As a mostly solo player , I hate the lack of pets.My main source of gear are Delves.And without pet…I will have to go BM , but its so boring…
I really dont get it , instead of just give us Bloodlust without having to do the pet schenanigans , they are destroying solo MM.
So this is something that struck my mind as of late, could Survival maybe get access to spirit beasts as an available pet family?
Since the emphasis on the bond between hunter and beast is so strong, after all their mastery is called “Spirit Bonds”, so it would make sense with how many of the abilities also mention becoming one with your chosen pet, or striking as one (which many of the abilities also reflect in their application).
Beast Mastery could still keep their Exotic pet exclusives, the spirit beast change would just make a lot of sense with how the class is flavoured.
I also reeaaaally wanna justify tracking down and taming some of those creatures, because as of now, I just don’t enjoy Beast Mastery all that much…
One mor thing that stands out: Aimed shot cast is, in this version, 3 seconds. There’s a talent that makes Explosive shot explode faster if the target is hit by Aimed shot. Given that Explosive shot has a 3-second fuse, this situation seems to have quite minimal impact even under high haste or Trueshot. The only major speed-up would be if Explosive shot is used during Lock and Load procs. Which, naturally, probably won’t happen that often if Explosive Shot is used anytime when ready. So this interaction might end up being very limited and underwhelming.
Also, with Sentinel’s final talent now having a 30-second interval, while Rapid Fire stays at 20 seconds CD, this might lead to a de-sync where the uptime of the AoE will be negatively impacted because it’ll be triggered only by every other rapid fire instead of every cast (outside of Trueshot window). So thig might need some looking into as the options so far seem to be either delaying RF to trigger the AoE or simply missing out on the full potential.
Blockquote* Withering Fire has been updated – Withering Fire now triggers from casting Black Arrow during Trueshot/Bestial Wrath and no longer auto-fires Black Arrow instead of gaining Deathblow.
*Developers’ notes: A common complaint of Withering Fire is its consistency. The goal with this change is to raise Withering Fire’s randomness floor while lowering its ceiling, still allowing for exciting high-roll moments where you get many Deathblow procs rapidly and reducing the times where nothing happens during Withering Fire.
The main reason why the automatic firing Black Arrows during Withering Fire works, is to save a GCD during Trueshot, whilst focusing on casting back to back Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires making the rotation a lot smoother during Trueshot.
Blizzard please revert this change it’s not too late!
For pack leader: if I need a beast invocation, for something like AOE, I can’t use my kill command, and this is problematic.
So we can make “Howl of the Pack Leader” a spell, off GCD because its on the kill command GCD, giving a buff saying:
[Your next kill command summons the aid of a beast.]
Customisation is incredibly important for me.
If I really am forced to call a (xxxx) boar as a Maldraxxian Hunter who builds a great team with her Necrorays, then that will be a huge letdown and will probably make me change main. q.q
I love blizzard doing solid work on Pack Leader, adding a lot more interesting effects (and visuals, hopefully) to this hero spec.
Things that stick out to me as especially interesting are the cleaving rs/mb ideas being brought back ( i loved old merciless blows) through Hogstrider and the aoe serpent sting consumption idea. Although tuning will need to be done carefully to make these playstyles impactful and viable.
namely:
The weakness of rs and ESPECIALLY mongoose bite. MB still has not recovered from the harsh nerfs it took, and despite finally getting a talent for it (bloody claws, might need something extra too btw, maybe additional mongoose fury scaling) it still performs abysmally to the Point where its not even a Pick in single target (wich absolutely should be its best use case). So while its always cool to see new talents added that interact with MB, the joy doesnt last long because we know there’s a good chance they’re not viable or almost non impactful. this needs to change, please!
this is exacerbated by the excessive amounts of bombs we get.
As it stands currently, survival hunters are already swarmed with bombs (and tip stacks), and some of the new talents in PL seem to give too many more. especially bombs. id rather see them improve the ones we get already as opposed to flooding us with more.
lastly i wish we scaled better with haste. survival just feels so much better to play lots if haste, and sloggish if played with low haste. Atm we are looking at what, 10% haste or lower optimally? we’re swarmed by all these procs and resets, more haste would help dumping them without feeling suffocated by them.
Also, one more thing that came across my mind - losing Serpentstalker’s trickery and Hydra’s bite - this means the talent that boosts DoT damage (Unnatural causes) in the class tree loses a good part of its value for MM.
Also, removing Improved Steady Shot - good move if the bonus becomes baseline, otherwise, especially with the longer cast of Aimed Shot, MM will be even more focus starved, especially on shorter fights like lower tier delves, world content, questing, and dungeons/raids with low-health mob packs. The same applies to Crack Shot.
