Feedback: Dark Ranger in The War Within

[Biopsy-thunderlord]

@Riokaii-burning-blade

Secondary stats do not play a significant effect on # of focus you generate or # of aimed shot charges you get.

Haste = Focus regen. I don’t know what the current conversion is, but it used to be 1% haste equaled 1% Focus regen. Players with low haste are frequently waiting for Focus to regen. Players with appropriate gear have far fewer issues with Focus.

For BM, Crit matters a lot. I don’t play MM enough to recall how important other secondary stats are.

@Nondriel-living-flame

i mean aside from cooldown resets what else is there? you can read riokaii’s post earlier in this thread, but like what else is there for MM? you dont have things to play around besides aimed shot charge for example

They could increase damage, add utility, etc. The most common complaint I hear from top Hunters is that cooldown resets aren’t needed and only cause overcapping issues. Resetting a cooldown isn’t as helpful if you’re already capping out on charges. So why do they keep designing with cooldown resets and Focus regen in mind? What is it about the class that makes them think those are the issues that need addressed?

[Riokaii-burning-blade]

@Biopsy-thunderlord

Haste = Focus regen. I don’t know what the current conversion is, but it used to be 1% haste equaled 1% Focus regen. Players with low haste are frequently waiting for Focus to regen. Players with appropriate gear have far fewer issues with Focus.

Currently, comparing T29 (Start of the expansion season 1) to T31 (Current Amirdrassil end of expansion season 3)

The MM Sim goes from 0% downtime, to 0% downtime. It is GCD locked always.

Both spend within 95%~ of the same amount of aimed shot casts, the same amount of rapid fire casts, similar # of steady shot casts and time spent casting, Generate similar focus from casts of RF, Steady shot, etc.

MM never really has issue gaining more focus, thru RF and steady shot it can always get more focus on demand fairly easily. And with both giving haste buffs via talents, our passive haste is the majority of all the focus we need to cast aimeds + arcane shots + kill shots, and is independent of gear levels. Often at the start of expansion you prioritize Mastery above all other secondaries, because crit and haste are not needed. This is with Amirdrassil having a 13 higher increase than normal between tiers

[Ametrine-sargeras]

I still don’t get why they’re adding a new ability rather than just repurposing Murder of Crows, which is already kind of similar (and scales better for BM.)

[Cognition-norgannon]

@Ametrine-sargeras

I still don’t get why they’re adding a new ability

I think most of us are in the same boat. Judging from the different interviews they gave on the topic, I was under the impression Hero Talents weren’t supposed to change how your spec is played. Black Arrow really doesn’t make either spec a “Dark Ranger”. It’s just another button to press every 30 seconds.

We need whoever designed Frostfire on our team. That tree isn’t perfect, but it certainly lives up to its name.

[Lenegis-stormrage]

It’s not bad, but it’s nothing great either.

If they want to make killshot a bigger part of the rotation they need to first fix interactions with trueshot and other stuff.

Simply put, during trueshot you don’t have much time to cast killshot, especilly if it keeps proccing, resulting in wasted aimed shots/rapid fire.

To solve this they need to take a page out of dh, and have deathblow reduce the gcd of kill shot to 0.25 seconds.

Also, they need to fix deathblow dot damage, because right now it’s terrible. Put it to 75% of the kill shot damage so it’s in line with trick shots.

[Istolilly-eonar]

@Riokaii-burning-blade

Many of these effects give you more aimed shots, when we already don’t always have the GCD’s available to spend the precise shots stacks we generate, wasted and munching them entirely.

That’s almost like a rollback to the Legion system of chargeless Aimed. So we can start pretending that charges don’t exist anymore.

@Riokaii-burning-blade

The focus generation of Dark Empowerment is not going to be sufficient to equalize the increased cost of more aimed shots, and during trueshot we already don’t need more aimed shot, we are already struggling to fit in the other required focus generation of Rapid Fire and Steady Shots for their haste buffs (steady focus during trueshot especially is awkward to fit).

More Aimed Shots are not the goal, though TShot will get many more of them in. The best damaging abilities are instant-cast and they happen to cost little to no Focus. That means L&L Aimed, RFire, and KShot. Hardcast Aimed, Steady, Precised Arcane, and vanilla Arcane are filler.

