So far the changes seem initially really nice and definitely appreciated. There are a few initial concerns some of us in the SV community have.
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Merciless Blows DoT doesn’t seem to be igniting or pandemic-ing, which means with high enough Haste / Pack Leader you may be losing out on DoT damage if you Butchery as its available
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Pack Leader still seems like it’ll be incentivized to spam KC instead of using non-generator abilities. This does not feel fun as it completely eclipses the new spec design and hero tree concept. Could the Vicious Hunt consumption trigger be moved to Raptor Strike instead of KC?
One of my favorite positive about this change is that it really reduces a lot of GCD bloat we had in AoE, sometimes the spec felt a bit too busy, so this will be interesting to play more on the PTR to see what it feels like
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id like it if packleader allowed sv/bm to get a talent from each other’s spec tree in the same way enh’s lightning rod takes from ele, exotic taming & aspect mastery and give bm ranger or somethin
It’s easy to miss, but Wild Attacks in the Pack Leader tree was given a passive effect that buffs Raptor by 20%
This gives them an easy knob to twist to tune Survival in ST and make sure KC isn’t too valuable, hopefully
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Yup! Just like how Howl got a 20% WFB node too 
I like the change to merciless blows if it goes through. One of my issues with PL is the few ways to buff your pet. The entire right side of the tree was catered to BMs with Survival having the Walmart version of it. The AS boost from Bloodseeker should help out.
Great changes overall and good for the health of the spec in AoE. It’s very cool to have Butchery become a hard-hitter with a powerful bleed. It helps alleviate some of the bloat we’ve had in AoE this expansion and gives Fury of the Eagle some much needed room to breathe, which is great.
Some concerns so far:
Relentless Primal Ferocity change:
The extra stack of Tip of the Spear generated is almost entirely useless. We don’t generate enough focus to actually spend 3 stacks of Tip of the Spear for every Kill Command cast. The current version is a perfect balance at 2 stacks; if you want it to generate 3 stacks, there needs to be either some type of focus cost reduction or increased focus generation.
Merciless Blow
This is a very cool effect and makes pressing Butchery feel very rewarding. The bleed, however is missing a ton of interactions within the kit:
- Merciless Blow doesn’t scale off mastery
- Merciless Blow cannot crit
- Merciless blow does not ignite or pandemic
- Merciless Blow doesn’t get buffed by Cull the Herd
- Merciless Blow doesn’t apply Outland Venom
That’s all I’ve got for now. The AoE changes feel great so far.
By now, I’m sure this list has gotten around but in case there are new faces, below is a document that is being constantly updated with hunter bugs for all three hunter specs, with newly added tabs for PTR testing.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SyyJ9FJ-kU5LMMTsaXIesOUE4dY8cDiTkAVc-s0qw9M/edit?gid=1014007160#gid=1014007160
Thank you!
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