That’s your definition of a ‘bloated spell book’!? Back in MoP, I remember having up to ten and eleven pages on certain classes. And it didn’t bother me one bit.
It’s really amazing to see the different perspectives people have…
Me, the more buttons the better!
Really? Perhaps I am misremembering just how many spells we had. All I remember is being dissatisfied looking at Spellbooks and only have one or two pages. Maybe I am just thinking of the spec specific spellbooks.
But yes I definitely agree. I loved having my bars full on my Hunter back in Cata and MoP.
Yeah, you’re right about the one-and-two-page spellbooks for specs in WoD and Legion.
MoP still had the spell ranks, and I was talking about the class-wide spellbooks. You had the option to both hide the lower ranks and look at spec specific ones. That’s where you get the 4-to-6 page number.
If should be noted that Bard has a mechanic where they cycle between 3 songs that affect certain abilities (Army Paean, Mage Ballad, Wanderer’s Minuet). In fact, their core gameplay relies on cycling the 3 songs.
Several of those abilities on your list are role skills, which are of questionable usefulness. Most bosses are immune to Leg/Foot Graze, Head Graze will only get use if your tank is not interrupting (FFXIV doesn’t do interrupt rotations within a party; it instead gave interrupts only to tanks and ranged physical, but spaced out abilities that need to be interrupted enough that a tank can interrupt full time without anyone else needing to do so). Peloton helps running faster out of battle.
The reason I say all this is because aside from role skills, Bard has that number of abilities as a result of its mechanics and gameplay loop, the fact that in concept it’s a “support” job, and the fact FFXIV jobs are designed within a specific template (14-15 abilities from lv1-50, with a new ability or trait gained every two levels after that).
That said, the idea of BM hunter cycling between aspects as their DPS is split between them and their pet might have potential.
Yes, my point was they have a lot of abilities that they can use and many of them are used consistently even if they are cooldowns, which the songs are cooldowns and 1 ability requires a specific song to be up and 1 other ability requires a minimum of 4 song procs to use and 20 to be most effective.
Yes, they’re not uniquely Bard skills, but they are skills a bard can use.
They were listed as the last 2 and I pointed out that they were not consistently used.
Which happens more often then you might think, or at least it did for me.
I used this all the time as a bard because it made running from 1 group to the next faster, which meant faster dungeon runs.
The point I was trying to make was that it was possible to have multiple bars full of skills that are consistently used, even if they are on cooldowns/require procs to use and make a class that is fun to play without feeling bloated by the sheer number of skills.
The point I was trying to make was that it was possible to have multiple bars full of skills that are consistently used, even if they are on cooldowns/require procs to use and make a class that is fun to play without feeling bloated by the sheer number of skills.
I’m aware of that. What I’m alluding to is that you’d need to give specs here more mechanics to justify having more abilities.
Agreed, having 24 buttons to push that all just did damage or increased damage would not be fun gameplay and would be nothing but bloat.
Assuming we were to borrow things from FFXIV, song cycling could be turned into Aspect cycling for BM (each aspect does different things to your pet and abilities like Cobra Shot or Barbed Shot, and maybe introduce a DPS skill and utility skill that can only be used while a specific aspect is active).
I’d borrow the Blood of the Dragon mechanic and give it to Surv (certain attacks elongate an effect that can be spent on a hard-hitting ability; funnily enough we sort of had this in Legion), though that would also require overhauls in other places (changing the function of Wildfire Bomb, reworking what Serpent Sting does in the rotation, bringing back Lacerate, make Raptor Strike its own ability and redesign Mongoose Bite).
Yeah, there are a lot of interesting mechanics that could be borrowed and if implemented correctly could be really fun in wow.
If this turns into the bard I’m out. Lack of a pure bow character is why I can’t play FF
If they do add a bard class or spec, I would hope it would be part of a new ranged class, not in addition to/replacement of the hunter class/specs. The Bard does not fit thematically at all with the hunter.
On the topic of Bard, it’s also fully mobile while being tuned carefully to not be above immobile classes on Patchwerk fights, proving that this is not some unworkable concept that breaks MMOs (cough Tyranova).
They even made it an immobile caster clone for their first expansion because some people didn’t like the fact that the bow class had such a… “penalty”, in their eyes, and it bombed so hard that it went back to being fully mobile the next expansion.
