Feedback: Hunters

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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Greetings, Hunters!

In Undermine(d), Pack Leader is receiving a complete rework, and we thought we’d take this opportunity to explain some of our decisions, thought-process, and goals with this update.

Pack Leader Fantasy
When reassessing what the fantasy of a Pack Leader is, we took inspiration from the iconic Hunter Rexxar. Rexxar doesn’t cleanly fall into any Hunter specialization, but he mostly closely aligns with Survival, with a splash of Beast Mastery given his repertoire of pets. As such, Rexxar seemed like a fantastic throughline to help guide our hand when designing Pack Leader’s second iteration.

Beast Mastery summons many random beasts with Dire Beast, and has even dipped its toes into summoning iconic beasts with talents like Huntmaster’s Call summoning Hati and Fenryr, so having a pool of special Beast summons made a lot of sense. However, summoning beasts is a largely unexplored territory for Survival Hunter. For Pack Leader, we wanted to ensure that you were summoning Beasts from a specific pool, and that each pet felt unique, like your Hunter and their Pack had a special bond. This direction felt more in-line with Survival’s fantasy of having a uniquely strong bond with a smaller suite of pets.

Three is a Crowd
While its fun to summon creatures, they can create a lot of noise in the game space, especially in melee. When designing Pack Leader, we wanted to ensure that the new summons we were designing were not sitting in melee and adding more visual noise, blocking sightlines, and taking up game space. This goal pushed our designs into less traditional territory. While the Pack Leader Bear behaves like a very traditional summoned creature, leaping into battle, using abilities, and auto attacking its target, the Boar and the Wyvern are a bit more unique in their behaviors.

In the Shadow of the Wyvern
The Wyvern’s visuals are likely the most unique of the bunch. When you summon your Wyvern via Howl of the Pack Leader, it swoops in, lets out a roar, and proceeds to circle the battlefield for the duration of its buff. Looking up and seeing your Wyvern circle the skies felt like a uniquely Pack Leader moment, and we’re happy with how we were able to package this effect.

Charging Ahead
When summoned, Pack Leader’s Boar performs a series of 3 charges from off-screen, crashing into your enemies with explosive force.Given the lower complexity of the other two summons, we felt that the Boar could have some more advanced interactions with a follow up talent “Hogstrider”. Hogstrider causes your Cobra Shot or Mongoose Bite to strike more targets and deal more damage, and this effect stacks the more enemies are damaged by your Boar. The gameplay we’re looking for is following up your Boar’s hits with your own when it rotationally makes sense, while also pushing you to not overcap on Hogstrider stacks. This “moment” also feels uniquely Pack Leader, and we’re hoping that when players are spec’ing in to Pack Leader, they’re looking forward to cool moments like this.

Defense and Utility
Given the gameplay and summons this Hero Talent tree is introducing, we wanted to keep the complexity low on Pack Leader’s defensive and utility talents, while still preserving some of the Pack Leader fantasy.

Pack Leader’s defensive talent “Shell Cover” features an adorable pet turtle that will come to your aid (atop your head) , providing some damage resistance when you are dropped below 40% health. This defensive is fully passive, and while you’ll notice it when it procs, it shouldn’t require any tracking or playing around to get full use.

Pack Leader’s utility comes on a choice node, with two talents: Slicked Shoes and Horsehair Tether. Part of the Pack Leader fantasy is an adaptive, quick-thinking, and seasoned Hunter, so a Pack Leader having some unique utility made a lot of sense. Pack Leaders are hard to slow down, and Slicked Shoes will give them more frequent access to Disengage should they get assailed by snares, slows, and other debilitations. Horsehair Tether is a very unique utility node for Pack Leaders that causes anyone stunned by Binding Shot to be dragged to Binding Shot’s center similar to spells like Ursol’s Vortex. Our goal with this talent is to help make Pack Leader’s utility immediately identifiable in function while also helping you to feel scrappy and clever with a new addition to one of Hunter’s suite of traps, snares, and stuns.

There’s still plenty to discover with this revision to Pack Leader, and we’re excited for you all to get your hands on it. Thanks for playing!

