Could someone explain Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot to me?

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Ok, I know what the descriptions for these skills say, but as I’ve been tinkering around with the skills it seems to me like BM is the only good skill if you’re not going straight up melee at which point Carve might be useful for the hand slot runes.

Explosive Shot shares a CD with arcane shot and aimed shot and since I am MM that means I use Aimed Shot a lot so the only reason I would use Explosive is to instantly tag enemies but I can do that with arcane shot anyway and I don’t have to worry about accidentally pulling more than I want.

I could use explosive + multi for groups of enemies but in singleplayer PVE that would just pull all enemies but one off of the pet and then they’d be in melee range and in the deadzone so I couldn’t even target them. In dungeon or raid setting I could use it for AOE damage I guess but the problem there is that mana management becomes horrendous and I’ve been told a few times that I should leave AOE to other classes.

When it comes to Chimera Shot I guess the disarm would be useful for scorpid sting in PVP content but I don’t PVPV so that doesn’t matter to me and the serpent sting damage that it is supposed to do just doesn’t feel like it is worth the mana. Like, if I am to burst damage then ok that will certainly burst damage as I can use Serpent, then Aimed, then Chimera while I wait for Aimed to reset itself. But this is insanely mana draining and I just don’t see the point when I could just put on BM which is passive, drains no mana and just makes the pet that already accounts for a lot of my damage to do 30% more damage.

So am I missing something with these two skills? What playstyle or moment in gameplay is an opportune time to use these skills? Is it just until I level up enough to get Aimed Shot or until I can get the BM rune? Cause it’s easy to say that the runes are useless but… I dunno, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is a playstyle that works brilliantly for these runes and I just haven’t considered it yet.

The devs were quick to change both of these runes very soon after SoD launched and haven’t touched them since while finetuning other classes so the only assumption I can go by is that they think the runes are exactly where they need to be and fulfill their roles as they should, but I just don’t see it.

So could someone explain to me when and why I should use Explosive or Chimera over BM rune? Like what are their strong points?

And if there ‘really’ aren’t any strong points at all to these two runes then… Well why do have two runes that are (as far as I can see) seemingly useless once we get BM rune?

Also, do runes scale with our agility?

(I think that Chimera should refund health with serpent sting instead of doing more damage as hunters have no healing abilities at all and explosive shot simply shouldn’t be tied to the same CD as arcane and aimed, that could open the runes up in terms of functionality)

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I think the chimaera rune is viable once you get the purple crossbow.
But yes basically they were gutted into oblivion after the day 1-2 outcry. The tears are on the pets right now and I’m pretty sure they won’t stop until hunters are mid dps at best.

1 Like
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Let’s be real.
If we didn’t have mana issues, we’d have NO issues.

Pets can solokill alot of players. Not ALL, but ALOT. Most only have the option of either CCing it or straight up running for a minute until it despawns. And that really only requires you to use a single BM rune.

Pet can kill alot of people without strong healing or good cc, by itself, including full tank ferals. Yes… you have a pet that can completely ruin a druids top dreams of being the strongest beast at their level.

I believe in the later phases and especially at max level with correct itemization and gear, that Lone Wolf etc will become really strong with ChimeraShot/ExplosiveShot when pets stop scaling. Enjoy it while you can, because Blizzard will definitely not allow BM Hunters to be top dogs by a large margin for the entire season, nor should they.

If you don’t enjoy using your pet, just remove BM and use another rune. Run LoneWolf if that is your thing, you may only do the same damage as a lowly caster but I don’t know if anyone will notice your damage until you are past the first boss in BFD, and dungeons people wont even bother replacing lower performing players.

4

You are right.
The only times i used explosive on my hunter was in stockades with big group pulls.
Even for Singleplayer PvE with MM you need the BM rune otherwise your pet can not hold thread.
Lonewolf is a dps lost. It costs 40g and you do less dmg with it then just using a pet without bm talents.
Maybe its viable at lvl 60 when the pet dies on bosses, but then its worth it to get with lvl 60.

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Cool, I don’t care about PVP so nerf pet damage against other players for all I care. I could use whatever rune I want to, that’s not the point. The point is why would I use rune X when rune Y is better?

I want to know how to effectively use Chimera Shot and/or Explosive Shot in just as meaningful of a way as BM.

6

The pet has been sufficiently nerfed, it remains strong only in BM specialization and is largely manageable with CC, etc. Most classes are capable of doing much more damage than a BM boosted pet and others have much greater burst damage. If at the moment the hunter is causing you serious problems in pvp it’s skill issues. I’m not talking about an outdoor 1v1 where the hunter will often have the advantage, which was already the case since Vanilla (and still).

Concerning the usefulness of Explosive shot and Chimera shot… well there’s none at all, these two runes were so nerfed that they lost all their appeal.

To review the SoD Hunter:

Multiple nerf since the release and ALSO before (lone wolf).

Torso Rune:

  • AoTL: Essential
  • Cobra strikes: AoTL is essential
  • Lone wolf: Reduces Hunter damage, this rune is a nerf.
  • Master Marksman: AoTL is essential.

Summary: Only one useful rune.

Hands Rune:

  • Beast Mastery: Essential overall.
  • Carve: Damage WAY too low. Useless.
  • Explosive shot: Nerfed to the ground and corrupted in AoE.
  • Chimera shot: Nerfed to the ground (although initially it was already not very powerful)

Summary: Only one really useful rune.

Legs rune:

  • Flanking Strike: A start of effort for a melee fighter, unfortunately, the CD is too long, the damage too low (probably still bugged) and the 20% chance of resetting it via raptor strike is insufficient.
  • Kill command: Situational in pvp, well of tears.
  • Serpent Spread: Useless as can be.
  • Sniper training: Useless as possible.

Overall, two interesting runes, one bugged and not effective enough, the other which was nerfed because of the mourners.

In total, the hunter only really has 3-4 out of 12 useful and effective runes.
Its gameplay hasn’t changed since Vanilla, and it’s the last class with only one role.

Clearly, SoD is going to become very, very annoying for hunters if nothing is done.

You can’t, these two runes have been nerfed way too much and one has become a largely dispensable AoE compared to what other classes can provide in AoE.

4 Likes
7

Good breakdown.

If the SoD team isn’t tweaking these two skills then while I hate waiting for the next phase I do hope that it is because they know how insanely useful they will be later on with other runes cause if not and they just continue to remain useless then… Is there any confirmation as to whether or not anyone on the SoD team even plays a Hunter? Cause this is just unacceptably bad if that’s the case.