Day 300…
No True Shot changes despite community consensus.
Really showcasing that listening slogan.
Actually, here are two new bugs discovered:
- The Bear cannot spawn Fenryr/Hati
- Bear gives +1 count like other Dire Beats to Huntmasters Call stacks
- Spawning a Bear at 2 stacks pushes it to 3 without spawning Hati/Fenryr
- While at 3 stacks, spawning a DB or a Bear overflows the stacks, spawning a Hati/Fenryr and taking the count back to 1 instead of the normal 0.
- Pack Mentality Kill Command damage increase does not affect Animal Companion
Thanks for reading!
2 Likes
I really hope this build was just tuning for the M+ testing initiative, and there will be a “real” build on Thursday, as usual.
Currently, a lot of stuff is still wrong:
- Trueshot undertuned
- Call pet actives/passives clashing/double-dipping with Cunning/Tenacious
1 Like
Is it possible that raptor strike and mongoose bit share a node and we choose which one we want. It just seems unnecessary for mongoose bite to have its own node when it’s going to replace raptor strike anyway. The talent tree in it’s current state has a lot of good choices and having to allocate 2 talents for Mongoosebite/bloody claws feels like we have to sacrifice a lot for minimal pay off. Please consider combining I wan’t to be able to use mongoose bite and the changes to Pack leader makes using the ability really enticing.
Pack Leader is in dire need of attention for Survival. This tree is currently around 15-20% behind Sentinel.
- Shell Cover, the defensive node, is still incredibly lackluster compared to what Sentinel and Dark Ranger offers
- No Mercy leaves a lot to desire, considering Basic Attacks do VERY little damage (and these still cost the pet focus)
- Ursine Fury is a damage LOSS on single target; it desyncs Flanking Strike from cooldowns and does not provide enough CDR to actually cast it often enough to negate this
The rework to Pack Leader is very thematic and cool but I’m afraid that even fixing these talents won’t have it competitive with Sentinel unless there are some additional changes for the Survival version of Pack Leader.
4 Likes
Dark Ranger is DoA for marks in pve as well.
I’m getting increasingly concerned about what’s going to happen to pvp when it comes time to tune this spec against everything else. The spec still needs significant +tuning if it’s to keep up in PvE, however the damage profile is still extremely bursty when you have charges of stuff, even if you’re not exploiting the hydra bug. Currently, the hydra bug is making marks single target about 20% stronger than it actually is, which compounds this problem even further.
Basically, what’s going to happen if something is not done (via lowering trueshot cooldown or bringing in some other mechanics), is that the already bursty pve damage profile will need to be buffed by 40% or more after bug fixes. Marks currently has huge positive PvP modifiers, and pvp tuning always takes a back seat to PvE tuning. If the spec is already capable of oneshotting stuff at 60% effectiveness, something seriously has to give when it’s at 100% effectiveness. However you also can’t just remove all of it’s pvp mods and make aimed/rf hit exactly as hard as they do on live now because then the spec doesn’t work at all, because those mods are there for a reason.
Basically, just a warning. There are major traps (pun intended) that need to be avoided. Questions that need answers and bugs that need fixes. This can still be a positive refresh. None of us want to deal with another broken beta version of a spec released mid-expansion into the game.
2 Likes
Please give survival some love. After losing plenty of uptime on lunar storm debuff in Sentinel Build and while we are competing in a melee spot in both m+ and raids there has to be some tuning after what we’ve seen was totally possible in terms of number tuning for MM and BM.
In that sense I have noticed Bombardier bugging out whenever you have one charge of Wildfirebomb available when using CA. Tried this several times just discharging one bomb before popping CA, everytime the cooldown timer of WFB gets reset to 1 charge instead of maxing out in that case. Of course you usually don’t intend on sitting on any charges of WFB when you enter CA even after the changes but since we sometimes delay our WFB for Sentinel Owl… well, we might as well 1+1 charge this unfortunately but you’ll just lose one charge with this bug.
