Feedback: Pack Leader Hunter

[Antaris-emerald-dream (Antaris)]

My feedback:

Vicious Hunt: Your kill commands add extra damage to your next kill command. Possibly the most boring mechanic you could think of. Am I missing something? Does this cause you to actually strike the target too? And if so how would that work?

Pack coordination: So after you kill command, your next barbed shot/raptor strike proc your pets basic attack. So basically, this is a damage proc. At least this somewhat incentivizes us to weave in kill commands between other abilities as much as possible.

Den recovery: 20% heal on two separate 2.5- 3 minute cooldown abilities. Not great. Pretty bad actually if you compare it to what other class hero specs are getting.

Covering fire: carve/butchery can already reduce the cd of bomb, so now bomb can reduce their cd. Cool, not super interesting but not bad.

Scattered Prey: passive damage increase

Howl of the Pack: passive damage increase

Timeless Hunt: wont be noticed

Cornered prey: More range on all attacks, quality of life and useful for dealing damage. Ill take it.

Cull the herd: passive damage amps.

Wild Attacks: passive damage increase.

Frenzied Tear: RNG passive damage increase.

Furious assault: RNG proc on top of an RNG proc to deal more damage and save some focus.

Beast of Opportunity: Calls a pet to attack when casting bestial wrath and coordinated assault. This is cool, fits the theme of the spec. For survival this seems pretty underwhelming, as coordinated assault is a 2 minute cooldown compared to bestial wrath, and also coordinated assault isnt always picked. Hopefully more work is done to the normal talent trees for this one.

Pack Assault: So this actually looks like it makes it easier to take full advantage of pack coordination, which was the only talent in the tree that might have altered your rotation.

Overall I have to say I was looking forward to this one but the entire tree feels like passive damage procs with no interaction at all from the player as far as making rotational decisions. Almost no useful talents at all, very poor defensive talents compared to other classes, and no utility talents at all. defensive / utility talents are where you can really get creative! I would really like to see this tree go through some heavy reviews.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

The worst is that this tree will probably “parse good” because it’s full of passive modifiers and the devs will say “But it’s strong, right, why change it?” completely disregarding the lack of creativity, fantasy, and most of all - fun!

[Nondriel-living-flame]

I’m not pretending anything lol relax. I am saying that other people give feedback and it is no less more important than yours.

[Hasew-arathor (Hasew)]

Cornered prey seems pretty useless for most scenarios.

[Celinamuna-area-52]

Tree looks great especially for pre-alpha.

[Caprisunny-moon-guard]

@Nondriel-living-flame

lot of BM players on this very forum. sorry you disagree with their feedback, but that doesn’t make it any less valid than yours

i actually dont have a preference for more or less beasts. it just seems thematically appropriate for this tree, with dark ranger being for the hunters who arent into zoo gameplay

ive just observed way more pro-beast or apathetic players on this forum but i dont sit the hunter forums as much as i mightve in the past.

[Biopsy-thunderlord]

My feedback in relation to Beast Mastery and Pack Leader.

Vicious Hunt: Kill Command prepares you to viciously attack in coordination with your pet, dealing additional physical damage with your next Kill Command.

In coordination with your pet? Does this mean the next Kill Command hits harder, or is there extra damage applied separately?

If the Kill Command hits harder, this plays into Beast Cleave, which is good. If it applies separately, not so good.

Pack Coordination: Attacking with Vicious Hunt instructs your pet to strike with their basic attack alongside your next Barbed Shot (Beast Mastery), Raptor Strike, or Mongoose Bite (Survival).

Howl of the Pack: Your pet’s Basic Attack critical strikes increase your critical strike damage by 5% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

Wild Attacks: Every third pet Basic Attack is a guaranteed critical strike, with damage further increased by critical strike chance.

High crit rating seems to be the goal here. I thought the previous goal was to make secondary stats to be beneficial without having high priority on a given stat. Wouldn’t this make crit the most powerful secondary stat? It seems like some thought was put into making sure the buff can be kept up, but worried about the impact on gear selection.

Den Recovery: Aspect of the Turtle, Survival of the Fittest, and Mend Pet heal the target for 20% of maximum health over 4 seconds. Duration increased by 1 second when healing a target under 50% maximum health.

