Class Update - Hunters

[Caanwick]

Was gonna wait till I got home and got some more testing in, but want to get this started before the thread gets any further overrun with over-reaction.

I will use this post as a log for all the tests I do and will edit it to update accordingly. All dummy tests will be "naked" tests in that they will be completely unbuffed, excepting for rotational buffs, IE Burn Hot. All tests will be run with my current Live gear, which is 5 pieces North Mirkwood armor, 2-slot Allegiance gloves and cloak, North Mirkwood earrings, Mordor gold rings, Mordor bracelets, Mordor pocket, and Mordor necklace. I will note which LI legacies I'm running with each individual test, as these may change as I get more comfortable with a specific rotation. I will save any recommendations till I finish all tests I want to run on this build. I will have the Combat Analysis plug-in up for all tests.

1st Test: Red-Line

Dol Amroth training dummie

I chose these dummies as it gives me a common control variable with which to test against the Live server, without the possible environmental changes of the Glan Vraig dummies. This test was performed with my full Live server blue-line set-up, including LIs. The purpose of this test is simply to tryout the new trait line and start to get a feel for the new rotation and skills. For future tests, I will list the legacies used in that respective test.

I opened from stealth with Burn Hot-HS-Up-SB-Barbed-QS from there I dropped into a routine of Focus skills alternating with builders. Exsanguinate was used whenever off CD, as was Upshot and Heartseeker. I continued in this fashion until Burn Out neared the end of its CD, as I was trying to time the big hitters being available with Burn Hot.

Results-
The actual numbers weren't overly impressive, but were higher than I expected. Peak DPS was 51k+ which leveled out around 45-46k while heavier skills were on CD. I expect this to increase significantly as I nail down the rotation and move skills to their optimum spot in my Quickslot Bars, as well as optimizing my LIs with the proper legacies. I was mildly surprised, as the inductions and CDs of certain skills were never as big an issue as I thought they would be, coming into the test.


2nd Test: Red-Line

Dol Amroth training dummie

I chose these dummies as it gives me a common control variable with which to test against the Live server, without the possible environmental changes of the Glan Vraig dummies. This test was performed with my full Live server blue-line set-up for gear. LIs are set-up as follows:

BOW: Induction Bow Crit, Focus Bow Crit, Induction Bow Damage, Induction Bow Power + Upshot Damage, Burn Hot Damage, Swift Bow Damage, Hunter Damage Over Time

MAIN HAND: Merciful Shot CD and Crit Multiplier, Strength Stance Damage, Press Onward CD, Power Restored by Traited Intent Concentration, Agility, Vitality, Fate

My stats: PhysMast=230k; Crit=61k; Finesse=77k; Morale=71k; Power=5800 (These are a little out of balance as I am in the middle of swapping to gold North Mirkwood essences)

This test is a series of 30 parses, most of which are over 3 minutes in length. All parses start from stealth and rotations go as follows: Burn Hot-Heartseeker------Upshot-Swift Bow-Barbed Arrow-Blood Arrow-Pen Shot-Quick Shot-Swift Bow-Upshot--------rinse and repeat till Burn Hot was off CD. I would substitute Barbed Arrow for Quick Shot to keep the bleed active, as well as using Exsanguinate when it would proc. I'm still a little choppy with this rotation but it should smooth out as I re-familiarize myself with the skills, and their quickslot locations.

Results-
As is expected with a redline build, the opening salvoes peak DPS, and it quickly slopes down and levels out, until the opening can be repeated. Every parse, through the first Swift Bow, was over 75k. Some went much higher, including a few over 100k. After the first Swift Bow, the DPS would come down and level off in the 55-60k range. Once Burn Hot was off CD, I'd repeat the opening salvo, minus stealth, and DPS would spike back up to near 70k. These numbers were higher than I expected, especially where they leveled out between Burn Hots.


3rd Test: Red-Line

Central Gondor Roving Threats

Chose to run these since I had just run them helping a friend get brands for 1st Age weapons, and had some data to compare to.

All my stats, gear, and LIs are same as listed in Test 2. As with the training dummie tests, I ran these completely unbuffed. Rotation is the same as I noted in Test 2.

