So serious question, is there any hope for some sort of changes like Shadow Priest got late in the beta for Survival?
Or anything that makes Survival have better synergy than pumping and dumping Focus while trying to keep two DoTs up with a cookie cutter set if Talents?
Wasn’t sure if this was the expansion to give Hunter a go.
At this point, nobody knows because the devs aren’t saying anything. And in another couple of weeks I expect the prepatch to come out, so they really need to say something if they are doing something. This is why they should have worked on classes from the very beginning of development. Bunch of people with rocks instead of brains in their head.
I’m wrong a lot, but no. It is too late for any major overhaul. They could make a few changes that would be good for the spec. Any thing meaningful that will pull SV out of the PvE cellar is long gone in my humble opinion.
At this rate it will be the least played hunter spec by a mile in PvE. It will be okay in PvP probably. There wasn’t enough done with BM and MM in PvP to make either of them worth anything.
I mean it’s possible they’ve been working on something this whole time without a peep to anyone. Is it a likely scenario, probably not. But then again anything can happen at this point really. They’ve already been going back and forth on so many things with the expansion already. sigh can we get some devs with brains for a change and some talent?
possible? yes. expected after the hunters mark debacle? no.
ive given up hope on survival. maybe they will do a rework mid expansion. maybe the next but i want to play something refreshing for the new content so ill stick with enhance shaman.
Yep, I was optimistic before, but not anymore.
What you see with SV is what you get.
Unluggy.
You can’t keep it active in AoE, nor can you keep it active in cleave, or rapid target swapping. You only get the reset if the target actually dies, and it’s not exactly uncommon for adds in instances and raids (and sometimes even open-world!) to not actually die, but simply become untargetable at 1 HP and then trigger some event associated with their “death”. These mobs do not grant any on-death effects. This causes some solid issues with Breath of the Dying right now, actually.
And if it’s on the GCD, we’ve solved nothing, because we’re still forced to waste a GCD slapping it on every freakin target to do our balanced DPS. And the targets have to live long enough to justify that GCD, which means on most shorter-lived targets, it’s not worth casting and we’re just stuck doing suboptimal DPS.
There’s no version of this where it granting damage is a benefit, or even good design.
There are actually quite a few options out there for utility that would benefit PvE without feeling mandatory for PvE.
Except in cleave/aoe/target switching where you are actively losing -5% damage.
I’m thinking of Visions, right now, as an environment with a high volume of targets in a time limited manner. Either suffer a 5% damage deficit, or waste 100+ GCDs casting Mark… It would be a large dps detriment either way. Mythics are similar, though skewered towards aoe. I imagine Torghast will function the same way. Solo content isn’t affected dps-wise but it would still be a tedious and onerous requirement before every mob pull. As if Aimed Shot’s long-cast wasn’t already a detriment in that area. Patchwerk bosses are the only environment where this ability is even remotely tolerable. I did not like Hunter’s Mark in Vanilla nor any iteration of it since. Remove the damage or remove it entirely.
I’m getting resigned to the fact that they don’t play Hunters.
I read about the 20 second cooldown on HM, and thought it wasn’t that big a deal, but it really slows down my Hunter when I’m fighting groups.
Normally when I fight groups, I will get one close to death, then will switch to another mob while my pets finish off the first. It’s something I’ve been doing since Wrath, and it’s one of the things I like about the Hunter “feel.” Having the 20s HM CD makes this feel really clunky because I can’t apply HM to the new target.
I’ve never been a fan of bringing Hunter’s Mark back with a damage component, but I wish they wouldn’t make it break up the target swapping flow we’re so accustomed to? That’s one of the defining characteristics of playing a Hunter, and it’s one of the things I’ve always liked about the class.
Where is it stated that a class is designed around 100% buff uptime on all targets?
I’m not necessarily disputing that it exists but I’m curious why this is just accepted so matter of factly.
An ability on a 20 second cooldown that gives 5% increased damage against a single target means that all other damage that player does, across the board, is reduced by 5% to all other targets?
It just doesn’t seem logical. Why would blizzard not balance total spec dmg in this case the same way they do every other buff for every other spec.
