Quickish SV Wishlist [Updated: Now More Thorough]

Classes Hunter
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  1. Horn of the Hunt added at level 48, granting baseline access to Lust/Hero/Warp. Primal Rage now instead grants the party 30% Speed and 15% Leech, fading linearly over 12 seconds. Cooldown to be decided.
  1. Mastery: Spirit Bond changed to Mastery: Wild Instinct, which “Increases the chance, frequency, or effectiveness of your additional effects, and converts excess chance of damaging effects into proportionately greater damage.”

    It therefore acts as a gameplay/profile tuning knob for KC resets, the impact of Terms of Engagement, impact of Mongoose Fury and Tip of the Spear, critical strike chance increase of FotE against low-heal enemies, the frequency of Viper’s Venom, effectiveness of Quick Shot, Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, Shrapnel Bomb, etc.

  1. Shrapnel Bomb renamed to Rupture Bomb and now causes your attacks to deal damage as if enemy Armor were reduced by 50%. Note also that, due to the new Mastery, Pheromone Bomb now converts Kill Command’s excess (i.e., normal) reset chance into proportionately greater damage.
  1. Viper’s Venom is now a choice node with Quickshot and is positioned below Improved Wildfire Bomb. Viper’s Venom’s effect now reads, “Causes your single-target melee attacks to afflict your enemy with Serpent Sting for 8 seconds. Duration of Serpent Sting may now be extended up to 21 seconds.”
  • Quickshot, has likewise been adjusted to “Your Kill Command resets to cause your next ranged attack to deal an additional (120% of Attack Power) in damage, split among all enemies. Effects which duplicate your attacks entirely will also duplicate this effect.”
    • The position formerly held by Quickshot has been taken up instead by Wildfire Infusions. The portion formerly held by Wildfire Infusions has been taken up by a new talent, Deathadder: “Enemies you have poisoned take a greater portion of periodic damage near the beginning of their durations based on the target’s portion of health missing. This rate of consumption slows with each tick, however, resulting in the same total duration.”
      • This occurs by concentrating their damage logarithmically, not by actually causing the debuffs to expire earlier. As such, you still benefit from the additional effects of these debuffs, but can replace them sooner, and lose less to an enemy dying with duration still remaining.
  1. Coordinated Assault no longer charges the enemy. Instead, it resets the cooldown of your Kill Shot, Disengage, and Harpoon and causes your attacks to cause free uses of your pet’s basic attack on each enemy they strike while also causing Kill Shot to duplicate 40% its damage as a bleed over 6 seconds. Its attachable enhancement talents work exactly as before.

    Same general benefits, but without the finnicky-ness. Though tied more to pet damage than before and less to Improved Wildfire Bomb, its overall impact should be mostly unchanged. The ST portion at the beginning is replaced with the replacement thematic tie-in, free pet basic attacks.

  1. Fury of the Eagle no longer causes Flanking Strike to have its cooldown reduced by Kill Command. Instead, that CDR is now inherent in the Flanking Strike talent itself.
  1. Killer Companion grants your Kill Commands a 10|20% chance to echo their damage to each enemy you strike with your next attack, and grants Kill Commands that do not reset a 25|50% chance to trigger effects as if they had reset and causes.

    Similar damage to just the original effect if its damage were improved, but now also allows for steady rhythm to still contribute towards FotE CDR.

  1. Spearhead made more versatile. It now reads, “You and your pet charge your enemy, striking them for (150% of Attack Power). You then become one with your pet for 12 seconds. While active, you and your pet’s melee attacks each cause the enemy to bleed for a further (60% of Attack Power) damage over 4 seconds, and your Kill Command has a 35% increased chance to reset. Effects which increase the damage of your and your pet’s attacks that apply this bleed also increase the damage of this bleed.”

    It’s worth noting that because excess chance is turned into increased effect, stacking Pheromone Bomb with Spearhead, Deadly Duo, Flanker’s Advantage means one would have guaranteed double damage from each hit… for a whopping +120% of Attack Power per Kill Command.

    And perhaps more importantly still… that’s a +60% AP per target hit by Cleave/Butchery. It’s now a noticeable AoE buff for those who’d rather not bother with Coordinated Assault.

  1. Bloody Claws now instead grants Mongoose Bite a 3|5% chance per stack of Mongoose Fury to cause your next Kill Command not to incur the global cooldown.

    More impactful, and likely even more fun.

  1. Carve Focus cost reduced to 30, damage increased from 31% of AP to 93% of AP, and it’s been given a second charge. Butchery Focus cost reduced to 25 and damage increased from 97% of AP to 110%.

