Let's start talking about hunters...

[SSG_Orion]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

[Oelle]

the yellow traitline should get several buffs to be worthwile outside of PvMP. Not (just) more damage, but mostly better stuff for the traps and decoy as thats the base of that traitline.

[19Euan96]

Hi Orion,

I only have a few major things I’d love to see changed with the hunters, which is my main class, so hopefully I know a little something. But I would make clear I mostly do landscape and quests as opposed to raiding etc.

For Blue Line:
- with the massive power creep, especially with the new LI’s I’d love to see barrage go back to not having a cool down. I think instead a higher power cost to make it a limited burst attack outside of rapid fire could be really fun. I think strength of the earth would be great if blue line hunters could use it while moving. Also a visual indication option (toggle perhaps) for when volley has triggered around your character, like the brawler’s mettle gauge for example, so you can maybe be more selecting about what you use it with.

For Red Line:
I love a good bit of red line, but the things I miss the most l, which to me feels less relevant now in power sense, especially when I see things like champ aoe, is I miss rain of arrows old reset chance on critical/devastates as opposed to the cool-down reduction we have now. I never felt it triggered enough to be overpowered, especially since focus meant you could only go so many times at once. I was very fun flavour as much as anything else. That’s always my biggest gripe in red line.

For Yellow Line:
Yellow is really fun…conceptually. There was a brief period when imbued weapons were first introduced where the trap damage scaled with your physical mastery rather than your weapon and they were really viable for solo play for a bit, not competing with the other lines but being pretty decent. Yellow just consistently feels weak compared to the other two, things like explosive arrow do about as much damage as a quick shot or two in the other lines, and it feels very lacklustre. Trap damage just needs a hike to make yellow a viable thing people can play when levelling, that isn’t massively outpaced at max level.

Hunters as a class:
As a personal thing, I’d love it if blood arrow healed maybe like 15% rather than 10 as it just feels very low as the only baseline heal the class gets compared to other, although we are ranged I do appreciate. Speaking of blood arrow, I really dislike the tying of corruption removal to the skill as well as healing. Sometimes you’re having to remove a corruption at full health or heal when you wanted to save it for a corruption etc. I assumed it was removed from merciful shot because of the health threshold requirement meaning you sometime wouldn’t have it for ages, but I just wish it was tethered to another skill instead. Even a new ability with low damage but an instead corruption removal or something, just one that wasn’t tied to a limited low heal.

[Strider5548]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

Hunter was my main for the first 14 years of this game...I have not really touched mine in a meaningful way since Gundabad launched so unfortunately I don't have a ton of feedback, but just wanted to post my appreciation for this thread.

Just a couple obvious things off the top of my head:

1) Red capstone skill has always been useless, an evade bonus for standing still is something no hunter has ever traited for...this could definitely be reworked.

2) Blue/Yellow line need a real purpose, blue used to be a great solo/leveling line but when it got too OP it was totally wrecked in the revamp around level 115 iirc. Yellow has some really niche applications in PvMP but other than that red line is pretty much the way to go for everything in PvE.

Maybe I'll dust off my hunter shortly so that I can provide more helpful thoughts, thanks again for posting this thread!

[Trixie_Me]

I feel like red hunters are in a really, really good place. My only request is please don't break them!

[Aeroniel]

For a casual solo player such as myself, blue line hunter is great! I hope it continues to be great.

Yellow line as people have said lacks...something. Here's a thought - make yellow line for hunters function just like yellow line for brawlers. Let it be a trait line that blue and red can dip into for 1 pt. Fill up yellow line with utility skills, esp crowd control skills. Eliminate yellow line for hunter being a stand alone spec.

Thanks for your work, Orion!

[Tatharil]

1. Define what yellow should be. What's its defined role. It tries to do several things at once and doesn't excel in any of it. Trait tree description states that it focuses on bleeds, cc and debuffing.
1.1 Cc: Too much roots, weakest sort of CC. Distracting shot too long CD since HD. Red line has comparable CC, but does way more damage.
1.2 Debuffs: in theory they are good, in reality applying them is very clunky and red has comparable debuffs. Penetrating shot de uff in red line is a lot stronger than yellow line ps debuffs armour rend.
1.3 bleeds: blue has stronger bleeds, lingering wound is a bad joke. Costs focus, and needs to be tiered up 4 times to be as strong as blue barbed arrow.

