Class Update - Hunters

[nelar]

Red comments:

I normally run in Precision stance, so having the Blue Precision trait moved to tier 6 is a costly change since it forces me to use more lower DPS induction skills in Precision stance. Even with 2 pts in Strength trait I'm trading 30% base damage against 34.5% crit multiplier and more frequent focus shots. For me, Strength stance isn't currently worth using.

Upshot has a longer cooldown and higher focus cost then Merciful shot, but does significantly less damage (according to Combat Analysis). In it's current state, it doesn't seem worth traiting or using.

[sikapete]

Max mastery and 73k crit gives around this in red line:

DPS target dummy says, 'Thou didst maintain a DPS of 42,136.488 over the last three minutes of our momentous conflict!'

Usually parses are around 42-45k. Rotation "" is not perfected yet.

I am doing parses in red with raid armour (-5sec blood arrow cd) and without bb jewelry.

Focus boost is traited from blue tree and i´m running in precision stance. Strength stance is too weak to use atm.

1) Rotation is 80% penshot spam, thats not good.
2) Current focus generation is too high. You can get away spamming penshot and blood arrow off cd and using barbed arrow every ten seconds with occasional quick shots.
3) Press onward is broken...
4) Exsanguinate needs a buff to bleed dmg to make it even more interesting and to justify the long cooldown. Another option is to make the bleed longer or make the CD shorter
5) Remove the dmg penalty from swift bow 3rd attack
6) Increase Power cost of focus spenders. Not too much but something reasonable to make icpr and power conservation a thing again. One can spam pen shot for 3 minutes with very little effort.
7) Remove entire HS reset from game, it is too powerful. Red line cap trait Marksman with -2 and -4 seconds is enough.
8) Buff upshot, with cashout mechanics like -x% enemy mitigations or -%crit def for every personal bleed present for 10-15 secs etc. Something to make it needed and wanted for rotation especially in grouping. One would have to time using it when exsanguinate and HS+ BA bleeds are about to end...
9) A whole new induction dmg skill would be cool, essential to rotation
10) Reduce heart seeker cooldown to 45secs and make it an red line exclusive. Maybe a 3/3 - (15sec/point) cd minus trait deep in red tree if straight CD reduce is too much?
11) Make fast draw from 5/5 to 3/3 with 5%, 8%, and 10% instead of 6-7-8-9-10.
12) Upshot and Plant Feet could use an additional point tiers with modifying the traits. See 8) for upshot ideas. Red tree needs additional important trait point spenders to prevent getting Precision from blue in name of pen spam.

Just some quick and not too much balance-wise thought ideas to make rotation more complex...

[CampbellCommunity]

One change that needs to happen for PvP. Blue line people saying blue line is getting such a huge nerf is a joke. A majority of damage comes from two sources - Crit + burnhot/rapid fire combo.

Move burn hot further up the red line trait tree please so blue hunters cant slot it. As for red DPS, then it would not need a further overhaul.

Legacies are fine as is for people crying, just use an imbued replacement scroll, easy as heck to get.

Other than the burn hot moving up, I'm actually really liking these changes to hunter. It is much more skill based, and if a hunter wants to max their DPS they're going to have to be much better at positioning themselves. And they're DPS is now better than a RK, so be happy. Hunters are now top dog if these go live.

[Macdui]

Not wanting to comment on other posters or anything but it's an un-imbue legacy that has my hunter who knows nothing of maintaining morale able to spam press onward. For a bigger heal than my mini's bolster who's somewhat experienced in such matters and has a mass of bonuses with which to heal better.

I can't get over how this first pass with this barrage change could be contemplated. Revert and cap the potency at 3. Only thing it does is lessen the stress on my middle finger and has me wonder what I could do to make more use for it.

[Altair6]

The question we should be asking about these class changes, and Hunter in particular here, is does it improve the class or at best not damage it. In this case I think the answer is no and therefore it should be rethought. If the only purpose of the Hunter change, as it seems to me to be, is to appease those who complain about how powerful Hunters are then the original premiss for the changes is invalid.

[Oelle]

the point with focus regen comes up a lot, but focus costs never get mentioned.
I'd like to do that:

Focus regen in blue&precision is 4 per 5s plus 1 per crit.
Focus regen in red&precision is 3 per 5s plus 1 per crit.
Focus regen in blue&strenght is 1 per 5s plus 1 per crit.
Focus regen in red&strength is 1 per crit.
Obviously, in all cases plus focus builders, intent concentration, focus potions.

Focus costs of skills are usually 3, 6 or all.
Those can be reduced by Strong Draw Rank6 by 1, which results in 2,5 or all and that procc has quite high uptime.
In addition to that, focus costs can be reduced to 0 via rapid fire for 10s each 90s and they can be reduced to 0, if skills get queued up at times where their focus requirements are met (like having 3 focus, launching two penshots, both fire, even though the second didnt have enough focus, which just nullifies its focus costs).
The reduction of focus costs to 0 via the bug happens roughly once every 5 seconds, if the player usually plays at lower focus levels and never, if he always plays at higher focus levels. people that spam focusskills however tend to be at the lower end and therefore get one free focusshot roughly per 5 seconds via this bug.

Now, lets see the result of this:
in 5 seconds, one can fire 5 penshots (the time a penshot uses is roughly one second).
if a player spams skills, one of these costs nothing via bug.
the result is either 8 Focus costs with Strong Draw active or 12 Focus costs with Strong draw not active.
Focus regeneration can meet that target of 8 focus, if all penshots crit. Its impossible to get 12 Focus in this time.
If the mentioned bug didnt exist, the costs per 5 seconds would be 10 or 15.
With an average Focus regen of 6 Focus per 5s due to roughly 2 critical hits per 5 shots, its very near to 8, but quite far away from 10, 12 or 15.
IF the target is stopping boring "1-button-rotations", the most simple answer would be: Never let a focus shot consume less than 3 focus.
This means: delete Strong Draw Rank 6.

Another way would be deleting deadly precision, which grants focus from critical hits.
Or a nerf to precision stance focus regen.

my personal opinion is, that costs are a bigger issue than regen, but obviously both are connected. I dont see the mentioned bug getting fixed, but Strong Draw really is the biggest part of the issue. Reducing costs of skills by 33% is a huge improvement, and as shown, this reduction leads to the closed gap between costs and regeneration. With 3 Focus per penshot, rotations would at least be a bit more complex. But getting Precision down to 2 Focus per 5 seconds might be a good idea, too.

Suggestion:
How about a completely different change to Precision? Like precision reducing partial avoidance instead of generating focus at all? That would fit its description... The focus regen might be put into Endurance stance instead. Thats where it kinda makes sense. If players have to decide between "more focus", "more general damage" and "more critical damage plus less partials", the decision would be quite interesting. Endurance parry&evade rating are uninteresting anyway and the stance doesnt get used at all. If it generated focus, hunters would have three interesting stances and all would fit their name

[B749]

Also parsed consistently around 40k on E&G dummy, red spec with deep blue cross-traiting, no BB set or HS set.

