Class Update - Hunters

[Oelle]

It means after you do barrage 3 the cooldown of 20 secs starts.

okay... thats even harder than I thought... but if it works this way, then why isnt the CD exactly as long as the barrage buff, so 5s?
Then, one could restart as soon as its down again. However, this actually really destroys the sense of barrage.

How about one of this?
a) after Barrage3, all barrageinternal buffs are deleted, resetting to normal barrage and restart immediately possible
b) a 5s cd instead of 20s
c) delete barrage2 and barrage3 and chance nothing around how barrage works. That should result in 4-5 tiers.
d) apply a CD on barrage itself, maybe 3 seconds or something like that. 3 seconds between 2 barrages should mean that any barrage can only profit from the last shot barrage. This would actually result in 3 tiers, as designed.
e) actually fix the internal barrage buffs, so they stop stacking with each other. Would result in 3 tiers, too, but seems complicated as it should already have been done if it was that simple.

resulting damage should be liveserver>c>e>a~d>b>activeBR. Dont know if d or a has higher damage, but the current BR version really isnt funny.

a, c and e would not change the playstyle, just reduce damage.
b and current BR are annoying.
d would change the rotation a bit, but might be acceptable and still reduce damage a lot.


thinking about d:
0s: barrage. barrage changes to barrage2 with +30% damage and +50% costs.
animation+3s: barrage2 hits with +30% damage. barrage2 changes to barrage3 with +60% damage and +100% costs. Now, its at +90% and +150% costs.
5s: barrage-internal buff of first barrage wears off.
2x animation+6s: barrage3 hits with +60% damage. barrage3 stays barrage3 with +60% damage and +100% costs. Now, its at +120% damage and +200% costs.
animation+8s: barrage-internal buff of barrage2 wears off.
3x animation+9s: barrage3 hits with +60% damage. barrage3 stays barrage3 with +60% damage and +100% costs. Now, its at +120% damage and +200% costs.
repeats itself endlessly... so we would only have three tiers of damage with version d and it should require no change besides a small cooldown for the skill itself.
Note: the CD might even be shorter than 3s. The minimum CD to achieve this effect is 2.5s minus animation of barrage.

[Merridew]

Why???!!!

[Araphorn]

Haven't seen this being mentioned but Press Onward with the cooldown reduction legacy on non-imbued weapon takes its cooldown to 0 seconds.

This could be a problem, with Hunters healing themselves for ~15k every 2 seconds.

[Happychappy]

instant HS reset should never have been a setbonus. That thing should be the capstone of redline. Or HS should always be instant (and redline already reduces its CD, which is fine). With its long induction and cooldown, there is no use for HS besides bursting down enemies from stealth.

Heartseeker could have been like exsanguinate or the Beornings Execute. Without the need for the armour set .

[Edlenn]

Don't care for these changes, particularly the barrage cooldown which seems a clunky impediment in the middle of blue hunters' move and shoot rotation. If the idea is to reduce blue damage Oelle has some good suggestions. If the idea is to buff red I'd rather see you do that with fewer changes to blue.

[Siddharta]

Heartseeker set-bonus must be removed for sure. But something needs to be done because without lvl 105 set this skill is almost completely useless.

Any parses without HS reset set?
I'm currently around 40k with capped crit\mastery (Tavern DPS dummy)



Nerf seems quite big for me (if HS set will be removed)

[Giliodor]

In an effort to make Upshot valuable and make red line more interesting and more effective, I have the following suggestion:

Each use of Upshot applies a stack of "Patient Marksman"(?). At five stacks, the cool down of Heart-seeker is reset, and Heart-seeker becomes instant. Once this effect is consumed, the stacks are reset.

Thoughts?

[Happychappy]

In an effort to make Upshot valuable and make red line more interesting and more effective, I have the following suggestion:

Each use of Upshot applies a stack of "Patient Marksman"(?). At five stacks, the cool down of Heart-seeker is reset, and Heart-seeker becomes instant. Once this effect is consumed, the stacks are reset.

Thoughts?

possibly.

Or just have Heartseeker useable after using upshot, with no induction but give Heartseeker a cooldown. It would make nice burst damage.

[DKenny]

I would just like to point out to everyone that they are going to remove the set bonus from Throne gear (aka HS reset bonus). New hunters will not be able to get that set in the next update while people who already had it, will keep it.

No more barrage spam, no more Heartseeker reset. Improved Penetrating Shot and Improved Swift Bow spam for the win? You pretty much need Heartseeker reset in redline for that line to be decent damage, otherwise what does redline even have to offer in terms of superior DPS?

