Not quite all that I’d want, or even exactly in the way I’d want it, but to keep things a bit more practical, I’ve refrained from redesigning the trees completely from scratch and mostly just gone with retweaks and retunes.
BY-TASK WRITE-UP:
Game-wide
I. Roll back unnecessary neutering of macros.
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Conditionals for range and movement have been added for macros, allowing one to create fallback actions for when the preferred action is out of range or unavailable because one is moving.
In short, you still can’t make a single-button rotation macro if any CDs are rotationally involved, but you can have it vary itself based on range and movement.
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Normally area-targeting AoEs may now again be set to @target.
Accordingly, one may now put a Binding Shot or Freezing Trap, etc., right atop an enemy if they so desire.
Class Tree
I. De-bloat the class tree.
- Specialized Munitions and Blackrock Armaments removed. Their value has been rolled into their affected abilities baseline. (Explosive Shot buffed from 291 to 315% AP, Aimed Shot from 457.4% to 500% AP, etc.)
- Keen Eyesight has been changed into 4% crit for 1 point and its node now also offers the choice of 4% Mastery instead.
- Trigger Finger changed to Honed Reflexes, which offers 4% Haste for 1 point. It is now opposite a choice of 4% Versatility instead.
These last two changes move us from 2–4 points of obligatory stat-stick to 2 points of obligatory stat-choice. Removing them entirely could also work, but being able to shift 3% around seems decently thematic for the ‘versatile’ Hunter class, and the position of the nodes would still make whatever replaced them ideally nigh-obligatory, too.
- Serrated Tips replaced with Moment of Opportunity.
It’s fine for Haste to occasionally overtake Crit on BM and for Crit to be less king on Survival. Arguably, Survival still ought to see a tiny Mastery nerf to make that less obligatory (at least/especially, post-Cyrce’s), as well.
II. Ease Hunter raid value, though uniquely/flavorfully where possible.
- Hunter’s Mark no longer increases damage dealt to enemies by default. Instead, Hunters now carry a new aura, Hunting Party, baseline. Hunting Party increases your and your raid’s critical strike chance by 5% against enemies above 80% or below 20% health.
This amounts to a nominal 2% crit buff overall —but likely quite a bit more impact in practice due to the particular ranges in which it is given— and carries that bit more flavor.
- Hunters now gain Horn of the Hunt at level 48, granting Lust/Hero/Warp. Primal Rage now instead grants 20% Leech to the 5 most wounded allies within 30 yards, favoring self, fading over 12 seconds, on a 2-minute cooldown.
III. Improve class tree flavor and utility.
- Misdirection now includes the threat of your pet and can be used on yourself. When used on yourself or your pet, your and your pet’s threat contribution is doubled.
- Wing Clip is now usable from range on a 6 second cooldown and 5 second duration. When used from melee range, though, it ignores its cooldown, and its duration is increased by 200%.
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Countershot is now baseline. Its talent node has been replaced with the choice between Spotter and Guerilla.
- Spotter causes Hunting Party to also increase your and your nearest 4 affected allies’ range by the greater of 1.5 yards or 10%.
- Guerilla causes Hunting Party to also increase your natural health regeneration rate and that of your nearest 4 wounded allies by 300%.
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Moment of Opportunity now grants 20% Haste fading over 8 seconds whenever you successfully use any GCD utility tool and a further 30% movement speed fading over 8 seconds when trapping or binding an enemy. The duration of the latter effect is proportionately decreased if triggered again within 20 seconds.
This allows it to actually be useful in PvE, a better replacement for Serrated Tips.
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Trailblazer has been renamed to Farstrider and has changed places with Hunter’s Avoidance and now causes the Hunter to gain up to 30% movement speed over (rather than after) [2 GCDs’ time] (rather than a fixed 3 seconds) of using no direct active attack.
Note also that this effectively means that we can average a 7.5% movement speed bonus, as we’d ramp to 15% movement speed by the moment of each shot. The name change is to make it clearer that it has no actual trail-forming capacity, unlike the skill below.
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Pathfinding reworked. It now instead causes you to leave behind a path when moving at 30% or more increased speed that echoes 70% of that movement speed to allies who take that path. The potency of this path fades over 8 seconds.
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Pathfinding is now on a choice node opposite with Windsung Ammo, which now causes your Aimed Shot (MM), Barbed Shot (BM), or Wildfire Bomb (SV) to leave a path of wind in its direction, accelerating the movement of allies in that direction by 30%.
This allows us a bit of mobile utility reminiscent of some of our older abilities, such as Legion’s Windburst.
Further Technical Details
Pathfinding’s buff works basically via a dense series of 3-yard-radius zones that store (and then degrade, by 12.5% of the original value per second) your % movement speed over 100% if ≥30%. Intersecting one of these points grants 2 seconds of duration, with effect fading over that time, but can of course be immediately refreshed by following further.
- Enemies permanently immune to traps will no longer intercept them. The traps will instead slide right through them.
- Binding Shackles replaced with Modular Devices, which allows you to toggle Freezing Trap, Tar Trap, Binding Shot, High-Explosive Trap, and Implosive Trap between Shot and Trap forms, optionally reducing the time a trap can be pre-set in place by 83% (a Freezing Shot will only last 10 seconds before fading if an enemy does not run into it) in favor of making their travel near-instant and preventing interception along the way or retaining the added pre-set time.
This is intended primarily as simple QoL.
- By default, Binding Trap/Shot now actually binds enemies in place, preventing them for 6 seconds from exiting the area 3 yards around the Trap’s/Shot’s center.
- Tar-Coated Bindings replaced with Rangari Bola and Shock Lines. Players caught by Binding Trap/Shot have a chance to break the line early by running into based on their maximum health and %movement speed opposite your Attack Power.
- Rangari Bola causes Binding Trap/Shot to draw all enemies within 7 yards’ radius into its center upon landing.
- Shock Lines causes enemies who would exit Binding Trap/Shot’s range (if not for being bound by the ability) to also be stunned for 3 seconds.
