True.
Okay…and? Sorry, not sure what you meant here.
The amount of throughput you get varies for all talents in the bottom “tier”. Would be the same thing here? Anyway, while I would personally find Caltrops to be much more interesting of a talent, ultimately, I wouldn’t mind either.
You’re saying IAotH wouldn’t be very interesting for the bottom tier. I’m saying that the stated design for Hunters is “Throughput on the bottom”, whether those talents are interesting or not. The interesting stuff goes in the spec trees.
Steel Trap? Stampede?
Looking again, I was mistaken. 5 of 16 bottom tier talents are uninteresting, the rest are neat.
Still though, I don’t have an issue with a thematically appropriate throughput increase that was historically a core part of Hunter talent builds, even if it is a little boring. I was going to say it would provide interesting choices in the bottom third, but really any 3-point throughput talent that goes there just makes it a choice between Trap Mastery and “New 3-point talent” or Binding Shackles and Keen Eyesight.
Why does it look like someone just picked talents out of a bowl for positioning on this tree.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of opinion/personal preference. What is interesting, and what isn’t.
Yep, pretty much.
Looking at the updated class tree, what they did was pretty much what was expected. As per our conversation the other day.
Scare Beast was moved out to the far left side, now serving as a tangent node. I still think it would be better suited if placed, again, as a tangent node, but extending out from the choice node for Binding Shot/Scatter Shot.
They added another path, to connect from the central section of the tree, to the left path(from Tar Trap and out). A good thing for the times where you want the enhancements to pet healing. Nothing special, but not a bad change.
The new agility node, where Scare Beast was previously placed, is what they said – a (PH)Placeholder node, which is going to get changed at some point in the future. Providing some form of boost to utility.
They removed Chimaera Shot(moved it into the MM tree). I mean…okay.
And then, they did add a new path that connects from Keen Eyesight to Master Marksman. For what the talents are, this was indeed a good change.
My general thought, while these changes are generally decent ones, I’m still holding out hope for more changes to be made. As mentioned in this post.
You then also have my thoughts on Serpent Sting in the class tree, and how it + Explosive Shot should be handled for an additional playstyle/spec, mentioned here. While they certainly could be done as well, that’s a different topic to this one.
Which tree are you referring to?
The BM tree…Maybe I’m just not understanding what their trying to do but it doesn’t look like there is a focused direction down the tree.
For example, Dire Beast is on the opposite side of Dire Pack. Abilities that play off each other should be, at the very least, on the same side of the tree.
I just think we should have a general idea that going down one side of the tree or the other leads to a known result.
Like one side is focused on your pet or one side is focused on single target or maybe have the big things we know everyone will take in the middle and branch out from there for flavor.
At the end of the day most people will end up with recommended builds from icyveins or wowhead but it would be nice to have a few quirky builds that can still work for endgame.
Honestly, there is NOTHING exciting about the generic hunter tree. No matter how you look at it, there is just nothing to be excited about.
I mean, look at whats there. Doing this from memory so give me a break. They doubled down on KC/KS, one of which is just a filler and the other is situational (below 35%). They pretty much force you into a tunneled situation between a purge, misd, and tar trap, so you really have nothing to look forward too at that point. You really dont want to take misd bc there isnt threat issues these days, PLUS behind it is the terribad fogged crystal and a choice of a stun or trap, ie, wayyyy more utility then you want to spend points on at least from a pve raiding perspective. You look at KC for bm and surv but your tunneled into a bunch of pet survivability stuff that you used to have thats been broken up for nothing more then to get you to spend points.
So basically at this point everyone is funneled into the KS side with the purge. However, once again you run into exhilaration talents that are broken into pieces for nothing more then to make you spend points but STILL doesnt increase the hunters survivability.
At this point if your bm your pretty much forced back to the left side of the tree for the pet talents. As surv your once again forgotten so you follow bm bc you have a pet. Mm goes right but is forced to spend points in concussion shot before getting to their talents.
At this point there really hasnt been anything to be excited about. Your spending twice the amount of points to get the same defensives you have now, PLUS forced into taking situational utility. But the pain has just begun.
If your bm your pretty much funneled into taking trap talents to get to your pet-specific talents. They are doing something with scare beast, which really is just a pure dead talent, but your still forced to take the talents before that, ie, all the pet surv talents.
As surv your stick with your thumb up your bum. Nothing on the tree fits your identity, well, hahaha, surv doesnt have an identity so i suppose blizz just confirms that? Anyways you go the same route as bm, being forced into taking trap talents. However, knowing how god awful rotational trap play was with nesingwary’s in SL and you still bang your head on your desk whenever you see that leggo on the tree, you immediately veer left and take the pet talents. Because god knows you are not going down that path again. Plus, you go into deep meditation 
to ask yourself: how does steel trap deserve an end-of-tree placement?
Mm is stuck on the right, picking up useless talents like SS to get to explosive shot bc you have a talent that auto applies it already. Yes, i know they are changing it but my point is still made. But thats it. Really? Explosive shot is the apex of the tree for mm? Yep.
