Update 26.1 Hunter Changes reported on +Cord of the Rings

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

Hey everyone. I transcribed a bit of the Hunter changes Cordovan recited from an internal E-mail on his show this morning.

You can find the Twitch VOD (linked with the start of the hunter timestamp) here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614896551?t=0h2m2s

Update 26.1 Aiming for Next Week, No Bullroarer

Hunter Changes Overview:

Hunter Bow Skills are going up, almost across the board.
AoE skills are being generally improved.
Hunter Melee and Trap Skills will be mostly going way up because they fell far behind.
Melee skills will now generate focus.
A number of the longer secondary skill cooldowns have been reduced.
Skills should generally feel more balanced in your rotations with more useful options available

Improved Penetrating Shot mitigation debuff magnitude is being reduced slightly but now applies to tactical as well as physical for greater group utility.
The cooldown for Dazing Blow is being reduced by about 2/3rds
The Low Cut cooldown has been increased from about 5 to 10 seconds and its base AOE targets reduced
Set Trap induction has been reduced by about 1/4
Most Bow Skil Damage has Been Increased, generally the worse a skill was before the more a bump it is getting
Damage on all melee and traps has been increased greatly and most melee attacks will now generate focus


Blue Line
Scourging Blow Bleed removal now does heavy additional damage, about 2-3 pulses of barbed arrow
Split Shot now costs 2 focus and has had its induction reduced by about 1/3rd and its damage has been greatly increased


Red Line
Upshot Cooldown is being reduced from about 20 to 15 seconds but the crit reduction now only removes 1 second per crit rather than 2 seconds
Heart Seeker's base cooldown has been reduced
The Shelob set bonus has been changed from -30 seconds Heart Seeker Cooldown to about -15 seconds
Rain of Arrows cooldown has been increased slightly but its damage has also been increased. The rain of arrows focus cost has been increased as well.
Hail of Arrows will no longer reduce Rain of Arrows' cooldown instantly, instead it may reduce Rain of Arrows cooldown by 2 seconds for each crit scored with Rain of Arrows, thus firing on larger groups of enemies can result in a faster skill cycle. The 30 second cooldown on Hail of Arrows has been removed.

Yellow Line
Tripire has had its cooldown reduced
Lingering Wound now costs 2 focus and instant damage has been increased.
Rain of Thorns has had its cooldown reduced by about 2/3rds and damage substantially increased. Now Costs less focus. Raid Set bonus has been reduced from about 60 seconds to about 15 seconds-ish
The One Trap has had its cooldown reduced - its instant damage has increased greatly but damage over time damage has been reduced. Now costs 1 focus.
Piercing trap has had its cooldown reduced and now costs 1 focus.
Explosive Arrow has had its cooldown reduced.
Deadly Decoy has had its cooldown reduced.

[Laerthan1997]

Thank you for making that summary

[Laurelinarien]

Hey everyone. I transcribed a bit of the Hunter changes Cordovan recited from an internal E-mail on his show this morning.

You can find the Twitch VOD (linked with the start of the hunter timestamp) here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614896551?t=0h2m2s

Thanks indeed! Linked your thread to a tweet, hopefully nailed your account user tag too for proper credit (if not lemme know!)

[Strider5548]

Hey everyone. I transcribed a bit of the Hunter changes Cordovan recited from an internal E-mail on his show this morning.

