The recently datamined Hunter set bonuses are incredibly uninspired and need retooling

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Full disclosure, I am visiting this topic from the perspective of a melee hunter who works in the theorycrafting circles for the spec, and while my opinions are largely reflective of what I foresee for Melee the bonuses are identical for ranged which is a problem in it’s own right. That being said, I’m predicting very similar issues for them if not they’re not identical just based off of that alone.

I believe the bonuses, as they stand right now for melee, need to be entirely revisted for Melee hunter for Phase 7 if they are not on the to-do list already. To start, the 2pc bonus does not do anything for Dual-wield builds which was an issue already present and addressed in T2.5 that shouldn’t have to be retread again. The 4pc and 6pc bonus, which are identical for Ranged and Melee only limited to their respective niches, are going to cause extremely boring and problematic gameplay loops once in full Naxx gear.

Hunter - Melee 4P Bonus: Your critical strikes with Strike abilities and Mongoose Bite have a 100% chance to reset the cooldown on those abilities.

Hunter - Melee 6P Bonus: You gain 1% increased critical strike chance for 30 sec each time you hit an Undead enemy with a melee attack, stacking up to 35 times.

Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, with Savage Strikes from the Survival tree, are already sitting at about a 70% crit chance in full consumables and world buffs. With the 6pc bonus, this is bringing both of them up to 100% crit chance which is going to lead to the rotation consisting of nothing but spamming Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite. They already have built in CDR resets through Melee Specialist, so you will get to that guaranteed crit chance incredibly quickly.

This potential rotation, which can be even further amplified by the shoulder enchants and Lone Wolf, is almost identical to what melee hunters used in Phase 2, which is a severe backwards development in my opinion for a spec that has come a long way from it’s one button rotation roots to start off SoD.

There are many other very powerful and more interesting sources of inspiration to draw from, such as a the wildily requested Beast Within that debuted in TBC or potentially Go for the Throat. If DoTs are on the teams minds, you could lean into that by giving pets a Deep Wounds effect, making Raptor Strike apply Serpent sting, cause Rapid Fire to increase DoT damage done during the duration, etc.

This version of hunter has been one of the most fun experiences I’ve had with the game in recent memory, I have been extremely excited for Phase 7 and reading those set bonuses as-is was incredibly discouraging for that gameplay and I hope the team will reconsider that direction.

5 Likes
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Most of them are uninspired. Some of them make no sense:

  • Rogue DPS 2 Set: Gain 1 Energy for each poison or bleed tick. That is 2 Energy all 3 seconds. Completely worthless
  • Tank 2 Sets: Taunt cannot miss. Reduce chance to get parried or dodged by 2%. Pretty lazy. It does not even make sense for warlock or elemental tanks.
  • Resto Shaman 6 Set: Alpha target takes 20% reduced damage. Resto is the only spec that does not use alpha. They have something useful on their boot rune. Tank/Ele/Enh will use alpha since they don’t have a good option on their boots. It would be way better if your Earth Shield targets takes 20% reduced damage.
  • Many 6 Sets: Do 25% more damage to undeads. Pretty Lazy.

There are some really cool set bonuses too.
Warlock T4: Your dots tick when your non-periodic damage crits
Warlock T6: Curse of Agony has indefinite duration (and keeps growing).
Resto Druid T6: Your Rejuvenation and Regrowth refresh their duration to full each time their target is damaged by an Undead enemy.

We need more of the later. Stuff that is unique to a class.

In general most of those set bonuses are way too powerful. 25% damage will force everyone to use sets. What is the point of 2% damage per Sanctified armor pieces whenn 6 set items give you 25%.

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At least you get to use your 6P bonus for T3… As a Warlock, I’m still stuck using Recklessness instead of Agony, so that fancy 6 piece is completely useless to me. Thanks, Blizzard.

Maybe if I suggest that they just add the Recklessness and Chaos effect to Moonfire they’ll listen, since they seem dead set to give Boomkins every single tool of every class for free.

4

Hunters have hit and run which puts up a similar debuff on whatever the pet is hitting. Would be nice if the devs game some love to pet builds and allowed BM to have a competitive tier again.

The hunter t3 pieces are incredibly lazy. I hope they are placeholders for what is to come but there is nothing innovative there. It’s all just a build up to spamming 1 ability over and over again. The lock and load rotation was fluid and felt good to play. Why they are moving away from it is beyond me. By all means make a proc to add some diversity to the rotation but making it so hunters have 80% crit and spam chimera shot over and over is not it.

I’m glad steady shot isn’t the answer to t3, but it would be nice to see a return of the TBC version of kill command in some form to bring back some pet hunter play.

5

The ranged hunter set basically has you spam chimera shot and nothing else because you will be at 100% crit and have no cd on chimera. Im sure there will be huge changes to all these bonuses. I hope they get rid of the undead only bonuses tbh.

6

Bump. I agree, I prefer the current playstyle much more than how it was in P2. These tier sets feel incredibly boring and uninspired. I like running 2H with a pet so I’m all for having a bonus like Go for the Throat or something like Focused Fire or Kindred Spirits from WotLK BM tree.