Do other classes also have all these 30-45 sec cds like hunter? As mm we now have Explosive Shot, Chakram, Volley, Salvo, Steel Trap and now Black Arrow. Seems a bit bloated 
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I hope they take the feedback to heart; giving stack of Aimed Shot doesnât help the bloat, but a lock n load free instant aimed Shot would ~
At the end of the day MM needs help outside of Trueshot windows, and while hero talents shouldnât be the way to fix a baseline issue with a spec, dark arrow could help.
Long story short; fix MM damage profile between their 2m windows, make Dark Ranger easy to integrate into the rotation (aka aimed Shot fixed I listed above would go a long way in avoiding over capping aimed Shot charges and reduce energy over drain from extra black arrow charges)
And well⌠Make wailing arrow the other impacted talent instead of kill shot! (Thatâs just a personal wishlist for that one 
)
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Oracle addresses a problem, but solves it in a way that arguably makes it worse. It also doesnât make a lot of sense to build a Hero tree around it. I donât think itâs fundamentally broken though. Just an idiotic iteration. Power Infusion issues need addressed at a base level - not through Hero talents.
Dark Ranger builds on the core philosophy of the specs in providing more CD resets, but theyâre not needed. Itâs a flawed design in that our existing talents already provide enough.
An analogy: Hunter is a glass half full of water. Existing talents fill the glass. Dark Ranger Hero talents makes the glass overflow, causing a mess. We donât need more water. We need to add flavor and a bit of caffeine to the full glass of water, so it tastes better and adds a little zest.
Also, as someone pointed out on wowhead, more than half of Dark Rangerâs talents do little to nothing for BM. That is what Iâd call a fundamental flaw.
Why is Oracle getting a rework before Dark Ranger? Probably because itâs a more embarrassing faux pas. Pretty much everyone in the game knows itâs terrible, whereas only dedicated Hunters understand the issues with Dark Ranger.
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I mean what do you think will happen when they release Pack Leader; will BMs be happier than Survival hunters? Most likely.
That said I do acknowledge the issues that hero talents should appeal to both impacted specs. Frostfire is I think the best example of something on the right track toward that. So I do hope they update the rest accordingly
Well, that brings up another issue. Hero talents are supposed to be a viable choice. Both are supposed to be balanced. Of course, one is always going to be better than the other, but it shouldnât be huge difference. If one of BMâs choices is a tree that does virtually nothing, then itâs not really a choice.
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Yep agreed, so far we can clearly see that all hero talent have a âmotherâ spec, that shares it with another. And that is going to be an issue.
I think itâs good feedback to focus on, how to increase interest for the second spec will be a hot topic all the way into release
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I think itâs very telling how little of the discussion was about fixing or adjusting the hero tree to better fit BM and that it has mostly been MM focused. Even all the things I would like to see have been strictly with MM in mind and I couldnât care less about BM.
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The problem with Dark Ranger and how it affects BM is one that canât be fixed with tuning, unfortunately. As it stands, it will always be stronger for MM than BM. In order to âtuneâ the talents related to Kill Shot, they would need to make Kill Shot something BM wants to cast. However, itâs a shared talent in the Hunter tree, so buffing it would make it crazy strong for MM. Iâm not sure the designer is aware of MMâs Mastery.
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I mean they can tune things separately for MM and BM thatâs not an issue at all.
I was more talking about the mechanical and rotational issues
Also yes sorry I am more of a MM player myself, full bias disclosure
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Hero talents are Blizzardâs shortcut to avoiding reworking all the standard trees to accomodate 10 more talent points. Relying on a rebalancing of existing talents to make Hero talents work is a bit counterintuitive. Itâs definitely possible, but seems highly unlikely.
There is also the fact that all of the damage done by Black Arrow and Withering Arrow will do more damage for MM, thanks to Sniper Training. Are they going to apply BMâs Mastery to them as well? Then it would be imbalanced the other way, as BM gets a huge Mastery boost.
I play all Hunter specs, although this season it is mostly BM, but usually I prefer MM.
Maybe make it so targets affected by Dark Chains take increase Shadow dmg, or maybe make it apply additional X% healing towards Embrace the Shadows.
What might be cool would be to have an ability separate(or possibly replace) Black Arrow called Shadow Quiver, which allows you to to draw upon the shadows for shammow(shadow ammo) which causes X amount of attacks or the next Y amount of seconds to cause your attacks to provide bonus shadow dmg(or in place of physical dmg) and allow your non-shadow abilities to benefit from Hero Talentsâ shadow bonuses.