Bugs and annoyances in yellow:
2.1 lingering wound a defining attack of yellow line has several weaknesses making it useless. :needs to be tiered up 4 times to do noticeable damage ticks, doesn't benefit from oils or crit legacies, consumes focus
2.2 no defining stance. Strength used to increase lingering wound damage, not anymore since le is neither focus nor induction skill, precision lacks the snare and is hard to invest points in imp precision, endurance is useless. Give endurance yellow specific bonuses like reduced cc skill CD or increased bleed damage. Yellow lacks focus generating traits. Deadly precision and imp precision stance are too deep down in red and blue. Yellow lacks a focus consuming skill that's worth it since upshot can't be traited anymore. Wounded prey bonus damage is too low. Suggestion: change it into a new skill that consumes lw stacks and increases incoming damage per lw stack consumed.
2.3 trait line bonuses are strong, traits aren't. Instant traps, no focus loss on movement, trapdebuffs. Those are great. Rain of thorns damage, evade chance, armour rend... aren't

There are a lot more things to adress, but first of all keep in mind: if you change something because of red/blue, don't forget to think about how it affects yellow. Red buffs were mostly yellow nerfs. New strength stance, upshot redline only, lw losing initial tick, giving red stronger easier to apply debuffs than yellow.....

[DoRonRon]

I believe it was Chromite that proved that the chain crit of Rain of Arrows made it destabilising for raid content. With increases to base crit with tracery bonuses this could only be worse now.

Loathed to suggest Blue capstones are not worth traiting because points spent in Bowmaster bring the solo Huntsman landscaper into it's own.

But having a trait, Rapid Fire, to require no focus cost for focus skills without sufficient focus skills that aren't incurring a CD makes no sense. Rather use Burn Hot and Deadly Precision - again from Bowmaster.

Volley is too expensive for the chances and without add-ons to track activity a nightmare to manage.

Moving Target.. we don't need evade cos with Improved Fleetness nothing can catch us up. Even that Troll RT in Mirkwood.

And Purge Poison ofc. We're always on the move in blue so why can we Press Onward but not cure on the move. But bring it into line with other classes animations and not require an immediate to break and move on when you might want that ranged interrupt for it's intended usage instead, Blindside.

For starters.

[DoRonRon]

*cough bring back "Focus Burn" Huntsman...

[alwaysbroke]

Beneath Notice could use a buff now that our LI's are immensely more powerful.

[Lillipia]

Hello,

I love my hunter class toons and currently enjoy the red line, but love playing the yellow line to explode enemies in close quarters and have a decoy but with no DPS to destroy enemies, it takes a long to play through quests and enemy camps on yellow line in PvE.

Haven't really even touched the Blue line since Red line is exactly where it should be for most PvE

Don't really do too much PvP since I always die on a Hunter lol.

I agree with most suggestions here for yellow line and not to really mess with the red line too much as it is in a good place. Would like to see some changes to blue line to try out.

Thanks

[theultimatekyle]

I'll also agree that red hunters are in a good spot. The only line that needs repair is yellow hunter.

I've tried making a forum post on this before, and got some engagement, though probably less than you were hoping for.

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...s-improvements

For a recap of my personal points,

Normally I don't play yellow hunter (I mean, who would?) because of its lack of viability in group content. But lately, I've been thinking about changes that could be made to the line to make it at least somewhat appealing to play in a raid/group setting. I'm no expert on yellow line, but would like to try and start a conversation on how to fix the trait line. For starters:

1)Rain of thorns. I personally would like to see its cooldown reduced to 45 seconds (so down to 30 seconds with the set bonus) and bring its focus cost down a little, at least in line with rain/hail of arrows.

2)Piercing Trap. With the Master Trapper trait, piercing trap returns morale to anyone that hits its target. As of now though, that morale return is less than a thousand points, which is inconsequential compared to the total morale players currently have. Even lower morale dps are sitting at 200k, with tanks ranging 500k-900k. Adjusting piercing trap to return even 1% of morale on hit instead of a flat amount of morale would make a huge difference in its utility.

3)Deadly decoy. Would benefit from being ranged ground-targeted like most of your other traps are after traiting the Advanced placement skill. Also needs a slightly larger taunt range.

4)Lingering wound. Even if you don't change the focus cost or the initial hit damage, it desperately needs higher bleed damage, and a longer bleed duration. Barbed arrow currently has a better bleed (up to lingering wound tier 3), a shorter cooldown, a longer duration, and a stronger initial hit. So lingering wound needs to be brought at least in line with Barbed Arrow.

