Where are the Archers?

Classes Hunter
1

Let me start by making three things clear.

  1. I recognise that the pet is a core element of a traditional wow hunter
  2. Blizzard was prepared to remove the bow from survival, but not the pet - which emphasises just how firmly “core” the pet is to wow-hunter vision
  3. Many hunters love having a pet and that is good for the game

OK, with that out of the way…

Why is the Archer archetype depreciated in WoW?

Bow combat has been a core part of warfare for milennia, only fading away when gun combat evolved.

History & fiction are full of incredibly cool archers & pre-modern gun users. There is an incredible amount of storytelling to draw from with a bow. Let me string together some examples:

  • English Longbowmen at Agincourt - I always felt this was the core of Marksman… raining down arrows on an enemy trapped in mud
  • Mongolian (and other) horse archers - How cool would DK Rider of the Apocalpyse be if it was an archer spec?
  • Diablo 3 Demon Hunter - Bliz has already made cool archers in one of their own franchises…
  • Legolas - Half the Lord of the Rings fans out there want to play him…
  • “Mad Jack” Churchill - A British Lt.Col. in WW2 who went into battle with a claymore & longbow. Once defended an attack by shooting the first enemy with his bow, before swapping to a machine gun (yes, really).
  • Natty “Hawkeye” Bumppo - aka the white guy from Last of the Mohicans, running across the battlefield swapping between black powder rifles & hatchets/knives
  • Tametomo & other Samurai - the bow has always been a core part of samurai combat. Minamoto no Tametomo was a historical figure who’s claimed to have sunk a ship with his bow by punching a hole below the waterline
  • Palnatoki & the Vikings - archery was also massive in viking combat - the front line formed a shield wall, the second used spears & every other row used bows. Palnatoki is mentioned in a 12th century story similar to William Tell, where he was forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head by Harald Bluetooth (who Palnatoki later killed - in some versions anyway)
  • The Amazons - according to mythology would not have looked like Gal Gadot, because in (highly dubious) storytelling they made significant sacrifices purely to be better archers
  • Confucius - Bet you didn’t know he was an archer - Archery was one of the Six Noble Arts during the Chinese Zhou dynasty (about 1000bc to 250bc). Archery competitions & rituals were a core part of Zhou culture, were advocated for by Confucius, and were likely the inspiration for Imperial examinations to test the skills of potential leaders

None of those story inspirations involve pets. They’re about Archers. Archery crosses most cultures throughout history & is deeply ingrained in human stories.

So what’s my point?

Despite all that potential inspiration, Warcraft has struggled to make a viable playable Archer archetype.

Marksman’s identity as an Archer has been colliding with WoW-Hunter’s identity as a pet-class for the last decade.

Players have demanded Archer-like play and Marksman’s Lone Wolf has tempted with the promise of pure archery for a decade. However all this time, Marksman’s utility has been compromised by pet requirements despite copious complaining & unhappiness from the playerbase. More pets vs less pets is nearly as big a meme as range-vs-melee SV.

On a personal level, the only reason I ever made a hunter back in BC was because I assumed the pet was optional when I started playing. I’ve got used to pets since, but accepting the design shouldn’t be confused with enjoying the design.

Archery is such a gaming default that there will be a large silent group of pro-archer players. Some already playing hunters, others avoiding hunters due to pets, and future players who’ll begin playing while thinking “surely a fantasy game has archers?”

What do I think should happen?

In the long term, Devs need to decide how they’re going to support Archer players. IMO there are only really three options:

  1. Give up on Lone Wolf, tell the players that Hunters = Pet Users, ignore all the incredible archer potential, and accept the fallout
  2. Accept that Marksman is an Archer archetype and enable true pet-less play
  3. Create a new class that’s a true Archer, so that Hunter can become a true pet ranger class

In the short term, we appear to be extremely close to Option 2 - enabling pet-less play for Archer-Marksman. It also has the advantage of leaving the other two long term options available, because Lone Wolf is the current norm for Marksman.

I agree this is the best short-term solution & feel that Devs need to bite the bullet and go all-in on it (at least for now).

