You’re missing the fundamental difference though.
Hunter’s Mark is design to be on the target 100% of the time.
Vendetta and other similar cooldowns are designed to be up for only a short time before expiring.
No. No you’re not. The fact that you think a major burst CD with a 16.7% uptime is comparable to a 100% uptime functionally-passive damage increase shows that clearly.
When Vendetta is on cooldown, even if it is not active, you’re gaining full benefit from it. Any ability with less than 100% uptime only loses value when it is off cooldown.
On the other hand, any ability which either lacks a CD, or lasts longer than its CD, loses value when it isn’t active.
See the difference?
Rogues aren’t “losing damage” from not having Vendetta active because they already used it on the boss and it’s still cooling down. Hunters, on the other hand, are tuned assuming we have Hunter’s Mark active. And we have to be tuned that way, because if we weren’t, we’d be far and away the best single target DPS in the game when we do have it active (ie. most of most boss fights). We’d become the only option on any fight with any sort of single-target DPS check.
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But the argument is that HM is intended to be on all targets 100% of the time. Perhaps not from all, but lots of people are saying this, otherwise how does one claim that it failure to have it on any mob causes a 5% dmg loss on all non marked targets?
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Don’t hang yourself up on uptime or durations etc.
In short, if we take our class as it is now in BfA, each spec has specific baseline abilities/effects as well as talents(and more). How much damage they deal or how much they boost the damage of other abilities is based off of the general balance of all classes.
Basically, the devs want us to be at a certain level of performance in order to be able to beat encounters(pvp/pve) , but at the same time, not be overtuned so that such encounters are trivialized.
Any new ability/effect we get which either deals damage or boosts damage done, will affect the rest of our toolkit. How each ability affects our performance can vary a lot. But the total theoretical output does not vary(should not by any wide margain), as that could result in a single spec or class becoming much better/worse than that of other specs/classes.
Back to my previous point about BfA.
In BfA, we don’t have Hunter’s Mark, and as such, all our other abilities and effects, are tuned with that in mind.
In Shadowlands, they are adding Hunter’s Mark, which in itself, boosts the damage we deal with all other abilities by 5%. And like I said, based on where our projected level of performance should be in season 1 of Shadowlands, anything(Hunter’s Mark) that can cause us to go above that level, will result in them adjusting the numbers of everything else in our toolkit, in order to compensate for said new addition(again: Hunter’s Mark).
This then means that, when they add Hunter’s Mark, our other abilities will be tuned around having that Mark, in order for us to not go above the projected total. But since Hunter’s Mark only affects 1 target, it only boosts our damage against that target, thus, against any other target we will deal less damage(this is why others are calling it a nerf to our damage).
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It’s really simple, they cannot balance us otherwise. They must balance us assuming HM is active, else we become the only DPS option for any sort of DPS check. And as a result, in any situation where we do not have it active, we’ve lost DPS by virtue of HM existing.
In theory, they could balance our AoE higher to compensate, but that wouldn’t fix low-target cleave, or short-lived adds, or rapid target swapping. None of those can be fixed, so long as HM exists and has a damage buff, without making us the best single target DPS in the game.
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That makes sense.
So, it’s not a flat 5% reduction to all dmg against unmarked targets all the time. It’s some small fraction of that reduced from the totality of the max dmg budgeted for the spec.
Now you’re getting it.
No, it’s flat out 5%. They budget our DPS, without HM, to be 5% lower, so that when we do have HM, it’s right where they want our DPS to be.
So, no matter how what they did with the GCD or normal cooldown or anything else, the spell, just by its very existence, reduces all Hunter dmg to all unmarked targets by 5%, 100% of the time
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Yes.
10char
So long as it has a damage component on it, then yes, that’s how it works, full stop, period. The only exception would be true AoE, and only if they tuned our AoE upwards (which they have not done).
If they removed the cooldown and removed it from the GCD, it would at least be less annoying, but that’s mostly just because the majority of hunters would simply macro it into their shots. At that point, it might as well just be rolled in baseline anyway. And it would still exist as a penalty on cleave and AoE fights, though the lack of a GCD would remove the penalty on short-lived targets.
This is why we’re generally so against it granting DPS. That DPS has to come from somewhere. We’re not going to be balanced to do 5% more than everyone else with it active when it’s so easy to keep active on a single target boss fight. So that clearly means we lost damage to compensate for the “buff”. That’s how tuning works.
If it were purely a utility ability, it would actually be a proper and true choice. You’d have to judge whether the loss of DPS from casting it (a GCD spent not doing damage) was worth the utility benefits.
As it stands now, whether you cast it or not is really just a math equation. The only judgement involved is you guessing how long the target is going to live for, and when you get that guess wrong, well, sucks to be you. There’s not really any choice involved. If the target is going to live for >= X seconds, you cast it (where X was ~20s in BfA, and appears to be around 15s in SL due to HM’s shorter GCD). If not, you don’t. For most targets, they clearly either will or won’t. Only a relative minority of targets will have HP in the range where it’s a toss up, and then you’re back to guessing and gambling with your DPS.