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In Undermine(d), Marksmanship Hunter is receiving a substantial update to its spec tree and fantasy, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to outline our goals with this change.

Lone Wolf, No Longer
Likely the most substantial change to Marksmanship is a reimagining of the specialization’s fantasy and how it interacts with pets.

Hunters are in large part defined by their pets and their greater relationship with the natural world of Azeroth and beyond. Marksmanship Hunter stood in somewhat stark defiance of that for much of its existence, as it was often more than willing to abandon pet access in exchange for extra throughput from Lone Wolf. Over World of Warcraft’s history, this talent was iterated, changed, and grew to be a core part of Marksmanship’s identity.

There were many fantasy and gameplay issues with Lone Wolf. Pets had legitimate utility behind them, such as Bloodlust, defensives, and mobility. Having to summon your pet and lose Lone Wolf to access that utility as Marksmanship often had legitimate experiential and throughput consequences. Why should a Hunter be frustrated to pull out their pet? The discord between Marksmanship Hunters and their pets felt like something that needed to be solved-- and our goal was to solve that problem in a way that not only reembraced pets as a part of Marksmanship’s identity, but also did it in a unique and fantasy-forward way.

Eyes in the Sky
In Undermine(d), Marksmanship Hunters are losing access to “traditional” pets, like Survival and Beast Mastery have, and are instead permanently joined in battle by an Eagle. Your Eagle will descend from the skies when called upon to help your allies and hinder your enemies.

Your most frequent use for the Eagle will be via Spotter’s Mark, a new baseline talent that Marksmanship Hunters will have access to starting at level 13. When spending Precise Shots, your Eagle has a chance to descend from the skies and mark your target, substantially increasing the damage your next Aimed Shot will deal to that target. This mechanic is more deeply developed, expanded, and altered in the talent tree.
Marksmanship Hunters can expect a full suite of unique Eagle-specific versions of pet utility such as a line of sight-ignoring Intimidation, a unique Bloodlust, new visuals for Master’s Call, and even the ability to change your Eagle’s specialization between Tenacity and Cunning.

Aiming Down Sights
The flow of Marksmanship’s rotation is smooth and iconic. For our updates to the Marksmanship tree, we were focused on trimming away some of the more vague parts of Marksmanship’s kit both fantasy-wise and mechanically and really focusing in on what made Marksmanship special-- all while retaining the smooth gameplay that Marksmanship players have come to know and love.
A big pillar of our Marksmanship update was to ensure that Aimed Shot was the star of the show. Aimed Shot is the core of Marksmanship-- a long channel, lightning fast projectile, and it hits like a truck. We’ve added some new mechanics, keywords, and talents that all help to build up to huge Aimed Shots, fat crits, and satisfying procs.

New and Old Tricks
While the core of Marksmanship’s rotation will feel familiar, we wanted to add some more flair to the less core parts of Marksmanship’s kit, such as Kill Shot and Explosive Shot.

Within the new tree you’ll find some familiar friends like Double Tap, Volley, and Lock and Load alongside some new talents like Precision Detonation, that makes Aimed Shot trigger Explosive Shot’s explosion earlier and increasing its damage substantially.
Kill Shot (and Black Arrow) can be turned completely on its head with a new talent, Headshot, that allows you to use Kill Shot as a Precise Shots spender just like Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot.

Room to Grow
This next step for Marksmanship is, ideally, the first of many. We are interested in continuing to flesh out Marksmanship’s Eagle as a true pet and partner for you on your journeys with unique interactions, effects, and even appearances in the future, but we don’t have specifics to share yet. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

We’re excited for you all to get your hands on Marksmanship when Undermine(d) drops, and we’ll be eagerly awaiting your feedback!

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I am not losing my winterspring aqua green kitty I tamed since vanilla! This should always remain a choice by the player.

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I love the direction Pack Leader is going in… But please don’t remove Den Recovery :sob:

That was like our best defensive as Pack Leader. Maybe you guys can work it into Survival Talent tree though if you don’t want it being on the Hero Talents?

