Shadow Assassin should be based around Kill Shot, maybe shoot Withering when KS procs or when casting KS?
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Black Arrow: It is a fine enough ability. Seems a little underwhelming as the first talent of the Dark Ranger tree. Also echoing the charges feeling underwhelming without any kind of instant or flavor added to them.
Rangerâs Finesse: Passive dmg, will be tuned around, but we are going to have these meh talents. I like that as a Dark Ranger having more dmg to be in our shots.
Dark Hounds: Its unclear as to what this does. Does it function like WoD Black arrow where it is similar to dire beast and the skele attacks for a little? Or is it just a dog missile proc? If it functions like a dog missile Iâd rather see it be an additional withering arrow or something. I think this would be better to change our pets into undead pets (possibly with an additional ability and power) rather than be a chance at dire beast 2.0. Could even add a glyph to not make pet undead and just be faintly shadowy like Spriest shadowform glyph.
Death Shade: I like getting an instant ability on BA use. I donât know if Kill Shot is the right choice here. Again it feels underwhelming that the instant ability isnât some kind of shadow theme.
Dark empowerment: Reset charges for a lot of other hero trees are âinstant and free (and usually more)â gaining a charge without focus is kind of useless for MM, and BMâs charge already gives focus so even more useless for them.
Grave Reaper: This functionality is fairly common across similar abilities so having to waste a talent for it feels pretty bad. Also this should be "anytime Black Arrow is removed prematurely as to cover to dispells for pvp.
Embrace the Shadows: You could make it âyou heal for 10% of all dmg you and you pets dealâ and that would make it much much better. And fix the leech issue for BM.
Smoke Screen: Very nice. I like the much needed defensive buff. The name is a little off. Maybe make the choice node here this ability (more powerful Defensive CDs and the other be âYou can exhil/survival while CCâdâ choice between easier use or better effect. Name seems off for this talent.
Dark Chains: Sounds really cool, VERY underwhelming effect. 40% is trash and 8 yds is 2 steps. Youâd be out of the 8 yds before the disengage animation is finished. I recommend a choice node between Disengage roots all nearby targets for X duration (dispellable) OR After you disengage you can cast it again within 3 sec and not trigger CD. So either a root or more mobility.
Intense Darkness: I like it. Faster dot dmg and procs while cds are active is cool. However you can basically already spam aimed/aimed/rapidfire in trueshot windows so getting extra charges wouldnât do really anything. Iâd like to see "When you activate Trueshot or Call of the Wild, Let loose a banshee roar. Increasing the ________ stat of all nearby party/raid members by ___%. Nothing crazy like 100% mastery!! But, like 5% vers or w/e for 20 sec. Goes into the Sylvanas banshee roar and gives a little raid utility to boot.
Shadow Surge: Seems alright enough. For pvp I would leave un talented because we never use Multi-shot. Multi-shot is also a very low dmg ability anyway (procs our good aoe but itself is meh) so adding "moderate shadow dmg just doesnât feel interesting.
Darkness Calls: Passive shadow dmg increase. Again we will have these talents so nothing to complain about here. I would like to see more shadow dmg from procs changing our rotational abilities.
Shadow Assassin: More charges of abilities we canât use fast enough or wont have the resources for. Id like to see an ability affect Rapid Fire or Kill Command here. Currently other than a passive 15% these have no interaction with Dark Ranger.
Withering Fire: I like this one. Withering shots are a core mechanic of Dark Rangers and having them passively proc feels much like a Dark Ranger just shooting off loads of arrows in quick succession.
Summary: In my opinion we need to get rid of the added charges and add it to procs instead. Changing the way the abilities work for the proc (shadow dmg). I donât know about double disengage per se, but Dark Rangers are highly mobile so adding some type of mobility seems to fit the theme. Possible additions could be DH double jump or something like outlaw hook or even an 100% miss for 1 sec like DH have.
I also think Wailing Arrow needs to be removed from the spec tree and added to the hero talent tree. Itâs only for MM/BM (like Dark Ranger) and its a core mechanic of a Dark Ranger. Rework the tree around having wailing arrow be a core mechanic. Hell, you could even utilize evoker tech to make wailing arrow an empowered cast to do more things/dmg the longer you charge it.
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The sad reality is that unlike other classes who have actual devs who play the class, we donât. This whole post is lip service at best and nothing mentioned here will be addressed or implemented - what the preview shows is what will go live for better or worse, this is as good as it will get.
Its the illusion of feedback and nothing else.
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I canât speak to whether or not we have a dev that plays the class, but the last couple of expansions have made it clear the devs donât truly understand how the class works.
As far as things getting changed, Iâve noticed a weird correlation between certain YouTubers and meaningful changes. No matter how much feedback is left here, it seems like nothing is being read by those that can make changes. Itâs only when certain content creators make videos about the problems that things happen.
This happened with the S1 BM tier set and then with the Rasz bow. The issues were ignored until Maximum from Limit mentioned the problems in his videos. In both cases, we saw blue posts within two days announcing changes.