All this gives a bit of extra flavor and at least more unique utility (as an arguably better version of the utility of Ursol’s Vortex or Champion’s Spear’s, rather than simply the uniquely least responsive AoE stun), now with further customization.
- High-Explosive Trap cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.
- Implosive Trap cooldown reduced to 45 seconds.
- Improved Traps replaced by Expert Trapper, which now also affects Binding Shot. Cooldown reduction increased to 20%.
- Expert Trapper now shares a choice node with a new talent, Ingenuity: "Your traps each receive new effects:
- "Freezing Trap – Now absorbs up to (600% of Attack Power) damage before breaking. This damage is split among nearby enemies upon being broken. You and allies may use the Additional Action key to activate Freezing Trap on self, freezing self until pressed again or having absorbed (600% of Attack Power) damage.
- "Tar Trap – Now also reduces the auto-attack and casting speeds of affected enemies by 30% for 6 seconds.
- "High Explosive Trap – After arming, your High-Explosive Trap may now be manually set to implode after targeting a particular direction, drawing enemies in before knocking them theretoward.
- “Implosive Trap – Damage increased by 150% if enemy was casting when affected. Effect halved on non-player enemies.”
Work-in-progress / spitball, but the idea here is just to give each trap a bit more utility or else reward said utility slightly further, if mostly inconsequentially.
- Scrappy now causes your Auto Shots and auto-attacks to have a chance to reduce the cooldown of any cooling skill among your traps, Intimidate, and Binding Shot.
- Quick Load replaced with Cornered Resourcefulness, which, upon your being reduced below 40% health now grants a single free use of Scatter Shot, Bursting Shot, Binding Shot, or any of your known traps.
These are some final bits and pieces to make the otherwise fringe/wasteful talents more attractive.
IV. Ease pet inclusion and the affordances of pets, even per when no pet is active.
- Misdirection now also affects the threat of your pet as well.
- Pet health, cooldowns, buffs, and debuffs are now still tracked (and continue to progress) even while the pet is inactive (though no damage is taken while inactive) and carry over even when changing pets.
I.e., swapping pets will not offer you a refreshed pet active skill (you will still have exactly the same time left until you can use your next active, whatever it may be), nor will they effectively full-heal your pet. (Beast Mastery may be able to manage multiple pets, in which case this is not quite always true, but baseline, no cheese is possible nor pet-swap optimizations enticed.)
- Pets no longer have auto-attacks. Instead, their basic attacks no longer have cooldowns, and their Focus costs have been decreased. Beast Cleave adjusted accordingly.
This greatly reduces the effect of downtime on pets, essentially allowing them to bank a larger number of seconds of full damage over their time spent moving.
- Dash and its equivalents no longer have cooldowns. Instead, they consume Focus over time commensurate to bonus movement provided and are, by default, used only if one is out of range and would otherwise overcap Focus.
- Pets may now ‘leap’ (as a disguised teleport) 12 to 20 yards if the way to pathable terrain nearest where they are to move is blocked. Doing so counts as bonus movement and consumes Focus accordingly.
- Actively using your pet’s basic attack, Dash, or Prowl now simply toggles each from being used only if your pet’s Focus would otherwise autocap (and the pet is out of range to attack, in Dash’s case) to being used as often as possible.
This further improves the reliability of pet mobility.
- Dismiss Pet is now an oGCD that takes effect over 4-seconds, reduced by Haste, during which time your pet will deal and take up to 50% less damage before dashing off (as a non-unit / only an animation) and disappearing.
This allows for one to try to bail their pet out in a worst-case scenario and also eases pet swaps, as may become important for Beast Mastery later.
More importantly for Marksmanship:
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A new skill, Beast Training has been added. It now allows you to select a specialization each for your 5 active pets and for yourself. For your own choice (affecting the Hunter directly, when no pet is active), a fourth setting, “Use most recent pet’s specialization”, has been added.
- Any number of changes set via Beast Training can be made simultaneously whenever out of combat even when in M+, via a 4-second cast, alike to changing talent loadouts but faster and universally accessible.
- One may also freely toggle a “Lone Wolf” option therein to temporarily replace “Call Pet 1” with “Change Aspect: ” and “Dismiss Pet” with “Revert Aspect”, allowing one to change choice of active and passive without re-using Beast Training. Note that “Revert Aspect” resets you to whatever Aspect you had set for yourself more directly, not to no passive/active set.
- While no pet is active or borrowed from, Lone Wolf defaults to Aimed Shot applying Mortal Wounds (or, though largely irrelevant, Barbed Shot for BM and Wildfire Bomb for SV).
- If borrowing an Aspect from a specific pet via Lone Wolf, one instead gains an oGCD in place of their normal minor pet active, e.g., Camouflage from Prowl (or halving its CD if already talented); Hemotoxin from Mortal Wounds and Neurotoxin from Snare —each an oGCD that then applies and only begins cooling on your next shot; Cover (30% increase to Armor for 5 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown) from any active defensive and Survivalist (30% increase to Armor, 10% less damage taken, and 3% health recovered per second for 5 seconds if dropped below 40% health on a 2-minute ICD) in place of any automatic 2-minute defensive; and Slyphic Charm (50% chance to purge one poison, disease, or magic effect from self) from Cleanse.
These final notes ensures that Lone Wolf players still have the same ease of swaps and extent of utility as pet-users.
V. Miscellaneous Polish
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Kill Shot cooldown increased to 12 seconds but now scales with Haste and deals 12.5% more damage (450% AP, up from 400%).
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Deathblow increased to a 15% chance.
If we’re forced to learn Kill Shot, it may as well feel decently powerful from the start. Some augmenting talents may be reduced slightly (not quite proportionately) in compensation, however.
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Cobra Shot replaces Arcane Shot as the baseline spender, and its VFX has been revised.
