(looks like they can get in on the merit of dps alone in p4 if nothing changes)
Absolutely at this rate.
Perhaps Truestrike Aura would simply grant ‘melee attack power’ only and I could get behind the idea.
I wouldn’t be thrilled with this since weaving hunters would be a little SOL in this case, but I would probably accept just the melee Attack Power if that’s what ends up happening. Maybe Truestrike doesn’t give the doubled ranged attack power, and that’s reserved for MM hunters?
I do think they could bake the Ferocious Inspiration buff from TBC into Beast Mastery rune (3% party damage buff after a pet crit)
I totally neglected to respond to this, I’m sorry!
Beast Mastery has been gutted so much since P1 that I’d be happy for a buff to happen to it. I would worry a little that the Beast Mastery rune would become obligatory if the 3% damage buff was added, becoming like Heart of the Lion was before it became baseline. I’m pretty firmly in the camp of “Let people have a real choice between pets or no pets” if Lone Wolf is going to meaningfully exist.
[The] Serpent Striker effect into Wyvern Strike (target takes x% additional Nature damage from all sources) potentially based on a % of the hunter’s agility (since they made Expose Weakness a rune and took away the party/raid buff Survival got in TBC).
The % Nature damage buff on Wyvern Strike is a good idea. They’d be something that Balance Druids and Rogues would definitely want in their groups if that were the case. I feel like Wyvern Strike definitely lacks something in its current PTR form. I like the idea of that middle column of runes being heavily based on the Hunter’s agility. The survival tree has a 15% bonus to Agility, which combines with Heart of the Lion to crank up your Agi stat. I’d love it if runes played into that a little (Like Expose Weakness does)
I somehow feel that the Wyvern Strike hunter would end up in the melee windfury group and would take the Truestrike helm rune (so give both the melee attack power buff and the nature damage buff) and push BM hunters out of raiding entirely (short of the Ferocious Inspiration buff since Wyvern Strike would not be able to make use of Beast Mastery so long as it competes with Chimera Shot).
Though in your rune rearrangements they would actually be able to provide all 3 buffs effectively killing BM (any remaining hunter slots would go to MM hunters).
I somehow feel that the Wyvern Strike hunter would end up in the melee windfury group and would take the Truestrike helm rune (so give both the melee attack power buff and the nature damage buff) and push BM hunters out of raiding entirely (short of the Ferocious Inspiration buff since Wyvern Strike would not be able to make use of Beast Mastery so long as it competes with Chimera Shot).
That’s a good point.
In my changes (I know they’re dense) I reduce the cooldown of Flanking Strike to 12 sec at base and have critical strikes of you and your pet reduce the remaining cooldown by 1 sec. In theory, you just need 3 critical strikes in 10 sec between you and your pet to keep Flanking Strike rolling.
Catlike Reflexes cuts Flanking Strike’s CD in half to 6 seconds. Clearly this is a personal DPS increase, but my hope is that BM players would be able to flex between Catlike Reflexes and Truestrike and not feel horrible about it. BM hunters get to double dip in the attack power because they offer their pet the extra melee Attack Power too, they just take longer to ramp up to 5 stacks of Flanking Strike than before.
Though in your rune rearrangements they would actually be able to provide all 3 buffs effectively killing BM (any remaining hunter slots would go to MM hunters).
I actually hesitated to put a new group buff onto an ability for the exact reason you’re highlighting. As soon as you add one (Trueshot being a great example) you’re expected to bring it. I do think that in your specific scenario though you could bring MM or BM hunters just fine after you get your Wyvern Strike debuff Hunter. Ideally, all three specs would be about even in damage.
To be fair: carve already hits with both weapons if you’re dual wielding… it either needs to be buffed to 75% to be on par with other abilities, buff single target damage to 90% and leave the 65% to all mobs in front of you, or just get rid of it lol. I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting giving it an interaction with wyvern strike, like spreading the dot, but even wyvern strike is a subpar skill and needs to be given a unique buff/debuff or more damage.
To be fair: carve already hits with both weapons if you’re dual wielding… it either needs to be buffed to 75% to be on par with other abilities, buff single target damage to 90% and leave the 65% to all mobs in front of you, or just get rid of it lol. I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting giving it an interaction with wyvern strike, like spreading the dot, but even wyvern strike is a subpar skill and needs to be given a unique buff/debuff or more damage.
