Feedback: Hunters

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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I covered the feel in my post. Not just the numbers. Calling numbers inconsequential for feelings is also ignoring a huge portion of how something feels. If you aren’t rewarded for performing something properly, like CA during DF, it feels bad. Executing your burst with the new CA feels good because it rewards you.

Dragonflight CA required at least 3 macros to use properly (turning pet attack off, manually pet attacking with Kill Shot, and turning pet attack back on). CA was incredibly clunky but also weak for the amount of work you put in. It felt bad.

The new CA (primarily with RPF) doesn’t require these macros, which inherently feels better. The 10% haste speeds up your rotation, and the increased Tip generation combined with more powerful Tips really feels great. It isn’t clunky, doesn’t disrupt your rotation, AND has power to go along with it.

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Thinking about Bombardier and how it’s still technically 4 extra GCDS (6 if you count pre-spending your bombs before pressing CA). Even more GCDS if you attempt to buff each of these bombs and the free Explosive Shots with Tip Of The Spear. AND on a possible 1 minute CD while doing the rest of your rotation??

I know people tend to prefer more active effects but something as simple as Bombardier giving you an 100% chance to fire Explosive Shot on bomb throw during CA or a chance to throw two bombs on a single charge or something during it would feel so much better I think.

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Burst should be in quotations here. It was a higher damage period over 20s + whatever remaining time on your killshot dot after CA ended that registered the same, and in many cases, less damage over a key or an aoe fight than not using CA at all. I wouldn’t exactly equate 20-24s as burst.

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MM PvP Viability

MM Hunter has struggled to be competitive in arena PvP since BfA. This is due to two major reasons: survivability and damage reliability. The survivability problem has been completely solved by the recent changes (and honestly went a bit too far, hunters will be insanely strong defensively now), but the rework has not addressed the damage reliability problem.

With the long cast time of Aimed Shot, it is simply too difficult to get off your damage against good players. It doesn’t matter that it can’t be kicked, the game is full of 100 different ways to stop it anyway, and against good players you’ll constantly be fighting a LoS battle as well. This has resulted in MM being a meme spec that is either just completely awful, or has hilariously overtuned damage to the point that when they do get an Aimed Shot off, players are getting deleted. This is toxic and unfun gameplay for everyone involved. I either suck, or I cheese players with one shots and don’t feel like I earned the win.

They tend to do well in late expansion as well, when you can get a ton of mastery and a healthy amount of haste, but before that point they are typically pretty awful.

There are two main ways that this problem could be solved or at least mitigated.

  1. Return an instant cast ~8-10 sec CD high damage shot like the old Chimera Shot. This is personally my preferred option as I miss this ability being good and having a lot of impact, but I understand this would require more of a redesign to the base spec than we are probably willing to do. It could also be added as a PvP talent, but that has the unfortunate side effect of hard-locking in another PvP talent slot that would never be changed.
  2. Add more ways to make Aimed Shot instant cast to the tree. This is a far easier solution, and also has upsides to MM PvE by giving them a bit more mobility. It is important to not go overboard here and make Aimed Shot instant cast too often, but we need something to not be a meme in early-mid xpac PvP.

There are a few ways that this could be done, but what would be the best solution imo is to make the following 2 changes:

  1. Buff Streamline to “Rapid Fire also causes your next Aimed Shot to be instant cast.”
  2. Baseline Improved Steady Shot and replace it with “Every X (suggest 3) Steady Shots causes your next Aimed Shot to be instant cast.”

This would go a long way to letting MM properly be a setup-based class and be able to prep their damage between go’s. With these two changes, in between traps MM could save their Rapid Fire and fire off a few Steady Shots, then during the setup they have a consistent and reliable instant Aimed Shot > Rapid Fire > instant Aimed Shot combo.

The damage of these abilities might need to be toned down in exchange for the consistency and reliability of being able to do that, but any good PvP player should understand that is a more than worthwhile trade-off.

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I am, with some trepidation, hopeful for tomorrows patch (I hope we get a patch?). The last two has been good to Hunters and especially Survival. The spec is bounds and leaps better than it currently is on Live but… there is still quite a few very vital issues left.

I think they’ve been lifted more than enough but I will lift the points I am most hopeful for and think are most important. I am really hoping for some big ones for Survival, to put it closer to a proper releaseable state.

The bugged talents and abilities need to be fixed. Currently it’s really hard to get a good feel for the spec due to quite a few abilities having broken interactions. ToTS I am looking at you.