Looking down the center of the tree we find more unnecessary utility then a 3 point crit talent. Sure all three go there bc where else are you going to go? Theres nothing super exciting to aim for. After the crit you ask yourself, well, what now? Surv and bm have basically burned up their points going for SS bc surv is of dire situation of needing something to make up for its horrible tree and bm has nowhere else to go. So mm forces themselves to take barrage just to get to their bleed.
But, but, what about chakrums? Bahahaha. The worst talent in SL for hunters?
Yea. No one is going for them.
In essence, look at allllll the other class generic trees, then cut the bottom 3rd off of each of them, then move the first two parts down, and thats essentially the hunter tree in a nutshell. The talents that are in the bottom 3rd for hunters are more second level talents for everyone else. Thats why our tree is not exciting. Theres no finish. No apex to the tree. Nothing significant enough where you will go “Wow i get to use X AND Y.” Thats what hunters are missing.
What content are you doing where threat issues aren’t a problem?
If I pop off on a fresh add pack in M+ with WS+Volley+Trueshot and spam Aimed Shots w/4pc/Vigil, I’m going to pull aggro, period. MD prevents that, while giving the tank enough of a buffer that other DPS can also go ham.
Ok?
You can take misd. But its going to cost you two points, which means you loose out on master marksman. See the fun???
To be honest, i was speaking in a raid context, not a m+ context. Ot course there are times for misd. I prefer to just wait 3 seconds then dps. Why sacrifice points for misd when you can just play smarter and get more dps talents.
What are you even talking about?
You get one extra point in the top 2 tiers because WoWhead’s calc is bugged and not giving free KS/KC for MM/SV. I can’t adjust my points on mobile, pretend the 1 point in Concussive Shot is in Master Marksman instead. You have wiggle room in the top 2 tiers with Natural Mending, Born to be Wild, Camo, Concussive Shot, Trailblazer, Tar Trap, and Trap Mastery all in play.
For BM/SV, shift 2 points into Trap Mastery to get to the pet stuff on the bottom left. Or don’t, if you’d rather have the shots in the bottom right.
You want to argue that Fogged Crystal and Binding Shackles are bad? You want to argue that Imp Exhil should be baked in? I agree. It’s still very easy to move around the tree, regardless of where you start.
I cant mess around bc i am on mobile.
My point isnt that there are not points, the issue is that there is nothing exciting to choose. This isnt just a hunter generic tree issue.
I mean, i was just messing around looking at the other trees on mobile bc i cant do anything with them, and i was like holy hell! The other trees are expansive! There is soo much to choose from, then return to hunter…
Like surv, look at all the other spec trees out there and then look at surv’s tree. Immediately you think wtfh, someone didnt do their job. Its like half a tree. But no a single fanboi on alpha is saying anything.
Thats what im getting at. Zero excitement on the hunter side of things.
I think my main issue with the generic hunter tree is that you are heavly pushed to pick the right side of the tree as MM. And the right side of the tree is mostly a massive button bloat. So if you wanna AOE as MM you mught end up with explosive shot, barrage, volley and trick shot, these abilities barley interact and feels more like stackong cake upon cake.
I like the Hunter class tree design a lot. There are some individual talents with issues (Imp Exhil, Fogged Crystal, Binding Shackles, Scare Beast, Nesingwary’s) but I have zero problem with the base concept. I like that I can tailor my utility to the encounter, or take all the actives at the expense of some sustain/DR/movement.
Maybe it feels worse for SV because you kinda have to take the pet talents in the bottom left?
Keep in mind that something like Barrage is EXCELLENT for stacking up Bullseye quickly during the execute phase of an encounter, Volley automatically grants Trick Shots for the duration, and Explosive Shot is a strong ability in its own right that is replacing a Multi-Shot GCD. It does add a number of buttons, but I feel they all have their place.
Oh ye they all provied something im just afraid thar it will end up feeling more like mash all your buttons instead of developing the aoe rotation into something intressting
I would agree with this, yes.
To a certain degree, I guess it depends on how you look at it, what your goals are. But in the sense that it doesn’t really bring back anything particularly interesting from the past, or anything new for that matter, I agree.
Having said that, I haven’t looked at other class trees in detail, so I can’t really fully compare it to those.
Hmm, not really.
Why is Fogged Crystal bad? It’s obviously not a mandatory pick for most end-game content in general, but these trees aren’t exclusively designed for end-game. The point is that it’s meant for solo play + niche situations in e.g. Why is this a bad thing?
While I’ve mentioned plenty of things in the OP that I’d like for to be changed/“fixed”, in regards to the BM tree, I am excited about Call of the Wild, along with the talent Kill Cleave that allows Kill Command to benefit from Beast Cleave. Those are definitely good additions to the spec.
Many other things, such as how they’ve removed the CDR on BW and put it in a separate talent, + how they’ve removed one baseline charge of Barbed Shot and put that in as a separate talent as well, such things I’m definitely not happy about.