5)Explosive Arrow. Being ground-targeted actually feels like a detriment to this skill. Would prefer to see it direct target, and maybe drop a burning puddle on the ground similar to sticky gourd on LM, or possibly a stun to mobs it hits? The time it takes to use it, the focus cost, and the current damage output makes explosive arrow not worth using atm. I can understand not buffing its damage, since yellow isn't the damage-centric tree for hunters, but then it should at least have more utility.

6)Purge poison. Tripling its cooldown for yellow seems excessive, even if you are expanding it to hit up to 6 targets (your fellow). And with the huge diminishing return on resistance rating (plus the 50% cap) the added poison resistance rating feels pretty worthless. Again, I'd like added utility there. Maybe in yellow line have a 30 second cooldown on purge poison with an added resistance percentage, similar to a Captain's Muster Courage? Even a flat 10% poison resistance would be useful for a raid setting.

Yellow hunter doesnt need to be amazing damage like Red Hunter, but there's no reason it shouldn't be viable for a raid.

Other people in the post chain seemed bothered by the armour rend trait in yellow. BPE reduction isnt great for a hunter, that can bypass block and parry in a raid by just attacking from the back of the mob. Changing it to a mit reduction on top of the mits pen already on penetrating shots would be too strong though, so maybe a crit defense % cut?

The deadly decoy also dies too easily, and sometimes doesnt explode if killed too quickly. So maybe make it unkillable for its duration, or maybe make the morale visible so we know what we're working with.

Overall though, yellow line needs more utility than it currently has. Some extra grace period time for the CCs would be nice too, and rain of thorns is even worse off now without the cooldown reduction from the remmo set.

[Arabani]

I do not really play a hunter, but I'd like to see Yellow line being useful. Or you can go the Brawler way and make Yellow line a supplementary one for the other llines. Would be the easiets and the best way, I guess. Because right now the line is pretty much useless outside of roleplaying a hobbit hunter.

[jalapeno_dude]

One thing I'd like to see, which has nothing to do with raid balance but a whole lot to do with class fantasy, is a renewed commitment to actually placing Camp Site Fires in game. If you look at https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Camp_Site_Fire or the in-game maps you can see that this has been hugely hit or miss for many many years now. For example there are Camp Site Fires in Eastern Gondor but none at all in Central or Western Gondor. The last time it feels like anyone paid attention to them was during the first Mordor expansion and a few quest packs that followed, but there's again been nothing since U24 Vales of Anduin, which dropped 3 years ago when the level cap was 20 levels lower.

Please, just put "add 1-3 camp site fires per zone" on a checklist somewhere and stick with it, and ideally, take a few days of spare dev time to go back and put them into, at minimum, the missing Gondor zones and the post-120 content. (And Wildwood/Yondershire/etc. would be nice too!)

[Tatharil]

The deadly decoy also dies too easily, and sometimes doesnt explode if killed too quickly. So maybe make it unkillable for its duration, or maybe make the morale visible so we know what we're working with.

Overall though, yellow line needs more utility than it currently has. Some extra grace period time for the CCs would be nice too, and rain of thorns is even worse off now without the cooldown reduction from the remmo set.

I'd prefer explosive arrow to apply deadly decoy debuff. Decoy is clunky, unreliable and sometimes the taunt isnt wanted. That way explosive arrow becomes useful. Regarding utility: either red line utility needs to be nerfed or yellow line utility buffed by an immense amount. Yellow is the supporting, debuffing line and should clearly outshine red in that regard.
About 4 or 5 years old post of mine, but most of it is still true.

0. What is yellow line about?

Traitline description: Focuses on sustained damage, AoE, and CC, controling the flow of battle while providing buffs for allies to gain leverage on their opponents.
skills earned for choosing yellow line: Lingering Wound, Decoy and all traps can be used while moving and have no inductions.

-> Yellow lines role as it is described: CC, offensive debuffs, damage over time


1. How good does it fulfill this role?

CC: Trapper of Foes has many tools to slow and root foes, but it is the weakest form of CC and red has almost as much CC(Lowcut root, pinning shot). Ranged and casters are unaffected. Traps are clunky to use, too.
Distracting Shot our best CC skill was made worthless with HD trait trees. Duration too short, CD too long.

Offensive debuffs: Traps debuff strength is fine as it is, BUT applying those debuffs is clunky and unreliable. 20m range and ground targeted(if traited) and it is hard to control which opponent triggers a trap if there are several foes. Deadly decoy's taunt may cause trouble in groups. Armour Rend is okish, but 5 traitpoints is a little expensive. Piercing trap morale return is rather weak. Red got better debuffing ability than yellow now (build #3).

