So we got a view on the first hero talent for SV and it is Pack Leader.
As a side note, the news are not published on the mobile web nor in any other languages than English. So if you need help, Blizz, reach out, I can help for French.
The idea in itself is dope. Do not forget that SV is the only spec getting an actual interaction with its pet through Coordinated Assault. Indeed, after CA, you will empower a spell (bomb or KS) after your pet has launched a basic attack.
It seems like it is giving that kind of vibes through this tree.
The base
We will work with Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination creating a chain of attacks empowered by our pet.Vicious Hunt
allows us to empower next KC through KC.Pack Coordination
When we use that empowered KC, we get a bonus dmg from our pet through a mongoose bite/raptor strike.Already there, we can have questions:
The empowerement on KC is a buff to be consumed a bit like coordinated assault?The pet attack from Pack Coordination is free? What if the basic attack is on CD?
– Are we again going to meddle with macros to micro-manage pet basic attack to make it work?This also raises the issue of having the basic attack of your pet launched on your target when manually used. Can we imagine an already existing issue where you switched target and your pet is too far to do its basic attack on your target?
Assuming everything is flowing smoothly, in a nutshell you get KC = empowerd KC = MB + Basic Attack
Then we have simple dmg amps through Howl of the Pack and Wild Attacks, which respectively increase your dmg based on your pet critical strikes and guaranteeing basic attack of your pet to crit 1/3 of the time.
The build
Everything else is building on this.Side note for Den Recovery:
We already discussed deeply, how squishy hunters are. However, we could broaden the discussion around utilities where defensives are part of it. The issue is more that, some specs have all of them, where, we, hunters, are on the lower end.I guess people want to see utilities more spread out. Don’t forget the Mage getting billions of defensive + a group buff + CCs + good dps, the VDH having so many sigils to control crowds + formidable survivability + group debuff.
Hunters tree revolves around CCs and Defensives but they are not practical at all, so much so that we are bottom tier useful in high tier content.
The talent in itself is weird as AotT is mainly used as an immune. Getting a heal out of it will be niche use case, where you push it as an emergency button when you don’t need the immune in the next 2.4 mins.
The mend pet, well… yeah healing your pet…
Only SotF will be useful as it will allow you to DR incoming damage and then get full HP back.
So, I would have preferred something more in line with our need if utilities overhaul is not planned for TWW.First choice node
allows us to have a mini AotE or move speed buff (I don’t know if mobility was really an issue for us with harpoon and disengage).Frenzied Tear
Building block on the base logic, as you get to do more KC thanks to pet basic attack and it will hit harder.Second choice node
Covering Fire
Interesting talent where you could enter in a nice loop where Bombs reduce Butch and Butch reduces bombs. So, more bombs but more on that later.Scattered Prey
Less interesting, Butch increasing ButchCull the Herd
This one on the other hand will create KS like non others. But through the reading of it, we can see it forces the use of CA as a talent to enable empowered KS and why not BoP return for more empowered KS (MT specific). The only issue is that the buff will be locked behind CA or Execute phase. Meaning it brings a lot more weight to your CA Window in your overal damage.Third choice node
Beast of Opportunity
Weird choice, calling a pet, as all talents from tree mentioning pet’s basic attack are singular. So, I doubt that this “called pet” would have a basic attack available that would trigger Howl of the Pack, Wild Attacks or Frenzied Tear. But who knows? If that’s the case it could be interesting.Furious Assault
Frenzied Tear has a 20% chance to make KC free but this one has 50% chance to make MB free and hit harder.
Again we follow this loop where KC is giving your harder KC which in turns give you harder MBs.Now does this all stacks?
Does this all consumes Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination?If my pet’s basic attack procced a KC reset, using it will empower my next MB but also my next KC (through Vicious Hunt)?
Does this mean that I can launch a KC to consume Vicious Hunt and then launch MB to consume Pack Coordination as well as the Furious Assault? So many questions…
The capstone
The pinacle of this tree is surprising but kinda follows the tree logic. Blizzard is forcing us using CA so that we can have Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination always active during the CD.
But what does that mean?Maybe this means that any KC will be empowered and any MB will trigger a pet basic attack. Who knows?
