EDIT: I posted this in the wrong sub-forum. Here is the same post, just in the right place. Thanks!
Hiya Folks! After much tinkering, I want to share my suggestions for Hunter Runes going into phase 4 of SoD. The majority of these suggestions already exist mechanically in other areas or versions of the game, and this is intentional. My suggestions are intended to be as easy to implement as I could make them. I realize the dev team has limited time and resources, and I wanted to offer feedback that was well-reasoned and useful as I could manage. Devs, I’ve had a great time in SoD so far, so thanks for all you’ve done and are doing.
I’ll be giving an overview of where all the Runes land before offering the specific changes for each set of runes by slot. If I could embed images, I would have had some really pretty graphics for you… I’ll write out the changes as best I can here.
Rune Slot Overview
Helm Catlike Reflexes Truestrike Aura Lock and Load Back Carve Hit and Run Improved Volley Chest Go for the Throat T.N.T. Master Marksman Wrist Beast Mastery Lone Wolf Hands Cobra Slayer Explosive Shot Chimera Shot Waist Kill Shot Expose Weakness Focus Fire Legs Flanking Strike Wyvern Strike Sniper Training Feet Dual Wield Spec Savage Assault Resourcefulness Baseline Heart of the Lion Aspect of the Viper Trap Launcher Melee Specialist Deprecated Rapid Killing Serpent Spread Cobra Strikes Raptor Fury
Click me for Overview Commentary
You’ll notice on the bottom row “Trap Launcher” and “Melee Specialist” are both now baseline runes. This is because these two runes offer such a drastic change in functionality that they crowd out most other runes in their slots. Ultimately, these two runes unlock almost half the abilities of Hunters as a class for use, and I determined the best course of action would be to have them as standard for all rune setups. Here are the details:
| Trap Launcher (Baseline): “Your Traps can now be placed at any location within 18 yards, and can be placed in combat. Additionally, your Fire-based and Frost-based traps now have separate shared cooldowns.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melee Specialist (Baseline): “Raptor Strike is now an instant attack. Whenever you or your pet critically strike with an ability, your Mongoose Bite ability becomes active for 9 seconds or 1 attack. Mongoose Bite deals additional damage equal to 40% of your melee Attack Power.” |
- You’ll notice that Trap Launcher had its range slashed. This was to avoid situations where melee Hunters could lob their traps at far distant opponents in PvP and prevent escape. The original range is restored to Marksmanship Hunters via a rune, so they still have that capability.
- Melee Specialist still makes Raptor Strike an instant attack, but it is still a 6 second cooldown and no longer has a lottery reset mechanic. I have my reasons for this, so read on. This rune also now borrows a mechanic from a Warrior rune called “Taste for Blood” to enable the use of Mongoose Bite consistently.
Leg Runes: The Big Three
The following three runes are designed to be core to the three main Hunter playstyles I had in mind: Melee Beast Master, Full Ranged Marksmanship, and Melee Weaving Survival. After this section we’ll cover the runes from head to toe, but these are interconnected with other runes that I felt they should be covered first.
| Flanking Strike (Legs): “You and your pet deal simultaneous 100% melee damage. Afterward, your Mongoose Bite, Raptor Strike, and Flanking Strike deal 10% increased damage for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Critical strikes by you and your pet reduce the remaining cooldown of Flanking Strike by 1 second. 12 sec cooldown.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wyvern Strike (Legs): “Replaces your Wyvern Sting ability with Wyvern Strike, a stinging strike that deals 100% weapon damage and poisons the target with a Sting for (10 / 100 * 10 * Attack Power) Nature damage over 10 sec. Refreshing the Sting deals instant damage to the target equal to the remaining periodic damage. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.” 6 sec cooldown. | ||||
| Sniper Training (Legs): Your Shot abilities gain 5% increased critical strike chance and the cast time of Aimed Shot is reduced by 50%. After not moving for 6 seconds, these bonuses are doubled for 15 seconds. |
Click me to show more about Leg Runes!
- Flanking Strike now has a base cooldown of 12 seconds, and the remaining cooldown is reduced by the critical strikes of you and your pet. This mechanic is inspired by the recent changes to the Paladin rune “Art of War”. You’ll notice that Flanking Strike also now stacks up to 5 times, and this is due to the Raptor Fury rune being depreciated.
- Wyvern Strike is intended to encourage the melee weaving playstyle many Hunters love if used with Chimera Shot. Refreshing the Sting effect as often as possible is the goal of the ability, and the cooldown has been reduced to 6 seconds to allow the Hunter to opt out of using Chimera Shot if desired.
