Hunter Beta Feedback: Round 1

What follows isn’t going to written like one of my normal blog posts. It’s a copy/paste of a feedback post I made in the Warlords beta forums intended for the developers. I thought some of you may be interested in reading it anyway. I’ve added a few pictures to help with the “wall of text crits you for 9000” factor.

Beast Mastery

Blink Strikes is still too mandatory for the spec for two reasons: Pet mobility and Beast Cleave damage. Extra single target damage is nice, but not the primary reason I feel the need to use it and never even look at the other talents. Shouldn’t a BM hunter want something like Stampede?

Suggestion: Change Blink Strikes into a new hunter-based passive or a new cooldown. As a bonus, it will mean Lone Wolf still gets to have 3 choices in this tier. Make the blink component of Blink Strikes a BM-only passive, and maybe compensate Beast Cleave elsewhere (Beast Cleave is a lot less potent in the burst department without it and I’d hate to lose it). I’d rather keep it as-is and not lose my awesome Beast Cleave, though. It was just a thought.

Basic attack damage seems low as previously mentioned.

Other than that, I am a fan of BM as it is on live, so I’m still a fan of it on beta. I don’t really miss rapid fire all that much.

Perks: I like them all. Wouldn’t want to change anything.

Survival

I like the new LnL mechanic, but I think it could be more robust if a couple of changes were made. Essentially, let the buff last for 30-60 sec (instead of 15), and increase the stack cap to something like 10. As it stands now, there is some potential to hold onto stacks for very short term burst, but you still feel the urge to bleed off one of those stacks every 6 seconds or else you feel like you’re “wasting” damage as you hold onto them. Therefore, your stack never ends up getting that big. If the buff lasted longer and you could save more stacks, it could potentially be a solution to survival’s burst problem. It could also a PvP burst problem, admittedly. Maybe smaller stack cap in BGs/Arena?

Say there’s a burst phase coming up in the next 30 seconds or so. You hold onto most of your LnL procs (at high multi-strike I think we’ll hit the current 5 cap very fast) in anticipation, then when that special add spawns, you can dump 7-10 Explosive Shots into it and have some true burst. As it stands now, there’s a lot less flexibility to do something like that. I feel like that extra flexibility could result in some interesting gameplay choices.

Besides that, I like the new LnL mechanic more than the old. I’m personally not concerned about wanting to stack Multistrike, or the proc chance getting too high, because I’m one of those people who adores the T16 survival 4-piece. It may be mindless, but I love spamming that button.

The other option is to just give us a cooldown.

I know number tuning hasn’t been done, but Explosive Shot seems pretty weak, only doing a little bit more damage than an Arcane Shot (that extra tick from the perk is what brings it over). Tooltip implies it’s supposed to be doing more (probably a bug).

As for an execute, I miss having a “OK, I’m done with you, die now please” button. I wonder if we could have something else so the flat-line damage has a little bit of a peak at the end. The sub-35% Kill Shot on BM and MM is really, really nice. This is pulled out of my rear, but what if our DoT ticks did something special sub-20%… guaranteed crits, faster ticks, something?

The Survivalist passive is truly amazing. Seriously, even though I have to face tank if I’m out in the world as survival, those constant unending heals keep me topped off.

Perks: They all sound fine to me, except Enhanced Entrapment is very bland. I had this pop up as one of my perks when leveling and it was just a disappointment.

Traps: New trap mechanics are to die for, but Explosive Trap still hits like a wet noodle. Here’s a suggestions: replace “Enhanced entrapment” with “Empowered Explosive Trap” — Increases trap damage by 100%.

Marksmanship

It seems you guys have listened to all the hunters being nostalgic over the Auto Shot stutter stepping days (and all the extra DPS for doing it correctly) because that is what the new Sniper Training mastery feels like.

I find it hard to give good feedback on this when I haven’t played much of it in a real setting, but at first glance the Sniper Training duration seems kind of short. Something like 10 seconds would be more forgiving while still rewarding movement management. Also, it really needs a visual of some kind (can be subtle) so you know its active without having to look up at your buffs. Otherwise, it’s an addon required thing to get the most out of it.

