Class Update - Hunters

[Elwenwing]

I've been working on the hunter quite a bit over the last several days, and I have to admit, it's been tricky.

I'm trying to get more skills into the viable rotation for both blue and red, and at the same time, I'm trying to get the focus generation mechanic to be a little more meaningful.

For some time now, precision stance has been the go-to due to its focus generation being massive, allowing you to pretty much spam focus skills like barrage or pen shot with little consequence. I'm adjusting two things regarding focus generation - the precision trait is being weakened somewhat, and the Deadly Precision trait is moving much further up the red tree, making it difficult or impossible to get both.

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit. I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.

I've been running a lot of damage parses to try and get Barrage and Upshot respectively into respectable portions of each build's DPS output. Upshot is a little tricky as it could end up being a really nasty one-shot skill if I don't manage it correctly. I may have to redesign it a bit - full one shot focus dumps may just not work out well when focus is a more valuable resource.

Anyway, not quite where I want it yet, but some of the rotations are starting to feel interesting.

-Vastin

Thank you for your work on the hunter class Vastin!

It will be interesting to see what you come up with for the next build!

More skills for our rotations sounds really good! And I really the idea of Quickshot having no induction and Penetrating Shot increasing a target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage!

[Tatharil]

(...) I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.
(...)

Please don't forget yellow, although you are focusing on red/blue right now. Adding this debuff to penetrating shot should be something for yellow not red/blue, since yellow is the debuffing/CC support line. Otherwise It will stay the way it is since HD. Yellow has -60% dps compared to red/blue and +20% support(debuff/CC) not a fair trade.

[Giliodor]

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit.

Making Quick Shot instant seems to take away the whole idea behind the class. Induction skills generate focus, and instant casts consume focus. I think it would be wise to stick to that formula.

I've been running a lot of damage parses to try and get Barrage and Upshot respectively into respectable portions of each build's DPS output. Upshot is a little tricky as it could end up being a really nasty one-shot skill if I don't manage it correctly. I may have to redesign it a bit - full one shot focus dumps may just not work out well when focus is a more valuable resource.

Anyway, not quite where I want it yet, but some of the rotations are starting to feel interesting.

-Vastin

In my view, the best way to make Upshot impactful without making it a one-hit skill would be to make it interact with another skill. Particularly, Heart-seeker (HS). Without using the Throne 4-piece for HS reset, HS isn't used frequently in the hunter's rotation.

Consider this: Make Upshot interact with HS, such that every cast of Upshot with 9 focus applies a stack of some buff. At X number of stacks, the cool down on HS is reset, and made instant. This would make Upshot meaningful, it would make the rotation more interesting, and it would bring back the aspect that many hunters like about the Throne 4-piece.

Just be careful that the DPS isn't overtuned.

[Joedangod]

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit. I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.

Perhaps reintroducing the old -3s swift bow set bonus as a trait would help improve things there? It had a neat interaction with the 10s free swift bow usage granted by Swift and True allowing you to potentially fire off two free swift bows rather than one. Admittedly it might lead to holding back on swift bow usage as people could end up waiting on the buff to proc.

By the way I love the coloured text, makes it much easier to spot the dev post in the list.

[Kander]

I've been working on the hunter quite a bit over the last several days, and I have to admit, it's been tricky.

I'm trying to get more skills into the viable rotation for both blue and red, and at the same time, I'm trying to get the focus generation mechanic to be a little more meaningful.

For some time now, precision stance has been the go-to due to its focus generation being massive, allowing you to pretty much spam focus skills like barrage or pen shot with little consequence. I'm adjusting two things regarding focus generation - the precision trait is being weakened somewhat, and the Deadly Precision trait is moving much further up the red tree, making it difficult or impossible to get both.

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit. I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.

I've been running a lot of damage parses to try and get Barrage and Upshot respectively into respectable portions of each build's DPS output. Upshot is a little tricky as it could end up being a really nasty one-shot skill if I don't manage it correctly. I may have to redesign it a bit - full one shot focus dumps may just not work out well when focus is a more valuable resource.

Anyway, not quite where I want it yet, but some of the rotations are starting to feel interesting.

