What Might Be Improved Among the Hero Specs?

Classes Hunter
1

I’ll toss in a few cents of my own, eventually, though hopefully attempting to keep things pretty minimalistic this time, but I mostly just wanted to open this discussion up to everyone as a quick reading of the room and then some explication.

On a scale of 1–5, how do you feel about the current/actual expression of theme, the impact on gameplay, and the extent to which each hero spec might be improved (in gameplay and/or theme)?

  • If possible, I’d love to hear your reasoning on each.

Example:

Dark Ranger (MM)

  • Theme: 4/5
    • It definitely feels distinct, at least for MM, but could definitely involve more thematic aspects. Love the VFX during Trueshot. Good AFX. Solid cosmetically, though there could be more connection to Dark Ranger-ness than just the DoT-spreading and its bonuses.
  • Gameplay: 3/5
    • The greater use of Kill Shot adds interesting enough filler GCDs and target selection optimization, even if Dark Ranger could be a bit less clunky in terms of, say, Bleak Powder requiring Trick Shots despite not hitting the central enemy anyways. It also feels like there should probably be at least something beyond Black Arrow itself, and Psychic is not quite that. Greater means of Haste generation, maybe, for some rhythmic differences?
  • Improvable?: 2/5
    • Definitely room for some utility and flavor improvements, especially via buffs to Souldrinker, consolidation of The Bell Tolls into Black Arrow itself, etc., but nothing super necessary or particularly important jumps to mind.

Sentinel (MM or SV)

  • Theme: 2/5
  • Gameplay: 1/5
  • Improvable?: 3/5

Will let you guess on the reasoning for the last one.

2

Pack Leader NEEDS an actual defensive node. And No Mercy needs to be changed to actually contribute. The theme itself is fine. I wish there were glyphs to change the pack beasts to be something more unique to your hunter, but that’s not a huge point of contention for me.

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So in regards to Hero Talents, and talents in general, most of my issues are purely immersive complaints from a roleplay perspective. I will leave actual gameplay mechanics and number issues to other folks who can break them down better than I can or care to.

Right now I find alot of the themes of the Hero Talents to be incredibly restrictive. Like, they are very niche in their concepts, with little room for any personalization outside their themes. I also dislike the talents/abilities that summon beasts without any customization. I like my pets. I don’t want random animals spawning in that don’t match with my stable pets.

Blizzard kind of addressed this with the Glyph of Dire Stable, but now there’s even more abilities that need the same kind of attention. Anyway. That’s my want for future updates.

3 Likes
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It feels much better on BM then Survival, so I’d say looking at the contribution of the nodes by spec so they are more rounded.

5

pretty sure it’s just as garbage on BM since they don’t like pressing kill shot at all to begin with

6

Sentinel needs more in its kit than just Lunar Storm. I don’t even know why the absorb shield is in there. And the actual Sentinel stacking damage mechanic feels invisible. It’s completely random, disappears just as randomly instead of affecting the target for a very specific duration, and I don’t really notice when an implosion goes off. It feels like I’m playing without a hero spec at all, frankly.

We don’t even have a modified/replaced rotational ability. Rapid Fire is still Rapid Fire, it just adds an AoE every 30 seconds or whatever. We couldn’t get any other lunar-themed abilities? Not even a supercharged Aimed Shot? I want to feel like a cross between a Balance druid and a Marksmanship hunter.

You could literally reskin Dark Ranger with owls and moonlight instead of hounds and shadow magic, then copy and replace it onto the existing Sentinel tree and it would be a massive improvement over what we have now.

4 Likes
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I’d kinda prefer Sentinel be changed to something less racially-specific. Like, I wouldn’t want a Shadowhunter, either, even if that weren’t just a Shaman, because it’d be Troll only. Sadly, changing the name to Watcher wouldn’t help, as that’s also… Night Elf only. It’s a wonder that “Scouts” and “Spotters” aren’t too.

But I wonder what could make for a recognizable Hunter archetype that isn’t too subtle nor too obviously Survival-only.

Outlander could be interesting, but is both vague and likely… very “Survival” as it’s currently themed.

Outrider could be basically a more general version of Sentinel, but now with more team tactics (e.g., if Lunar Storm were calling in an area bombardment) and mobility-themed tech.

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I’m torn. On the one hand, I’ve historically only ever played dwarf hunters prior to TWW, and I remember having mixed feelings when Sentinel was announced as a hero spec, because it felt like there wasn’t really anything on the table for people who just wanted to be WC3 riflemen. So I understand the desire for something more neutral.