Agree with others, pen shot spam is even more boring than barrage-pen shot spam was. The problem is we generate so much focus even spamming pen shot constantly doesn't force us to use that many builders at all. Make 'Strong Draw' rank 6 only usable in Blue maybe? That should increase focus consumption by a fair bit already. Even though you moved the 'Precision' trait way down the blue line so it is now more difficult to reach, cross-traiting to it remains possible. If you want to make it impossible to reach while in Red spec, you'll have to put it on the very last tier (meaning important red line traits would have to be sacrificed to reach it) or make it a blue line trait set bonus. Getting rid of both of those would require more focus builders to be used across the board.
Still, we might need an additional focus consumer skill (so good it's better damage-wise than pen shot spam) to really make focus management an important class feature again. You could consider just adding a cooldown to pen shot, but that doesn't really solve the problem of generating more focus than we consume.

An alternative idea: make Upshot apply a powerful (non-resistable) bleed to the target with a duration/magnitude depending on the amount of focus pips it consumed. For example:

• Upshot consuming at least 3 Focus: apply bleed at 50% strength with 5 2s ticks (total = 10s)
• Upshot consuming at least 6 Focus: apply bleed at 75% strength with 8 2s ticks (total = 16s)
• Upshot consuming full 9 Focus: apply bleed at 100% strength with 12 2s ticks (total = 24s)

Provided the bleed is sufficiently powerful, it would make optimal Hunter rotations work towards a 9 Focus Upshot every 24s, in addition to maintaining Barbed Arrow bleed (every 10s), minding Heart Seeker (with its bleed) and using pen shot as a filler skill. Just a suggestion, but I do feel we need something extra to make Hunter rotations more interesting. Pen shot spam meta is boring!

Blue line:

20s cooldown on Barrage 3 is not the most elegant solution but it gets the job done. The problem I have with it is that it effectively changes the rotation from 'Barrage-other skill-Barrage' while maintaining bleeds where possible to 'Spam as many pen shot as you can while keeping bleeds ticking', with the occasional Heart Seeker or Swift Bow in between, or Quick Shot if focus drops low. The point being, this is more of a 1-button spam meta than Barrage was, and it extends across BOTH blue and red lines now.
Also, could you either change the 'Exsanguinate' trait to go up to 100% application chance or reduce Exsanguinate's cooldown? Currently, it happens we get the RNG proc while the skill is still on cooldown, and that it won't proc when we actually have the skill ready to use. Also, 10s duration vs 45s cooldown for a rng based bleed is a bit unbalanced on its own already.

[Caitwyn]

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.

agreed - introducing an enforced respec (with an associated grind) for all blue-line hunters who want to remain effective in raids and other instances is not the way to entice your customers to remain loyal to LOTRO. The idea that we reset and make meaningless the investment of players in their characters over months and years is unwise. I'm not against change but they should be proportionate and evolutionary. h. As others have pointed out the proposed changes to Huntsman as they currently stand clearly haven't been thought out with those who currently play it in mind. There is no way the barrage nerf will mean our dps remains equivalent to current rates. There is no reason why red should out perform blue in raids by 10-20% - why not make them near equivalent once the player has mastered? then we might just have a position where we could choose how to trait based on playstyle preferences rather than being forced into one or t'other.

at present the changes seem ill-thought out and designed to annoy people who play hunters (especially those who enjoy playing blue line) - think about that before you finalise, because from my perspective alienating customers is a sure way to kill the game.

for me the focus for change on hunter should be

1) slightly alter red to make either spec a stylistic choice between the 2 for raids (i.e. more or less equivalent dps rates with some situational variability)
2) end the underlevel armour issue
3) reinvigorate yellow line to something more viable
4) make blue rotation a bit more complex/intricate to maintain dps

only once we have those first principals agreed should you really look at mechanisms to deliver the above.

[Dorri_Hammerfist]

Red line - Bowmaster left for dead?

as of now blue line got:
- bow of the righterous
- strenth of earth
- blood arrow HoT
- press onward

a bit too much morale/power heals for a line that can strife/kite mobs to death (killing either by damage or by getting the mob tired to death), is it not?
once a mob "breaks" into melee range of Bowmaster, it looks grim.

P.S. all hail penhot spam in blue and red. now it is really 1 button game.
best solution would be to reset barrage to 0 after barrage 3 AND massively increase damage in red: in this case blue line will be performing still somewhat lower than on live and red line will outshine blue. hunter in U22.2 is not solving the problem, it is creating more problems.

[Araphorn]

A way to tackle the Pen Shot spam in Red Line would be to switch a few things around a bit.

Right now its too easy to generate Focus from Crits and Precision Stance. So, a possible workaround would be to change how Stances work.

- Remove Critical Multiplier from Precision Stance and add that to Strength Stance. Tune down the Damage bonus Strength Stance currently provides to compensate. This way, Hunters would switch to Strength and it will be slightly harder to generate all that extra Focus.

- Increase the damage on Swift Bow, and add 5% crit chance for 5s. This way it will be used more for Focus generation and be worthwhile to use that skill, because right now it's not an ideal skill to use in rotation.

- Increase the chance of Quickshot granting additional Focus.

This will lead to more Induction skills being used than they are used now.

Just a few thoughts.

[Rimenuir]

- Increase the chance of Quickshot granting additional Focus.

Would that be increase it with or without legacy for it? Or make the legacy a passive from the trait?

[eorl67]

I don't propose to be an expert hunter. Especially not of red line, which I haven't used since the first couple months of Helm's Deep. But not knowing anything has never stopped me from pretending I do. I've been giving the changes here a thought and came up with some ideas of my own on how to improve red line and fix blue line.

First I'll give an overview of the problems with Blue vs Red Hunter as I see them, and then some of my suggestions to fix those problems. tl;dr at the bottom.

