I used to like Lone Wolf a lot but over time my opinion of it has soured. Not only does it cause issues like the current MM Hunter bloodlust debacle or how much of the base talent tree in DF isn’t applicable to MM but it also normalised carving up the base Hunter identity, contributing to the “thinking” behind melee Survival and leading to such terrible takes as these:
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Likewise easily fixed by just tying those utilities to the Hunter instead.
Affinity
Tune your inner affinity towards Ferocity, Tenacity, or Cunning, each with a unique passive and skill. Only one option can be active at a time.Ferocity:
Predator’s Thirst - Increases Leech by 8%.Tenacity:
Endurance Training - Reduces your damage taken by 4% and increases your healing received by 8%.Cunning
Fleet-footed - Increases movement speed by 8%.
Invoke Affinity
Cast an ability based on your current Affinity.Ferocity:
Horn of the HuntIncreases haste by 30% for all party and raid members for 40 sec.
Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and unable to benefit from Bloodlust or Time Warp again for 10 min.
Tenacity:
Survival of the FittestReduces all damage you and your pet take by 30% for 6 sec.
Cunning:
Cut the NetsThrow an axe that severs the lines binding the target ally, freeing them from all roots and snares and granting them immunity to such effects for another 4 seconds.
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Way easier to balance it the other way - keep the pets as-is (no AoE), change Lone Wolf to buff primary target damage only. Then AoE can be tuned without any consideration for pet vs petless. Single target is easy to balance with minor numerical adjustments from patch to patch if necessary.
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Admittedly, I kind of figured something to do with Trick Shots prevented that, as the secondary damage is inherited from the first.
Otherwise, yep, that would be even easier, and would retain further focus target control compared to balancing around baseline pet AoE.
Master’s Call should be baseline and require no pet, or it could conceivably be in the class tree, though that thing is already bloated as heck.
Master’s Call - A random pet from your stable heeds your call and frees your target from movement impairing affects, etc. etc.
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Trick Shots causes Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire to ricochet for 55% of the primary target damage. Simply change that modifier to 50% while Lone Wolf is active (55% of 100 is the same as 50% of 110). Blacklist AoE abilities (e.g. Multi-Shot, Explosive Shot, Volley, Barrage, etc) from the Lone Wolf buff.
Problem solved. Lone Wolf might need a little attention over the expansion as gear improves (particularly with more mastery) and set bonuses are introduced, but that’s pretty standard anyway.
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Blizz noticed some Hunters running w/o their pets.
Blizz noticed that this was a damage nerf for those Hunters…
Blizz decided to buff damage for Hunters running w/o a pet…
and broke the Class… Things have gone downhill ever since.
As a cohesive Class, we are pathetic…and laughable.
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“Wears mail” is about all we’ve got for macro identity. For me, it was always Ranger + Pet. That’s what attracted me to the class in 2006. I appreciate the reasons LW exists, but the “Sniper Fantasy” was never something that was even hinted at until only recently (in the lifespan of WoW) and only serves to further cloud what a Hunter is - or WAS. It would have made more sense to make Combat Rogue a ranged sniper than incentivize petless MM and switch to MSV.
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It was made in legion that is when the sniper crap started.
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When the core identity of Hunter was unmade.
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The mail commonality may not last much longer, with the MSV pundits crying out: " I play melee. I deserve more/better protection."
They will get it before it’s over.
And all three specs will run exotic pets, just for looks, cause we will have the pet damage and utility without the pet, and why not? Not because of Class or Spec rules.
There don’t seem to BE rules anymore. Nihilism.
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Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t want the three specs to feel the same, but making the pet optional (though we know it’s a no-go because of Trick Shots) and taking away range seem like two pretty lazy design choices to make that happen.
Lone Wolf was introduced in WoD and I have been dismissing my pet in certain situations for 17 years now because the damage wasn’t worth the liability of bad pet AI. It has been asked for repeatedly since Demonic Sacrifice was introduced in TBC.
There is zero reason we can’t have a “guy who shoots bow really good” paradigm that’s independent of using a pet.
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Lone wolf sucks because MM damage is balanced around it.
I just want to play a sniper spec without having to manage clumsy pet AI.
Get rid of the need for MM needing pets at all. Offer some other tangible abilities/defensives/utility.
8 Likes
That’s what I’m saying! Just make Outlaw a ranged sniper spec. Stealth, subterfuge, maybe you get a claymore (mine, not sword), but you can still stab people in the back. This is primo sniper fantasy stuff. OR give DH a 3rd, shadow-bow-esque kinda deal. An EEEEVIL, dark MAGIC sniper. [weird hand gestures] OOOoooOOOooooooOOOOOooooooo…
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Sniper Training was a vanilla talent, then a Mastery. Aimed Shot entered the game as a 3s cast. Hunter’s Mark is designed to look like a scope reticule.
- Technically, the effects of Sniper Training were previously held in Aimed Shot and Hawk’s Eye; bonus range, and MM having to occasionally sit still for 3 seconds (via AiS’s cast time). The latter talent was later moved to SV as all specs were changed to offer more of cross-wise use to the other specs, and Sniper Training a way to supply that also to the new WotLK RSV playstyle, which had by then become an MM-alternative.
WoD was technically just as rooted / snipery. It didn’t even have instant ST shots outside of execute phase.
Please link the posts asking for Hunter to go plate?
Or, was that connection just in your head, a place where even the mere option to go without a pet amounts to…
…?
Combat was originally the melee-intensive swashbuckler spec, so… no? No, it would not have.
(See below.)
