Feedback: Hunters

In Development Dragonflight Alpha Test
#112

We really need clarification on how Coordinated Assault & Spearhead are going to work, including their respective talents underneath.

As it reads, Coordinated Assault does nothing on single target, unless you are in execute range (or get a Deadly Duo proc, which requires you to take a separate talent and does not even guarantee a single use during the cooldown). For a 3 minute cooldown, that’s pretty bad…

However, there was a time on Alpha where my pet’s Basic Attacks were giving a charge of Kill Shot and allowing it to be used at any % HP. I really, really hope this is intended as it is powerful on single target, and has great synergy with Explosives Expert for additional Wildfire Bomb casts. If this is the case, I would think Birds of Prey should also allow Kill Shot casts to extend the duration of Coordinated Assault.

Regarding Spearhead, it seems like it is clearly meant to be the live version of Coordinated Assault. The talent underneath, Coordinated Kill, implies that it works with Coordinated Assault. I assume this is a tooltip error and it actually works with Spearhead instead (once Spearhead is implemented of course), but it would be nice to have that cleared up.

The team should re-consider the “scaling” of Ruthless Marauder and Coordinated Kill. As it stands, the 3rd point in both talents is guaranteed to put you over 100% crit on Kill Command/Fury of the Eagle, so the 3rd point in each is largely wasted.

Lastly, is it intended that Predator only has a 12% (down from 25%) proc chance now? If that’s the case, Deadly Duo is going to need a buff, re-design, or removal because we are going to be resetting Kill Command significantly less.

19 Likes
#113

Tbh that sounds like mostly a pvp defensive, while the entire class can benefit from flat class wide defensives.

4 Likes
#114

Dnno is it only useful for PvP though? Are blur/evasion awful in PvE for rogues and DH?

2 Likes
#115

Deterrence is basically current turtle (in terms of utility in PvE) and i feel like having 2 separate pseudo-immunities would just be weird.

Counterattack - doesn’t actually stop any damage going to us, even if it functioned exactly like evasion, it still has very low impact in PvE as you rarely can use evasion for things outside of auto-attacks in raid (and again, it’s more of a potential cheese/immunity ability) , in keys it’s a tiny bit better due to fixates and a few more mechanics that you can usually dodge, but still too unreliable to be actually defensive.

#116

I think it can help survival to have something that they can still attack during, which is how that version of deterrence functioned. The difference between that and turtle would be a full immunity vs a minor defensive we can attack during.

While most of my PvE experience was during BfA, I don’t really see how giving a defensive Survival Hunters could actually attack during would be harmful.

Right, I think it doesn’t necessarily have to be something that you NEED to take, but just something that could have some sort of utility in general. I don’t see why a node that goes off to the side somewhere could not just add these in

It would be far more significant in PvP of course but even then you wouldn’t take it into every single team either, but it would at least give some sort of incentive to go toe to toe with other melee more and give a reason for them to not just exclusively sit on you too.

I’m just not necessarily seeing the harm in adding something extra to the spec to let it melee more. We are really compromised on points currently - but I think that is still because of a heavy emphasis on our tree still having a large amount of flat damage modifiers.

However if something like this should be class wide, the aspect of the cheetah artifact power from legion that gave a bonus of dodge and immunity to movement impairing effects could be somewhat useful too.

4 Likes
#117

Hello again, Hunters.

We wanted to discuss some adjustments coming to your talents in a future build, and briefly mention a few thoughts.

Class Tree
The current design intentionally has almost all utility above the second gate, which means you have 11 points that will almost certainly be spent only on throughput choices in PvE situations. We like having a bunch of abilities located past the second gate that were previously locked to individual specs. This has also created a situation where there’s a lot of bloat of extra abilities and cooldowns that feel mandatory because they are available and likely worth pressing. The last 3 rows of the tree have been shuffled around a bit and will continue to be adjusted to try to prevent most hunters from feeling obligated to acquire multiple extra active buttons.

  • Barrage and Explosive Shot are now a choice node.
  • Stampede now replaces Chakram in the choice node vs Death Chakram.
    • Chakram has been removed from the talent tree.
  • Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been lowered to 2 points.

Beast Mastery

  • Bloodshed and Murder of Crows is now a choice node, and is where Dire Beast previously was.
  • Dire Beast has been moved to where Murder of Crows was.
  • New Talent - Bloody Frenzy - Barbed Shot has a chance to apply a second stack of Frenzy to your pets. This is located in the second gate area.
  • Beast Cleave has been lowered to 2 points, and Beast Cleave’s duration is now 3/6 seconds depending on your rank.

Marksmanship
While Rapid Fire is not a required ability, we’re trying to integrate it to the tree where it would make sense. Marksmanship has very limited passive Focus generation, and Rapid Fire should ideally help with that. We want to avoid situations where you drop Steady Shot entirely while doing prolonged combat.