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Current Problems

Little distinction in playstyle between specs
- Both specs rely on heavy focus bow spam, the dreaded “1 button rotation”
- Both specs take Deadly Precision and typically use Precision Stance for maximum focus generation
- Both specs have access to most of the other spec’s induction reductions
- However, as I’ll explain below, Blue is better equipped for this playstyle, which is why it tops the DPS charts

Blue provides better skills
- Barrage is Blue exclusive and overpowered, mostly due to excessive buff stacking
- Blue passive focus generation from Fleetness generally better than Needful Haste
- Upshot is underpowered for its focus cost
- Heartseeker’s induction and cooldown is prohibitive without reset from 105 armour

Blue has enough trait points to get most good Red traits
- Typical builds (at least as I've seen) spec around 31 points deep into Blue and dump another 58 (29 traits) into red, which is nearly down to Upshot (like they'd even want it)
- Red’s only exclusive skill, Pinning Shot, is useless for DPS and doesn’t fit the spec
- Red’s signature cooldown, Burn Hot, is easily obtained in Blue at only 42 and 44 points
- Blue’s signature cooldown, Rapid Fire, is 62 points deep and can’t normally be reached in Red
- The best stuff from Blue (Barrage, Fleetness, no focus loss and inductions while moving) is locked into default skills or trait set bonuses, and can't be earned in Red, regardless of points spent

LI Legacies and other bonuses favor Blue skills and playstyle
- Barrage is the only focus skill to receive a damage upgrade legacy of its own, and it’s on mainhand which has plenty of room for good legacies
- Red focused legacies like Heartseeker and Swift Bow Damage buff cooldown skills which make up small percentages of overall damage, and are on overcrowded bows with many other valuable legacies to choose from
- Precision Stance critical magnitude legacy provides more DPS than Strength Stance bonus damage legacy
- Quick Shot crit chance legacy only applies in Precision Stance yet primarily benefits the Red trait Deadly Precision. Strength Stance Slow is comparably less useful
- Both DPS-focused 115 armour set bonuses provide more benefit to Blue than Red. Blood Arrow already has reduced cooldown in Blue traits, and Rapid Fire is (almost) exclusively Blue
- Even the Throne 105 Heartseeker reset most benefits Blue's focus spam playstyle, because it's triggered by focus bow skills

What Should Be Done
- Tweak the way each spec generates focus to make each playstyle unique again, and make the rotations more interesting
- Nerf Barrage, obviously, but without shifting us to Pen Shot spam instead
- Reshuffle some LI legacies so both specs can benefit from them, and move some off the overcrowded bow and onto the sparse mainhand so we don’t have to pick favorites (or stats)
- Not only improve red line damage to be the primary DPS spec for groups, but also utilize its featured skills like Heartseeker and Upshot in the regular rotation

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Focus Changes
- Currently both specs have the same focus generation because both use Precision stance and take Deadly Precision
- !!! I propose moving Deadly Precision and stance traits (+focus in Precision and +damage in Strength) to trait set bonuses or default spec skills, so we can’t double dip !!!
- Blue will get a reliable flow of Precision Stance focus to maintain regular Barrage rotation
- Red will get unpredictable bursts of Deadly Precision focus they can dump in the occasional Pen Shot filler between Upshots, to avoid overcapping
- And most importantly, neither will get both!
- This reduces focus generation in both specs, differentiates the play style, and makes the rotation less reliant on focus bow spam
- Details on how to achieve this in the Red and Blue trait sections below

LI Legacy Changes

Replace Barrage Damage on mainhand with Focus Bow Damage
- This is an easy way to reduce some of Barrage’s OPness, while buffing red line focus skills (especially Upshot)

Replace Precision Stance Critical Magnitude with Bow Critical Magnitude
- This is an easy way to shift the balance towards Strength Stance without actually nerfing Precision

Move Induction Bow Damage and maybe something else (Bleed or -Evade chance) to mainhand
- There are too many good legacies on bow, not enough good legacies on mainhand
- Some of the helpful but marginal legacies can be moved to the mainhand, freeing up slots for better legacies without depriving us of the bonuses
- This also puts Induction Bow Damage and the (proposed) Focus Bow Damage on the same LI, for the OCD among us

-----

Now for some big stuff.

Red Line

Overview / Goals:
- Build Heartseeker reset directly into the spec; no more reliance on old set bonuses
- Improve Upshot, making it not only a more powerful skill but a key part of the rotation
- Provide avoidance penetration due to reliance on criticals for focus and Upshot cooldown

Traits and Skills:

Marksman (7th tier set bonus): Leave Upshot cooldown reduction on crits, but replace Heartseeker cooldown reduction with this: "Upshot resets the cooldown of Heartseeker and removes its induction if used with at least 6 focus"
- This turns Upshot into a cornerstone skill in our rotation, or at least it will if Upshot and Heartseeker damage are balanced appropriately
- Ideally red line rotations would revolve around big 1-2 bursts of Upshot and instant Heartseeker, followed by a short phase of focus generation and spending excess focus, until we get enough crits to reset Upshot’s cooldown and start over
- I considered making it only trigger if Upshot is used with 9 focus, but I think that may make the rotation too unforgiving and cause focus overcapping
- This means we don’t need the 105 Throne set bonus anymore. I suggest changing that set bonus to something like -5 seconds Upshot cooldown to speed up the burst phase of the rotation (this may be too strong though)
- One of the 115 set bonuses should also be changed to whatever the Throne bonus is changed to, so no one’s tempted to use the 105 set if they’ve got the 115 gear.
- I recommend the Archer’s -5 second Blood Arrow set be changed, mostly because I already crafted the helm but also because the Rapid Fire set is already strictly for Blue and should remain so

Plant Feet (7th tier trait): Evade’s useless. Replace with this flavor text and effect: "You hold your ground and wait for a perfect opening. Gain +5% Upshot damage every second while standing still. Each stack lasts 5 seconds"
- So it’ll cap out at 5 stacks, or +25% extra damage to Upshot. If you have to move for raid mechanics you’ll lose some stacks over time, but not all at once and they’ll recover quickly
- Synergizes stylistically with Upshot’s need for full focus, which is lost on movement

Deadly Precision (3rd tier trait): Fold this effect into the Needful Haste buff and remove the trait
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section
- With a 15% base proc chance on any attack and +15% from the 1st tier set bonus, Needful Haste buff is up pretty much all the time but doesn’t provide a huge benefit right now
- Now Blue can’t get it, and low level Reds can get it even earlier

Shoot to Kill (2nd tier set bonus): Add +10% Strength Stance damage bonus, then remove/replace the 3rd tier Strength trait which does the same thing
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section. Self explanatory

Archer’s Mark (3rd tier set bonus): Replace Critical Defence reduction with Avoidance reduction
- We have enough crit magnitude. What we don’t have is some way to get rid of these stupid partials.
- My proposed changes make us more reliant on crits for focus and Upshot, so I'd really like a way to reduce partials
- This would also provide better group utility than a crit defence reduction

Hidden Stalker (6th tier set bonus): 1-shot bonuses on openers don't really do much in a raid DPS spec. Replace with an in-combat bonus like: "Single-Minded Focus: Intent Concentration allows the use of the Focus skill in combat for 10 seconds"
- This way we can benefit from Focus’s 25% crit chance and magnitude bonus for extra Upshot/Heartseeker burst damage, or to speed up the rotation