Results-
Gundlag - 69k DPS with a max hit of 195k

Mota - 56k DPS with a max hit of 134k

Haldalona - 61k DPS with a max hit of 230k *Note: This is the green darkwater. He actually dove underground for a couple seconds or DPS would have probably been higher.

Skorkaz - 35k DPS with a max hit of 120k *Note: The DPS for this fight was actually MUCH higher, but he hit me with a fear and I spent several seconds feared before finishing him. He was under 100k Morale when he got to me and hit with the fear.

Amorchant - 62k DPS with a max hit of 110k

All five were nearly finished by the time they reached me, so I never had more than 10k total damage done to me by a single RT. Now admittedly these are level 100 mobs, but comparatively speaking, I'm shocked by what I was able to do on this build versus my blue-line build on the Live servers. I have run these RTs enough to have a mental timer of my Time-on-Target for all of them, and every one of them surprised me with how quick they were down.


I will also test the new blue-line as time allows, but as this is the targeted trait-line for top group DPS, it will be my focus.

Vastin, PM me if you have anything specific you want me to look at in my testing this weekend.

[mkcraft27]

A couple points:

1) Continuous barrage is a 1-button rotation. That's too simplistic, even for a 'low difficulty' class, so the cooldown was implemented so that the skill can remain reasonably powerful while leaving room for other abilities in your rotation. Free power generation over on the LM's has been substantially reduced as well, so in practice continuous barrage is likely unsustainable in any case.

2) The HS reset bonus will need to be addressed in some manner. We may have to address the old set bonus in order to make room for the skill itself to be defined as a powerful finisher skill for general use. I would prefer not to leave a skill under-powered simply because some old set bonus is OP.

Ok thanks for the clarification for your intent with barrage. Knowing the concerns you have I can see how the fix makes sense to address them.


As for heart seeker I would get rid of the old set bonus and introduce a trait similar to swift and true. Give some skill (barbed arrow?) a chance to proc an instant heart seeker. With the correct internal cool down you could make the damage on heart seeker high (a "powerful finisher"), while controlling how often it could be used which would prevent abuse.

[dselden]

This thread is example why its vital to log on bullroarer to know what is going on to comment and contribute meaningful manner.

Possibly the best way to reduce penshot spam would be to nerf passive focus generation.

Agreed. They need to make strength stance the primary dps stance and nerf precision focus generation to emphasize using QS/Barbed Arrow/Swift Bow to build focus instead of just getting enough from crits on focus skills and passive regen to largely sustain focus with little to no effort.

[Cordovan]

Reminder to please not reply to someone else's opinion with your own opinion. We are trying to keep this targeted feedback thread on-track without it veering around with debate. Please have that debate in a separate thread. Also, I've had to clean up a few posts that insulted others, either individually or as a group.

[Theyaretakingthehobb]

So one word to describe this - massacre .

Blue line Hunters are getting absolutely destroyed .... and why ? So the red can be little bit more powerful .

And describing barrage as "simplistic" ... lol,it takes good rotation skill to use it properly,so what if it can be used couple times in row .

[DKenny]

So one word to describe this - massacre .

Blue line Hunters are getting absolutely destroyed .... and why ? So the red can be little bit more powerful .

And describing barrage as "simplistic" ... lol,it takes good rotation skill to use it properly,so what if it can be used couple times in row .

The blue name describing barrage as a "1 buttont rotation" tells you everything you need to know about why things have gotten to this state, and offers little hope that this latest spate of changes will ultimately improve anything in the end.

[Kasius]

So one word to describe this - massacre .

Blue line Hunters are getting absolutely destroyed .... and why ? So the red can be little bit more powerful .

And describing barrage as "simplistic" ... lol,it takes good rotation skill to use it properly,so what if it can be used couple times in row .

ist not getting destroyd.blue hunter does still enough dps to be able to do every aspect of this game!
and on 3min you still do a 40k dps around.

[siipperi]

ist not getting destroyd.blue hunter does still enough dps to be able to do every aspect of this game!
and on 3min you still do a 40k dps around.

It cant be stated enough its in very similar ballpark like many other classes, but some of these have better mitigation penetration than hunter. Only really burg is far ahead of these numbers and mostly due RW, give benefit of that to hunter and things change. Like I said, people need to download the client and test it, getting triggered on forums without actual hands-on experience is extremely missleading.

[Macdui]

Cap Hunstman Maxed tuned LIs best of non raider gear in game, maxed trait points.