Black Arrow was originally kind of iconic(which is kind of ironic), because it was a unique ability that was kind of out of place compared to all of the other Hunter abilities. But with the ability to have a mini-tree to fill that void left by Black Arrow, it just feels kind of âmehâ to have a 30second ability thatâs essentially just a DoT being the âiconicâ thematic ability for Dark Ranger. Like, I think I would rather have Black Arrow be a side talent or capstone in the Hero Tree, which would basically just work as being a Shadow DoT bonus to bleeds/poisons(or just its own independent ShaDOwT) while Shadow Quiver is active. To be able to play well for AoE and ST, you could make ST abilities apply a stackable DoT, or cause AoE abilities to apply a DoT(max 1 stack) to targets hit by the AoE ability. Maybe give the BM spec a node that gives their pets âShadow Strikesâ in place of MMâs Black Arrow, which would basically just give pets bonus Shadow Dmg while SQuiver is active. Would love to see either a new pet in homage of, or the modification to the Sholazar Basin Spirit Beast that makes it take on a Shadow Form with some shadow vfx during SQ.
I love the middle column and the shadow arrow barrage capstone of the Hero Tree so far. The side talents are âmehâ,I kind of hope they get reworked a little bit from now until release, but the overall direction is something to get excited about.
I like the path of your thinking, but two problems with that idea.
- Most targets worth doing additional damage to will be immune to snares.
- It would lead to degenerate gameplay, where we would have to run into melee range and disengage away to get a damage boost.
In my opinion, Dark Chains just needs a redesign to give Disengage an extra charge, or perhaps make it Haunting Wave and give it a pushback.
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Maybe make it so targets effected by Dark Chains are unable to use movement abilities(like Charge, Shadowstep) for 4 seconds, Or until the affected target moves ~13 yrds away from their location at time of effect, OR the hunter has created ~40 yards of distance between themself and the target?
The xtra charge of disengage and knockback are also interesting though.
And as you said, most targets might be immune- so maybe give the affected target a dmg reduction done to the hunter in place of movement impediment if they are immune to snares, that lasts 4 seconds or until cleared in the same manner as the snare.
This will never happen. Too many people will complain about it in PvP. As it is, Hunters used to be the kings of kiting, then they gave pretty much every class ways of closing the distance. Problem is, they usually have multiple charges, while Disengage only has one.
Multiple charges of disengage would have uses in both PvP and PvE, so I feel strongly it would be the best option.
We already have talents that do similar things, so it would just be redudant. It would also suffer from not affecting the targets we want it to affect.
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Shouldnât this be applied to/via the base talents, though, rather than relying on a borrowed power to fix something 30+ levels after its pain-point becomes necessary â and in a way that has⌠little to nothing to do with the motif the borrowed powers are based on?
It would be great if Disengage had multiple charges baseline, but this is a discussion about Dark Ranger hero talents. Whatever happens with Dark Chains, I think most of us can agree the current iteration is terrible.
Just give disengage an extra charge and add some flavor animation to it. Makes the most sense to me.
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Remember when Knockbacks werenât a thing in WoW? Because if we were talking about adding knockbacks as a mechanic into the game, I bet you would have said the same thing about"too many people would complain", yet here we are. Iâm actually not even sure what youâre getting at, considering there are a good number of abilities that are even more of a nuisance to others- which may not be the best test for deciding whether certain game mechanics should exist- but itâs not like Iâm even suggesting a Loss of Control ability(which Hunters already have, such as Binding Shot that acts as an AoE enemy gameplay disruption) Iâm just offering a brief restriction on using gap closing abilities. I thought of it acting as the opposite of an Evokerâs Time Spiral talent that gives the group a free use of their movement ability.
I actually donât disagree with your desire for an extra disengage charge; but itâs a little funny because that almost seems like that might be even more valuable than briefly denying enemy gap closing abilities. That said, it does seem more fitting as a PvP talent than to be a Shadow Ranger Hero talent.
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I do remember that actually. TBC. People were upset because the common world PvP at the time was the towers in Terrokar Forest and Druids could just throw you off the tower to your death without actually fighting. It got a massive number of complaints. It was the same time they gave Hunters Disengage, and the joke was that Druids could throw you off the towers, but Hunters could throw themselves off.
The ability to stop others from using their movement abilities for 4 seconds from an ability we can use every 15 seconds would get a massive number of complaints. Partially because that is just too often, but also because it would be coming from Hunters - and people love to complain about Hunters.
An extra charge of Disengage would be just as useful in PvE. Hunters are often chosen to do specific mechanics. The ability to jump around as needed to reach soaks or grab orbs would be invaluable.
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