Hunter Rework, My initial thoughts on MM

Classes Hunter
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Hey all!
Happy to see big changes coming through for the Hunter class as a whole!
As soon as I saw the changes I had to check them out in the beta.

For MM the playstyle seems largely the same with the exception of AoE. AoE received some love for sure and Mythic+ players will get a kick out of the big playstyle changes.

I’m a pvp player and will be talking about these changes from a pvp perspective.

The class tree is by far the most changed.

  • Bursting Shot and Quickload are now in the class tree.
  • Intimidation can now be cast without a pet and stun 2 nearby enemies with Territorial Instincts. There is also a talent that reduces the CD of Intim and Binding Shot, called Scrappy.
  • We got a greater dispel like shamans where our Tranq dispels 2 buffs which will be huge with the PvP talent Tranq Darts.
  • 2 charges of Survival of the Fittest + a talent that reduces its cooldown along with Counter Shot’s CD, called Lone Survivor.
  • We see more damage amp talents for Aimed Shot in the class tree as well.
  • Looks like we are going to be a spec that scales very well with crit with lots of crit synergy.
  • Steel Trap and Explosive Trap now share a choice node.
  • Emergency Salve talent. Feign Death and AotTurtle removing poison and diseases is pretty sweet.
  • There are talents now that benefit from playing without a pet.
  • MM may feel much faster when it comes to running speed, generally speaking.

Some things feel awkward in the class tree, however.

  • Binding Shot is locked behind talents that are not attractive for pvp
  • Bursting Shot and Quickload are too deep and seemingly not valuable enough to want to grab when there are other juicy talents.
  • Binding Shot still says stun but other tooltips mention that it now roots. I don’t mind this as we can use Intimidation with or without a pet. An on-demand root is good compared to tar trap, either way, I don’t mind it being a root with access to Intim.
  • Scatter Shot sharing a choice node with Bursting Shot. In most cases, Scatter Shot will be the go-to pick so it will be sad to see Bursting Shot go. Scatter Shot locked behind unattractive talents feels very awkward.
  • Kindling Flare looks to be the worst talent point spent in the entire game, imo.

Lets talk about the MM Tree.

  • First thing that stood out for me was the new Volley and the talent below it, Kill Zone. Kill Zone makes targets hit by volley take 8% increased damage and ignore LoS. Love to see it! Makes sense to consolidate Sentinal Owl into Volley, though I’m sure you can just walk right out of it. It is still cool to see it. Might give the pvp talent Ranger’s Finesse some play (I doubt it).
  • Being able to play with Surging Shots, Streamline and In The Rythm at the same time is such a good feeling. These are all great talents for Rapid Fire. Love to see it.
  • Eagletalon’s True Focus now casts an extra Arcane Shot when under Trueshot. To be honest, with all the Aimed Shot charges/resets, Kill Shot procs and Rapid Fire resets I doubt we’ll use much of Arcane Shot but I guess it’s better in a sense.
  • Wailing Arrow deals substantially lower damage than an Aimed Shot so its awkward to want to use it. In AoE I would rather still use an Aimed Shot over Wailing Arrow but since after casting 3 Aimed Shots, Wailing Arrow replaces Aimed Shot, there will be no choice but to use Wailing Arrow in situations where you might not want to. Readiness giving you 2 charges of Aimed Shot and resetting Rapid fire may sound nice but we already have tons of resets on those abilities (If you go Dark Ranger)
  • AoE vs ST is much more defined now.

Things in the MM Tree that feel awkward.

  • Legacy of The Windrunners is basically a visual bump now. Damage and synergy is lackluster.
  • ABSOLUTELY ZERO UTILITY IN THE ENTIRE TREE. (Kill Zone doesn’t count as you will always want to use Volley to burst)
  • Lonewolf being the only talent that pushes you into playing without a pet and it’s now nerfed to 5%. Class tree has 2 talents that adds some Lonewolf flavor but there should be more in the spec tree.
  • No real gameplay changes. Everything feels and looks the same with the exception of Explosive Shot visual, an extra arcane shot being shot out during Trueshot and Kill Shot doing Truck loads of damage.