  • Attach an out-of-combat stance ability to Lone Wolf so that Marks can choose between Fortitude, Lust and Freedom (and get the appropriate passive buff too). Give it a 3s cast time to mirror pet swapping.
  • Don’t follow through on the Patch Note about requiring a pet for intimidation, or make it a dire-beast type pet that does not remove Lone Wolf.
  • Add a 3s cast time to Call Pet & make Dismiss Pet instant for Marksmanship. This would leave pet access available (e.g. for open world tanking) while reversing the spec’s default to be Archer-oriented.
  • Add a temporary in-combat stance swap to Freedom in the Wild Kingdom PVP talent and have Roar of Sacrifice redirect damage to the hunter.

These changes would get Marksman working as an Archer spec without disadvantaging its ability to run as a Pet spec.

It would give the community what they expect, require minimum development time, and leave the field open for more carefully designed & discussed class changes in the future.

The current BM design has possibilities for either more-or-less pet oriented play, and could readily adapt to Marks either abandoning or forcing pet use. These recent Beta talent tree changes could finally give Hunter a clear differentiation between all three specs.

But at the end of the day it comes down to a simple problem:

Players want Archers. Devs want Hunters to be Pet controllers. The Dev team needs to communicate how they’re addressing this conflict.

10 Likes
2

The opening cinematic of WoW, the first thing we see after the continents and title, is a Dwarf Hunter with a gun and a bear pet. This has been my class fantasy for nineteen years.
Beastmaster is a spec that has ranged weapons but mainly uses them for utility, while damage comes from the pet. I want the inverse, to have a pet for utility but rely on my weapon for damage. Survival was removed from this fantasy in Legion. Therefore, I have played Marksman since the rework, and the better part of those nineteen years.
I can support fully Lone Wolf Marks, but only if pet Marks remains viable in all content.

3 Likes
3

Now that blizz kinda killed lone wolf and you still need a pet for utility, lust sac ,freedom etc

The only hope for a archer or gunner spec is a new spec. I think dh has a good chance at being a archer or a rogue 4th spec.

Dont give up yet, maybe wait until prepatch thry might use new tech to give lust, leach,anti heal, sac and freedom to non pet users

Lone wolf has been in the game longer than it hasnt been i the game. If i wanted to rely on a pet for everything i would play survival and bm. Pet should be purely cosmetic/optional for mm.

4 Likes
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When i first started playing it was around when lord of the rings movies came out and most people had the vision/fantasy of being legolas… lol i remember all the night elf names that sounded or spelled in some way to say legolas, always funny to see it. I think bm is pretty solid for the dwarf pet/gunner fantasy like in the clip.

1 Like
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BM doesn’t work for me. The graphics, animations, theme, rotation, and relying on the pets to go somewhere to do damage is not to my liking. I played BM in TBC because I was hardcore raiding then and it was meta, and part of Legion because I could not stand Vulnerability, and disliked it both times. Rapid Fire, Aimed Shot, Trick Shots, Barrage, etc, are much more satisfying. I value the pet as a pocket tank more than a damage source.

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I started playing hunter back in vanilla. I have played all the range specs with a pet. I prefer having one pet not a zoo. I played mainly range sv until it went melee. Then I played MM until it went petless.

I am happy to see I can play MM with a pet now. I believe choice is good for the game.

1 Like
7

Agreed which is why they need to give lust, leech or anti heal and sac when using lone wolf. And you shouldnt need to spend a extra point to be able to use pet stun without a pet nor should you spend a talent for lone wolf. Just baseline and the damage diff is equal to pet damage.

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What’s going on with LW in TWW? Are there changes to make it more usable, or has it been left untouched?

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For all the people complaining about how they want more pets in BM, that is actually one of the things I really like about the new version of the Beastmastery tree.

It seems like BM is getting close to being able to run both an all-the-pets and one-strong-pet playstyles in the same tree.

I know I miss when Big Red Pet was a thing for BM.

If they didn’t lock Beast Cleave & Kill Cleave behind Animal Companion, the new BM tree could get back to that one pet playstyle.

Give access to Basilisk Collar without going through Dire Beast talents, while buffing Killshot & making Bloodshed a viable alternative cooldown to Call of the Wild. You’d end up with a spec that could focus on one strong pet supported by a range of poisons, bleeds & debuffs.

At the same time the “all the pets” players could have Dire Beast, Huntmaster’s Call & bring back Stampede in that lower right section of the tree for a full zoo experience.

IMO having BM get two contrasting playstyles would also be great for Marks.