-Vastin

Ok, Precision stance: nerf in red line will most likely mean we're going back to blue, unless you nerf the focus generation of Precision stance, which would mean a plain nerf to the hunter dps (again). Tbh there's so much rework to be done if you change precision stance, for instance average hit of precision stance is way higher than strength stance. Basically strength stance gives only ~10% base damage increase, while precision gives 37% crit magnitude which is huge and you would prefer using precision stance even if it gave 0 focus. I'd say rework strength stance into affecting base damage rather than mastery % increase, else hunter will be really in a worse position.

About instant quick shot I think it's not that great idea since it alters the class basics of inductions generating focus, but we could get used to it. Penetrating shot being able to debuff might be a good idea and will probably help increase our dps a lot.

Barrage: It's simple, if you make this skill useful again even if that means being only able to use barrage 3 instead of barrage 3x3 then blue will be the line to go and you were trying to move the highest dps line to red.
Upshot and Heart Seeker: Honestly these skills are not even worth traiting on live. HS induction just makes it not contribute at all to our dps and it's only usefull if using with a HS reset or a Volley proc. On last beta build the cooldown wasn't that bad given each crit reduces it by 2 s and each devastate by 4s, so it had an effective cooldown of 20-30s, which is nice. Upshot just consumes all focus, have a terrible post animation delay and does not deal that much damage, it barely deals a bit more than blood arrow. My suggestions (only one of them, not all of them at the same time):

• Make Heart seeker have no induction or a really quick induction and give Upshot a huge bleed to add some damage to it (if you just give them both significant damage to be used in raid environment then they will be able to oneshot almost everything in PVP).

• Implement some Synergic mechanic between the two skills like upshot makes next HS inductionless and well.

• Give Upshot only 3 focus cost and HS have an induction similar to quick shot.

• Make give HS a huge focus generation in its current state and upshot apply a buff to you, or maybe reduce cooldown of Burn hot significantly, so even if you lose damage it's worth using.

[DKenny]

I've been working on the hunter quite a bit over the last several days, and I have to admit, it's been tricky.

I'm trying to get more skills into the viable rotation for both blue and red, and at the same time, I'm trying to get the focus generation mechanic to be a little more meaningful.

For some time now, precision stance has been the go-to due to its focus generation being massive, allowing you to pretty much spam focus skills like barrage or pen shot with little consequence. I'm adjusting two things regarding focus generation - the precision trait is being weakened somewhat, and the Deadly Precision trait is moving much further up the red tree, making it difficult or impossible to get both.

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit. I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.

I've been running a lot of damage parses to try and get Barrage and Upshot respectively into respectable portions of each build's DPS output. Upshot is a little tricky as it could end up being a really nasty one-shot skill if I don't manage it correctly. I may have to redesign it a bit - full one shot focus dumps may just not work out well when focus is a more valuable resource.

Anyway, not quite where I want it yet, but some of the rotations are starting to feel interesting.

-Vastin

The problem is when you start by making the following statement:

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.....

which is grossly inaccurate it doesn't inspire much confidence in your ability to rip apart and reassemble hunter skills and end up with something that actually works. Again, as everyone who actually plays hunter well knows, barrage is not and never was a "1-button rotation". Nor does the cooldown create a more complicated rotation. Since you've clearly demonstrated that you lack the necessary understanding to successfully accomplish the stated objectives, my advice is to simply leave it as it is, and use blue hunter, along with red RK, as the dps baseline as was stated previously. Having said all that I know very well you're not going to do that. You're going to rip apart hunter and what you end up with will most likely be a barely recognizable mess that will take a long time to properly sort out.