That’s what DPS means in a nutshell. I don’t know why you’re thinking you need to cast two Steady Shots for the buff because that’s two globals + two hardcasts spent, precious seconds that can go towards something else of higher priority. I’m sure DKR will give us plenty to do besides worrying about that.

@Riokaii-burning-blade

They are not solving problems or opening up new gameplay in the spec, just making the already clunky parts of the spec even worse. Overcapping aimed shot feels bad and is your #1 priority to avoid, these hero talents make it nearly unavoidable that overcapping aimed charges will occur, unable to be played around or avoided proactively.

Keeping KShot and RFire off CD as they come is #1 priority. Aimed can wait and if charges “no longer exist” with this DKR system, that defeats the very purpose of redressing the issue of overcapping.

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It will be interesting to see how Sentinel will compete.

[Altani-mannoroth]

@Riokaii-burning-blade

This is the core problem with MM. It already doesn’t have room for all of what it can/wants to do baseline. Giving it more stuff doesnt make it feel better to play, it just feels like more of the same. Other specs have Obliteration vs Breath of Sindragosa, Momentum vs Demonic, Glacial Spike vs. regular ice lance etc. MM doesn’t even feel different in AoE really aside from having even more focus problems and awkward multi-shotting every 2nd GCD.

I don’t want Legion MM back, but certain aspects of it would be appreciated as options, and boy does MM currently need more substantial/palpable options.

@Ilarion-windseeker

MM is bloated and dark ranger doesn’t really seem to fit with bm

MM needs some un-bloating and, especially, greater optionality regardless, and Dark Ranger could easily fit with BM if they just let it tap into the sort of Darkhound Master theme a bit further, better making use of those per-spec conditionals instead of trying to blanket solution two very different trees with very different spaces and needs.

[Riokaii-burning-blade]

RF being higher priority than Aimed shot charges overcapping is only true because of the current tier set, it has been the opposite for every other tier in the past 2 expansions to prioritize aimed instead. That is the proper priority of how the spec works by default. Similarly, you regularly prioritize steady shot x2 for the buff, yes even during trueshot. This is how it worked all thru shadowlands and beyond, yes this was a dps gain.

Regardless. Whether we let RF sit on cooldown to spend aimed, or let aimed overcap on charges to cast more RF. This is a tuning question. The problem is not one or the other, its that either way, it feels like wasting the potential value of the tools given to the spec. Wasting value never feels good, some minor amounts of 1-2 GCD’s are somewhat unavoidable, but most of the best feeling specs avoid nearly all of it via proactive planning your next 5-10s of GCD’s in advance to avoid overcapping resources, it feels awesome as a player to execute this properly.

[Tacohands-sargeras]

I’ll probably beat this drum until beta comes out, but I do like the idea of adding Wailing Arrow to the hero tree, but reworking the ability so its not an additional button. Like (I suggested this earlier and keep thinking about it) Wailing Arrow could replace Multishot (once again, I think it should be baseline), have a reduced CD to 3-5 seconds, have the damage work the same. If your primary target has the Black Arrow dot, then Black Arrow spreads to x mobs within 8 yards of your target. This version of Wailing Arrow should replace Shadow Surge, and all the spread black arrow dots should not trigger procs from the hero tree. And, of course, remove the interrupt/silence. It would also interact with Trick Shots the same as Multishot.

[Heliôs-frostmourne]

that seems a bit out of the scope of a hero talent tree tbh

[Minikyu-proudmoore]

Hero should be different play style or at least different animation plus new effects.

Those talents should passively change original skills, for example: multishots can become shadow tangles attack from the ground from hero talent, black arrow (or should rename to black shot because we use guns too) should replace aimed shot or barbed shot, keeping it’s dot & add a new trigger effect.

And the bottom talent should be an ultimate move (since hunter’s key bind numbers is much better than other classes), the ultimate move can be like naruto’s copies of himself, we got copies of player or player’s pet with shadow form, and those copies leap up and shoot or charge to bite target enemy at the same time, instant cast without channeling.

Maybe it’ll be better if they change a new dev to do those talents…

[Tacohands-sargeras]

Yeah, you’re probably right. My mind keeps thinking thematic and I do agree with others that Wailing Arrow fits the bill so I just let my mind wander too much. lol

[Keskinshots-rivendare]

Very happy with this archetype, have been looking forward to it as my favorite class/ spec since the early warcraft days, as long as the balance is good I’m looking forward to it, good job with this Blizz.

