Hunter's mark needs rework or a replacement

Classes Hunter
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This point was raised before and I am raising it again now as the prepatch is still a time where devs are more flexible with changes. These are the points that fellow hunters and I raised before:

1.1. Hunter’s mark has a mediocre signifiance in raids. First 20% health of the boss is almost always the least impactful phase of the fight. Take for example Fyrakk or Sarkareth, their first 20% health phase are baby easy compared to later phases, which makes hunter’s mark feel useless.
If in my guild raid druid’s buff or priest’s buff missing, the raid leader will not start the pull, while I, as a hunter have never been asked to apply hunter’s mark before or during the fight, even if I fail to do so (sometimes out of pure frustration of how useless it is).

2.2. Hunter’s mark is a worthless garbage in m+ dungeons (let alone heroic or normal dungeons). It’s almost never worth it to waste your Global Cooldown on hunter’s mark when dealing with trash. I would normally apply hunter’s mark on m+ bosses if we have a short gap between trash and a boss (e.g. healer drinking) but even if I don’t, noone ever , either guildie or pug, ever rebuked me for failing to do so, because noone cares, this “buff” means nothing in a whole picture of m+.
Out of all dragonflight content, there was literally only ONE boss in the entire expansion, where hunter’s felt useful - Iridrikron from Dawn of the Infinite.

2.3. I don’t play PvP too often to say for sure if Hunter’s mark damage debuff is meaningfully useful in Arenas / BG, so if there is any experienced pvp hunter reading this, please share with us your opinion.

The idea behind introducing damage buff on hunter’s mark was to give hunter a buff utility and after playing 2 full seasons with it I’d say this idea failed. It is both practically meager compared to other classes utility and it feels very much so, it’s the worst button bloat ability in my entire UI.

Based on that here are possible suggestions:

  1. Remove Hunter’s Mark damage effect and give us instead passive ability -
    2.Expose Weakness: your special abilitiies critical strikes on the target below 50% apply a debuff that increases all damage they take by 3% for 10 seconds. The debuff doesn’t stack and doesn’t have internal cooldown, new critical strikes will simply refresh the debuff on the target.

  2. Remove Hunter’s Mark damage effect and give us instead new ability -
    4.Precision Aura - your Aimed Shot / Barbed Shot / Mangoose Bite critical strikes inspire your group, by granting them 2-3% mastery for 10-15 seconds. Or simply make it a contant buff.
    Seems a bit too OP? Remember that Druids have permament 3% versatility buff, priest permament 5% health buff, pallies permament 3% damage reduction buff.

Feel free to critique and/or throw your own ideas on what a good hunter’s ability buff could ook like.

If you agree with me and by chance have access to write in hunter’s feedback thread, by all mean please do so.

2 Likes
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My suggestion would be:

  1. Make it buff the execute phase, not the first %

  2. Let it aoe proc from something like Explosive Shot, that all hunters use.

An aoe applied execute buff is something every group would welcome.

For pvp just keep the anti-stealth version like it was before.
With no pve benefit at all.

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  1. Swapping it to last 20% might be an option, would make a big positive impact in raiding and prolly make it perfect for raiding, but I fear it would still be underwhelming in dungeons, 20% of the trash mob is usually something intangible. Hence proposal to reduce effect from 5% to 3% but extend application range from 20% to 50% health pool.

  2. Explosive shot has 30 seconds cooldown and is a talent ability, that we usually wanna use on cooldown rather than keep it for till the right moment to apply the buff. I’d say it would be safer to make a trigger main abilities of each spec: MM’s aimed shot (including tricks), surival bomb and BM’s kill shot or any frequently used aoe ability.

Even more though I lean to seeing it as a group’s buff rather than enemy’s debuff.

  1. Yeah I too think that hunter’s mark perfect place is to be that anti stealth / invisibility pvp ability.
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how about deletion? literally nobody asked for hunters mark to return, it was just some classic era garbage that was forced back into retail and made hunter gameplay worse.

5 Likes
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I don’t play retail anymore, thus it doesn’t concern me much, still… my opinion is that Hunter’s Mark is signature ability for this class, just like Blessing buff were for paladin, or Mark of the Wild for druid. Rework is always better than removal.

