Upcoming Changes to All Hunter Talent Trees on Dragonflight Alpha

Dragonflight Posted 2022/08/19 at 6:07 PM by Squishei

Happy Friday, Hunters.Several changes will be in your next build and we wanted to share what to expect. There are also several bug fixes, and some things that were previously marked NYI are now working.Class Tree:

Survival Hunters: corrected a missing connection between Kill Command and Improved Mend Pet on the class tree.
Alpha Predator’s value has been lowered from 30%, to 15%.
Improved Traps now also lowers the cooldown of Hi-Explosive Trap.
Stampede now snares targets hit by 30%, and you and your pets gain 10% increased critical strike chance against targets hit by your Stampede.
Hunter’s Agility is once again Avoidance.
Camouflage no longer links directly to Improved Traps. The choice node below Survival of the Fittest now links to Born to be Wild.
New 2-point passive talent, Serrated Shots: Serpent Sting and your bleed damage is increased by 10/20% damage. This value increases to 20/40% against targets below 30% HP.
New 2-point passive talent: Arctic Bola - Aimed Shot/Cobra Shot/Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite have a chance to fling a bola out at your target that bounces 2/4 times and deals increased damage per point. Targets struck by the bola are snared by 20% for 3 sec.

Beast Mastery:

The top of the Beast Mastery tree has been shuffled around a bit, and now starts with Cobra Shot rather than Barbed Shot.
Barbed Shot damage has been increased by ~75% (this is unrelated to talents and just a change to the ability)
Loaded Quiver has been removed. Barbed Shot is now 2 charges always.
Barbed Wrath is now 1 point, down from 2. It no longer affects Aspect of the Wild.
Wild Call has been reduced to 1 rank.
Call of the Wild’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes.
The Bloody Frenzy that adjusted Barbed Shot Frenzy stack generation has been removed.
New 1-point talent: Brutal Companion. When Barbed Shot causes a 3rd stack of Frenzy, your pet automatically uses their special attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) with increased damage.
Aspect of the Wild has been redesigned.

Aspect of the Wild now fires a Cobra Shot at your target and another nearby target. While Aspect of the Wild is active, Cobra Shot’s Focus cost is reduced by 10, and each Cobra Shot fires a Second Cobra Shot at a nearby target.

New choice node below Aspect of the Wild:

Each temporary beast summoned reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 5 sec.
Cobra Shot damage increased by 30% while Aspect of the Wild is active.

Several talents shifted around past the first gate due to the above changes, but the tree’s structure is very similar.
Marksmanship:

Dead Eye now also reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot.
Windrunner’s Guidance has been lowered to 25% critical strike damage bonus.
New choice node below Wailing Arrow:

Wailing Arrow resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire and grants a charge of Aimed Shot.
Wailing Arrow now fires 5 wind arrows at your primary target, and up to 10 split between any secondary targets.

Crack Shot lowered to a 1-point talent.
Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus have swapped spots.
Survival

Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, and related talents should be working.
Explosive Expert tooltip updated, it has no interaction with Kill Shot and is just some cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs.
Birds of Prey has been redesigned. Kill Shot now strikes up to 3 extra targets while Coordinated Assault is active.
New choice node against Birds of Prey: Bombardier. The cooldown of Wildfire Bombs is reset when Coordinated Assault is activated, and when it fades.
Guerilla Tactics increases the initial damage of Wildfire Bombs by 50%, down from 100%.
Fury of the Eagle once again grants 50% critical strike chance against targets below 20% HP.
Ruthless Marauder increases the HP threshold for increases critical strikes by 5% per rank rather than increasing critical strike chance.

Thanks for the continued feedback and testing.
And yes, have a nice weekend everyone!

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Comment by couchpotato2013Wish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by Cribble2kToo bad they don't put this much effort into Druids.Comment by LustrigiaWhile I can appreciate the frequency in updates that the Hunter trees are getting, the Alpha Predator and Birds of Prey changes here are just… straight up bad.

Why would you want to decentivize the KC synergy you’ve worked so hard to build the BM and Survival trees around? It was so !@#$ing cool, and new, and unique. So why make it bad/worse? I can’t help but feel confused.

Birds of Prey was easily one of the coolest Survival talents in the game, especially when you could increase the frequency of total KC resets in the span of a 5 min Patchwerk fight. With enough haste you’d have SO much going on, especially with Deadly Duo. So… why decide to exclude it to AOE? The past iteration of Survival had so much interesting ST potential, and you kinda just took it away. Another super confusion decision.

While I commend that these changes are frequent, which is great, I still believe that these changes should still be good. These are not.Comment by michaelphoenix22Too bad they don't put this much effort into Druids.Comment by ShuhToo bad they don't put this much effort into Druids.Comment by MapaMundiBarbed shot being 2 charges baseline is a welcomed change.

I still think both BM and MM have some talents that feel like they should be baseline or baked into other talents. And other classes have a good amount of cleave without purposely speccing into cleave damage, whereas hunters can't have an all-around, all-purposes build, you either commit into cleave damage or you don't have any.Comment by StoneLegionToo bad they don't put this much effort into Druids.Comment by RyodanWish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by PeesneezeAnother day another hunter post.Comment by couchpotato2013Wish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by Gearhead3673Wish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by SapoQLxdWish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by ElyrionOh, nobody expected another day of hunter changes... if only other classes existed too.Comment by AedionMorrisThe problem for MM remains the exact same. Why are baseline abilities that are core and fundamental to the class now requiring us to drop some and spend talent points in order to get very few of them back? Why is trueshot not baseline? Why is multi shot not baseline? Steady shot generating focus isn't required to build but they don't want people doing that? It still makes no sense.

I will once again say. Unpopular now. Will be very popular in dragonflight. These talent trees are a mistake. Taking 5 baseline abilities, making them talents and saying "choose 2" is lazy design and development.Comment by ZeionsThe problem for MM remains the exact same. Why are baseline abilities that are core and fundamental to the class now requiring us to drop some and spend talent points in order to get very few of them back? Why is trueshot not baseline? Why is multi shot not baseline? Steady shot generating focus isn't required to build but they don't want people doing that? It still makes no sense.

I will once again say. Unpopular now. Will be very popular in dragonflight. These talent trees are a mistake. Taking 5 baseline abilities, making them talents and saying "choose 2" is lazy design and development.Comment by KestevavildThis is getting ridiculous.

All the people who said : "They are focusing on hunter talents right now, but soon they will shift to other classes, stop whining!", when will you acknowledge that this will never come? What's the date when you could admit that?

You are defending the company who made Shadowlands... and BFA. You make very little sense.Comment by FlupoWish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by ElyrionWish we could get a dev like this for all classes. Rogue, shaman, warlock, and hunters eating good.Comment by ZiraThis is getting ridiculous.

All the people who said : "They are focusing on hunter talents right now, but soon they will shift to other classes, stop whining!", when will you acknowledge that this will never come? What's the date when you could admit that?

You are defending the company who made Shadowlands... and BFA. You make very little sense.Comment by ShadowstepsThis is getting ridiculous.

All the people who said : "They are focusing on hunter talents right now, but soon they will shift to other classes, stop whining!", when will you acknowledge that this will never come? What's the date when you could admit that?

You are defending the company who made Shadowlands... and BFA. You make very little sense.

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