Jaggles, you don’t seem to have been a fan of RSV being removed to make room for MSV (regardless of whether such may or may not have been necessary to create that space for MSV—just, instead, based on what happened).
Given that, why would you force that upon another class?
4th spec or pass.
Snipers aren’t known primarily for stabby-stabs. Outlaws who might occasionally fire a shot from a grassy knoll, sure, but snipers are shooters.
- The word itself initially referred to, a snipe-hunter. Later, it referred to one skilled enough to reliably shoot even targets that are as small, partly camouflaged, and elusive as a snipe—a skilled, generally patient sharpshooter.
I’d be cool with a 4th spec, but, exempting any flagrantly excessive powers/capacities that might one day arise, don’t touch Outlaw outside of the interests of Outlaw. Or any other spec for that matter.
…This looks a lot like not giving a damn how bad a fit it’d be elsewhere, so long as you could be rid of it, despite the sniper aspect of Hunter having been in MM from the start.
- We started with a 3s cast on Aimed Shot and a literal sniper scope / targeting reticule graphic via Hunter’s Mark.
Again, options are good. Forcing incohesive options elsewhere just to reduce options here… is not good.
If you wanted a more run’n’gun MM, I’d actually love to see that as a sub-spec. If you wanted a form of MM that trades the cast time on Aimed Shot for something else, same. But do not try to prune sniping, root and stem, from what has always been intended as the sniper spec.
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First off, no, it wasn’t a vanilla talent. It wasn’t a BC talent, either. It was a WotLK talent for, drumroll please… SV. Also, Sniper Fantasy doesn’t just mean using a scope and shooting things from a distance with a carefully aimed shot. It may have originated with that, but modern-day snipers (which is what I’d assume most people associate with a sniper fantasy through movies and video games) are elite force members trained in all manner of things outside of distance shooting. Subterfuge, hand to hand, explosives. All kinds of fun stuff. If people just want to shoot far, they’re a marksman, and as such, can arguably follow the archetype that BLIZZARD ESTABLISHED of having a pet as part of that.
I can’t think of too many swashbucklers that use two swords, btw. Or two of anything. Gun + Sabre/Cutlas/etc. I don’t think Outlaw should have two 1 handers since it doesn’t make sense and is too similar to the other Rogue specs. Give 'em a bow or rifle to differentiate them from Sub and Assassination, and then they can pull a SECRET knife out to perform melee abilities. No class is designed so shallowly to derive it’s entire identity from the weapons it uses, right?
Having a pet is not “part of” shooting far or being a marksman. The two are irrelevant to one another. Why then should being a marksman enforce pet usage?
Outlaw, and Combat before it, hasn’t necessarily used two swords. Only the main-hand is necessarily so, due to Sinister Strike dealing instant weapon damage.
This seems no more sensible than saying that Hunter specs would be unable to differentiate themselves if they all used ranged weapons.
Yes, you can expand the class’s themes accordingly, but needs to be done in the interest of the class in question, not simply because you disliked the identity for one of your specs and foisted it off on someone else.
If dual-wielding (as all DWing, outside of Fury, is done with 1-handers) makes Outlaw too similar to Sub and Assassination, how would that warrant not also apply to Sub and Assassination themselves?
But Rogue already does not thus limit its identity. Yes, is that Outlaw makes frequent and obligatory use of ranged attacks, drawing “a SECRET pistol,” instead of having solely ranged attacks and drawing “a SECRET knife” for, say, Gouge (as there’s nothing melee can do that ranged cannot except as compensation for being truly Melee). But that is just part of Outlaw’s identity—one of three facets of its being eclectic and driven by creating and exploiting favorable situations (procs, RtB, etc.) or mitigating their punishment (banked ranged capacity, etc.). It’s “Dirty Tactics” as a spec, rather than just a meh talent.
Demanding that specs themed around things that have nothing to do with pet usage must still use a pet, on the other hand, would be limiting.
Correct. My bad there. But you’re also pointing at a time where the Ranged Damage buff required for MM was from BM. Every spec crossed into other trees, and SV was a hodgepodge of, essentially, generic buffs and whatever could fit in BM and MM, outside of its all of three unique PvE effects, all essentially new to WotLK. Until then, it was the overflow / compensator spec; it makes plenty of sense for both BM and MM themes to have ended up there.
It doesn’t necessitate a scope, but precise aim is a literal requirement of “sniping,” yes. That is precisely what the word refers to. Just as a bow is not a “gun,” shooting aimlessly is not “sniping”.
Because they are logical compliments to sniping within that certain setting (one which has nothing in common with WoW —outside perhaps a theoretical 10000x world-size hardcore PvP remake— as irl snipers spend 95+% of its time hiking and simply providing info, not even in *pre-*combat). They are not, however, that act of “sniping” itself. Scouting, note-taking, using comms, etc., are not, themselves “sniping”.
One doesn’t look at a random army marksman, or even a sniper, and assume the combined capacities of Primeval Technology, Rambo, and an IED-maker. Those are all capacities that would be auxiliary to judging distance, finding a good spot to shoot from, and landing one’s shots.
The class tree is where those explosives and subterfuge should come from, because it’s applicable to all—yet not required for any of—the three specs. Those aspects should not, however, forced upon a spec that has nothing to do with them by being pushed into the spec tree. Just as using a pet should likewise be an option available to MM, not forced upon it.
2 Likes
They could make it a two-choice talent. One that has a pet talent and one without it.
It already functions as such.
You lose X to gain Y. Or, you gain Y at cost of X.
Either way, you make the choice between either “build” just by… dismissing your pet, or calling it again.
1 Like