-handed ways to do that, admittedly, but that’s a niche I feel that BM, of all specs, deserves to be able to specialize in.

As for funnel damage, that was inadvertant, due to synergies between GftT and how I imagined the aforementioned pet-Focus-spending rework/retweak (to decrease the penalties of pet downtime due to escaping enemies) would interact.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

You’ve made a choice node out of Aspect of the Beast + Animal Companion? I hate to say it, but I can’t get on-board with that. Mostly because I don’t want AC to be a talent option at all.

And that’s where we disagree. I prefer the choice of, at the same net damage:

1. Two pets, and you get the skills and passives of each, but their skills recharge slower.
2. One pet, and its skills recharge faster and its passive is doubly effective.

You get the same casts per minute and damage regardless. My main issue with Animal Companion is that there appears to be an extra pet with me, but in reality, it’s just a wonkily constrained Kill Command damage buff.

If what I see is 2 pets, to my mind, 2 pets is what I should get.

[Tanais-kilrogg]

@Terranox-stonemaul

Your opinion vs mine is all this is. I have a right to voice my opinion same as you.

No… all opinions are equal, unless you’re a child-killer or have played melee.

You actually played the spec in question before making conclusions about them, so can you really claim innocence? An undiminished status?

…I thought not.

Actually, playing a caster might be equally bad. You might consider infrequent, pivotal cast times to similarly be a worthwhile skill element instead of insisting that hunter must always be run-and-gun.

So, more specifically, are you sure you’ve played nothing but BM since Legion launched? And have no vile thoughts of allowing it to be more than just Frenzy stack management and maximizing Kill Command casts with the occasional woven Kill Shot? Otherwise, Bepples, who knows best in and for all things Hunter, may need to take you out back…

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:: Quick asides, though:

@Exotic Pets
I agree with Bepples and many others that such should stay BM-only. At the very least, the means of getting extra abilities out of them needs to stay BM-specific.

@Early (pre-Cata) Melee Skills
Bepples is also right to say that the melee components of early Hunter were only occasional supplements to a purely ranged core. Anything beyond that was not terribly mana-efficient, even if you could potentially use them to reduce GCD-downtime if carefully timed between auto-shots back in BC and Wrath, and therefore can’t really be called an intentional source of actual power, only a means of mitigating our weakness (the deadzone). Regardless of how we feel about how broadly or narrowly (i.e., must be a hypermobile ranged pet-user) or broadly we might want the hunter theme to extend, that much was objectively the case.

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

I have played bm and raided with it in the past. I haven’t much anymore. I started in this expansion then swapped to survival in like season two when I started doing mythics again. Then they became real meta in season 3.

I made suggestions for survival. And Bepples brought my feedback into this beast mastery thread. When I did not even suggest making it melee. More so Survival getting exotics and that I liked BM when it was mixed.

I dont’ think I said I played nothing but BM. Bepples has always had problems with me liking survival and wants to bring back ranged survival hunter and eliminate melee survival hunters. I like that blizz brought back the melee side of hunters personally because I stopped playing mine a whole lot when it became purely ranged stuff.

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

Again, please stop posting about SV in this topic. It has nothing to do with that spec. Please move that particular conversation to one of the many topics that are in fact about Survival.

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

Tell them to stop bringing me into it and linking my post from the alpha in here >.>

[Ingvaeonic-dalaran]

Watch what you say next time. If your going to give fb in alpha, and contribute to that specs god awful condition, then you have every right to be tagged in a post.
You cant expect to just give crappy advice and get away with it, do you? We know who suggests what.