    You have the option of a 50% longer CD for 50% more charges and 16.7% less Focus cost for more control and burst, or to go for greater total theoretical CDR over time.

  1. Hydra’s Bite now also increases the number of Serpent Stings applied by Viper’s Venom and Volatile Bomb by 2.

    I.e., now it might at least be an option in AoE, instead of nowhere.

  1. Energetic Ally buffed to increase your and your pet’s maximum Focus by 15.

    This is just barely enough to maybe get in an extra MB into a MF window.

Extended Version:
  1. Frenzied Strikes is now a choice node with a new talent, Shock Tactics:

Shock Tactics
Reduces the the cooldown of Carve/Butchery by 1.5 seconds, increases the damage of Carve/Butchery by 20%, and gives Carve/Butchery a 35% chance per target struck to grant a stack of Shock Tactics, causing your next single-target melee attack to deal its damage to an additional enemy, stacking up to 4 times. Stacks will only be consumed when an additional enemy is present to be cleaved and up to all 4 may be consumed simultaneously.

  1. Sweeping Spear reworked. It now causes Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite to increase the damage of your next Carve/Butchery by (10|20% of Attack Power), and Carve/Butchery to increase the damage of your next Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite by (10|20% of Attack Power). These additional sources of damage are affected by Tip of the Spear and Mongoose Fury.
  1. Wildfire Bomb is now a choice node with a new talent, Rending Glaive:

    Rending Glaive
    12-second cooldown
    Throw a glaive that will ricochet among and shred through your enemies, dealing (60% of Attack Power) physical damage and an additional (90% of Attack Power) over 6 seconds. When striking fewer than 3 enemies, Rending Glaive has a chance to make itself usable again upon return without incurring its recharge time nor your global cooldown.

  • Improved Wildfire Bombs has been renamed to Packbreaker, and now gives a 50% chance to throw a free Wildfire Bomb [Rending Glaive at increased damage] upon activating Fury of the Eagle and 100% chance on Spearhead and Coordinated Assault. Tactical Advantage also gives Flanking Strike a chance to do this.
  1. Wildfire Infusions is now a choice node with a new talent, Snake Hunter, which causes you to gain 3% Haste from each active damage-over-time effect you have active. This effect diminishes by 20% per additional source contributing, reaching ~10% at 5 effects, and a soft cap of 14% at 12 effects (with 15% requiring more than 30 effects).
  1. Sharp Edges now also increases your critical strike chance by 1% per point.
  1. Viper’s Venom has been reworked and is now a choice node with Serpent Sting:

    Viper’s Venom
    Your single-target melee attacks will now apply the effect of Serpent Sting.

    This effect has two charges, each regenerated over 15 seconds and accelerated by 1.5 seconds per single-target melee attack used.

    Serpent Sting
    Fire a poison-tipped arrow at an enemy, dealing (30% of Attack power) Nature damage instantly and an additional (120% of Attack power) damage over 12 sec.

    If you acquire this skill also by other means, your other attacks will gain a chance to grant a free, empowered use of Serpent Sting, causing it to additionally deal its periodic damage instantly in addition to applying its normal effect.

    • Yes, this is purposely a lower-duration, more immediately potent version of Serpent Sting.
2

My wish is to buff Lunge to be +35 yards.

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My wish is for Bepples to get over it.

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i want to be able to tame exotics. just make it a farm/grind to unlock each pet family like they did for the dinomancy, undead, and bloodbeast tome. stick the stone hound one in throne of thunder/vaults of mogushan as a drop for example.

i think also if there were more talents that were more suited towards a melee dps like:
aspect of the monkey which could increase evasion

something that changed aspect of the turtle to trade some of its deflection for some more defensiveness and the ability to attack while reducing move speed or something would be great.

maybe they could work in that one anima power that had you drop a (harmful) trap at your feet when you used disengage. that wouldn’t feel awful to use since you have harpoon and also posthaste from the hunter tree.

survival instincts would also be incredible to have

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That’ll be some tricky-dicky coding. Finally, Mastery will no longer be a dump stat…it sounds like Versatility will be the new dump stat.

Any ranged attack? WFB is ranged. Eagled Raptors/Mongooses are ranged. Granted, it’s called “Quickshot” but your tooltip may be a bit vague.

I take it it’s inversely proportional. The less health missing, the more DoT damage, and vice versa. This is not a half-bad way to bypass what Haste(which is integral to the spec) can do.

Better than the Blink Strikes of old.

This is a decent new rework getup.

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Yes. It only affects the next use, after all, not each use for a duration. The primary bottleneck is solely your KC reset frequency.

