Feedback: Dark Ranger in The War Within

Classes Hunter
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So I wanted to do a small write up on how the ability Black Arrow used to work versus this one, and then analyze how the current iteration will interact with the MM kit.

The effect from Pre-Legion reworks was as follows:

Fires a Black Arrow at the target, dealing x damage over 20 sec. Your Black Arrow periodic damage has a 20% chance to trigger Lock and Load, causing your next two Explosive Shots to cost no Focus and trigger no cooldown. When Black Arrow is dispelled, its cooldown is reset. (35 Focus cost, 24 sec cooldown)

For context, Explosive Shot Pre-Legion was an instant cast ability with a 6 second cooldown.

This interaction had a fun gameplay loop. Whenever you would cast Black Arrow, you would end up with a cool proc that was easy to utilize, and felt impactful because it spiced up an otherwise simple rotation.

The ability for TWW seems to have little overlap with the historical ability due to how MM functions now. Aimed Shot now has two charges, and a 2.5 baseline cast time. Any resets on Aimed Shot are difficult to utilize because you spend so long casting after it resets. The TWW Black Arrow seems to be wanting to fill the niche of “hey here’s some resets on your big damage ability, use it!” but at least with current wording, it is more along the lines of, “hey here’s an ability reset, good luck utilizing it!”

Thinking rotationally, a possible setup for this ability in game would be:

  1. Use a charge of Aimed Shot and spend 1-2 globals spending Precise Shots (or ignore Precise Shots altogether)
  2. Use 2nd charge of Aimed Shot and spend globals on Precise Shots (or ignore)
  3. Black Arrow
  4. Kill Shot
  5. Rapid Fire and pray you don’t get any resets on AiS during the channel because by this point you’ll be close to overcapping charges of AiS
  6. Spend any Aimed Shot resets and neglect other spell priorities
  7. Steady Shot to get focus back/put up Steady Focus
  8. Insert any resets on AiS from Lock and Load or resets from Surging Shots for Rapid Fire.

This is without even factoring in the tight windows of using Trueshot. The pain points above are having to ignore Precise Shots (which has always been an issue with this talent), possibly missing out on Rapid Fire charges, and the long ramp up time to get your rotation going. Black Arrow also steps on the toes of talents like Lock and Load because it has the same functionality, but less reliable and useful because Lock and Load actually makes AiS instant cast.

The spec design itself really causes issues with this ability because of three factors:

  1. Aimed Shot has a long cast time, charges, and a cooldown and having to spend more time hard casting it is not fun
  2. There are very few globals to spare due to several talents like Precise Shots, Tactical Reload, Steady Focus, Deathblow, and Surging Shots. Incentivizing other casts is awesome, but on top of those, adding an incentive to cast our big hitter will overshadow all of those talent choices.
  3. The talent tree is full of pitfall talent options and stuff that should just be baseline for MM.

Overall, I’m frustrated by these proposed talents because MM already has a problem with a lot of weird talent options. See: Serpent Sting vs Serpenstalker’s Trickery; Crack Shot; Killer Accuracy; Improved Steady Shot; Precise Shots; Steel Trap; Multi-Shot. There are a lot of unfun nodes in our talent options, and others that overlap their functionality. I think Black Arrow in its current implementation is more of the same.

5 Likes
63

Hell yeah. I was going to remark something similar. Camo needs to be back like it was during WoD at the very least, if we can’t have a ‘set it and forget it’ like druid prowl and rogue stealth.

I’m also not all that big on the chain thing, we already have ice trap, tar trap and binding shot.

Additionally as others have said, we are fine with the number of barbed shots that are currently being generated. So having something else would likely be more appealing.

Perhaps getting the heal back on Kill shot? Back in WoD, the ability when it successfully killed a target would give the hunter a heal. Being that hunter is still fairly fragile, this could be really nice to have back.

1 Like
64

It’s clear that this is meant to be somewhere between “MOP-era Ranged Survival” and “HotS Sylvanas” for the inspirations. If that’s true, then there’s a few places they can improve upon this… in my opinion. Goal is to minimize the number of GCDs we’re forcing on the rotation.

First, provide a passive with Black Arrow that replaces Arcane Shot (MM) or Cobra Shot (BM) with Withering Fire, which deals Shadow damage.

Second, have Black Arrow’s proc make your next Withering Fire shoot three times. BM doesn’t want even more Barbed Shot resets, and the Aimed Shot charge that isn’t instant-or-free is… kinda unnecessary or clunky? This plays into the old Explosive Shot being “three Arcane Shots in a trench coat.” Each shot consumes Precise Shots as normal, so it’s a quick way to offload stacks when available.

Second, change Dark Empowerment to make Black Arrow empowered Withering Fire cost no focus. It’s no longer resetting abilities, so… yeah.

Third, replace Dark Hounds with a talent that interacts with Wailing Arrow. Perhaps “your autoattacks against targets affected by Black Arrow reduce the cooldown of Wailing Arrow by X seconds.” Hunters kinda hurt for AoE stops that don’t chuck enemies across the world in M+, but this also plays into Readiness for Raid for MM. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do as much for BM.