Basically, there’s absolutely nothing fun, engaging, or rewarding about the ability. It doesn’t feel like a bonus against the marked target, because we understand how tuning functions. It feels like an ability we’re forced to cast just so our DPS doesn’t suck.
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Thanks for the detailed explanation. It seems to be a punitive design decision.
Pretty much.
It doesn’t actively reduce our damage done as in “you deal X% less damage to Y target”.
But like Xaedys said, our total budget is going to be where the devs want it to be(at least, that’s their goal when balancing us).
And that budget for us now in BfA is at a certain level and is based on what abilities and effects we have now.
If they add in a new baseline ability which in itself, affects our damage done, this will then be accounted for in the total budget(how, depends on how the individual ability works/is designed).
In the case of Hunter’s Mark, as it is designed to be a flat percentage increase to all our damage done, with an estimated 100% uptime, this will then result in the damage of ALL our other abilities to be based on having that mark active, for 100% of the time.
A different example could be what you mentioned earlier with Vendetta for Rogues.
This is designed to be a burst CD, allowing some Rogues to deal more damage in short periods.
But despite that bursty design, the ability also affects their total damage budget(despite not having 100% uptime).
So, in case the devs feel that Rogues who have Vendetta lack in burst potential, they can increase the damage bonus of Vendetta to…let’s say 45%, up from 30. However, they also feel that the total damage budget of Rogues who are using Vendetta is already reasonable, then, if they buff Vendetta, they will have to compensate for that buff by lowering the numbers somewhere else, in order for said total to not go “above budget”.
It’s going to be the same for Hunter’s with Hunter’s Mark. Any ability we have which affects the total damage budget, has to be accounted for, no matter how it affects us.
And since Hunter’s Mark is just a flat damage increase with a design that suggests a 100% uptime, they will most likely compensate for that through the damage dealt by ALL of our abilities.
They could for example lower the damage increases we get from our major cooldowns if they feel that we have to strong burst potential(as it also affects the total budget). There are many ways to adjust general numbers and, how it’s done, it all depends where they feel that we would be to strong(or weak) otherwise.
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Yep, that’s the reason words like “petty” and “spiteful” are being thrown around.
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Doesn’t the added cooldown take away the assumption of 100% uptime on HM for all the problems mentioned (like target swapping) and all less of the DPS budget to be given to HM?
Maybe instead of 5% without the cooldown it’s now 2-3% of our DPS rotation.
Trying to figure out how HM with a cooldown causes uptime problems yet blizzard balanced HM with 100% uptimes. Seems contradictory to me.
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In PvE, Hunter’s Mark doesn’t have a limit to it’s duration(well, it does, just it’s so long so there’s no point in mentioning it).
In PvP, as I recall, Hunter’s Mark has a limited duration(last I heard).
The balancing for it, doesn’t take into account the situations where target swapping is required a lot as it’s, for the most, based on single target-damage.
So blizzard doesn’t balance for AOE, target swapping, and cleave?
Could it be they balance for all of the above and that each is independent for each other?
Meaning HM is factored into a single target boss fight but not for hunter aoe and/cleave.
I just imagine adding the cooldown to HM has to change something in the DPS budget otherwise why do it?
Given the huge disparity of AOE and cleave performance I personally find this scenario hard to believe (that they’ve somehow taken HM into account for our AOE by not considering it entirely). I think their balance of AOE is more along the lines of figuring out if any of the classes are broken OP or if any of the classes broken weak. I could be wrong of course, but their single target balance generally is in a much better place as if they’ve actually balanced it. AOE seems to be less of a priority for them. Also, they don’t really balance target swapping, because classes that have ramp up generally suck at it.
The bottom line is that whether or not a 5% difference is huge during these moment to moment situations (switching targets, focusing adds, moving dungeon packs), it feels punitive because we know we’re supposed to apply hunters mark and hunters mark is not a fun ability to press. Having to decide when to apply it is not fun and neither is using it.
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If they want to keep the 20 sec CD on HM it needs to do something more than just a 5% dmg increase. They could add a bonus to it for each Hunter specs like
MM could also add a 5%-8% armor pen (yes bring this back) to target
Surv could also add 2-3 sec to the MB counter per usage and or reduce cd of Carve by 1 sec for every mob hit (max 4)
BM could also add a bleed effect to the target that stacks a certain amount of times or have their pet have a 20%-30% chance to have an extra chance to hit it’s target (sorta like a pet version of windfury)
Cause only a 5% dmg increase is like a wet noodle hitting a F-18 jet. Specially if you compare it to say a Fury Warriors Enrage ability which grants which ever % their mastery is (so if you have 36% mastery it increases your dmg done during that enrage window by 36%), it also increases their haste by 15%, movement speed by 10% for 4 sec. Then you also have talents that increase Enrage even more with Fresh Meat and Warpaint.
I think it would be awesome to give survival the old explosive shot back or atleast something like it where multiple explosions. Maybe wildfire bomb would be able to reset the cd of it or something.
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