You can find the Twitch VOD (linked with the start of the hunter timestamp) here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614896551?t=0h2m2s

Update 26.1 Aiming for Next Week, No Bullroarer

Hunter Changes Overview:

Hunter Bow Skills are going up, almost across the board.
AoE skills are being generally improved.
Hunter Melee and Trap Skills will be mostly going way up because they fell far behind.
Melee skills will now generate focus.
A number of the longer secondary skill cooldowns have been reduced.
Skills should generally feel more balanced in your rotations with more useful options available

Improved Penetrating Shot mitigation debuff magnitude is being reduced slightly but now applies to tactical as well as physical for greater group utility.
The cooldown for Dazing Blow is being reduced by about 2/3rds
The Low Cut cooldown has been increased from about 5 to 10 seconds and its base AOE targets reduced
Set Trap induction has been reduced by about 1/4
Most Bow Skil Damage has Been Increased, generally the worse a skill was before the more a bump it is getting
Damage on all melee and traps has been increased greatly and most melee attacks will now generate focus


Blue Line
Scourging Blow Bleed removal now does heavy additional damage, about 2-3 pulses of barbed arrow
Split Shot now costs 2 focus and has had its induction reduced by about 1/3rd and its damage has been greatly increased


Red Line
Upshot Cooldown is being reduced from about 20 to 15 seconds but the crit reduction now only removes 1 second per crit rather than 2 seconds
Heart Seeker's base cooldown has been reduced
The Shelob set bonus has been changed from -30 seconds Heart Seeker Cooldown to about -15 seconds
Rain of Arrows cooldown has been increased slightly but its damage has also been increased. The rain of arrows focus cost has been increased as well.
Hail of Arrows will no longer reduce Rain of Arrows' cooldown instantly, instead it may reduce Rain of Arrows cooldown by 2 seconds for each crit scored with Rain of Arrows, thus firing on larger groups of enemies can result in a faster skill cycle. The 30 second cooldown on Hail of Arrows has been removed.

Yellow Line
Tripire has had its cooldown reduced
Lingering Wound now costs 2 focus and instant damage has been increased.
Rain of Thorns has had its cooldown reduced by about 2/3rds and damage substantially increased. Now Costs less focus. Raid Set bonus has been reduced from about 60 seconds to about 15 seconds-ish
The One Trap has had its cooldown reduced - its instant damage has increased greatly but damage over time damage has been reduced. Now costs 1 focus.
Piercing trap has had its cooldown reduced and now costs 1 focus.
Explosive Arrow has had its cooldown reduced.
Deadly Decoy has had its cooldown reduced.

Thanks for transcribing this. I'm not sure how I feel about all this. Looking at blue line, doe sthis mean that Scourging Blow will do roughly 30k damage but remove all bleeds? If that's the case I don't see why anyone would use it...if I have HS bleed on a target and they move close, it's not worth hitting a melee skill to remove that bleed and do less overall damage immediately. I am hesitant to interpret "greatly increased" as anything more than marginal, but if split shot becomes a massive DPS skill then maybe I'll slot it?

Redline seems pretty mixed as well, Upshot CD decrease is OK I guess, it will make rotations more dependent on one skill which isnt' great but maybe DPS will go higher? You also have to factor this into all the weapon swapping we need to do, if we are hitting Upshot all the time then does it even make sense to swap for swift bow and other skills...

Glad they are trying to fix ROA, again will see how it plays out.

I have no comment on yellow, I tried yellow a few times and it's just utterly useless, i don't think lower CD's on CC will change anything but I'll leave it up to more informed hunters to speak to.

With all that said, I'm glad they are finally addressing there is a problem.

[Ethrildar]

Good transcription, thanks. This is interesting. Some of the changes are questionable, Scourging Blow doing 2-3 pulses of BA's bleed makes it still utter junk, but hey-ho! As long as damage for bow skills goes up across the board and we're not still 100000% reliant on Quick Shot spam for 97% of our rotation, I'll be happy to dust off my Hunter once more.

I hope this puts Hunters at the #3 spot for DPS instead of #34th behind Atli Spider-bane, just behind high-risk melee DPS.

[Narunthon]

Thanks Chromite, for the transcription!!!

As a hunter, this is very exciting. Yellow does seem promising, at the very least it seems like it will be a blast for the Moors. And I cant wait to test out Red DPS, hopefully this will put red hunters back where they need to be.

[Laerthan1997]

It all depends on how much exactly they increase the skill damage. We shall see.