I re-speced to approximate my power regen focus build huntsman and used Dol Amroth Training dummy.
No pre-buffing max burst 1 min test, just spamming a few skills, well pen shot as that's what we've returned to.


"A Ranged Attack" was second to pen shot in damage done, I was spamming pen though.

I tried to see if just doing a Barrage 1 then 2 and leaving the 3 to reset and use Barrage 1 and 2 again but the 3 buff lasts almost as long, 17 ish seconds.
So it looks like Barrage is just good for a little 3 second burst followed by 20 second wait. There is no waiting around to get 2 and then barrage 3 up, it's instantaneous so no having to look at the skill icon or use a barrage add-on, just hit one after the other for your burst. So no "skill" required in the tiering up process of live.

This build has 9126 power, it didn't drop below 9k at any time. With this build, heavily into power regen, I just doesn't use enough power to even contemplate a power pot of a power skill now that Barrage is off the table for spam (if that's what is perceived by those not in the know). So can sustain dps however long you can stand to mash 3 or 4 skills on your bar. I'll keep Bow of the Righteous and class essence for now and see where we go next. I scoffed at others needing a LM power battery.

Was annoyed finding Quick Draw and Hail of Arrows so deep in red, this is my machine gun AE build for solo but we're ok with 89 points, but no bodkin and burnhot the burst damage build needs.

Again Press Onwards in blue feels like a cop out, just to get Bowmaster inductions down. When they could have gone into blue to get them easily enough before. Huntsman was historically fast medium damage with Bow the big hitting slow skills.

Alternatives to Barrage: I see Swift bow more useful with the possibility of insta-cast and focus regen, Barbed still good with the changes and Quickshot with Fast Draw and Quickshot Focus traited still fine.

Will wait before changing any gear and a higher damage build.

I question why have barrage at all in this state. We had two skills to spam we now have one again.

Mac

[denpl5]

If you start with this statement as the premise to an argument, I feel that the following statements contradict it.




Mathematically it simply is not possible for the blue line hunter to "keep its DPS approximately where it currently is on the live worlds" if Barrage is on 20s cd, because Barrage is over half of the source damage in current DPS parses.

In reality blue line's DPS has dropped significantly in order to make room for increased survivability.

In addition, the new redline will be nowhere near the current blueline. It will not eclipse blue line at all. Rather, blue line will go down and red line will eclipse the new blue line, but the new red line will not eclipse the current blue line. This effectively leads to a big hunter DPS nerf.

Very well said. -Monty

[denpl5]

Very excited for red line to out DPS blue. But do not nerf blue line sustain. Just have red eclipse current blue...like you said. Barrage 3 second CD is not a good idea. You could increase the power consumption by a little bit maybe if you really intend to nerf barrage. The balance between nerfing barrage and buffing press onward/survivability is no balance at all. The press onward change has been needed for years. Unless I am wrong and the press onward change was not about balancing blue line.

Please have red line eclipse CURRENT blue line dps. Not new nerfed blue line. Do not compensate by nerfing blue....compensate by changing enemy NPC modifiers.

[Farasilion]

1) Continuous barrage is a 1-button rotation. That's too simplistic, even for a 'low difficulty' class, so the cooldown was implemented so that the skill can remain reasonably powerful while leaving room for other abilities in your rotation.

-Without HS set-

Barrage every ~1.5s is too simplistic yes, but right now the rotation is even worse on Bullroarer: instead of Barrage - other skill x1 - Barrage - other skill x1 - Barrage - other skill x1... (constantly rotating between skills depending on focus/proc etc, since we fill the 1s CD between each Barrage with a different skill, it is not really a one skill spam), now it is mostly Pen Shot - Pen Shot - Pen Shot - other skill x1 - Pen Shot - Pen Shot - Pen Shot - Pen Shot - other skill x1... The new rotation is basically replace Barrage slot with Pen Shot, then add the existing Pen Shot usage from Barrage rotation, resulting in much worse 1-button rotation.

imho there are several factors leading to this:
1. Skills that have higher DPS output than Pen are on 10s+ CD (Barbed bleed lasts 10s and does not stack, so it is used every 10s), once we cannot use those, we would want to do as many Pen Shot as possible;
2. Pen Shot being the only focus consumer for most of the fight;
3. A bit too much focus regen in Precision with traits and legacies;
4. Bonus damage from Strength stance is too low (atm it works as +%mastery, so heavily diluted by existing 400% mastery and 100% base damage) to outweigh the extra Pen Shot in Precision stance;
5. No need to "hoard" focus because Upshot damage (and the damage increase from spending more focus) is way too low.