The stacking part is probably there to avoid losing procs given the fact that we will KC and MB a lot.
If we understand it correctly, this means that the empowered MB might interact with CA and give us more Coordinated Assault buffs through the bonus pet basic attacks so that we don’t keep it for KS but also use it on bombs.
Conclusion
A ST centric tree
The whole revolving around MB and KC, leave little space for AoE. Our current sources of AoE are FotE, Bombs and Butchery. We even have some knobs for tuning there under bombs. Unfortunately, this tree revolving around those 2 skills give little space for AoE build as they have no direct AoE capacity.The AoE potential would come from CA and BoP, having 4 hard hitting KS but again this would put a lot of pressure to use CA correctly especially in M+. On the other hand, we will have plenty of KS reset allowing us to use more FotE and let’s not forget the talent allowing us to have a positive feedback loop between WFB and Butchery.
It’s not a bad thing in itself but the use of this build in M+ will probably depend on tuning and the Sentinel tree.
We will lose the DF S3 bonus, my question is then: will the WfB - butch talent loop, FotE CDR from KC reset and CA window be enough to be competitive in M+?
Anyway, strictly speaking for ST content, I am confident that this tree will do great.
I guess all that will depend on tuning. However, the philosophy behind the tree looks great.
A CA centric build
All leads toward the use of CA but what about Spearhead?
If you noticed, losing S3 bonus will free us points from FotE in ST. Those points give us access to Spearhead, which have a lot of interaction with the Hero tree.
Spearhead increases MB dmg through a bleed (cull the herd + pack coordination + frenzied tear + furious assault)
Reinforced by deadly duo, which buff KC.Why not add Spearhead to the capstone then?
This will raise the issue where you could run SH and CA, respectively 1.5 and 2m CD.
Also SH tends to be KC → MB spammy, which would completely negates the use of bombs but that’s already how it works now.KC is boring
The argument that KC is just a boring noodle skill is overlooking a lot of its interaction with our tree.
As mentioned through Deadly Duo/SH but also with talent such as Bloodseeker, Quick Shot. Even Flanker’s Advantage would line up with the Pack Leader tree pretty nicely.A fitting fantasy not answering our needs
Even if the idea is nice and fit that SV fantasy where we gonna be the next “Rexxar Misha” combo.The implementation raises too many questions on the actual way it works.
We build our SV identity more and more towards Wildfire Bombs. As we still are using Mongoose Bite as a base for our identity, we can all admit that MB is treated more as filler and KC as a focus generator but that’s due to tier set mainly.We switched a bit more towards the Bombs now. Wishing in the feedback of S3 to make it ignite so the different debuff are not wasted.
We even mentioned how clunky and expensive our CDs were leading to the infamous No-CD build.
We wished for a bit more spice in our rotation and having CDs having more impact to fit how expensive they are in our talent tree.
Are those requests answered?
The end of the bomb and a pending wishlist
Seeing then, a KC → MB heavy tree with a CA capstone is surprising. I even suggested that we could switch to a non-bomb build but this will lock us out of talents like Ferocity or Bloodseeker. So maybe the goal here is to have bomb treated as a filler.
I really doubt that our wish will be granted as it seems that Pack Leader boils down to a lot of KC MB spamming, the amount of KC received and the fact that we can stack Vicious Hunt and Pack Coordination makes me think that the rotation will not be more engaging or less predictable than it currently is.
However, it looks like our CA will be way more impactful through the capstone talent, so the points invested would feel less expensive. However, I guess I would have prefered a rationalization of our talent points budget than doubling down on it.On top of that we still lack good utilities but that part is more on the Hunter tree revamp and not the job of the hero talent. Reason why Den Recovery feels so weird.
End words
We have no view on how the actual SV tree will be modified in TWW nor do we know what the tier set will be in S1.Those hero talents are raising more questions than giving answers to long waited and needed improvement on SV and Hunter in general. So much so that even if I was hyped about it, I am now eager to see how Sentinel will turn.
I wish Sentinel to be more AoE friendly so that we don’t end up sub-par in a full department locking us out further on M+.
That said, being sure those talents will be interesting and nice to have in ST content, I am still eager to test out how it will perform in AoE.
If I missed on some stuff or you have different view, don’t hesitate to share them here.