- Sniper Training, in my opinion, is one of the most annoying runes in the game in its current version. This version allows more freedom of movement than the current iteration, asking the player to find islands of time in a stationary state rather than asking them to become a statue to optimize damage. It is inspired by the WotLK version of Sniper Training.
Helm Runes
| Catlike Reflexes (Head): “Increases your chance to dodge by 20% and your pet’s chance to dodge by 9%. In addition, reduces the cooldown of your Flanking Strike ability by 50%.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Truestrike Aura (Head): “Increase the attack power of party members within 45 yards by x [and increases their ranged attack power by an additional 100]. Lasts 30 min. Does not stack with Trueshot Aura.” | ||||
| Lock and Load (Head): Same effect as current version. |
Click me to show more about Helm Runes!
- Catlike Reflexes is functionally the same. Mentions of Kill Command have been removed. Lock and Load is also unchanged. Note that Catlike Reflexes now brings Flanking Strike’s cooldown to 6 seconds.
- Truestrike Aura is here to be available to Melee Hunters without requiring them to dive to the bottom of the Marksmanship tree for Trueshot Aura. It is intended to be functionally identical.
Back Runes
| Carve (Back): “A sweeping attack that strikes all enemies in front of you for 65% weapon damage. Benefits from most talents and effects that modify Raptor Strike.” Moved to Back slot | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hit and Run (Back): “You gain 15% movement speed for 4 sec after dealing damage with a melee or ranged basic attack. This effect cannot be triggered by the same type of attack more than once every 6 sec.” | ||||
| Improved Volley (Back): “Reduces the cooldown of Arcane Shot by 2 sec. Reduces the mana cost of your Volley by 50%, reduces its cooldown by 100%, and is no longer channeled, but has a cast time of 1.5 sec. Volley also deals 3% of your ranged Attack Power as additional damage each time it deals damage.” |
Click me to show more about Back Runes!
- Carve now benefits from talents and effects that modify Raptor Strike. This includes Savage Strikes (Survival Talent), Dual Wield Spec, and Flanking Strike’s damage bonus.
- Hit and Run is designed to enable the weaving playstyle, but could be picked up by pure melee or ranged setups with reduced effect. I’m not overly concerned with Hunters being too fast in PvP, but if this ends up being a problem feel free to adjust it.
- Improved Volley now has a brief cast time instead of a channel. Volley can be a filler spell if needed, and offers some mild AoE for full ranged Hunters. The Arcane Shot cooldown reduction addition is for our lurking Bowmage friends. I see little harm in a buff like this since Arcane Shot is such a weak spell. I also suspect that a simple flat reduction in cooldown is relatively easy to program.
Chest Runes
| Go for the Throat (Chest): “Critical strikes with abilities grant your pet 10 Focus.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T.N.T. (Chest): Moved to Chest; Same as current version. | ||||
| Master Marksman (Chest): “Increases your critical strike chance by 5%. Your critical Shots cause the target to bleed for 30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.” |
Click me to show more about Chest Runes!
- Go for the Throat replaces Cobra Strikes, a now depreciated rune. Go for the Throat triggers off critical strikes from any ability, so it should be useful for melee and ranged players alike.
- T.N.T. has no changes, other than having been moved to the Chest slot.
- Master Marksman lost its Shot mana cost reduction and gained a bleed effect on critical Shot hits. This is borrowed from a WotLK/Cata rune called “Piercing Shots”. With Aspect of the Viper existing, a mana cost reduction on a rune doesn’t have as much value as it once did. The hope with this change is that Hunters will synergize a little better with group effects like Mangle from Feral Druids.
Bracer Runes
| Beast Mastery (Wrist): Moved to Wrist; Same effect as current version. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lone Wolf (Wrist): Moved to Wrist; Same effect as current version. |
Click me to show more text!
The Wrist slot is now a very simple choice: Do you want to play with a pet or not? For pet-centered runes in other slots, there should be a decent alternative available for people that want to opt into the Lone Wolf rune.
Glove Runes
| Cobra Slayer (Hands): “Mongoose Bite now activates when an enemy dodges your attack, and you gain 25% attack speed for 5 seconds after using Mongoose Bite.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explosive Shot (Hands): Same effect as current version. | ||||
| Chimera Shot (Hands): Same effect as current version. |
Click me to show more about Glove Runes!
- Cobra Slayer now causes Mongoose Bite to grant melee attack speed haste. All other melee classes have some method of increasing their melee speed, but Hunters do not. I saw this as an opportunity to make Mongoose Bite a little more appealing, especially when combined with the changes to Melee Specialist.
- Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot remain unchanged.
Belt Runes
| Kill Shot (Waist): Moved to Waist; Same effect as current version. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expose Weakness (Waist): Same effect as current version. | ||||
| Focus Fire (Waist): Moved to Waist; Same effect as current version. |
Click me to show more about Belt Runes!
- Kill Shot and Focus Fire have been moved to the Belt slot, but other than this move all three runes here remain functionally unchanged.
Boot Runes
| Dual Wield Specialist (Feet): “Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50% and causes Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite to strike with both weapons while you are dual wielding.” | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Savage Assault (Feet): “Increases base damage and time between attacks of your melee and ranged weapons by 20%. You gain melee Attack Power equal to half your Agility.” | ||||
| Resourcefulness (Feet): “Reduces the mana cost of your Traps by 100% and their cooldowns by 40%. The range of Trap Launcher is doubled to 36 yards.” |
Click me to show more about Boot Runes!
- Finally, boot runes. Dual Wield Specialist now includes Mongoose Bite in its list of abilities that strike with both weapons. It’s worth noting that Carve also now benefits from this rune since it inherits all effects that modify Raptor Strike.
- Savage Assault is my “big ask” of the post, and it requires a bit of math to understand how it works. The TL;DR is that your ranged and melee weapons have more time between “swings”, but you don’t actually do any more DPS with just the first half of the Rune. The second half gives you more melee attack power (and thus bigger melee damage) for your Agility, bringing you closer to the value that other melee classes get for their primary offensive stat.
The idea with this rune is that your weapon speed is increased (for example, from 3.0 to 3.6), allowing you to weave melee and ranged attacks better. Increasing the base damage of the weapon (the printed damage range on a weapon, before Attack Power scaling) by the same percentage actually only keeps the DPS of your weapons the same, you just hit for bigger chunks at a time. The second half of the rune (where the Hunter gains melee Attack Power equal to half their Agility) grants Hunters a total of 1.5 melee Attack Power per point of Agility when combined with their base stat scaling. All melee classes get 2 melee Attack Power per point of their primary attribute, and while this would still leave Hunters behind them in terms of raw statistical conversion, they do still get 2 ranged Attack Power per point of Agility. There isn't an effect like this in any version of the game that I’m aware of, so I don’t think there’s an existing effect somewhere that could be pulled and modified to easily create this, but I think it would be an excellent rune for the weaving playstyle. - Resourcefulness doubles the lower base range of Trap Launcher from 18 yards to 36 yards. This rune is intended for ranged Lock and Load players who could benefit from the extra range and don’t mind losing out on Dual Wield Spec and Savage Assault.
Concluding Thoughts
This is already a long post, so I’ll keep this last part brief. I think many of the rune changes on the PTR for Hunter are on the right track, just not quite right. I feel pretty good about where everything landed and how the different rune and playstyles would settle out, but clearly I don’t have any information on if there are more runes coming, or other changes that might be down the road that I just don’t know about.
Again, here is the Rune Chart:
| Helm | Catlike Reflexes | Truestrike Aura | Lock and Load | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | Carve | Hit and Run | Improved Volley | |
| Chest | Go for the Throat | T.N.T. | Master Marksman | |
| Wrist | Beast Mastery | Lone Wolf | ||
| Hands | Cobra Slayer | Explosive Shot | Chimera Shot | |
| Waist | Kill Shot | Expose Weakness | Focus Fire | |
| Legs | Flanking Strike | Wyvern Strike | Sniper Training | |
| Feet | Dual Wield Spec | Savage Assault | Resourcefulness | |
| Baseline: | Heart of the Lion | Aspect of the Viper | Trap Launcher | Melee Specialist |
| Depreciated: | Rapid Killing | Serpent Spread | Cobra Strikes | Raptor Fury |
Just before I leave, I wanted to highlight some pretty standard rune setups:
Example Rune Setups!
- Dual Wield BM: Dual Wield Spec, Flanking Trike, Kill Shot, Cobra Slayer, Beast Mastery, Go for the Throat, Carve, Catlike Reflexes/Truestrike Aura
- Survival Weaving: Savage Assault, Wyvern Strike, Expose Weakness, Chimera Shot, Lone Wolf, T.N.T., Hit and Run, Truestrike Aura
- Ranged Marksmanship: Resourcefulness, Sniper Training, Focus Fire, Chimera Shot, Beast Mastery, Master Marksman, Improved Volley, Lock and Load.
Of course, there are many other permutations, but I think these would generally be the go-tos. Hopefully this was useful for any Devs peeking at this, and thought-provoking for any players. Thanks for your time.