How many hunters would pick the following talent (or something like it) over Trick Shots (if it existed)?
Line of Fire - Passive
Aimed Shot hits all targets in a line from you toward your target, diving its damage evenly among all targets hit. Aimed Shot deals 25% additional damage per target hit, up to 5 additional targets.Abilities which work off Tricked Shots similarly function when Aimed Shot hits multiple targets.
Never. I hate the āin a lineā mechanic in all video games. It is incredibly unreliable and very unpredictable.
Also why are we having a damage-split and a damage-enhancement on one spell? Doesnāt it kind of cancel itself out? It would be simpler and better to just have Aimed Shot do itās full damage to all targets. Or like 50% to additional targets.
Making sure the main target takes 100% damage is important.
Damage split and damage enhancement onto one spell is the way Rushing Wind Kick (Mistweaver) works, and itās incredible.
The biggest drawback with Trick Shots itās that you need 3 targets nearby each other to reliably trigger it. If there was a means to trigger it with spread targets or with just two targets, that would be great.
There are a few way I can think of:
Marks being bereft of two target cleave via trick shots is an intentional design thing that theyāve made clear over the years.
They need to revisit this.
Iām not disagreeing with you. Designed friction plays a role in a specs overall power budget however. That one thing has been clearly identified as Marksā designed friction point.
Could be intentional, could just be poor design. MM isnāt even good in single target. And its best talent set-up sacrifices so much AOE that it becomes non existent whereas other specs donāt have to give up too much and perform better than MM in all aspects of the game. We donāt even need to go to other classes, Survival is a great example.
Whether its intentional or not, the design is flawed. It needs to be changed. I can think of many ways to address this but alas Iām not a WoW dev.
I only say this because various blizzard devs (and ion) have mentioned two target cleave as the intended friction point for marks. The best way to simplify power budgets it to think about it as a spectrum of mario karts where no kart gets to have 5 stars on all attributes. Maybe you can put brakes, acceleration, and steering to 5, but then you only have two stars left for top speed. Think about wow power budgets as a way more complicated version of that with like 300 different variables. Two target cleave is the one that they picked for marks as the intended 1-2 star variable. I donāt disagree that itās a frustrating weakness, but what iām trying to convey to you is that opening up two target cleave via trick shots would probably require a complete retooling of the rest of the kit, and I donāt think theyāre going to do that in the middle of an expansion.
I, too, would rather have more single target damage, the ability to cleave two targets with trick shots, and I would sacrifice some 4-8 target burst cleave for the exchange. Weāre not the ones that get to make that decision, though. They would have made the class like that a long time ago if we were.
And I understand that youāre simply relaying information conveyed by game developers. Iām here to tell you that I simply do not care for this and neither should you. They can change it, they have changed it, they can change it again. Not to come off as aggressive, but whenever a āgame design choice rationaleā is quoted as a reason for something being the way it is, it usually isnāt actually a good rebuttal. One could point out many contradictions in the design/balance philosophy that exists right now.
If two target cleave is the intended friction point, then why arenāt MM Hunters the best at single target or 3 target or multiple target or uncapped? The truth is that MM Hunters arenāt the best at anything despite being one of worst in two target. Thereās no trade-off, therefore thereās no actual ābalanceā, therefore their philosophy is flawed. Just because theyāre the game designers/developers doesnāt mean theyāre always right. In fact, often times theyāre wrong and thats okay. All we want is for this game to continue to get better and thatās usually what the game developers try to do anyways because theyāre financially incentivized to do so.
I think the design is fine, but the tuning is off
As a m m enjoyer, I thought the tuning and design was fine before they reworked it, and it made it great and then tuned it to be not so great. And then, hopefully now, on december 17th, back to being pretty good.
I agree. The 3 targets requirement is a disability. Shaman Chain Lightning only requires 2. Guess who is better at cleaving?
Exactly as I recall it. Although stated in not so bold way. I would call the circus-like decision dynamics unstable.
And the results are in. Looks like I was right. Iāll take my prize now.
Oh wow you really kept track of this. Huh.