Feedback: Dark Ranger in The War Within

Classes Hunter
405

Because Dire Beast and AMoC are never taken and Bloodshed (which is taken only about half the time in Mythic) is taken only when Multi-shot is not, so 7-8 remains the button count regardless depending on KC procs over Execute phase.

What I listed for MM is already the only competitive build for M+ and all but on Tindral, Smolderon, Nymue, and Volcoross, who reduce its button count only by 8%, from 12 to 11.

Unless you go out of your way to lose damage or add trinkets and pots to the equation, BM will never have more than 72% of MM’s rotational buttons (and tends instead to have nearer to 67% or 58%). So, yeah, I’m not going to be worried quite as much about an extra button there.

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406

I don’t play my Hunter as much these days, so had to swap over and look. You said MM was “more rotationally button-bloated”.

My single target base rotation for MM and BM is four buttons.
MM has 2-3 buttons more for the opener, depending on build, but the rotation is similar to most classes.

My multi-target base rotation for both MM and BM is five buttons.
Both specs have 8 buttons for multi-target opener.

I don’t know what you’re doing differently, but both specs have identical number of used abilities in M+ for me. I’m also lazy, so just use the builds listed as optimal by the folks that do all the theorycrafting heavy lifting.

Either way, adding another button contributes to bloat, in my opinion. It’s a bit worse for MM on ST openers, but it’s bad for both specs.

Note: Your previous list omitted Barbed Shot btw. I’m sure it was an oversight, but Barbed Shot is a core ability for BM.

407

You’re clearly not using any of the recommended specs (or, say, those taken for M+) if you have at most 8 combat actions. Or you have skills from those builds you haven’t put on your bars yet.

BM:
https://www.archon.gg/wow/builds/beast-mastery/hunter/mythic-plus/talents/20/all-dungeons/this-week#alternative-talents

https://www.archon.gg/wow/builds/beast-mastery/hunter/mythic-plus/talents/20/all-dungeons/last-week

In either case: CotE, BS, BW, DC, MS, KC, CS, KS — 8 actions.

MM:
https://www.archon.gg/wow/builds/marksmanship/hunter/mythic-plus/talents/20/all-dungeons/this-week

https://www.archon.gg/wow/builds/marksmanship/hunter/mythic-plus/talents/20/all-dungeons/last-week

In either case: Trueshot, DC, ExP, SrS, StS, KS, ArS, MS, AiS, RF, Salvo, Volley — 12 actions.

It did, sorry. Posting from phone, and I thought I had double-typed BW instead of one being a typo.

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408

Trueshot and Salvo are not on the GCD, so can and should be macro’d with other abilities. While some prefer to not macro Trueshot, I was under the impression the vast majority of Hunters macro’d Salvo with Volley. Neither is a button that needs to be keybound though.

Arcane Shot I didn’t list for either spec, because BM doesn’t use it at all and I don’t use it on MM in multi-target fights. I even just ran a test on the AoE target dummies for about five minutes, and never had occasion to use it. Other abilities took all of my GCDs. For the sake of completeness, I checked a few of the guides online and none of them list Arcane Shot in the multi-target rotation. It might be incorrect, but seems legit.

Edit: I missed Explosive Shot on my first run through. There was a spot for it, but it was missing from my bar for some reason. By my reckoning, that puts BM at 8 buttons and MM at 9 buttons.

409

Theres nothing really to macro trueshot with tho but yeah salvo goes with volley trueshot should be its own button

Sure but mm would still use it on bosses in m+ as well as every raid boss in the current tier as none are pure aoe (council you don’t always get all 3 together). So mm still uses arcane shot.

410

You quoted my comment, which includes the reference to multi-target fights. We’re discussing buttons that are used in types of fights, so saying “mm still uses arcane shot” in single target fights seems off track.

411

But I’m telling you that in wow right now it doesn’t exist. In m+ and on every raid boss this tier you’re going to press arcane shot as mm.