Heartseeker (1st tier trait): Make Heartseeker a Red line exclusive skill, then replace the Heartseeker trait in 1st row with this 2-rank effect: "Heartseeker applies a 5%/10% critical chance bonus to all ranged skills for 5 seconds"
- This synergizes well with Marksman and Deadly Precision. For 5 seconds after using Heartseeker, you’ll be generating a little more focus and faster Upshot cooldowns
- That will allow you to fire off another full Upshot sooner, speeding up the rotation and maintaining the buff for more of the fight
- Rewards including Upshot and Heartseeker in a regular rotation, as often as possible
- May be too long or strong depending on how often Upshot is reset in a typical fight, but I envision it having around a 50% uptime

Heartseeker (skill): Reduce Heartseeker base cooldown to 1 minute for quality of life at low levels, and to allow them to make better use of this proposed Heartseeker trait in an opening strike

Upshot (skill): Add an additional +25% damage bonus to Upshot if used with 9 focus
- Why not, right?
- This will encourage usage at full focus, instead of at 6 just to trigger free Heartseekers
- B749’s suggestion to add a bleed to Upshot based on focus spent is a great idea too, and would accomplish the same thing with more flair

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Blue Line

Overview:
- Cap Barrage buff stacks and diversify rotation in a single easy step
- Further improve Press Onward as a survival skill

I didn’t make as many changes to this trait line, because I think it serves its purpose as an easy mode solo build quite well, and also because if it’s no longer intended as the top DPS spec I don’t really care about it.

Traits and Skills:

Barrage (skill): I don’t believe the current 20 second cooldown per 3 shots is going to do what you intend. It still dooms us to the same boring rotation only this time with more Pen Shots. I think this simple change will be more effective:
- Increase Barrage cooldown from 1 second to 2 seconds

That’s it. That’s all it really takes. Other suggestions on the forum (resetting to tier 1 after tier 3, applying a (short) cooldown after tier 3, capping tiers at 3, or reducing the bonus damage per tier) all work too, but I like this one. Here's why:
- The Barrage buff lasts 5 seconds, so with a 2 second cd by the time we get to Barrage 3 old buffs will start dropping off and we won’t be able to maintain anything higher. This effectively caps Barrage at 3 tiers
- Increasing the CD to 2 seconds also effectively halves the number of Barrages we use in a fight, reducing its total impact on DPS and giving us plenty of time to mix in more Quick Shots, Barbed Arrows, and Exsanguinate
- This leads to a more relaxed, varied, solo friendly rotation
- However, if the focus changes I proposed are also implemented and Deadly Precision is locked in Red, we’ll have much less focus to work with
- Those 2 seconds will best be spent using induction skills and not Pen Shot spam to ensure we have enough to maintain the Barrage 3 buff
- This will lead to consistent DPS with a large Barrage hit coming every 2 seconds and smaller induction skills in between, as opposed to the current changes which lead to a large burst of Barrages every 20 seconds then Pen Shot spam
- I think this steady DPS fits Blue's philosophy as a reliable solo build better than the 20 second burst in effect now, and Barrage remains a vital skill

Press Onward (skill / trait): Echoing other complaints, I think it’s fine this is in Blue now but the induction goes against the whole philosophy of the spec
- Add a 4th trait to Perseverance which either allows Press Onward to induct while moving (preferred for balance purposes) OR removes the induction of Press Onward
- Also, please make sure you’re not reducing the cooldown to 0 seconds or less with the mainhand legacy

Nock on the Move (1st tier set bonus): Either make the effect a default bonus of blue line or remove it entirely if you consider it OP to induct while moving at 100% normal speed
Fleetness (2nd tier set bonus): Move this to the 1st tier in place of Nock on the Move

These two changes are only to make room for:

Precision (new 2nd tier set bonus): Precision Stance now generates 3 focus per 5 seconds
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section
- The shuffling around of traits was just to get this into the 2nd tier to mirror Red’s Shoot to Kill suggested change. It can optionally take the place of Nock on the Move in the 1st tier instead

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General Quality of Life, minor suggestions to assorted skills

Reduce animation delay of Cry of the Hunter and increase bubble potency
- Quality of life improvements to our stun removal and damage bubble
- Current animation is as long as most stuns, making it useless for stun removal outside of 8 second Uruk knockdowns or similar
- Not sure if bubble has been improved on Bullroarer, but on live it's barely enough to protect against a single DoT tick

Reduce cooldown of Intent Concentration to 90 seconds
- Aligns better with other cooldowns and helps offset proposed nerfs to focus generation
- Synergizes well with the Improved version in Blue for power restoration
- Also makes it a nice DPS cooldown if my proposed Red 6th tier set bonus suggestion is used

Reduce cooldown of Dazing Blow to 30 seconds
- Gives us a little more crowd control and makes our corruption removal less ######
- Can also extend the duration in Yellow to make it a quality crowd control skill

Reduce Merciful Shot focus cost from 6 to 3
- I rarely use the skill due to the long cooldown and morale threshold, let alone the high focus cost. This will make it more useful outside of Rapid Fire
- Would probably want to change the Red 5th tier set bonus Swift Mercy if this is done, so we’re not getting free Merciful Shots

I don't really have much in the way of Yellow suggestions since I don't play it and don't care. However a couple ideas popped up to make its group utility and crowd control more useful

Lingering Wound (skill): Add a 2% incoming damage debuff to the skill, stacking up to 4 times like the DoT
Pinning Shot (skill): Move this from Red to Yellow and increase the duration to 10 seconds, allowing perma-root of a single target at the cost of a little focus

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tl;dr for the most important changes (the rest is just salad dressing):
- Move Deadly Precision and Precision Stance focus traits into Red and Blue default skills or trait set bonuses (respectively), so we can't get both at the same time
- Allow Upshot to reset the cooldown of Heartseeker and remove its induction
- Change Barrage's cooldown to 2 seconds instead of 1

God I hope this is legible. I wrote most of it at work so little play time wasted at least

[Giliodor]

tl;dr for the most important changes (the rest is just salad dressing):
- Move Deadly Precision and Precision Stance focus traits into Red and Blue default skills or trait set bonuses (respectively), so we can't get both at the same time
- Allow Upshot to reset the cooldown of Heartseeker and remove its induction
- Change Barrage's cooldown to 2 seconds instead of 1

Just quoting the tl;dr for brevity, I did read all of it. I think this is easily one of the most useful posts on the Bullroarer forums currently, and just about everything else could be scrapped from this thread. If forum reputation was still a thing, you would be showering in it.
That said, I do have one point of critique: I think every Upshot resetting HS would be too strong. I proposed earlier that Upshot would apply stacks, and that HS would reset at 5 stacks. I see now that 5 might be too many to make it impactful enough, so let's say 2-3 stacks. If every Upshot resets HS, you would still have an instant HS every 10-15-20 seconds, depending on crits/devs. That seems too powerful to me.

