Hunter Talent Updates

For discussion of the upcoming 5.3 patch, and any finds on the PTR.
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Gimlion
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Gimlion »

Slickrock wrote:Well, look at the options warlocks have with their pets with the tier 90 talent. Would be intresting for BM to have a "merge with pet" MM to be petless and take on some aspect of the pet, not sure what SV would get.

The thing it needs to do is offer choice. I wouldn't want to remove pets across the board from MM, but what if it was an option, probably through a glyph?

The real problem I see is that our pets, especially with the recent round of nerfs, in actual gameplay are really indistinguishable from other pet classe's pets. Our pets do no enhance us in unique ways anymore, and that's where the real flavor could come in.

Think about an MM hunter taking a flying pet to increase damage at max range, or an SV hunter taking a scorpid to increase nature damage, and a BM taking an exotic for other special boosts. Might be hard to balance, but would make things more interesting.


All that aside... I don't think we'll see anything done with this until 6.0, for the rest of this expac we are gonna see hard nerfs and bandaid buffs.
The bolded part I found really interesting, actually. I don't quite understand the flying pet thing, but the other 2 make much more sense. Granted, I don't want to go back to the wolf, raptor, cat days; but having pets give personal buffs that only the hunter and pet will see is interesting. They'd have to do a hell of a job balancing it, but I think it would be pretty cool if they did. As long as one pet didn't become the best for any certain spec, (like SB for BM, Scorpid for SV, and Wolf for MM for example), then I think it could do great things for the class.

As I see it now, hunter pets' buffs hardly matter. In anything less than top tier, the buffs are just extra, everyone just brings who they'd like. Even in PvP, with the nerfs to CC, the special attacks are just flavor. This is great from a pet-lover standpoint, as they can literally bring whichever pet they want, spec it into the proper spec, and pew pew. As much of a pet lover as I am, I'd like to see hunters having to at least make a little bit of choice based on situational merit. If there's a boss with exceptionally high armor, why not pick a pet that renders it? Or you get into a BG with a ton of casters, why not a pet that increases Magic Resist? Or slows casting?

These sorts of abilities are kind of what the pet buffs were when they initially came out, but then they got rid of a lot of spare buffs, consolidating them into bigger buffs. Then a FEW people figured ways to gain an edge with certain pet abilities, and they're all getting nerfed now. So basically, we have no choice, because none of them really act differently.

TL;DR- Pets are very homogenous, which is good for people who enjoy taking whichever pet they like, but bad for class diversity.

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Slickrock »

Yep. It's mostly fire and forget now.

I was thinking flying pets for the whole "eagle eye increases accuracy and ranged damage" or something like that for MM.

But really, pets don't matter now, they are totally flavor, nothing else.

Of course, they shouldn't take it too far, otherwise we are back to mandated pets.
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Gimlion
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Gimlion »

Slickrock wrote:Yep. It's mostly fire and forget now.

I was thinking flying pets for the whole "eagle eye increases accuracy and ranged damage" or something like that for MM.

But really, pets don't matter now, they are totally flavor, nothing else.

Of course, they shouldn't take it too far, otherwise we are back to mandated pets.
Pretty much, I definitely want to avoid the majority of LK, as far as pets go, but with Blizzard's work in balancing, I'm not sure they could manage super unique abilities without that happening.

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Slickrock »

Of course, I'm the one staying BM for my 25-man raid team because we often don't have enough brezzes. Yep, I've been the 3rd and the backup brez at least once a month this tier, if not more... >.>
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Maizou »

They will NEVER make pets unique again, other than the buffs they bring.

That is probably the best change they've ever made to pets to me.

I DESPISED the fact I had no choice but to use a wolf for an entire expansion.
Slickrock wrote:Well, look at the options warlocks have with their pets with the tier 90 talent. Would be intresting for BM to have a "merge with pet" MM to be petless and take on some aspect of the pet, not sure what SV would get.
.
Grimoire of Sacrifice is the level 75 talent, and it is a 15-20% DPS LOSS to grab.

Blizzard made it clear pet classes are pet classes, and the only way they will consider allowing them to ditch their pets is at a substantial loss of DPS. They nerfed the crap out of sacrifice in 5.2, and Ghostcrawler clarified what I just said on twitter.