  • Deathblow has been made a 1-point node. Rapid Fire casts (not damage events) can now also activate this. The chance for activation is different for Aimed Shot vs Rapid Fire.
  • Razor Fragments now also works with Deathblow procs, rather than being tied solely to Trick Shots.
  • Bombardment’s design has changed - Every 6/4 (2-rank node) Arcane or Chimaera Shots causes your next Multi-Shot to grant you Trick Shots, regardless of how many targets it hits.
    • This will likely be changed to a 1-point node, or adjusted to also boost Multi-Shot damage per rank. The location of this also needs to be adjusted as you can currently select this without Multi-Shot.
  • Lone Wolf’s spot in the tree has been moved to above the first gate.
  • More things connect to Lock and Load’s talent node.
  • Some redundant node connections have been removed.
  • Legacy of the Windrunners and Serpentstalker’s Trickery node locations have been swapped.
  • Unerring Vision’s design has slightly changed to also increase critical damage while Trueshot is active.

Survival
Spearhead and Coordinated Assault are competing for some space in the tree. We’re hoping to identify a set of abilities to that each augments in a way that feels good, and also would prefer a design that doesn’t encourage you to stack both of them at the same time. Some adjustments are being made to these abilities to try to focus on different parts of your ability sets in a manner that lets both Coordinated Assault and Spearhead hopefully feel both distinct from each other, while still feeling powerful on their own.

  • Mongoose Bite should actually replace Raptor Strike now.
  • Predator returned to 25%, rather than 8%. This was a data error when changing from a 3 point node to a 1 point node.
  • A connection between Lunge and Frenzy Strikes has been removed to prevent a dependency problem.
  • Deadly Duo renamed Quick Shot, and redesigned. When Kill Command’s cooldown is reset, you fire a free Arcane Shot at your target.
  • Coordinated Assault is back to 2 minutes.
  • Coordinated Assault no longer modifies Carve. Instead, your pet’s special attack increases the initial damage of your next Wildfire Bomb.
    • Birds of Prey will likely be adjusted in a future build to more directly work with the design tweaks of Coordinated Assault.
  • Bonded Companion renamed Deadly Duo, and redesigned. While Coordinated Assault is active, Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown is reduced by 25/50%, Wildfire Bombs generate 5/10 Focus when thrown, and Kill Shot can be used on any target regardless of the target’s HP.
  • Coordinated Kill redesigned, and is now 2 points. While Spearhead is active, Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite Focus Cost is reduced by 5/10, and Kill Command resets increase the duration of Spearhead by 1/2 sec.
48 Likes
[Feedback - Build 44999] Hunter Class Talents + Beast Mastery
#118

Absolutely great! Super exciting to see where this is at next build. Each of these iterations is so fantastic to see. I cannot say enough how appreciative many in the community are for this impactful and prompt response to the feedback so far.

Do you know if there’s an update in the pipeline to address the lack of group utility or defensives? Or does the team see Hunter’s niche to be much higher damage than other classes to offset the group utility?

19 Likes
#119

These changes are awesome and address a lot of the issues with each of the talent trees. Amazing job team!

I am struggling to see what the intended purpose of this talent is. BM doesn’t have any issues stacking Frenzy to 3, but maintaining those stacks and this would not help with uptime at all. Also, we already have a talent called Bloody Frenzy (bottom right capstone choice node).

Love this addition since crit damage synergizes well with all of our crit chance amplifiers (Keen Eyesight, Killing Blow, Hunter’s Knowledge, Bullseye, etc.). Are there any considerations being made to re-work Calling the Shots (i.e. any Focus spent reduces Trueshot CD) or bring back the BfA version of Master Marksman, letting us cast Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot more easily during Trueshot?

Are the talents on the right side of the MM tree going to have any additional paths to reach them? This side of the tree seems unnecessarily restrictive. To take Wailing Arrow, you have to take Focused Aim, Dead Eye, Serpentstalker’s Trickery, and Bullseye, with no other path to get there.

I think this has potential, but Arcane Shot has no synergy with Survival as it stands. This might be more interesting if Ranger also buffed Arcane Shot.

Will Coordinated Assault also still modify your next Kill Shot such that it applies Bleeding Gash? If that is the case, not having Kill Shot resets or lowering the cooldown limits the amount of Bleeding Gash debuffs you can apply during the duration of Coordinated Assault. Regardless, I think this talent is still strong on single-target scenarios due to the Wildfire Bomb interaction, but looking for some clarification here.

13 Likes
#120

Thank you so much for your continued communication! Lots of these changes sound great.

I love the talent position swaps and the Beast Cleave change. It never made sense to me that the Dire Beast focused-stuff was in the bottom left and Dire Beast itself was in the top right, and making Bloodshed/AMoC a choice node should help avoid some button bloat. Giving us a little more leeway on Beast Cleave, now that we’re trying to fit Kill Command into those windows, will also really help.

About Bloody Frenzy: IMO, getting from 0 → 3 Frenzy stacks quickly has never been the issue for BM, it’s always been about sustaining our stacks. BM gameplay since BFA has always consisted of getting to 3 stacks fairly easily, but then needing a critical mass of crit/haste/resets to maintain it. Regardless of whether you hit a one stack or a two stack, you’re still going to want another Barbed Shot ready when those Frenzy stacks’ duration is running out. Unless the expected gameplay for this talent is to get to 3 stacks and then drop it because you’re running a build with a low number of resets, this doesn’t make sense to me.

