it seems inline with the presented hero talents so far. if 2 of 10 trees have active abilities, seems pretty standard with their goals
51, unless you count every shared class tree as separate for each spec.
Which has little to do with whether Hero Talents need to be 80% cosmetic.
Weâve seen games reduce their workload by pruning systems, but contrary to what youâd assume by purposely going for the bare minimum in or pruning away surrounding systems, core balance almost never improved. It usually became worse.
- Perhaps that was because it was that much less granular, perhaps because of new learning pains in working from that new paradigm, perhaps because it essentially okayed that much more complacency. We do not know the exact reasons, but such is the case.
That would get so much backlash. There is already a lot of pushback from people that wanted class skins. Something that is far less likely to happen now that Hero talents are a thing.
Some of the specs having active abilities might be within their design philosophy, but add in that it also becomes a maintenance buff, provides benefits that are questionable, and alters how the specs are played. Now it goes against multiple philosophies in just one ability. Seems odd to me. If you like it, thatâs fine. Judging by this thread, you would be in the minority though.
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I am struggling to understand what you are getting at. So you want to solve a problem that struggles from âwastingâ charges due to the fact the limited amount of charges currently available are not enough to achieve ideal rotation effeciency? Youâre saying if their âmax charge capacityâ were to be increased, they could then achieve âideal gameplay rotationâ? So youâre solution to this problem that requires a larger charge capacity is to⌠reduce their available charges even more?
Are you under the impression that these Hero Talents are going to have to be balanced so they donât change anyoneâs damage? Are you saying that if the Hero Talents allow for more âprocsâ to occur, then theyâll have to redo ability damage modifiers? I think the point of those additional procs actually is to increase the amount of damage the Hunter does. I think the current assumption weâre supposed to be viewing these Hero Trees, is that they will indeed tune the amount of âadditional procsâ to be at a level that is competitively consistent to the other classes/specs also gaining additional new Talent choices.
But itâs not beig tuned in a âvacuumâ? Also, err, I donât see why you couldnât tune it in âvacuumâ? If you have a ton of iterations with different modifiers, you could then pick out the modifying numbers that produce the results youâre trying to achieve, could you not?
Are you telling me that every single talent/ability is directly linked to every other ability/talent that exists in the game, and that by altering the numbers on ability will also increase/decrease the the numbers on the rest of the spells in the game? Iâm admittedly not very familiar with the gameâs engine, or even formal mathematics for that matter, but I thought that abilities/talents do exist in a âvacuumâ, which allows spells to be tuned independently from one another.
WoWâs combat gameplay is kind of designed around making small concessions from âtheoretical peak rotation efficiencyâ, to try and make more âpragmatic optimalâ moves. Like, maybe instead of popping all of your cooldowns as soon as they are ready, you decide to hold on to them an extra 10 seconds, because in 10 seconds the boss will enter a phase that causes them to take 500% increased damage, so you want to make your CDâs align with that phase, despite, as you say, âwastingâ those cooldowns by not letting them accumulate more charges, because theyâre already at max charges until you use them and put them on cooldown where they will begin to recharge. And I donât think this is what you are intending to imply, but what I gather from your conclusions, is we should remove (all?) abilities that have any sort of cooldown, because that can lead to wasted effeciency if they arenât used the instant they become available to use; and adding charges doesnât work because what happens if you proc an extra charge while youâre already at 3.7/4 charges, putting you at 4.7/4, aka,you just wasted .7 of a charge.
Idk, I guess you need to bust out the whiteboard for me, because are you against the game design of WoW in general? Is it just the Hero Talents you donât approve of? Is it just the current iterations of the Dark Ranger that donât work, but the premise of the Hero Tree is still salvageable, as long as we donât touch the current sacred modifier numbers, because everything is already in perfect yin-yang universal balance? I mean, âBalanced Gameplayâ is a subjective term, youâre not going to be able to produce an objective definition of what that is, because⌠thatâs just not how it works.
I think whatâs really tripping me out is Iâm assuming that Iâm somehow oblivious to your insightful perspective that doesnât involve using âconvoluted modifiersâ; but for my own sanity, Iâm just going to say it: I think youâre being crazy.
Is anyone else following this, or is it just me struggling?