412

Where did I say you won’t use Arcane Shot in m+? Nowhere. I’m so confused by your comments. I said Arcane Shot isn’t used in multi-target fights. Just like you’re not going to use Multi-Shot on single target fights. Is this a difficult concept?

413

I’m saying its dumb to not list arcane shot when it gets used in all content this tier. Is this a difficult concept? Anyway back to the topic of dark ranger feedback I think that another press and forget ability for mm is the last thing it needs as basically the entire rotation is already press x button on cd with no interaction with the rest of the kit. BM has a bit more room in this regard but barbed shot resets instead of kc will feel really bad.

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414

Apparently it’s difficult for you. It was listed - for single target rotations. You interjected on a comment about multi-target rotations with an irrelevant reply.

On this we agree.

415

Saw the Oracle announcement about getting reworked recently. Dark Ranger is getting reworked too right?.. right? It should.

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416

Good point. I felt that, too.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder how I’d like Dark Arrow as a passive. What if it applied a stacking DoT when striking targets with auto-attacks and abilities, and then you could consume the stacks for different effects?

  • If you use Aimed Shot or Barbed Shot at high stacks you get the Withering Fire effect.
  • If you use Exhilaration you get the Drain Life tether effect.
  • If you use Aspect of the Cheetah you get the Death’s Advance/Cloak of Shadows effect.
  • If you use Disengage you get the option to recast it for a few seconds to teleport back to where you disengaged from (possibly not consuming stacks unless you use the teleport).
  • If you use Concussive Shot, it applies Dark Chains to your target to slow them drastically more.
  • If you use Kill Command at high stacks, maybe you spawn an Undead minion immediately.

That would reduce button bloat and prevent you from just stacking all of these unique effects together. You’d have to choose which one was right for the situation. It feels a little bit like the Maelstrom system Shamans have, but that’s also one of my favorite resource systems in the game.

To me, it’s just important that the longer a Dark Ranger is focused on a target, the more debilitated the target becomes and the more powerful the Dark Ranger gets. So the above isn’t quite enough to get there. Especially if the stacks build and get spent very quickly. That’s more tactical, like a Rogue or Monk fighting moment-to-moment. I’d prefer Dark Rangers to be more strategic, thinking farther into the future to control events rather than just having a lot of tools to react to events as they happen.

I’m thinking of the prototypical Dark Rangers, the Quel’dorei Rangers that fell and were raised in the Third War, led by Sylvanas. I’m also thinking of Nathanos and his undead human rangers. Both played up the “super strategic subterfuge” angle. In that context, maybe Black Arrow could apply a stacking cap on movespeed, or healing, or damage vulnerability?

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417

Hello,

Would you please forward my feedback regarding Dark Ranger to the developers team?
Thank you very much in advance!

It is here in my topic called: “Dark Ranger hero talents - existing abilities with new names”

Dark Ranger hero talents - existing abilities with new names

Have a great day!

418

In the hopefully upcoming Hunter trees rework/revamp some abilities would be made baseline, with Serpent Sting being one of those(other skills going baseline would be multi-shot/carve, because come on Blizz this is ridiculous).

An aspect of what made Black Arrow so satisfying to play around was the the fact that the ability that the procs interacted with was already instant cast. From an MM perspective there are many problems with the current skill design that have already been touched on in this thread, but one element that I dislike is the proc interacting with an ability that not only has a cast time, but a longer cast time at that.

A couple thoughts on some mechanical/design changes that could effect quality of life are:

  1. Black Arrow replaces Serpent Sting. This will be overall ‘neutral’ in terms of key binds.
  2. Black Arrow operates like the previous version of Viper’s Venom, where procs give you a buffed Serpent Sting to cast that has higher up front damage. This does have some friction with current SS choice node talents, as well as the SS auto-application talents that the specs have.
  3. Black Arrow/Serpent Sting procs give buffed Arcane Shots to cast. This would have friction with Precise Shots for MM and how they interact with Aimed Shots as well as Multi-shots/trick shots(and Trueshot windows).