A few talents are just god damn abysmal. To name the ones I personally think either is way too weak/bad design or just way too bad because they are 2-point talents or a X% damage modifier.
Sic’em (weak and bad design), Quick shot (good design? Does not work and is weak), Sulfur-lined pockets (cool idea but doesn’t really seem to work at all), Lunge (just a gutted talent not worth being there atm. Give us something else), Bloody claws (weak and bad design, replace it or rework it please), Viper’s venom (does not work very well. I like the idea but please make the spread smart), Killer companion (X% dmg modifier, 2-points…), Sweeping spear (X% dmg modifier, 2-points…), Explosives expert (2-point talent and weak… CDR on bombs?) and all three capstone talents (spearhead is just a crit/crit damage buff… Coordinated assault is better than on Live but, not really. The only really good part about it is when it ends? what? and then Fury of the Eagle, just a worse and weaker Fists of Fury. Please remove/rework this).

Hero talents: Pack leader doesn’t work… like at all. Sentinel is still very weird, a dot with a purple owl? still too late for those changes though I guess. And Dark ranger is also very bugged and lackluster. Don’t feel like a Dark ranger at all. Hero talents haven’t been touched yet though so hopefully big things coming. All three badly need to get improved visually at least.

Pet customization. We badly need some improvements to pets. The new stable is nice for what it is. But how we use our pets badly needs a rework. They like to tote the whole “bring the player not the class/spec” so please… let us bring whatever pet we like and then choose how they benefit us. Literally any freedom here would be good. Many suggestions has been made.

Dual-wield. This is a hot topic. It’s constantly being requested and asked for. There is pretty much always a thread on these forums or reddit asking for it. And I am asking for it again. Yes there is plenty who don’t want it because balance might be affected (some other classes who have gotten it has been fine and some has had bad balance) but I don’t personally think that’s a reason not to add something. We’d never get anything then. Just look at hero talents! And I understand not all think it’s worth their time or that they personally prefer 2-handed. But also a very lackluster argument since it’s applicable to anything. Not everyone needs to want something for it to be added. There is obviously a large part of the community that wants it/keep asking for it. Please add it in any way possible. Again many suggestions has been given here for how it could be implemented.

Sorry for the long post. Just hopeful for another good Hunter patch. Since the last 2 has been good to us perhaps they still have more coming to us. Here’s to hoping. And again, thank you for the already implemented changes Blizzard. They have for the most part been spot on. Especially in regards to SV.

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682

Continuing the discussion from The War Within Beta Development Notes:

I don’t know how to feel about this. Mongoose Fury being changed to a boring maintenance buff and FS being changed to a thoughtless ability swap is not so exciting. Is there anyway we can walk FS back to be a cool spender?

I’m also really concerned that Flanking Strike replacing Kill Command might be actively hurting yourself as a spec with so many KC related talents unless FS counts as KC directly

Also, tying a charge to a rotational ability that happens every X time seems a bit awwkard…we’ll have to see what happens when testing

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I hope when adjusting leech that you fixed it for BM hunters to actually work now

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The change to multishot’s focus cost fixes the issue of its viability in ST and passive cleave, which you probably wanted to avoid, however it causes AoE to feel even more severely focus starved and clunky so I hope we see further changes to the AoE playstyle because this is just a strict downgrade.

In terms of bloat buttons, Explosive shot has a lower CD, and costs focus rather than generates it, making it much more disruptive rotation wise to integrate compared to Death Chakram. I feel like the loss of Chakram while Adding explosive feels opposite to your goals for the problems you’re identifying with the specs/class.

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Nice to see the mongoose bite window changed finally

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Yeah, Flanking Strike isn’t working with any KC talents it seems so every 3 Kill Commands your next Kill Command is worse.

Between this and the Mongoose Fury changes we’re losing a lot of cool things to think about and gaining a lot of passives you don’t think about at all :confused:

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I’m sick of being treated like I can’t handle moderate complexity. Now you’ve pruned Death Chakram, one of our coolest abilities, because of “button bloat,” a nebulous buzz-term that a vocal group of players keeps throwing around? Sad.

Please create a single-pet alternative talent to Animal Companion.

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This Flanking Strike change is not it. It was much better with the version we had last week. It feels very weird now, simplifies the rotation a bit too much, and doesn’t work with any of the Kill Command based talents (which is an entire hero tree as well!)

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Agreed. Last week’s version just felt so much better to use. We didn’t really need to lose an ability like that

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Pot meet kettle

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100% - please revert the Flanking Strike Change - it being a spender and another on demand gap closer was way more enjoyable.

EDIT: also it didn’t create button bloat if that was an issue that was focused to be tackled here - Removing Death Chakram was good for FS it wasn’t needed at all.

Personally, I would have preferred it be more powerful per stack and cap out earlier (which it now does) but keep the friction of mastering it. This feels more like a half-baked Way of Mok Nathal.

On the other hand, I totally agree, it kinda conflicts with the new centering around Tip of the Spear, so they might be right with the change. Still good they look in the viability of MF.