Hunter Feedback:
Marksmanship:
Please don’t put too much damage increase into debuffs (Spotter’s Mark) that are limited in it’s application to one or multiple targets. While it can feel good in Single Target encounters, the tuning, on classes that have their St and Cleave/AOE damage linked can become very problematic. The same thing happened to Beast Mastery with Basilisk Collar, which you finally removed from the game (God Bless you). Don’t fall into the same Pitfall with MM. If you want to continue with the debuff centered gameplay, put in a talent that applies Spotter’s Mark to more targets when it triggers (not the bad 25% chance on Ohn’ahran Winds, a 25% chance on a 30% chance sounds terrible). You coul put it behind Trick Shots because they are inherently linked to each other.
This all depends on the application of Spotter’s Mark. Is it based on casts or on hits of an Ability. Does a multishot application of 30% trigger on every single damage instance, or on a cast and the application is for every target hit.
Also i love the baseline Multishot.
A different approach could be that Spotter’s Mark becomes a self buff, so that it is useful on the whole Aimed Shot (St and the cleaved component), buit that doesn’t really fit the immersive aspect and idon’t dislike the idea of a debuff centered playstyle.
This could make a distinction between more cleave focused setups for raid, where more st is needed and M+ where the focus lies more on AOE Damage.
The only other thing i am really missing is the Season 3/4 Dragonflight Set bonus. Since you shifted a lot of focus away Multishot damage with the change to Bulletstorm. I loved that Setbonus and i felt so good to pump out those back to back Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires while not worrying about the application of Trickshots.
Otherwise the Marksmanship rework looks cool and i am excited to play it.
Beastmastery:
I love that you removed Basilisk Collar and the changing positions of other talents. The Spec probably needs some form of compensation buffs for loosing BC because it was such a strong talent, but that can be fixed in a future build.
Once again i am asking for a baseline Multishot on BM. You did it on Marksmanship, so many other specs have baseline AOE abilities, please do it for Beastmastery aswell. On this note you could also make a smaller version of Beastcleave baseline (something like 50% of the Value) so that BM can contribute some form of light Cleave damage on tight singletarget encounters. If BM loses ist pure ST niche it also looses on of its strong points. Since the cost for the ability to do cleave damage is so high (at least 2 points, Multishot/ Beast cleave/Kill Cleave and in the Future Dire Cleave) you kind of loose your good St to become fairly solid in the AOE department. I like the possibility to go even heavier into aoe for M+ but in Raid it can be a hindrance to the spec.
Other than that i love the stuff you did with the Hero Talents. Survival seems to me that i would need to test it out more before i could give some feedback. Most of BM and MM feedback is things that i have witnessed while playing these current iterations.
Overall I like the changes. The randomness of pack leader is not ideal unless they can overlap or there is some sort of smart system (if there there are more than 1 add, buff wears off etc.)
The issue with MM no longer having an option to summon a pet also hurts it’s solo capacity (delves etc).
My biggest problem with the changes is the trick shot node options. It feels like a cheap fix specifically for raiding but does not take any consideration into other content. Plenty of disadvantages in M+ due to two target encounters (mist of tirna for example.) Why not just make trick shot proc from multi shot cast? Or make volley have no cooldowns?
I can’t wait for these changes… MM really needs it’s own identity… Hopefully they will let us change the look of the eagle with glyphs.
I enjoy Lone Wolf very much. When I am doing solo content (world, delves, etc.), I am happy to use my pets. My beetle has tanked nearly every world boss in the game up to Siren Isle. When I do group content or an actual tank is present in world content, I am happy to dismiss him and dps without him knowing I can bring him back at any time if needed. I enjoy this playstyle very much.
A lot of people have talked about the fantasy of the hunter in WoW and I would like to bring up the fantasy of hunters in general. How often do you hear of bow hunters waiting patiently in tree stands for hours to get the perfect shot? What about the fantasy of heroes like Hawkeye or Green Arrow? No pets. All of these things do not use pets.
As a sidenote, I would also like to just add that I specifically do not have any flying pets in my stable because the flapping noise drives me insane. stares meanly at ZG bats
Technically you don’t have a pet, so there is no “default ferocity specialization”. This talent simply provides you passives that benefit you as if you had (an upgraded) Tenacity or Cunning pet - or rather, it creates a choice to make you more survivable (preferred in PvE) or more agile (potentially worthwhile in PvP).
From what it looks like, the Hunter version of Bloodlust will be unlinked from the pet, at least for MM given they do not have a pet anymore.
There is also another change that is not in Hunter section, but in the bottom part of the original Blizzard post:
Looks like we will be able to make any pet into Ferocity, so BM/SV will be able to flavour their pet choice without worrying about BL access. I still think BL for Hunters should be a separate spell - it’s hard to have BL compete with extra defensive CD as they are just two completely different tools.
These changes make me quite sad.
I have been a hunter main for many years, but I will probably have to find another class to play now.
