Improvements to Dark Ranger

In Development The War Within Patch 11.0.7 PTR
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Hello, please consider the following suggestions for the new dark ranger hero tree.

  1. Bell tolls. This talent is unnecessary. Black arrow is already coded to perform the function of this talent without taking the talent. This should be replaced with hunter spell modifiers.
  2. Hounds/Soul Drinker node. Hounds is a great talent for BM, but doesn’t really do much for MM. Soul drinker is not a good talent for either. Replace soul drinker with something that is as marks-centric as hounds is BM-centric.
  3. Bleak arrows. The values for BM and marks should be swapped. BM already procs black arrow more, because each Kill Command cast is actually two KCs, and BM gets to cast kill command substantially more often than marks gets to cast aimed/rf. BM also gets proc/global locked where marks is currently starving for damage.
  4. Banshee’s mark/crows. Again, this talent just benefits BM substantially more than marks. Every cast of BA for BM gets to cleave, which makes this proc more on everything. BM gets to cast BA more anyway. Do something to normalize this talent between the specs.
  5. Withering Fire. Speaking from a PvP perspective here, this talent very much needs to be nerfed by 75%+ in PvP, and given a choice node. The base damage of aimed shot, rapid fire, and black arrow being high enough for the spec to work will reinstate random oneshot conditions. Conversely, base damage will have to be kept too low for the spec to be palatable in order to avoid these oneshot conditions. The talent is simply too extreme and too random to balance in rated PvP, and the sooner a path is made around it, the sooner the spec can be fairly tuned for PvP. You can’t just nerf the talent without giving it a choice node, because the talent uses your BA procs for you, and there will be a point at which it’s better to just not complete the hero tree so that you can utilize unnerfed BA procs in trueshot.
  6. Hunter’s Prey. This is less of a suggestion than a simple acknowledgement of fact. This talent makes all of BM’s black arrow procs cleave to 5 targets. This mechanic existing makes everything that modifies black arrow or proc off of black arrow 5x more effective for BM than marks. This compounds the already stark difference in hounds, crows, and bleak arrow gaps between the specs. You’re going to have to way overbuff MM talents on the tree just to catch it up to BM in lieu of this specific mechanic.
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This is the end result of no Hunter Devs and the work being assigned to people who have never played a Hunter in game and only have a list of abilities on a whiteboard and their feelings to work from.

1 Like
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Not sure why it posted on my bank alt.

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Another thing that I just remembered that I left out, but is also important as it pertains to hunter’s prey and dark ranger talents. The bell tolls’ function also inherently benefits BM a lot more than marks, because BM will passively be shooting black arrows with a full hunter’s prey buff for all but the very first black arrow when they’re utilizing it above 80 or below 20. Marks black arrows depend on the deathblow proc to take advantage of their spec tree killshot modifiers, which just aren’t consistently up over 80 and below 20 like hunter’s prey is.

A lot of the value for marks black arrow is also heavily weighted into + crit damage talents, and crit is a dead stat in PvP. The base damage of non crit black arrow is still way too close between bm and marks in that content type, for how much more often bm gets to cast it. Consider nerfing the +crit damage talent in PvP and further increasing the base damage of kill shot/black arrow for marks.

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Dark hounds and crows arent supposed to be centralized around either spec, it is apart of the theme of Dark Ranger. Therefore, they make sense for both MM and BM, otherwise why would you even have choice nodes each tree would be unique to each spec which is boring. They need all of the choice nodes in the hero trees to perform equally(to an extent) so that people can play they way they want.

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The way both talents work now is already profoundly centralized around BM. Hounds get an additional chance to proc off of dire beast, which BM gets to cast passively with kill command as well as on its own rotationally. Hounds benefit from all of the +pet damage modifiers in the bm tree and bm mastery. Bm also passively cleaves black arrow on all of its casts, which passively summons more hounds and crows on everything.