Lack of shadowlands feedback

Classes Hunter
61

Or no, because that takes a clear portion of Fire’s mechanical identity and gives it to every spec.

The reason you use Fireball is specifically because other specs don’t generally have a reason to use it. Being Mages, they should obviously have some base proficiency in all their schools, and using the main nuke/filler as the “base proficiency” means that other specs don’t have off-school spells as part of their moment to moment kit.

You specced Frost, and got spell locked out of the Frost school? Use Fireball or Arcane Blast to fill until you can get back to Frostbolt. It’s clearly suboptimal and you wouldn’t use those spells normally but when you have literally nothing else you can do, they are nice to have.

That’s Steady Shot for BM. BW/KC/BS/CS/etc are on CD, not enough Focus to use Cobra Shot and still use the next KC on CD, so you use 1 Steady Shot to fill the GCD that would otherwise be empty. Arcane Shot is even more niche, you would only use it when you need to proc an Arcane damage effect, if your target has extremely high armor such that Cobra Shot does worse damage, etc.

For SV, it’s even more niche, maybe swapping to ranged to DPS down a caster add you can’t safely Harpoon to, maybe a flying enemy that stays too high to be in melee range, and you swap to a bow and plink away rather than standing there doing nothing but SrS and Wildfire.

62

Msv is played as an alt for $hits and giggles in most cases,devs know they have screwed up but they will never admit it.

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63

I don’t know if that’s true. It possible they were concerned that too many people were playing hunter, and they wanted to reduce the percentage of players. I don’t think they realized a lot of those hunters would quit though. They really should have just created a new ranged, or semi-ranged, physical DPS class if that was a concern.

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The Ranger class has been sitting there since before wow as a melee and ranged class that could have easily satisfied a lot of players without pissing anyone off in terms of spec deletion.

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65

Fire Blast that procs Ignite, Hot Streak, and always crits is not the same as the equivalent of an oGCD skill that can buff a main rotation’s spell every 20 seconds. The only thing Fire “loses” is exclusive ownership of a spell that can be cast while other spells are being cast, and that’s a far cry from Fire’s identity.

The reason you use Fireball is specifically because other specs don’t generally have a reason to use it.

Which is something I consider wasteful. As I said, I’m not a fan of that idea at all.

That’s Steady Shot for BM. BW/KC/BS/CS/etc are on CD, not enough Focus to use Cobra Shot and still use the next KC on CD, so you use 1 Steady Shot to fill the GCD that would otherwise be empty.

Steady Shot in this context is still serving a purpose (resource generation), even if it may not come up often. That’s very different from “I didn’t pay attention to mechanics and got spell-locked”.

Arcane Shot is even more niche, you would only use it when you need to proc an Arcane damage effect, if your target has extremely high armor such that Cobra Shot does worse damage, etc.

I’ll grant you this one, though I don’t think this would have merit unless you bring in bosses that have “immune to physical damage” phases. Even then, it’d suck to have your damage balanced around those circumstances.

It is admittedly tough to come up with stuff for Arcane Shot. The first thing that came to mind was turn it into a laser pointer for BM (increases pet damage or crit rate for a short time) and act as an Expose Weakness effect for Survival. Then I realized that the former has overlap with Frenzy (even if it would probably be a challenge to make sure both are active on your pet), and both require giving it a cooldown or limiting its use somehow (itself a problem because we then have to explain why MM can spam it but BM and SV can’t).

For SV, it’s even more niche, maybe swapping to ranged to DPS down a caster add you can’t safely Harpoon to, maybe a flying enemy that stays too high to be in melee range, and you swap to a bow and plink away rather than standing there doing nothing but SrS and Wildfire.

I’d rather see SV’s sidearm put to use over encouraging weapon-swap macros.

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If they are using it rotationally, it is taking away from Fire’s identity, in the same way that it would be taking away from BM’s identity if Kill Command had a use for each spec (it’s usage as a generator by SV is easily one of the most common complaints about the spec, because it makes the spec feel like BM in melee clothing). Similar to if Howling Blast had a rotational purpose for all 3 DK specs, or Mind Flay was used rotationally by all 3 priest specs, or if Mortal Strike had a rotational use for all 3 warrior specs.

There are abilities that are used by all specs for a given class, but they are generally utility abilities, or ones without a clear association with a given spec. For example, Judgement for paladins, or Sap for rogues, or Victory Rush for warriors.

When you have a trio of rotational abilities shared between all 3 specs, the available room for differentiating those specs drops dramatically.

Steady Shot only generates resources for MM. It’s purely a GCD filler for BM.

Or we could abandon this silly notion that every single damaging ability in your spell book needs to have a use case in your rotation. Just because you have an ability doesn’t mean you need to be regularly (or ever) using it.

1 Like
67

It only generates resources for MM.

Arcane Shot and Steady Shot first appear during the 1-10 experience. Arcane Shot costs 30 Focus, and Steady Shot generates none. There are Rank 2s of both shots at higher levels, but those are MM only.

This is a thing in Torghast at least. There is an anima power that procs on arcane damage to oneshot the enemy by turning them into furniture permanently. There is also precedent for spell school requirements - Frost damage is required on Viscidus in AQ40, Ragnaros was (is?) immune to Fire damage entirely, and I think there may be a few others (though I will concede that this hasn’t really been a thing in a while).