Would you agree that it is healthier to have Upshot apply a stack of "ominous name", and have HS reset (and become instant) at 2-3 stacks?

[Oelle]

good points

Generally sounds good. Barrage should be on 3s cd though, not on 2. with 2, it still tiers up to Barrage7, which it just shouldn't do.
I see nothing wrong with redline dishing out one instant HS each 15-20 seconds, if that costs all Focus and relies on having used the worst focus-spender before (upshot has the worst damage per spent focus points at high focus values, especially if used without oil). Maybe, if just one upshot isnt enough, it could be gated behind the use of two non-3-focus-skills. In early fight, that would mean two upshots, in later fights, upshot+mercshot could do the job, or two mercifuls, if one wanted to wait that long and hated upshot that much, because its sooo slow.

[Joedangod]

I feel like the biggest problem at the moment is the fact that focus consumers are the most damaging abilities but don't really have any notable cooldown associated with them. I'm curious about how well a nerf to penetrating shot/barrage base damage (reduce it to be a filler skill for when focus is overflowing, could probably remove the 20s cd on barrage if the reduction is large enough) would work in conjunction with adding a few 10-20s cooldown focus consumers that hit like heartseeker for example. Granted that's probably a bit more in-depth than is currently planned.

At the moment if penetrating shot stays as one of the higher damaging skills you're going to end up with it being spammed regardless of what other changes you make. It's too low cost, low CD, high reward.

[Kander]

tl;dr for the most important changes (the rest is just salad dressing):
- Move Deadly Precision and Precision Stance focus traits into Red and Blue default skills or trait set bonuses (respectively), so we can't get both at the same time
- Allow Upshot to reset the cooldown of Heartseeker and remove its induction
- Change Barrage's cooldown to 2 seconds instead of 1

God I hope this is legible. I wrote most of it at work so little play time wasted at least

Certainly one of the best and most complete guide on how to make the hunter class interesting. I actually like all the changes you suggested on the full post but I think that if you do all those changes, dps of a hunter with good rotation will scale to 100k+ dps unbuffed in red line, so my suggestion would actually be: Do all changes you suggested since it would be way funnier to play the class BUT you're suggesting that Upshot gets a huge increase in damage (I think a total of 87% compared to beta +the increased crit magnitude) which I don't think it's worth it, I'd rather have upshot gain strenght depending on your focus amount but always consumes 3 focus instead of completely depleting it without touching its current magnitude.

[eorl67]

Just quoting the tl;dr for brevity, I did read all of it. I think this is easily one of the most useful posts on the Bullroarer forums currently, and just about everything else could be scrapped from this thread. If forum reputation was still a thing, you would be showering in it.
That said, I do have one point of critique: I think every Upshot resetting HS would be too strong. I proposed earlier that Upshot would apply stacks, and that HS would reset at 5 stacks. I see now that 5 might be too many to make it impactful enough, so let's say 2-3 stacks. If every Upshot resets HS, you would still have an instant HS every 10-15-20 seconds, depending on crits/devs. That seems too powerful to me.

Would you agree that it is healthier to have Upshot apply a stack of "ominous name", and have HS reset (and become instant) at 2-3 stacks?

Thanks for the kudos!

I'm not sure. It depends on how often we typically get resets with the Throne set bonus, which I haven't used. We wouldn't want it to be more powerful than that. I don't think the rotation will be as fun without a reset each time, though. They could tone down the Marksman trait a bit (at least remove the 4s Devastate reduction and leave it at 2s per crit) to slow down Upshots, or increase Upshot's base cooldown to 30 seconds. It also depends on the relative strength of the 2 skills how powerful a reset every 10 or 20 seconds is.

The key thing for me is having it reset with Upshot. That gets us using the skills Red's supposed to use again. It also makes the rotation a little unpredictable due to Upshot's variable cooldown, without locking it behind low percentage procs. The actual mechanics of how it's done is up to the developers, as long as they don't screw it up too bad

Generally sounds good. Barrage should be on 3s cd though, not on 2. with 2, it still tiers up to Barrage7, which it just shouldn't do.

My understanding of the Barrage buffs is that they each have their own 5 second cooldown and stack with each other, so we end up getting up to 6 buffs at once if we spam Barrage every second. If that's the case a 2 second cooldown will limit us to 3 stacks, as by the time we get that 4th barrage off we'll be 6 seconds into the fight and the first buff will have fallen off, leaving us with only the last 2.

If I'm wrong and the Barrage buff stacking works a different way, then yeah we'll need a different cooldown. I'll defer to your expertise (and the dev's expertise???) on that.

I feel like the biggest problem at the moment is the fact that focus consumers are the most damaging abilities but don't really have any notable cooldown associated with them. I'm curious about how well a nerf to penetrating shot/barrage base damage (reduce it to be a filler skill for when focus is overflowing, could probably remove the 20s cd on barrage if the reduction is large enough) would work in conjunction with adding a few 10-20s cooldown focus consumers that hit like heartseeker for example. Granted that's probably a bit more in-depth than is currently planned.

At the moment if penetrating shot stays as one of the higher damaging skills you're going to end up with it being spammed regardless of what other changes you make. It's too low cost, low CD, high reward.

You're right that focus bow attacks are too large a % of our damage. The problem IMO is the focus generation though, not the base damage or cooldown. They should be more powerful than our induction skills, or at least Quick Shot, but they should be limited by how much focus we have to spend on them. If all they did was nerf the damage, we'd still spam them as long as they do more than Quick Shot, because we simply have too much focus. Case in point, they nerf Barrage and what becomes the new meta? Pen Shot spam in Red.

If my proposed focus changes are made and we no longer get +3 focus in Precision while in Red or Deadly Precision in Blue, we'll be limited on our focus generation and focus spam won't be possible. We'll need to save most of our focus for Upshots in Red or Barrage buff maintenance in Blue, with a Pen Shot mixed in every few seconds when we have excess. If we still have too much focus after this, they should remove the 6th tier of Strong Draw.

There is some room to scale down Barrage, Pen Shot and Blood Arrow, especially if they use my suggestion to turn the Barrage legacy into Focus Bow Damage (bringing Pen Shot/BA to Barrage 1 level, i.e. buffing the pants off them). Just don't touch Upshot, it's weak enough as it is!

Certainly one of the best and most complete guide on how to make the hunter class interesting. I actually like all the changes you suggested on the full post but I think that if you do all those changes, dps of a hunter with good rotation will scale to 100k+ dps unbuffed in red line, so my suggestion would actually be: Do all changes you suggested since it would be way funnier to play the class BUT you're suggesting that Upshot gets a huge increase in damage (I think a total of 87% compared to beta +the increased crit magnitude) which I don't think it's worth it, I'd rather have upshot gain strenght depending on your focus amount but always consumes 3 focus instead of completely depleting it without touching its current magnitude.