I get where you are coming from. I wish we knew how open to adjusting the trees/talents the devs are. I get the feeling they wonât be adjusting Black Arrow much except for maybe changing the AiS/BS proc component. Personally, I would like a little more flavor to be added to other abilities. If it were up to me, I would have Black Arrow replace Steady Shot and Barbed Shot.
Black Arrow:
- Steady Shadow, 1.4sec cast: A shadow tipped steady shot that causes (x% of attack power) Shadow Damage, and causes shadow damage every 2 sec for 16 seconds. Only one Black Arrow dot can be active at once. Generates 10 focus. Castable while moving.
- Barbed Shadow, Instant, 2 Charges: Fire a shot that tears through your enemy, causing them to bleed for (x% of attack power), and causes shadow damage every 2 sec for 16 seconds. Only one Black Arrow dot can be active at once. Sends your pet into a fenzy, increasing attack speed by 30%, stacking up to 3 times.
And then further down the tree Shadow Surge Replaced by:
- Wailing Arrow, Instant: Fire an enchanted arrow, dealing (x% of attack power) Shadow Damage to your target and an additional (x% of attack power) Shadow damange to all enemies within 8 yards of your target. When Wailing Arrow hits a target affected by Black Arrow, a burst of shadow fire erupts applying Withering Fire to all enemies near the target. Withering Fire burns for (x% attack power) every 2 seconds for 16 seconds. Replaces Multi-Shot.
Edit: I also think talents like Bestial Wrath and Trueshot could be included for more theme. Like during Bestial Wrath, your pet is overcome with Shadow Wrath and radiates a burning aura that causes shadow damage to all mobs within 8 yards every 2 seconds. Or During Trueshot: Reduces the cooldown of your Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire by 70, causes Aimed Shot to Cast 50% faster for 15 sec. While under the affects of Trueshot, the hunter is consumed by shadows, and Shadow Arrows sporadically fire at your target for additional shadow damage.
Those ideas are mostly thematic and probably changes too much to be taken seriously, but I do enjoy tossing ideas around with the lot of you. Itâs fun trying to stretch my creative legs.
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I fully admit Iâm not the best at explaining things without visuals, but it boggles my mind how you got that out of what I wrote.
- Both MM and BM have the potential of overcapping. If you already have full charges of an ability, proccing another charge gives you nothing, because you canât go over that cap.
- The current Black Arrow tooltip says it âresets the cooldown ofâ. If I have zero charges of Aimed Shot, but the cooldown is 90% finished, does a proc give me 1 charge plus that 90%? Or does it just give me 1 charge and the second charge starts from the beginning? If itâs the latter, then I really only gained 10% of a cooldown reset. If itâs the former, then I would need to make sure I always have 0 charges, which changes how the rotation works.
No matter how it works, the value of proccing a charge will vary constantly. By contrast, Frostfire talents mostly empower the next cast or proc actual damage. The potential of losing value on those procs is very low.
How did you even get that from what I said. Nothing in my comment even remotely suggested such a thing.
Iâm under the impression that Blizzard will try to make all the trees equitable for all specs. Why? Because they said so. They also said they donât want to make significant changes to base talents. They want Hero talents to enhance the existing toolkit. Adding large multipliers to base talents seems unlikely.
Tuning in a vacuum would be if that one spec was the only spec in the game. There are many hero trees, so tuning needs to achieve results that put the specs where they want them in the grand scale. Adding huge modifiers to an ability to make the new Hero talents work might shift the damage profile of that spec. Theyâve already said they donât want to do that.
Your responses bear a striking resemblance to arguments that think everything is just easy to do. Balancing this game is an arduous and tricky endeavor. There is more to it than just making everyone do the same amount of damage. Dark Ranger, as presented, is chock full of imbalances that seem impossible to âtuneâ without drastic changes to at least one of the specs. Could they do that? Sure. Will they? Highly unlikely.
In the end, let me clarify: These talents are absolutely tunable, but would require massive changes that theyâve already stated they want to avoid. With those changes off the table, Dark Ranger is untunable and needs to be redesigned. If neither happens, Dark Ranger will be an absolute garbage choice for BM Hunters and questionable for MM Hunters.
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Heâs not asking for Aimed Shot to have fewer charges. Heâs saying that charges randomly granted through periodic effects (unlike charges controllably and predictably granted as per Legacy of the Windrunner) oblige you not to bank charges, instead always using them as soon as they refresh to reduce overcapping waste.
