No, my personal problem with it is having it not work because of roots or something similar. It’s super frustrating when you have a game won and just need to stun/trap the healer - but when you press stun your pet can’t get there for some reason. Any other class just presses stun and you get to stun someone, even lock pets get it at ranged and most other melee also have it at range.
This isn’t really an issue, we need MS to be working when we’re going for a kill… If the enemy is safely behind a pillar anyway that’s not currently happening.
That being said I hope people who want their pet get to keep it. I have nothing against people wanting the pet, I’m just excited for the changes because I’ve played without a pet as MM for years.
People run behind a pillar when they are already hurt, so they can heal, so wanting MS on the hiding target is a valid concern. However if LoSed enemies were a concern, we have options now and in 11.1. Enemies in our Volley can be hit through pillars, new Intimidation doesn’t get LoSed ever, Blinding Shot is a great ranged AoE stun, MM is fast as heck on live and faster in 11.1 and stupid crazy fast if played as a Worgan, and we can double Disengage with regular Disengage and pvp talent that augments Busting Shot, and Cheetah works wonders and we have our own Freedom run on sentence from hell I know. Players hiding for long from a spec as fast and mobile as MM which also has tools to deal with LoS and the best in game range will have a bad time.
Sometimes having the pet do the stun is good cause enemy don’t expect, hard to shadowmeld that, since they are focused on you.
The thing is, fixing one issue(pets rooted/stuned/slowed) also removes compeltely your agency and control of the pet, to do all the things you did, keep then in combat, active other hunter traps, annoy then with more enemies on the screen.
There are better ways to fix this without screwing balance tbh, like making pet movespeed the same as the hunter, if you are not slowed, so pet isnt either
If we are still talking about Arena, what I put above is why someone cant actually hide from a MM who isnt busy being trained by another enemy. Worries the MS might be delayed while you use mobility, CC, and Volley to negate the LoS, should be very minimal. MM has all the tools to handle it. Worse for the MM than an enemy failing to hide are melee that are difficult gain distance from, and MM has lots of tools for that too.
and they cant anticipate with normal pets either, the only “win” here is ignoring line of sight, with could be just a buff to territorial instincts talent
Ms is a non issue coming from the pet because it’s completely passive and lasts longer than the cooldown under which your pet uses it. It’s actually the most consistent baseline Ms effect in the game as is. Rogue is close.
Aimed shot Ms is absolutely going to fall off more than pet Ms did and that’s something that needs attention. Aimed Ms should stack to 35 where one aimed gives 17.5 for 10 seconds and a second aimed puts it to 35 for 4 and then you have to start over. More in line with slaughterhouse instead of regular Ms. More effective than average when you have uptime, but falls off and builds back up. Give and take.
Intim stun will absolutely be a lot faster on healers and the los component is really good. Pets get stuck in roots and aoe cc. They have a path/travel time. The bird doesn’t. Give and take.
Yup, nobody gets to CC a healer twice and mortal strike another enemy who is LoSed without spending some GCDs, but if the effort is exerted by pushing some buttons MM can do it.
If they thought you might want to use your pet utility on live they CC your pet. If your pet on live is CCed your utility from your pet does nothing when you push the button, unless the button clears the CC on the pet.
The Eagle cant be LoSed, CCed, killed…you never spend time summoning it, healing it, clearing CC off it, swapping it out for another pet to get that other utility, is that not objectively better for the Arena example always?
100% MS uptime is an asset, like Convoke the Spirits in SL killing all enemies in a 30 yard radius once a min was a asset to Druid. Doesn’t mean it is what is best for PvP.
Less MS than with pet, MM will be worse in PvP as a result. It’s already not doing great since the current patch nerfs especially to dark ranger. In shuffle and 3’s MM is currently one of the worst DPS. It does simply ‘OK’ in Blitz but not really because you have to sit still and cast which gets interrupted by CC. Which one, casts can be longer with the new changes - and you have to sit still more in general. Which = worse.