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What have I asked to be removed? What button or option of yours am I trying to take away? Throughout this thread I’ve been asking for the option to opt out of Animal Companion, not remove it.

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I recognize that these are pretty quick first impressions and more time might make me feel differently about them, but:

Class Tree

Removing Steel Trap is a good thing for PvE, a negative thing for PvP. It would’ve been nice if we could’ve had it just do zero damage and remain on the tree somewhere, but it’s not make or break.

Implosive Trap is finally some much-needed group utility and hunter is finally able to use an AoE stop. This is great, though 1.5 min CD feels a little long. 30-45sec would probably be too short, but I think a 1 min CD would be a much better place without overshadowing any other specs who are already known for AoE stops.

I am overall pretty indifferent to losing Death Chakram. It is a cool ability but I think both Surv and MM (don’t play BM) play fine without it from my testing. I wouldn’t mind it staying/coming back, don’t really mind that it’s gone.

Marksmanship

Increasing Multi-Shot’s focus cost is fine, but that combined with losing Death Chakram and it’s focus gen results in Improved Steady Shot feeling much more mandatory, it’s very easy to be focus starved in AoE. This is unpleasant, as it is by far the least interesting and worst-feeling node in the top gate of the tree. Please baseline this talent.

Survival

Sic’Em, Butchery, Quick Shot, and Coordinated Assault changes are very positive. CA being a more typical damage increase does make the existence of Spearhead even more strange, though, since they both now very clearly fill the same roles. There’s nothing about CA that innately makes it feel better or worse in ST when compared to Spearhead, it will just come down to tuning, and that’s a weird place to be. Would prefer Spearhead to be replaced as a capstone.

Mongoose Bite/Fury changes I think are positive, though I think could still be better. The old version just didn’t really fit anymore in my testing, there are too many buttons that competed with Mongoose Bite. However, now it is just a boring maintenance buff. I don’t have any ideas I’m happy with on how this could be further improved, but I do think there’s still a lot of room for improvement here. At this point I’d almost prefer to just play without Mongoose Bite entirely if it’s numerically viable to do so.

Flanking Strike changes are overall very negative. This button was completely fine and felt great as a big spender, and now it’s a boring passive that doesn’t change how you play other than giving you an extra Tip stack over a regular KC.

This also makes this ability FAR worse in PvP, as you no longer have any control over the dash, and you can’t reliably build focus from range. One of the best parts about Survival in PvP is the choice of being able to play at range or dive in for more damage, and the Flanking Strike change directly contradicts that. We could just not take the talent in PvP, but that also sucks, the ability was always fun to use.

PLEASE revert the change to Flanking Strike. It’s already a niche spec and always will be, it doesn’t need to be designed for the masses and have even more abilities removed.

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Too late. They’re on a crusade to snuff out “button bloat” wherever it may be.

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Oh I didn’t thought about PVP - but this is totally true, it really ruins SV PVP Skirmisher Style.

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Comparing this suggestion to what we have live, not the newest change, to be clear:

Unless outright aiming to net buff Mongoose Fury (though that means either MB becomes mandatory or has its base damage reduced, which then further divides MB from non-MB builds)… I feel like this would just make Mongoose Fury even more finnicky, actually, and still less intuitive to the average player.

Consider: Without buffing Mongoose Fury, you can’t possibly increase the duration of your 5th stack to match that of your first, which means some duration is going to have to be siphoned out of said first stack.

That leaves yet less time for other actions if wanting to get the most one can out of Mongoose Bite (remember, pre-Haste, even now you can only get at most 8 Mongoose Bites into a MF window even when opening that window with full Focus and Wild Chakram and/or a ToE Harpoon for the additional 21 or 20 Focus).

More importantly, this in turn means instead of having a ramp-ups and climaxes, you’re having lower peaks just to allow for lower valleys, but that’s going to be inherently less efficient — and, frankly, less dramatic, let alone exploitable.

As such, it’s not a big change, but I do expect it would be for the worse, even if not by much. Don’t take that as a slight; you’re still miles ahead of the devs here…

Now, to comment on the Mongoose Bite changes given by the dev team:

This is god awful. It turns Mongoose Bite into a 2-GCD ramp tax on Raptor Strike any time you haven’t been able to use it within the last 10 seconds, just for a dull bonus thereafter.

What you’ve removed Mongoose Bite for… is just Way of the Mok’Nathal but now applied only to Raptor Strike (renamed Mongoose Bite). We’ve been through this before. You saw copious criticism over it during Legion. It’s still terrible.

And no, the current design of Mongoose Fury does not pull your rotation in two separate directions any more than any class capable of both spending and actively regenerating a given resource.

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