Tweaking 1, 2 and 3 require way too many changes and could possibly piss off a lot of players; cannot add longer 1s CD to Pen without making rotation sluggish (due to the delay when you chain up induction skills) or rendering focus control pointless plus adding CD will annoy players; so imo best would be increase Strength stance bonus damage (maybe make it work differently than flat +%mastery? Cause if percentage mastery cap increases in future updates, it will certainly increase more than Strength stance damage legacy, hence reducing its +%mastery effect) and/or increase Upshot damage and make it worthy hoarding focus for 9 focus Upshot.. if the goal is to make hunter rotation more complex and fun.

Free power generation over on the LM's has been substantially reduced as well, so in practice continuous barrage is likely unsustainable in any case.

Right now on live, as long as captain can hit something constantly, trait Rallying Cry power restore (Rallying Roar trait) and use it properly alongside Inspire, hunters (being sensible and use power book, power cost class essence, focus power cost legacy, Bow of the Righteous trait) do not need power restore from loremaster at all while spamming Barrage. Without captain or loremaster it is still doable by using Press Onward or Rejuvenation Potions.

2) The HS reset bonus will need to be addressed in some manner. We may have to address the old set bonus in order to make room for the skill itself to be defined as a powerful finisher skill for general use. I would prefer not to leave a skill under-powered simply because some old set bonus is OP.

Agreed, having to use old sets for max DPS is silly. Aside from Throne sets, I would suggest reviewing other sets that can be used at lvl115 as well (e.g. Epic Battle jewelry sets, Dor Amroth armour sets, lvl100 PvP armour sets, lvl85 gold jewelry/offhand/armour).


Edit: correct me if I am wrong here... afaik all +%ranged/melee/tactical damage work as direct +%mastery (which you can see by mousing over mastery in character pannel) while +%induction/focus/certain skill dmg work as a separate multiplier to mastery (e.g. %damage for Barrage on tooltip after removing bow = (100%aka base dmg when mastery is 0 + %mastery) * (%dmg from hidden barrage buff + %focus bow damage + %Barrage dmg legacy + 100% aka base dmg when no buff, focus dmg trait/legacy or barrage dmg legacy), so an easy way to change Strength stance damage from +%mastery would be making it +% induction and +% focus bow damage instead of +%ranged damage.

[MAWorking]

My observations:
Barrage timer just flat sucks. It may seem like a whine if you do not play a hunter blue line. 20 seconds is excessively long. 5 seconds might add in an additional skill to the rotation. At 20 seconds it basically eliminates barrage from (my) rotation in landscape.

Penshot becomes the dominate shot. Lead off with barbed arrow for a bleed and 1 key Penshot... repeat.

I have not re-specialized to red line yet, but will. The reluctance to do so (even on a test server) is how much a pain it will be. I simply cant imagine how much a pain it is going to be to redo my LIs.

I know change is hard sometimes... but "having to" switch to red line to be considered for raids now is harsh on the player.

Even more so, to the point.... my gutt says other classes will have a higher sustained DPS now making it harder for Hunters to find a spot in raids.

In landscape, the current changes are minor (in my opinion). In higher T2 content.... most likely too much.

[Elwenwing]

A couple points:

1) Continuous barrage is a 1-button rotation. That's too simplistic, even for a 'low difficulty' class, so the cooldown was implemented so that the skill can remain reasonably powerful while leaving room for other abilities in your rotation. Free power generation over on the LM's has been substantially reduced as well, so in practice continuous barrage is likely unsustainable in any case.

2) The HS reset bonus will need to be addressed in some manner. We may have to address the old set bonus in order to make room for the skill itself to be defined as a powerful finisher skill for general use. I would prefer not to leave a skill under-powered simply because some old set bonus is OP.

