The one major problem I have with Dark Ranger MM right now is AoE during Trueshot.
What makes Black Arrow decent for AoE is completely stripped away during Trueshot. Bleak Powder requires Trick Shots to trigger but, once you cast an Aimed Shot/Rapid Fire during Trueshot, you consume your Trick Shots and THEN Withering Fire decides if it’s going to occur, thus firing a Black Arrow without Trick Shots up.
Something that could probably save this hero talent without completely reworking this oversight is have Trick Shots active as a duration and not a charge, much like Beast Cleave is for BM. This will allow Withering Fire to actually be useful in AoE.
As for single target scenarios, I think Withering Arrow is either a little overpowered when it procs 10 times in 2 seconds or it doesn’t proc a single time. Maybe increase the damage of Black Arrow and put Withering Fire on an internal cooldown so it doesn’t feel bad when there are no procs? idk
But until they fix Dark Ranger, I’ll just stick to playing SV… sigh
3 Likes
MM shouldn’t be geared towards AoE, it’s a single target spec and it’s failing miserably at that as well.
7 Likes
Should have connected bleak powder to Razor Fragments, honestly.
Chiming in from pvp perspective.
I want to start here. Withering fire is a major problem for a similar set of reasons, it’s too random. Base rapidfire, aimed, and black arrow can’t ever be independently meaningful and threatening outside of trueshot, because that will cross a threshold where you’re randomly globalling people when you get procs at the right time in trueshot. Conversely, with damage tuned such that that never happens in trueshot, marks is just never threatening at all unless it gets very lucky and procs/crits at exactly the right time in its burst. It’s an impossible balancing scenario, and a pathway around it needs to be made ASAP.
The remaining problem for marks in PvP is just how much more the DR tree benefits BM. BM is doing an APM rotation designed to cast black arrow and kill command as many times as possible. Kill command procs BA, crows, and dire beast, which itself can proc hounds. Not only is hounds proccing a lot more for BM, hounds also benefit from BM mastery and it’s +pet damage talents from the BM tree. Because you’re technically casting KC twice per button press (because both pets kill command), BM is passively proccing a lot more black arrows than marks does from its hunter spells. BM also gets 20% on its bleak arrows where marks only gets 8%. All of BMs black arrows are cleaving to 2-5 targets, which is passively cleave proccing hounds and crows to more targets, which do more damage for it than marks. The function of getting to cast black arrow above 80% is kind of meaningless for marks, because its killshot damage is predicated on razor fragments instead of hunter’s prey, and hunter’s prey is always up vs razor fragments being a function of deathblow procs. A lot of killshot’s value for marks is also predicated on kill shot critting via +crit damage talents, and crit is nerfed in pvp. The list goes on.
Basically, all of this boils down to a hero tree that seems to fit seamlessly into the more toxic pvp spec’s passive design, and does almost nothing for marks except give it a gimmick that requires the rest of it’s kit to be overly throttled in order to prevent oneshots. It’s like the worst of both worlds.
The solution, imo:
- Just replace withering fire with something else. I really don’t know what a good PvE replacement would be, but old withering fire would be a lot better for PvP in the long run.
- Give marks back hunter damage modifiers in the DR tree.
2.1: bell tolls is completely unneccesary, black arrow is already coded to perform its function even without taking the talent. Start here with hunter modifiers. Consider replacing the choice node against hounds with more hunter modifiers.
- Swap bleak arrows proc chance between bm and marks.
I think this collection of changes at least gets the two specs back to a place where they can be logically tuned without creating more problems in either direction.
1 Like
This is good.
I also woulda tied it to just black arrow in general and not having another activation requirement. its really dumb to have nothing work, because trickshots is consumed after you fire your shot before the effect can even trigger. DR seems like something fed out by AI which was good on paper, but the devs had no clue how to code it into the game and work. whats sad is old DR with the new bleak powder and new shadow surge woulda been perfectly viable. and wouldnt required as much effort as the full rework.
I didn’t mention it before but another major downside of playing MM DR is having to take the far-left column of talents to get any meaningful Black Arrow damage (In both single and multi-target builds). This means doing AoE content, we’ll always be missing out on 3 important talents such as Streamline, Tactical Reload, Hydra’s Bite or Kill Zone… feels bad.
All the while giving us very lackluster Black Arrow damage (imagine it without those talents) with nothing to make up for it… as well as already losing our pre-11.0.5 Hero Talents that buffed our core kit to begin with… feels extra bad.
On top of all that…
The Black Arrow DOT is a joke and doesn’t roll over like it should.
Bleak Powder doesn’t trigger if Black Arrow kills the target (but has to used under 20% if you don’t have a proc) meaning there’s a good chance of it killing the target.
There’s also sometimes a weird whole-second delay when trying to cast Rapid Fire.