It says “heal the target”, but none of these are targeted abilities. Obviously, this means Turtle and Survival of the Fittest will heal the Hunter, but does it mean Mend Pet will heal the pet 20% more, or will it heal the Hunter when using Mend Pet? Healing pets an extra 20% isn’t really needed and a 20% heal to the Hunter every time they cast Mend Pet would be very strong. Probably too strong.

Tireless Hunt: Aspect of the Cheetah now increases movement speed by 15% for another 8 seconds.
Cornered Prey: Disengage increases the range of all your attacks by 5 yards for 5 seconds.

Tireless Hunt is pretty boring. Not as bad as Dark Chains in the Dark Ranger tree, but still seems like a filler.

Corner Prey is situational. I can see it having usefulness in PvP and some fights where getting out of range for a few seconds is helpful. I hope this applies to pet range as well. We still have pet AI issues, where pets follow moving targets at maximum melee range and can’t hit with basic attacks.

Frenzied Tear: Your pet’s Basic Attack has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Kill Command and cause Kill Command to strike a second time for 30% of normal damage.

CD resets are always contentious with Hunters, as we already have plenty. This seems far less egregious than Dark Ranger though.

Covering Fire: Kill Command increases the duration of Beast Cleave by 1 second (Beast Mastery). Wildfire Bomb reduces the cooldown of Carve or Butchery by 2 seconds (Survival).
Scattered Prey: Multi-Shot increases the damage of your next Multi-Shot by 25% (Beast Mastery). Carve or Butchery increases the damage of your next Carve or Butchery by 25% (Survival).

Covering Fire seems great. Multi-Shot is already annoying to cast. Any excuse to cast it less often is welcome.
Scattered Prey is just terrible. Like, laughably terrible. 25% more damage to an ability that does very little damage? Do the devs understand Multi-Shot does jack-all for damage?

^ Perfect example of ‘illusion of choice’. One is good. The other is horrifically bad. lol

Cull the Herd: Kill Shot deals an additional 30% damage over 5 seconds and increases the bleed damage you and your pet deal to the target by 25%.

This is fine. I like the synergy. However, for the sake of this tree and Dark Ranger, I hope Kill Shot gets a massive buff for BM. Right now, it’s barely even used.

Furious Assault: Consuming Frenzied Tear has a 50% chance to reset the cooldown of Barbed Shot and deal 30% additional damage. (Beast Mastery) Consuming Frenzied Tear has a 50% chance to make your next Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite free and deal 30% additional damage. (Survival)
Beast of Opportunity: Bestial Wrath (Beast Mastery) or Coordinated Assault (Survival) calls on the Pack, summon a pet from your stable for 6 seconds.

Furious Assault kind of works into the new synergy of Pack Coordination, but worried about overcapping on charges.
Beast of Opportunity is a decent option to prevent overcapping with Furious Assault.

Pack Assault: Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination now stack and apply twice and are always active during Call of the Wild (Beast Mastery) or Coordinated Assaulted (Survival).

Active during burst cooldown is great, but I honestly can’t figure out what it means by stacking Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination. Some clarification would be appreciated.

In conclusion: Seems fine. No massive red flags. I like that is adds a bit of complexity without significantly altering the spec. However, I don’t see any visual flare for the thematics of Pack Leader. Where’s the pack? Where is the theme at all?

Rating:

• Mechanically : 7.5/10
• Thematically : 0/10 (Non-existent)

[Caprisunny-moon-guard]

@Biopsy-thunderlord

Tireless Hunt is pretty boring. Not as bad as Dark Chains in the Dark Ranger tree, but still seems like a filler.

yeah im pretty sure its a recycled conduit. i like it but its way more of a normal talent than hero

[Hasew-arathor (Hasew)]

Would be nice if the pets summoned by our spells had the names we gave them instead of random beast name.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Summary of the tree:

“kill command increases the damage of kill command”

“during your big CD ability this effect is doubled”

Man, that’s so creative! We need more of the same

[Nondriel-living-flame]

wait until you see other hero trees and use such reductive language with them as well

[Celinamuna-area-52]

This tree synergizes well with BM has good interactions and generally only 1 weak choice node (MS dmg), while flowing well in AoE and ST.