If that is true, it is possibly the worse aspect of this update. Force hunters back into red for dps, but HS reset makes a huge difference. If you don't already have it you cannot get it in the future, but if you already have it you get to keep it? Absolutely the worst way to go, either allow it to continue to be obtainable or remove it completely from the game, including on existing armour.

[mkcraft27]

-General line stuff

So first off thank you for letting us know what each tree is intended to do. Now that we know red is supposed to be the raid DPS and blue is solo/Survivability we can test to see if those goals have been met. That being said if blue is going to be solo/survivability, what is yellow supposed to do?. On live it looks like yellow is a CC/support line however it does not function as such. Yellow line CC is very weak and unreliable and the support aspect is similarly lackluster. Seeing as no real changes were made to yellow line it looks like it will continue to be ignored by the vast majority of hunters. This class update gives you a great opportunity to really define what yellow line is supposed to be and to update it to achieve that goal.

-Blue line
With blue line I think you are saying one thing, but then doing another. You intend for it to be a solo/survivability line yet you want the DPS to remain approximately where it is on live. On live Blue hunter is the highest DPS spec beating the red RK by a small margin. RK's are getting a DPS nerf due to loosing relics (RK healing is also getting nerfed due to lost relics and they were already lagging behind mini heals). So Blue hunter DPS stays the same RK DPS goes down. That means the hunter solo line will be capable of out DPSing the RK's main DPS line and the hunter DPS line will out perform them even more, is that really what you want?

However introducing the 20s barrage cooldown is going to seriously nerf blue hunter DPS. That makes sense if you want blue line to be solo/survivability but doesn't make sense if you want blue hunter DPS to be approximately what it is on live. You can't nerf barrage if you want blue DPS to stay the same and you should not want blue DPS to stay the same if you want it to be a solo/survivability line.

Speaking of barrage, obviously as devs you guys though it wasn't WAI hence the nerf. So as devs what aspect of barrage do you feel is not WAI? Is the issue barrage continuing to tier up beyond T3, is being able to maintain that high tier, or is is both? As a player I think the aspect not WAI is barrage being able to tier up beyond T3, I feel being able to maintain a tiered barrage is perfectly fine. If you neither aspect is WAI then introducing a 20s cool down prevents both aspects from occurring. You can no longer tier barrage up past T3 and you can no longer maintain the T3 barrage. Meaning you have to start tiering it up again after the 20s cooldown is over. If you feel that barrage beyond T3 but would have no issue with being able to maintain a T3 barrage the 20s cooldown does not accomplish that. I think a better way to achieve that goal would be to increase the cooldown of all versions of barrage to ~3s. That would prevent barrage from Teiring as high as is does on live while allowing T3 to be maintained. That would nerf blue DPS some but not nearly as much as a 20s cooldown to barrage 3 would.

Press onward got a boost which is good (blood arrow is still a better heal), however putting it in blue seams counter intuitive. Blue line is all about mobility kiting mobs and moving around that sort of thing. Press onward requires you to stand still to use. In my mind that doesn't make sense for a line that is all about moving. I would make it usable on the move to fit in with what the line is trying to be.

The problem with cry of the hunter is the long skill animation rooting almost as long as the mobs are stunned. So while a decreased cooldown and run speed buff are nice, they done address the problems that the skill already has.

If blue is about survival, would it make sense to move survival gear from yellow to blue?

-red line

Moving swift release over to red line means that for a hunter to get the full effect from that bonus they need to trait down to the second tier to blue. Is that intentional? Does any other trait line bonuses in other classes require skill in other trait lines? To me it would make sense to move split shot into red and rain of arrows into blue.

It appears that the new red line DPS is greater the current blue line DPS on live, but only is you are using the heartseeker reset set from throne. Meaning once this update goes live hunters will once again be using gear from past level caps. Is that intentional on your part? If you introduce a max level on the throne sets like you did with other sets I can't see how red hunters DPS would be 10%-20% higher then blue is on live.

-raid sets

Currently red line has no real raid set bonus. Both the rapid fire cool down and the blood arrow cool down require you to trait down far into blue line to get either any effect or to get max effect. With the new trait lines that will still be the case. Both usable raid set bonuses are dependent on traiting heavy into blue to maximize effect. Meaning the would be better to get the 2 piece bonus from each set instead of going for a 4 piece bonus or as mentioned above use the heartseeker set from throne. This upcoming instance cluster would be an ideal time to introduce new set bonuses that would be usable to each line.

