Feel free to try new things with the marks spec skills and talents but do not take away at least the ability to pull out a pet for solo play. Choosing which pet to use and having it as my tank are critical aspects of playing a hunter. I have been playing wow for nearly it’s entire life and as a result am now older and have less time myself. This expansion took so many steps forwards for the solo player so you know that so much of time put into the game is outside raids and m+. Removing the pet from marks kills one of the key things that makes it great for these players like myself. There’s no need for an argument here, just leave Lone Wolf in the game so we can choose!
20 Likes
This is exciting! Overall i’m very optimistic, but I want to give feedback on some of the things that caught my eye. Everything is from a pvp purview:
- Withering Fire has been updated – Withering Fire now triggers from casting Black Arrow during Trueshot/Bestial Wrath and no longer auto-fires Black Arrow instead of gaining Deathblow.
- Developers’ notes: A common complaint of Withering Fire is its consistency. The goal with this change is to raise Withering Fire’s randomness floor while lowering its ceiling, still allowing for exciting high-roll moments where you get many Deathblow procs rapidly and reducing the times where nothing happens during Withering Fire.
First things first, thanks for listening to feedback. This (11.0.5) version of withering fire was going to make marks untunable for the remainder of the expansion. The new version you came up with is much better. Bravo.
However, I’m very concerned by:
- New Talent: Double Tap – Casting Trueshot grants Double Tap, causing your next Aimed Shot to fire again at 100% power, or your next Rapid Fire to fire 100% additional shots during its channel. This talent’s effectiveness is reduced by 50% in PvP combat.
We have been here before. Doubletap was an extremely polarizing ability, and it presented the same type of problems that withering fire was going to. Base damage of aimed shot and rapidfire can’t be high enough to be threatening outside of this ability, because the ability will cause oneshots. A major design goal seems to be to make aimed shots feel even more impactful. You’re painting yourself in a corner, i’m afraid. Especially considering how many cool effects that you’re also adding to aimed shot, such as the eagle mark modifier, new bulletstorm, etc. I’m afraid that there just won’t be a fair middle ground where all of these things are possible to have at the same time without it all just being super nerfed and not really mattering.
Another thing to watch out for:
- New Talent: Precise Detonation – Casting Explosive Shot grants Streamline. When Aimed Shot damages a target affected by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot instantly explodes, dealing 25% increased damage.
Imagine this scenario. You have a lnl proc. You trap a healer, cast explosive shot and then salvo volley on a dps, then expend your lnl proc. This is more or less another example of a similar problem. You’re going to have a hard time making explosive shot feel like the exciting button you want it to be when you allow this type of scenario where one buffed/insta proc aimed shot could theoretically detonate two 25% buffed explosive shots on one target when it hits in that setup. If explosive shot does enough damage to be fun by itself, it’s going to be a problem when you use it like this.
I have very little to criticize about the rest of the changes, and to be honest, I am still digesting them and playing with the talent calculator. I really like how there are multiple avenues to proc streamline, and I feel like that design is going to put more depth into the spec. The one and only thing that I would add for consideration would be to bake into a spec tree or pvp talent the ability to generate precise shot stacks with steady shot, such that no matter what, you’ve always got a basic yet mobile way to get yourself started without having to plant for an entire 3s aimed shot cast. Even if these precise shots granted by steady are less effective than others.
Last thing, don’t underestimate the impact that moving MM’s mortal wounds effect to aimed shot will have. There are often long periods of time in arena matches where marks is not pragmatically able to cast aimed shot. This is going to mean that marks MS will be significantly less effective than most others. Consider doing something similar to slaughterhouse, where it’s designed to eb and flow from below average/no ms to temporarily better ms instead of being a static effect. Or just put ms back on the marks eagle when you pick cunning.
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Removal of Careful Aim is sad because it was a talent that offered a minor optimization minigame and gameplay impact.