Fourth, have Shadow Surge apply a 6s Shadow damage DoT to enemies hit, no CD. Play into the old Serpent Spread: what made it fun was the uncapped DoT application. This also is similar to HotS Sylvanas’ Shadow Dagger, which applied an AoE DoT! Put a DoT on your primary target, and watch it spread to the neighbors. The 6s duration means that just spamming Multi-Shot doesn’t provide a ton more damage, as you’re just refreshing the DoT, but does mean you have a bit more flexibility with when you cast (Pandemic window means you can be a bit early). Reasonably, this should also increase Beast Cleave duration to match.

Fifth, replace current Withering Fire with Might of the Banshee: dealing damage with Withering Fire applies a Curse to the target. At 3 stacks, your next Aimed Shot / Barbed Shot or Kill Shot consumes the stacks to deal bonus Shadow damage. This is based on a combination of Sylvanas’ passive in HotS and, ironically, her level 7 talent “Barbed Shot.” It’s a bit more active than the dark arrow barrage, and that “fantasy” is already covered by the Withering Fire multiattack. But it plays into the “assassin” nature well.

Ultimately, I find it really hard to make anything here actually BM themed at all. However, by making Withering Fire an upgraded Cobra Shot for them, the extra shots give bonus CDR from Cobra Senses, buffs the free KC chance from Cobra Sting significantly, etc.

6 Likes
65

Disagree, black arrow is cool and should be its own separate button. Just reduce the reset rate of aimed shot by a lot and that gives you time in your rotation to press other things. The reason having multiple buttons sucks is because you’re balancing them all with procs and resets of those buttons.

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The more of these hero talents I see, the more they reaffirm my belief that class work is still the worst work coming out of this team and seemingly isn’t getting much better.

11 Likes
67

My feedback:

Doesn’t seem balanced for the two specs it covers. It’s clearly an MM tree with BM as an afterthought. Would like to see it balanced better, because otherwise having it cover two specs is just artificial expanded coverage.

Black Arrow:

  • Does it do the same damage for both specs? Typically, MM does significantly more damage with shared abilities than BM. Kill Shot, Explosive Shot, Death Chakram for example.
  • Resetting Aimed Shot is a big damage ability, while Barbed Shot is a non-stacking DoT that is often off cooldown anyway due to other talents.
  • Why an extra button to press? Other classes seem to be getting passive buffs or replacements for other abilities. MM doesn’t need yet another button.
  • Why call it Black Arrow? Black Arrow has long been synonymous with Survival, but this tree is for MM/BM. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, but seems like a petty slap in the face.

Dark Hounds:

  • Is the summoned hound’s damage increased by BM’s Mastery and talents? Is their damage reduced by Animal Companion?
  • Thematically spits in the face of Lone Wolf MM Hunters.

Death Shade:

  • Kill Shot does significantly more damage for MM than BM. In fact, BM only uses Kill Shot if there is a global to spare.

Embrace the Shadows:

  • Pets aren’t doing shadow damage and are 70-75% of BM’s damage. This means MM gets much more benefit, especially if Black Arrow does more damage for MM.

Smoke Screen:

  • Is this affected by Nature’s Endurance? Will we get 40% reduction if talented into it? Or will this only be the base 20% of Survival of the Fittest?

Dark Chains:

  • We get all of the talents at max level with the exception of choice nodes, so this means Dark Chains will just be a default talent with no way to opt out. Imagine kiting a group of mobs, disengage for distance, one gets chained, and now they’re chasing at different speeds. Either needs to be AoE snare or able to toggle it off.

Intense Darkness:

  • Same issue as above. Does Black Arrow do more damage for MM?

Shadow Surge:

  • Beast Cleave, which is tied to Multi-Shot lasts for 6 sec. To avoid losing too much AoE damage from Beast Cleave falling off, we need to recast Multi-Shot just before that 6 sec is up. With Shadow Surge having a 6 sec cooldown, that makes that window non-existent. Since Multi-Shot does jack all for damage, this could be addressed by simply removing the 6 sec cooldown on Shadow Surge.
  • Same question. Is damage equalized?

Darkness Calls:

  • What shadow damage are my pets doing?

Shadow Assassin:

  • Once again. Big damage ability for MM vs a non-stacking DoT for BM.

Withering Fire:

  • Same issues as above.
  • Single target talent, but is a “volley”. Might want to reword that.

PvP:

  • As others have pointed out, if Black Arrow is dispellable, the bulk of the tree becomes nearly useless in PvP.

Conclusion:

  • The fact so much focus is placed on extra charges, rather than extra damage, really supports the idea the Hunter developers don’t understand how the class/specs work. Reminds me of the BM tier set that granted focus regen - for a spec that isn’t focus starved - and was only changed after wowhead posted an article about it.
  • I really hope the Pack Leader hero talents are better for BM than Dark Ranger, which is only usable by BM in description only. I highly doubt any BM Hunters will use these.
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68

I play BM exclusively and to me this doesn’t fit my class fantasy at all. Making a pact with dark magic, embracing hatred and necromancy… how does that fit with being a master of the wild? Undead hounds? No thank you. Happy for the people excited about getting dark ranger, but unless this comes with a bunch of glyphs to get rid of the shadowy undead stuff I’ll be giving this a pass.