[Morellian]

Thanks so much for transcribing this!

It all depends on how much exactly they increase the skill damage. We shall see.

Agreed, it's hard to know what to make of any of this until we know exactly how much each skill has been buffed. I'm glad to see that they are looking into greater hunter utility as well as just a straight damage buff, though.

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

It's a start.

The Dazing Blow cooldown change is nice.. finally we can at least contribute a little bit with that (and make Houses of Lamentation solo take a LOT less than 5 minutes it currently does on boss 3)

Still no mention of a Ranged Interrupt. A kinmate of mine suggested that pinning shot be modified so that it includes a ranged interrupt. I think that is a fantastic idea and something we REALLY need since Blindside is melee range only and such a fail at actually getting it to interrupt things.

No mention of animation problems fixed (Burn Hot after animation, Camoflage after animation, etc..) (Yes, I know if you do burn hot and move it breaks the animation but you shouldn't need to do that...)

[Aeviternus]

Can't wait for Hunters to overbuffed because the majority of the population don't know how to play one.

Like performing surgery with a sledgehammer.

[Laerthan1997]

It's a start.

The Dazing Blow cooldown change is nice.. finally we can at least contribute a little bit with that (and make Houses of Lamentation solo take a LOT less than 5 minutes it currently does on boss 3)

Still no mention of a Ranged Interrupt. A kinmate of mine suggested that pinning shot be modified so that it includes a ranged interrupt. I think that is a fantastic idea and something we REALLY need since Blindside is melee range only and such a fail at actually getting it to interrupt things.

No mention of animation problems fixed (Burn Hot after animation, Camoflage after animation, etc..) (Yes, I know if you do burn hot and move it breaks the animation but you shouldn't need to do that...)

Dazing blow cooldown is nice Indeed. Ranged interrupt would be awesome too, still makes no sense to me why we Don't have one, and agreed about the pining shot idea, would make a lot of sense. As for animations, I seems it is a large problem in this game since a lot of classes are stuck with bad animations.

[Laerthan1997]

Can't wait for Hunters to overbuffed because the majority of the population don't know how to play one.

Like performing surgery with a sledgehammer.

Well if the increase is in the 10-20% range for most of the skills I don't think it would be an overbuff. Also even the best of the best hunters aren't taken in T2+ raids, so take it as you wish.

[Chris91]

Can't wait for Hunters to overbuffed because the majority of the population don't know how to play one.

Like performing surgery with a sledgehammer.

While I do think that Hunters and RKs are currently somewhat undertuned compared to melee dps I think the current melee meta is refreshing

I hope that ranged in general stay about 10% lower than melee so we aren't back to 5 ranged dps standing 30-40m away from the boss and ignoring 80% of the mechanics because of range

[Aeviternus]

Well if the increase is in the 10-20% range for most of the skills I don't think it would be an overbuff. Also even the best of the best hunters aren't taken in T2+ raids, so take it as you wish.

I didn't say Hunters didn't deserve a buff. I'm expressing my lack of faith in SSG's ability to not go overboard, as they did with Burglars.

[SuperPowers]

Can't wait for Hunters to overbuffed because the majority of the population don't know how to play one.

Like performing surgery with a sledgehammer.

When did ever vastin not make any class he buffs stupidly broken? and he probably has no idea that hunter benefit way more than any other class in raid situations from the raid buffs.

I'm glad that hunter is finally becoming not useless , but can't wait to see it becoming the most op class, burg has been there for a long time

[Laerthan1997]

I didn't say Hunters didn't deserve a buff. I'm expressing my lack of faith in SSG's ability to not go overboard, as they did with Burglars.

You are right. I agree with the other person that ranged dps should be about 10% lower than melee or so, since Melee needs more work to get their dps in positioning and needs to take more risks. But all classes should be viable in their own way and warrant at least one spot in a raid (when you think about it there is 10 classes so about 1-2 spots for each class in raid).