- Cobra Shot now appears as a subtle but seemingly dangerous shot with a quick, slightly-arcing green tinged projectile and a subtle wake and hiss of air from its speed, more akin to the feel of a rapidly striking snake rather than a child’s toy gliding on a small rocket towards its target.
- All buffs to Arcane Shot now apply instead to Cobra Shot.
- Beast Mastery’s Cobra Shot replaced with Striking Cobra, which causes Cobra Shot to reduce the cooldown of Kill Command by 2 seconds.
For a mana-less Hunter, Cobra Shot is simply the more thematically fitting. It also removes the weirdness of redundancy with Arcane Shot or of trying to fit in a magical attack alongside an otherwise almost wholly physical kit vs. plate-wearers on Marksmanship, allowing them a more cohesive adaptation (see the change to Penetrating Shots in the Marksmanship section).
- Rapid Fire now uses silver-white projectiles by default.
- New projectile-appearance-changing glyphs sold by most city’s former Hunter trainer NPCs.
- Cobra Shot can now be turned blue again via the Arcane Adder glyph.
- Rapid Fire can be turned red again via the Overheat glyph.
There you go. Some VFX choice. Probably more to come.
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Mend Pet has been replaced with Spirit Link. Spirit Link “infuses the link between your spirit and that of your pet, splitting (200% of Attack Power) healing over 10 seconds between you and your pet and consumes 5 Focus per second for an additional (120% of Attack Power) healing per second, for up to 3 seconds. This split is based on %health each tick, with the more wounded receiving a proportionately larger amount. Your pet receives 300% increased healing from Spirit Link.”
- Wilderness Medicine now increases the effect of Natural Mending and causes each tick of Spirit Link to reduce the duration of most harmful poison, disease, or magical effects against you or your pet by up to .2 seconds, based on the proportion of healing each of you receive. Effect increased by 300% for your pet.
Compare this against Flash of Light spam or the like, which does 632% AP healing in 3 seconds without risking a 10s CD being ended before its full effect.
While this is certainly less healing than any hybrid has access to, it does at least allow for some desperate saves and can certainly keep your pet alive while also providing a more seemingly cohesive/synergistic point of attachment for certain other effects (a returned Den Recovery, Camouflage heal, receiving the HoT while channeling Feign Death, etc.).
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Eye of the Beast has been returned baseline to all specs and flying pets affected by it can now actually fly.
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Eagle Eye has been returned to baseline for all specs and now checks for distance from any ceiling and places the camera up to 12 yards above the surface, insofar as able, by default.
Just a final tidbit of class flavor in usually un(der)appreciated areas.
Marksmanship Tree
Main Highlights:
- Bloat for getting back to where we were prior to 11.1 has been mostly removed. Ferocity is returned as a choice (with Primal Rage now granting a temporary surge of Leech to self and 4 nearest [wounded] allies) and we can now swap between Cunning/Tenacity/Ferocity via, at longest, an out-of-combat 4-second cast, and the spec no longer breadcrumbs out access to the Aimed Shot speeds we already had prior (Aimed Shot is back to 2.5s, and Streamline back to a single stack at max of 30%).
- A few aspects have been slightly simplified on paper in order to be less rote in practice, largely by baselining certain augments that otherwise unintuitively sectionalize who can do what. Razor Fragments is now basically just for the AoE, does a Trick Shot’s portion, and requires no procs, while Precise Shots is now a flat (split-able) bonus to any instant Shot, and Streamline is now 5% per any instant Shot loosed, up to 6 stacks (30%, for <1.75s seconds pre-Haste, faintly shorter than double-Streamline stack at present), with a Rapid Fire therefore still capping it by itself (as each shot loosed counts separately), removing the need for Moving Target.
I. Better Handling of Lone Wolf
- Spotter Eagle no longer prevents the use of a pet. It simply becomes inactive whenever a pet is active, replacing the pet’s raw damage with the chance of more Aimed Shot damage.
- As per the changes above, one can use the Ferocity/Cunning/Tenacity specializations even without a pet active and can easily swap between them via Beast Training or the Lone Wolf toggle therein and its conversion of “Call Pet: (Pet Name)” to “Change Aspect: (Pet Species)”, thereby gaining access to one’s preferred C/T/F passive and active and to the species-specific minor pet active.
- Accordingly, Cunning / Tenacious and Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond have been removed, leading to a talent reshuffle as this slot is filled:
- Surging Shots has traded places with Penetrating Shots, and On Target has moved into the place formerly held by Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond.
- Trueshot now paths from this newly-placed On Target (in the node formerly occupied by Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond), Penetrating Shots (in the node formerly occupied by Surging Shots), and Master Marksman.
The first swap simply puts the Rapid Fire-dependent talent under Rapid Fire and the non-dependent talent that mirrors Master Marksman not under Rapid Fire and in a position to mirror the position of Master Marksman.
II. Reducing "Bread-crumbing" and Increasing Intuitiveness
- Aimed Shot is again a 2.5s cast, down from 3.0s, baseline.
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Streamline is now generated by every instant ranged special (i.e. active, not Auto) skill, but generates only 5% reduced cast time for Aimed Shot per shot loosed, to an initial max of 30%. This is still capped by Rapid Fire, as each shot of Rapid Fire counts individually.
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Moving Target has again been replaced by Careful Aim, which increases the critical strike chance of Aimed Shot against enemies over 70% health by up to 45%, increasing with their % health. Your first Aimed Shot against a non-player enemy always benefits from this effect.
- Bulletstorm no longer increases Aimed Shot damage. Instead, Bulletstorm now instead causes each hit you land to increase the damage of your Shots by (5% of Attack Power) for 12 seconds, stacking up to 15 times (60%). New applications do not refresh this effect.
- Hunter’s Mark applies Spotter’s Mark. This Spotter’s Mark has infinite duration against NPCs (until consumed, obviously), but in all settings this effect cannot occur twice on the same target until out of combat for at least 5 seconds.