This idea that we need to be keepers of an entire zoo’s worth of pets, does NOT jive with me at all. Especially when it’s not even pets I choose, but just random animals.
It might be an unpopular opinion, but I absolutely hate it. Big nope for me.
Animal companion was bad, Dire beasts was worse, but THAT atleast could be mitigated a little with Glyph of the dire stable.
Huntsmaster’s Call made me completely retire one of my hunters, because it just completely broke apart my RP theme for that character, while simultaniously not having ANY worthwhile alternative talent wise. NOT choosing that talent was just too much of a damage loss.
So what about the other specs then?
Marksmanship always felt clunky and cumbersome to play for me, mostly due to not being allowed movement when casting Aimed shot.
I might have gotten used to it eventually, because it at least meant I would be rid of this apperantly ever expanding harem of random beasts, and just have the ONE pet I wanted…But oh wait, now you take that away too.
Replacing my chosen pet with a random eagle is just adding insult to injury. And these new oddball mechanics…Seeing how the sentinel owl was an absolute nightmare, I’m guessing this will be more of the same.
Again, Big nope!
Survival is melee, and guess what…Big nope for me.
It’s not all bad though. Being able to choose the specialization for pets is something I really thought should never have been removed, and I’m glad to see it return!
But considering that I seemingly don’t get to choose pets anymore…It’s not enough of a saving grace.
I really hope this gets redesigned with player option and aesthetics in mind.
I DO appreciate that devs have been thinking of all kinds of cool pet stuff, don’t get me wrong, it IS cool stuff.
But only from a general hunter class point of view, when there is no thought given to the individual character.
From a RP perspective, when the player has tried to bring out a theme with more depth than “guy with gun” it kind of blows to loose agency over character aesthetics in such a major way.
Not sure how i feel bout mm losing traditional pet utility, obv they have a talent rn so they can go it alone maybe that being expanded on would have been good as well.
However i suppose its gnna have to be seen to be belived.
As for soloing we can always use bm if we want our pets, its definately gnna feel right weird not having a pet perse at your side constantly, i was never pne for being petless but its different so why not give it a try.
As always there will be fallout on you guys bc you cannnot keep everyone happy 100% if the time.
“The flow of Marksmanship’s rotation is smooth and iconic”
I certainly would like to see that made reality, i’ve never felt like marksmanship align with my undecisive imagination of how a ranger should play. Can’t really tell tho never been a fan apart from niche situations when it comes to the markmanship spec.
Regarding survival, not sure why butchery & flanking strike will be on a choice node, don’t really agree with having them both is too much. Maybe the underlying message here is that it’s overpowered to have them both and so that’s why they are now in a choice node, i’d prefer if that had been made clear instead of weaving words.
If i’d remove anything from survival, it’s kill command, probably the only boring button of the spec. make the dmg increase effect come from something else that feels satisfying.
Ouai alors non. Le changement de Lone wolf là pour mettre un pauvre aigle en spé préci’, désolé mais c’est nul comme idée. Un aigle… UN AIGLE. Sur l’ensemble du bestiaire existant, vous nous imposez un AIGLE. Je commente jamais sur le forum mais là, je ne peux pas m’en empêcher vu comment la nouvelle me fou en rogne !
La spé précision est ma favorite depuis des années, et malgré le “handicap” que ça peut causer, j’aime jouer avec certains familiers spécifiques en spé précison. Cela peut sembler absurde, mais j’ai un attachement sentimental envers certains de mes familiers, et j’ai aucune envie de les jouer dans autre chose que la spé précision… Pourquoi ? Parce que si j’aime mes familiers, j’aime aussi mitrailler à tout-va comme si j’avais une M-60 entre les mains ! Alors un grand merci de me priver de mes familiers pour les remplacer par une saloperie d’aigle ! ><
I was thinking about it. If you don’t like Lone Wolf, just remove it from the game but do not force us to have some eagle. Honestly, the entire MM changes seem more like something optional like a hero talent tree or a specialized/advanced class. Sure, some people may like it or want it but it is definitely not for me. I told my wife that, should those changes go through, I would try out survival and see if I like it. If not, I will be forced to change mains. I can’t go BM because that is her thing…
Finally some great stuff for MM
Regarding upcoming changes for Survival, feedback #2:
I don’t feel like the rotation is too bloated because of both butchery and flanking strike. And I don’t feel like it’s restricting me from using raptor strike as a filler either.
I think it’s great to have both of those skills in the same kit, so my build can be used well both for single target/funnel and aoe. If you decide to make FS and Butchery mutually exclusive as proposed, additional sources of Tip of the Spear charges during aoe situations would be highly appreciated. Final tuning notwithstanding, it just feels disappointing to use skills without TotS in aoe, which happens quite often even now, with FS in play.