-other stuff

While not the end of the world this will be the second time in ~1.5 years that hunters are going to have to overhaul their LI's. A lot of people are going to be less then thrilled about having to get a bunch more legacy replacement scrolls

[Vastin]

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.

[yafga]

This is so stupid.. We have now a good spec in raids(blue) doing good DPS. Why not make red equal to it? Do you know that the majority of people RAIDING are currently BLUE, why would you force them to go red? Thats just a plain stupid thing to do. Keep blue in line with red DPS.

[Macdui]

So does a 20 second timer kick in after a barrage 3 only, to prevent use of any barrage for 20 seconds? Making us contrive a Barrage 1 and 2 rotation to keep using the skill... Wasn't the obvious answer to just stop Barrage 3 increasing it's potency for subsequent ones after that first Barrage 3. Or just reset barrage on a Barrage 3 hit.

Seems odd for the Blue line to get survival skills if it's to be the "solo casual" tree once again when their movement negates taking much damage compared to a static hunter. Is this from old Bow masters who switched for the increase damage but couldn't actually play Huntsman properly?

I'm concerned at this suggestion that some will retain a set bonus from gear that those following will never have access to. It's these things that cause the divisions that has you deemed ill-equipped for the role require.


Sorry still downloading.

Mac

[Tatharil]

[*]Yellow line skills have been normalized, but are otherwise unchanged.

Lingering Wound deals about as much bleed damage as BarbA and Exs. Thank you.
But it doesn't seem to stack anymore and the initial tick is gone. Debufficon tiers up, but damage stays the same. The loss of initial tick may be intended, but stacking seems to be bugged.

Edit: Wounded Prey damage has been increased, too. Thank you. ( LW(1) Wounded Prey on dunlending in School of Tham Mirdain: noncrit ~ 3400 , crit ~8000, LW (4) Wounded Prey on Dunlending ~7000 noncrit, 15000 crit

Explosive Arrow and trap damage haven't been changed.

You haven't touched yellow yet, focusing on red and blue for obvious reasons. If you are done with them, here some things I would like to change in yellow line.

1. Fire and light oils should work on Lingering Wound, too.

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

suggestion: add a stun effect to Explosive Powder. 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.

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

suggestion: Endurane stance increases Hunter's damage over time by 10, Endurance trait increases this bonus by +10% per rank.

4. Distracting Shot
current problem: CD too long, duration too short.

suggestion: 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.)

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

suggestion: Let it apply all trap debuffs. (inc. damage, morale return, inc. critical chance).

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

suggestion: eplace damage increase with CD reduction, increased targets or reduced chance to break on damage.

7. Complex Mechanisms
current problem: finesse makes this trait worthless.

suggestion: increase trap debuff duration by 2 sec per rank


Legacies:

Melee weapon

1. 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).

[WorrBinpike]

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.

But please fix this NOW. it is a really bad choice not to give hunters the set bonus if they do throne in the future. So old players have the reset skill and doing WAY more damage like hunters without the set. That isn't near any fair balancing for all.

"Will need to be adressed in some manner" sounds like " yea..we will do something in 2 years." Please don't. Fix this issue now, before going live with this.

[DKenny]

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.....

First, barrage wasn't a 1-button "rotation". It was always worked in with different skills. Power, and focus, also already put limitations on it. So if the concept is to make power even more of a limiting factor, then why the overkill with a 20 sec CD as well? Basically this represents, yet again, a massive overreaction to a perceived problem. Barrage will go from the mainstay of blue dps to practically worthless in a sustained fight. IMHO, drop the CD change in the first pass and start off by trying to tweak the power (and / or focus) constraint to move incrementally towards the appropriate balance.

[DKenny]

This is so stupid.. We have now a good spec in raids(blue) doing good DPS. Why not make red equal to it? Do you know that the majority of people RAIDING are currently BLUE, why would you force them to go red? Thats just a plain stupid thing to do. Keep blue in line with red DPS.

I wouldn't mind if they had simply buffed red up to be comparable with current blue dps. However, they've apparently made red dps higher with a massive nerf to blue dps (barrage CD). That, plus as others have highlighted, the HS reset bonus being such a huge contributor to dps is a huge problem as well, only exacerbated by making it impossible to obtain going forward, but allowing those with it already to keep it. Either it has to go for everyone, or stay for everyone (and go is probably the better option).

[Siddharta]

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.