I could go on for days about this 11.0.5 rework.
2 Likes
To be fair, most those talents are not picked anyways, streamline is always taken. tatical reload, hydra bite, killzone are not. infact the killshot side of the tree is even prefered for sentinel as a small aoe loss about .3% for a moderate ST and prio add damage gain. if your still running bulletstorm, tatical hydra bite and killzone then your doing it wrong.
2 Likes
The moment I noticed how we get fewer procs of Black Arrow as MM I rolled BM and said f@$k it not playing that sentinel Wild Spirits 2.0 crap. Its been like this since BFA. We think MM is going to be great and fun only for it to be overtaken by BM for the entire xpac and now even surv is better for those who enjoy playing melee which I dont =( At least BM DArk Ranget is fun and we get to use a lot of Black Arrows and crows it also helps that for BM kill shot cleaves making it more fun with Black Arrow
MM was total 
until 8.1 from 8.0. So who knows if the same thing won’t happen? That was when TShot was overhauled to what it is today: a 50% CDR on AShot and 60% CDR on RFire(now 70% for both), and a -50% cast time on AShot.
Because a Blue also figured it out that Haste did jack-all for the spec. Big changes did come from the BFA cycle…common knowledge to those who were at least “Legion babies” like I were.
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Marks is dead in the water and eaten by sharks especially Dark ranger and its disappointing
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This is not gonna fly today.
Every spec should have a good baseline if st and AOE.
Just saying: this spec is the st spec. Is insane
2 Likes
I feel like they have taken a different design approach about MM since Legion. They focus more on its AoE and less on its Single.
It has been for a really long time, not realizing that is just if not more insane.
Good luck with that.
Im not even saying that mm shouldn’t be good, but the idea of st and aoe spec is outmoded, to state something like mm should be the st spec is ridiculous with how the game currently works.
It’s been like that for a long time? Since when? Legion was like 8 years ago, and mm had very good aoe then, wod? Wod was 10 years ago.
1 Like
This player knows nothing about the game, let alone the hunter class. Just ignore them.
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If they just fixed lone wolf i would play MM. Losing utility when you dont wanna play with a pet SUCKS. Sac\Stun\Freedom is basically required in pvp so you cant play lone wolf at all. Also in PVE bloodlust being tied to a pet is annoying. Pet should be a cosmetic choice for MM, if you dont want one you shouldnt lose power\utility.
1 Like
We can cast intimidation with lone wolf if you have the talent and I’d argue its even better than BM/SV because pet isnt somewhere else aoe rooted cced etc.
Instead of freedom, we get fortitude of the bear. It isnt master’s call and isnt ideal, but at least its something.
I 100% agree about roar of sacrifice though.
If only roar of sacrifice would work like “territorial instints”, a random pet comes to cast ROS on us, that’d be great.
Also if we could choose what to get “master’s call, primal rage or fortitude of the bear” that’d also be great. To prevent people from swapping the abilities constantly, you could set rules 1)You can only swap the abilities while they are off CD 2)Swapping the abilities would take X seconds to cast. 5 maybe.
Yea and you waste a talent point to get it effectively reducing your utility or power.
Instead of freedom, we get fortitude of the bear. It isnt master’s call and isnt ideal, but at least its something.
You are forgetting with a cunning pet you also get pathfinding which is 8% movement speed and anti heal which applies Mortal wounds which is like 25% healing reduction.
So just for getting bear a 20% defensive on use temp buff… you lose freedom, movement speed Sac and 25% healing reduction. Its not worth it, you are nerfing yourself.
Lone wolf basically needs sac and anti heal to even be close to going with a pet.
Replace withering fire.
Put hunter modifiers in place of bell tolls. (Black arrow does its function without taking it).
Swap bleak arrows proc chance for bm and marks.
Buff crows damage for marks.
Replace the choice node against hounds with more hunter modifiers.
You accomplish the purpose of dark ranger with this. More kill shot damage. More kill shot procs. Kill shots are shadow. You’ve got cool animations. If withering fire is something like +10% damage against targets with the black arrow dot, maybe getting to benefit from trick shots, and you have significant modifiers elsewhere in the tree, marks is back where it was damage wise before the change, but with the function of new black arrow.
Too much potential value is tied to withering fire, and withering fire is too random for it to be fair. You have to start there.
2 Likes
I just wanted to suggest a change to Bleak Powder for Marksmanship:
Bleak Powder
Casting Multi-Shot while your target is afflicted by Black Arrow ignites the residual powder, causing an explosion that deals [250% of attack power] damage to nearby enemies, and consuming Black Arrow from your primary target.
If you spread around Black Arrow this would leave room for some optimized play where you could still theoretically get a few explosions off in a small window by multi-shotting enemies still afflicted with Black Arrow.