Marksmanship struggles with basic class design

Classes Hunter
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With SL launch looming on the horizon - there’s no hope for any meaningful changes to the spec design/mechanics/interactions. But anyways, I think I’d just drop several highlights on glaring issues of MM spec:

  • Trueshot - still a lackluster ability, now that Master Marksman doesn’t give us free Arcane/Multi-shots - we’re drying up on Focus in seconds and have to cast lame and barely damaging Steady Shots during our “burst” window.
  • Aimed Shot - still boggles my mind that a core ability in a kit of MM hunters has so many restrictions: you need to be stationary, long cast time of 2.5s, it suffers pushback from damage, it’s a primer for our core mechanic (Precise shots), chugs a third of hunter’s resource bar, and most of all - it has a bloody cooldown.
  • Rapid Fire - as of prepatch it’s damage is pretty nutty when loaded with 5-6 related azerite traits, but once you remove them - it’s a worse Aimed Shot with 20s cooldown. Majority of hunter community disliked this skill since it’s inception, but Blizzard doubled down on it with no intention of making it an actually enjoyable skill. The skill is extremely bland, as a damaging cooldown - it doesn’t deal alot of damage to be called one, as a resource recuperating ability - it generates a miniscule 7 focus over 2 seconds. The only reason to use it is to fill the GAPING hole that is the wait time for AiS recharge. And for whatever reason - the cooldown is NOT affected by haste!
  • Chimera Shot - introduced as a “two-target cleave option” it got promptly nerfed - it’s main damage was reduced and secondary projectile was nerfed by 50% on top, due to interaction with a legendary item that skyrocketed MM hunter’s dps in a 3+ target scenario, wich was understandable. Now the mentioned legendary was completely reworked and doesn’t interact with Chimera Shot at all, yet the damage nerf to secondary projectile still remains making it worthless as an option in general.
  • Precise Shots - our core mechanic of empowering our Arcane/Multi Shots, prior to pre-patch it worked fluidly with our burst due to Master Marksman giving us one free Arcane/Multi every time we cast AiS. Now that interaction is gone and so is fluidity, the core mechanic of the class is a dps loss due to higher focus costs and lower focus gains.
  • Severe downtime in rotation - it still remains, as you wait for your AiS to come off cooldown - your dps drops lower and lower, because your only dps-enabling ability is bound not only by a heavy resouce cost, but also a hefty cooldown. You end up standing like a bufoon shooting Steady and Arcane shots back to back, to keep a balanced 50 focus for an upcoming AiS that will flatline your falling dps meter for a few seconds, only for you to return to boring rotation of barely damaging abilities. This is the main reason I like to run L’n’L - those random procs of recharged, free and instant AiS are sublime.

I’m almost sure that this post will do absolutely nothing, since the beta feedback thread is filled to the brim with way more elaborate comments on issues and suggestions of fixing them. But every time I read new patch notes - I’m disappointed, prompting me to write this thread in frustration.

6 Likes
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At least you get to do something. Several specs have actual downtime where they can do NOTHING. BM Hunter is an example.

I do agree that the Aimed Shot focus is a pain. That is why I don’t usually run MM. BM is my favorite as it is all instant and ranged.

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I’m glad to see it isn’t just me on the issues you’ve pointed out on Trueshot Aura. It’s unfortunate, especially when losing ESSENCES at release, we don’t really have a major CD.

1 Like
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I don’t think there’s as much wrong with Aimed Shot as you say there is. Firstly, outside of a few exceptions in WoW’s history, it has usually been an immobile casted ability. MM is kind of meant to be a more immobile sniper than the other Hunter specs. Secondly, having a cooldown on it ensures that you aren’t casting it all the time. This sounds like a bad thing, but the fact that it’s an immobile cast actually means you really don’t want to be having to cast it all the time to maximise DPS. Now, I’m sure you might say “well it should have neither a cooldown nor a movement penalty”, but then you get to a situation where there is minimal variety in the core toolkit.