Though it's hypocritical. Talents are supposed to be a choice and not negatively impact your DPS for choosing the "wrong one." On top of that, they said they did it because too many warlocks were choosing it. Now every single Affliction/Destruction warlock is using Supremacy, so they're huge hypocrites.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Nachtwulf »

As long as talents do DPS, there will ALWAYS be 'the one everyone chooses'. Unless they remove dps-increasing talents completely, there will always be one of them that you should always take and you're a fool if you pick the other two. /shrug

I used Supremacy from the beginning just because I wanted cooler demons. So tired of staring at the same ones since vanilla. (Well, BC is when I rolled my lock but still.)

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by SpiritBinder »

Myzou wrote:They will NEVER make pets unique again, other than the buffs they bring.


Agreed, I doubt they will make the families any more unique than they currently are, it's a very safe setup now and could not go back to the old X's is better than Y's, therefore X is best. But they could make them unique via the pets spec (or even more so). Maybe different pets specs could buff/benefit the hunter in a separate way, rather than just the pet.

Eg.
IF they decided to add a "petless" option for a spec, maybe when your pet was relinquished, what ever spec your pet was in, you would gain an essence or trait of it of some sort.

Tenacity ~ A Stamina % Increase? Or a small health regen? (like spirit bond) or the “Blood of the Rhino” healing increase? Or “Last Stand?”
Cunning ~ A Dodge % increase? Or an increase to run speed? Or the “Bullheaded” 3 min trinket?
Ferocity ~ A DPS % increase? Or a small DPS cool down? (Like rabid for the hunter?) Or a Heart of the Phoenix “Ank” if you die.

Yes I know the relinquished ferocity would be "THE BEZT FOR THE DPS" but all pets have access to it, but the others could add very welcome unity in other situations/fights. Anyways, just an idea to possibly make it work..

Blizzard made it clear pet classes are pet classes, and the only way they will consider allowing them to ditch their pets is at a substantial loss of DPS. They nerfed the crap out of sacrifice in 5.2, and Ghostcrawler clarified what I just said on twitter.


Yikes, really? I never recall blizzard saying the only way they will consider a pet class to go without would be substantial loss of DPS. Could you point me in the right direction?

Though it's hypocritical. Talents are supposed to be a choice and not negatively impact your DPS for choosing the "wrong one." On top of that, they said they did it because too many warlocks were choosing it. Now every single Affliction/Destruction warlock is using Supremacy, so they're huge hypocrites.


Yeah I find it ridiculous as well, it's a very typical knee jerk reaction that they tend to do. You'd think they'd learn to do little taps to push it one way or the other, and not slams. That is all that is require a lot of the time.

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Slickrock »

Well, for tomorrow...

I'm concerned.

We need to check on the spells that weren't mentioned in the patch notes, and scream loud and hard if Spirit Mend and Rabid did not actually get the fixes to counter the Exotic nerf.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Aeladrine »

Actually sitting down and reading the hunter portion of the patch notes is jut so... discouraging.

Also, does anyone understand why they took a core ability away from BM and gave another to Marks? Doesn't that put us at like 0-1-2 for BM, Surv, Marks? I may just not be understanding something, but it seems like it puts Marks at an advantage and BM at a disadvantage.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Kalliope »

Aeladrine wrote:Actually sitting down and reading the hunter portion of the patch notes is jut so... discouraging.

Also, does anyone understand why they took a core ability away from BM and gave another to Marks? Doesn't that put us at like 0-1-2 for BM, Surv, Marks? I may just not be understanding something, but it seems like it puts Marks at an advantage and BM at a disadvantage.
My theory here is that binding shot was the least taken of the talents, so it needed to be assigned to a specific tree when intimidation replaced it. Marks is the spec that focuses the most on kiting and control, which made it the frontrunning choice.

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Tsuki »

TBH, for PvE, the changes aren't going to mean much, since intimidation and binding shot are both very, very, very situational.
Still, that entire tier is pretty much "silence shot or gtfo" now...

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Kalliope »

Tsuki wrote:TBH, for PvE, the changes aren't going to mean much, since intimidation and binding shot are both very, very, very situational.
Still, that entire tier is pretty much "silence shot or gtfo" now...
You mean it wasn't before?

(My point being that not making silencing shot baseline does not solve that inherent problem with that tier.)

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Nachtwulf »

They gave marks another toy because marks is currently broken and no one plays it much anymore. Not that giving them binding shot will fix it, but that's why.

Why they made the -choices- they made still mystifies me, though. Intim has been a signature of BM since vanilla. It's not that useful (lots of things are immune to it) but I suppose I can see that it would fill the same niche as binding shot and perhaps wyvern sting as 'things that are situationally useful'.