Additionally it’s kinda sad to see the built revolved around bombs ans explosives dealing exceptionally less damage with explosive shot than MM, critting up to 9m dmg on a single explosive shot while the highest we can get for SV is between 1.5-2m. While I totally get the restrictions of having some sort of thoughtful positioning (which is covered by muscle memory and simply planning ahead effectively but still) I just can’t see, why Wildfirebombs still seems to have a very unreliable area of effect especially with moving packs. Dungeons aren’t designed to be overly stationary, same goes for FotE.
Set Bonusses are alright after the changes.
Other than that I noticed that during single target/patchwerk there is a weird window in which it wouldn’t be worth it to press any buttons in order to max out efficiency. Since you absolutely want to wait for lunar storm to come off CD more than before it sometimes opens up a moment where you don’t want to either
a) Raptor Strike to 1) burn focus or 2) to not consume a charge of TotS or
b) Kill Command to 1) overcap on focus or 2) overcap on Tots or 3) being unable to cast it because you weren’t lucky with refunds
or you’d have 2 globals to play all while Lunar infused WFB is about to come up again just to fit the gap.
To be honest having our Lunar Storm moving just like it has been changed towards with a slightly bigger Area of Effect would’ve been perfectly fine even with a shorter duration but shorter CD + initial damage.
Besides that pack leader is a good idea in itself but lacks both synergy with the entirety of the spec even with changes like Cull the herd. Still needs plenty of work.
2 Likes
Daily reminder that Pack Leader is weaker in every single way compared to Sentinel and has 2.5 nodes that don’t contribute anything defensively or offensively
- No Mercy is just an extra, non empowered basic attack which does very little damage for SV
- Shell Cover is a very weak 10% defensive node that you can’t control that lasts 6 seconds after you take the damage
- Envenomed Fangs and Flanking Strike-Ursine Fury are also numerically very weak
These talents need another look at if Pack Leader is meant to be an appealing tree to pick
1 Like
They really should being back some nodes of the old Pack Leader. I see no reason why Den Recovery shouldn’t be at least a choice node with Shell Cover (we all know which would never be taken, lol).
1 Like
What’s up with Dark Ranger talents Soul Drinker and Embrace the Shadows? Those have got to be two of the most useless hero talents. If Soul Drinker was 100% of the time, it would still not be useful. Embrace the Shadows needs to have HPS comparable to Smoke Screen, but it’s not even close.
3 Likes
I was so happy to see they had added a choice to avoid the shadow hounds.
I was sad to find it was Soul Drinker, forcing me to keep summoning shadow hounds…
2 Likes
Soul drinker should be changed to a boring but effective regular hunter spell modifier. There will always be tuning issues related to the base damage of abilities with one hero tree giving modifiers and the other not. Hounds are also wildly more effective for BM than marks, even after the bug fix on the ptr that makes them actually spawn sometimes for marks now. You’ll still probably prefer hounds as BM dark ranger because of the extra interaction with dire beast + them benefitting from BM +pet damage talents and mastery. However you’ll have a better and more thematic option as marks.
Withering fire is also really really bad now. All the effect does now is make black arrow cleave which has no impact in single target situations and very little impact in most pvp situations. I agree with the removal of old withering fire because it was also a very unhealthy mechanic for the game but new withering fire is basically nothing.
I use embrace the shadows as BM in arena sometimes. Smoke screen is 50% effective in pvp and BM gets to cleave all of its black arrows (which proc way more often for BM). There are certain situations where the somewhat bursty leech effect you get from embrace outweighs ss, but mostly against pet classes where you know that you’ll get a lot of cleave. Also a great BM talent for bgb because you’re going to cleave a lot there as well. Agreed that at full effectiveness, there is no rational choice between smokescreen and embrace the shadows (pve situations).
2 Likes
Withering Fire should replace Aimed Shot with Wailing Arrow for the duration (but remove Wailing Arrow’s Silence for obvious reasons).
Soul Drinker could enhance Black Arrow’s DoT somehow. Maybe a flat percent extra damage, or a chance to grant Spotter’s Mark, or a chance to grant Streamline, I dunno.