Are you saying you don't want to do 100k DPS? :P

Certainly we'd have to make sure the final result is balanced. But actually an 87% increase in Upshot sounds about right. Currently my Pen Shot tooltip on live is 22,926 and a 9 focus Upshot is 36,232. An 87% increase would raise it to 67,754 which is just slightly lower than 3 Pen Shots, for exactly 3x the focus cost. That's purely by accident, by the way. I was just throwing random %s out in my post

[Silmelin]

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.

Barrage is not a 1-button rotation for me at all, would be too slow killing things like that on my character, though I'm not at max level so I don't know how people at those levels play

[Oelle]

Certainly we'd have to make sure the final result is balanced. But actually an 87% increase in Upshot sounds about right. Currently my Pen Shot tooltip on live is 22,926 and a 9 focus Upshot is 36,232. An 87% increase would raise it to 67,754 which is just slightly lower than 3 Pen Shots, for exactly 3x the focus cost. That's purely by accident, by the way. I was just throwing random %s out in my post

Plus, Penshot quite often only costs 2 focus, which gives upshot the costs of 4.5 Penshots, plus Penshot ignores additional mits, plus Upshot only has its high damage anyway, if used with oil, plus Upshot has a much longer animation/skill delay than penshot. In addition to all those points: one wants to use a focus skill between two induction skills anyway, because induction skills have a long delay that can be countered by fast skills and focus skills are fast skills. Even if Upshot was worth using, Penshot would still be used as every second skill, sometimes mercshot or upshot instead of penshot, just because penshot fastens the rotation and fills the downtime between induction skills. So yep, totally, Upshot should deal at least 3x the damage of penshot. If thats too much burst, convert a part of it to a dot, all fine. but Upshots damage clearly has to rise. if thats by direct upshot damage, by upshot giving free instant heartseekers or by a strong DoT from Upshot doesnt really matter.

Imo, we should change Hunters stances:
Precision: increased critical magnitude and either increased critchance or reduced partials. Thats all things that have to do with precision.
Strength: increased base damage, everything hits harder. As it does.
Endurance: big increase of QSheal, like 5% hunters morale per QS (or 1% hunters morale heal by every used skill), plus put the Focus regen from precision to Endurance The current avoidance rating bonusses are totally irrelevant.
That way, all three stances would be viable and not only precision.

[Gwinthilnel]

Reducing partials would go a long way and would make some of these changes more acceptable, but I don't see that happening unfortunately.

[Tatharil]

Endurance: big increase of QSheal, like 5% hunters morale per QS (or 1% hunters morale heal by every used skill), plus put the Focus regen from precision to Endurance The current avoidance rating bonusses are totally irrelevant.

Bloodarrow, PO and QS % heals? Getting a bit op, isn't it? Endurance stance is meant for yellow at least its trait is in yellow, though endurance is a worthless stance. If you change Endurance, change it in a way that it becomes useful for yellow.

a) increase damage over time: would fit the name and yellow is about slower, controled fights and bleeds.
b) improve CC skills or debuffs: maybe turn trapskills into aimed shots for a reliable application of debuffs, but reduce ranged damage by 20%

[Cordovan]

I don't propose to be an expert hunter. Especially not of red line, which I haven't used since the first couple months of Helm's Deep. But not knowing anything has never stopped me from pretending I do. I've been giving the changes here a thought and came up with some ideas of my own on how to improve red line and fix blue line.

First I'll give an overview of the problems with Blue vs Red Hunter as I see them, and then some of my suggestions to fix those problems. tl;dr at the bottom.

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Current Problems

Little distinction in playstyle between specs
- Both specs rely on heavy focus bow spam, the dreaded “1 button rotation”
- Both specs take Deadly Precision and typically use Precision Stance for maximum focus generation
- Both specs have access to most of the other spec’s induction reductions
- However, as I’ll explain below, Blue is better equipped for this playstyle, which is why it tops the DPS charts

Blue provides better skills
- Barrage is Blue exclusive and overpowered, mostly due to excessive buff stacking
- Blue passive focus generation from Fleetness generally better than Needful Haste
- Upshot is underpowered for its focus cost
- Heartseeker’s induction and cooldown is prohibitive without reset from 105 armour

Blue has enough trait points to get most good Red traits
- Typical builds (at least as I've seen) spec around 31 points deep into Blue and dump another 58 (29 traits) into red, which is nearly down to Upshot (like they'd even want it)
- Red’s only exclusive skill, Pinning Shot, is useless for DPS and doesn’t fit the spec
- Red’s signature cooldown, Burn Hot, is easily obtained in Blue at only 42 and 44 points
- Blue’s signature cooldown, Rapid Fire, is 62 points deep and can’t normally be reached in Red
- The best stuff from Blue (Barrage, Fleetness, no focus loss and inductions while moving) is locked into default skills or trait set bonuses, and can't be earned in Red, regardless of points spent

LI Legacies and other bonuses favor Blue skills and playstyle
- Barrage is the only focus skill to receive a damage upgrade legacy of its own, and it’s on mainhand which has plenty of room for good legacies
- Red focused legacies like Heartseeker and Swift Bow Damage buff cooldown skills which make up small percentages of overall damage, and are on overcrowded bows with many other valuable legacies to choose from
- Precision Stance critical magnitude legacy provides more DPS than Strength Stance bonus damage legacy
- Quick Shot crit chance legacy only applies in Precision Stance yet primarily benefits the Red trait Deadly Precision. Strength Stance Slow is comparably less useful
- Both DPS-focused 115 armour set bonuses provide more benefit to Blue than Red. Blood Arrow already has reduced cooldown in Blue traits, and Rapid Fire is (almost) exclusively Blue
- Even the Throne 105 Heartseeker reset most benefits Blue's focus spam playstyle, because it's triggered by focus bow skills

What Should Be Done
- Tweak the way each spec generates focus to make each playstyle unique again, and make the rotations more interesting
- Nerf Barrage, obviously, but without shifting us to Pen Shot spam instead
- Reshuffle some LI legacies so both specs can benefit from them, and move some off the overcrowded bow and onto the sparse mainhand so we don’t have to pick favorites (or stats)
- Not only improve red line damage to be the primary DPS spec for groups, but also utilize its featured skills like Heartseeker and Upshot in the regular rotation