No, directly. Else I’d have written it inversely to begin with.

The less %health they have, the more quickly the damage of your DoTs are dealt.

I’m not sure what you mean by bypass here.

  • Haste does not reduce DoT duration nor concentrate its damage towards the head of the effect, not thereby allow for a greater frequency of DoT applications (making their durations shorter, more granular, as to reduce waste). For DoTs, Haste is effectively just Versatility unless you have per-tick proc chances that are not proportionately modified by the increased tick rate. As such, Haste did not already provide such benefits.
  • This talent allows for DoTs to be used less wastefully while changing up low-target-%hp gameplay, but it does not overlap with the purposes of Haste beyond doing more damage. The auxiliaries, not the MB fillers, after all, are the anchors of our rotation, even if they may be delayed to finish capitalizing on a MF window, and Haste only increases the number of MBs per MF window and therefore the relative value of each (as each up to the 6th would buff yet more damage in total), rather than allowing for more room for competing Focus spenders.
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I’m down wit that.

I was thrown off by that because that’s dangerously OP. Less than 50% health and they’ll start to drop like a sack of hot potatoes. Blizzard on the whole have been sheepish about making dotters strong for some odd reason, lately.

I was thinking that it would not make the poison damage do too much more in a critical health window. So it does the most at 100%(think Careful Aim style) but does the least at 0-1% per the talent. I was wondering if that’s what you meant.

So if you say direct, it’s the more, the more, and the less, the less. The more health missing, the more damage. The less health missing, the less damage. So if I’m tracking(pun intended) you, the poisons are going to do tiddlywinks in the first phase of a boss and on fresh targets in M+…

We already have execute damage, so…naahhh. I’ll pass on that.

I think I prefer the inverse option if you don’t mind me saying. snapping fingers Damage needs to happen now, now, now. Gogogogogoggo.

Bypassing limitations of the Haste stat, which is a good way to go actually. Haste can only do so much. I’d like a talent like Deathadder that would speed things up even more. And I reiterate, I want the inverse.

I want those poisoned targets to take the most damage upfront, and then it can slow down as the health lessens. That way you open the door towards executes quicker.

Honestly, change it for inverse and you’d have a sweet thing going for both PvE and PvP application.

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Basing the DoT compression on the target’s %health missing is less OP than basing it on %health retained despite also having better gameplay implications.

A typical SV Serpent Sting is 202% of AP in armor-bypassing damage, almost double the damage against NPCs of a base Mongoose Bite, and at only a third of MB’s Focus cost. The more often you’re able to use it for full effect, the more often you’d be able to swap out an ST filler with a more powerful Serpent Sting.

If you could increase the frequency of your DoT actions by, say, 40% from the very start, your “ramp” would feel that much more cumbersome, with combat becoming increasingly devoted just to filler instead of accessing the core earlier and then having additional chase options at the end.

With it instead increasing available DoT frequency at the end, it reduces the likelihood of duration waste (15s DoTs on a target that will only live for 10 more seconds, for instance).

In short, it has a bit of intentional anti-synergy with your Kill Shot window precisely because it’s a consistency/QoL and optionality buff first and a throughput buff second.

The effect is dynamic, not snap-shotted. If you want the DoT to “go go go”, apply it, nuke the enemy, and each tick will steal some portion of that % of missing HP more from all remaining ticks, instead dealing them more instantly.

If it were snapshotted, you’d apply it at the start and want to purposely delay damage until they heal and you get another off, just so you can align a burst (such as by farming MF off a separate target) with it, and Serpent Sting would be that much less worth applying after for fear of failing to finish off the kill, rather than it being what helps ensure the finish from your direct damage.

In PvE, such also fits our profile of having CD-limited AoE opposite a ST-only focus mechanic and funnel effects, as we’d otherwise be encouraged to swap off towards high-HP targets to improve our damage efficiency, rather than actually finishing off the thing we’re focusing.

I’m still confused what you mean by this. Current SV has no tick-based procs for Haste to interact with any way unique from Crit or Versatility (more damage). There’s no RSV Lock and Load, only buffs (Bloodseeker) and capitalizing abilities (e.g., Volatile) which scale with the number of mobs afflicted. Nor have I suggested any such mechanic yet.

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I implied that the Deathadder would be dynamic instead of snapshotted. That too would be OP and we certainly don’t need to repeat those historical dooms.

You argue this like it’s a bad thing. But wait, this is too similar to BM. Oh no, we can’t have that. You’re right, this is TOO GOOD for SV.

Seriously, though, more filler is not a bad thing when all the important stuff is popped off. You’re doing pretty good that way, because filler is just filler. You can substitute filler with non-offensive CDs without losing too much damage. That’s actually a good thing.

