A ton could be said (and has been said) about Marksman’s new tree. I wanted to concentrate on Steady Focus (SF) in this post, hoping to highlight it because it is making me fundamentally swap specs away from playing Marksman for the foreseeable future in TWW.
Steady focus is -really- not fun for me.
What it is, Why it’s not fun
- [What It Is] Steady Focus is a passive talent that requires you to press a Steady Shot cast twice in a row to gain a 15s haste buff of 8%. Since its addition in early Legion, the haste buff is large enough that often MM hunters take this talent for purely numeric reasons.
- [Annoyance] In gameplay, with a fairly fun & reactionary rotation, this essentially adds a maintenance buff that we have to do every 5 GCDs, often interfering with Lust, Trueshot, and other major CDs. Other class maintenance buffs are not as intrusive as SF has been for Hunters. Imagine shadow priests having to cast Voidtouched x2 to enter Void Form, or Evokers having to fully Disintegrate x2 every 5 GCDs to be able to upkeep Ebon Might.
- [Unsatisfying] Part of the problem is that this is with a boring Steady Shot cast that is completely unsatisfying to press. Doing this twice to get a buff that doesn’t really show on your character at all, leading to a whole army of Weakauras being developed just to manage this annoyance. [evidence]
- [Compounding] The talent being taken uses up a talent point in an already heavily costly tree, making AOE builds even worse for it. With so much in the tree for intended management, such as wailing arrows (which can’t be taken as of writing this because the tree is still too costly), the talent point & it’s positioning make it even more inconvenient.
- [Precidence] Steel Trap’s damage was once another toxic area of the MM rotation and was reduced by 80%, then given community feedback, was ultimately removed entirely. I think this is good precedence that SF could be similarly removed or reworked.
- [Just Vibes] I get wanting a talent for a higher skill ceiling, and SF does fill that gap. Even the “lore” or “RP” of having a hunter needing to refocus their target is buyable. But with our resource literally being called “focus”, already having “aimed shot” and many other resource builders such as rapid fire being so heavily involved now I just don’t see the purpose for SF as an additional complexity. I think there are other ways to increase a skill ceiling that are also enjoyable and engaging. I just don’t get the vibes of having this in the game. It’s already taxing enough that we have to buy our focus generation (of 10 focus per Steady shot) in the talent tree.
Community Reaction to Steady Focus
- Even world-first raiders, in competition for high stakes, did not use SF when it was most optimal dating back to Shadowlands. This was because it was unwieldy to manage and not fun. [evidence]
- Community hate for this talent goes far back on the forums, even to 2020 [evidence] but also mountainous response in latest feedback. [evidence]
- Larger polling (n = 152) of the Hunter discord had participants rank-order their most wanted changes (21 topics). Steady Focus rework/removal was ranked #3, and (if removed) correlates as a solution for the #2 biggest concern. [evidence]
Thanks for reading, I hope some change(s) can be made to Marksman before Season 1; similar to how SV and BM have had revisions post-rework. I would like to avoid a .5 or 11.1/11.2 patch on this given that the evidence is clear now that a change should (in our opinion) occur.
I know this is outside of the mainline Hunter feedback forum post, I apologise, but I really wanted to underscore this one talent. For all other Hunter feedback, or to continue the conversation consider going here.