Though barrage has been too strong for a single skill and a nerf has been needed, it was not a simple 1-button rotation for blue hunters. I feel a 20 second cooldown is probably one of the worst ways to go about making barrage less powerful and some good suggestions have been made too address this. For me a base damage reduction of the skill to the desired level of dps would be preferable. Especially since you state power generation from loremaster will be reduced as well!

Taking the barrage skill out of any rotation for most of the time, means you are actually making the blue line rotation even simpler.

Please realise some hunters like to play as a blue line hunter, and do not want to be forced into red line in order to make a meaningful contribution to group content.

[Gwinthilnel]

I simply cant imagine how much a pain it is going to be to redo my LIs.

.

This. If you're going to make these changes, it makes some of our legacies obsolete. I'm not going to waste a slot on barrage damage if it becomes as worthless as it would be with the cooldown. You'd have to supply us with a few imbued legacy replacement scrolls.

I'm downloading now so I can test it, but the changes are disappointing. I would love for red line to increase in DPS because it's a fun line to play, but please don't nerf blue line to accomplish this. Clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way and I hope you take this into consideration.

[Hejazia.Arkenstone]

1) Continuous barrage is a 1-button rotation. That's too simplistic, even for a 'low difficulty' class, so the cooldown was implemented so that the skill can remain reasonably powerful while leaving room for other abilities in your rotation. Free power generation over on the LM's has been substantially reduced as well, so in practice continuous barrage is likely unsustainable in any case.

I have to say that I disagree with this statement as it is simply inaccurate. It was never a 1 button rotation with Barrage, just like how it wasn't a 1 button rotation with Bolster Courage on minstrel. With Blue hunter, there was 5-6 damage skills heavily involved, with Barrage being used once every 2 skills. It was never just pressing 1 button over and over again, that's just a silly rotation and it would never work even when Barrage was on a 1 second cooldown.

With red line right now, the rotation pattern is same as it was on blue line so that never got better. We are still using one skill (Penetrating Shot) very often, with 4-5 other skills being used next to it. So the simplicity of hunter rotation was never really fixed, but rather the balance has shifted from blue being dominantly used to red being the new dominantly used line.

Just my thoughts.

[Crissaegrim]

Barrage 3 20 second cooldown simply ignored by keeping at or below Barrage 2.

Imbued Legacy on Main Hand makes it possible to have cooldown on Press Onward to be reduced to way past zero.

[Harla]

I can already see that there will be a wave of feedback upset about barrage: I haven't read the thread and I don't intend to reply to other player's comments, since this is about feedback to the point.

- A fix for barrage is, absolutely, necessary. This is a good thing.
- Saying that the current hunter DPS output is where you want them to be, when hunters are currently expected to lean heavily on the use of an obviously unintended bug to exponentially sky-rocket their DPS, is bad.
- That bug needs to be taken away. That you're doing so is good. Do understand that without it, currently, hunter DPS optimums are behind other DPS classes.

- Some (probably many) will give feedback saying that you're destroying the class, or that you're going to make hunter unplayable, or any number of other things 'may as well delete hunter', 'say good bye to raid groups' etc., etc., Please do NOT listen to these voices.
- If a player believes that the class cannot be balanced without the use of a bug to spike their output, then that is not a player whose feedback anyone should be listening to. It can, and should, be balanced without it.

- As it stands, the changes are under-performing where you've stated you want them to be. There may be numerous ways to tweak this, but that is the statement I'll make on the matter, and I'm glad there will be a further pass.

- The biggest, by far, issue with hunter sustained DPS at the moment in game and in raids, is the utterly ludicrous swing value on our crits-to-partials.

- By this I mean, we cannot be considered truly reliable DPs when we have skills that might deal 320K damage on a devastate... and the exact same skill under the exact sane conditions might deal ~9k damage when Partialled by the enemy, when we have NO viable way to remove that hefty partial chance that all bosses have. (You can say turn the boss away to knock out two of them; not always an option... See Fingar (Diversion on him is exploitative and obviously unintended behaviour) Even then, we can't knock our partial evades in any way. Other classes DPS classes either don't need to worry about partials, ie., tactical classes who can reduce their equivalent measure (resist) to nothing with finesse (Which does not affect partials at all), or else they actually have large amounts of avoidance penetration available to them. Hunters do not. This leaves us in the position where the class that is *Supposed* archetypally to be the class that is *Good At Hitting Things Accurately* ... is actually the DPS class that is LEAST reliable for hitting things with clean shots. THAT is what needs to change to help balance us.