[Thrymyrden-stormrage]

Resets need to go away.

[Thrymyrden-stormrage]

Can we just think about how impossible this is for players to get right if they’re new, or don’t read guides? The fact that ability resets pool and the order you press them in, counting for assitional resets in between, has a massive impact on your throughput, is frankly absurd. I miss when abilities actually had a cooldown and they hit hard. Now everything hits like a feather because it resets every 3 seconds.

[Kerack-the-forgotten-coast]

Dark Chains is so lackluster… in MoP we had Narrow Escape:
(https://www.wowhead.com/spell=109298/narrow-escape)
When we disengaged we rooted all enemies for 8 sec, and now we slow one person for 40%? Its just so bad compared to what we used to have.
I dont think we should have a 8 sec root when we disengage, but damn…

And do Shadow Assassin trigger Withering Fire when it resets cd?

[Nondriel-living-flame]

I don’t think it’s absurd at all to expect players to learn and get better at the spec they want to play.

@Thrymyrden-stormrage

I miss when abilities actually had a cooldown and they hit hard. Now everything hits like a feather because it resets every 3 seconds.

thankfully, classic wow exists if you want to play a game where most of your time is spent waiting on cooldowns

[Thrymyrden-stormrage]

The problem is that the difference between the skill floor and ceiling is insanely large, this is not good for anyone. Also abilities didn’t work like this at this scale mostly until Legion, it’s not just classic.

[Rocknroll-kargath]

I love Black Arrow returning, but they need to change the procs away from AS and BS. Not including Wailing Arrow feels like a miss but with WAs current itteration it wouldn’t make sense outside of theme. So why not redesign WA and make it into a version that replaces Explosive Shot and have Black Arrow proc that instead like the old rsv playstyle.

[Istolilly-eonar]

@Riokaii-burning-blade

RF being higher priority than Aimed shot charges overcapping is only true because of the current tier set, it has been the opposite for every other tier in the past 2 expansions to prioritize aimed instead. That is the proper priority of how the spec works by default.

Even before what the spec microevolved to, RFire has always been better than AShot head to head. It also got better when LOS was no longer needed(who remembers?). Surging Shots and Focused Fire were the go-to azerite powers. In BFA, BEFORE we had a new covenant attack and the glorious return of Kill Shot, Aimed Shot had more prominence. But as I laid it out, we have other abilities that mattered more.

Not to mention in BFA TShot was overhauled to give 50% faster Aimed Shot AND recharge times. And when we had Visions of Perfection from 8.2(which procced off EVERYTHING) you has less need for Haste. TShot procs + TShot ability just made everything faster.

When Double Tap AShot was nerfed in PvP by 9.1, it was RFire that would still do 200% of its resolution vs. players and monsters. It was never nerfed in PvP.

So I can agree things have changed hwr and there, but both hindsight AND foresight was 20/20. Anything that’s hardcast for any Hunter is anathema. It used to be that if you suffered knockback during RFire, it was cancelled(?). Though it’s still channeled, it does it damage faster than AShot, which requires the cast and some travel time(not what’s called a hitscan in FPS).

@Riokaii-burning-blade

Similarly, you regularly prioritize steady shot x2 for the buff, yes even during trueshot. This is how it worked all thru shadowlands and beyond, yes this was a dps gain.

Steadies do low damage, and especially as non-instants. I never bothered with that. SL made it worse with KShot procs if you went with Venthyr.

@Riokaii-burning-blade

Regardless. Whether we let RF sit on cooldown to spend aimed, or let aimed overcap on charges to cast more RF. This is a tuning question. The problem is not one or the other, its that either way, it feels like wasting the potential value of the tools given to the spec.

Well, the way it is tuned for these bussin’ 6 years is quite interesting. Each of the 7 shots of RFire does its own damage. The tooltip will show the minimum, so while it’s not likely all 7 shots will crit, it would have a higher damage average than crit-or-miss AShot.

That’s the conundrum we’re in. If it was like this for six years we have to assume the spec has played and performed the way it was intended. The problem is that BMers don’t like how it’s set up yet insist they have the right to dictate MM’s reworking. As if giving BM everything, even for it to be its own class, wasn’t good enough.

I will say that if DKR is going this same way, putting AShot off charges altogether would be a nice start, and maybe BArrow can enhance AShot more another way.