Ramp-up is just bad. I would ditch that style. It was horribad back in Leg with the Mongooses and the old Fury. Nobody sensible would want to go through 5+1 globals to do max damage on Mongoose and Fury.

If we’re under the impression that Sting is linear and not like Warlock Agony which is exponential(?) to some nth degree, I would not sweat this.

I take it you mean a target that lives for 10 sec flat, or 10+15 sec? If you ask me, just one application of Sting is fine for both. That’s what I’d like to see, to simply the rotation which, again, is too good for SV to have in the present status quo.

For balancing reasons I wouldn’t support this as much, but it’s still one less ability to worry about as you’re using the others. It’s still some good vittles.

Afflocks and maybe Spriests did this professionally for a career. SV should consider themselves fortunate it’s only Sting they have to worry about applying.

Exactly. You just said it for me. We’re going to need the Haste still for recharge times and GCD reductions, but something that would actually do more damage without relying on the Haste secondary is good. That makes Crit and your Mastery even MORE important.

Because SV Haste is nice, but it is limited. SV Haste doesn’t need to be some ridiculous 24-32% value when it can just stack Crit and Mastery: Wild Instinct.

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It would be. It would make SV worse at what it does well while making it feel clunky in the exactly places it should feel smooth and directed.

Take your meds, dear.

It is linear. That is how it works. Nothing in my suggestion said to make it work differently.

That’s what Viper’s Venom is available for. Deathadder doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be, redundant with that purpose.

…That’s not particularly relevant, nor even a real “need”. With any AoE opportunities, the recharge times and GCD reductions granted by Haste only exceed the value of Crit in MB-focused contexts (MB-focused tier sets, Tyrannical builds, etc., and in this case with Viper’s Venom over Quickshot). After 20% Haste right now, Crit becomes more valuable until Fury of the Eagle would crit-overcap.

That applies regardless of Deathadder, though. What you’re describing is just increased net damage. …Every secondary stat gives that.

All it takes to increase choice is to un-neuter Mastery, which could have been done just with better scaling, even (though that would have come at cost to forcing more difference in optimal gear sets between ST and AoE).

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You weren’t listening to me.

You mean like aggression inhibitors from StarCraft? Sounds like you’re low key accusing me of not managing my testosterone levels.

Sorry. I don’t take T-blockers. You’re probably socially inexperienced with my type.

I never claimed it would be. Two different talents in two positions. It’s not one of those pick-ones.

Yes, it is. You overcomplicated a rebuttal. There’s still going to be a lot of GCDs to go through with SV. And since it’s technically melee, the first breakpoint of Haste would be standard issue.

Haste is the only secondary that DOESN’T improve actual base damage. It increases DPS, the time factor and all that. I already said it that a ridiculous 24-32% Haste would deprive one or two of the other stats. That’s not going to be better than M: Wild Instinct.

So you can dump Haste some and completely dump Versatility (it won’t be as good as Wild Instinct) for a solid Mastery/Crit build.

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Then hopefully repetition will clarify this: I see no need for two talents each designed to simplify the spec’s gameplay. The one is plenty, especially given the number of %dmg talents available to SV and which can be taken over mechanically-additive talents.

  • Some of those basic amp talents will likely need rebalancing later on as to be only mildly inferior choices at levels of optimal play, but such talents already provide sufficient avoidance of complexity.

No melee outright requires a Haste breakpoint outside of select builds (e.g., Cleaveless Arms needing enough Haste for CDR to bring its 45s CD down to 20 seconds).

Haste does, in effect, plainly and directly improve the damage of DoTs… and DoTs are all that Deathadder connects to. That’s why I have no idea why you kept referring to Haste among comments on Deathadder. If your intent is to reduce the relative frequency of DoT casts and increase your portion of filler, you’d avoid Deathadder and take more Haste.

But yes, the revised Mastery effect should make that Mastery real choice, given sufficient tuning (just as current Mastery would if given sufficient tuning, though with the downside of additional spread between ST and AoE stats). It does that independently of Deathadder, though, and does not therefore require that Deathadder also be designed simplify SV gameplay.

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You had me sold on Deathadder and Wild Instinct. I’ll take that over what we have now.

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Some additional wishlist items added. Click the hidden Details block to expand and view them.

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Amen.

(5char)

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He never will he enjoys having temper tantrums so much

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I had several talent and general class suggestions as well in my post a while back if you wanted to add any: We don’t have any specific Hunter changes to announce at this time - #4 by Markelf-zuljin . Most are with a Survival mindset.

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