Dragonflight Hunter Talent Trees

Classes Hunter
21

I really like the look of the bm tree. You want single target. Summon a bunch of pets and buff them with the relevant talends. Want aoe, sommon fewer pets or just 2. Give then cleave and some abilities that now cleave.

So they will need to do some balancing at launch and move some talents around. Though keep in mind that the spec will most likely be worked on right through the next expansion. Its completely new for most of the team.

Though as a long time bm hunter. I really like the different themes. There will be different talent builds, meaning. You can fill different roles within the raid. More importantly, it looks fun to play.

So overall happy but will see.

22

Hello,

There are a few major problems with the hunter trees:

  • the most bloated of all classes (multiple 3-point nodes), especially survival

  • provide the weakest survivability of all classes, previewed so far

Example: rogues can take Cheat Death, Elusiveness and Leeching poison for 1 point each, 3 points total. These are all absurdly good defensives. Hunters can take Exhilaration CD reduction talent for 2 points, reduction of Aspect of the Turtle talent by 20% for 3 points, and Posthaste for 2 points, so a total of 7 points for almost nothing that can help you defensively. The rest are mostly pet survivability talents that don’t affect the hunter.

Example 2: DKs can take all current defensive talents for a huge impact (Pact, big AMS, Wraith walk), which is incomparably better to what hunters can get.

  • Bloat in the utility talents: rogues can take 15% speed increase for 1 point, hunters 6% for 3 points. Improved shadowstep is 1 point, the harpoon improvement talents are 3 points total! Rogues can get 3y range for 1 point, survival for 3 points. Rogues can take 20% movement speed while stealthed for 1 point, hunters Posthaste for 2 points.

  • And most of all, which is the worst, nothing new, exciting or innovative. Priest talents are fantastic, same for rogues and druids.

When I play with builds in the hunter tree most of my choices feel like “I take this talent because it is the least bad of the choices, but I would skip it if I could”. When I play with the rogue or priest tree it’s like “I want to take everything but I must make hard choices”.

Please, re-iterate on the hunter trees

BR

3 Likes
23

BM tree is excellent

MM tree is poorly ordered but some cool things in there (light/heavy ammo)

SV tree is abysmal

4 Likes
24

It feels like they started with BM, took their time, and put real effort into it, as it is clearly the most polished of the three, then with MM got a bit lazy but still okayish, and finally with SV they completely ran out of time and copy/pasted the same talents in different parts of the tree (there are several talents that increase mongoose bite dmg by 5% for 3 points f.e.).

What also surprised me for SV is that Serpent sting, which is the most basic uninteresting DoT, is now a top-tier talent in the General hunter tree. It’s like putting Corruption as the top talent in the Warlock trees :smiley:

3 Likes
25

There is a really obvious flaw in the MM tree:
You can get Trick Shots (activated by Multi-Shot) without even picking up Multi-Shot via True Aim. Whichever talent is going to replace Double Tap, you’ll have to get it with an AoE build otherwise you’re wasting points. That’s bad design.
Another very weird choice is to put Windrunner’s Guidance, a 3 point talent, into the bottom row, competing with Wailing Arrow and ETF / Unerring Vision. That means each level of Windrunner’s Guidance must have a benefit comparable to the other talents.

Also Wailing Arrow seems really forced. Especially in the BM tree it doesn’t fit at all thematically. I get the feeling that whoever came up with the talent trees for hunter really likes Sylvanas.

26

Aaah, Steve Danuser then. If you say Sylvanas three times, you summon him. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

27

Is there a world where hunter gets raid utility? Hear me out. What if instead of stampede talent in general tree we get something like flex utility? For example, are you missing a monk in your raid team? You summon spirit of toxic frog too coat your arrows witch poison to increase physical dmg on target. U don’t have warrior? Call for spirit of wolf to increase ap and so forth. It could work like old auras and you can only swap abilities out of combat.

28

Whilst that would stop people looking for specific classes (like in the past when it was Shamans for Bloodlust - but now Hunters can do it…or the good days when we had battle res pets), Hunters would then become OP because they can do things other classes can. That’s when it starts to become a difficult balancing act between ensuring there’s a viable group composition or just stacking it full of Hunters.

29

Imo, BM will be the best tree. Ofc we can’t know how tuning and dmg numbers for now but in terms of smooth gameplay BM will probably shine.

MM is ok but place some of the talents in the tree is a bit weird. But especially ammo selection and Windrunner’s Guidance seems good.