4 Likes
#121

Wow

Double wow.

Really interesting change and now I can see some reasoning to choose between SH or CA.

Very well done, you guys keep making SV better and better. I was incredibly disappointed when initially seeing these trees and every update has been very impressive.

25 Likes
#122

Could it function as a separate buff that stacks with the baseline one (thus being useful even when refreshing Frenzy at 3 stacks), or is simply to get 3 stacks faster and not do anything if refreshing at 2/3 stacks.

Great change.

I’d gladly trade pet hp/trailblazer for defensives / raid utility.

Also things like Improved Tranq Shot for 2 points looks insanely meh, and even if i take it, i don’t see a scenario where I’d really want to take it.

14 Likes
#123

I’m excited to see the tree in the next build. The last two builds have had a few of our talents not work, I am hoping this is resolved next build so we can test them.

You guys are doing a 10/10 job on communicating with us!

5 Likes
#124

One more piece of feedback based on some discussions with other hunters:

The other choice nodes in the MM tree are interesting because your selection is not purely based on what provides more throughput. This choice node is going to solely come down to throughput. A suggestion that was brought to my attention is swapping the positions of Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus. Calling the Shots might need additional tuning to compete with Unerring Vision in general, but there are specific situations where you would want to select a shorter cooldown Trueshot (M+ or a Sludgefist type fight) over a Trueshot that has a longer cooldown but is much more impactful (Lords of Dread).

19 Likes
#125

I cannot upvote this enough. Sounds incredible and i cant wait to test it on tuesday.

4 Likes
#126

This sounds… interesting? Will something replace Stampede, or will that node just disappear? Same with Barrage?

…respectfully, what?

Rapid Fire is one of the main 2 damaging rotational skills for Marksman and has been for years.

It just feels like you guys are aiming to turn all 3 hunter specs into a 2-3 button rotation, and that feels really bad.

As another poster said, this would make sense if talents like Ranger affected Arcane Shot - otherwise there’s zero synergy with this talent.

This feels… weird. Don’t get me wrong, the new talents sound solid, I just mean the placement in the tree feels weird.

Bonded Companion is the gateway to Birds of Prey, which is a Raptor/Mongoose Bite talent. So wouldn’t having the new Coordinated Kill that affects Mongoose/Raptor make more sense in that spot?

But at the same time, Spearhead, which is required for the new Coordinated Kill is a Mongoose/Raptor strike talent as well.

It just feels disjointed is all. The new Deadly Duo sounds great, but it doesn’t have any synergy with Coordinated Assault and Birds of Prey, which is the “tree” they’re in. Just feels like it’d be better as the leftside’s endcap talent (as the left side is mainly about AoE), and move Fury of the Eagle to the middle, with a possibly reworked Birds of Prey to also have Fury of the Eagle trigger the extension too?

Obviously I can’t see the changes yet, so I’m trying to visualize, but as I can tell, it seems disjointed. But I’ll see how it feels once it’s out.

That said, I do hope you guys do address the fact we have 2 endcap talents that cost more than 1 point, despite the fact every other spec except 1 have only 1 point endcaps.

5 Likes
#127

It looks like they’re reworking Birds of Prey to be more inline with the new Coordinated Assault.

I don’t know if there needs to be synergy. It’s a free, damaging Arcane Shot on KC resets from a passive talent. There’s already plenty of synergy in the spec with KC resets and anything more tied to that mechanic could get pretty overwhelming for players.

4 Likes
#128

You know, I read that post like 12 times and somehow overlooked that sentence every time. What the hell.

Thank you though. <3 Glad to see it is being adjusted.

Eh, agree to disagree? Lol. Arcane Shot isn’t used at all in Survival, so it’s just weird that we fire an Arcane Shot in general - hence having some sort of synergy would help make that feel less… random?

7 Likes
#129

You can fill out the talent tree without ever selecting Rapid Fire if you choose to. It may not be the best way to play, but you could do it. That’s all the original post was referring to.

23 Likes
#130

Wailing Arrow doesnt silence in pvp, or atleast in duels. Is this intended?

1 Like
#131

It still doesn’t seem right that Lone Wolf is a talent rather than baseline. It would make sense if choosing to take the talent itself was the decision point (like a choice node of be able to summon a pet vs gain Lone Wolf) but it’s not, the decision is already made by opting to leave Lil’ Bleater in the kennel. Putting a point into Lone Wolf after that just feels more like a penalty than a decision, an unfair one at that. LW essentially has to make up the dmg of the lost pet AND the extra talent point that the pet build would have free to put elsewhere. I don’t imagine anyone running a non-pet non-LW build for any reason, so MM basically boils down to pet or LW builds, and the LW build is either down the pet damage or down a talent point worth of damage no matter what.

20 Likes