Hello BR forum, players and devs alike, I've decided to make three posts concerning Hunter and Burglar on the latest build on Bullroarer.
This post focuses on the traceries available for Hunter and check out the follow up post to this about Hunter damage output on the 4th BR build!

Available Class Traceries


I like the approach SSG has taken with the new Legendary system, making it new, but the traceries are familiar to the legacies we had before.
What I'd like to see later on is going deeper with traceries, not just being +%boosts but a way to possibly alter how skills behave eg. making Penetrating Shot an induction focus skill but it applies to +X amount of targets.


Now to the table of available traceries for Hunter



Most of these are perfectly fine for hunter as it is now but there are couple that I want bring to attention

Focus Bow Critical Multiplier: The damage output of Focus Bow Skills is very low compared to the Induction Bow Skills, mostly cause of the long animations.
All of that animation time could be used to cast Quick Shots to reduce the cooldown of Heart Seeker and Upshot. Blood Arrow, Split Shot and Merciful Shot at the very least need their damage to be leveled with the Induction Bow Skills when you look at the time you spend in the animation.

Precision Stance Critical Magnitude In theory this tracery is really great, in practice it is one of the reasons why Hunter feels so unrewarding to play and another reason to never do any sort of stance swapping to utilize the 10s Stance swap buffs.

Needful Haste Duration This tracery is simply put useless. Needful Haste has a base duration of 15 seconds and is renewed very consistantly through basic attacks and a bit more rarely through Bow Skills. This tracery should be replaced by something else eg. Focus Bow Skill damage.

Ranged Skill Black and Evade Chance Modifier the values are so low to even get any real testing done and as a Hunter you are not going to be getting many BPE's with the amount of Finesse you get only from gear and Virtues.
Cool idea, but values should be bigger. Or don't give us that much Finesse from gear and Virtues at next cap.

Press Onward Cooldown and Heal The cooldown part of this tracery is really what makes the skill a strong defensive cooldown, the skill should not get more heal value, the traits and morale/vitality stacking make this skill very strong with its very fast animation. Keep the cooldown portion, take out the healing part. Maybe instead the tracery could add a buff to the skill instead.

Beneath Notice Cooldown, Explosive Arrow Damage and Strength of the Earth Morale heal quite irrelevant skills in Hunter's arsenal, but I want to bring them to attention that these traceries are doing nothing in practice.
Beneath Notice from 5min -> 2min48s
Explosive Arrow arrow's damage can't crit and is a focus skill, a damage focused skill that does very low damage, even when taking the "infinite" target count in the consideration
Strength of the Earth, 5s channel that roots you in place, 130cap base morale heal from 2155 -> 3335 with tracery
Three incredibly bad traceries just cause the base skills are already very bad.

Distracting Shot A utility skill, but a 16.5s cooldown reduction from a 3min base/2min traited cooldown does not really add much power to it when you compare to the other tracery options.


In summary

Most of the traceries that you slot have no competition at all, which I'm not a huge fan of since it only decreases the personalization of your character's build.
Maybe something to think over for the future releases and I'm not speaking only for Hunter, but for other classes as well.

That is all I have on Hunter traceries. Thank you for reading and check out my other posts about Hunter damage output and Burglar on the 4th BR build!