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On the flip side, playing solo and being able to pull out my pet to tank something has been a huge advantage over the years. I’m really hesitant to see if that functionality remains in any way with this new pseudo-pet.

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Please don’t take our pets away from us. They’re a huge part of why I play this class at all; I would rather swap to a different specialization than play dinosaur-free.

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Class Tree feedback:

  • Kindling Flare - This talent will still never be taken other than for Dark Flame Cleft in S2.
  • Revise Roar of Sacrifice - Revise this talent to protect a target/party for 10% DR or the HP of our pet down to 1% HP.
    • Alternatively, move this talent into the PvP talent section, our class tree is bloated with PvP talents that bring no value in PvE.
  • Ghillie suit - Janky to play around with and should also allow us to camouflage in combat - mages already have this with their invisibility.
  • Scare Beast - This node needs to be removed or replaced with something similar to Priest/DK’s ability to temporarily control a beast so it may see some usage in the future. It has 0 usage in PvE and very limited usage in PvP.
  • Eagle Eye/Eye of the Beast being limited to their respective spec is fine; they are very rarely used as is.

Class Utility:

  • Hunter’s Mark needs to increase the first and last 20% HP by 5% damage taken while applying a 30y radius debuff aura. Perhaps additionally, the marked target takes increased crit damage so there’s slight enthesis on the marked target.
  • Alternatively, an increased crit chance & damage 1h raid buff would synergize well with all 3 hunter specs decently.
  • Horsehair Tether should be in the class tree under Binding Shot - Hero Trees should NOT have utility. I suggested that Binding Shot did this “grouping to the center of the arrow” mechanic in the Beta feedback post several times.

Pack Leader:

  • Shell Cover is just as bad, if not, somehow worse than Den Recovery which I didn’t think was possible. This defensive needs to block damage while at max health or do something else to be more M+ viable like grant 1% Damage Reduction per pet out + ~3% base Damage Reduction. 6s of 10% DR every 2m is insanely weak.
  • It might feel bad to get the ‘wrong’ pet from Howl of the Pack Leader though they all seem to have some AoE value so we can only hope they’re tuned to all do roughly the same damage.
  • No Mercy - This is just a pet charge given there’s no damage component currently attached to this? I don’t see the point of it. At least make it like Beast Master’s pet Stomp so it has a purpose. Rewarding players for hitting Kill Shot seems to be a good start.
    • Description since it’s new: Damage from your Kill Shot sends your pets into a rage, causing all active pets within 20 yds and your Bear to pounce to the target and attack it.
  • Lead From the Front - This will likely be kind of weak for Survival, should be tuned accordingly.
  • Better Together - This is a placeholder node that offers no actual value and should be baked into Howl of the Pack Leader.
    • Description since it’s new: Howl of the Pack Leader’s cooldown is reduced to 25 seconds. Your pets gain an extra 5% of your attack power.

Sentinel:

  • The bird can finally fly, now we just hope that tanks can see the circle under the bird so mobs are not pulled out from the circle.
  • A lunar storm every 30s instead of 15s is fine but it’s a damage loss and uptime loss. It wasn’t much stress playing around it but does fix janky haste breakpoints. The current compensation for it should be a little bit better based on napkin math.

Survival:

  • I somewhat like that Flanking Strike and Buchery are a choice node, Flanking strike was kind of janky to play around with currently (11.07) as a focus spender that didn’t feel super impactful to press, especially without Exposed Flank (Which has been bugged, not granting the extra Kill Command damage since it was consumed by Bloodseeker for whatever reason) but I also don’t mind it being separate personally.
  • Frenzy Strikes (Flanking Strike version) - the attack speed doesn’t do a whole lot for us, just a bit of bomb CDR, perhaps crit or mastery is better for this. Attack speed only benefits Lunge - which I’m still waiting for this talent node to be renamed to something more appropriate since the loss of the increased attack range.
  • Merciless Blow (Butchery) seems like a massive unwarranted nerf. At least make it an uncapped bleed now in that case. Otherwise, I don’t see why this is getting gutted so hard.
  • I’m shocked nothing was done with Mongoose bite. It’s tuned too weak to be worth taking and is essentially a 2-point investment with Bloody Claws for pure single target due to Tip of The Spear requiring Kill Commands pretty much every other GCD.
  • Teir set feedback: We hit WFB so often that I don’t see us keeping Winning Streak up as much as I’d like and 3% is pretty weak. We hit KC/RS a decent bit (more so in raid) but I feel like we don’t have that much filler between WFB casts to proc Winning Streaks. Hard to say without trying it out and maybe WFB can proc a Winning Streak.
  • I like the 4p giving a 200% KC and 3 tips when Winning Streak does run out - that’s nice but will take some adjusting on the fly and a little more enthesis on focus management instead of using KC almost every other ability to generate and dump Tip stacks/focus.

Beast Mastery:

  • Weird that BM could have 1 pet instead of 2 now; so much for spec identity but good for those like handful that wanted it throughout TWW Beta. They should be numerically equal if 1 pet or 2, not marginally similar.
  • Blizzard finally realized Basilisk Collar was not good in practice after endless feedback from Beta due to how it scued damage output towards ST and added additional AoE nodes -all good changes.
  • Please just stop trying to make Barrage work and scrap it, it’s a horrible talent that bad hunters take and pull whole rooms with.
  • Teir set feedback: I personally will always enjoy when Beastial Wrath gets additional CDR and the set should feel good sending out free Barb Shots (and Stomps).

Marksman:

  • There will be a vocal minority of MMs that will complain about the lack of pet - even when not taking Lone Wolf is like a ~2% damage loss. Overall, giving them lust as a separate button is a good change all around, most seemed to absolutely despise taking 3s to pull out a lust pet and dismissing it anyway.
  • Aspect of the Hydra (2 target trick shots) is quite niche but good since MM will no longer depend on 3 targets to cleave which is massive but at that point, Trick Shots could have just been changed to 2 targets.
  • The rest of the changes seem overall decent.
  • Teir set feedback: The extra auto-attack damage is jarring at first glance but makes more sense when paired with select talents. It’s decent I suppose, would require trying it out to provide better feedback.
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Really like what I’ve read thus far and excited to see how things play out.

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All you had to do was rework lone wolf so hunters could choose which utility they wanted, that’s it. This change is missing the mark(smanship) so hard I have to question if the person who thought of it even plays a hunter.

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Please change your mind on this.

You even explain:

Then go on to say “But marksman will no longer be able to use the pets they formed a bond with over the past 20 years cause we said so!”

All you had to do was make it so we could choose which pet spec’s utility we get when we dismiss the pet. That’s literally all you needed to do, and all we’ve asked you to do.

EDIT: Not to mention, as Rankin says, this will make Marksman unuseable for soloing. Hunters are designed, by you guys, to take more damage than other classes because we have a pet to tank for us. But with these changes, we will no longer have that chance.

Are you increasing Marksman’s armor? Health? Regeneration? Healing? Etc. to compensate for the loss of the pet?

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please don’t take my pets away as MM…

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On a fantasy level, the idea of this new Eagle companion seems a bit undercooked. One of the best parts of hunters prior to TWW was how applicable the class fantasy was to basically any race. Pet-oriented races had a melee and ranged option to choose from, and races like goblins or blood elves that tend more towards sniper and ranger fantasies had the ability to forego pet fantasies entirely with Marksmanship. Now, however, it seems like the pet fantasy is not only being placed into all three specs, it’s one specific pet fantasy.

I think my biggest point of feedback on the fantasy level is that this Eagle for Marksmanship should have a plethora of glyph options to allow players to have the same range of fantasy as the other two specs. An eagle will feel ill-fitting for a gnome who wants to focus on being a tech-y sniper, or a Zandalari troll who might want something more Loa-based. Hopefully it’s built on a technical level to allow for other animals or mechanical replacements to be used in lieu of this Eagle.