Between all the above changes, your Aimed Shot has virtually zero dependence on prior actions and enemy players have relatively full forenotice of Aimed Shot’s likely power (based on their %health and the presence of Spotter’s Mark), unlike when Moving Target and Bulletstorm could silently enter the mix by being landed on someone else. Only the cast time of Aimed Shot is dependent, as before.
- All Shots except Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire now have a 20% chance to generate a Spotter’s Mark. However, Precise Shots still increases this chance to 30%.
- Precise Shots can now be spent by any action, but it now simply duplicates and stores 30% of Aimed Shot’s damage dealt, to be added to your next instant shot, increasing its chance to generate a Spotter’s Mark to 30%. Up to two applications of Precise Shots can be held at a time. Applications are spent separately, the larger damage bonus first.
- Headshot now instead increases the critical strike chance of Kill Shot by 15% and causes Kill Shot critical hits against its primary target to apply Spotter’s Mark.
You may notice a running theme here: Rather than 1–2 select skills being allowed to partake in each mechanic, almost all can, although some obviously are more synergetic than others. Rapid Fire indirectly, due to loosing many instant, active shots per second, has the strongest tie to Streamline, but Streamline applies to everything equally. Kill Shot, via Headshot (and Razor Fragments), has the strongest tie to Precise Shots but all instant shots can spend your applications of Precise Shots.
III. Addressing Miscellaneous (Subtle) Shortfalls
Volley, and Returned Trick Shots–related Fun
- Trick Shots is now snapshotted. If a shot was loosed under Trick Shots, it will Trick Shot fully even if the buff falls off prematurely.
- Volley no longer replaces your application of Trick Shots, but instead causes your shots to act as if affected by Trick Shots for 6 seconds. This, too, snapshots.
This just generally smooths out the use of Volley, causing it no longer to necessarily waste existing applications of Trick Shots.
- Consuming Trick Shots now replaces the consumed application with a 0.6-second application.
This gives time for you to slip in an instant or near-instant Aimed Shot at the end of a Rapid Fire consumption of Trick Shots, similar to our brief-lived ability to double up Double Tap on both Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot under Trick Shots + Lock and Load. Though we still can no longer conditionally get literally double value out of Double Tap, as that made the talent unmanageable, we can at least spare ourselves a Multi-Shot cast.
Importantly for PvP, Marksmanship is now less affected by enemy Armor.
- Penetrating Shots now causes your critical hits to penetrate a portion of enemy defensives, short of immunity, based on your Mastery.
Reliance on Critical Hit has been reduced in PvE, reducing the difference between ideal and less ideal secondary stat compositions.
- See the above change to Penetrating Shots.
- Note: Serrated Tips was removed from the Class Tree.
- Master Marksman % of damage is now dependent on Mastery (equal to range bonus).
The value of Haste has been increased slightly for a greater number of builds.
- Rapid Fire’s cooldown now scales with Haste.
- On Target %Haste increased to 10% but now fades over 8 seconds. Maximum benefit from overlapping stacks remains at 20%.
- Precise Shots no longer reduces the frequency of Auto Shot. (This indirectly makes In the Rhythm proportionately far stronger, which in turn aids Lock and Load and in turn aids On Target, which… {read: light quadratic scaling here, too}.)
- Note: Kill Shot now hits 12.5% harder, its CD now scales with Haste, and it typically benefits further from Headshot that it did previously.
Marksmanship has been made a bit more able to deal with short bursts.
- Trueshot now holds up to 20 seconds of duration (1 second of duration per 6 seconds of charge) but requires only 10 seconds of charge for it to be activated. By default, additional seconds of charge are tracked in the bottom-right corner of the skill’s icon.
This allows for a more manipulable Trueshot, which can be pushed from essentially 60 to 120 seconds’ worth of cooling.
- Calling the Shot now also extends the maximum charge time of Trueshot to 150 seconds and therefore its maximum duration to 25 seconds.
- Tensile Bowstring now simply causes Trueshot to “also increase your Haste by 5% and the cast speeds of Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot by 25%.”
- Improved Streamline causes Aimed Shot to benefit 50% more from reductions to its cast-time or increases to its casting speed.
Since one can use Calling the Shots to extend the duration of Trueshot, Tensile Bowstring can now fall back to a purer comfort talent with more modest DPS implications (outside of certain Haste-thresholded AoE tech if paired with Improved Streamline).
- Calling the Shots is now opposite Archer’s Rhythm: “Every 20 Focus consumed reduces the cooldown of Trueshot by 1 seconds. Trueshot maximum charge time extended to 120 seconds and its maximum duration, consequently, to 25 seconds.”
This allows for an option less dependent upon Feathered Frenzy and Ohn’ahran Winds, if one wishes to opt out of those.
Marksmanship no longer suffers from its target being killed mid-channel, and Rapid Fire has been smoothed out to allow for a bit of greater nuance and choicefulness overall.
- When its target dies, Rapid Fire now automatically re-acquires a nearby engaged, non-CCed target, if any.
- Rapid Fire slowed to a shot per 0.5 seconds pre-Haste (4 shots over its 2 seconds max channel time), but each now hits for 150% of Attack Power, up from 60.5%.
- However, Surging Shots no longer increases the damage of Rapid Fire, since that portion has effectively been baselined.
I.e., Rapid fire is now less spasmatic, at least by default (you can talent to return the spaz) and better fits the portions of GCD (3 shots per GCD) and keeps it from being too absurdly powerful in terms of Streamline.
- Rapid Fire now looses shots individually, for as long as Rapid Fire is channeled, for 1–4 shots loosed per channel. It holds up to 5 charges by default (increased to 7 by Ammo Conservation), each regenerated over 5 seconds (pre-Haste). Rapid Fire does not trigger the global cooldown, nor does it make use of Trick Shots below 3 charges.
- Consuming Trick Shots with Rapid Fire refreshes Trick Shots at 0.6 seconds’ duration, effectively causing Trick Shots not to be consumed until Rapid Fire completes (or until having slipped in a final Lock and Load Aimed Shot).
