Hunters HATE 9.0 Hunter's Mark

Note: Very happy to say the 5% damage debuff has been removed on PTR, so things are looking good! Thanks to Blizzard for listening to our feedback.

Hunter’s Mark is unpruned in Shadowlands and Hunters on the beta forums provided consistent aggressive negative feedback for months. It is overwhelmingly disliked. This feedback has not received any response. Beta is ending and those forums will be shutdown soon, so here we are.

HM applies a 5% damage debuff, meaning Hunters will need to spend a GCD on every single primary target throughout the entire expansion and all single-target abilities will be tuned assuming HM is being used. Since it’s on the GCD, it cannot be macroed into other abilities-- you will need to press that button, every non-AE pull, for the next two years.

Here’s a blue quote from three weeks ago. It literally describes 9.0 Hunter’s Mark. This is why so many Hunters hate it. Can a dev explain why it doesn’t apply?

There’s a poll on the MMO-champion forums. Out of 251 Hunters, 208 want changes versus 34 that like it. That is a six to one ratio.

For reference, here’s what we’re talking about:

50 Likes

I wasn’t super opposed to the return of Hunter’s Mark, it was kind of a wondering out of all the abilities to unprune why THAT one, but meh. I could live with it.

But to later add a 20 second cooldown to it? Like, what?? No.

I originally wouldn’t have minded if they kept HM and removed the damage component, so it was a flavour ability, and had use in pvp, but now I’d rather just see it gone. Preferably forever.

7 Likes

As a PvE player I’d be fine with that but it’s super-useful in PvP so the widely preferred option in that poll is to remove the 5% damage debuff. That way PvPers don’t lose something they’re really looking forward to using and PvEers (is that a word? awkward!) aren’t forced to use it every pull for 2 years.

5 Likes

I absolutely hate Hunter Mark ability and I am very sad that I have to deal with it as a hunter in SL.

8 Likes

Personally I enjoy Hunter’s Mark. I just wish it could be something unique that Hunter’s bring to the group. The gcd and cd don’t bother me much.

4 Likes

There has been much feedback (mostly against HM or at least the damage component of it) on HM and at this stage I think blizz is just going to go with HM. That being said if there is another great pruning I guarantee, HM will be first on the chopping block.

1 Like

They definitely are. It’s going live like this. We may be able to get it changed for 9.1 if we keep providing overwhelming feedback here but I mean, I’ve been around since vanilla. I’m not holding my breath.

What do you enjoy about it? Genuinely curious.

1 Like

In practice I find that the gcd doest matter much. The majority of the time I’m pre casting it or the target will die quick enough it’s not worth the gcd anyway. I find many complaints overblown or over analyzed.

I’m a ranger fan so the idea of the cooldown resetting when you kill something is cool.

I enjoy the concept of focusing on specific target and feel it leads into class fantasy.

All in all I would rather the discussion be about making Hunter’s Mark something unique Hunter’s could bring to a group rather then taking it off the gcd or removing it.

1 Like

That’s not unexpected, 13% of Hunters like HM per the MMO-champ poll. And I guess it’s your lucky day.

2 opinions here:

  1. HM needs to go (except maybe in the form of a pvp stealth-tracking utility)
    –From an AOE standpoint, it adds 1% to your overall damage (assuming I’m thinking about it correctly). You can attack 5 targets; 1 of those targets you’ll hit for 105% damage. The other 4 remain at 100%. Averaged out, your damage on the group of targets goes up 1% (assuming all 5 targets die at exactly the same time. More than likely, you HM’d the focus target and it went down first. Since you’re probably not re-applying HM, you don’t even get the full benefit for the aoe pull). So why am I even using it?
    –If you’re in a single target/raid boss situation then you’re marking before the pull and, most likely, never thinking about it again. And if that’s the case, why does it even exist? Just give us the correct base level damage.
    –Add on to all that the fact that Hunters will be tuned assuming they’re always using HM and you’re going to end up with some under-tuned hunters, particularly in scenarios where it is unrealistic or impractical to use it as well as (probably) in aoe situations.:
  1. Since someone at Bliz clearly just wants to push this through in the face of the continuous and overwhelmingly one-sided feedback, how in the world does it Not meet the criteria (laid out by Bliz) to be taken off the GCD??

How is HM not on that list?? And I realize it isn’t a full GCD but still… And of course, if it were taken off the GCD, we’d just macro it to all of our abilities (even with the 20s cooldown) since our class is going to be tuned around that 5%. And at that point, again, why does it even exist (outside of a pvp-oriented utility for tracking stealth)

10 Likes

Yes exactly, that’s why the most popular choice is to remove the 5% damage so it would basically become a PvP ability. Hunters are excited about getting HM back for PvP. Don’t want to take that way from them.

I’d be perfectly fine taking it off the GCD, I’d just macro it into every ability. That’s the #2 most popular way to fix HM. But like you said, that’s stupid and the devs would never do it.

4 Likes

please blizz either get rid of hunters mark or take it off the gcd…good lord. how is this even still a debate!

8 Likes

I get why many players want it baseline for the utility. So…remove the damage component and it’s all good. Nothing more to it.

As a passive damage amp, it’s just a tedious and frankly a horrible design element.

11 Likes

In PvE have Hunter’s Mark be a long cooldown (2-3 minutes) that increases the entire group’s damage on the target for a period of time. That gives us back some group utility we lost by dumbing down our pet lust.

In PvP add a talent you can take that changes the functionality of Hunter’s Mark to have no cooldown, no damage increase, but has the stealth reveal component.

3 Likes

remove 5% damage. that’s literally all that needs to happen.

we don’t even want to cast it on that many things because it’s just not worth it, mobs need to be alive 15-20 seconds for it to be worth… which just so happens that’s the cooldown of the ability.
dumbing it down so people proxy use it “properly” instead of letting people just play the game and learn, and of which isn’t even a huge thing to learn.

it just comes down to 99.9% of hunters only using it on bosses and ignoring it otherwise as it feels A W F U L and unenjoyable to use, and thus ultimately just nerfing our overall damage by 5% for a terrible design choice… again… for the 100th time in 4 years, and going to continue to be not enjoyable for another 2 years making SIX YEARS of a ruined class rework that no one but some shaman playing @%I)@$@ wanted and doesn’t play hunter giving us 1.5 / 3 specs.

10 Likes

The damage boost it provides is negligible, so im only ever gonna use it on bosses. :woman_shrugging:t6:

3 Likes

Hunters HATE this one TRICK

12 Likes

If you hate this, then you’d die playing Survival. The whole spec is one global after another. It’s sluggish as hell and relies far too much on gear.

Pretty sure us pvp hunters don’t want it either. Rogues are just going to cloak before vanish…

Druids won’t be restealthing if they are ur kill target…

Like nothing else has stealth aside from out of combat hunter camo…

Literally no point in this iteration of hunters mark except to force another gcd o. Us slowing our burst down and swaps even more…

I said this from day one…anyone who thinks hunters mark is a buff doesn’t play hunter at a high enough level to matter

6 Likes