[WorrBinpike]

I think hunters had now hard 2 years behind them, so i dont mind beeing a bit overpowered again. At least we now have some little contribution with penetrating shot. But other than that Hunters still can nothing useful than damage. So give us a lot more of that please.

[Aeviternus]

I think hunters had now hard 2 years behind them, so i dont mind beeing a bit overpowered again. At least we now have some little contribution with penetrating shot. But other than that Hunters still can nothing useful than damage. So give us a lot more of that please.

Firstly, your prior "hardships" do not entitle you, in any sense, to being overpowered. Secondly, it wasn't until lvl 130 that Hunters fell out of grace, which is less than a year ago. So let's stop exaggerating.

[mikkye]

Will this nerfing of Marksman trait include heart seeker not receiving -2 seconds per crit? If thats true thats way too far imo no need nerf our cap stone skill.

[Arandour]

When did ever vastin not make any class he buffs stupidly broken?

Champions.He made lots of discounts with us but i prefer this instead of nerfing as later like he did with rks.And to be honest i feel very underprivileged/unjust, (i dont know the right word my English are bad but you can get the point) and I will explain why.
Hunters is a class that had to much attention since middle Throne raid until a bit before burglars update.Fixed many core things and broke others.Champions before get those buffs didnt had any attention since Abyss raid at least 2 plus years ago.
Champions have many issues and asked about specific fixes plus a damage buff.We got only a damage buff even that our class have many core,deep issues for years.Hunters on the other hand for been competitive needed what champions got and i mean only a damage buff nothing else (at least for now).So Vastin instead of giving deeper attention to champions that were left behind for years he just gave a row buff that probably at next lvl cup will need another one again.For hunters tho that had so much attention the past 2/3 years he is making a proper balance pass by checking individually almost every skill in every line.So if you were champion you would feel the injustice here or not?
Anyway at least we got those buffs its something from nothing but not all classes that Vastin gave buffs are broken and also didnt had the same amount of attention thats for sure.

[HotStuffs]

Champions.

he didnt work on champions it was friendlyhat

[nu2war]

At this point, I consider their admitting their is a problem with hunters, a good thing, all by itself. Good fix, bad fix, at least they are doing SOMETHING with the hunter class. It's about time.

[Neere_CH]

I agree with the other person that ranged dps should be about 10% lower than melee or so, since Melee needs more work to get their dps in positioning and needs to take more risks.

Bah, com'n, at least all other classes have different roles to perform and only hunters are pure dps. No CC (yellow for pvp only, you can't use it in raid for example instead of LRM), no debuff, nothing. And 10% lower? What's the reason then? Quick travel?

[Gunhard]

While I do think that Hunters and RKs are currently somewhat undertuned compared to melee dps I think the current melee meta is refreshing

Refreshing is not enough to describe how it looks. Of course there is different situation in different kins, but many ppl start looking at you with thoughts like: oh, look, this guy also can push the buttons and maybe even better than me. Ego of fotms players go over the roof sometimes and its nice to put them back on earth to show this is just a game and you just follow devs rules, so no need to be like that guy. One day circumstances are in your favour and another thery are not.

Bah, com'n, at least all other classes have different roles to perform and only hunters are pure dps. No CC (yellow for pvp only, you can't use it in raid for example instead of LRM), no debuff, nothing. And 10% lower? What's the reason then? Quick travel?

Reason is ignoring bunch of mechanics coz of range like was pointed above. 10% looks fair. No pain - no gain.

[Gothrir]

(...) What's the reason then? (...)

Ranged have an easier time dealing with most mechanics and have less dps downtime. Several examples - boss is kited by a tank, ranged can stay in place, benefiting from ground targeted buffs, continues to dps; boss applies a debuff on a player, which requires them to move away from the group - ranged can move away and continue to dps; boss does aoe attack around itself - ranged can ignore that and continue to dps, etc, etc, etc. In an ideal world, this should result in achieving the same overall damage as melee, who have more dps downtime.