It also now many Hunter’s Mark even MORE contradictory than before, we again are an execute damage class. Hunter’s Mark is still by far the weakest raid buff and nearly useless in M+ and is not compelling. It makes massively more thematic and intuitive sense for it to work at below 20% hp also, shouldn’t require a GCD to activate, shouldnt be locked to only 1 target at a time, and/or othe ways of numerically buffing it.
Defensive node of new Pack Leader sucks.
You could give all specs 10% leech, 8% movement speed, 8% maximum health, Fortitude of the bear, Lust, and Master’s Call simultaneously and we’d STILL not be overloaded in terms of utility. Why do pet families exist at all? Just let all pets give all bonuses, Why have different aspects to a petless MM with no way to have a pet tank or leech ever and remove a ton of cosmetic choice and attachment?
Why cant survival cosmetically dual wield? Blizzard has used Rexxar as the artwork and literally given him the title of “Beastmaster” for like over a decade, “Hes not clearly a BM hunter” are we serious here? cmon. This is “Jailer was the real lich king the whole time” levels of amateurish retconning. Nobody buys that. Just because survival is melee doesnt make rexxar a survival hunter in any sense ever.
Why can’t we use weapon illusions on ranged weapons still? We’re removing a LOT of visual spectacle from the class with already the least amount of options. Our class abilities are either nearly invisible or visually distracting to everyone else. We simultaneously want to lower the number of animals spawned in for melee while making dire beast a more prominent part of BM and after we just gave BM a 2 minute cooldown with spawns more beasts? There’s philosophical design contradictions every 0.5 patch flip flopping one way to the other. We go from “We’re not going to give every class a raid buff” to “Hunter’s you get the worst excuse for a raid buff” to “here shamans, you guys get a good one, haha sucks to be a hunter amirite?”
Why does Scare Beast have a 30 yard range, a focus cost, and a cast time?
Barrage is not going to feel fun to play most likely on GCD capped specs when it has a 3s channel time.
Kill Shot consuming precise shots is a good change.
Exhilaration being on the GCD still feels bad, and why does Symbols of Hope give Exhil cooldown and not Fortitude of the bear or Survival of the Fittest?
Leech still doesn’t work with pets, Misdirection still doesn’t work with pets. Misdirection still doesnt make sense when Trick Shots is target hardcapped (hope my bounces hit the right mobs evenly to assist a tank with threat, out of my control as a player sucks and feels bad frustration when it doesnt)
Is flare utility ever going to be useful outside of you brining Vault of the Wardens back in an M+ season? It wasnt all of Shadowlands and Dragonflight.
Half of the spec talent changes are good, half of them create new problems, and there’s still problems which have existed for years going unresolved. Your focus is in the wrong place.
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I can’t do SV or BM - my disability precludes that choice, so with MM going my hunter days are over too.
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Careful aim is historically a very powerful modifier, even after negative pvp coefficients. When you consider how many additional aimed shot modifiers are being added via the eagle mark thing, moving target, bulletstorm, doubletap, etc. - i think careful aim just can’t be part of the picture.
BM should be melee/tank(with tenacity pets), SV should be single pet(ferocity & cunning) & MM no pet…or birds only.
And make outlaw rogues pirates, leave huntets out of that.
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Well, I spent several hours trying to get it - but it isn’t compatible with my disability. I’ve only got access to a total of 3 specs in game, this reduces that to 2.
Shouldn’t expect too much - they don’t let me play plunderstorm either.
then give aimed shot a lower pvp damage modifier of 80% or whatever. They do this all the time for other spells, whats the difference? Why are we losing good talents and gaining “your auto shot does more damage” ones instead?
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Actually
That talent will be taken by pvpers, like I lol.
I don’t think it’ll have much use in pve though.
I am sorry to hear that hopefully there are some macros that could help? BM tends to need less buttons than other specs
Well that’s kinda the problem. You have to nerf base damage too much to compensate for these types of modifiers, which tends to make the spec more polarizing.