From the arena perspective it is better and worse in different ways. I’m still leaning more towards the better spectrum. It’s kinda hard to tell without being able to actually use it in real arena matches without lag and proper tuning and proper opponents, etc.
On live, marks is actually almost as attached to its pet as sv or bm (at the same time it’s also a huge liability, see below). You need to turtle and res or end the match pretty quickly if it dies because you have to have Ms, freedom, and intim. The situations where it dies are also pretty uncontrollable because it’s usually one shot by a random balance Druid proc or gets aoe bled by sin/feral and dies faster than your mend can heal it. You can’t pet sac and also have a bled pet. This isn’t a problem for bm (is also a problem for sv) because BM has a bunch of pets out at the same time which then invokes most of the “does less damage beyond x targets” conditions of the bleeds killing mm/sv pets.
In certain ways it’s a huge liability because you’re more concerned about when your spells are landing and doing a lot of damage in a tiny window as marks. So having to wait out cc or roots on a pet sometimes ruins go opportunities. Out of line 3s stun that you can precast on a trap from a longass way away is actually pretty insane. Borderline op when you combine with other wall hacks like volley and correct use of rapidfire. Being able to sac yourself or a teammate and not worry about your pet dying is awesome.
In other ways, you lose out on the ability to just send a pet after a drinking healer. In my humble experience, this isn’t really a huge issue any more, and if you’re giving healers drinking windows, you have probably already lost anyway. You also lose traditional hunter node defense in blitz. It’s significant but it’s also a role that most marks hunters dread because you also have unique ways to own team fights that you never really get to use.
Current marks is and has been insanely easy to play since bfa. It’s either tuned high enough to work or it isn’t. It’s really hard to screw up. It has really stupid limitations as a result.
At this point I’m convinced that it’s actually everything else except the pet scaring these people. I’ve seen first hand the experiences of people used to fotm trolling it for the last few years when they try to use this one. People are resistant to change when something has been free for so long.
There’s no indication that bm is getting any less straightforward anytime soon. RP Andy and fotm Billy need to just keep playing bm.
If MM is worse off in pvp than now, other than the obvious not being able to spin a node while CCed (like many specs cannot do), it will come down to, were broken talents bug fixed, and was a tuning pass done to get it back up to good damage or more durability as compensation for fragility + no pet to spin nodes + less damage than on live now with weak hero tree/spec tuning. PTR and spec reworks are the times when tuning should be adjusted and bugs fixed so I’m hopeful.
My expectations are tempered, I dont expect Sniper Shot removing half of someones health amounts of damage, nor the over the top buffed Rapid Fire and Aimed shot that came with Sniper Shots nerf. Before the Devs nerfed MM a few ways including the Dark Ranger Tree MM was eating good. It was a really great time to be MM, maybe too good. I couldn’t enjoy other specs, MM was just too good not to play. Now on live it is average, it is hard to get excited about average.
It would need more instant dmg, not channeled, not hardcasted. Like all other ‘casters’ in this game - or let them have defensives that would HAVE to make them entirely immune to all forms of CC so they can DPS during trueshot or other windows - and ON TOP of that they would have to allow them to shoot through walls. PTR has none of that, it’s actually doubled down on making things more turret based and immobile with less surviability.
On top of that too many classes have ‘dodge’ mechanics on top of their CC for you, so they can sit and be ENTIRELY immune to your damage, without touching you.
Marks is pretty good right now on live. It was really really good before the dark ranger rework, then broken for several months, and is good again now. It’s a great solo shuffle spec. BM is hard to compete with under current mechanics without making marks just one shot stuff with withering fire. This upcoming version has way more potential.
It really just can’t have double tap and also have super impactful aimed shot all the time. It’s not a good sign when something already needs a 50% PvP nerf at the onset. Outside of that, current aimed is actually set up to be what marks needs it to be and rapidfire is still good, it’s just not your literal only kill condition with wall hacks. To move forward out of the impossibly polarizing window of viability that marks has been in since bfa, something needed to happen.