Smacking Trailblazer w/ some love

Classes Hunter
1

What’s going on guys!

I wanted to chime in my thoughts on Trailblazer!

I believe it’s an ok talent but it is in a tier where you get 2 talents, Exhilaration and Camouflage, that are very strong/appealing because of their healing components. As a class that doesn’t excel at self sustainability these come in handy quite often.

I can also see how Trailblazer can be taken as a way to survive by out ranging/losing but the actual aspect of it doesn’t really come up as something we actually need or use unless you are a person who quests which while it can be helpful in moving short bursts (Otherwise you will just mount) the other two talents can make the leveling experience more streamlined as you’re able to heal more often.

I thought of 3 ways Trailblazer can be changed/buffed in a way that we would actually think of of it and want to use it more often than not.

The first one is simple. Add a passive to Trailblazer, 3s after Trailblazer begins get a very small to small heal as long as you’re running at max speed.

The second one is fun and reactive. Making Trailblazer an active which will give you the same effect as the Highmountain Tauren’s racial, Bullrush, without the stun but heal you if you do not take damage the entire 3s duration. If you do get damaged you will still rush through but do not gain the heal. Encourages smart/dumbass plays and further define our kiting/ranged prowess. I can see this being on a charge system with a relatively long CD (45s-1.5m) or a 2 minute CD with a beefy heal.

The third is adding an active ability onto Trailblazer’s passive. So basically whenever you don’t attack for 3s you move 30% faster with the added benefit of whenever you are under Trailblazer, Trailblazer itself becomes an active ability. When activated you get healed every second for Xs. 3 minute Cooldown. While Trailblazer is on CD you cannot benefit from Trailblazer’s passive.

I feel that any of these, preferably the second lol, can make trailblazer a strong talent with added flavor the same way camouflage changes our playstyle.

What do you guys think about this or what are your own ideas on how to buff/change Trailblazer?

Thanks for reading!

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My thought is simple. The talent is useless and a minor buff will never make it anything more than thrash. What Blizzard need to do is scrap the whole talent completely and just replace it with something new.

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I don’t disagree lol. I do like the movement speed of it though and would like it to still be implemented in some way

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I think the 75 talent Posthaste already is good for movement speed. I would rather Blizzard remove Trailblazer and add a new talent that could reduce 1 min from our aspect of the Turtle which bring it to 2min instead of 3min. With this new talent change I don’t think it overpowering and the other two talents Natural Mending and Camouflage will still have it place in certain situation.

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Some sort of movement speed buff like we had for all of WoW prior to recently would be good, but Trailblazer, which works only when you are not doing anything at all is just this side of completely useless. It has no combat applications except continuing to get away when you are already away. The restrictions on this ability are ridiculous making even that application nearly useless, as it doesn’t even allow casting Concussive Shot even though it does no damage. So it is really only useful to help you get away, when you are already away, IF your target can’t be slowed by Concussive Shot.

It’s only non-combat application is an increase in speed when you can’t mount.

So no real combat applications, and one extremely situational (and not overly desirable) non-combat application. Its possibly the most worthless talent ever created, even in theory. No healing effect is going to make it better. I mean, it might make it more useful, but it won’t make it not terrible design.

As for the healing on Camo, that is a secondary effect that shouldn’t even be a part of Camo. I’m not saying it isn’t useful, it is. Any healing is useful because it’s healing, but the fact that our “new and improved” Camo only allows us to HUNT half the time in exchange is a substantial reduction in immersion (I’m a hunter, let me hunt all the time) and a trade-off no one asked for. The fact that it’s a talent at all is a whole nother can of worms I won’t open here.

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Posthaste is great. In pvp we get Ranger’s Finesse which gives us the reduced CD on Aspect of Turtle and I do use this talent in open world pvp.

Born to be wild also reduces it’s cooldown but it’s in the same tier as posthaste which sucks lol

A merge or shifting of Ranger’s Finesse and Born To Be Wild with other talents might give us a nice synergy flowing going on. Given that we do have cooldown reduction for Aspect of The Turtle I don’t think they’ll add another one.

Right, it’s why I mentioned my suggestions because compared to the other two talents in the tier it has no chance.

Being that we are a kiting class I wouldn’t mind seeing a talent that really sells that idea to us and movement speed synergies well with kiting and being able to heal while kiting even with the 3s it takes to activate, combined with your other spells you can completely control the movement and pacing of a fight.