It seems the developers are only human. Too lazy to read the feedback threads, because itâs easier to just watch a few YouTube videos. Maybe someone that knows the big YouTubers can get them to shine some light on the problems. lol
Maximum recently created a hero talents tier list video and said âthe ones that are bad but not totally awful are in the worst spot, because they are not likely to be reworkedâ and gave dark ranger as an example 
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Yes but at the same time Dark Ranger is not in as bad a spot as the worst of them. Weâve seen with Diabolist that a tree favoring one spec savagely can be elaborated to fit way better for both specs - what we have to ask for and provide feedback toward for Dark Ranger is that the hero talent fantasy is maintained, evolved and that they communicate the plans regarding it providing its benefits to both MM and BM in a satisfying manner.
Point is, keep providing good feedback, its how we get stuff better in the end.
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Thatâs the irony - if your hero talent tree is awful it will be reworked due to the overwhelmingly negative feedback. But if itâs just âmehâ people will say âi guess itâs alrightâŚ. could have been worse⌠a bit boringâŚâ and it will remain as it is, because they have limited resources and will concentrate them to improving the worst only.
So youâd want your spec to be either very good or very bad. Being âmiddleâ is the worst position to be in.
Thatâs why sentinel must be good, or otherwise MM will end up with two mediocre hero specs
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but thats the thing, I am not saying to settle for less, I am saying that thinking this iteration of Dark Ranger is final isnât what anyone should do. Does it need work as it is now? Yes, point what needs to be worked on.
Assuming it will be mediocre on TWW release would mean they are going to do 0 work on it.
I saw that. It was kind of weird for him to explain how bad it is, but move it up to mid-tier because he likes the theme. Those should be two different lists in my opinion. lol
Thatâs just it. Dark Ranger is âmehâ for MM and probably the worst Iâve seen a tree for BM.
To summarize what has already been posted in this thread.
- Black Arrow procs Aimed Shot for MM(big damage) and Barbed Shot for BM(non-stacking Dot). A bit of an odd choice.
- Sniper Training Mastery will likely apply to Black Arrow and associated talents, making the actual damage of Dark Ranger ~50% stronger for MM than BM.
- Rangerâs Finesse makes Kill Command & Barbed Shot stronger, and makes the gap between them and Kill Shot wider.
- Death Shade procs a Kill Shot and Shadow Assassin grants procs on Kill Shot use. BM would need a massive Kill Shot buff to make these even do anything.
- Shadow Surge procs shadow damage when using Multi-Shot, but Multi-Shot isnât used during Call of the Wild. Multi-Shot is also very weak damage and only used to keep Beast Cleave active.
- All of this in addition to all the shared problems with GCDs, overcapping, etc.
There are a lot of unpopular Hero trees. Some are weird, like Oracle. Some are convoluted, like Lightsmith. But I donât think Iâve seen one be virtually useless for one of the specs it covers.
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Very well put! I really hope mods are relaying feedback to the dev team
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Hello,
Iâd like to report a design flaw - the talent Intense Darkness is anti-synergistic with âTrueshotâ.
During Trueshot you can already cast Aimed shot â Aimed Shot â Rapid Fire, and by that time you already have 2 charges of Aimed Shot again anyway. Getting more aimed shot resets will not benefit you in any way.
At the same time, having Black Arrow deal damage 50% faster will make it expire in 12 instead of 18 seconds and youâll have less benefit from the 10% damage increase talent (Withering Fire).
In summary, having the talent âIntense Darknessâ would be a DPS loss at worst (if it indeed makes black arrow expire in 12 rather than 18 seconds) or neutral at best since you canât consume aimed shots any faster anyway, and all the resets you get will be wasted.
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In general, 50% faster just means it ticks more often, but still for the same duration. However, we are unsure of the details of what they mean on other things.
Specifically;
- Is it 50% faster, as in 50% more ticks? OR, is the âevery 2 sec for 16 secâ reduced by half to tick every 1 sec for 16 sec? The wording is odd and unclear.
- Will each tick do the same amount of damage, thereby making Black Arrow during TS/CotW do 50% more damage? OR does it do the same overall damage and the only âbenefitâ is more proc chances?
I was basing off of how f.e. assa rogue abilities work. They had this ability (forgot its name) that got pruned last rework, but had a 3min CD and made all bleeds tick 100% faster, which essentially halved their duration. I hope black arrow doesnât work like that, because you want it for as long as possible in order to maintain the 10% damage buff as long as possible.
Non of my hunters are elves or undead so the only issue i have is hyper focused on elven and undead elven origin style hunters so this is a very bias âfantasyâ here.
Can Hunters get a response to our feedback? Iâm worried Dark Ranger and the general Hunter talent trees will go into TWW without much changing.
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Are you surprised weâre still in dev absentia?
If it will actually be a TWW exclusive in future reality, I wouldnât sweat it.
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Are you saying we should be ok with our hero talents not being good because itâs only for one expansion? ThatâŚdoesnât make any sense
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I fear the same. Pack leader and sentinel MUST be good, because otherwise some hunter specs will end up with 2 bad hero talent trees
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sentinel will sure be a funny hero tree. the two specs in it are the two least played specs in the entire game
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Iâm just saying we should be more sober to the supporting facts. For all we know, the Hunter class could very well get a unique overhaul far down the line so Blizz would want players to forget about it for now. After all, no rework came to the class at all this cycle. Blizz has been known to do this before something major happens.
So we can enjoy the hero classes, but not too comfortably.