I hate Survival and haven’t played it since the rework. So I don’t know how it’s…

30

Hey everyone,
I would agree with most of the complaints about MM tree. Building the tree feels awful, there is so many talents that should be baseline, I got to the part where it requires 8 talent points spent and I already spent like 15 because every talent is 2-3 points which is absurd. Not much choice to be done, I could barely get what I want. Talents like Lone wolf, Steady Aim gives 10 Focus or Arcane shot focus cost reduced are stupid tbh. Why would you put Lone Wolf as a talent, it is passive and it should stay passive please.
Hunter talent tree looks okey, not much to choose from because you will go right side and buff your abilities rather then pets but as some people said a lot of stuff should be baseline and some more interesting interactions to be made in the talent tree.
Though I like Critical Damage increases, Crit chance etc the problem is they are 3 pointers mostly and you can barely get good stuff because so many points are required.
Hopefully they will get on track.
P. S. Hunters need visual update for their skills, the class feels outdated compared to any other class, Aim Shot which is a big boy skill looks like an auto attack, really. Hunters need to be on the same level as other classes, not fair.

31

So I just looked at other class talents and oh man does mm hunter look really bad compared to other class(I didn’t check all of them yet).
Surely we need to get rid of this 2-3 point talents all over the place, you can’t choose nothing. You’re stuck with no points left to spend on anything after you reach closer to the bottom.
I just checked retribution paladins and that talent tree looks amazing, so why does mm feels like blizzard hate this spec/class? Really, other classes have meaningful 1 point talents and they can learn a lot of talents while hunter is stuck spending 3 point on every talent for some critical chance on a ability and that is done twice for two abilities. Really? You can’t even get 2 bottom talents, unless you don’t learn some talents that are actually almost necessary.
There needs to be more synergies with abilities done, hunter talent tree looks lazy and boring, why do I have to spend 4 points just to get critical strike on Kill Shot and Aim Shot, you could just bring us back Resonating arrow where we can do some crazy pve crit burst and we don’t need 4 points for 20%crit on two skills. Really…
Paladins and rogues have so many fun synergies and 1 point talents, they can aquire 80% of the tree almost which is cool, you still can only take like 2 bottom talents but damn Hunter can’t even do that cause everything is 2-3 points and does nothing fun at all.
Like I said before Lone wolf should not be a talent down the bottom of the tree, that’s like a main thing about MM hunters that you give up your pet, why make it a choice down the bottom when it should be auto learned as passive or top of the tree. Arcane shot focus cost reduced? Really? I didn’t even know it can cost 40 that’s crazy “fun” talent.
If there is not gonna be any changes done to MM hunters I am definetly not playing Hunter in dragonflight because mm is going to be boring as hell, not to mention visually class looks outdated.

32

I’m not sure if you’ve looked at the updated talent trees, but they made it so every
talent costs a maximum of 2 points for MM, also currently MM has the tree with the lowest overall cost out of the 3 hunter specs (55 total points for BM, 54 for Surv, 52 for MM). I have a feeling that Blizzard is having difficulties figuring out new fantasies for hunters in general and that’s why we don’t have any new flashy abilities coming in DF.

33

Probably because Sylvanas isn’t around now. Since Legion, there was a lot of things associated with her and whilst they’re trying to bake old artifact and/or legendary effects into the talent trees, they’re just not going to match the demand of core talents.

34

What are people’s thoughts on this: https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-reveals-more-hunter-talent-tree-adjustments-for-all-3-specs-and-class-328081

Class Tree
The current design intentionally has almost all utility above the second gate, which means you have 11 points that will almost certainly be spent only on throughput choices in PvE situations. We like having a bunch of abilities located past the second gate that were previously locked to individual specs. This has also created a situation where there’s a lot of bloat of extra abilities and cooldowns that feel mandatory because they are available and likely worth pressing. The last 3 rows of the tree have been shuffled around a bit and will continue to be adjusted to try to prevent most hunters from feeling obligated to acquire multiple extra active buttons.

  • Barrage and Explosive Shot are now a choice node.
  • Stampede now replaces Chakram in the choice node vs Death Chakram.
  • Chakram has been removed from the talent tree.
  • Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been lowered to 2 points.

Beast Mastery

  • Bloodshed and Murder of Crows is now a choice node, and is where Dire Beast previously was.
  • Dire Beast has been moved to where Murder of Crows was.
  • New Talent - Bloody Frenzy - Barbed Shot has a chance to apply a second stack of Frenzy to your pets. This is located in the second gate area.
  • Beast Cleave has been lowered to 2 points, and Beast Cleave’s duration is now 3/6 seconds depending on your rank.

Marksmanship
While Rapid Fire is not a required ability, we’re trying to integrate it to the tree where it would make sense. Marksmanship has very limited passive Focus generation, and Rapid Fire should ideally help with that. We want to avoid situations where you drop Steady Shot entirely while doing prolonged combat.

