We don’t have any specific Hunter changes to announce at this time

Classes Hunter
61

There was no reason for MSV’s fantasy to so badly and forcibly overlap with Beast Mastery’s to begin with, so giving some actual optionality there is a positive change regardless. CA shouldn’t be finnickily built around pet basics regardless, making a change away from that a positive change regardless. And KC’s otherwise mostly identical but non-pet-dependent replacement would cause no further complication for Spearhead anyways.

SV’s forced inclusion of pets is like Frost’s former weaving in of its water elemental, but simultaneously less interestingly and controllably and to a more crippling degree of dependence. It’s better off as a choice with certain perks than simply a fetter for even one’s basic resources generation.

Except that’s not what having bonus MB charges come from your pet adds over not coming from your pet. You have options A and not-A, yet you’re comparing what A gave only against having gotten nothing otherwise.

  • That’s not how these things work. Fire wouldn’t just somehow lose any ability to spread Ignite if the devs decided they didn’t want Fire Blast to be the skill to do that, Subtlety wouldn’t lose any and all GCD mobility if Shadowstrike wasn’t how they wanted to provide it, etc.

There was an artifact power designed to grant MB charges. You can have it (A) come from pet attacks or (B) from anything else. The specific advantages of it coming from the pet are that it can continue attacking even when you would not, while the disadvantages include that it is more easily CCed or killed than you are. It’s not just some pure win.

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62

I don’t think I agree with it “badly” overlapping Beast Mastery. I think the pet is a good thing for the whole class to revolve around in a more unifying theme personally. I know this is my opinion, but people who wake up and choose to play hunter but hate pets would be like someone choosing to play paladin but hate holy magic, or choosing to play druid and hating shapeshifting

to add, a SV hunter without a pet is just a warrior with explosives to me. what’s the inherent difference between a petless SV hunter and an arms warrior? the former uses explosives?

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63

I know MM players who loved Lone Wolf as a talent because they wanted to be the ranger class fantasy without a pet. A ranger does not always equate to rocking animal sidekicks.

Your opinion is valid, but so are the opinions of players who want a different ranger fantasy.

As far as logistics goes, I don’t play SV and won’t attempt to speak for it one way or the other, whether it should be changed or remain the same should be up to Blizz and the general consensus of SV players.

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64

It’d be more akin to disliking cat-weaving or disliking Seals or stacking all one’s CDs every time to get any real effect out of one’s abilities.

We have similar costs to other shape shifting annoyances already, just due to the GCD costs of Exhilaration and Turtle and the occasional resultant clunkiness of traps. It’s only in going much deeper into use of shape shifting that Druids could approximate the impact of, and amount of things held hostage to, using pets as a Hunter.

Don’t get me wrong; I like pets and like using them, but their gameplay impact is far more, well, impactful to the actual gameplay (not just aesthetics or vibe) than you’re making them out to be here, albethat mostly through constraints rather than leverageable advantages.

Pretty much the entirety of their playflow, profiles, and considerations (what they have available to min-max)? So, the things that matter to anyone focused on more than just visuals?

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65

I don’t think I communicated properly. fantasy wise there would be very little difference. You’re a fighter that hits people with a big weapon and that’s about it.

I think your examples here are a bit more niche

Right, but that’s what Lone Wolf MM is for—explicitly for that different (and valid) petless ranger fantasy. If someone wants to play a petless melee fighter there are plenty of options

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66

this class is so screwed lol

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67

Then a 2H Enhance shaman (or even a DW shaman with large transmogged weapons), Blood, UH, or 2H Frost DK, and a Ret Paladin would also be “Warriors”. It’s more than just the pet that distinguishes them. Hell, there’s little that even unites them.

There are also other pet-using melee options, pet-using ranged options, and non-pet ranged options. Why should it be permissible for the one spec with alternatives to either variety (LW or no) but not the other spec that similarly has alternatives to either variety?

Why does Survival have to be a singular, unchoiceful muddle of munitions and beast mastery instead of being able to build around survivalism as it pleases? SV is fun, certainly, but look at what constitutes it: its core and ‘unique’ rotational abilities are either borrowed, the literally most generic spender possible, or a replacement for a generic spender that is at this point rarely taken outside of pure single-target.

  • Hell, even CA, CK, and BoP together just give you a more limited Razor Fragments with some CDR and extra clunk.

SV works despite that, yes, but it’s not composed of some thematic treasure trove. It’s some old BM tech + borrowed MM tech + WFI/FotE + filler. It’s effectively a revitalized 41/30 BM/MM muddle… with WFI and FotE sprinkled on top. It’s old parts intersecting somewhat newly — fine, but also partly a waste.

Now consider what it could be, in keeping with its titular theme, if it wasn’t just an intersection of other themes and some garnish. The possibilities are a whole lot less constrained if we aren’t trying to force pets and Ranger, in particular, into it, be that by going out of our way to “Hunter=PETS!” the unwitting hypothetical spec or again through copy-pasta.

That’s not a call for Survival to be wholly technology-based or whatnot. But SV should be about being resourceful, and pets should therefore feel like a tool that one can leverage, rather than being beholden to.