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Focus Changes
- Currently both specs have the same focus generation because both use Precision stance and take Deadly Precision
- !!! I propose moving Deadly Precision and stance traits (+focus in Precision and +damage in Strength) to trait set bonuses or default spec skills, so we can’t double dip !!!
- Blue will get a reliable flow of Precision Stance focus to maintain regular Barrage rotation
- Red will get unpredictable bursts of Deadly Precision focus they can dump in the occasional Pen Shot filler between Upshots, to avoid overcapping
- And most importantly, neither will get both!
- This reduces focus generation in both specs, differentiates the play style, and makes the rotation less reliant on focus bow spam
- Details on how to achieve this in the Red and Blue trait sections below

LI Legacy Changes

Replace Barrage Damage on mainhand with Focus Bow Damage
- This is an easy way to reduce some of Barrage’s OPness, while buffing red line focus skills (especially Upshot)

Replace Precision Stance Critical Magnitude with Bow Critical Magnitude
- This is an easy way to shift the balance towards Strength Stance without actually nerfing Precision

Move Induction Bow Damage and maybe something else (Bleed or -Evade chance) to mainhand
- There are too many good legacies on bow, not enough good legacies on mainhand
- Some of the helpful but marginal legacies can be moved to the mainhand, freeing up slots for better legacies without depriving us of the bonuses
- This also puts Induction Bow Damage and the (proposed) Focus Bow Damage on the same LI, for the OCD among us

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Now for some big stuff.

Red Line

Overview / Goals:
- Build Heartseeker reset directly into the spec; no more reliance on old set bonuses
- Improve Upshot, making it not only a more powerful skill but a key part of the rotation
- Provide avoidance penetration due to reliance on criticals for focus and Upshot cooldown

Traits and Skills:

Marksman (7th tier set bonus): Leave Upshot cooldown reduction on crits, but replace Heartseeker cooldown reduction with this: "Upshot resets the cooldown of Heartseeker and removes its induction if used with at least 6 focus"
- This turns Upshot into a cornerstone skill in our rotation, or at least it will if Upshot and Heartseeker damage are balanced appropriately
- Ideally red line rotations would revolve around big 1-2 bursts of Upshot and instant Heartseeker, followed by a short phase of focus generation and spending excess focus, until we get enough crits to reset Upshot’s cooldown and start over
- I considered making it only trigger if Upshot is used with 9 focus, but I think that may make the rotation too unforgiving and cause focus overcapping
- This means we don’t need the 105 Throne set bonus anymore. I suggest changing that set bonus to something like -5 seconds Upshot cooldown to speed up the burst phase of the rotation (this may be too strong though)
- One of the 115 set bonuses should also be changed to whatever the Throne bonus is changed to, so no one’s tempted to use the 105 set if they’ve got the 115 gear.
- I recommend the Archer’s -5 second Blood Arrow set be changed, mostly because I already crafted the helm but also because the Rapid Fire set is already strictly for Blue and should remain so

Plant Feet (7th tier trait): Evade’s useless. Replace with this flavor text and effect: "You hold your ground and wait for a perfect opening. Gain +5% Upshot damage every second while standing still. Each stack lasts 5 seconds"
- So it’ll cap out at 5 stacks, or +25% extra damage to Upshot. If you have to move for raid mechanics you’ll lose some stacks over time, but not all at once and they’ll recover quickly
- Synergizes stylistically with Upshot’s need for full focus, which is lost on movement

Deadly Precision (3rd tier trait): Fold this effect into the Needful Haste buff and remove the trait
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section
- With a 15% base proc chance on any attack and +15% from the 1st tier set bonus, Needful Haste buff is up pretty much all the time but doesn’t provide a huge benefit right now
- Now Blue can’t get it, and low level Reds can get it even earlier

Shoot to Kill (2nd tier set bonus): Add +10% Strength Stance damage bonus, then remove/replace the 3rd tier Strength trait which does the same thing
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section. Self explanatory

Archer’s Mark (3rd tier set bonus): Replace Critical Defence reduction with Avoidance reduction
- We have enough crit magnitude. What we don’t have is some way to get rid of these stupid partials.
- My proposed changes make us more reliant on crits for focus and Upshot, so I'd really like a way to reduce partials
- This would also provide better group utility than a crit defence reduction

Hidden Stalker (6th tier set bonus): 1-shot bonuses on openers don't really do much in a raid DPS spec. Replace with an in-combat bonus like: "Single-Minded Focus: Intent Concentration allows the use of the Focus skill in combat for 10 seconds"
- This way we can benefit from Focus’s 25% crit chance and magnitude bonus for extra Upshot/Heartseeker burst damage, or to speed up the rotation

Heartseeker (1st tier trait): Make Heartseeker a Red line exclusive skill, then replace the Heartseeker trait in 1st row with this 2-rank effect: "Heartseeker applies a 5%/10% critical chance bonus to all ranged skills for 5 seconds"
- This synergizes well with Marksman and Deadly Precision. For 5 seconds after using Heartseeker, you’ll be generating a little more focus and faster Upshot cooldowns
- That will allow you to fire off another full Upshot sooner, speeding up the rotation and maintaining the buff for more of the fight
- Rewards including Upshot and Heartseeker in a regular rotation, as often as possible
- May be too long or strong depending on how often Upshot is reset in a typical fight, but I envision it having around a 50% uptime

Heartseeker (skill): Reduce Heartseeker base cooldown to 1 minute for quality of life at low levels, and to allow them to make better use of this proposed Heartseeker trait in an opening strike

Upshot (skill): Add an additional +25% damage bonus to Upshot if used with 9 focus
- Why not, right?
- This will encourage usage at full focus, instead of at 6 just to trigger free Heartseekers
- B749’s suggestion to add a bleed to Upshot based on focus spent is a great idea too, and would accomplish the same thing with more flair

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Blue Line

Overview:
- Cap Barrage buff stacks and diversify rotation in a single easy step
- Further improve Press Onward as a survival skill

I didn’t make as many changes to this trait line, because I think it serves its purpose as an easy mode solo build quite well, and also because if it’s no longer intended as the top DPS spec I don’t really care about it.