At the same time though, I feel like maybe Blizzard could just…make more hero specs? It’d be complicated because I don’t think every class necessarily needs more, but there’s still some very specific RTS fantasies left unfulfilled.

I’m curious, what kind of mobility-themed stuff would you add to Sentinel? Considering they took the cool owl out of Lunar Storm and how invisible the rest of the kit is, at this point I wouldn’t even necessarily mind a redesign around team tactics. I guess the trick would be how to implement that visually in some way that doesn’t just look like casting Volley.

I wonder what the plan even is for character progression in Midnight. They cleverly side-stepped talent tree creep by substituting 10 more levels of talents with hero specs, but what happens when we hit level 90? I feel like they either have to extend the class and spec trees, or double down on hero specs by making each one bigger. Problem is, it feels like they ran out of ideas for some hero specs before they even finished.

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Idk. Should we be… hoping(?)… that they are just purposely drip-feeding any creativity on many of these specs?

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I’ll take anything at this point.

To be fair to Blizzard though, for some classes even I would have no idea what I’d like to see. A lot of the ideas I have for class/spec design would involve adding a ton more glyphs, maybe even on the level of a “class skins” system. Or full spec redesigns, like somehow figuring out a way to bring back Vanilla-era “hybrid hunters” with melee and ranged capability.

But for some other classes, like rogues? I got nothing. I look at those hero specs and go “meh” but also can’t even think of anything to replace them with. There’s even a couple hero specs that I specifically love because they don’t change much for the class. Like Templar for paladins. All it’s really doing is doubling down on hammer-themed abilities. But I love that. Hammer of Light is an awesome spell. Arguably it’s similar to Lunar Storm in that it’s just an addon to Wake of Ashes, but it feels great to use in a way that Lunar Storm just…doesn’t. Maybe because it doesn’t go off automatically? Idk.

11

Honestly, my biggest problem with Hero specs is that it feels like they’d mostly just be naturally arrived at if the talent trees themselves were just better leveraged.

  • If Arms Warrior just had more breadth available to it, I doubt there’d be nearly so much outcry at there being no full-fledged “Blademaster” offered.

(Never mind, of course, that by lore, they’re generally just Orcish monks, since literally everyone other than cripples and the mentally deficient gets a baseline of martial training in orcish culture, and Blademasters then go into obsessive ascetic training —though of varying sorts, from constant combat to sometimes none at all— to master their mind and thereby their matter/form/martial arts.)

  • If Beast Mastery offered more interesting use of summons (more than just using them as DoTs and uncontrollable Stomp emanators), there’d be little to no need for a Pack Leader. Etc., etc.

Honestly, yes, likely that. Exactly that. Lunar Storm would be something that feels like an actual opportunity rather than a constraint to Rapid Fire / Wildfire Bomb if it were its own action.

Make it oGCD, though, allowing us to macro it to as many of our CDs as we like.

Idk. Should we be… hoping(?)… that they are just purposely drip-feeding any creativity on many of these specs?

EDIT:

For SV, a sort of trampling pet-as-mount charge with an empowered pet attack at end, reminiscent of a Saber charge. For MM, you can now cast while falling or sliding and for .5 seconds after landing/stopping and Disengage launches you higher into the air and briefly grants Glide (hawk spirit mumbo jumbo), maybe?

Each could be on a choice node with, say, an arcane spirit-tethering arrow (replacing Concussive Shot) that allows you to pull yourself to a target location, ally (if intercepting the trajectory to location) or enemy (same) on a second press. (Again, can cast while sliding and briefly thereafter.)

Perhaps another talent would, for MM, allow one to use most oGCDs even mid-cast and to cause movement abilities to grant up to 2 temporary bonus stacks of Streamline (to be consumed in place of your regular stacks without overriding them), perhaps opposite the same upon use of trap or first hit after marking a target with Flare or Hunter’s Mark.

Sorry, late night posting after a long workday, so not the most creative atm.

12

should have made survival packleader & dark ranger, reintroducing but not giving sv black arrow is sheer insanity

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Tbf… why would they necessarily desire to give the Huln-themed spearhunter spec Black Arrow, a skill from a Marksmanship Hunter (by lore, that is — or, kit-wise, Shadow Priest/Warlock hybrid with a bow), elvish undead/banshee or otherwise?

There is zero relationship between the “Marksmanship 2” Survival and “Melee BM” Survival beyond their alleging to use a larger than typical variety of tools (a selling point actually felt pretty much only during certain tier sets in MoP/WoD and maybe BfA/ShL, with one or both other specs making more complex use of DoTs before and/or after its change).