In fact, what issues actually exist (and they are clearly not the ones you perceive) are the direct result of the nature of the U19 changes. At that time I suggested starting with simply boosting all hunter damage by 50% across the board. That would have left the relationship between blue and red intact (i.e. red with higher dps) and red already at the time had a more complicated rotation. However it was someone's bright idea to boost focus skill damage by a huge amount (up to 100% increase) while boosting induction much less. It was that change that resulted in blue having higher dps, as blue was always about using primarily focus skills and avoiding induction as much as possible. The blue rotation remained pretty much as it always had, it just did a lot more damage because of the boost to focus skills vs. induction skills. But now you propose the ham-fisted "solution" of adding the 20 sec CD to barrage which effectively destroys the blue rotation yet completely fails to achieve the stated goal of a more complicated rotation. Rather than continuing to grope around in the dark vainly attempting to find a solution, why not just take hunter back to pre-U19 and then boost damage across the board (both focus and induction equally) to whatever is deemed the appropriate level. That should restore the pre-U19 red rotation that was both more "interesting" and the top hunter dps and would avoid having to re-invent the wheel. However, I expect that you're set in your course and that is perhaps more interesting for you. I have no intention of being the subject of your experiments however. Good luck!

[siipperi]

Making Quick Shot instant seems to take away the whole idea behind the class. Induction skills generate focus, and instant casts consume focus. I think it would be wise to stick to that formula.

This. Skill should have induction. If he feels it's too long as induction maybe take 0.2s off from it or something. But still should have induction even if it would be barely visible.

which is grossly inaccurate it doesn't inspire much confidence in your ability to rip apart and reassemble hunter skills and end up with something that actually works.

Have you logged bullroarer and you are aware hunter is mostly barrage + complimentary shots, what ever it's. Barrage is in live the by far the main tool that produces grossly most of the damage. Thus saying barrage is the one skill spam rotation. Just like penshot is on bullroarer. Sure you use more skills but it's still one skill spam rotation. That's why nerfs are needed to rotation and reason to use other skills.

[DKenny]

....Have you logged bullroarer and you are aware hunter is mostly barrage + complimentary shots, what ever it's. Barrage is in live the by far the main tool that produces grossly most of the damage. Thus saying barrage is the one skill spam rotation. Just like penshot is on bullroarer. Sure you use more skills but it's still one skill spam rotation. That's why nerfs are needed to rotation and reason to use other skills.

Your statement is barely coherent and self-contradictory. What is on BR is completely irrelevant with respect to my statement. The claim I was disputing was regarding live, and I disputed the claim because it is incorrect. Beyond that, perhaps you and the rest of the cheerleading squad should spend less time telling others to go on BR and test and do more of that yourself. I haven't seen you post anything beyond your usual unsubstantiated claims.

[Geventh]

I've been working on the hunter quite a bit over the last several days, and I have to admit, it's been tricky.

I'm trying to get more skills into the viable rotation for both blue and red, and at the same time, I'm trying to get the focus generation mechanic to be a little more meaningful.

For some time now, precision stance has been the go-to due to its focus generation being massive, allowing you to pretty much spam focus skills like barrage or pen shot with little consequence. I'm adjusting two things regarding focus generation - the precision trait is being weakened somewhat, and the Deadly Precision trait is moving much further up the red tree, making it difficult or impossible to get both.

I've been playing with the pacing and damage of the focus building shots, such as making quick shot a non-inducted skill so you always have a quick go-to to grab another point or two of focus, and speeding up swift bow a bit. I've also experiemented with the re-introduction of penetrating shot as a target debuff, increasing the target's vulnerability to ranged crits and physical damage.

I've been running a lot of damage parses to try and get Barrage and Upshot respectively into respectable portions of each build's DPS output. Upshot is a little tricky as it could end up being a really nasty one-shot skill if I don't manage it correctly. I may have to redesign it a bit - full one shot focus dumps may just not work out well when focus is a more valuable resource.

Anyway, not quite where I want it yet, but some of the rotations are starting to feel interesting.

-Vastin

Good to hear!

Strenght Stance could use some major attention:
+49.2% Ranged Damage can't compete against passive focus generation, +37% Critical Magnitude and Quickshot: +22.5% Critical Chance & bonus focus generation

Nerf the Precision trait from [2, 3] Focus every 5s down to 1 Focus every [4s, 3s].-> Passive Generation is cut in half but will happen more frequently

Don't make Quick Shot inductionless.
We should actively generate focus with Induction Bow skills and consume focus with Focus Bow skills.
Able to use Focus Bow skills is the pay off for inducting and low the damage of Induction Bow skills. Execptions are Heart Seeker and Swift Bow which have longish CDs.