- Regarding trait swaps amongst the trees, please keep in mind that at this stage we can get two-thirds of the way down a second tree to reach other skills, and in many cases we want to; there should remain enough desirable cross-tree skills to chose from to do this without having to take less useful or undesired ones to 'make up the numbers' on the way to that mid-to-deep desired trait.

[Caanwick]

Updated my previous post with info from my 2nd and 3rd tests of new red-line build.

[MaxHunter]

Something is wrong when you use a 105 armour set and you do more DPS than a 115 armor set...

[siipperi]

Something is wrong when you use a 105 armour set and you do more DPS than a 115 armor set...

Like gear giving us ability to reach about 250k mastery in combat? Thats the problem. Most classes are "forced" to adopt into old sets since we hit mastery cap few updates ago. Burg, rk, lm, captain, hunter, minstrel, champ, to name a few.

[RicoFTW]

It's been said here many times. Not to be mean, SSG, but if you really think that hunter's blue line dps will be the same when you put a 20 seconds cooldown on skill that does 55-60% of our overall dps (t3 barrage) while you also think that it's the only skill blue hunters use, then no offence but you guys are clueless.

Few things.
You should rather reduce the stupid animation of Cry of the Hunter instead of giving it a shorted cooldown and faster run speed.
Do something about blue and red line. You made it even worse now. Both lines are now basically pen shot spam.
And for God's sake stop this old sets nonsense. It's really sad to see half of the classes using underleveled armour. Put a better cap on the set like 74 instead of 75, 84 - 85 etc etc, so one cannot use them at next *lvl cap*.
There is a bug with the power cost essence. Pen shot cost 145 without the proc and 30 (!) with. So one cannot run out of power now no matter what line you are in or what skills you use, just like RKs/minstrels. Don't think this is wai.
PO cooldown reduced to 0 with non imbued swapper. Would sooner nerf the heal but make it an instant cast (like other classes).

I remember when you guys said that you don't intend people to be able to cap multiple stats. I guess that's why we have got 5th version of essences during ONE LVL CAP ! Now some classes are pretty much forced to use underleveled stuff to not have ridiculous amount of masery/crit or to have useful set bonuses (unline Abyss ones) while still being able to cap literally every stat...

[Oelle]

There is a bug with the power cost essence. Pen shot cost 145 without the proc and 30 (!) with. So one cannot run out of power now no matter what line you are in or what skills you use, just like RKs/minstrels. Don't think this is wai.

Its additive stacking, like nearly everwhere in the game.
usually, penshot at lvl115 costs 230 power. half of that is 115 and thats the reduction you see when the essence procc is up.
that penshot costs 145 for you just means, that you already have 37% power reduction, I'll guess via power book (-12%) and legacy (-25%).
Additive stacking is also the reason, why barrage was that expensive.
Starting value for barrage afaik is 230. with your book, legacy and essence, that would go down to 30. Now, getting barrage costs at +50/+100/+150/+200/+300% which happened with barrage tiering, that wouldnt be much of an issue, if 30 would be the base for that raises. However, 230 was the base for these raises, which made barrages with roughly 1k power cost possible to happen.
so its totally not a bug and WAI. However, I will totally agree, if you start joining my agenda to make things multiplicative


and @ high stats at lvl115... I think, its time to get to lvl125, soon, with another huge jump in stats and soon followed with another round of clearly too overpowered items that allow reaching all caps again, soon (or maybe, slowing down itemization to NOT do the same mistake again). #uncapeverything #strongDRforeverything #hardcapssuck

[Theawen]

I won't be mathematical about it at all. I spent months on this hunter after leaving my main champion and the game for 5 years after similar circumstances.

Whatever you say or do won't compensate for my time and money spent cause I like the playstyle of the blue hunter the way it is. And playing for 4 months and trying to cap my LIs made for the blue line, just the thought making another ones makes me leave and never go back. So much disrespect for someones time spent. Maybe you see it other way, but from my point of view as a customer that's the only way I see it when deciding where to spend my money too.

[Araphorn]

Would very much like to see Red Line parses on the new Training Dummies in E&G from main/experienced Hunters, to see where Hunters stand in general. So far, I only see one parse here on the new dummies.