This further reduces any penalty for the target dying and newly allows one to use Rapid Fire to reduce overkill or realign cooldowns.
Note that the change to Trick Shots above (causing it to linger, upon each consumption, for 0.6 seconds, means that Rapid Fire cannot prematurely consume Trick Shots.
You should still bank up the maximum number of shots before unloading during a Trick Shot, especially if you can’t get Aimed Shot to below a 0.6-second cast, but there are no new constraints from the change, only new opportunities.
- Ammo Conservation no longer increases the number of shots fired. Instead, it increases the maximum number of Rapid Fire charges you can hold to 7 and increases Rapid Fire’s damage and recharge speed by 40%.
- Ammo Conservation is now a choice node with Free-fire. Free-fire gives each shot of Rapid Fire a 75% chance to duplicate itself but reduces the damage of each shot by 25%.
This allows one to choose between greater burst proc value (mostly for Aimed Shot) and Rapid Fire being a stronger tool in its own right.
- Surging Shots now gives Aimed Shot a 20% chance to grant 3 charges of Rapid Fire.
This just fits its old effect to the new individual-shot model.
- Surging Shots now shares a choice node with Lethal Shots. Lethal Shots grants every Shot loosed a 20% chance to grant a charge of Rapid Fire.
Again, you can thereby choose between more Aimed Shot / Trueshot–focused burst and greater overall use of Rapid Fire. Surging Shots concentrates 3 shots’ worth of effect into each Aimed Shot, but since you tend to fire off at more than 3 shots per Aimed Shot outside of Trueshot or particularly Aimed Shot-focused builds, Lethal Shots may average higher overall Rapid Fire frequency. (I’ll tune it upward if not. Outside of AiS-focused builds, Lethal should be better for constant uptime without burst requirements, while Surging should focus on the utility of having that added burst.)
IV. Increasing Customizability, Pathing Access, and Thematic Breadth
Trueshot-augmenting talents remain obviously dependent on Trueshot but no longer require every prior augment.
- Calling the Shots / Archer’s Rhythm now warns that Trueshot is a prerequisite but now paths from Target Acquisition and No Scope, allowing Feathered Frenzy to be skipped.
- Double Tap / Unerring Vision warn that they depend upon Trueshot but now path also from Bulletstorm, and Volley.
As Tensile Bowstring now stands mostly as a redundancy / safety net and the effects of Feathered Frenzy are less valuable due to other means of increasing Spotter’s Mark generation and the increased bankability of Trueshot, it makes less sense to force either to be taken. As such, they are now wholly optional — decent but not obligatory.
New choices are now available for AoE, allowing one to shift Aimed Shot’s emphasis in/for AoE:
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Note that the revised Bulletstorm spread out the damage bonus onto all other actions.
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Aspect of the Hydra has been renamed to Serpentstalker: Your Physical Shots afflict their victims with Serpent Sting, at (30% of Attack Power) damage dealt per second, for a duration based on the Shot’s original damage dealt (plus a small amount extra per hit), and your other ranged attacks to deal an additional (150% of Attack Power) of their damage type over 6 seconds. Afflicting more than a single target increases your afflictions’ damage by 20% per enemy beyond the first, to a maximum of a 100% bonus. Afflictions ended early by dispelling or the death of their victim split and add their remaining duration evenly among nearby enemies.
This allows one to replace Trick Shotting enemies with multi-dotting and empowered Explosive Shots that form mini burst windows. Think RSV, but without the DoT being quite such a freebie. (And yes, it more than plentifully competes with the original Aspect of the Hydra in two-target.)
But, as this inadvertently comes with a single-target bonus, Trick Shots should perhaps also gain at least some single-target value…
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Trick Shots revised: “Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire have a 30% chance to ricochet to a nearby enemy for 75% damage, repeating up to 6 times. Striking 3 or more enemies with a single attack increases this chance to 100% for your next Aimed Shot or Rapid Fire. If Trick Shots would occur but no enemy is nearby to ricochet to, Aimed Shot will refund 15 Focus and 2 seconds of its cooldown.”
This much is still very much WIP, but essentially you now have two very different ways to approach core multi-target damage, each with some implication on single-target damage as well, and as it is an obligatory talent regardless, a greater amount of impact has been bundled into each from the start as to make them feel more distinct from yet competitive with one another.
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On Target now shares a choice node with a new talent, Harrier, which causes you to “gain 1% Haste for each of your bleed effects active and the greatest number of your additional afflictions present on any single enemy.”
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Razor Fragments revised: “Your Kill Shots deal 60% of their damage to nearby enemies over 6 seconds. This periodic damage starts off intensely and fades over its duration. During Deathblow, this portion is also applied to your primary target.”
- NOTE: Bleak Powder no longer provides the bulk of Kill Shot’s (Black Arrow’s) basic/direct AoE damage but does still provides substantial quadratic scaling. Bleak Powder was changed to All to Shadow: “Black Arrow causes all enemies within 12 yards to take (100% of Attack Power) Shadow damage and deal (30% of Attack Power) Shadow damage to all enemies nearby if afflicted with a bleed or twice that if afflicted with Black Arrow itself.”
With this, Kill Shot can more substantially join the fray in AoE (and feel more substantially worth using) without having to be a Dark Ranger.
Sentinel (Marksmanship)
WIP
My issues with Sentinel are twofold:
- It doesn’t, imo, feel interestingly additive in any way. Its only noticeably optimizable mechanic is Lunar Storm, and even it just applies the most basic of basic effects: flat damage and damage amplification. (That it only does those two things isn’t bad, to be clear, but it feels like there should be something more, at the least.)
- It doesn’t feel particularly Sentinel-like, and what little it does draw upon is only the least interesting and most racially/religiously specific sort.
I suspect that when lore-ists think of the Night Elven military, especially after the War of the Ancients (before which males were still traditionally used, often as infantry or shocktroop cavalry, and therefore functioned and felt rather differently), we usually think of guerilla fighters, with relatively few fully-engaged shock troopers but far from content to simply whittle enemies down through constant attrition alone.