[Vastin]

Good to hear!

Strenght Stance could use some major attention:
+49.2% Ranged Damage can't compete against passive focus generation, +37% Critical Magnitude and Quickshot: +22.5% Critical Chance & bonus focus generation

Nerf the Precision trait from [2, 3] Focus every 5s down to 1 Focus every [4s, 3s].-> Passive Generation is cut in half but will happen more frequently

Don't make Quick Shot inductionless.
We should actively generate focus with Induction Bow skills and consume focus with Focus Bow skills.
Able to use Focus Bow skills is the pay off for inducting and low the damage of Induction Bow skills. Execptions are Heart Seeker and Swift Bow which have longish CDs.

Heh. I came to much the same place as you as I laid out the changes.

I'm changing the strength stance to be a BASE multiplier, which is a lot more effective (though I do have to reduce its magnitude a bit), and you managed to guess exactly where I was going with the precision trait change, so kudos there.

I did end up keeping an induction on quick shot, but it is very short. This works out well as a spam focus generator for red line, particularly as it has two chances to generate extra focus (30% chance of a +1, and a chance to generate one off a crit). I also added a long bleed on heartseeker to give it more heft.

Overall I'm now pleased with the base rotation and the proportion of damage coming from the various skills.

My version of the red line rotation looks like PenShot->SwiftBow->Upshot->BarbedArrow->QuickShot(x2-3 depending)->PenShot->... Insert the occasional HeartSeeker, or dump out to blood arrow to heal. Need to take a look at merciful shot though, as I doubt it's worth hitting at 6 focus right now when Upshot hits so much harder at 9. That may have to wait for a later pass however as time runs short.

-Vastin

[Macdui]

Seems like the Barrage 20s CD is written in stone now.

Maybe Palantir were against it too as rumours were posted before the BR#1 notes.


I'd like to get back to the old huntsman rapid rate of fire mostly focus skills against the big hitting slower bowmaster inductions. Passive traits early in the trees could do this and be quicker to tweak later. But tone down barrage, don't kill it.


On the bright side at least we don't have to make and be encumbered by quivers of arrows. Really old school.

Mac

[Kander]

Heh. I came to much the same place as you as I laid out the changes.

I'm changing the strength stance to be a BASE multiplier, which is a lot more effective (though I do have to reduce its magnitude a bit), and you managed to guess exactly where I was going with the precision trait change, so kudos there.

I did end up keeping an induction on quick shot, but it is very short. This works out well as a spam focus generator for red line, particularly as it has two chances to generate extra focus (30% chance of a +1, and a chance to generate one off a crit). I also added a long bleed on heartseeker to give it more heft.

Overall I'm now pleased with the base rotation and the proportion of damage coming from the various skills.

My version of the red line rotation looks like PenShot->SwiftBow->Upshot->BarbedArrow->QuickShot(x2-3 depending)->PenShot->... Insert the occasional HeartSeeker, or dump out to blood arrow to heal. Need to take a look at merciful shot though, as I doubt it's worth hitting at 6 focus right now when Upshot hits so much harder at 9. That may have to wait for a later pass however as time runs short.

-Vastin

That sounds pretty cool but merciful shot tbh shouldn't be so much of a problem when every swift bow will reduce its focus cost by 1 and its base damage is way higher (at least on last beta) than upshot max focus and crit magnitude is extremely high, so technically you could use every merciful shot with a 4 focus cost instead of 6, anyways I would like to see swift bow cooldown reduced by a bit, like it having 6s cd instead of 10 so we could use the swift and true buff for 2 swift bows instead of 1. Strength stance applying buffs to base magnitude will help a lot, thanks for that and I would be really curious what the final rotation ends up being, because atm blood arrow is worth using over pen shot when it's off cooldown (also given the chance to use exsanguinate which is probably the hardest hitting skill of the hunter after Heart seeker with the bleed), still did upshot get buffed drastically? because I see no point on using upshot if you can use 3-4 pen shot instead, on last beta I think upshot had a base max damage on my hunter of around 37k full focus, while pen shot had nearly the same, or use pen shot + quick shot to keep the reduced induction quickshot nearly instant with -30% induction.