While I can understand the logic behind making Dark Ranger the hero tree for MM and BM, I think it has some poor synergy when it comes to making a tree that applies to both specs. What is the overlap in playstyle and theme between a spec that wants all the pets and another that wants none of the pets? Sure there are some shared abilities, but finding overlap that impacts each spec similarly to build upon is tough, let alone the consideration of MM’s mastery effecting shots and BM’s does not.

And, while I am primarily a Survival player and selfishly would like access to Dark Ranger, I understand that Survival is different now than it was when DA was a core ability(maybe we could add Flayed Shot to the newly fixed up Survival tree??1). It feels, however, that making Dark Ranger (themed around the player’s abilities) into a Hero Tree that the 2 weapon-focused Hunter specs will have access to is overall a better and simpler design challenge then trying to work around Beast Mestery and their pets.

I expect to see iteration done on Dark Ranger to better mesh with the base versions of BM and MM, and I would also hope that all 4 of the Hunter trees will be seeing some reworking efforts done to remove much of the generic +dmg talents, increase the impact of talent selection, and reduce the expensive cost of many spec talents. Maybe we could reduce the CD on Cheetah while we are at it? And make Sentinel Owl less sad? Perhaps make Binding Shot into a Sigil of Chains clone instead of the current design?

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419

No, they absolutely should not. Salvo should be prepopped by up to 14.9s. Trueshot should not.

No. No they should not. You can prepop Salvo up to 14.9s early every fight in order to get in an extra third of a charge’s worth of use, for a decent chance at up to an extra 2387% AP in armor-penetrating damage, within that fight. You can’t do that if you macro it to Volley.

Nor can you hold Volley for Trueshot in order to sustain 2-target cleave and an extra 49% AP per second for the whole extended duration of Trueshot (up to 28 seconds) if you’re using it on CD to make best use of Salvo.

Volley is absurdly important for 1-2 targets given our tier set. Our only other means of getting 2-target cleave is Kill-Shot-procs-Trick-Shots talent that requires avoiding AiS until we’ve used RF made far inferior by our tier set and our focus on Trueshot windows.

BM will never use it over Cobra Shot (87% more AP at only 75% the cost), but Aimed Shot absolutely uses Arcane Shot in any actual situation that has AoE simply because that AoE opportunity is not infinite unless it’s a ceaselessly stacked council fight. (We don’t have one of those this tier.) Arcane Shot comes out ahead of Multi-shot in 2-target, where we also can’t generate Trick Shots from Multi-shot anyways to increase MS’s value indirectly.

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420

Would love to see Lone Wolf for MM hunters, and Survival Hunters (SV). Much like the “Rune of Lone Wolf” Hunter Rune in WoW Classic, Season of Discovery. This can be engraved on the Chest slot.

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Really liking the Dark Ranger stuff though. No complaints.

421

like a loan shark, but in packs, aka: a bank

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422

Central Mechanic: Quadratic damage scaling from GilGold Toss, sharing debuff value with, and benefiting from, others’ contribution?

Cheat Death: “‘Too Big to (Let) Fail’”?

Which I’d love.

Here’s my issue, though, and hopefully it’s just from lack of creativity: It feels completely arbitrary as to which it would do, ultimately makes the fight less dynamic and therefore causes the Dark Ranger to feel that much more… routine(?) or flat(?), for lack of better words, and could probably be as easily or better emulated either just by an oGCD augments-next-action resource or simply passive (possibly context-dependent) bonuses on one’s anti-heal, slow, damage amp, etc.

Or, in a very similar fashion…

…sounds very thematic but ultimately just means you’re slow to feel normal and proportionately improved recuperative damage options (spend cumulative buff on a finisher).