You’re right about this. The thematic approach of Bard is alien to Hunter. What I really did like about the class, though, is the concept of multidotting giving a single-target damage boost i.e. funnel cleave. It’s been a while since I last played it, but the DoT ticks on all targets buffed the song phase in some way (I don’t remember exactly how). It was pretty damn complex; definitely more complex than any iteration of any WoW Hunter spec. But I felt it was intuitive and worked well. I never got to max level with it, though.
I always felt ranged Survival could learn from that and be a semi-complex multidotter spec and I think that would have been far, far more valuable to the class and its playerbase than melee Survival.
While this would be defiantly not for me, it’s good proof that they can make different ranged specs with different play styles. Just so long as mm doesn’t become the spinning plates multi dotting spec
I’m sure some lessons could also be applied to bm but I think people that like bm are fairly content with bm.
In Stormblood it was when either dot crit it would proc repertoire. Each song has different repertoire procs for those that don’t know. Currently it’s just a 40% to proc repertoire every time either ticks. Severely lowered the value of crit, but from the way I read it, really bumped up the value of skill speed.
I was just talking about borrowing gameplay elements. BM Aspect swapping would be self-only (well, self and pet), not provide a damage/crit/whatever boost to nearby party members (which is part of the reason why bards are purposely tuned to deal less damage than the other DPS).
Here would be a very rough idea of what I mean:
Aspect of the Viper: The hunter takes on the aspect of a viper for 20 seconds. While active, Cobra Shot applies the Weakened Prey effect on target, increasing damage target takes from your pet’s attacks by 1%, to a maximum of 5%. 55 second cooldown.
Aspect of the Fox: The hunter takes on the aspect of a fox for 20 seconds. While active, Barbed Shot will generate 30 focus over 8 seconds and its damage ticks have a chance to increase your haste by 5% per stack of Frenzy on your pet. 55 second cooldown.
Aspect of the Dragonhawk: The hunter takes on the aspect of a dragonhawk for 20 seconds. While active, increases you and your pet’s critical hit rate by 1% every second, to a maximum of 10%. Additionally, damage ticks from Barbed Shot have a chance to cause your next focus-consuming ability to consume 0 focus and not trigger it’s cooldown. 55 second cooldown.
The idea would be that the hunter would activate a new aspect every 20 seconds and gain a slight shift in gameplay. The examples aren’t exactly balanced, but that’s intentional for the sake of showing the idea.
Hmmm, how about something to this effect:
Aspect of the Mongoose
30 second cooldown
While active, the Hunter’s ranged attacks deal 30% increased critical damage and your Barbed Shot critical hits grant your pet a stack of Frenzy, increasing their critical strike chance by 6%, stacking up to 5 times and lasting 16 seconds. While active, the remaining duration of your pet’s Frenzy stacks is paused.
Aspect of the Falcon
30 second cooldown
While active, your pet’s attacks and Kill Command deal 30% increase critical damage and your pet’s basic attack critical hits grant you a stack of Insight, increasing the critical strike chance of your ranged attacks by 4%, stacking up to 5 times and lasting 16 seconds. While active, the remaining duration of Insight is paused.
Aspect of the Wolf
2 minute cooldown
While active, you and your pet deal 50% increased critical damage with all attacks, and the remaining duration of Insight and your pet’s Frenzy is doubled.
Hmm…the end result looks like you’d be switching between two aspects (Mongoose and Falcon), activating a new aspect every 16 seconds, though that’d change to swapping between 3 aspects every 2 minutes. I’ll admit I don’t play BM so I’m not sure what else would need to be adjusted to make it work, but it looks like a good starting point.
Depending on balance it may take longer to go between Mongoose and Falcon. The cooldowns are to prevent constantly swapping them to attempt to maintain full stacks forever. It is still theoretically possible, but would require a fair bit of luck so it wouldn’t be consistent. Then you would pop Wolf either during a lucky string of crits to maximize the durations of Frenzy and Insight, or if you entered a huge burn phase or something.
well for ff14 physical ranged is just tuned below everyone tbh lol.
The more buttons you have, the more ways you have to interact with the world. I don’t ever remember having a complaint or a concern that I had too many abilities. Those abilities, and how you use them, determine how good a Hunter you are. If I wanted a limited number of buttons, I would play ESO or Diablo. I don’t like those games, because having abilities to interact with the world is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to me. Without them, the game feels empty.
It’s crazy to me that people are talking about Hunter Button Bloat even though Hunters have been avoided because they were the “simple class.” Button Bloat is fake news.