We’re like a year into the expansion with two major content patches and a handful of tuning updates, and marks still hasn’t “organically” found itself into the meta. Shocker, I know. We’d only been complaining about the overpruning of the spec since May of last year when it went into beta.
Anyway, since we’re mid-expac and there’s no chance of much in terms of new spells or anything big, something within the existing kit has to be tweaked to make the spec have a place in the meta.
Swap trailblazer and binding shot on the talent tree (or otherwise shuffle the talents on those rows so that you can pick postehaste and binding shot). This makes the player choose between a stealth opener or improved control via binding, while still being able to use postehaste, which is all but mandatory.
Put scatter on disorient. This lets the hunter set up his own trap from mid-range, but also puts two trees on DR, preventing too long of a theoretical instant CC chain from things like follow up fears/blinds, etc.
IMO, these two things can and should be in-scope for mid expansion, and help with the biggest problems caused by the overpruning of control/non-damage buttons. It’s a shame that you have to either play melee hunter or BM (both of which still aren’t that great in the meta, but I digress) to do anything in arenas. Especially when MM is the only spec in the game that really fills the “archer” archetype for the RPG.
Best bandaid until a proper revamp is Scatter off trap DR, and aimed/steady shot is now instant cast.
We’re one of the only specs left in WoW with zero mitigation, and close to zero healing. We can’t survive casting an aimed shot for 3 seconds with spell pushback. We’re the only spec in the game that almost never sees Dampening in 3s. Even Jellybeans healer couldn’t keep him alive until dampening during the tourney.
Give us the ability to use our kiting abilities while punishing. Right now when we “kite” there’s no damage coming out. Meaning there’s zero downside to chase us to africa behind a pillar. If we move, they get to keep chasing with zero downside. If we stay still, most specs have enough tankiness/self healing to sometimes even be rewarded to play behind the pillar while we slowly cast off aimed shots.
Every season I start the first two weeks playing MM, get super disappointed and go back SV. These changes would definitely help, but not fix the fact that nothing dies in this super slow meta.
S2 was so bad I didn’t even bother with a glad push because raiding was actually more fun… playing a hunter just doesn’t feel good unless it’s MM. sad days.
This would be ideal. But given the changes in the game in over a year, adding abilities is likely something we won’t see until next expansion. I don’t believe hunter has ever had a major dps rotational ability added to it mid-expansion in the history of WoW.
I mostly made my previous suggestion since it’s within the realm of a “blizzard mid-expac bandaid.”
Honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Not even trying to tin-foil hat, but from a business perspective the devs probably threw quite a bit of budget at turning SV into a melee spec.
They have to justify that, and after legion having it still be one of the least played specs in the game probably did no favors with the upper management having to please share holders.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they bull-headedly didn’t want to admit that despite SV being a spec with much better flow and development that most people originally rolled a hunter to be an “archer,” and decided to leave the spec mediocre in the hopes that one of the most played classes in the game will even out the specs artificially banking that upper management won’t know the difference between a successful overhaul after dumping budget, and sandbagging a competing spec to force players to funnel into the new one skewing the numbers.
Have seen it in my own company with new R&D ideas after dumping a large amount of manpower into a new idea that didn’t pan out to try to minimize backlash on themselves because shotcallers were too scared to take the heat.
Scatter shot being on a different DR than trap is too strong. It allows hunters to CC someone for 15ish seconds SOLO, while being very easy to pull off with minimal counterplay. Its not like you can kick scatter shot/trap/intimidation.
Mm hunters would just excel with things that bring raw damage and tunnel 1 target while the hunter does the CC, i.e warrior/ret/dk. That to me personally just sounds cancer.
Huh? Scatter trap is 12 seconds total… with a 24 sec, 3 sec locked out kick we get what, 15 sec? That’s nothing special. When fire mages literally do do one better with three spec schools. Also having more survivability and more burst with combustion. All while being almost as mobile.
I bet you 100k gold that even if they took scatter off trap DR it still wouldn’t be meta breaking because nothing dies in a 12 second CC chain due to how HP pools have outscaled damage and self healing is overturned.
But this coming from a destro lock, a class with tons of cc, survivability and burst to back it up…
Scatter is marks only, and marks doesn’t have intimidation.
Also this. You have to look at the whole toolkit for comparison. Sure you can kick poly but it’s also spammable and you have shimmer, roots, db, ring, etc. to fall back on. Trap is “instant” but you can eat it, ground/reflect/reverse it, and it’s on cooldown instead of where you’d just set back up to recast as mage/lock, etc. Marks has always had something to set up its own trap with, and it just doesn’t work without it.
Besides putting scatter on a different DR than trap, I think it would go a long way to buff more instant damage (since I doubt we’ll see them touch aimed shot) so that when we’re kiting/getting trained we’re not completely neutralized.
Piercing shot hits pathetically weak for a last row talent. Even against cloth wearers its not even worth taking(especially for something that’s a 30 sec CD).
Explosive shot deals a moderate amount of damage, but it can be DISPELLED. I understand it’s magic damage, and usually worth dispelling but it’s still annoying to see it just disappear. Also with careful aim being only 20% bonus damage in instanced PvP, explosive shot is an attractive option if you’re not able to get aimed shots off.
*Very wishful thinking here, but adding something along the lines of readiness would help MM tremendously. If they made it a PvP talent, it could replace something like Hunting Pack (or re-work hunting pack to give AotC something similar to what it did in legion with breaking slows) or Ranger’s Finesse.
Also, WTB Kill Shot back. Pipe dreaming right now.
I agree with all of this. Readiness is even one of my major suggestions in the big thread over in items and classes. Unfortunately, new spells and major changes to existing spells are out of scope per the last forbes interview that was given. I think at bare minimum, shuffling a talent position and changing one DR should be within scope for a tuning pass.
I don’t disagree with the need/want for more stuff like kill shot and chimaera or some form of instant aimed shot (suggested by Rawrzy), it’s just that they’ve said they’re not doing new spells or radical changes to existing ones.