If they made the following changes to the class tree, I would be pretty happy about where it’d end up:
I know @Adreaver is content with keeping Wailing Arrow as part of the BM/MM trees, but tbh, I find that this would be a really odd way to go about things. IMO, there’s no reason to have Wailing Arrow as part of either of the spec trees.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but, is there any situation where you’d pick Wailing Arrow for the damage(over what other choices there are in either of the trees), or do you pick it primarily because of the utility of the silence effect, and the damage it deals is mostly just a bonus? Add to that the fact that, as the devs have outright said, the intention is that SV should be able to use all available abilities in the class tree, even when using a melee weapon, the exception might be Barrage. That’s one more reason for why it makes no logical sense to put it in talent trees tied to individual specializations.
If you look at Hi-Explosive Trap, it currently says that, when triggered, it deals ~57% of your AP as Fire damage, and it’s on a 40 sec CD. That’s not something you’d pick because of the damage. They can just reduce the amount of damage that Wailing Arrow deals, so that people wouldn’t be heavily motivated to pick it “just because it deals damage”, but first and foremost because you’d want to make use of the silence-effect.
Add to this the fact that AoE silences aren’t a very common type of utility/perk amongst all the classes, so if we would have Wailing Arrow as part of the class tree, that would make the class as a whole more desirable. Again, IMO.
Edit:
I suppose that if people really want Wailing Arrow to also deal a decent amount of damage, you could instead move it to the class tree, and place it as a capstone tangent node that extends downwards from Master Marksman, near the bottom of the tree. It would be positioned between the choice node for Chakrams/Death Chakram and Explosive Shot.
It’s bad in the context of being largely wasted points in terms of moving around the tree at level cap for PvE or PvP.
It’s fine as a leveling or soloing talent. For a general purpose talent I’d rather it give the Hunter DR.
New post in the Hunter alpha topic: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-hunters/1279513/63
The next build to alpha will have some pretty substantial changes for the hunter talent trees. Many talent nodes have had their position shuffled around, as well as connections, so this won’t be an exact list of what specific talent node moved to what new position and what it connects to. Some of this may be redundant information with previous posts:
Baseline Changes:
- Mend Pet has been bumped up from 35% of Pet’s HP over its duration, to 50% of pet’s HP.
Class Tree:
- The placeholder Agility % node has been replaced with an Avoidance node.
- Improved Exhilaration (the pet healing) is now part of the baseline Exhilaration ability. This has been replaced with Rejuvenating Winds.
- Viper’s Venom in the choice node after Serpent Sting has been replaced with Hydra’s Bite.
- Binding Shackles is planned to work with any combination of Scatter Shot, Explosive Trap, Binding Shot, and Intimidation. This should make sense with the new tree layout.
Beast Mastery
- Dire Pack has been redesigned. Every X Dire Beasts summoned now resets the cooldown of Kill Command, and reduces the cooldown and Focus Cost of Kill Command for a duration.
- New talent added that increases the duration and damage of any Dire Beast summon.
Marksmanship:
- Steady Focus values lowered to 4/8%, rather than 7/15%.
- Hunter’s Knowledge and Focused Aim now boost Rapid Fire damage and crit chance in addition to Aimed Shot.
- Salvo has been renamed to Bombardment and redesigned - Arcane Shots increases the damage of your next Multi-Shot by X%, stacking up to 4 times.
- Explosive Ricochet renamed to Salvo, and design adjusted. Multi-Shot now also shoots Explosive Shot at up to 2 targets hit. This can only occur once every 45 sec.
- Killer Ricochet renamed and redesigned, is now Razor Fragments - When Trick Shots fades or is consumed, your next Kill Shot does X% more damage, and causes up to 5 targets to bleed for Y% of the damage dealt over 6 sec. This node comes right after Deathblow , which may be in a different position in the tree now.
- Bursting Shot and Quick Load are no longer a dependency for any talent node on the tree.
Survival
- Terms of Engagement and Improved Harpoon talents have been combined and now only requires 1 talent point total.
- Several abilities reduced to 1 or 2 total points, down from 2 or 3 total points.
- Precision Removed
- Frenzy Strikes now also applies its cooldown reduction to Flanking Strike.
- Note: there’s an issue where this talent will incorrectly be able to be obtained by a prior node without the Butchery/Carve node, this connection will be removed in a future update.
- Wildfire Infusions - Volatile Bomb has been adjusted because Serpent Sting is no longer a baseline, guaranteed to have ability. This bomb will continue to deal bonus damage to a target affected by Serpent Sting, and will also apply Serpent Sting to some number of targets it hits.
- Viper’s Venom is now in the survival talent tree with a redesign. Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a chance to apply Serpent Sting to your target.
- New Talent - Ranger - Increases the damage of Steady Shot, Kill Shot, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting.
- New Talent - Intense Focus - increases focus generated by Kill Command
- New Talent - Ruthless Marauder - Fury of the Eagle has a 15% increased critical strike chance against targets below 20% health, and Fury of the Eagle critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb and Flanking Strike by 0.5 sec.
- The critical strike chance and cooldown reduction values go up per rank, the 20% HP threshold does not change.
This is a lot to parse, and things above are not final. Thanks for the discussions so far, we appreciate it.
Say what now