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Suggestions To Improve Hunter Talents (Mists of Pandaria)
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Post by
Interest
It's been a while since I've made a thread, eh?
After playing on both beta and live, I feel the new talent system seems to be decent at accomplishing the idea of making choices. A lot of the talents seem to be strong or at least competitive enough that there is going to be some variance in builds (even if some are clearly more oriented for PvP or PvE). However, after fiddling around with the Hunter talents for a bit, some talents stood out to me, either because they were too strong, too weak, or not well designed.
That is why I am going to offer some suggestions to improve certain talents either by changing them slightly or replacing them entirely and give my reasoning as to why. You can follow along by referring to
here
as I explain the talents tier by tier.
Tier 1:
I would fix nothing in this tier. All the talents bring some sort of defensive utility, mostly involving
Disengage
, that is unique and could be more helpful than the others depending on the situation, but all of them are strong overall (for instance,
Posthaste
can be good for kiting and handling slowing effects, but that doesn't the other talents from having their merit in that situation).
Tier 2:
: This talent seems like the strongest of the three, but for all the wrong reasons. While Silencing Shot may not be as strong as the other two talents in terms of hard crowd control, it can be used as an interrupt more often than the other two. Interrupts in themselves are pretty versatile because of their power to disrupt enemy spells, making it helpful in PvP and PvE situations that require it, even at times when hard CC is unable to stop a spell.
However, this isn't necessarily the main reason I want to change Silencing Shot. I want it to be baseline mostly because other interrupts are baseline (many of them have been for expansions now). In addition, comparing an interrupt to hard CC in the same talent tier seems illogical, since both, in the sense of things, are completely different animals (silence could arguably be a hard CC for a caster, but in *most* cases Silencing Shot is used as an interrupt) - the talent should be replaced by another hard CC talent. To counterbalance this, the amount of crowd control/disruption a Hunter can bring to the table should be toned down. For instance, pets with control abilities may need to have said control abilities replaced.
To compensate for the removal of Silencing Shot from the talent tree, I feel
Intimidation
is a suitable replacement. I understand it is a Beast Master specialization ability, but it makes more sense to have it as a talent so Hunters don't all go BM and become chain CC masters. In addition, it is a hard CC, so it will fit right into the second tier (it was even a talent at one point in the beta, iirc). Intimidation should be given some quality-of-life changes as well, such as an increased range from pet to target (15 yards from melee, for instance) to make it a more reliable stun (it is a pretty weak stun compared to others, but I don't particularly have a problem with it being 3 seconds given Hunters have a CC-heavy kit). (If it isn't already on the global cooldown, it probably should be.)
TL;DR - Silencing Shot doesn't match the theme of the tier and should be baseline anyways. Replace it with Intimidation and consider removing pet CCs entirely (other debuffs like cast time increase are debatable, but probably okay).
Wyvern Sting
: I personally didn't like this when it was a Survival talent, but it's nice that it no longer has a damage-over-time effect that would make chaining CC a little more difficult (if you don't have the glyph) and it's convenient because you can CC multiple targets. However, Wyvern Sting has some issues that I would like to address:
Firstly, the range of the ability is 35 yards and needs to be increased to 40 yards. This is obviously a relic of the past when Hunter abilities had 35 yard ranges and this issue was a constant problem with some other abilities throughout Cataclysm until they were eventually addressed over a few patches.
Secondly, I don't even know why this has a Focus cost. It seems rather pointless. Just remove it.
Thirdly, the ability itself seems rather bland as a talent. It's just a CC that breaks on damage now. It's like the equivalent of making
a talent. It would at least be nice to have some compelling design that makes it interesting because otherwise I would skip this talent a majority of the time.
For example
, make the CC jump to a nearby target (prioritizing players and targets that can be crowd controlled) if it is dispelled early (and only dispelled), affecting that target for the remaining duration. It would make it at least have a(nother) niche that could make it an interesting choice (mostly in PvP - it's not that bad in PvE anyways).
TL;DR - Remove the archaic design of the shot and add a design, even if it is a little gimmicky, to make the CC more interesting.
Binding Shot
: Surprisingly, I like this ability (it can effectively be used as an AoE stun and is a great zoning tool). I'd probably just consider removing the Focus cost but otherwise leave it unchanged.