True! I noticed this about a month ago. I find it weird that it doesn’t get mentioned anywhere in the tooltip, but I’m glad it works that way.
I’d be pretty on-board with buffs to Carve in basically any way. It’s a cool ability (and I have plans to grab some fun on-hit weapons in P4 to use it with) but definitely not a heavy hitter. I’m hoping that getting a damage boost from Flanking Strike (+50%) and the crit buff from Savage Strikes (Survival Talent) would help with that.
My idea with Carve is to have it be part of a 4-ability rotation in melee: Raptor Strike (6 sec cd) Mongoose Bite (5 sec cd) Flanking Strike or Wyvern Strike (6-12 sec cd, maybe lower for FS depending on crits) and Carve (6 sec cd). Admittedly, Carve is definitely the most “filler” of those four options.
Should try and condense this down to it’s most important elements. Not sure if the devs are going to be able to put the time in for a full rework and restructure like this. We need to wait and see what happens on the PTR when they finally get to hunter and it’s actually playable, but when that happens we should look at what the devs have done and the direction they’re going in and help with that.
Something that bothers me about this is: why on earth do we accept the fact that we need to swap a rune in order to some AOE dmg? That’s ridiculous. Carve is such a she/it ability, we might as well just make it baseline for every hunter. Same goes for Explosive Shot. Just make those baseline. It’s not like a MM is going to sneak an explosive shot into his rotation when chimera shot is available… It’s just silly.
Also, if you make the CD of Wyvern Strike 6 seconds, then the whole ranged weaving with chimera just feels… dumb… I would then change the interaction that chimera shot has with Wyvern Sting. Maybe make it so that a target that has wyvern poison on it will make it so that chimera shot has a 100% crit chance? or maybe it increases you and your party’s melee crit by 5% for 10 seconds after hitting a wyvern poisoned target with chimera shot? This would at least get you invited to raid…
I don’t think you’ve tested the details of some of your suggestions. Flanking strike 6 sec CD with a 1 second reduction in CD for every crit of you AND your pet? Bro, I had 35% crit chance in raid today WITHOUT Savage Strikes. That Flanking Strike will constantly be up. It’ll be dumb. I’d keep the CD at least like 20 seconds if you want to include that mechanics.
Forcing MM Hunters to choose between TSA and LnL completely F***s their rotation… DELETE.
I’d rather they just go all the way and introduce harpoon and disengage already. Now that warriors have Deathgrip, we’re playing retail. That’s the end of the debate: Hunters need disengage.
I did test the details; Flanking Strike being up that often if you opt into Catlike Reflexes was the point. Playing a Flanking Strike build assumes that you’re going full Beast Mastery, so you’ll have to choose between Truestrike Aura and Catlike. Are the numbers out of line? Maybe, but part of the reason I’m posting the ideas is to get feedback.
Why would MM Hunters NEED to take the Truestrike Aura Rune when they already have Trueshot Aura talent? They’re perfectly capable of taking their capstone talent and rolling Lock and Load just like they do now. Truestrike Aura is clearly (or I thought it was clearly?) there for melee hunters to be able to bring the buff to a melee group without bricking their talent setup.
Due to the way this version of Wyvern Strike’s sting damage is dealt, you deal a burst every time you hit Chimera Shot or Wyvern Sting.
So you’re incentivized to weave in and out as much as possible to re-trigger the effect as frequently as possible.
And that’s fair. I had seen the idea kicked around and thought it had some merit. I apologize for being a little accusatory in my last post, that was unkind of me. We’re all pulling for a more playable hunter class here, because what we have now aint it. I’m glad there are so many other people that are passionate about the class.
I think the easiest solution is probably just letting TSA be raid-wide, but then you run into the question of “Why isn’t every group buff raid-wide too?”
I did see you mention in another post that you suspect they have changes in the pipe for Hunter (if I understood it correctly). I agree, I think they’re cooking something up.
I just think your post is a distraction away from a real solution. I’ll ask again, have you seen Bousted’s post from earlier?
Just trust me, it’s a better redesign. Go check for yourself. I don’t know the guy. He’s not in my guild. I got no dog in this fight. His design just looks really fun to play. Yours doesn’t.
And I think if Blizzard’s 3.5 remaining SoD devs get on here and a see a billion different ideas thrown around, who the F knows what they’re going to do. I think the hunter player base needs to get behind a single idea to make it clear to them what we want. Doubling talents into runes smacks of poor game design.