Traits and Skills:

Barrage (skill): I don’t believe the current 20 second cooldown per 3 shots is going to do what you intend. It still dooms us to the same boring rotation only this time with more Pen Shots. I think this simple change will be more effective:
- Increase Barrage cooldown from 1 second to 2 seconds

That’s it. That’s all it really takes. Other suggestions on the forum (resetting to tier 1 after tier 3, applying a (short) cooldown after tier 3, capping tiers at 3, or reducing the bonus damage per tier) all work too, but I like this one. Here's why:
- The Barrage buff lasts 5 seconds, so with a 2 second cd by the time we get to Barrage 3 old buffs will start dropping off and we won’t be able to maintain anything higher. This effectively caps Barrage at 3 tiers
- Increasing the CD to 2 seconds also effectively halves the number of Barrages we use in a fight, reducing its total impact on DPS and giving us plenty of time to mix in more Quick Shots, Barbed Arrows, and Exsanguinate
- This leads to a more relaxed, varied, solo friendly rotation
- However, if the focus changes I proposed are also implemented and Deadly Precision is locked in Red, we’ll have much less focus to work with
- Those 2 seconds will best be spent using induction skills and not Pen Shot spam to ensure we have enough to maintain the Barrage 3 buff
- This will lead to consistent DPS with a large Barrage hit coming every 2 seconds and smaller induction skills in between, as opposed to the current changes which lead to a large burst of Barrages every 20 seconds then Pen Shot spam
- I think this steady DPS fits Blue's philosophy as a reliable solo build better than the 20 second burst in effect now, and Barrage remains a vital skill

Press Onward (skill / trait): Echoing other complaints, I think it’s fine this is in Blue now but the induction goes against the whole philosophy of the spec
- Add a 4th trait to Perseverance which either allows Press Onward to induct while moving (preferred for balance purposes) OR removes the induction of Press Onward
- Also, please make sure you’re not reducing the cooldown to 0 seconds or less with the mainhand legacy

Nock on the Move (1st tier set bonus): Either make the effect a default bonus of blue line or remove it entirely if you consider it OP to induct while moving at 100% normal speed
Fleetness (2nd tier set bonus): Move this to the 1st tier in place of Nock on the Move

These two changes are only to make room for:

Precision (new 2nd tier set bonus): Precision Stance now generates 3 focus per 5 seconds
- As mentioned in the Focus Changes section
- The shuffling around of traits was just to get this into the 2nd tier to mirror Red’s Shoot to Kill suggested change. It can optionally take the place of Nock on the Move in the 1st tier instead

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General Quality of Life, minor suggestions to assorted skills

Reduce animation delay of Cry of the Hunter and increase bubble potency
- Quality of life improvements to our stun removal and damage bubble
- Current animation is as long as most stuns, making it useless for stun removal outside of 8 second Uruk knockdowns or similar
- Not sure if bubble has been improved on Bullroarer, but on live it's barely enough to protect against a single DoT tick

Reduce cooldown of Intent Concentration to 90 seconds
- Aligns better with other cooldowns and helps offset proposed nerfs to focus generation
- Synergizes well with the Improved version in Blue for power restoration
- Also makes it a nice DPS cooldown if my proposed Red 6th tier set bonus suggestion is used

Reduce cooldown of Dazing Blow to 30 seconds
- Gives us a little more crowd control and makes our corruption removal less ######
- Can also extend the duration in Yellow to make it a quality crowd control skill

Reduce Merciful Shot focus cost from 6 to 3
- I rarely use the skill due to the long cooldown and morale threshold, let alone the high focus cost. This will make it more useful outside of Rapid Fire
- Would probably want to change the Red 5th tier set bonus Swift Mercy if this is done, so we’re not getting free Merciful Shots

I don't really have much in the way of Yellow suggestions since I don't play it and don't care. However a couple ideas popped up to make its group utility and crowd control more useful

Lingering Wound (skill): Add a 2% incoming damage debuff to the skill, stacking up to 4 times like the DoT
Pinning Shot (skill): Move this from Red to Yellow and increase the duration to 10 seconds, allowing perma-root of a single target at the cost of a little focus

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tl;dr for the most important changes (the rest is just salad dressing):
- Move Deadly Precision and Precision Stance focus traits into Red and Blue default skills or trait set bonuses (respectively), so we can't get both at the same time
- Allow Upshot to reset the cooldown of Heartseeker and remove its induction
- Change Barrage's cooldown to 2 seconds instead of 1

God I hope this is legible. I wrote most of it at work so little play time wasted at least

This seems like an excellent analysis and overview. Thanks for the time in putting this together.

[Theyaretakingthehobb]

Let me write " excellent analysis " in a single sentence -

If ain't broken,don't " fix it " .

You welcome .

[Cil.]

I've already post that comment in general feedback, but I think this is a best place for it : (I'm sorry if this has already been said, but I'm french, and the comments on this thread are very long, so I didn't take the time to read each of them)

First of all, I've got to say that it is fair, and logical, that a static hunter should have a bigger DPS than a moving one.
It's a good thing that you intend to fixed that point.
But, I'm worried about the gameplay of blue line, with this 20sec CD on Barrage (but I didn't test it on the BR yet, don't have the time for now, so it's just a general reflection, sorry sorry sorry !)
Let me explain...

---------------------------

A possible solution to this might be to remove the 20 sec cooldown while Rapid Fire is active as a qounter balance for the cooldown.

Good point... If we could cast 3 Barrage, and then only Penetrating Shot when the Rapide Fire buff is active... Urrrgl...

But despite that, if you want to give a limit to theses invisible buffs of Barrage (plus, that is just boring we couldn't see it), why don't you simply change them ? Something like the Writs of Rune Keepers ? They could grown up to T3 max, that's all. The other Writs just refresh the buff, but never improved it. So, it is possible, you've already made this such of thing.

Without the Barrage (a huge 20sec CD is sensitively the same), the blue line have no more any proper interesting skills that consumes concentration, except the Blood Arrow (but as it also have a 10sec CD...).
So what will be different between blue and red, except the possibility to cast while moving ? The blue line is based on skills that consumes concentration (several traits for regen of concentration), but there will be just 1 left, the Penetrating Shot, witch is not specifically a blue line one... I don't understand.

[Elwenwing]

This picture accurately illustrates why blue line has more DPS than redline. If you want to make red line eclipse blue, you need to buff redline damage as a whole and/or nerf the damage of Barrage.



The tooltip damage on Barrage 1 is more than Improved Penetrating Shot, and Barrage 2 and Barrage 3 are just even higher than that. I believe that if you nerf Barrage 1,2,3 and keep the cooldown at 1s, you will achieve the result that you want. Barrage is simply put, the only good damaging skill from blue line, and putting it on a 20s cooldown makes blue line as a whole, completely irrelevant in terms of DPS.

I think this does illustrate the issue with barrage well.

Would it be possible to get a bullroarer build with a changed version of barrage as it is on the live server now, which is changed along these lines:

1) The base damage of tier 1 is lower than the damage of penetrating shot, tier 2 is equal to the damage of penetrating shot, and tier 3 is higher than the damage of penetrating shot.

2) The damage % increase component of barrage is not as high as it is now, e.g. 15 % in stead of 30% and 30% in stead of 60%, while the power consumption cost is still the same.

3) The premise that the red line should eclipse blue line damage by about 10-20% should still be the objective! If these changes are not enough than numbers should be tweaked further.

That should decrease the damage quite a bit, and still keep it a worthwhile skill in the blue line rotation.

Despite the fact that it's too strong right now, it does serve it's purpose of being a major focus consumer, as well as a major power consumer.

If there will be a lot less need for focus and power management it will just make the blue line rotation a lot less fun!