Damage over time: Yellow has a lot of damage over time effects, but most of them don't scale well. Barbed Arrow is fine. (...)
Red and blue have at least equally strong bleeds (HS and Exs)


2. What does it need to fulfill this role more effectively?

CC: Improve Disctracting Shot. Restore it to its preHD glory, when yellow hunter with capstone could permamezz 1 target.

Offensive debuffs: A more reliable way to apply debuffs, especially in groups.

Damage over time: Proper scaling of yellow line DoT.

3. Strong trait setbonuses, weak traits

Yellow has pretty good and strong trait setbonuses:

- instant traps while moving
- LW: instant bleedshot
- Deadly Decoy: Not the best but still quite useful, if it survives long enough to explode a good debuff and some breathing time gained via aoe stun.
- Triple Trap: great for controling greater groups.
- Master Trapper: The best trait setbonus. Great debuffs. (+ 15% incoming damage, + 10% incoming critical chance, morale return)
- Strong Intimidation: The weakest one(+ 5 sec fear duration, 5% fear resistance penetration). Bard's Arrow isn't our best CC-skill.
- Heightened Senses: A strong one. + 6 stealth detect, + 5% evade, - 5 sec trap CD after(partially) evading an attack
- Purge Poison: It's ok. Fellowship wide purge.
- Sturdy Traps: Another strong one. + 5 sec trap grace period, no focus loss on movement.

But most of the yellow traits are weak.

Explosive Arrow: Damage is weak. 1/3 of RoA with thrice the CD and it doesn't reset on crit. Explosive Powder trait useless.

Endurance Stance and trait useless: Endurance stance doesn't offer anything useful to yellow hunters(or any hunter traitline) at all and the Endurance trait doesn't offer anything useful. Strength provides a strong snare and some boost to bleeds, precision boosts focusgeneration.

Improved Distracting Shot: CD reduction to low, no increase in duration.

The One Trap: Like the other traps it's damage scales with level only and is very weak at higher levels. Doesn't offer anything else except a snare.

Rain of Thorns rank2-4: Rain of Thorns is primarily a CC-skill not a dps-skill. Increasing damage isn't useful.

Complex Mechanisms: Finesse makes this trait worthless.

Armour Rend: 5 trait points is kind of expensive.

Wounded Prey: Bonus damage is rather weak and costs all LW bleed stacks.


4. How could Trapper of Foes be improved to fulfill it's role better? (aka suggestions)

Skills:

Lingering Wound: proper scaling, fire/light oil and critical multiplyer legaciesshould work on this skill.


Traits:

Explosive Arrow, Explosive Powder: Add a stuneffect to Explosive Arrow - rank 1 : Explosive Arrow stuns for 1 sec. rank 2-4 increase duration to 1,75/2,5/3 sec. rank 5: Explosive Arrow applies Deadly Decoys incoming critical chance debuff if Master Trapper is unlocked.

Endurance: Endurance stance increases Hunter's damage over time by 10%, Endurance trait increases this bonus by +10% per rank. Or Endurance stance improves CC skills (reduce CD, increase duration... whatever) endurance trait improves QS heal, turns it into a small fellowship heal.

Improved Distracting Shot, Strong Intimidation: Strong Intimidation additionally removes DS induction and reduces DS CD by 90 sec. Improved DS: increases duration by 10sec/20sec. ( Why gated behind a trait and a traitline bonus and not a simple legacy? Red and blue shouldn't have access to a permamezzing DS.)

Rain of Thorns rank 2-4: Replace damage increase with CD reduction, increased targets or reduced chance to break on damage.

Complex Mechanisms: Increase trap debuff duration by 2 sec per rank.

Armour Rend: reduce required traitpoints for max debuff strength to 2.

The One Trap: Either add all known trapdebuffs to it or turn it into an AoE mezz like Bane Flare. If trap is triggered a blinding flash/explosion mezzes enemies around for 10 sec.

Wounded Prey: Instead of causing bonus damage add an incoming damage debuff, triple traps incoming damage debuff could be removed in return. For each LW tier removed incoming damage is increased by 3% -> 12% incoming damage after using Merciful shot on target with 4 LW tiers. (That way there could be a useful yellow raid setbonus: your Lingering Wound may now stack up to 5 times. -> + 3% additional incoming damage.)