Tier 3:
Iron Hawk
: This talent doesn't seem to good too me. While I understand Hunters may need some damage reduction, the other two talents seem superior in a majority of situations (the healing may be too strong on the talents) excluding when healing would be useless (i.e. Aspect of the Iron Hawk prevents the Hunter from being one-shotted (Deterrence can accomplish this to a similar end too), the Hunter has a huge Mortal Strike effect on him/her, and so on). In addition, with the current Aspect dancing design, there will be situations where Aspect of the Iron Hawk isn't in use (more so in PvP than PvE). Even without the Aspect dancing (something they tried to kill with a poorly though out change recently), it becomes a choice between sacrificing self healing and potentially mobility to have damage reduction.
I would probably change this by doing one of the following:
Just give Hunters a 15% damage reduction for taking the talent or at least when in the Hawk/Fox aspects(not the best idea)
Change the talent into something like
Vampiric Quiver
, which causes all
direct
damage from abilities that cost Focus to heal the Hunter for 10% of the damage dealt (I know this makes no logical sense, but from a practicality standpoint it sounds nice and besides, there's a reason the Death Mask existed in the Warcraft universe). It would fit more thematically with the tier anyways, in my opinion.
Overhaul/remove the damn aspects already so we don't have problems like this. Aspect dancing is such poor design anyways.
vs
Exhilaration
: I'm going to compare these two talents because I think it best explains the suggestions I have.
I'm going to open with something that some Hunters are probably not going to like: Spirit Bond healing is too strong. Consider that by the time 30 seconds (25% of Exhilaration's cooldown) pass, you heal yourself for as much as Exhilaration does. This means that while the latter is a bursty heal that can save you in some situations, if you can prolong a fight long enough to make the 30 seconds of healing worth it, you effectively just used Exhilaration and then anything after is additional healing.
Arguably, Exhilaration may be better in situations where you have a window of opportunity to heal for more (i.e. healing reduction just wore off, which would affect Spirit Bond no matter what since it's always active) or to do massive clutch healing to your pet since it restores it to full health (great for soloing and if your pet is getting bursted down), but Spirit Bond's healing is just too good for a passive over time heal. I'd probably reduce the Spirit Bond healing to 0.75% per second (1.5% per 2) or something, maybe more or less. (I would also mention something about Readiness, but Spirit Bond still heals for too much and 1 minute of Spirit Bond healing = double Exhilaration.)
TL;DR: Spirit Bond is too strong. Please reduce the sustained healing by a bit.
(Second Wind needs a nerf too imo)
Tier 4:
This tier is pretty strong as well. I don't have much to say about it. I personally use Dire Beast but all of the talents are good in their own rights and have slight advantages in certain situations and it seems more of a preference. It's like tier 1, except with Focus sustain.
Tier 5:
A Murder of Crows
: I really like this ability, but I think it could use a minor tweak. It gains a bonus (cooldown reduction) when used on low-health targets, but in some situations the target dies (long) before the entire duration is even remotely close to finished. It also doesn't seem like a compelling execute ability in general and Kill Shot seems like a decent choice for securing the kill (bosses in PvE are a different story, though I think this may be from a raiding perspective). I'd add a bonus effect where after the target dies, the crows attack a new nearby target (that is not affected by crowd control, if possible) for the remaining duration. This would make it much more interesting as an execute ability, since it seems to have some intention of design in that manner (but it's pretty crappy).
TL;DR: Make A Murder of Crows work like Malzahar's Space Aids (except duration doesn't reset).
: This ability is pretty terrible in my opinion. It seems like the pet equivalent of Warrior's charge except it does damage instead of stunning. It also is a bit inferior to Lynx Rush. It wastes more globals and Lynx does a huge amount of burst damage (and has the same problem Lynx Rush does in terms of biasing Beast Mastery), which in my opinion is useful in a lot more situations. This makes Blink Strike rather pointless as a talent. Therefore, I'd just add the teleport utility (maybe a lesser version, such as a 25 yard teleport instead) to
Kill Command
since BM Hunters are the ones who need this sort of utility the most and replace the talent with another offensive talent, such as:
Voltaic Concussion:
(Passive)
Your Concussive Shot will deal X (scales with AP) Nature damage. The shot is embedded into the target, dealing an additional Y (also scales with AP) Nature damage over 6 seconds, crippling the target each time damage is dealt - which places a new slowing effect equal the remaining duration of this debuff (the damage-over-time can be dispelled, but not removed by effects that remove slow, though the slow can be negated by persistent slow immunity). The damage is dealt rapidly at first and slows down as the effect reaches the full duration. This effect can only occur on the same target once every 30 seconds (denoted by a debuff on the target).
TL;DR: Blink Strike is an awful talent and BM benefits most from the utility, hence why it should be baseline for them in some way. Replace the talent with something that other specializations will benefit more from.
