Problem with BM design

Classes Hunter
1

Are the developers aware how Kill Command barely does 1% more damage than a Cobra Shot? KC costs 5 focus less which barely affects gameplay at all gear levels and the only advantage it has over CS is the 50y range, which is barely utilized in the open world, let alone arena or battlegrounds.

KC used to ignore hunter’s line of sight requirement, allowing you to use it on escaping players in PVP or those who hide behind pillars, that is no longer the case.

Eredun War Order and Flamewaker’s Cobra sting legendary effects seem fun, but being able to equip both together at the same time would probably result in less damage than compared to certain other legendary that 99% of players are using.

Again, why would anyone stack mastery with scaling such as this when the Barbed Shot mechanic revolves around crit chance and haste in general just makes gameplay for every class more fun and fluid.

Killer Cobra talent is also great, but only if you manage to reach BFA corruption levels of bonus stats, which I doubt is going to happen so soon, if ever again.

Rylakstalker’s Piercing fangs sort makes it work because Beast Within can maintain relatively high uptime, but from a design perspective first requiring a player to craft a legendary in order to justify using an ability only shows the lack of understanding in how the class works. This advice can be thrown out of the window if you decide to PVP because you are very likely to go with the Feign Death legendary.

Even the Killer Instinct talent seems bad on paper compared to Animal Companion. The only situation where it works in practice is while running Torghast, because of the way bonus damage powers stack, and considering the main pet entity doesn’t receive the penalty damage % modifier, it greatly helps with with keeping the pet alive through the use of leech mechanics.

Dire Command legendary, one of the things that encourages you to press KC, doesn’t work properly in Korthia for whatever reason. It summons a mage-like arcane familiar thing that does no damage. In addition, Dire Beast talent suffers from the identical issue.

2

What do you mean by this? Individual hits? Or over a fight?

Because going by top ST BM logs right now, KC is doing +50% more damage than cobra over the fight, with individual hits about the same difference (5k avg KC hit, 3k avg CS hit).

3

I think gear matters quite a bit for the damage output of either. It’s not necessarily a flaw in the design of BM or the play style.

Cobra Shot and Kill Command also have different scaling with your gear. Cobra Shot is looking at my Attack Power and so is Kill Command but at different %. Both are physical damage but for some reason Kill Command is looking at Versatility and Cobra Shot is not .

Kill Command is also a CD and requires focus and Cobra Shot can be spammed as long as you’ve got the focus.

I have a low amount of versatility because I’ve recently rerolled to this char and my gearing isn’t amazing. I need to unload some Mastery. However, my Kill Command and Cobra Shot Crits are roughly the same. I get more damage out of Cobra Shot right now because of my gear levels. I expect this will change as I acquire more ideal gear.

Rylakstalkers is going to be our Best in Slot leggy this patch so it is worth crafting it.

If you think BM hunter is reliant upon gear, then go try shadow priest. ( had three different crafted legendary items and three different play styles ) - really not fun and which is why I now play this hunter.

4

Erm, of course cobra shot scales with vers.

I mean, it doesn’t really change at all, why would it? The % will vary slightly based on mastery but it’s not like an overall increase in item level is going to significantly shift the damage % between each.

It’s worth crafting, but there are slightly better alternatives if you don’t mind playing SFE, and it’s possible the new night fae legendary will be pretty strong for BM when the hotfix goes live.

5

KC damage on top parses is heavily inflated from heavy haste buffs and thanks to the Rylak legendary you get results where KC overall does 80% more damage for near similar amounts of CS used over the course of fight. This results almost in a 1:1 ability use ratio.

The more you move down the rank list, CS overall damage % increases, up to a point where you get number such as 18% total vs 15% total. If you eliminate Rylak legendary from your equipped gear and take Mastery discrepancy in account between players, the spells match each other in overall output but regardless you still get cast 1.3 CS per KC window at best with current levels of stats.

Without that one item, unless you are gearing for ultra heavy Mastery, you could comfortably skip KC entirely in favor of CS and the lost damage would be negligible.

I mentioned in the first post how the two talents which affect KC are completely inferior. The better gear you get, slowly focus resource becomes less of an issue and you global cooldown becomes a limiting factor, which you simply get around by stacking even more haste.

The point is that your signature ability is completely obsolete in PVP, and due to stat priorities barely worth using in PVE unless you meet a certain requirement (legendary).

6

Some nice feelycraft going on here.

Kill command is doing between 60-80% more damage per cast than cobra shot, and requires 5 less focus to use.

if that isn’t enough of a reason to press the button, then you don’t care much about performance and all of this is irrelevant.

Legendaries and stats are irrelevant, it’s never not worth pressing.

7

And you can probably barely explain why that is.

KC base 1975 dmg
CS base 1987 dmg

One pet does 100%, two pets should together be doing 200% but they both receive a penalty which isn’t even mentioned in the talent, for a combined 65+65=130% (may not be accurate after BFA). So your base KC does 30% more after picking a talent, is dealt in two hits where each of them follows a separate dice crit roll, which in combination with RPF legendary explains the inflated Kill Command numbers when you look at the logs.

This only highlights the poor class design, because one is a completely dead talent and the other does nothing for your AOE damage. There is no meaningful choice.

Just as bad as Venthyr vs Night Fae where one covenant spell is limited the a single target, and is heavily outperformed by a predominantly AOE burst spell, which happens to be a superior choice on ST as well.

So what’s the point of talents and legendries if everyone follows the same pattern. There is no meaningful choice under any condition. Why was so much development time spend on special effects that are so poorly tuned they won’t even be considered as an alternative?

8

Unfortunately, it doesn’t have that detail in any of the tooltips or info I could find - but it’s good to know. Thanks.

9

What does this has to do with literally anything lmao. It doesn’t inflate the value of rylaks at all. Whether the hit comes in two smaller parts or one larger hit is absolutely irrelevant.

I can literally sim your character and see that your average KC cast is ~50% more damage than cobra shot, whilst costing less focus. And that’s without rylaks. Not really sure what else you want with it really.

All of these are absolutely valid points, not much of it has anything to do with KC/CS though.

10

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