  • Deathblow has been made a 1-point node. Rapid Fire casts (not damage events) can now also activate this. The chance for activation is different for Aimed Shot vs Rapid Fire.
  • Razor Fragments now also works with Deathblow procs, rather than being tied solely to Trick Shots.
  • Bombardment’s design has changed - Every 6/4 (2-rank node) Arcane or Chimaera Shots causes your next Multi-Shot to grant you Trick Shots, regardless of how many targets it hits.
  • This will likely be changed to a 1-point node, or adjusted to also boost Multi-Shot damage per rank. The location of this also needs to be adjusted as you can currently select this without Multi-Shot.
  • Lone Wolf’s spot in the tree has been moved to above the first gate.
  • More things connect to Lock and Load’s talent node.
  • Some redundant node connections have been removed.
  • Legacy of the Windrunners and Serpentstalker’s Trickery node locations have been swapped.
  • Unerring Vision’s design has slightly changed to also increase critical damage while Trueshot is active.

Survival
Spearhead and Coordinated Assault are competing for some space in the tree. We’re hoping to identify a set of abilities to that each augments in a way that feels good, and also would prefer a design that doesn’t encourage you to stack both of them at the same time. Some adjustments are being made to these abilities to try to focus on different parts of your ability sets in a manner that lets both Coordinated Assault and Spearhead hopefully feel both distinct from each other, while still feeling powerful on their own.

  • Mongoose Bite should actually replace Raptor Strike now.
  • Predator returned to 25%, rather than 8%. This was a data error when changing from a 3 point node to a 1 point node.
  • A connection between Lunge and Frenzy Strikes has been removed to prevent a dependency problem.
  • Deadly Duo renamed Quick Shot, and redesigned. When Kill Command’s cooldown is reset, you fire a free Arcane Shot at your target.
  • Coordinated Assault is back to 2 minutes.
  • Coordinated Assault no longer modifies Carve. Instead, your pet’s special attack increases the initial damage of your next Wildfire Bomb.
  • Birds of Prey will likely be adjusted in a future build to more directly work with the design tweaks of Coordinated Assault.
  • Bonded Companion renamed Deadly Duo, and redesigned. While Coordinated Assault is active, Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown is reduced by 25/50%, Wildfire Bombs generate 5/10 Focus when thrown, and Kill Shot can be used on any target regardless of the target’s HP.
  • Coordinated Kill redesigned, and is now 2 points. While Spearhead is active, Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite Focus Cost is reduced by 5/10, and Kill Command resets increase the duration of Spearhead by 1/2 sec.
35

Binding shackles 7-1 in general hunter tree can be a dead talent depending on the choices you choose from the two choice nodes connecting it.

36

hunters hits like wet noobles in alpha …

37

It’s alpha, damage is absolutely irrelevant

38

i realy hope we get 6 numbers damage in DF

39

The new MM Hunter Talents seem absolutely Dire. :frowning:

40

There are improvements, but the dev team are still building on a weak foundation, namely the original version of the General, MM and SV trees (BM was good from the start, on par with the best trees out there such as the shaman ones).

Ideally, they could have redesigned bigger parts of the trees as early as possible, following the feedback. Tweaking the current ones can only make them more tolerable, but will not improve them to the level of top-tier talent trees some other classes have.

  • Still no utility options
  • Defensives lacking
  • The pet-centric part of the General tree is still unattractive (10% pet hp, misdirect talents, etc…)

The biggest, and probably hardest problem to solve, still not addressed, is the non-synergistic parts of the trees:

  • As MM, if you go for the “kill command build” in the general tree, how will you incorporate this in your rotation? Will you drop Arcane shot and spend the focus on kill command? But if you do, a lot of the MM-tree top-level talents that you must pick to go down the tree, become redundant.
  • As BM, you must go for the kill command/pet dmg talents in the general tree, as these buff your main dmg sources a lot , so you are mostly bound to the left side of the tree.

All of this could be avoided if the general tree was truly centered around utility/movement speed/defensives/cool stuff and such, which actually was the original intention, announced during the DF reveal ceremony. They literally said “we split them into 2 trees, general and spec, because we didn’t want to mix damage and utility”. But since the general tree is centered around damage, and has almost no utility options, it’s mostly predetermined - you have to lock in certain talents as a certain spec.

For example, I can’t imagine having more than one build for PVP as any spec of hunter with the current iteration of the trees. I would use the same build for each situation - there isn’t basically anything you can swap around - nothing to change if against a caster-heavy team, nothing if against double melee, etc…

In my opinion:

  • The general tree must be redesigned to be more utility oriented and less damage oriented
  • BM tree is almost perfect, I would consider it release ready more or less
  • MM tree is far from perfect but could probably be tweaked with enough iterations
  • SV tree must be reworked from scratch - still disjointed, artificial nodes for the sake of it, boring 3-talent nodes

However, all being said, players’ feedback taken into account, blue posts describing the team’s ideas, weekly iteration builds and the whole development process is on another level - never seen this in more than 10 years of playing this game

BR