Which is true. Since they have to be tuned around some %waste and balancing tends to focus on situations that better exploit the exploitable ability, even if that makes it more finnicky to get value out of in most situations, rather than allowing it to be OP in the more exploitable situations.
And thatâs worsened in our case because itâs not just movement thatâs fouling up our ability to use every charge of Aimed Shot as soon as we get it, but also our 2+ other random procs via Deathblow, Surging Shots, and tier effects.
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Thatâs because Dark Ranger is closer to being MM Hunter + Sub Rogue. Like, FrostFire was a neat example in which the Hero Tree just happens to have about equal thematic overlap. But Dark Ranger really doesnât have much reason to be a part of BMâs Hero Tree imo.
I think I was just misinterpreting what you were getting at, because I went back and read more of the conversation and I think now I kind of understand what I wasnât earlier. Because I think most of us are in agreement about not making a 30s Black Arrow cd be the main focus for the Hero Tree.
Personally I think the MM has too many +dmg/+procs nodes that arenât âexcitingâ. I like the idea of having the Dark Rangers and Astral Archers who are Hunters at their core, but incorporate some outside flavor, and those two cptions would be my ideal choices for MM, even though they donât really have much to do with BM/Sv. Because I think you mentioned that pure dps classes are in an awkward position where their Hero choice isnât going to be nearly as significant as, say a Prot Paladin choosing between extra dps, or extra healing. Which kind of misses out on the aspect of choosing a Tree to help compliment you in a particular way. Having to choose between 'Sonic Shot: Fire an arrow to the sky that Elune blesses that returns to ground with the power of a shooting star that stuns enemies in the surrounding area for X seconds; vs Darkened Darts: hurl a volley of shadowy darts at enemies in front of you that interrupts spellcasting and silences targets hit for 4 seconds.
Yeah I agree with that, and the more I think on it, the more I realize how much of the MM tree currently revolves around rng procs, which isnât ideal gameplay imo.
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Honestly, I donât feel like Deathblow, Surging Shots, or even both with S3 tier atop them is too many procs, merely about the limit of what would be okay.
More importantly, though, on-specific-CD-use procs and periodic procs are just very different things, though. I can hold Aimed Shot to prevent it from wasting its Rapid Fire reset when thereâs only a second left until RF resets naturally. I canât do that for a DoT tick I applied most of its CD ago.
Are you actually tryin gtk say that if blizz goes from 52 tree combinations to over 100 combinations with hero talents that we will get better balancing because historically making thing simpler it was less balanced?
I just disagree, but time will tell if they can pull it off. So far i dont see it happening, most people dont see this as being a forumla for success
I think itâs mostly been negative (outside of theme) because MM has tons of problems, and this tree isnât fixing any of them. 
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Nor should it
Hero talents shouldnât be fixing a specâs issues. They should fix the base spec, and let hero talents do what they are advertised as; make your spec++
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Oh, I know. But my expectations are effectively zero when it comes to Blizzard actually fixing MM at all.
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<3
I will never main hunter but itâs always one of my primary alt for fun. I play MM, so I must have some of that hopium~
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This is really interesting, I like it.
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I also really like these ideas. 
The last thing MM needs is more button bloat.
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I would prefer black arrow just replacing serpent sting mostly because i dont like the idea of having to steady shot a bunch of mobs to apply a dot then do damage.
Serpent sting turns into black arrow and can transform? Steady shot into wailing arrow maybe sometimes on proc? or black arrow turns aimshot into a wailing arrow sometimes on proc?
At the moment im not even a huge fan of serpent sting and i dont think serpent sting really fits the theme of dark ranger at all with dark ranger being about death magic. serpent sting is just an automatic thing fired with aimshot its kinda lost what it had back in the day, or maybe im miss remembering dragonflight serpent.
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More options is more work, but easier to balance. Adding a drop of chlorine to a glass of water has a bigger impact than adding a drop of chlorine to a swimming pool. Similarly, having more talent options means small changes to just one has less effect on the overall. Much easier to balance by making small changes to many talents than one big change to a single talent.
That has long been one of the issues with Blizzard. They want to put out a product with the least amount of work possible, so we tend to get a game that is arguably not well balanced.
the unfortunate thing about this is that BM doesnât talent into serpent sting, so their entire build would need to change
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Ah right good pointâŚ
Then maybe it could just be a dot that gets applied with aimshot or barb shot and you can only have one up at a time or something.
I guess steady shot could be a good inbetween