Much rather have this than something super insanely creative but that just doesn’t work with the spec.

[Raadun-terokkar]

On a baseline systems level I’d like to improve our existing amps rather than stack on more narrow windows of damage amp.

Empowering Call of the Wild, Bestial Wrath, Coordinated Assault, instead of stacking additional damage amp windows.

On a thematic level there’s a real avoidance of of empowering the pack here, and what seems to be zero visual flair(as all the nodes are passives or add to existing things)

Wheres the hunting hounds and the swarm of ravens, where’s the vultures with Kill shot? Where’s the secondary effect to bestial wrath that empowers all active pets?

This is the lowest impact, lowest visual flair of these trees and it’s severely underdelivering on the class fantasy and “Hero” portion of these Hero talent trees.

[Biopsy-thunderlord]

@Kirenaika-daggerspine

Summary of the tree:

“kill command increases the damage of kill command”

“during your big CD ability this effect is doubled”

Man, that’s so creative! We need more of the same

A bit early in the thread to argue, but I disagree. The keystone talent is definitely designed that way, but the first row incentivizes using Barbed Shots more often to keep the crit damage buff stacked. Cull the Herd will likely make Hunter’s Prey a default talent, as adding Kill Shot to the rotation will increase the damage of Barbed Shot. If tuned correctly, these will add much needed complexity to BM’s rotation without negatively affecting synergy.

[Mccrowley-stormrage (Mccrowley)]

I was expecting the ability to summon a TON of extra dire beasts for some reason. Like… you know… having a PACK of animals fight on your side.

Beast of Opportunity basically just replaces our tier bonus for when that goes away next expansion. So the ONLY new pet summoning ability we get is a slightly suped up version of our tier bonus from THIS season.

[Celinamuna-area-52]

@Raadun-terokkar

Empowering Call of the Wild, Bestial Wrath, Coordinated Assault, instead of stacking additional damage amp windows.

Those things are already empowered. Also having a hero tree full on lock you into CotW wouldn’t be fun, so at best it can empower BW/CA which what do you want it to do ? Make you do extra 5% dmg and 10% crit during them ?

@Raadun-terokkar

lowest visual flair of these trees and it’s severely underdelivering on the class fantasy and “Hero” portion of these Hero talent trees.

if each node made you 1% larger during your cds and your pet 1.5% larger, would that do it for you ?

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Sure, let me try that

Rider of the apocalypse:

“ your attacks have a chance to summon 1 of 4 NPCs that gives you a strong and interesting effect”

“During your big CD all 4 of them are in effect simultaneously “

Added bonus: “you can fight mounted in outdoor zones”

This is brilliant! What pack leader could have been. But… I guess having strong kill command and pet basic attack is fun, right? Quite original and will surely create rewarding and fun gameplay!

[Biopsy-thunderlord]

@Mccrowley-stormrage

I was expecting the ability to summon a TON of extra dire beasts for some reason. Like… you know… having a PACK of animals fight on your side.

Thematically, that sounds amazing. I was honestly expecting something like that as well. I’m relieved it wasn’t though, because we already have enough issues with poor pet AI. I think any Hero tree that summoned a ton of beasts would be followed by angry shouts demanding an overhaul of the pet AI system. lol

[Verek-malganis]

as a Survival hunter main, this tree looks AWESOME. With the buffs to focus regen and quickly stacking more Tips of the Spear, this really puts a emphasizes on the mongoose bite playstyle that makes me incredibly excited. I really hope the tree stays like this for the most part besides maybe the butchery/carve talent which is kinda dead with the higher uptime on high stacks of bite.
Other then that, like I said, I love everything about this tree and thoroughly hyped to see it in action.

[Dactyl-shadowstrike-au]

Just as bad as dark ranger. Maybe even worse when comparing to other pet hero trees.

Like just compare riders of the apocalypse to this or the warlock pet one. This hunter tree is really low quality in compairson

I was expecting bm riding a pet in combat, i was expecting huge spams on animals etc. This is bad