While the Sentinels did form in close connection with the Sisters of Elune, in part through Tyrande’s advantage of power vacuums to start a much deeper theocratic bend through Night Elf society and governance, it’s not as if the average archer wielded Elunite magics, nor were military tactics at all built around said magics. The Darnassian Army made use of druidic magics and that of faerie dragons, etc., but Elunite magics themselves were largely a barely if ever leverageable side-effect of the Night Elven priestess-hood (of Elune, specifically, at that). Making that the core of what makes a Sentinel — as opposed to ambush tactics, coordinated fire, things befitting outriding or scout work, etc. — feels even less fitting that trying to make, say, traditional “martial arts” the core of Spec Ops training.
That said, addressing those issues is still a work in progress, and I’m not sure how many changes I can afford to make. So, to start, I’ll stick to a minimum, aimed less at theme than simple functionality:
Minimum Changes:
WORK IN PROGRESS / STILL CONVERTING FORMAT
ORIGINAL BY-LINE WRITE-UP
GENERAL
- A new skill, Beast Training has been added. It now allows you to select a specialization each for your 5 active pets and for yourself. For your own choice, a fourth setting, “Use most recent pet’s specialization”, has been added. Any number of these changes can be made simultaneously whenever out of combat, including in M+, via a 4-second cast.
- Hunter’s Mark no longer increases its target’s damage taken. The damage bonus has instead been replaced by a new baseline raidwide passive aura, Hunter’s Insights, increasing the Hunter’s and their raid’s critical strike chance by 3%, increased to 5% against enemies over 70% health. Auto-crits instead have their damage increased.
- Hunter now gains Horn of the Hunt at level 48, granting Hero/Lust. Primal Rage now instead briefly increases one’s party’s Leech by 16%, fading over 8 seconds, with a cooldown of 2 minutes.
This finally both provides a useful raid buff and freedom of pet spec even while retaining access to Lust/Hero.
- Keen Eyesight has been nerfed to 3% but now costs only 1 point. It now also shares a choice node with Expert Knowledge, which increases Mastery by 3%.
- Trigger Finger reduced to 1 point and renamed to Honed Reflexes and now grants 3% Haste. It now also shares a choice node with Hunter’s Tenacity, which increases Versatility by 3%.
Rather than being solely obligatory stat-sticks (even if the latter was largely useless for most), they at least now offer a bit of choice. It also saves us a couple talent points, opening those up to use on utility. Yes, we are of course nerfed slightly in compensation, as with all else that would otherwise be a nigh-universal buff to the class.
- Specialized Arsenal has been removed and its damage baselined.
- Blackrock Munitions has been removed and its damage baselined.
This offers us a further 2 points of utility, now for a total of 4.
- Kill Shot now has a cooldown of 12 seconds but is newly reduced by Haste.
- Base Deathblow chance increased to 15%.
- Baseline Multi-Shot damage increased from 51% to 76% of Attack Power for all specs, bringing MM’s base Multi-Shot damage up to Beast Mastery Multi-Shot’s base damage.
- Arcane Shot focus cost reduced to 30.
These few changes are mostly aimed at Marksmanship and just making baseline Kill Shot less pathetic. Effectively, it prevents the need for bloat talents or such excessive reliance on Aimed Shot later along.
- Hunter’s Avoidance has swapped places with Trailblazer, which has been revised: “Your movement speed increases by up to 30% over 3 seconds. This bonus is lost when you attack or are hit by targeted direct damage. Rate increases with Haste.”
This places an element far more vital to QoL and class flavor much earlier in the leveling experience and, in its revised form, effectively grants an average of a 7.5% movement speed bonus.
- Binding Shackles replaced with Born to be Wild. Born to be Wild’s former position has been taken by Improved Traps.
- Serrated Tips has been removed and its place taken by Hunter’s Avoidance.
- Unnatural Causes has been removed and its place taken by Moment of Opportunity.
And this then saves two capstone talents and improves Hunter’s central path to the capstone tier. Damage of all Hunter damage over time effects is of course increased by ~12% in compensation.
- Moment of Opportunity adjusted: "After triggering a trap or making an attack from Camouflage, your next 3 seconds’ of movement have their speed increased by 30%. Effect proportionately reduced if triggered more than twice per minute.
- Scrappy now causes your Auto Shots and auto-attacks to have a chance to reduce the cooldown of any cooling skill among your traps, Intimidate, and Binding Shot.
- Quick Load replaced with Cornered Resourcefulness, which now also affects one of your cooling traps.
- Cornered has been moved into the position formerly held by Trailblazer, pathing from Bursting Shot / Scatter Shot and into Emergency Salve.
- Kindling Flare has been moved into the place formerly held by Improved Traps, pathing from Scrappy and Camouflage and into Moment of Opportunity.
These small changes reopen up pathing sensibly.
- Territorial Instincts’ cooldown reduction increased from 10 to 20 seconds.
- Binding Shot now prevents enemies tethered from moving more than 5 yards away from its center for 6 seconds and can no longer be dispelled except by the removal of roots. It no longer stuns.
- Binding Shot now a choice node opposite Fetter Trap, which does the same but as a trap activated when an enemy passes through and tries to leave its area of effect.
Yes, these skills works well to prevent, say, Theater of Pain jumpers from jumping all over, limiting them to those 5 yards’ radius. And it allows knockbacks to knock enemies up without actually spreading them across half the arena.
- Tar-Coated Bindings replaced with Rangari Bola, causing Binding Shot and Fetter Trap to pull all enemies towards its center on activation.
- Implosive Trap replaced with Gale Shot, which no longer has to travel towards the enemy. It just knocks up the target (if an enemy) and any enemies around them instantly.
- Explosive Shot’s damage is now reduced only after 8 enemies hit.