It seems like it was made for Focusing Shot as well, since it has a base cast of 3 sec (same amount of time you need to stand still to trigger Sniper Training). I like the interaction, but often times you do not need to use Focusing Shot every 6 seconds, which would be another benefit to upping the mastery duration to 10+.

As mentioned before, I can’t imagine playing with anything but Thrill of the Hunt here. 30 focus Aimed Shots and free Multi-Shots is too good to pass up. Maybe this isn’t a bad thing, because I feel like if ToTH was any less potent for Marksmanship, then the entire spec would suffer.

Is Piercing Shots staying or going? It’s been at least 2 builds since it was supposed to be removed, and Master Marksman and Steady Focus were removed back then (when Piercing Shots was supposed to go as well). Is the new mastery supposed to be that “crit value compensation” that was mentioned earlier by Celestalon on twitter?

Rapid Fire + Careful Aim is a beautiful thing.

My main concern with marks is that it just won’t be worth the hassle, plain and simple. If MM can do identical damage to SV and BM without Sniper Training, then it’s worth the hassle of getting that extra damage. I shouldn’t speak for everyone though. I know some people do like the “turret” style of gameplay, but for me, if I’m going to go all out with my movement management, I better be doing more DPS than I could elsewhere.

Chimera Shot needs some love. It has an awkward cooldown, and well, it doesn’t live up to its namesake anymore. The heal at least gave it something, but now that’s gone. Compare this to the other signature shots: Kill Command is pet-based and is generally fun to cast, Explosive Shot has the LnL interaction, and Chimera Shot is…. a buffed Arcane Shot. It needs something else IMO.

Now that Enhanced Piercing Shots is no more, I fear for Marksmanship’s AoE. I’m not even sure this perk would have fully solved the problem, but it certainly would have helped. The thing I hate about MM AoE is there is no middle ground. You either go all in, or you don’t bother at all. This is fine for situations with 5+ targets, but most of the time we need to cleave instead of mass AoE. It feels like Piercing Shots would have helped since you’d still be ticking some damage when you switched back to single target DPS. Maybe just make MM Multi-Shots inherently apply Piercing Shots? It’s nowhere near as strong as Serpent Spread or Beast Cleave, but it adds a little middle ground at least.

Perks: I like all these perks, except the loss of the Multi-Shot one as mentioned above.

Quick note on the range bonuses: That is really fun. With Sniper Training + perk, having 50+ yard shots and 55+ yard Kill Shot is really cool.

Talents

Lone Wolf: Not my cup of tea (I’m a pet guy), but I have the feeling it’ll be one of those “you’re dumb if you’re not using Lone Wolf on X fight.”

Versatility: I gave this suggestion on twitter to Celestalon, but rename this to “A <player race>’s Best Friend” please 😀 A Pandaren’s Best Friend, A Forsaken’s Best Friend, A Dwarf’s Best Friend. Oh, as for the talent itself… yes, I do enjoy having a raid boss super pet.

Exotic Munitions: I like that we can switch them in combat (3 sec cast feels fair), so please don’t change that. I’m not going to comment on numbers yet, but I do like the talent. I’m not sure if I would use it outside of survival spec though. Suggestion: change the color of our Auto Shots with a cool looking tracer round based on which ammo we have selected.

Focusing Shot: Feels like a Marksman only talent to me, especially with Sniper Training. I found myself focus capping more than I’d like with it. It can be awkward if Thrill of the Hunt isn’t up. I can’t fathom ever taking this as survival or beast mastery. Maybe I’m wrong though.

Glyphs

Can we pretty please (with a cherry on top) have our Glyph of Misdirection back? Without it, all there is for survival and marksmanship is face-tanking. Even better: Change the glyph to cause Misdirection to last 1 hour when cast on your pet.

Glyph of Play Dead is amazing, but it has an issue right now. if the pet is moving when you cast it, the pet won’t actually play dead. It just stops dead in its tracks until you exit Feign Death.