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69

I can’t believe Blizz failed this hard on these. Sure there are probably folks into the whole dark ranger thing, but that’s literally it. That specific group is mainly who benefits, but at severe cost to another group of hunters who have no interest in such a huge story change for their characters, which might be more than a decade old.

And this is before we talk about the above mentioned damage bias against BM, and a complete playstyle jankiness from what we currently have.

Massive, massive fail. Blizz, try again.

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70

Lets not get too wild there are other choices for both BM and MM, if this is the way they’re going we need to try and make it as good as possible or offer a suggestion of something else.

Can’t just throw up our hands and give up.

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71

i mean tbf that’s why each spec gets 2 hero trees

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72

I hope that for withering fire they look at Sylvanas in HotS and use that sound effect, or something very reminiscent of it. It’s a great punchy sound.

The undead hound doesnt really resonate with me but I get its MM/BM, and I play all hunter specs but mostly survival casually these days. It does make me wanna play MM though cause if withering fire is like the wind arrows talents that could be really fun. Just pew pew pew wind and darkness arrow barrage.

Overall seems neat. More attracted to withering fire as a concept than black arrow but I’m looking forward to trying it out.

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73

That seems fine to me. It just means you have ideal use cases and less ideal ones. If you’re enticed to pop Exhil to survive a would-be one-shot, though, that’s still a second charge on your capacity to survive one shots.

Spell Reflect’s ideal use case is 4.99 seconds of non-reflectable magical damage before a reflectable in the last 0.01 seconds, but Warriors scarcely complain that they’re not getting the best of both worlds each time.

This is my main concern. BM already has so much of the same that it no longer seems a remotely interesting perk so much as just excess.

I’d rather they at least do something different with it, like making our next Barbed Shot oGCD and instantly generate its full amount of Focus, giving room for some alternate casts.

My largest complaint, honestly, is just that Black Arrow is more a maintenance (de)buff than a button that would feel fun to press in itself, and not even as responsive or rotationally-affecting as, say, Multi for Beast Cleave. That may be nostalgically attractive for some, but not for me. I’d rather, for instance, have it create a shot

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74

It’s the illusion of choice though. Clearly BM isn’t going to choose this tree and it will likely be the default for MM. BM will use Pack Leader and SV will use Sentinel. It’s unlikely they want to actually spend the time/resources to make them viable options. They just want the playerbase to think they are.

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75

no? there are BM hunters that love the dark ranger fantasy. you may not like it, but there are people that do like it.

oh you saw both hero talent trees already? what are the talents like?

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76

The top choice and all options in the circles are set picks and those with arrows are pic which ever side.

So Every talent in a circle is going to be picked there none that aren’t selected.

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The balance matters. When it comes down to it, the vast majority of players are going to choose the talents that result in the most DPS gain. Dark Ranger is clearly lopsided in favor of MM. While there will certainly be a few players that focus on fantasy over function, they will always be a very small minority.

Now you’re just being obtuse. It’s clear what Blizzard intends from these Hero talents. You don’t have to accept that, but please come back and read this post again when they are released. lol

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I meant the fantasy aspect not the actual talents.

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how am I being obtuse lol you’re making generalized statements based on nothing factual, just your feelings

“We know that for some players, prioritizing total throughput is the most important thing to them, even if the difference between choices seems small. That’s okay but keeping Hero Talent balance close is one of our priorities so that players can play what they prefer and still be viable in any content.”

if you choose to ignore the stated goal, that’s fine, but don’t act like you’re privy to some unknown information without backing it up with anything factual

it’s almost as if this is a feedback thread 7 months before the expansion is out specifically asking for feedback and it’s almost as if I said this very point of feedback as the very first post in the thread

right, that’s why each spec has access to two different hero trees to hit wider fantasies

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You’re being obtuse, because you implied that assumptions are unwarranted without hard data. I made it very clear my comments were assumptions based on history.

I’m making statements based on Blizzard’s history… in a thread asking for feedback. As they stand, these talents are clearly tilted towards MM. If that changes in the future, then so will my opinion. I can only give feedback on what is currently known, with assumptions from how Blizzard has done things in the past.

Oh, the irony. You do realize I’m giving feedback, right? lol

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81

another HotS inspired idea is “remorseless” where Withering Fire’s fired at a primary target already affected by black arrow ricochet/bounce to 1 nearby target, applying black arrow to them also. This makes dark ranger into the “2 target” niche hero talent choice, a gameplay hole desperately missing from the MM current toolkit especially.

Haunting wave as a delayed “self gateway” replacing Disengage would be cool, especially the “windrunner” Sylvanas HotS level 13 talent inspired, allowing 2 uses of mobility in a short timeframe.

9 Likes