It’d leave design room for the pet to be a much more pure support, which you could easily mirror non-pet versions of for the pure archer players.

At present I don’t see a way for non-lone wolf Marks to be dps viable in aoe, simply because the pet doesn’t scale up in aoe. Considering that in PVE you most want pet utility in AoE situations, it’s created a bit of a lose-lose scenario.

Really Lone Wolf needs to avoid being about damage & instead be about flavour (imo).

5 Likes
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Nerfed to 5% damage, still cant lust with lone wolf. Need extra talents to use pet stun on top of a talent for picking stun to use it during lone wolf. You dont get pet leech or anti heal when using lone wolf and lone wolf is 7th row now. Still cant use roar of sac without a pet or freedom.

So its weaker in pve and wayyy worse in pvp and world content

4 Likes
11

Then the designers are trying to kill it off. Create a useless talent, and delete it next patch claiming no one picked it. They can’t program LW to function like it been asked for, so just delete it.

3 Likes
12

You might be correct.

Make it super terrible to play so nobody picks it then delete it next patch saying nobody is using it. Yea true, would be nice if they just removed it so i can reroll now rather than next patch

2 Likes
13

I think its pretty simple, lone wolf is baseline and lone wolf is basically a spirit like orb that floats around you or a monkey on your shoulder or a hawk that automatically does damage to your primary target.

Done solved no more trouble around balancing them

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14

Warlock’s grimoire solves this by giving the lock’s shadowbolt a %proc damage tic and also access to the command demon ability, where it’s a much fairer choice. Hunters could have similar.

1 Like
15

Everything you have written here is exactly what I have been complaining about to any friends who will listen.

I have been playing wow since 2004, and the first character I created was a dwarf hunter. I respect that pets historically have been heavily integrated with how Hunter works as a class, but since the first time I started this game up I wanted to play a lone archer without a pet. Playing Lone Wolf in WoD was a breath of fresh air, and it saddens me that this is not further supported.

It greatly bothers me that a classic archetype is so incomplete and poorly represented. How is there room for 3 different mage specs, balance druid, dev evoker, and a huge chunk of elemental shaman, all petless casters and magic users, but we can’t have 1 complete spec for us petless bow users? Even warlock has a class mechanic in Grimoire of Sacrifice which allows them to sacrifice their pet, gain access to their ability, and it lasts until a new demon is summoned.

How does Marksmanship not have a way of accessing Hunter utility spells without a pet, still?

4 Likes
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Somebody made a good point in another thread they might be nerfing it to kill it off. Kinda wish they just did a simple solution instead but oh well

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17

You’ve got to wonder at times… it can be very easy to accidentally or intentionally sabotage a project just because some element is poorly implemented.

One of the reasons I tried to step back from a direct critique of Lone Wolf is just because I believe that we do need to look at fundamental game elements that players enjoy.

In whatever form they take, Archer archetypes are a big element in fantasy stories.

Even if the devs did want to kill off Lone Wolf, it would be sabotaging the game to do it before they had some alternative lined up to cater to the Archer-oriented players.

Developers need to be able to develop what they believe in, but they also need to take into account community expectations.

1 Like
18

Solution?

Introduce a 4th Rogue spec that utilizes ranged weaponry. Stealthy sniper. GG.

Marksmanship Hunters are too heavily influenced by elven archery in the WoW universe, which has touches of LoTR “anime” shenanigans (see Sylvanas boss fight in Shadowlands). The “WoW Elves Archetypes” are overwhelmingly present in the Hunter hero classes.

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When wow came out the meme of night elfs called Legolas was a big thing because people liked Legolas, he wasnt a pet dude he was just a ranger. Sylvanas etc lots of ranger people that are not super reliant on pets fantasy wise

The solution is to make lone wolf baseline, remove the damage buff from it and to add in pet sac which adds a dot to auto attacks only one target at a time that makes up for pet damage and the sac gives you access to lust\leach\whatever pet you sac, then just send out a spirit to use sac\pet stun etc when you use them.

The whole thing is fixed… No extra balancing required, pet or no pet doesnt matter.

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There is much more to it then just the pet. I don’t see solo archers having such spreads and firerates of arrows. The core of marksman in wow is so far from that of old. I tried to recreate it with the talents i chose but with the TWW talent rework its back to machinegun arrow spam as they keep pushing you more and more into rapid fire and volley styles.