Legacies:

Melee weapon


- Endurance dot damage (It could replace the pointless melee skill critical rating legacy): Each tier increases hunter damage over time effects by 2% (+ 0,4% per rank).

- Quickshot healing

- Piercing Trap morale return: increases Piercing Trap morale return by 10% (+ 0,5% per Rank)

[Patriotp3a]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

As a long time lurker in these forums, posts like this from devs is honestly really nice to see.

[CasualActual]

Have a look at raid loot, for some reason hunter seems to get warden tanking gear in drops more often than not. To be clear when I say warden tanking jewerly I mean high vit, low agility pcs with mitigation instead of crit/mastery/finesse. Its been this way since Remmorchant and now HH potentially before that I don't know.

Any other feedback I could provide would be to cleanup the trait lines, get rid of stuff nobody uses and simplify things including making sure the tooltips are up to date and concise and verifying that all skills are wai. Hunter seems more dependent on LM then other classes, maybe something to look at balancing.

Above all as others have said, its nice to see a dev having conversations with the players again.

[Morat]

Have a look at raid loot, for some reason hunter seems to get warden tanking gear in drops more often than not. ...

Even wardens have no use for warden tanking gear anymore, alas.

[Atomos]

2 things related to blue-line Hunter:

1. The cure for effects skill "Purge Poison" roots you at your current position for a few seconds, even in blue-line. This kind of seems out of place for me because IMO the whole point of choosing blue-line over red-line is to sacrifice damage and range for increased mobility. I would like to see this skill changed so that it can be used while moving, at least for blue-line Hunter.

2. Often after using the skill "Blood Arrow", I have to press the key for the skill "Exsanguinate" multiple times before "Exsanguinate" is used a few seconds later. Sometimes this does not happen and I can use "Exsanguinate" immediately after using "Blood Arrow", as I would like. Not sure if it's related to lag or something with the animation time/skill delay, or something else. I would appreciate this being fixed or improved.

[CasualActual]

2. Often after using the skill "Blood Arrow", I have to press the key for the skill "Exsanguinate" multiple times before "Exsanguinate" is used a few seconds later. Sometimes this does not happen and I can use "Exsanguinate" immediately after using "Blood Arrow", as I would like. Not sure if it's related to lag or something with the animation time/skill delay, or something else. I would appreciate this being fixed or improved.

I've had this problem too, I thought it was just me.

[Atomos]

I've had this problem too, I thought it was just me.

Yeah, same. I'm surprised it hasn't been brought up a lot before (or I've just missed the posts about it lol).

The problem definitely improves for me when playing in off-peak hours so I think there's a lag/server load related component to it. I'm not sure if there's also an animation time/skill delay or some other component contributing to the problem as well though. Possibly something like an inconsistent or excessively long animation time/skill delay between the 2 skills.

[CasualActual]

Yeah, same. I'm surprised it hasn't been brought up a lot before (or I've just missed the posts about it lol).

The problem definitely improves for me when playing in off-peak hours so I think there's a lag/server load related component to it. I'm not sure if there's also an animation time/skill delay or some other component contributing to the problem as well though. Possibly something like an inconsistent or excessively long animation time/skill delay between the 2 skills.

Yep, almost as if the game detects that we've hit the skill but is too busy to accept the skill and tries to delay its execution. I'm not sure its lag related because I recall trying other skills in the same time frame and having them work normally then coming back to exsanguate and having the same thing happen. My hunter is a stout axe in the event someone from SSG does look into this and its related to race.

[cwswim03]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

It's a problem that the best DPS makeup in t4/t5 HH is 3 hunters + yellow mini/yellow warden.

[Atomos]

Yep, almost as if the game detects that we've hit the skill but is too busy to accept the skill and tries to delay its execution. I'm not sure its lag related because I recall trying other skills in the same time frame and having them work normally then coming back to exsanguate and having the same thing happen. My hunter is a stout axe in the event someone from SSG does look into this and its related to race.

Good points. You are correct. I forgot that the other skills were working as normal at the same time.

My hunter’s race is high elf.

[Patriotp3a]

Plant feet has been useless in red since traits got reworked. A defensive trait that seemed like a last minute addition to the best offensive traitline. I can dig up ideas the community has given over the years as a replacement (tiering buffs come to mind).
-Bow of righteous is now outdated
-Maybe this is just me, but I never really cared for pathfinder. Since it is attached to the mobility line, it could be changed to a flat +x% run speed that works in-combat
-Traps in yellow can be placed too close. Not a big deal as you can just slightly shift where you click. Just always found it odd.