I’m genuinely interested if there’s a dev statement somewhere or even another comparable ability elsewhere in the game that is handled this way
That being said, I’m not a fan of mark outside of PvP and they could remove it from PvE and that would be fine
This is how HM was balanced when it was baseline from vanilla - mop.
No, the way it works is our damage is going to be balance with the 5% increase from HM in mind. Meaning while it won’t be visible on a surface level look, but our total dps potential will be scaled back to make room for the 5% increase from HM. This means, to reach the theoretical balancing point Blizzard wants to get all classes/spec to we have to have HM on the target or we’re not going to be doing our full potential in dps.
Thanks for the explanation and I think it helps me understand but post after post is saying that all other dmg is reduced by 5%.
I’m sure that out of the totality of all dmg, they account for the fact that on single target fights, there’s a 5% dmg bonus, but if you look around the forums there are people claiming that every attack they make against an unmarked target is reduced by 5%
It may be that the math guys understand this and just haven’t cleared it up for the rest but the echo chamber around this one buff is disproportionate to what’s really happening
There are posts of people claiming they are abandoning the entire class because of the “5% dmg penalty”.
It just seems crazy
Because it basically will be. If you 95% damage without HM and 100% with HM, when HM is not on the target you are losing out on 5% of your potential damage. This means in aoe situations, you are doing 5% less damage than you could be to all non-marked targets. Another way to put it, is you are doing 5% reduced damage to the unmarked targets because you are doing full damage to the marked target.
Also, this is how all classes are balanced btw. Blizzard assumes you are using your abilities to maximize your damage. If hunters mark increases damage by 5%, you’re gonna do 5% less damage on a target that doesn’t have mark on Compared to a target that does have mark.
Because of the GCD, this creates windows of time where it is not useful to move mark depending how long a target will survive. In other words, how many seconds of a + 5% damage buff is enough to make up for the time used casting HM. This leads to a lot of unfun decisions being made while in dungeons and other situations with revolving targets (how long will this thing live, is anyone else targeting it? Oh great that thing got deleted and now I have to reapply mark to my original target) . It’s not fun gameplay, especially considering HM itself doesn’t do anything. Just empty GCD. Back in the day (Classic) this didn’t really matter too much because the game was much slower. But that’s not the case anymore. It feels out of place.
It also means that during aoe, everything without mark will get hit weaker. This is partially why the warrior talent that turns their 30% damage debuff into an aoe debuff is so strong.
Is it though? I don’t think it’s too crazy.
When you consider it from an overall damage point of view, and you’ve done about 5 million damage at the end of a M+ or something, being gimped by 5% is a big deal.
These last three posts would seem to speak to my point
Here’s an example of another spell with a. Cooldown that buffs damage to a single target
Vendetta
30 yd range
Instant 2 min cooldown
Requires Rogue (Assassination)
Requires level 56
Marks an enemy for death for 20 sec, increasing the damage your abilities and auto attacks deal to the target by 30%, and making the target visible to you even through concealments such as stealth and invisibility.
Does Vendetta lower a rogue’s damage to all targets without the debuff by 30%?
I’m really trying to understand here. I’m on your side and my best bud is a hunter so I only want the beat for him, and you.
Vendetta is assassinations major cool down, it wasn’t designed with 100% uptime in single target like HM is. When an add pops up that they have to switch to, this doesn’t negatively effect them because they could have already benefited from that damage window during a separate part of the fight. Meaning they don’t lose out on potential output. Hunters mark is not a damage window, it’s literally a 100% uptime debuff.
Also, I just want to reiterate. It’s not only the damage issue that hunters dislike, they also dislike using the empty GCD in pve. It’s fun as a utility ability (stealth in pvp) but of boring else wise.
No, c’mon dude, you can’t compare Hunter’s Mark to Vendetta. Vendetta is assassination rogues big DPS CD, and it lasts 20 seconds, Hunter’s Mark is designed to be on the target until it dies/you mark something else.
Mechanically, it fits the criteria that loads of people have said makes HM function the way it does.
The idea of “yeah, but vendetta is awesome”, doesn’t change that
I’m really not trying to argue. Just trying to understand.