With the component of healing combined with Trailblazer it can absolutely make a difference. All you need to do is not attack for 3 seconds which pairs well with disengage, freezing trap, concussive, tar trap, scatter shot and Aspect of Turtle and boom you’re getting healed. I’ve shown this in a series of videos.

It can be Camo’s version of kiting. Camo is great for openers and resets especially because of it’s heals and the versions of Trailblazer I mentioned in the op can be great for everything else that Natural Mending can’t handle. Questing, kiting, old dungeons.

Don’t get me wrong tho, I’m not defending Trailblazer how it is now, again I think it’s garbage in it’s current state but those suggestions I made will make it not only an interesting pick but a strong one.

I’m also not opposed to removing the ability but since it’s what we have I like to play around with it to see how others would change it. Rather than simply saying “remove it”

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Healing combined with Trailblazer would make a difference because it’s healing, as I stated above. Trailblazer has zero thematic reason to have healing incorporated (neither does Camo). I protest based on this reason, not because it wouldn’t be useful (also as I stated). Aesthetics in a fantasy game cannot, and should not be underplayed. When you do you lose immersion, and then you lose subscriptions, and then you lose the game.

I’ve seen your videos. I’ve done it myself in testing. I watched two videos of yours just now to see if there was anything I missed. Both had “Machine Gun Build” in the title and you were using, and talking about how great Trailblazer was. I watched specifically for the Trailblazer buff and tried to determine if when you got it, it made any difference in living or dying, getting kills or not, or any other real difference in any situation. In both videos there was exactly one time where MAYBE it made a difference. It was a time when you used Turtle and got far enough away that that may have been the reason you weren’t followed. Maybe they just didn’t follow you because of Turtle, maybe it was a combination of both. In this “maybe” the conditions were, you weren’t already snared (which would negate Trailblazer almost entirely), Disengage was not on CD so you had both Trailblazer and Posthaste buffs going + the distance from Disengage, you used Turtle, and there were other targets for the people to go after.

Once again, as stated above, Trailblazer only helps you get away when you are already away AND when the other person can’t be effectively slowed with Concussive Shot, since that is a better “slow” than Trailblazer is a “fast” (the delta between them is 50%+ for Concussive Shot, and 30%- for Trailblazer). What that means more specifically is, lets say someone has 115% speed (minimum for most melee) and you have 108% speed without Trailblazer (assuming pet). Concussive Shot would reduce that to 57.5% and 108% respectively a delta speed of 50.5%. Trailblazer would increase that to 115% and 138% respectively, a delta speed of 23%. The more speed they have, the better Concussive Shot is and the worse Trailblazer is on this delta.

Concussive Shot + Trailblazer gives you at best 2 seconds of both effects, and only if your intent is purely to run away. That is insufficient to be meaningful. All the other things you mention as “synergies” already let you get away if that is your intention, and I assert that Trailblazer does next to nothing to assist in that. Watching your videos and my own testing corroborate that statement. In your video you touted it as useful, yet as I said, with one, and only one possible exception when you got the Trailblazer buff you weren’t already perfectly safe without it.

You feel it is useful. That’s fine. There is no evidence to support your feelings. What I think you like is just being able to move fast. Don’t we all. It’s very nearly useless in actually increasing our combat effectiveness or ability to survive. It’s certainly useless for our ability to kite. It’s a truly awful talent, and taking it is in all cases a mistake. Create real evidence to prove me wrong if you wish, but your feelings are irrelevant (not to be mean, just how it works).

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Have you changed your mind since last month when you were touting it as “so useful?” If so, you may ignore my previous post (maybe I should have read the entire thing before I started typing. :grinning:

As do I. It is important to test things thoroughly before offering suggestions. Unfortunately I don’t think the PTB care about our suggestions in the slightest at this time (as opposed to previous Blizzard community interactions), but we can still hope, and discuss it amongst ourselves.

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Masoschism, my dude. Lol

Humor me, please.

With movement speed in mind, If you could change Trailblazer to be a talent that would be more fitting and useful to use what would you do to it?

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I know it seems like I am attacking you. That is not, nor will it ever be my intention. I have spent way too much of my life analyzing every aspect of the current MM hunter. When someone says something that is provably not true about any aspect of the spec I won’t let them off the hook, because I don’t want disinformation being spread. People need to know exactly what the real problems are and why we are broken. It’s the only way to get the right fixes done.