To me, SV isn’t the tools it starts from, but how it compounds with them, such as via Volatile Bomb, Pheromone Bomb, and, sure, spread Kill Shots, Poison Injectors fitting nicely with a non-spammable AoE, etc. But compounding off those things doesn’t require our generator needing a pet to even be cast, instead of being a means of extending its effective range or the like. That doesn’t require pet basics limiting the effect of CA in one of the clunkiest ways imaginable. That doesn’t require Spearhead being of such poor use for burst since so much of its effect is siphoned towards augmenting generation instead of spending.

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68

No, not really? All the listed examples heavily use magic with their themes. Without the pet, our gimmick is hitting things with a spear and throwing a bomb. There would need to be way more explosives or poisons… which again is a LOT of work for a lone wolf node.

Because MM LW requires a lot less work than SVs. I feel like I’m repeating myself now.

Because that’s a lot of work and attention for one spec to be able to express itself so flexible gameplay wise AND fantasy wise? What about the MM players who wish they had more pet abilities and interactions, do they deserve an entire half-rework tree to make their fantasy come true?

69

THat sounds like rogues

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70

Making Lone Wolf possible for MM in DF required…

  1. Changing how LW works.
  2. Introducing a null/default state to pet type selection uniquely for MM Hunters.
  3. Tuning certain defensives uniquely for MM.

That’s the same number of mechanical changes as you said would be required for LW on SV.

???

Via adjustments to the class tree, so that they no longer have 9 talents useless to them… yes. Yes, they should.

If they want to use a pet to, say, make lines of sight not directly available to them but visible to their pet accessible via ricochet — by all means, that would be a very “MM” way to make use of a pet. If they want to be able to use their pet to interrupt instead of Countershot, so that they can interrupt even mid-cast, again, that’s synergetic and fitting. If they want to have their attacks trigger pet attacks and pet crits increase their crit chance (multiple applications may overlap simultaneously)… why not?

This idea that SV must use a pet despite not being the pet spec, that MM must not use a pet despite being agnostic to pet usage, etc., makes no more sense than declaring that Frost, too, must have a permanent pet or that Blood must not be capable of summoning a ghoul.

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71

No? Lone Wolf SV would need an entirely new focus generator, and two entirely new cooldowns. That also breaks half of the spec tree. That’s way too much work for one passive node.

there are 6 notes that direct depend on the pet, 8 if you count flanker’s advantage and tip of the spear.

not to mention, you keep ignoring how the spec’s description directly references the pet as a part of the spec’s identity. that’s like saying “well, you can replace the poisons on mut with a single node that makes deadly poison a bleed” or “just makes arms a dual wield spec”

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72

We should get lone wolf BM in that case.

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73

Unless BM were reframed to be about aspects and beast skills instead of actual use of beasts, Lone Wolf BM runs into the same thematic issue as a Melee Marksmanship or a stealthless Subtlety or frostless Frost.

How is that comparable to a preparation-focused spec that is able to leverage every resource being not wanting to be fettered to/around just one of many of those tools (instead of being able to leverage said tool as an additional bonus, per all its others)?

And frost once referenced its elemental. Feral once referred Bear Form. Ret once referenced Seals. And Survival itself previous did not to refer to pets; of the three specs, only BM did… because it, alone, is the pet spec.

74

Still sounds like rogue.

At the current stage melee SV is basically rogue with a pet, and taking away that pet just makes it a rogue in mail armor.

75

Right, because Rogues as a class have traps, explosives, directly applied poisons, sighting tools, specialized ranged tech, etc.?

Oh wait. They either don’t or have noticeably lesser versions thereof that just force choice in status effect instead of having access to all at once. And they flow nothing alike. And have very dissimilar profiles and optimization concerns.

What’s next? Without pets, Hunters would just be Ret Paladins?

76

I feel like profiles and optimization concerns have literally nothing to do with the conversation here as that is literally down to a tuning knob. not to mention, if you’re thinking this lone wolf node will somehow NOT effect a damage profile when half of the spec right now has talents specifically about pets…

why couldn’t it? a single lone wolf node could easily do that. if kill command can be changed for SV it can easily be changed for BM. it’s not like barbed shot has anything that actually relies on the pet itself. the BM can stomp too.

77

Literally what? Changes to damage profiles are not classwide aura buffs.

I didn’t say it couldn’t. But the difference between “pet spec” and “not pet spec” is considerably more than between “uses 5 things, leveraging any and all of them” and “uses 5 things, leveraging any and all of them but with one being a weak link that is also not interestingly leveraged except by holding hostage other capacities arbitrarily”.

78

Poison bomb / smoke bomb

Shiv

Ignoring shuriken storm / fan of knifes and in the past shuriken toss there is a spec called outlaw with a decent large seletion of specialized ranged tech

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79

Man I just want to be a beastmaster with one pet again. I’ve been three characters wide since Legion.

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80

Is described as and given the icon of… a jar.

And which seems the more responsive? Spending resource to apply a non-damaging status effect that Hunters get for free regardless, or applying 3 damaging poisons at a time at net neutral or net positive cost?

As we should, since both are melee AoEs. Thunderclap can have a larger radius that Shuriken Storm does.

It has…

  1. an instant physical damage shot to a single target and
  2. an instant physical damage shot to a single target with an attached buff that has nothing to do with the shot.

That’s not specialized ranged tech. Prot Warrior has as more than that.

A Hunter is not just a pet-using Rogue. A pet-less Hunter is not therefore a Rogue.