TWW Beta MM hunter tier set bonus needs tuning / changing

[Heartful-ravencrest]

Hey guys. I made an examination of our TWW MM hunter tier set bonus and I found it very weak, especially compared to some other spec’s set bonuses. I prepared a detail feedback for Blizzard only to discover that I am not allowed to post on their feedback threat for some reason so I decided to post it here as separate topic.

If you agree with my opinion and have access to leaving messages in the feedback threat, feel free to do so!

Hey, Markmanship Hunter, playing mostly mythic+ dungeons (8-12 lvl keys) and heroic raids.

Unfortunately, I am unable to play TWW Beta at the moment, but I play very actively in season 4 and I will give my feedback based that + taking into consideration reworked talents, hero talents and removal of the current tier set. Though there might be minor mistakes in numbers, I trust the general picture will be valid.

Set bonuses in question:

(2) Set Bonus: Arcane Shot and Multishot damage increased by 20%.

(4) Set Bonus: Consuming Precise Shots increases the damage of your next Aimed Shot by 10%, stacking up to 2 times.

Point 1 “we aren’t looking to make these demand high levels of focus to optimize.” - the set bonuses indeed require minimal if any level of focus to get max utility, if you exclude the fact that they will interfere with hunter’s rotation during trueshot.

Point 2.1 “How bonuses may not have their expected value, given how the class is often played” – my concern is that during Trueshot (18-20 seconds buff every 2 minutes, when playing MM hunter becomes a real fun) both bonuses will give either minimal value or no value at all, especially on single target.

As of now during Trueshot I am not using anything but Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Using x2 arcane shot / multi shot to consume precise will mean that I will waste 1 or 2 extra charge of Aimed Shot (lets count it as 1.5 charge).

My current Aimed Shot damage is 167k damage * 1.5 (careful aim amplificator) * 1.15 (overshadow talent from Dark Ranger talents amplificator) = 221k

My current Arcane Shot damage is 42.5k * 1.7 (precise shot amplificatory) * 1.2 (2 pieces bonus set amplificatory) *1.3 (Eagle Talon true focus talent amplificatory) = 113k

Thus if I try to utilize the bonus set I trade my 1.5 extra aimed shot charges i.e. 331k for 113k x2 (buffed arcane shots) + 44.2k (bonus damage to my next aimed shot gained thanks for 4 pieces bonus set).

Thus 113k x 2 + 44.2k – 332k = -61k, i.e. I lose 61k damage (18% of original damage) each time I decide to utilize my tier bonuses, making it not just worthless in Single Target fights, but detrimental to use.

In the AoE situation will slightly be better because we use multi shot to activate trick shot, probably bringing the dps “increase” to -5% or at best 0%.

Conclusion – both tier bonuses seem useless during Trueshot, the most fun 18-20 secs of any MM hunter, feels frustrating to me.

Point 2.2. Overall impact of the tier bonuses.

Lets evaluate the possible impact of the the tier bonus in MM hunter’s overall dps by taking as an example the breakdown of my most recent Brackenhide Hollow m+ 8 key:

Abilities’ share in the overall dps:

Rapid Fire – 30.2%

Aimed Shot – 22.8 %

Volley – 13.9 %

Explosive Shot – 10.8%

Master Marksman – 7.7%

Multi shot – 2.5%

Arcane Shot – 0.8%

Abilities used:

Rapid Fire – 112 times

Aimed Shot – 187 timed

Multi Shot – 83 times

Arcane Shot – 57 times

Perceived effectiveness of 2 pieces bonus: given the numbers above, multi shot + arcane shot in my mythic + run provided 3.3% of my overall damage. 20% of this means that the bonus set will give me an additional 0.66% bonus damage. Seems very underwhelming

Perceived effectiveness of 4 pieces bonus: lets pretend as if all of my multi and arcane shots were done with precise shot buff (which I am specced into). 83 + 57 = 140 shots means that 70 of my Aimed Shots would’ve gotten 20% bonus damage. These 70 aimed shots with 20% would’ve increased overall damage of my aimed shot by 7.48% and thus increase my overall damage by 1.7%. Better than 2 pieces bonus but still quite weak.