Classic Mark that have to be manually applied can be nuisance for hunter’s gameplay, but removal is not good option.

I could imagine random proc chance to apply the mark to current target for short duration damage boost.
I’m not familiar with current “developer’s vision” for retail WoW mechanics though, whether there is place for random chance damage boost, or retail WoW “need” to have everything set on predesigned cooldowns for each class that fits together like puzzle.
Does retail still have trinkets with proc chance?

1 Like
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Absolutely, in terms of pve this is pretty much what I am proposing:
remove hunter’s mark damage buff and give us instead either group buff or a debuff on enemies that easily and effectively gets applied on aoe targets.

In terms of pve hunter’s mark should retain its original 2004 use: keeping track of sneaky enemy players who can go stealth or invisibility, making them always appear on the mini map.

Answering to Nishtre:

  1. Pala’s blessings (which are now gone in retail) and druid’s Mark of the Wild were originally buff utilities. Hunter’s mark was not such a thing it only increased damage dealt by hunters, not by any other class. Hunter’s mark signature feature since Vanilla was to track and chase enemy players, especially rogues and other sneaky classes.

1.1. Note that we talk about removing and replacing the damage buff that hunter’s mark currently gives, it was introduced in October 2023 and has since been disliked by many hunters as impractical in aoe scenarios and generally unimpactful even in ST.

In retail hunters have a reputation of a class that brings little to no utility and thus are shunned when forming a group. Adding this hunter’s mark buff changed nothing of this problem.

  1. Yes, there are still plenty of trinkets with proc chance in retail.
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Hunter’s Mark should purely be a PvP ability, where it does some good in keeping track of stealthies.

That annoying arrow is useless on a gigantic boss that takes up half the room.

Just make it easy Blizzard, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Give us Aspect of the Fox back.
This lets everyone cast while moving for 6 seconds. Best raid utility in the game by far, from any class. After removing it, there are 0, zero, nil, zilch reasons to take a Hunter in PvE content over anything else.
From the best raid utility in game since Vanilla to nothing.

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I consider Hunter’s Mark to be signature ability as whole, despite the changes it went through over the time, not just it’s effect.
That’s why I would prefer rework instead of removal.

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speak for urself pve hero

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well then i speak for about 95% of the playerbase

1 Like
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I only use it against rogue since the duration is short people are fast below that HP and it can be dispellt, its also need a gcd and cannot be macro into your rotation

Pretty much a useless in PvP besides some minor plays vs rogue

1 Like
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Thank for your insight Sokkxe.

This then drives further the point, that hunter’s mark should be reverted to being a tracking, anti sneaking ability only and that hunters should get a proper group utility both in pve and pvp not to connected to the mark.

Answering to Kagrot.

Haha, I too find that arrow on a big boss rather silly indeed.
Regarding Aspect of the Fox I haven’t played Cata - Wod, when it was introduced, but I’d happily accept it over that useless “buff” we have now. This buff though may give Blizzard too much headache (e.g. they have to keep the ability in mind when designing boss mechanics) to be bothered to reintroduce it.

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It’s not minor, it’s gamebreaking vs rogue. Good hunters mark usage literally wins games vs rogues.

Also incredibly useful against other classes that can stealth.

1 Like
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We need something else for PvE though. It’s our only raid “utility”, and it’s atrocious.

The solution is simple: Give us Aspect of the Fox back:

Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells and abilities for 6 sec. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.

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Why would people invite you in M+ is all you have is this
Bring back that pets could buff every raidbuff from other speccs but 1or 2 % weeker like 8% stamina buff or a 2% heart of the wild
A pet with a weeker chaos brand

If groops feel like we need a mage for int or a Dh for chaos brand we could also invite a hunter

For hunters mark, get this off gcd so people can macro it in there rotation and forgett abou it + last 20%hp also extra damage

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Does anyone remember the 1h crossbow from Diablo 3 called Calamity? It had a proc chance to apply their version of hunter’s mark on the target which for a short duration increased all damage taken which could be spread via their damage.
Something like this could be cool and fun where the hunter’s mark could increase the groups power in some way against marked targets.

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An improved Hunter’s Mark/Flare talent, all enemies exposed to flare will get marked for 1 min. Marked targets take x% more damage.

Would make it a bit more usable in dungeons and raids.

2 Likes
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