I get that while Survival started off in keeping with its name in Vanilla (traps, tracking, stamina, last resorts, etc.) it quickly became the “toss in anything and everything that doesn’t quite fit Marks” spec, but there’s never been a thematic connection between Black Arrow and Survival, specifically; it just boiled down to the simple fact that MM already got Chimera Shot (the 10s-CD nuke version, which had more interaction with DoTs than the alleged DoT spec) and, like the weirdness of a single-target “Explosive” Shot before it, it would do.

The only difference between Black Arrow Lock-and-Load and Auto-shot Lock-and-Load was that the first took an extra GCD to get started and concentrated its procs (usually fewer in total, especially after ICDs/caps) into a portion of uptime. Survival’s design never hinged on, nor outside of Archimonde’s Trinket was every able to interestingly leverage, the affordances of Black Arrow vs. any other means of proc generation. Even if we were to go back to Ranged Survival, there still wouldn’t be a need for Black Arrow to be on that spec in anything like its previous functionality. And if it’s then to remain just a Kill Shot, which would at least have some interplay… that has nothing to do with old/Ranged Survival.

We can make the case that SV should have access to Dark Ranger because there are some random NPCs by that name that use swords (even if, by lore, it’d only be as a last resort, alike to any other Hunter when the deadzone still existed) or because there are cool Dark Ranger-esque moves/skills/vibes we think would be synergetic with present Survival, but… there is no reason to put a Windrunner’s ranged attack on a spearhunter just because said spearhunter used to be an Alt-Marksman.

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14

the fact that it was survival’s (former) signature ability should be enough reason why it deserved to have dark ranger instead of wild spirits 2.0

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I’d have to disagree. It’s been gone from the spec for longer than it’s been present (2008-2016), was an overrated use-on-CD that had no impact on the spec that could not have been almost identically emulated by auto-attacks, and was by the developers’ own admission included in the game as a last-second toss-in only because they couldn’t figure out how to code the trap interactions/mechanics they originally wanted for SV.

Is there anything about Dark Ranger that actually feels fitting to you for Survival-as-its-been-since-2016?

  • It could even easily be Black Arrow–as-Kill-Shot-upgrade, but we should be looking at the specs we actually have (or, if those specs are a waste of potential, adjusting them before deciding on hero specs for those as-of-yet-nonexistent specs), no?
16

Explosive shot ?

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17

i am not looking to be convinced, it would be like if they had a hero tree for aff/destro that gave them meta and not demo

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Which is fine, as

  1. since 2016 Demo has had nothing to do with becoming a demon. That, like Black Arrow, has been present (2008-2016) for less time than it’s been gone (2016-2025), and
  2. if analogous, the reintroduced ability would have nothing to do with the “Metamorphosis” of before, just like the Black Arrow now is just a [Kill Shot + Condemn], not a basic use-on-CD-proc-generator.
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19

black arrow was “iconic” for RSV simply to be a vehicle to reset explosive shot. nothing else in the kit had anything to do with the weird necromancy dot on a guerilla survivalist

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20

A $0.02 minimalistic wishlist as it pertains to Hero Specs:

General

  • Kill Shot buffed from 400% AP to 500% AP.
  • Razor Fragments nerfed from a 75% bonus to 40% bonus (still results in a 700% AP shot) to primary target damage but now spreads 50% of damage to other targets (an increase of 105[n-1]% AP).

Dark Ranger

  • Bleak Powder no longer requires Trick Shots but has been nerfed from 560% AP to 460% AP. (This is still a net-5n% AP buff, as Dark Ranger isn’t going to be taken without Razor Fragments.)
  • Ebon Bowstring also reduces the global cooldown incurred by Kill Shot by 33.3% and causes it to refund 5 Focus.
  • Souldrinker now begins at a 100% chance on engaged enemy or allied death, but is reduced to 10% after any proc, regenerating to 100% over 90 seconds.

Sentinel

  • Lunar Storm is now a separate action, off the global cooldown. Macro it if/as you please.

Pack Leader

  • Shell Cover now generates up to 10 stacks of Shell Cover, each shielding for 2% of maximum health, to be consumed only as needed to keep you over 20% health and regenerated at a rate of 1 stack per 10 seconds. You gain 1% Avoidance and 1% reduction to periodic damage taken for every 2 stacks of Shell Cover readied and are healed for 2% of your maximum health for every stack consumed. Attacks which would kill you by less than 20% of your health consume Shell Cover to avoid death but do not heal you.
  • Shell Cover is now a choice node opposite Den Recovery, which works as before while also increasing your natural health recovery by 200%.