But why? MM gets a better Arcane Shot than the two other specs. BM gets a better Call Pet than the two other specs. SV gets (theoretically) a better melee toolkit (in practice, it gets some weird amalgamation of a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really have any relation to one another, but that’s a whole different ball of wax).

Why is it a problem for one specialization to…specialize in a subset of abilities, and do them better than the other specs?

I’d rather see SV have 2h/ranged/DW options and be 100% player choice. It can be easily done with less than 10 changes to Survival based on what SV has on the Shadowlands beta right now.

To add, part of having a broader toolkit is leaving room to grow within your character. The differentiating factor between a good player and a great player isn’t performing the basic rotation a little bit better, it’s finding those edge cases where you can use situational abilities, and keeping up the basic rotation at the same time.

2 Likes
69

I’ve done the same. I’m not going to say I didn’t DABBLE in MSV. It’s a lot of the other community that will never admit to the devs’ screwing up.

To get brutal with the real talk, nobody really wants SV to be the best, or to be good. Nobody is even really talking about how good SV is. Who’s going to give up their Paladin, DK, DH, and Monk(hint: hero classes) to go SV all the way? Who are the true Stukovian SV’s anyway? As I want others to know, I and the others were Stukovs of Marks. We stayed with Marks “all the way” when it was too easy to go BM, RR, or QQ altogether.

70

Realistically, it only takes 2: remove or baseline Mongoose Bite (commonly asked for) or Tip of the Spear, and in its place put a talent that substantially increases Arcane Shot’s damage (however much is necessary to balance that talent with a ranged rotation using Arcane Shot as the filler against the other two remaining talents with a melee rotation using Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite as a filler). Bam, done. Everything else already works. Kill Command, Serpent Sting, and Wildfire Bomb are already ranged abilities, and all of the other talent tiers already have ranged options.

Carve/Butchery would still be PBAoE, but there’s precedent for that amongst ranged DPS (Arcane Explosion). If necessary, however, all they’d really need to do is add Multi-Shot as a baseline ability, and give BM and/or MM rank 2’s of it that alter it as needed for that spec (ex .reducing its focus cost and increasing its damage for MM). The new talent could then also affect Multi-Shot. And maybe add Concussive Shot as a baseline ability alongside (or instead of) Wing Clip.

So 2 changes, and maybe up to 4 depending on whether we also need to change Multi-Shot and Concussive Shot. It’s really simple to get there, though.

71

So I just posted this over in the Beta forums:

This is my best idea for how to improve Survival.

3 Likes
72

Ok, you went a bit more thoroughly about it than I did, but ya, that’s basically exactly what I had in mind. Super simple changes, and it would instantly open up a viable ranged alternative. That said, I still think it’d be ideal if there was a specific talent to bonus Arcane Shot, so the hunter can intentionally decide to spec into a ranged playstyle.

Without that, the ranged playstyle is simply a false promise, because Arcane Shot deals a bit over 14% less damage (assuming the normal 30% boss armor), for the same focus cost, as Raptor Strike. If there isn’t something to specifically bonus it for SV, Arcane Shot simply cannot viably compete as a legitimate build option.

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Or they can just change the aura buff for SV to buff Arcane Shot by a bit over 14%.

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They use the aura buff to tune specs, not to tune abilities against each other. That’s what the individual ability coefficients are for.

That said, they could simply tune Raptor Strike down to 85% AP, but that would likely require re-tuning all of the talents and such.

Maybe an SV-only Rank 2 for Arcane Shot that increases its damage by 16.7%, which would push it up to 70% AP, dead equal with Raptor Strike against a boss target. That’d most likely be the easiest solution.

Also might be worth noting in your proposal that moving Multi-Shot baseline would require a Rank 2 for MM that reduces the focus cost by 25, increases the damage by 242%, and increases its AoE range by 2 yards, as Multi-Shot for BM and MM are currently two entirely different abilities. SV would probably need a rank 2 to increase the damage as well, since BM’s Multi-Shot (which I assume would be the base, since it’s the highest cost and lowest damage, and rank-ups can’t make an ability worse) deals only ~11% of AP as damage, while Carve deals 28% AP. Carve has a CD, but it also reduces Wildfire Bomb’s CD and costs a bit less focus (40 vs 35), so Multi-Shot would probably need to do damage somewhere in that ballpark in order to be useful for RSV.

75

don’t see current blizz doing anything like this. they are too obsessed with simplification these days and having 2 specs in one would just confuse new players.

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I’d like to give Zera on youtube a shoutout. This guy has excellent ideas for MM’s talents.

MM SL Hunter Feedback

@adreaver Thoughts?

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77

Bm hunter is filling that role just fine as “semi-ranged” physical dps.Msv was unneeded and unwanted change.Also their grand plan to bake rsv into marksman spec via talents did not work.

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78

Of course it didn’t work because there was no way to do it without pissing off the MM hunters at the same time they did the RSV hunters when they deleted RSV.

MM mains don’t want MM to be watered down to make room for RSV and RSV mains don’t want to be a watered down version of RSV to be able to fit in MM.

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79

Yup. :slightly_frowning_face:

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Made a post in General Discussion… probably a bad idea, but oh well.

Or it will just get ignored, as our response to feedback as been.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/lack-of-hunter-feedback-response-sl/586546

81

pretty sad… feedback for months with 0 response then a spit in the face during a interview knowing well the information spoken on was false

5 Likes