1 Like
Imagine trueshot on a 45s cooldown, and withering fire granting the effects of readiness wailing arrow upon pressing trueshot. I feel like that would jive extremely well with how it feels like the spec should flow.
You’ll get trueshot back approximately where you’re hitting the huge dead time now. This trueshot gives you a (potentially) doubletap rapidfire and then a short wailing cast that should not consume streamline charges and also give you back rapid+ aimed charges. This just accelerates what you’re currently doing with the button (mostly just getting charges back so that you can actually do the rotation) and making it available more often removes the need for each aimed shot to do like 10 million damage for the spec to average out.
This makes the spec suck less because of less downtime. It makes trueshot feel like it sucks less because it does a little bit more on the keystroke and also you get to use it more often. It makes dark ranger suck less because the capstone actually does something.
1 Like
Played some more with it today. Delves are perfectly fine with Bran as tank. Felt better than a pet to be quite honest, cause I didn’t have to keep pressing mend pet and bran grips things in from time to time.
Trueshot feels weird, it’s still worth pressing and you don’t want to skip but feels bad.
Improved Streamline vs Focused Aim, seems like we will end up going with Focused Aim and stacking more haste. The shortened cast time of Improved Streamline makes the rotation really awkward at times. The CDR to Aimed Shot just feels more valuable.
2 Likes
I’ll be honest… I don’t think they intend to have anyone playing PL > Sentinel… which is a shame. I don’t care for sentinel.
Pack leader feels like garbage. They gave us random generic pets that do a little bit and go away, while breaking the very few good things PL had going for it (namely Furious Assault and Covering Fire). FA allowed more RS/MB and CF gave butchery/bombs a very fun and interactive feel. Ursine Fury is the “replacement” for CF, except it’s worse in every way. It lets one of the 3 beasts have a 10% chance to reduce butchery by 2 seconds… So instead of being able to rip off insane and fun butchery/bomb combos, we get to… every now and then when 1 of the 3 beasts is up, have a 10% chance… Wow, much impress.
I will admit, the loss of Furious Assault isn’t really a loss, since we’re not resource starved, but I enjoyed it.
1 Like
I’ve been farting around farming old Mists stuff just this week. Here’s what happens when a tiger pounces from halfway across Azeroth: It growls, uses pounce, a big red blood-burst animation erupts on me, I take damage, and THEN it flies through the air to my location. I can strafe to be a little ways away from where it lands, but I eat the pounce no matter what, and once it lands near me, it is staying near me, as it is much faster than I am.
1 Like
I genuinely feel that Aimed Shot should not be a cast at all, but rather should be a charged move like Evoker’s fire breath. The longer I pull back the bow, the harder the shot that comes out. I think this would feel good and really play up the class fantasy angle of having this one big huge between-the-eyes marksman super shot, next time they do an inevitable rework.
7 Likes
They went through all the trouble to create a new talent that no one will use and all they had to do was change trickshots from minimum of 3 to 2 targets, we are already capped at 5 why do we have to be punished even more with a hard 3 target minimum? If we had uncapped AOE with Trickshots I would understand the limitation,
7 Likes
The more I play it, the more this combination of changes just really make sense to me:
Trueshot to 1m cooldown and 8-12 second duration instead of 2m cooldown with 15-20 second duration. (~40-50s cooldown with cts vs ~1.5m)
- makes double tap more attractive
- Removes large amounts of dead time in the flow of shots vs cooldowns on charges of shots
- Makes tuning easier since each trueshot needs to be less drastic in lieu of less dead time
Also, dark ranger is back to mathematically impossible numbers in all situations compared to sentinel in pve. Withering fire has gone from an impossibly good mechanic with off global black arrows happening alongside current trueshot windows to now basically only making black arrow cleave during trueshot.
Replacing withering fire with readiness wailing arrow makes a lot of sense:
- would play in well with a lower cooldown trueshot model.
- Brings back a reason to pick dark ranger while not having to completely sell out to single target talents for a workable build.
- Thematically fits with dark ranger for obvious reasons
- Gives BM hunters the opportunity to actually get to cast something (and makes them have to cast something to play dark ranger correctly in PvP)
5 Likes