100%
I want my RANGED single pet SURVIVAL hunter play style back.
BM is for melee, REXXAR is BM.
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This - bring back RSV!!!
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As someone who has played a hunter since OG vanilla, I agree with this 10000%. The Legion changes to hunter (lone wolf, two pets for BM, melee survival) were just the first kick in the teeth to my favorite class, and now this.
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As a vanilla hunter currently I’m trying to suffer through BM, heres my take:
If blizz did their homework they’d find that the posts with the most 
s are the keep the pet ones…as well as the melee/ranged class could be a rogue…or even BM.
The fantasy, rexxar is BM…so sure, make MM no/rng pet…but for the rest of us that want ONE pet, not a ZOO make survival ranged again. Survival was my favorite spec, a ranged trapper with a faithful companion.
I’ll admit, I never once spec’d the new SV since it has been melee-until last night…and to be perfectly honestly, it might as well be a rogue. Glyph to throw knives? Come on…why are we stuck with this?
Sure make MM no pet…then make SV ranged again-with only ONE pet…and do what you should have from the very beginning…make BM melee(with the entire zoo NO ONE is asking for), and also give them a tank spec and dual wield as part of it while your at it…because that all makes WAY more sense that whatever you’re trying to pull here.
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In Undermine, player fantasy, and the existing investment in their characters is being ignored as if it doesn’t matter, and a sudden and abrupt wholesale change is being forced on them with little to no care about the history players have in the development of their characters.
It’s not about specific changes being made, it’s that you can destroy the years of backstory and relationship that has been fundamental to the class fantasy as if it didn’t matter. I get that to devs these classes and specs are just a spreadsheet game, but to many players it’s still a fantasy roleplaying game, and dismissing their class fantasy like it doesn’t matter in order to have some fun on a new design is disrespectful at the very least.
If you want a new spec with a single mandatory cookie cutter pet, that’s fine. Make it a fourth spec and let existing MM players enjoy themselves. No need to destroy what they love in a gamble on the latest spreadsheet exercise.
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doubletap would make it feel like a truck again so thx for that
Just wants AiS to feel like a powerfull charge arrow shot again , can we update the animation please? SLOW DOWN THE ANIMATION FOR OUR CHAR its an aimed shot it should feel slower than autoshots and would let me appreciate my bow attack animation , i only enjoy it on classic 
and when casting AiS
Losing pets is sad , i still used my pet for soloing and chill with a “friend”
I have read the notes , and the only thing that look worrysome is
HAS A CHANCE…dont please , we dont want more RNG
edit its even worse its RNG proc that its a debuff , would be cool to get spotters mark on mob at 5% and then never get a proc on the next pull
because its gonna be a PPM (proc per min)
and if it procs too much yeah nerfed to 15% or 10% and we have another season /raid tier that sucks for MM
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If you guys wanted us to play Rexxar, why didn’t you just keep developing Heroes of the Storm?
I play WoW to play my own character, and I play hunter because I like taming my own unique pets to use. It’s been the biggest appeal of the class to me in the over a decade I have been playing.
I don’t want to be summoning a random boar, a random wyvern, and a random bear as a major part of my class identity. I would like to summon my own pets. Even Hati and Fenryr were pushing it.
Why are you shoving less customization down our throats instead of more?
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I like my pets to match a theme. Like all wolves. I don’t like that pack leader has set pet summons. It would be nice if pack leader only pulled from our stable. Running off that, it would be cool if we could set specific pets in our stable that summon under the Dire Stable glyph. Or some kind of customization that lets us choose what pets we summon for abilities.
I really like the talent where I can use one pet for BM again.
Kill Command is visually the ugliest spell in the game…Point and scream. Please give this spell a cool visual or something. It’s spammed a lot so there’s a lot of pointing and screaming. It’s not visually pleasing.
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What if I don’t want my hunter to use an eagle? What if some other animal fits how I imagine their character better? It’s really that simple Blizz. There’s no reason at all to restrict this.
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