Silencing, however, is pretty much ALWAYS useful; hunters need an interrupt just like other classes need their interrupts, and therefore it makes no sense to take something that probably won't work over something that pretty much always does. I suppose it could be worse, and they could've taken Silencing away instead, but...

Frankly, the -sensible- thing to do would be to make silencing baseline to all specs (which resolves the issue that 'everyone takes it') and leave the tier as Intim/wyvern sting/binding shot since all of those fill a general niche. I could live with that.

I'm also unhappy about the Exotics nerf although I'm also not entirely sure how much it's actually going to impact anything. It's a loss of 30% cooldown on 'special abilities'... so bite/claw/whatever are unaffected, and I don't -think- it affects pet talents like rabid. So it only applies to stuff like Burrow or Web... It won't probably matter on dps except for worms and chimerae and... I don't know about you, but I can only usually get off one go of burrow/breath before the stupid thing runs itself out of focus and I can't cast it again. Cooldowns have never actually been an issue.

I just... get really confused when they say 'oh, we don't like that all the specs feel the same' when it looks to me like they're going out of their way to make them more all-the-same. I mean.... what. And why the hell is 'exotic beasts' a Lv69 skill? It's not even very GOOD. It's not like you're giving battle rezzes to Lv25s or anything; there isn't a tamable quilen before Lv86. The worst thing you'd be doing by making it the Lv10 'pick your spec' ability is giving bloodlust to lowbies if they take the Kurken. But pet abilities scale with level so is '+1-+5 haste' for a couple of seconds all that amazing? I don't think so.

Look at other specs' Lv69 skills.... might I point out, oh, 'Titan's Grip' for an example. Now look at what's left of 'Exotic Beasts'. Don't compare too much, do they?

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Aeladrine »

Nacht, that's the thing that confuses me the most! BM's top tier skill has always been a little... Underwhelming, compared to the other specs, but it came with new pets, so whatever. Now, does it do anything except allow us to tame exotic pets? No. And exotic pets really aren't much of an advantage....

I don't know. I just don't understand.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Castile »

I actually used Binding shot quite a bit as BM, I found it really useful so I will miss it. I've never liked MM so meh...and I agree with Aeladrine, exotic pets aren't that much of an advantage if thats all BM is for now :/

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Danielfboone »

I'm liking the new Blink Strikes in my BM spec. I think AMoC is still better for the other 2.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Danielfboone »

Castile wrote:I actually used Binding shot quite a bit as BM, I found it really useful so I will miss it. I've never liked MM so meh...and I agree with Aeladrine, exotic pets aren't that much of an advantage if thats all BM is for now :/
They didn't take the heal away from Spirit Beasts or the battle rez from the Quilen so Exotics still have advantages
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Aeladrine »

Danielfboone wrote:They didn't take the heal away from Spirit Beasts or the battle rez from the Quilen so Exotics still have advantages
But they don't provide nearly as much of a boost as the other two top tier abilities. So it's... I don't know, it's very underwhelming in comparison. It's like a flavour skill, really. And exotics really aren't that much better than regular pets. Not enough to balance it out. That's why we had the 30% to begin with.
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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

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Castile wrote:I actually used Binding shot quite a bit as BM, I found it really useful so I will miss it. I've never liked MM so meh...and I agree with Aeladrine, exotic pets aren't that much of an advantage if thats all BM is for now :/

Agreed, and also with silencing pretty much being the only choice in that tier atm, Bliz are seriously deluded if they think otherwise. But then if I had to pick Binding or Intimidation, I'd take binding. I found it had a little more pve utility and application, especially in multiple add control in raid setups, it was really helpful.

But meh, I'm a little over it all now anyway, I'm just randomly getting a bit.. over all of it? I was having a chat with a friend this morning and you'd think we’d be all "OMGOMGOMG New Patch!!!!" but it was more like... "so what now? I'm bored..." :|

Aeladrine wrote: But they don't provide nearly as much of a boost as the other two top tier abilities. So it's... I don't know, it's very underwhelming in comparison. It's like a flavour skill, really. And exotics really aren't that much better than regular pets. Not enough to balance it out. That's why we had the 30% to begin with.
Also Agreed, BM at this point only means you can tame an exotic pet (a little extra, non-unique, utility), have a DPS cool down (BW) and you can use KC... that’s it. It's now just kind of diluted and is feeling less meaningful as a class that is meant to be a "MASTER OF BEASTS"

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Re: Hunter Talent Updates

Unread post by Slickrock »

Yep, if I didn't need to be able to bring a brez...
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