Marksmanship question here. Is there any chance of Lone Wolf being made base-line and changed to how it worked in WoD? You can use a pet at any time, but you lose the buff while your pet is out. This would free up the first talent row to have a meaningful choice instead of every MM Hunter picking Lone Wolf.
Marksmanship during Legion almost made it to live completely pet-less, as a way to separate their identity more into ranger/sniper so that Beastmaster could have more heft as the ranged pet spec. Beastmaster however landed in a place of having ALLTHEPETS! so the core ranged hunter with a pet was lost in the shuffle and thus Lone Wolf was brought back.
Looking back, I think that losing the pet completely from the spec probably feels like a bridge too far for hunters, even though there is definitely space for the Legolas/Robin Hood archetype in our favorite gun and bow slingers. Honestly I really like your suggestion because it maintains the spec's identity while allowing us to still go into the ranger direction. I call my pet when I'm really in trouble, or just when I'm out for a stroll in the world.
Could you tell us anything about your ideas behind Fury of the Eagle (fote). As it stands, while good in cleave, it's being used to fish for procs in single target instead of feeling like an impactful part of our rotation. Possible change to do slightly more damage if it only hits 1 target?
Fury of the Eagle is intended to be a satisfying payoff for getting to high stacks of Mongoose Fury (and doubly so in AOE situations). It's always on our radar when buttons aren't performing as intended, but at the same time we don't mind when players find unexpected uses like fishing for procs as long as it's not creating degenerate gameplay.
P.S. Sorry if someone has already created this thread. I looked around and didn't find one. The rest of the question can be found following the link above.First Question, is there any plan to update Hunter pets? My second question is, what is the future of BM Hunters?
We don’t have any solid plans currently, but I fully agree that we’re not in a great place right now. I would love to improve the situation. With the power of Battle Rez (Quilen) and Bloodlust (Core Hound), I don’t think I’ve used a different pet on my BM Hunter alt in PvE in a long time.
I think BM Hunters aren’t far from being in a good place. Adding a 2nd charge to Dire Frenzy went a long ways, because I think the future of BM in 8.0 will be Dire Frenzy baseline, with the gameplay of maintaining Dire Frenzy stacks being one of the core parts of the rotation. Another missing part is giving Cobra Shot a reason to exist outside of Bestial Wrath with Killer Cobra. In general, it’s better when spammed spells either push another resource forward (e.g. combo points for Rogues/Feral) or have some procs/triggers attached to them (e.g. Cobra Shot during Bestial Wrath with Killer Cobra, Fireball/Frostbolt procs Hot Streak/Fingers/Brain Freeze for Mages, Shadowbolt generates Soul Shards for Demo). It gives those spells a feeling of a reason to exist. Current thinking – I want to try something like Cobra Shot reduced Kill Command cooldown by 1 second baseline or something along that vein. Right now Cobra Shot admittedly feels a little bit just like you’re bleeding off your resource simply because you don’t want it to cap and be wasted.
Whatcha thing, guys?