Alright, so the purpose of this threat is to yet again pinpoint the problems this specific spec has and to begin some sort of discussion about what changes could be made to counter at least some of them and maybe, just maybe somehow some of the feedback eventually gets to the development department and they make something about it when Shadowlands comes out.
So I have a few (a lot) of problems regarding the class design and how it fits in arenas, namely:
We get a 10 % damage buff when pet is hidden, and yet, we are forced to play with pet, because there is no way we can otherwise win a match, because the damage output is so low.
This class is totally not enough on its own, we need bis trinkets, bis azerite pieces, perfect talent setting, bis HoA traits, proper pet and a healer that helps us damage and CC and doesn’t die in order to even win anything. The class in itself just does no damage and has no survivability
No survivability. We only have exhilaration. BM hunters have spirit mend, SV hunters have mending bandage. For us to get additional healing, we need to play leech pets, but these are incomparably bad compared to cunning classes with master’s call, which is mandatory due to the fact that melees have so many range closers, compared to how many range-wideners do ranged classes have.
Crowd control. This is probably the most ridiculous point. We are forced to play with a pet, yet only MM hunters don’t have pet stun. We have ice trap and scatter shot. Scatter shot is disorient, and yet it shares the same DR with trap.
The damage output. Mentioned before, but this class is heavily-dependant on full bis traits and trinkets to actually do some damage. Trueshot is literally useless, it just gives haste for a while. Aimed shot is literally not worth casting. it says in my bar it should do 70k damage per hit, yet in practice it does 14-28k, sometimes 30-40 crit with enough luck, and this spell HAS to be cast while standing, and has a 2-ish second cast time. This is totally not worth it, and it only used to reset the cooldown of rapid fire via surging shots, hoping it will proc. On the other hand, arcane shot, which is instacast, does 30-40k normal damage almost everytime, crits for 50-60k, how does that make sense. Speaking of rapid fire, it is a channeled once-per-20-seconds attack, which does roughly 80k per cast, 160k if doubled once per minute. This is not kickable, but is totally easily stunnable or feignable, and once thatS’ done, we have to wait for 20 seconds to do any damage again. Compared to spammable fear -> chaos bolt 90k+, or poly -> G. pyro 150k + combust, or instacast retri’s templar’s verdict 140k hits, this is absolutely ridiculous.
This spec* has no dots whatsoever. The only one would be talentable serpent sting, which is not worth it compared to focus-free arcane shots after a lenghty wait of 2 seconds for poorly-hitting aimed shots to go off. This makes this class ridiculously easy to kite around.
Talents, e.g. LnL 5 % proc rate. What used to be connected to a design-given talent called Steady Aim is now scattered all over the talent board. Hunter’s mark is countered by said Steady Aim and Streamline, which is mandatory to play PvP due to full-rapid fire build. Serpent Sting is against Master Marksman, LnL, which used to proc periodically through a very clever system, is now random, never-proccing useless thing. not to mention the procced hit does like 40k at most.
These are just some of the issues. So overall, how does this make sense? I do understand that Blizz did revamp the class designs by pretty much scuffing every classof what it used to be, but I would say MM hunters suffered incomparably to any other class. We have nothing, especially in PvP.
you forgot to speak about mortal wound that BM and Survival got baseline with pet and that MM hunter don’t get ( need to take a pet as you said in 1.)
i pref to have a bleed than magic damage serpent sting.
I want like a bleed on the aimed shot target that give Healing reduction.
But i think i’ll give up on MM hunter this season, i don’t want to spend more time to humiliate myself again.
I just want blizzard focusing all their efforts on Shadowland than balancing MM hunter in BFA, we all know how BFA is that bad.
Sadly I dont think anything more will change than kill shot/hunter’s mark/eyes of the beast.
However I’d like MM hunters to not have to rely on a pet, so we get master’s call even without a pet, but with a different name. We should also get a healing reduction ability, possibly integrated into aimed shot.
Aimed shot should be our best damage ability, arcane shot should be second and rapid fire/steady shot should be third and fourth for focus regen.
Aimed shot should be hard to cast(it already is, to be honest) and it should deal more damage than it already does. It could also give a healing reduction effect. We need something to be able to land our aimed shot. It doesnt have to be a stun, we could have binding shot baseline. You can also change trueshot to give more damage or something instead of reduced cast time to make up for it.
Arcane shot should deal more damage too, to make up for the lost damage when we cant cast aimed shot and to make up for the lost damage from rapid fire. See below.
Rapid fire should have its damage reduced a lot but Its damage should be better than steady shot and less than 2 arcane shots(you can cast 2 arcane shots instead of rapid fire).
I dont know about bleed, we can already get either serpent sting or AMoC as a dot, but I know they both compare badly to master marksman talent.
I’m probably asking a huge overhaul(not really, these are just number tweaks) but yeah.
Am i just talented as marksman hunter? the damage is so good! i perform better as marksman than any other dps and my dps main is bloody 470 affli lock! and my hunter is 445!