I would make it work when not taking damage instead of when not doing anything useful. Just like it did for 12 years.

I would also make it baseline and I would call it Aspect of the Cheetah.

I would also make Camo baseline, and I would make that tier a healing tier, assuming we need a healing tier at all. I rather think that we don’t, since we never did. I’d rather have it be a mobility tier, helping us with kiting, encouraging us to play as a skillful kiting spec as we were for those 12 years we had Aspect of the Cheetah (the real one) and not need more healing at all.

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This is how a discussion should be. I would’ve respected this WAY over what ever it is you were trying to do. Sharing ideas, who knew it could be so difficult.

I wish I knew what you are talking about. I simply stated how I felt about Trailblazer and how I would change it. No where in my OP or anytime after that did I speak or mentioned anything that is even remotely close to misinformation. A huge waste of my time as we still have yet amounted to anything useful and not because of my lack of trying.

All I see is Masoschism taking everything that I say, dissecting it beyond comprehension and going on a tangent for an unknown reason, throwing jabs in attempt to belittle me, repeating most of what I have already said but made it twice as long while adding all this nonsensical clout that is not relevant to the OP. For the second time. In a row. Derailing it, yet again.

I am completely fine with disagreements, debating and even trolling. I, however, don’t appreciate you being at my neck. If you see me opening new threads or responding to other threads, stay on topic and IF you do see that something is wrong then say so but be mad chill, bro. If you cannot then I won’t reply to you. I have no interest in being part of your charade.

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You have on several occasions made statements that Trailblazer was “great.” You have several different videos where you go on and on about all the “synergies” and how it helps you “kite,” etc., etc.

These are all false statements going so far as to say they are opposite of the truth of the talent. You tested it out, that’s great, but the things you say about it were the wrong conclusions from the tests. That is the “misinformation” I am talking about.

Further examples:

It may be the worst talent ever created. It does nothing for you in any situation where movement speed is useful except where you can’t mount and aren’t in combat.

It can’t be used for this purpose because it negates all of our other tools that are designed for this purpose. If you could also use Concussive Shot or one of our traps, or Binding Shot, or anything else along with it, I would agree it could perform this function. Since you can not, it does not.

This is not making Trailblazer “better.” This is simply adding a passive heal to the spec. This is a good idea because its a heal not because its Trailblazer.

Trailblazer doesn’t do any of these things. You made these statements numerous times in your vids. You reiterated that here, albeit in a relation to the heal. I agree a heal would be great, but again, that has nothing to do with how the speed function of Trailblazer works, which is the part that needs to be fixed.

Do me a favor. Don’t try to sell Trailblazer by saying it is “useful” in any way, and I won’t call you out on it.

You think it is a waste of time, I think it is very important to understand exactly what is wrong, and not pretend something is what it isn’t or does what it doesn’t.

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They should try something like “aspect of the panther” passive 30% speed buff, that gets knocked off if you take damage. This would be a step toward rectifying the damage they did to Hunter.

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15

That sounds unreasonably too strong (especially for pve)

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I was kind of being cheeky. That’s what hunters had for many years after they introduced the Glyph that turned aspect of the cheetah from a daze to just losing the buff and giving it a 3-10 sec cooldown, I honestly forget which one. It wasn’t overpowered and it was amazing for solo gameplay and PvP.

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I love trailblazer but yeah not terribly useful outside getting from one place to another.

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So was it too strong for the 12 years before Legion before they pruned it for… reasons?

Not a single complaint was ever filed against this ability, so probably not “unreasonably strong.”

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You realize we had that YEARS before these god awful class pruning happened and nobody complained. Tell blizzard to give your abilities back as well so you stop calling what we want BACK for our spec “too strong”

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If I remember correctly that wasn’t an aspect you could keep on during a raid encounter. Here we are talking about a talent that always stays on. This would be too strong for any reasonable raid encounter where you can avoid damage. If you don’t see that then that’s your problem.

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That glyph was neat, tbh. It was useful if you knew how to use it even for kiting. If you took pve or pvp serious tho there were better glyphs.

Trailblazer’s main problem is that it’s too weak of a talent vs the other 2 in it’s tier. Even if you replace Trailblazer with the AotC’s glyph effects, while it’ll be more useful, it won’t used as much as the other 2.