Trick shots and hydra stacking with each other in volley should simply just not be a thing, at least in PvP. This was a problem that I called out very early in the ptr. Hydra off shots cleaving back to the main target when combined with double tap is unsurvivable and unavoidable for several classes. This has led to both hydra and trick shots being substantially nerfed, which kind of threw the baby out with the bath water in terms of marks actually being able to do cleave damage. If they don’t stack in volley, there is no reason for either to be nerfed which preserves a lot more of marks’ identity and function.
It’s also frustrating to see basically the whole talent tree nerfed at this point. I feel like the spec was new enough at launch to warrant completely wiping existing modifiers on aimed and rapid, while letting the tree start unnerfed. Making the vast majority of useful talents 50% or less and throwing even bigger modifiers on base spells just dumbs the spec down. You will never arrive at a fair point where the bare bones of the kit works without being gimmicky this way. It feels like the spec never really got a chance because of the way these mods were handled.
Additionally, black arrow was preemptively nerfed in PvP by 15% in tandem with the pve tuning. All of this was done once again with the unnatural causes bug active. There probably wasn’t a need to nerf black arrow in PvP if the bug wasn’t in play, and thus the PvP mod should have been removed when the bug was fixed again. It should lose its -15% damage mod Tuesday at bare minimum.
The meta isn’t better when the vast majority of players have to go bm if they want to play a ranged hunter spec to compete. We just want a fair ranged hunter spec that we can feel good about playing. It feels like we have just accelerated the trajectory for marks’ polarity with this rework, after the dust has settled.
Do you ACTUALLY think MM is suddenly going to fall so far off the radar the only people playing it tomorrow will be the OTPs? Because MM is just losing its burst/cleave power and getting shoehorned into harder hitting PVE damage.
MM will still have a strong burst, it’s just not going to be a double tap aimed shot/kill shot one shot. Instead it’s damage throughout the game will be higher, and have more pressure. This generally should allow it to be more oppressive into the meta specs, like mages and rogues, but just not be as spikey as it is currently.
This punishes the specs, like Survival, that play lower vers and higher mast/haste in the game.
It will remain a noobstomper in shuffle to 1800 or so then probably fall off harder. Coordinated 2s and 3s will be way more drastic. Specifically not saying that hydra trick shots in volley needs to remain a thing. The net effect of changes just doubles down on an even more one dimensional version of the spec than before 11.1. Thats going to result in you seeing way more BM hunters again because it isn’t as one dimensional and still does the same stuff that marks can do.
I tried to break the meta by playing full crit/mastery, but they consistently nerfed every single talent that has the word “crit” in it. The positive PVP mod on Master Marksman is not enough to make crit good.
The talent tree lacks choice (not as badly as before the rework) but so many talents are nerfed, so many are mandatory to make the basics work (Windrunner quiver, Moving target) that you have 1-2 flex talent points realistically.
The saddest thing is that “Unbreakable bond” (the pet talent) will outperform the now-nerfed Improved spotter’s mark in high-end arena PVP, because having a pet that applies constant slows or MS effect for when you can’t aimed shot them, on top of adding around 3% damage, will be stronger than 10% on RNG aimed shot mechanic. I won’t play pet personally despite all this.
And I also hated them nerfing the AOE burst - this has been MMs niche since forever. Either make Aspect of the hydra not stack with Trick shots, or nerf it by 50% only with trick shots, or something like that.
I know right now MM is considered OP and a lot of people are complaining, but the playstyle is slowly degrading with talent options constantly taken away.
Blizzard want us to play one particular build, with one particular set of stats and gear, that they feel then can balance…
It is obvious that they have no idea what they’re doing. How many times has Dark Ranger been redone? MM? They’re managing the game through spreadsheets, none of them actually play MM in PvP.
I just wish that Microsoft would spin-off WoW to another developer under their umbrella. The people that made WoW great are long gone and have been replaced by inexperienced hires.
Remember back during MoP BM hunter pets that were summoned through stampede were ignoring resilience and doing way too much damage. Blizzard devs nerfed around the core issue even though many people, me included, were pointing it out to them. Then when they FINALLY figured out what we were telling them, they fixed it but kept all the other nerfs in place. There also was a very long time when the calculation for dodge based on agility was so messed up a new hunter had a negative percentage of the dodge stat, this is when they added aspect of the dragonhawk as a bandaid.
The changes incentivize it to be weaker at lower ratings, and way better at high ratings.
The best MM hunters are still killing you in your goes, but now they have more standard pressure in between those goes which makes it much less volatile.
You’re going to see more BM hunters because BM is the easy to play spec that doesn’t have to really think
As evidenced by mm going 0-3 against frost rmp saturday
I think crit is still slept on despite it being nerfed by default in pvp and having so many nerfs on crit damage talents. However, you really need to sell out on it. There are now a lot more variables in the equation that calculates most of your damage (via talents), which greatly devalues mastery. You get crit dam back based on your crit chance via penetrating shots, which further scales up and feeds back into trueshot when you press that. The higher they push the base value of abilities, the more crit starts to make a huge difference. The value of your non crits do not deviate enough between 8000 mast and 16000 crit vs vice versa to matter. The highest theoretical crits that you can do start scaling higher once you are at very high amounts of crit instead of very high amounts of mastery. Once pushing close to 40% base crit in pvp, the mastery weapon enchant also becomes a much bigger proc because of where you’re at with the rest of your stats.
Is that an MM issue or is that an RMP is the best comp in the game by 5 seasons in the future issue?
Because jungle doesn’t counter RMP, and the only good matchup into RMP atm is FMP, which has no hunter in it.
Kasu didn’t lose to RMP because he didn’t have damage, he lost because Mage/Priest out defensive Hunter/priest, and tony can’t peel enough. There was also an insane amount of plays made by the mage that went completely unnoticed, which made it EXTREMELY unplayable for kasu.
This shows you lack basic understanding of what happened.
Yes RMP is very strong because OP Barrier and the survivability it has, but MM has design flaws as well.
MM suffers from design issues. Its a lot more “casting” and not enough damage into instants. Therefore the damage is easily stopped with micro CC when trying to get Aimed Shots off as opposed to something like BM that is all instants.
In my opinion, Aimed Shot should be 1 charge, high burst with a CD similar to Rapid Fire. Damage should then be redirected to instant casts.
This would make it more viable for AWC outside of broken damage.
You said that the best hunters still kill you in their gos. I think kasu counts as one of the best hunters since he’s the only perennial awc hunter player. He wasn’t even able to kill a mage in his go’s with pre-nerf marks.
They invested too much into Lunar Storm being the big AoE braindead drooling damage dealer they really didnt give two spits about actually balancing it. such a gimmick of a game.