Rapid Fire does need a buff, that’s true, but I don’t think that means it’s a fundamentally flawed ability as much as some people around here like to say it is. Once again, MM has trouble having a varied toolkit when it’s restricted to primarily physical damage. You don’t want to be cutting abilities left and right. I think it actually makes a lot of sense to have an expert marksman be able to alternate between a fast rate of fire and lining up well-aimed shots. with Rapid Fire I think they should double the focus regeneration, increase it’s damage output, and give it a hasted cooldown.

The single biggest issue with Marksmanship right now is the focus economy; especially during Trueshot. Basically, they retuned Marksmanship’s focus efficiency around a talent that no longer exists (BFA Master Marksman). This makes Trueshot really weak as a major cooldown. They have partially addressed this by making Trueshot increase your focus regeneration but I don’t know how effective this change is. They should probably just make Precise Shots 1 charge + baking in the original Master Marksmanship effect.

6 Likes
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I just tried out Marksmanship on the beta. The Trueshot change is actually a pretty massive improvement, but it still feels a bit odd to neglect Precise Shots so much during Trueshot. It feels like now the GCD is a much more limiting factor than the focus costs so they should consider making Trueshot reduce our GCD.

I think they should revert the focus cost increases to Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot to 15 and 30 respectively on top of this change but I’m not so sure that they need to bring back Master Marksman’s original form. Now I think the biggest issue with the core gameplay of the spec is the filler time when both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire are on CD. I think to alleviate this they should do two things:

  1. Put Rapid Fire on a hasted CD so it’s up more often
  2. Swap the positions of Careful Aim and Chimera Shot on the talent tree and revert Chimera Shot to being a separate instant cast cleave spell on a cooldown.

This way you would gain an additional ability on the level 25 tier no matter what. I think this would be a quality of life increase for a few reasons. Firstly, you no longer have to work around whether or not you’re getting an extra button from that tier. Secondly, it means you will always have an extra active ability which improves the variety of the baseline spec and alleviates that “filler time” I talked about. It also means you don’t have such a powerful single target talent (Careful Aim) competing with two AoE options. They should uncap Barrage and therefore you would have 3 multitarget active abilities on one tier: one for two-target cleave, one for spread AoE, and one for clumped AoE.

2 Likes
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Can I ask you a favour? I’ve no access to BETA, so I’d like to ask you to try out the “-50% focus cost during Trueshot” legendary and if the old AiS>Arcane>AiS>Arcane rotation works as fluidly as it did with old “Marster Marksman” talent? I hear everyone saying that the best simming are the AiS firing off a Serpent sting and reduced cooldown on aspects and trueshot legendaries, but I really miss the old rotation and don’t wanna waste two weeks for a potentially garbage leggo at the very start.

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RapidFire feels a lot better with Surging Shots legendary. There is a nice feedback loop with Streamline, Lethal Shots, and Lock and Load with the Surging Shots legendary. You reset RapidFire often and it feeds your focus for Aimed Shot reducing the use of Steady Shot.

I not sure it will be competitive for damage, but it feels better than the other options imho.

What feels bad to me is Kill Shot. Arcane Shot with Precise Shots is practically the same damage as Kill Shot. Plus with the cool down I’m often only getting in one Kill Shot per target even some bosses in mythic+. Feels like a waste.

3 Likes
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Mostly agree with what you’ve written in your post.

AiS charges and cooldown needs to be thrown into the bin ASAP, hurting the flow of the spec.

Actually throw the entire BFA MM model into the bin, terribly bad design. Constantly trips over itself.

1 Like
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yea i tried it out. if you use that legendary atm you basically just aimed and arcane spam and never have any focus problems during trueshot.

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Many thanks friend! Will have to keep a close eye on patches now, Blizzard like to nerf things into the ground pre-release.

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Honestly, at that point, just make it haste. Heck, make it haste now. Like, it’s reducing cooldowns, speeding up cast times, and improving passive focus regen (and active, but that’s to offset the lack of cast speed hasting on Steady and RF) right now. If it also reduces the GCD, that’s basically exactly haste, except it isn’t called haste, and the difference in magnitude of the effects throws everything off.