: I like this talent too, but for obvious reasons this ability is way too biased towards Beast Mastery (more so than most other class talents are for other class specializations - Mage bombs actually count too since the bonus damage for their specializations is GONE). I think the best way to resolve this is to make the ability scale purely off Attack Power, but watch out for the potential burst capability of the ability and adjust damage and cooldown accordingly.
Tier 6
I didn't study these talents and they'll probably change by the time Mists goes live. I may give my thoughts on them after messing around with them a bit at 90.
And that's it for my suggestions. What do you guys think? (Lol I randomly thought of doing this out of nowhere...)
Post by
Wombat62
Some interesting ideas .
With me being mainly a PvE player I dont think spirit bond is too strong but can see where this may be the case in pvp . I do agree with you that silenceing shot doesnt really fit here and should be baseline for hunters ( remember earlier versions of the talents had rediness in this tier -that is now baseline ) as we do need an interrupt
Murder of crows also gets better with gear so judging it now may not be the right thing to do ( last I read on EJs was that at t14 h gear murder was simming in front of teh other two )
I have tried all of the T6 talents out in Beta and I am likeing glaive toss the best , tho barrage is quite fun ,its like having a machine gun
Post by
Nooska
First thought, the focus cost on Wyvern sting and binding shot need to stay for balance reasons - while I agree that it seems so small as to be negligable, it is an important thing for pvp that it actually has a cost and isn't just a freebie - As being 20 focus means it is a tradeoff on top of the GCD to use it instead of AS.
On Silensing Shot, as I have said before, it has a longer CD than other baseline interrupts, so while it may have some play in pvp, it is by no means the "must have" talent, and in PvE, it is actually quite poor, outside possibly challengemodes.
On Spirit Bond, while I agree that an "on paper" comparison of SB and Ex makes Ex look very underpowere compared to SB - SB just isn't that good in any actual damage scenario.
For PvE, its mostly noise (though its helpful) in regards to healing, while Ex can be something you can use as a life saver.
For PvP, SB is simply too slow to beat out Ex in most situations, and again, 1% health gained per second is easily outdone in incoming damage, while a 30% health boost will actually matter.
If anything, Spirit Bond is too weak - also remember that all the healing from Spirit Bond is overhealing for the duration of not taking damage - comparing it on a 2 minute scale means that SB is simply a "heal up faster" tool - and bandages surpass that, and eating and OOC health regeneration beat SBs regen, so a lot of SB is actually "overhealing" (except it doesn't register as such, as SB doesn't actually register as a heal).
On the MoC/LR/BS tier, none of the abilities are biased toward BM, they all benefit from BM mastery - and are simply better for BM than a similarly geared MM or SV, however BM is balanced around this being the case.
Your suggestion would make no sense for PvE (adding concussive shot to the bars) and would be of zero benefit to one of the specs, as the other two would always outperfrom it.
Post by
Interest
@Wombat
Murder of crows also gets better with gear so judging it now may not be the right thing to do ( last I read on EJs was that at t14 h gear murder was simming in front of teh other two )
Well I actually wasn't exactly asking for a buff per se. I just want to add a design quirk that makes it more interesting during execute phase.
Interesting to see it's that strong in tier 14 though.
@Nooska
On Silensing Shot, as I have said before, it has a longer CD than other baseline interrupts, so while it may have some play in pvp, it is by no means the "must have" talent, and in PvE, it is actually quite poor, outside possibly challengemodes.
Well my first point was sort of a smaller reason. It really should just be a baseline ability. As for interrupts, excluding Wind Shear (which has crappy range vs the other ranged interrupts), it's a pretty nice interrupt to have in terms of ranged interrupts, as it is 20 vs the 24/other long cds (even if the lockout sucks).
The PvE argument I guess sort of makes sense, but still doesn't negate the fact it's pointless to have as a talent to begin with. It doesn't fit thematically with the tier... It should've been baseline at least an expansion ago...(list goes on)
For PvE, its mostly noise (though its helpful) in regards to healing, while Ex can be something you can use as a life saver.
While this is true, I generally try to avoid these situations anyways. Deterrence is a good tool for this, though I won't deny there are some situations where I would like a good Exhilaration. However, what you're leaving out is how insanely effective SB is during sustained raid damage fights as opposed to Exhilaration. A great majority of encounters have it in some form at the moment.
For PvP, SB is simply too slow to beat out Ex in most situations, and again, 1% health gained per second is easily outdone in incoming damage, while a 30% health boost will actually matter.