Now I play only Markmanship and am not very knowledgeable about BM, but even I can see that BM bonus set is several times stronger than Markmanship’s.

My guildie BM hunter told me that both 2 and 4 pieces bonus are going to have 100% uptime (please correct me if I am wrong).

MY BM fellow hunter told me that 70% of his overall damage is done by pets.

Thus 5% haste bonus to pet equals 3.5% overall haste, which should probably provide at least 2.5-3% overall damage bonus if not more ( please feel free to correct me on this one).

And 10% pet damage increase equals to an overall 7% damage.

Thus The Beastmaster is perceived to receive around 10% overall damage buff thanks to their tier bonuses, while Markmanship is perceived to receive 2.33% overall damage buff. Seems a bit unbalanced to me.

[Jerby-bronze-dragonflight (Jerby)]

Coming off the back of a rework, applying current numbers with future set bonus is probably a bit pointless. It will be better to judge it when we have an actual idea of how the spec will function and the damage contribution by different spells.

As an example, multishot using new MM talents will be incredibly strong (Stronger thann aimed shot even) so suddenly the 2p is incredible on AoE - even though it would be awful on live.

[Heartful-ravencrest]

I agree that generally it’s very difficult to estimate the damage before all the tunings are done ( which will be probably be ready only with the actual release of TWW s1).

However seeing what new talent work we got, I believe, it is possible to roughly estimate the role of main abilities. E.g. In Season 4 Rapid fire is the main dps ability, in Season 1 TWW Aimed shot is expected to become a main dps ability once again.

What makes you think Multi shot will be doing more dps than Aimed Shot? With the current changes given to both Multi Shot and Arcanr Shot, it’s expected to remain a garbage filler spell with very low damage value, multi shot main value remaining as a Trick Shot trigger. And this is what I accounted for in my calculations above.

[Jerby-bronze-dragonflight (Jerby)]

@Heartful-ravencrest

What makes you think Multi shot will be doing more dps than Aimed Shot? With the current changes given to both Multi Shot and Arcanr Shot, it’s expected to remain a garbage filler spell with very low damage value, multi shot main value remaining as a Trick Shot trigger. And this is what I accounted for in my calculations above.

I mean it won’t really change the rotation at all most likely, but damage wise multishot is getting something like a 240% buff via little game hunter/other talents. Between these and the precise shot during trueshot change (Both precise shot procs being spent from one aimed) means the value goes up a lot.

[Heartful-ravencrest]

1. Speaking of Multi Shot, Currently the basic damage on my multi shot is 27 489. Multiple it by 1.7 (precise shots), 1.2 (tier bonus set), 2 (small game hunter) and you get 112k damage. Add 30% bonus increase during true shot and even with all these huge buffs you get only 146k damage as opposed 221k damage from aimed shot, still 66% weaker, not stronger.
   May it interfere with our rotation? Yeah there is a chance, we may have dilemma of either using our 2nd precise shot (the 1st precise shot will always be used due to trick shots) and capping on Aimed Shot stacks or using AImed Shot instead and thus losing 2nd stack of precise shot.
   Either way is going to be wasteful as in this context the tier bonus will either be minimal dps gain or minimal dps loss, both are bad.

2.And don’t forget about Arcane Shot, which doesn’t benefit from SGM and is expected to remain a weak filler ability.

Again my concern is that even with possible further dps boost (apart from what we have now) of arcane shot and multi shot our set bonus will be much weaker than those of other specs.

To make arcane shot viable during True Shot you need to at least give it 100-125% damage increase on top of all current amplificators . Such a big dps fix isn’t very likely to be implemented after the start of the Season.
And even if it happens, it will make arcane shot viable, but not the set bonus, which even with 100% damage increase of arcane shot, our set bonus will still be very weak compared to other spec set bonuses.

I fear that if we don’t point it out to Blizz now, we will just end up with one of the weakest set bonuses on the season, which isn’t the end of the world given all other buffs we are receiving as hunters, just another season where MM will be left in the dust by BM in terms of dps.