MARKSMANSHIP
Main Highlights:
- Bloat for getting back to where we were prior to 11.1 has been mostly removed. Ferocity is returned as a choice (with Primal Rage now granting a temporary surge of Leech to self and 4 nearest [wounded] allies) and we can now swap between Cunning/Tenacity/Ferocity via, at longest, an out-of-combat 4-second cast, and the spec no longer breadcrumbs out access to the Aimed Shot speeds we already had prior (Aimed Shot is back to 2.5s, and Streamline back to a single stack at max of 30%).
- A few aspects have been slightly simplified on paper in order to be less rote in practice, largely by baselining certain augments that otherwise unintuitively sectionalize who can do what. Razor Fragments is now basically just for the AoE, does a Trick Shot’s portion, and requires no procs, while Precise Shots is now a flat (split-able) bonus to any instant Shot, and Streamline is now 5% per any instant Shot loosed, up to 6 stacks (30%, for <1.75s seconds pre-Haste, faintly shorter than double-Streamline stack at present), with a Rapid Fire therefore still capping it by itself (as each shot loosed counts separately), removing the need for Moving Target.
- Marksmanship no longer loses access to their pet, with or without Unbreakable Bond, but your Spotter Eagle is still called only when no pet is active. The warning “Your Spotter Eagle is inactive while your pet is summoned” has been added to the Marksman version of all pet skills except Master’s Call.
- Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond removed, as they just further force someone away from a choice that otherwise would have been available just from calling or not calling a pet.
- Tenacious / Cunning node has been removed, since you can now change your pet-less specialization via Beast Training and its 4-second cast anyways.
- On Target moved into the place of Surging Shots, Surging Shots moved into the place of Penetrating Shots, Penetrating Shots moved into the place of Trick Shots / Aspect of the Hydra, and Trick Shots / Aspect of the Hydra moved into the place formerly held by Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond and now paths directly to Trueshot, which can now also be reached from Surging Shots and Master Marksman.
There was literally no reason to make NuLoneWolf outright prevent the summoning of pets, a mistake we already learned the stupidity of back in Legion.
- Aimed Shot cast time reduced from 2 GCDs back down to 1.67 GCDs. Rapid Fire is again the only generator of Streamline and again (ultimately) reduces Aimed Shot’s cast time by 30%.
- Aimed Shot damage increased from 457.4% of Attack Power to 550% of Attack Power (a ~20% buff), but Moving Target has been removed.
This frees up Aimed Shot’s value to be more immediate while also ensuring a greater portion of its damage variance is telegraphed to enemy players.
- On Target now shares a choice node with a new talent, Harrier, which causes you to “gain 1% Haste for each of your bleed effects active and the greatest number of your additional afflictions present on any single enemy.”
This adds some new funnel value and incentive for spreading bleeds, partly in place of Serpentstalker’s and old Hydra.
- Moving Target has been replaced by Careful Aim, which increases the critical strike chance of Aimed Shot against enemies over 70% health by up to 45%, increasing with their health. Your first Aimed Shot against a non-player enemy always benefits from this effect.
In this way, PvP damage is pre-indicated by Spotter’s Mark and by Rapid Fire granting Streamline or is silently amped only when the victim has the most HP left by which to respond, while in PvE we get back an old iconic trait.
- On Target buffed to 5% Haste per applications, but its applications now last only 8 seconds each.
- Precise Shots now increases Arcane Shot and Multi-shot damage by 25% passively and causes Aimed Shot to generate a Precise Shot, duplicating and storing 25% of that Aimed Shot’s damage dealt to its primary target be added to the damage of your next damaging instant Shot, split among all enemies struck, and reduces its Focus cost by 10. You can hold up to 2 instances of Precise Shots at a time, to be spent separately.
- Precise Shots no longer increases the time between auto-shots. In the Rhythm duration reduced to 7 seconds.
Since we can’t buff Arcane Shot too far without killing Cobra Shot and hidden modifiers for which no explanations can be found in-game are gross, I just added here the passive portion I would otherwise have baselined. Modifiers on each spender apply also to the bonus damage.
- Rapid Fire now looses its shots individually, holding and consuming 3 to 6 charges at a time to be fired off every 0.33 seconds pre-Haste. Damage per shot/charge increased to (100% of Attack Power). A charge is regenerated every 4 seconds, and this cooling rate now scales with Haste. Rapid Fire may change targets mid-channel.
This increases flexibility even while offering a bit more skill ceiling due to consequent inadvertently adjusted interactions. Note also that the Surging Shots damage bonus is baselined here.
- Streamline now reduces the cast time of Aimed Shot by 5% per ranged special attack (i.e., not Auto Shot), again to a max of 30%.
- Surging Shots no longer increases Rapid Fire damage, but instead simply gives Aimed Shot a 15% chance to generate 6 charges of Rapid Fire.
- Improved Deathblow no longer increases Aimed Shot’s chance to trigger Deathblow but instead grants all shots a 5% chance per shot to trigger it.
Yes, this of course helps Rapid Fire most (as it will land 3 hits per second pre-Haste).
- Surging Shots now shares a node with a new choice, Lethal Shots, which causes each instant and Auto-shot to generate a charge of Rapid Fire.
Yes, you can again choose to take on smaller portions of generation that deemphasize Aimed Shot.
- Streamline has switched places with Ammo Conservation. Streamline now instead triggers from all instant shots.
- Ammo Conservation has been replaced with Wild Quiver. Wild Quiver increases the maximum number of charges of Rapid Fire you can hold by 4 and their cooling time by 25%. It does not, however, change the maximum number that can be fired at a time, nor their rate of fire.
The idea here is to take talents for their gameplay-affecting novel capacities, rather than just for their raw output (previously a straight 43% buff).
- Obsidian Arrow replaced by Hair Trigger, which increases your Auto Shot damage by 100%, gives it a high chance to duplicate itself against all bleeding engaged (non-CCed) enemies in a large cone in front of you.
Again, allows incentive for spread bleeds.