  • A similar example from XIV for instance was Monk, prior to late Shadowbringers. They required up to 9 GCDs to “ramp up” but (unlike a Soulfist from Lost Ark, etc.) that was ideally a one-time punishment, not cyclical, so they were already balanced around being permanently ramped-up. To balance them in shorter fights, therefore, such as in dungeons, they needed some way to recoup that initial loss at a nearly one-to-one ratio (one time ramping up, one time nuke to spend that cumulative buff).

    • That offered interesting control but, frankly, the job got a lot more popular after it replaced that mechanic first with cycles (creating flexible mini-burst windows) and then immediately full throughput for a reason.

    • It’s probably also why you eventually saw Frost DKs, for instance, go from stealing opponent’s attack-speed to just having the straight options to zoomie zoombie slish-slash (very intimidatingly worded, I know) from the start.

More constructively… I think you can do something like that, but that ‘theft’ would probably have to feel rather deliberate—more Dark Simulcrum and Shade banking than just… modest but cumulative and inexorable stat-theft.

Hopefully some of that rant made sense?

423

Really love this, would be very cool

424

Dark Ranger feedback from PVP perspective

Black arrow

  1. Must be undispellable in PVP, or it will invalidate the whole talent tree
  2. Resetting aimed/barbed shot is not exciting or interesting in general, the effect is underwhelming

MM: Resetting the CD of Aimed shot will not be noticeable at all, since usually in PVP it’s hard to fire aimed shots off, and it’s never that the ability is on CD, but that you must find a good moment to do it

BM: Barbed shot is already reset by auto attacks quite often. Not as bad as for MM, but won’t be an exciting effect either

Ranger’s finesse

  1. This name coincides with an MM PVP talent.
  2. The effect is passive, but very strong for both MM and BM. Unless the other trees have something similar, this talent tree might be mandatory and not a real choice, because 15% more damage to your biggest abilities is huge.

Dark hounds

  1. MM: summoning random pets does not feel right as MM. Does this cancel Lone Wolf for the duration? Or these are categorized as “guardians” and don’t matter?
  2. BM: already summons a lot of pets, even more might make it clutter the screen as Demo lock does

Death shade

MM: this effect is strong enough
BM: kill shot is the worst ability as BM doing no damage, might not be worth the GCD to use kill shot

Dark empowerment vs Grave reaper

As a PVP player this is not a choice at all. But even for PVE you will need the extra energy for those Aimed shot resets

Embrace the shadows vs Smoke screen

Smoke screen is infinitely better, even if Embrace the shadows is buffed by 100% or 200%, it would still be much much inferior. Not even a choice, unless Embrace the shadows gets redesigned or buffed with magnitudes.

Dark chains This effect is very weak. PVE players who reviewed the tree say “this is for PVP” but no - as a PVP player I can say this is not for PVP - you will never feel this in PVP

Intense Darkness this will cause you to overcap resources (aimed/barbed shot charges) without being able to spend them, because you want to use other abilities as well during your burst cooldowns.

Shadow surge This should also work with Volley. I have never taken Multi-shot as an MM hunter in PVP ever since the new talent trees were introduced. I don’t even have a keybind for this ability any more. So for MM PVP this talent node effectively doesn’t “exist”.

Darkness calls vs Shadow assassin

10% more shadow damage would be around 1-1.5% increased damage. Very minor and very passive
The Shadow Assassin effect will be very very rare, there is one guaranteed kill shot (with only 15% chance to trigger this effect) and there will rarely be any other kill shots in the window.

Withering fire Strong effect, 10% damage is big. In 90% of the cases this will be the only benefit of the whole talent tree.

SUMMARY: aimed/barbed shot reset is not an interesting or exciting mechanic. Resources will overcap often, and the 10% damage increase will be the only benefit of the whole talent tree during most situations. All choice nodes are a non-choice and imbalanced with one option being significantly better

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