This is where I strongly disagree. PvP encounters have gotten pretty long (even 1v1 or 2v2 double dps) per se. It's not like Wrath where people were gibbing each other in a matter of seconds. Because of this, I think sustained healing wins out and also mathed it out. Yes, burst heals are fantastic if you get low, but you get lower at a much slower rate if you had SB to begin with and in long encounters, slowing the rate you die is better than just burst healing it back up if the former heal is better.
What if there was a healer with you? They just simply don't top you off and use mana efficiently (absorb shields, etc are great here).
If anything, Spirit Bond is too weak - also remember that all the healing from Spirit Bond is overhealing for the duration of not taking damage - comparing it on a 2 minute scale means that SB is simply a "heal up faster" tool - and bandages surpass that, and eating and OOC health regeneration beat SBs regen, so a lot of SB is actually "overhealing" (except it doesn't register as such, as SB doesn't actually register as a heal).
Again, this is true. This is why I worded the situation above as I did. However, as I partially mentioned above, there's a lot of sustained damage in both PvP and PvE. Even bursts of damage take a little more than a couple seconds to recover from (and if you manage cooldowns properly you're not gonna die in seconds). It might be worth mentioning healers, but SB might allow (smart) healers to prioritize other players who need the heals more than you before switching to you when possible (see above) - most of the other classes do not have this type of healing over time (that is this accessible)
Your suggestion would make no sense for PvE (adding concussive shot to the bars) and would be of zero benefit to one of the specs, as the other two would always outperfrom it.
I guess I'm one of those people with Concussive on my bars at all times (helps when kiting pesky trash, adds, and the like). The idea was more a way to make it a shot potentially usable in the rotation (short-term DoT, usable in both PvE and PvP) without adding extra abilities to our (slightly less cluttered, but still pretty cluttered) actionbars. I was more or less giving an example. I just want to replace Blink Strike - it's pretty awful imo.
On the MoC/LR/BS tier, none of the abilities are biased toward BM, they all benefit from BM mastery - and are simply better for BM than a similarly geared MM or SV, however BM is balanced around this being the case.
I again disagree because the mastery gives a pretty sizable edge over the other two specialization since both Lynx Rush and Blink Strike scale directly off the pet's damage. While the pet technically scales with the Hunter, the BM pet receives bonus scaling due to said mastery. This is why I believe they are biased (also Blink Strike, for instance, hits like a wet noodle in MM/Surv -
800
600% pet damage is surprisingly very little for some reason in those two specializations).
It may be noticeable now because endgame gear, but I am almost certain that at least Lynx Rush is going to be the clear, obvious winner by the end of Mists if left unchanged (and if Murder of Crows is also unchanged, unless it has stupidly asinine AP scaling for some reason).
First thought, the focus cost on Wyvern sting and binding shot need to stay for balance reasons - while I agree that it seems so small as to be negligable, it is an important thing for pvp that it actually has a cost and isn't just a freebie - As being 20 focus means it is a tradeoff on top of the GCD to use it instead of AS.
The problem with this argument is a great majority of other talented control abilities do not have a cost/the cost isn't even remotely significant in terms of resource cost (Ring of Frost - 2% base mana...). It's pretty obvious that Wyvern at least is just something left over. As for Binding, the need to add a Focus cost seems somewhat unnecessary as well. If they want to balance that particular ability, the resource cost shouldn't be a factor imo. This is especially so since it's essentially just a zoning tool and does nothing more (besides stun, which is part of this whole zoning thing).
Post by
Nooska
On the MoC/BS/LR tier, I don't think LR will be a clear winner. LR has the benefit of lining up nicely with Rabid, which makes it attractive in that it also "removes" another button to manage. If we look at the simmed highest damage currently, its MoC (last report from Zeherah), and in that case, I would leave rabid on autocast for bossfights (nothing else to reliably time it with).
Post by
Interest
On the MoC/BS/LR tier, I don't think LR will be a clear winner. LR has the benefit of lining up nicely with Rabid, which makes it attractive in that it also "removes" another button to manage. If we look at the simmed highest damage currently, its MoC (last report from Zeherah), and in that case, I would leave rabid on autocast for bossfights (nothing else to reliably time it with).
How strange. I guess MoC's damage is just really high. That's another story though - I'm really looking at the talents (that tier in particular anyways) from a mechanical and design standpoint. Adjusting numbers is well...adjusting numbers...
(Except SB vs Exhilaration, because even factoring in the fact they're two different mechanics, SB's potential healing really is kinda silly compared to Exhilaration, so I really did sort of have to do a numbers discussion there.)
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