Like, half the issue with Trueshot is how much of a bonus it grants to CDR compared the hasting. The actual effects of Trueshot as of now are:

  • Reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 70.59% (1/3.4)
  • Reduces the cooldown of Aimed Shot by 69.23% (1/3.25)
  • Reduces the cast time of Aimed Shot by 50%
  • Increases passive focus regen by 50% (base 5/s → 7.5/s)
  • Increases active focus regen by 50%*
*caveat: if this would result in decimal focus, I’m told it now gives you that percentage chance of gaining 1 additional focus. For example, Rapid Fire generates 1 focus per arrow. 50% increase means 1.5 per arrow, which actually means, per arrow, 50% chance of 1 focus and 50% chance of 2 focus.

The problem is that these are wildly different in effect. It does nothing for the cast time of RF or Steady Shot or the GCD. The increase to passive focus regen is equivalent to +50% haste, and the increase to active regen is sorta the same (it increases focus per time spent on the ability by 50%, like 50% haste would, but comes in larger chunks). The reduction in AiS cast time, however, is equivalent to +100% haste. The reduction in AiS cooldown is equivalent to +225% haste. RF’s would be equivalent to +240% haste, if RF’s CD were hasted.

If they instead just made it provide a flat 40 or 50% haste, while also making RF’s cooldown scale with haste for the duration (or period, honestly) and cut its CD by say 50% for the duration, we’d be in a good spot. 50% haste means you get in 22.5 seconds of DPS within that 15s period, and the bonuses to RF’s CD reduces dependency on Steady Shot for the duration as well. In addition, since the flat haste affects everything equally (except RF’s CD), it means that anything worth casting outside of Trueshot is worth casting inside it.

You no longer have to ignore Precise Shots, because you no longer have an absolute glut of Aimed Shot charges. Arcane, Steady, and RF no longer feel terrible to cast, because they don’t take forever to cast (like, seriously, baseline, even naked, Aimed Shot has a shorter cast time during Trueshot than Arcane Shot’s GCD!).

It also makes the cost-reduction legendary actually useful again. Like, before the Trueshot focus change, it was effectively mandatory, and since the change, it’s not particularly powerful.

That said, I’m also partial to another option that combines that with a suggestion of Danski’s. Make Trueshot give flat haste plus remove the cooldown on Aimed Shot for the duration (I know Danski wants to chuck the cooldown period, but even during Trueshot would be fairly effective).

:point_up:

Gimme back WoD or MoP MM, pretty please. Both were overwhelmingly better than what we have now. Heck, I’d even take 7.3 MM over the BfA iteration, and honestly I wasn’t that much of a fan of the Legion iteration.

1 Like
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Screenshot, Xaedys considered my idea !!!

Would you want the focus regen bonus kept with your haste version of TS? Honestly I see it working much better than what we have currently.

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Either way, tbh. It works even without it, because we’d have lightning quick Steady Shot and Rapid Fire casts. It would help it feel more like a CD with one, though. But that also risks devaluing the legendary, as it happening now.

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Yeah I’m kinda expecting an eagle talon rework.

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Oh, come now, it isn’t overpowered like SST was. Why would the devs even look at it? They clearly don’t care about underpowered legendaries.

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i havent had this much fun on my marks hunter since MoP.

IDK what you are talking about

5 Likes
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Fun with what aspect of MM, exactly? High damage and range?

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I’ve played MM since Vanilla and I find the current MM pretty fun and enjoyable to play. You can get into a DPS rotation rhythm very easily; I don’t have the same issues with Precise Shots and downtime that you do. We’re also in really good shape for SL.

1 Like
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hunting horde of course.

I always loved the mm rework in bfa, the aesthetics and abilities did it for me. Now that we do enough damage and got killshot back everything is clicking. You cant fully appreciate the hunter toolkit until you pvp out in the world and use it all.

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Each to their own I guess!

I think it’s the worst iteration of MM I’ve played in the history of the game :joy:

1 Like