- No Scope now shares its node with Every Shot Counts, which gives Auto Shot a 15% chance to trigger Spotter’s Mark on its victims and allows it to generate Streamline.
This opens up options for Mark-spreading that face diminishing returns with other options but thereby offer choice in how one wants to increase Mark uptime and against how many enemies at once.
- Deadeye now grants a second charge of Kill Shot and causes your uses of Kill Shot and the action after them to incur 0.5 seconds less of the global cooldown.
This mostly just improves one’s ability to slip in additional Kill Shots, since they’ll then cost a net value of only half a GCD.
- Headshot increases the critical strike chance of Kill Shot against its primary target by 15% and its critical hits are now guaranteed to apply Spotter’s Mark.
Note that Precise Shots can now also apply to Kill Shot by default and is even ideally saved for it if its damage modifiers would exceed Arcane Shot’s. As such, the functionality of Precise Shots has been changed in keeping with its earlier main purpose of allowing for less Aimed Shot downtime, especially during Trueshot, as opposed to just its raw damage.
- Bulletstorm now instead causes each hit of Aimed Shot or Kill Shot to increase the damage and reduce the Focus cost of Arcane Shot and Multi-shot by 3.5% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 15 times. New applications do not refresh this effect.
Creates windows wherein Focus generation can come in usefully for Multi-or Arcane spam in place of Steady Shots. Should better fit the name and create a better complement to Marksmanship’s existing hierarchies (as opposed to just giving yet more reason to use at all times what was already top priority).
- Kill Shot and Black Arrow damage increased by 20%. Razor Fragments now increases Kill Shot damage only by 15%, to be dealt over 6 seconds, but no longer requires Deathblow or Trick Shots and causes up to 6 nearby enemies to be struck for 75%, up from 35%, of Kill Shot’s normal damage.
I.e., Kill Shot can now Trick Shots, but the AoE effect no longer benefits from primary target effects.
- Windrunner Quiver now causes excess stacks of Precise Shots to fire off an Arcane Shot or Multi-shot automatically, based on the number of targets struck by its Aimed Shot (or Rapid Fire) that generated them, at no Focus cost and 50% damage. These, too, trigger all normal effects of consuming Precise Shots.
Offers smoothing but no longer has the 280% damage Arcane Shots. Now more of a gameplay option than primarily a performance option that inadvertently nerfed No Scope’s relative value.
- Double Tap is again a separate oGCD, now with a 60-second cooldown, that duplicates next your Aimed Shot or Rapid Fire to strike again for 80% effect, including any bonuses they received. Effects which reduce the cooldown of Trueshot equally reduce the cooldown of Double Tap. Double Tap may be right-clicked to set it to auto-cast. If not added to hotbars, this auto-casting is activated by default. Effectiveness remains nerfed in PvP.
Smoother, with more control, as permissible with so much else having been pruned from MM bars.
- Aspect of the Hydra has been renamed to Specialized Munitions and now causes your Physical Shots to afflict their victims with Serpent Sting, at (30% of Attack Power) damage dealt per second, for a duration based on the Shot’s original damage dealt, plus a small amount extra per hit, and Explosive Shot to afflict enemies with Burning Shrapnel, causing them to take (180% of Attack Power) Fire damage over 6 seconds and take (30% of Attack Power) from your further physical attacks for those 6 seconds. Afflicting more than a single target increases your afflictions’ damage by 20% per enemy beyond the first, to a maximum of a 100% bonus. Afflictions ended early by dispelling or the death of their victim split and add their remaining duration evenly among nearby enemies.
This replaces Trick Shotting enemies with multi-dotting and empowered Explosive Shots that form mini burst windows. Think RSV, but without the DoT being quite such a freebie.
- Trick Shots revised: You generate stacks of Trick Shots every 3 seconds while out of combat or by hitting an enemy with one of your Shots, up to 5 stacks held or generated at a time when hitting multiple enemies. While at 3 or more stacks, Aimed Shot will consume all Trick Shots stacks to hit up to 5 additional enemies nearby. If there are no nearby enemies, Aimed Shot will instead deal 5% additional damage per stack spent.
Note here that with the removal of Improved Spotter’s Mark / Unbreakable Bond and Tenacious / Cunning, Trick Shots / Specialized Munitions is now required for reaching Trueshot. These changes allow Trick Shot some competing single-target and two-target damage opposite Specialized Munitions. Note also that due to Rapid Fire being made more modular, it now becomes a means of generating Trick Shots, rather than a way of spending them.
- Shrapnel Shot now increases the target’s damage taken by Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot by 30% for 6 seconds.
A single Arcane Shot’s worth of damage per 30 seconds was pathetic. This, on the other hand, makes for a nice little window synergetic with Bulletstorm.
- Small Game Hunter replaced with Bandolier, which increases the damage of Explosive Shot by 40% and grants it an additional charge.
Multi-Shot has already been buffed plenty baseline, so this seemed the more useful option to now offer.
- Penetrating Shots now instead causes Aimed Shot and Kill Shot to penetrate a portion of your enemy’s Armor equal to your crit chance, and to further penetrate a portion of all enemy defenses, including Armor, equal to your % Mastery if they crit.
This primarily aids against defensives and plate-wearers, but does also close the gap slightly between the nominal and actual damage each of your non-physical and physical attacks even in PvE, thereby slightly increasing the value of your Crit and Mastery, though to a lesser impact on Crit in PvE than the former version gave, thereby better opening up stat choice.
Haste’s benefit in turn, as not to be left behind, is that the more Haste one has, the more Haste-generating actions they can fit into a given rolling window, thereby maintaining yet more Haste.
- Eagle’s Accuracy has been reduced to 1 point but now instead increases the damage bonuses applicable to Aimed Shot by 20% of their original effects.
- Bullseye has been reduced to 1 point and still gives its original maximum of 2% crit per hit but now has only half the maximum number of stacks and those stacks fade by 1 per second instead of dropping off all at once.
Still working on Hero Talents.