Like i know its arenas, but comon! how do people struggle with damage?! its the utillity that gets on my neeerves
Like all classes have stun, cc, ect while marksman gets a slow that increases from steady aim ( Not really that useful ) & freezetrap, so utillity wise marksman is just downgraded survival & beast mastery really
Not to speak of bursting shot registering hits 30% of the bloody time you use it
We are talking PVP here, Grovi. In PVE, I have triple Unerring vision + triple* In The Rhythm, and I’m pumping 160k DPS on opener. In PVE, my Aimed shot crits for 181k, in PVP, my Aimed shot crits for 60 into cloth at most, usually thought like 34-40k ish into anything else. DPS in PVE is not* the issue, the only PVE issue with marksman is AoE dependant on multishot, and that AoE can only cleave 5 targets. For example, I would always get benched on Orgozoa Mythic last pach, because I couldn’t cleave both boss and the adds. But all in all, marksman is pretty fine in PVE. But in PVP, it’s garbage. Good luck trying to get* higher than rival with a marksman, it take a sh*tton of patience, practice and an insane healer, that can also DPS like crazy to compensate for your poorly balanced, rapid fire and trinket-dependant damage output.
ALSO, offtopic: speaking of Killshot being added in Shadowlands, they did say that these abilities will allegedly be class-wide, not spec-specific. Am I the only one sooooo hyped to get deleted by a melee surva hunter with a ranged shot finisher spell?
I can help you how as affliction how to beat MM hunter in damage.
The main issue is the damage is good only against Cloth / Leather armor, i don’t if you tried dealing damage against Mail / Plate but in arena situation the warrior bleed will deal more damage on you that you gonna deal on him.
Marksmanship today is way too much affected by armor. That why damage is a big issue.
and in battlegrounds we easely forget that we can pick up many target with the lowest armor to get full efficiency.
badly there’s more value reapply concussive shot than to maintain it with steady shot since focus is something you never miss in PvP ( since steady shot deal 0 damage merely, you have to take Memory of Lucid dream and RF traits to never cast that spell).
We don’t play with that in arena, UV and ITR is PvE trait for the reason is crit got more value in PvE ( 150% damage in PvP instead of 200% in PvE) and ITR is a condition need to full cast RF (can be countered easely) for only haste. If you go on haste all your damage gonna get more physical, instead of Mastery > Versa that make your Arcane shot more valuable in the case we already struggle against armor. And versa give you more substain.
Trait should be 3 focused fire and 3 Surging shot since it combine very well with Double tap for burst.
and your burst will look like this in PvP :
double tap
Trueshot
CC
trinket offensive
Sniper shot
Rapid Fire ( double tap) full casted
aim shot
CC again
Arcane shot / rapid fire ( depend on ennemy life) .
I was 2038 last season in 2s as MM mate, I know a bit what I’m talking about ^^ Of course we don’t play UV + ITR in arenas, in arenas, you want to play triple SS + triple FF in Streamline talent to abuse rapid fire, as that’s the only thing that can do at least some damage.
Other than that, there’s no reason to play Sniper shot in arenas, it does hit hard for once, but in most scenarios, you need Scatter shot + Roar of sacrifice, and third slot should be either Survival tactics, Spider sting or most of the time Trueshot mastery. There’s no place for sniper shot in higher arenas, unless you run something like double DPS with sub rogue or whatever. It is pretty good in RBG though, as you don’t need Roar of Sacrifice there.
Other than that, if you intend to play Sniper shot in arenas, it is way better to play LnL instead of CtS, then you pre-cast Double tap, then you press sniper shot, as it’s not influenced by Double tap, then you offensive trinket, then you rapid fire and pray to hades that by that time your LnL had procced and oy ucan abuse the doubled cast at the last second. But then again, that only works in lower arenas.
Yeah, anything above 1200 will either cc you if they are targetting your teammate, or stun you if you are their target.
In your rotation I think you are losing about 7 seconds of trueshot. GCD from CCs and about 2,5 seconds of sniper shot and about 3 seconds from rapid fire.
I think when you cast trueshot, you gotta start with aimed shot before casting rapid fire because trueshot doesnt make you caste rapid fire any faster or it doesnt grant any damage. It only lowers its CD. So you could always cast rapid fire before, get it on CD first, then cast trueshot, aimed shotx2, then rapid fire again. Am I wrong?
Thats why I prefer:
-camoflague
-double tap
-sniper shot
-offensive trinket
-rapid fire
-CC
-trueshot
-aimed shot x2
-rapid fire
-try to cc
-boom boom
Then again im not a high rated player and it never goes as planned anyways
I mean, that’s pretty much what I am hoping for, it’s not like I am hoping for a change to happen in bfa, tbf I actually lost hope for Shadowlands as well…
I know but does that mean im banned from saying my pve experiences??
Also damage is still not an issue even in pvp, its utillities still, you dont even have a stun without a pet which … uhm your supposed to not have one as marksman
You can say whatever you want mate, but realise that as the title says, this is PvP-oriented post, therefore PvE experiences have no value, as they simply are not the same, not even in the slightest.
For you to better understand the difference, here I will link 2 damage breakdowns. The first one will be my DPS breakdown from N’Zoth the Corruptor HC, the second one will be from a simple 1.7-ish MMR arena which simply just took too long, since I just couldn’t finish my target off due to low damage output. (mind the serpent sting, I was just experimenting whether or not is it worth it - I’m still not sure. Exploshot is definitely worth it over Careful aim)