Overall - I’m happy to see some changes come through like being faster and using our stun without a pet. I also like the rapid fire talents being available and not be stuck behind choice nodes.
However, losing bursting shot and having to spend talent points on either misdirection or a dispel perk to gain access to Binding Shot or Scatter Shot feels horrid. Being able to stun without a pet is a huge QoL change but you still need a pet for Roar of Sacrifice so IDK, its not really a win.
I wish we had more utility for group and solo play.
2 charges of a 30% DR for 8s is better than 1 charge but damn, I’ll admit, I can think of better ideas for defensives.
I enjoy the idea of being a spec that plays around Crit. Love me huge numbers!
I give these changes a 6 out of 10.

What do you guys think of the new MM changes?

2 Likes
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Apparently the intimidation thing isn’t intended and is just added to test the talent
intiimidate won’t be useable without a pet and they don’t have plans to allow it, from a dev note on the patch notes.

Personally would like to see lone wolf baseline- tuned to be equal to using a pet or not (dont let it affect aoe) And let lone wolf hunters use pet utility with a dire beast. Everyone is happy that way

2 Likes
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I just read it, thanks for the heads up!
From the wording it seems like when you cast intimidation without a pet it will summon the pet to stun. I’m ok with this change but it costing a talent point, not a fan lol

4

I think the talent is more for the aoe stun portion
but it feels like a waste of a talent slot when we have binding shot already (Which got reverted back to a stun)

Stuning 3 people versus all of the trash pack seems very… meh?

1 Like
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That’s not exactly how I interpreted the note, but I could be wrong. I understood that you could use press intimidation button even if you didn’t have a pet out, and it would summon a pet and stun the target (plus two more) in one global. Now your pet is out like normal, it doesn’t magically disappear back into the stable or something.

I guess we’ll find out more in the coming weeks.

2 Likes
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Ah i mistyped. I meant without a pet, but yeah apparently it summons your last summoned pet to do the stun, is what i’ve heard from those with beta

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Yea I agree, it’s more for the multi stun. If binding shot is reverted back to a stun then that makes the new intim talent less attractive.

Idk, seems like they wanted to throw out new talent choices and while they succeeded it’s not too exciting, imo More or less the same

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I do not main hunter, nor do I ever plan to main it, but I do have a couple thoughts from a “hunter alt” perspective. It may not be as insightful as the original post and I only did some surface level testing, but I did notice a couple things.

Wailing arrow definitely seems like it’s meant to be played with Dark Ranger, but there doesn’t seem to be enough shadow damage synergy yet.

Scatter shot being on a choice node with bursting shot is cool because you can combo binding with scatter now if you need to, and since scatter removing all dots can be bad in some situations, it’s good to have bursting as an alternative

There isn’t enough in the class tree to justify reducing lone wolf to 5% and moving it further down the spec tree.

Last, and this is certainly more debatable, I wasn’t seeing many big numbers on the test dummies in the way I was seeing them pop when testing melee classes. The damage was there but both hero trees give you lots of small numbers rather than feeling “Marksman-y”, so to speak. Are we headshotting or just making them bleed out?

4 Likes
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I still have a problem with them charging a talent point for Steady Shot to give focus when that is why MM has reduced focus regen over Bm/Sv.

Now it takes 3 talent points for Trueshot to become an acceptable Cooldown.

The damage just doesn’t seem to be there compared to BM/SV. Both the Class and MM trees are better though, class moreso than MM spec tree.

1 Like
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territorial instincts is 100% bugged in The War Within Pre-Patch and DOES NOT WORK AT ALL! Therefore you are wasting a talent even using it until Blizzard fixes this!
Why would you do that and release a “talent” that doesn’t work making us Hunters waste a precious talent point???

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Then just ignore it for now? Good things are worth the wait, even if it’s been 20 months ahah.