The rotation is even worse now, Penetrating shot is about 70% of hunters damage (without lvl 105 HS set)


my suggestions:

1. Remove Throne lvl 105 HS set completely or make it as red line passive trait (instead of Marksman). Proc cooldown 15-20 sec. Bleed do not stack.
2. Make Barbed arrow bleed unmitigated
3. Replace 'Fast Draw' and 'Quick Draw'
4. Replace Upshot with Focus generate in Strength Stance (like 2 focus every 6 seconds)

[Giliodor]

First, barrage wasn't a 1-button "rotation". It was always worked in with different skills. Power, and focus, also already put limitations on it. So if the concept is to make power even more of a limiting factor, then why the overkill with a 20 sec CD as well? Basically this represents, yet again, a massive overreaction to a perceived problem. Barrage will go from the mainstay of blue dps to practically worthless in a sustained fight. IMHO, drop the CD change in the first pass and start off by trying to tweak the power (and / or focus) constraint to move incrementally towards the appropriate balance.

Blue hunters have the single most simplistic rotation of any class in the game. Period. They have mobility on top of that. There is no justification for blue doing more DPS than red. Vastin has the right idea: nerf blue, buff red.

That said, I don't think this was the right way to go about it. However, I'm more than happy to let that slide of red becomes superior to blue.

[Oelle]

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.

The easiest solution to prevent a "1-button rotation" would be putting a Cooldown on the skill itself. With 3 seconds, all other issues of barrage are cleared, too. Why dont you go that way, then?

Some posts earlier, I suggested the following

a) after Barrage3, all barrageinternal buffs are deleted, resetting to normal barrage and restart immediately possible
b) a 5s cd instead of 20s
c) delete barrage2 and barrage3 and chance nothing around how barrage works. That should result in 4-5 tiers.
d) apply a CD on barrage itself, maybe 3 seconds or something like that. 3 seconds between 2 barrages should mean that any barrage can only profit from the last shot barrage. This would actually result in 3 tiers, as designed.
e) actually fix the internal barrage buffs, so they stop stacking with each other. Would result in 3 tiers, too, but seems complicated as it should already have been done if it was that simple.

Now, if barrage shouldnt be a "1-button rotation" (which it never was, it was more of a always use barrage an then another skill as filler, but I get your point), then a, c and e obviously are out of the window as they'd still result in the same rotation, because barrage is just a really strong and cheap skill.
Your way to change it with 20s cd is still very annoying, and a 5s cd would still do the job (suggestion b).
But if you really intend to make the rotation more complex, just go for d, and add 2.5-3s CD to barrage (and barrage2 and barrage3). Everything else fixes itself that way, as long as the CD is minimum 2.5s. And it sounds like a very simple fix...

[siipperi]

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.

1. Could there be compromise to be made and lower t3 barrage CD to 15s. Barrage on current rotation is producing quite small % of overall dps and penshot producing overwhelming amount of total damage, so in essentially we move from barrage spam to penshot spam. Barrage on 15s t3 cooldown would allow hunter utilize it a bit more without it being spammed as much as in live.

2. Sounds good. One thing We have suggested before during years having HS reset trait to be replacing plant feet last trait of red hunter, which nobody traits. With longer internal CD of course, like 35-40s.

[Edlenn]

Barrage may be a 1-button rotation for a low level hunter. Putting out proper DPS in a T2 raid requires quite a bit more thinking.

[siipperi]

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.

[Oelle]

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

I think, its easier to delete Strong Draw Rank 6 and fix the old bug that skills dont require any ressources if they are chained up when the ressources were present, which grants lots of free focus shots when playing with low focus.
That bug not only affects hunters, though. Captains can use both skills with one death-event due to this bug and for example minstrels can fire two instant-bolsters on the run after Coda... and thats not all examples. But hunters use it the most, or... my hunter uses it roughly every some seconds infight, which is much more often than on other classes.

passive Focus Regeneration is just 4 focus per 5 seconds.
spamming penshot is ~15 focus in 5 seconds, or ~10 focus with Strong Draw Procc active. Exploiting the bug makes roughly one penshot each 5 seconds focus-cost-free (and its really hard to not exploit the bug).

Dont believe that bug exists? Just trait red and use strength to not have high passive regen (only from crits and builders), then get up to 7 focus. Now chain up penshot, mercshot, penshot. Afterwards, you'll still have 1-4 (more than 1 from crits) focus, because merciful didnt consume any focus.


And while we're talking about focus regg... afaik, you can get 6 focus per 10 or 20s, if you just use focus potions on Cooldown, because the CD is for each tier and not for all types of potions together. Thats even part of the description, as it says something like "cooldown 2min. you cant use another pot within 10s after using one" ###?

[Baredur]

nerf passive focus generation.

This exactly. Excessive focus enables one or two button rotations. Fix that and the class becomes interesting again.