On a gameplay level, I’m a tentative fan of the changes to Marksmanship to allow for a more fluid playstyle built around not having an actual pet, but it feels like a heavy loss for those who have been comfortable with summoning at will. I think it’ll need to shake out on a playable PTR first to really see the impact. I think making spells like Eagle Eye exclusive to MM is not a good choice though, and it’s weird to take away a utility option that’s been class-wide for 20 years from Survival and Beast Mastery.

Likewise, it’s frustrating to see a built-in Bloodlust be exclusive to one spec after the work that went into removing similar issues via Windfury/Skyfury on Shamans this expansion. I think that this Harrier’s Cry ability should simply be available for all specs, not just MM. Overall though, the new concept for gameplay flow seems much cleaner than the last few expansions.

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absolutely hate the thought of losing access to pets I’ve had since 2004 as MM…

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have you lost your mind?!, your solution to lone wolf being clunky is to take away all the pets we have spent years colleting. pets we have grown attached to. So now our only choice if we want to keep our pet is to get locked out of marksmanship. I can’t understand how anyone ever thought this would be a good idea. this change will basically kill hunters for a lot of us, I don’t know why i would even play my hunter if I can’t play my favorite spec with my favorite pets.

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I’m willing to embrace Markman’s new identity. I think it could be really good and the direction is… different I guess…

But can we please, please, pleeeaaasse talk about Hunter’s Mark? That button is beans. Make it a passive. Make it apply to everything we hit. Change it to crit damage or crit chance or something.

When you compare it to Mystic Touch… Chaos Brand… or literally any other raid buff that’s not from an Evoker it’s just laughably bad, inconvenient to use, and not fun to play around.

We had a raid boss this tier that had damage amps above 80% HP - with two targets - and the raid buff was so bad that the ‘meta’ was not to bring 2 hunters.

<3 Please consider giving Hunter’s Mark a rework while you’ve got your eyes on the class already.

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To expand on my last post:

The eagle, at its core is not a bad idea. However, the way it’s presented is horrible.

  1. We should still have access to our regular pets. You could simply make the eagle retreat when we summon a pet. Not being able to summon pets at all takes away our ability to solo out in the world - I thought you guys learned this in WoD when Marksman hunters screamed about being unable to quest before you made Lone Wolf simply drop the buff if you summoned a pet rather than restrict summoning it altogether.
  2. We need glyphs or something like a menu at the stable master to swap the Eagle apearance with other flying beasts. Eagles fit Highmountain Tauren and that’s about it. Eagles make zero sense for some of the races. There should be at minimum, one appearance catered to each playable race.
  3. An optional talent (one in an off-the road place) that makes our regular pet fully replace the eagle. Instead of the eagle marking your target with Spotter’s Mark - your active pet does. Same with the talents that alter it. As it would require an extra talent point, it would be a slight dps loss, but give people the option, since I know you guys like to do that with talents against your own beliefs for the spec (like how you directly told us grimoire of sacrifice is meant to be a dps loss for warlock) kinda like how not using Lone Wolf was currently. (I think it was like 2-3%, so using a pet is not the end of the world right now, unless you’re pushing super high content)
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This seems even worse than the 2 other options they talked about. The devs can’t be serious with this can they? Who’s hunter class fantasy is having some random eagle follow them around? I just want a classic pet talents type system where you tame a pet to learn a skill and then you can teach it to whatever pet and you can either play with that pet out all the time or just have it pop out as a temp summon to get Heroism/Bloodlust or another group buff. Blizzard has made some questionable decisions in the past but this annoys me more than anything else in the last 20 years and is soo bad I’m seriously wondering if I a having a nightmare

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So just some more feedback. We’re going from 20 years of being able to tame and bond with our pets, to being issued a single pet, that we may or may not get to customize until later on. That seems just in general like a giant step backwards.

And why just Tenacity and Cunning? Why are MM Hunters being locked out of Ferocity?

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They said we’re getting an Eagle version of Bloodlust.

But that’s also discounting the leech ferocity gives, which is why a lot of people use ferocity, not just for bloodlust.

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This is the worst decision made to hunters since removing old survival entirely

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