Here you go:
The one thing that Bousted’s post is missing, which you addressed also is: What is going to be the buff that Survival/BM hunters bring?
You can’t have all the specs bring the same buff, coz then people will only accept whichever one of the specs does the most dps. “Want to play BM? F you, Survival does 200 dps more, we want you go to survival.”
I think we’re lucky with BM, because we can simply steal from TBC. I think Ferocious Inspiration can be implemented pretty easily.
For Survival Hunter I think you have 2 choices:
Give them the upgraded version of Hunter’s mark, which gives both ranged AND melee attack power, or…
Give them the druid’s 3% party-wide crit. They already have that talent, “Killer Instinct”. Just make it party-wide. I would make sure this doesn’t stack with the druid buff. This would take some pressure off the need to bring feral druids, especially for alliance (with no shamans for WF totem).
You didn’t “ask” the first time, this is what you said:
That, my friend, was an order. I don’t appreciate being told what to do by random strangers I don’t know. I don’t think you intended it this way, but you come across pretty aggressive in your posts and I feel defensive and want to argue because of it instinctively. I bring this up because you have good ideas and I generally agree with you, but the way you approached me by attacking my ideas with comments like this:
REALLY doesn’t encourage me to want to agree with you. You can take this feedback any way you want, but I wanted to point it out in as kind a way as I’m able in the hope that you take it genuinely. You’re hurting your (rather good) arguments by approaching people this way. I’m more than happy to amend my original post if you make a good argument (and you do!), but tearing down double-digit hours of work I put into this post is not a good way to convince me that I should change my mind or suggestions. We’re on the same side here friend.
On Topic
I totally agree. I indicate this at the beginning of the post, but I’ll reiterate it here: I don’t actually believe many of these changes are the best options going forward. I created these suggestions based on what already exists and would be easy to implement or adjust (from a coding perspective). Blizzard’s team is obviously stretched thin, and I wanted to suggest solutions that were actionable so that something happens. Bousted’s post is indeed excellent, and I like many of his ideas more than the ones I suggest here, but a good number of them are also entirely new and would require a lot more work on the coding and development side to apply.
Thank you for the link to Bousted’s post. I agree with what you mention a few times in that thread: that designing runes around a specific playstyle is really the way to do business here.
Overall, I like the idea of BM or Surv having their own unique buffs to bring to the party in the context of TSA being a raid wide effect. Slotting a ranged hunter into your melee groups for the buff feels awkward.
I spotted this idea when I was sifting through the different versions of the game, but never had something good for Survival. I really like the following suggestion though:
I’m very fond of this because it is both thematically relevant and already exists in the form of the Druid’s version of the ability, so it should be easy to port over.
I do have concern though for the Alliance side specifically. A Feral Druid is still necessary to bring WF to the melee group and would also have this 3% party-wide crit buff. A survival hunter wouldn’t be bringing anything new to that situation, and thus might fall into the situation you indicated earlier of “We want you to play x spec because [its better for the group]/[your spec doesn’t do anything for the group.]” I think we can agree that we’d like to avoid this.
Finally
Sincerely, thank you for making me aware of Bousted’s post. I hadn’t seen it before and there are great ideas over there. I do think the overall flavor of his changes fall along the lines of “This is the ideal if Blizz has the time and manpower”, where mine approach the it from “Blizz is stretched and has only the barest minimum time and energy to give each class.”
I plan to take a closer look today and amend my suggestions with the good ideas found there, but don’t be surprised if many things don’t change. We’re approaching the topic from two different viewpoints, and I think that the perspective offered by each is valuable.
Also, this guy is assuming that your intention was for your entire post to be implemented in it’s entirety. There’s only bits and pieces out of any of our posts that actually can or should be fully implemented. Your post has SOME of the best ideas that I’ve seen come out of the Hunter community on this topic.
That’s precisely my approach. I’m a big believer in scattered inspiration. Some ideas here are good, some ideas elsewhere are good. By all means, mash all the best ones together. I want the best result, not necessarily my specific suggestions.
Not sure if you saw my reply that got removed. I simply stated that you’re ideas were far more nuanced than some other ideas I’ve seen and that you clearly understand game design better than some people who were claiming that you don’t. Also, that you shouldn’t listen to someone who is telling you that you should stop posting so that this other unnamed post would have a better chance of being seen by the devs as opposed to letting the posts stand on their own merit. Especially when your post is just objectively better than any other hypothetical post I’ve seen.