[Vastin]

Ok, I'm kinda out of time on this pass, but I'm pretty happy with where things ended up mechanically. I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

Anyway, here's what happened:

Hunter Update Pass 2
* This update pass ended up actually being more substantial than the first.
* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.
* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.
* Skill damages changed more or less across the board to accommodate the new focus cadences.
* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.
* Pen Shot base damage decreased.
* Upshot's damage and damage multiplier per focus increased considerably. Now hits like truck. Cooldown reduced to 15s.
* Press onward and bonuses rescaled as a % health effect. Induction reduced to 1s.
* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.
* Barrage now has a 2s cooldown per shot, and a 15s reset cooldown. Barrage 3 also hits brutally hard.
* Exsanguinate can now be traited to a 100% application chance (same trait cost).

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill. Not sure if this will remain true once you folks start playing extensive trait and set bonus mix & match, so we'll have to see where that goes. This will hopefully be the final 'big' pass, but I do expect to be making smaller corrections in fairly short order once these changes hit the live server and we start getting more in-action feedback on how they perform.

And again, my apologies to any yellow line hunters - not enough time to address any real changes to that at the moment.

- Vastin

[Macroscian]

They are not working on yellow line, yet. They normalized some of yellow skill damage. Apparently LW. LW damage is scaling much better, as strong as BA/Exs. on live it is about 6300 per tick, on BR it was in the same range as BA (about 11000, initial bleed tick is gone though). But LW was bugged on BR: It didn't stack anymore. Debufftooltip tiered up, but damage stayed the same. Wounded Prey damage increased with each tier, though.
LW legacy doesn't need to be that high, but being in the same range like every other legacy would be great(29,2% or even 58,4% like HS). But before that we'll have to wait what will happen with LW and yellow in general. If it will tier up again or even stack there is no need of a strong legacy. But enough about yellow now, it is getting too much OT. This beta version is about blue and red.

Glad to hear it. I had an initial LW skill damage lower than 1k on live with a geared 105 versus mobs 45 levels below.
That's not a skill, it's an insult. That is the application damage.
Yep, it is about blue and about red because yellow isn't really /played

I don't agree it needs to be a low % legacy, the leg requires you to play in yellow for the effect, as opposed to headshot - an absurdly overpowered skill with the resets.

[Giliodor]

Ok, I'm kinda out of time on this pass, but I'm pretty happy with where things ended up mechanically. I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

Anyway, here's what happened:

Hunter Update Pass 2
* This update pass ended up actually being more substantial than the first.
* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.
* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.
* Skill damages changed more or less across the board to accommodate the new focus cadences.
* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.
* Pen Shot base damage decreased.
* Upshot's damage and damage multiplier per focus increased considerably. Now hits like truck. Cooldown reduced to 15s.
* Press onward and bonuses rescaled as a % health effect. Induction reduced to 1s.
* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.
* Barrage now has a 2s cooldown per shot, and a 15s reset cooldown. Barrage 3 also hits brutally hard.
* Exsanguinate can now be traited to a 100% application chance (same trait cost).

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill. Not sure if this will remain true once you folks start playing extensive trait and set bonus mix & match, so we'll have to see where that goes. This will hopefully be the final 'big' pass, but I do expect to be making smaller corrections in fairly short order once these changes hit the live server and we start getting more in-action feedback on how they perform.

And again, my apologies to any yellow line hunters - not enough time to address any real changes to that at the moment.

- Vastin

Very disappointed to not see any meaningful interaction between Upshot and Heart-seeker. However, glad to see you didn't opt to make Quick Shot instant cast. I suppose we'll have to wait to test these changes, but I'm afraid hunter DPS is going to fly way past champ/RK DPS, which isn't a good thing.

And don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see you working on changes. Just hoped to see some interaction between Upshot and HS, or Upshot and... well, anything really.

Something to note: Upshot's cooldown is already reduced by crits/devs through the "Marksman" trait, so I feel like that cool down reduction was really unnecessary.

[Elwenwing]

Ok, I'm kinda out of time on this pass, but I'm pretty happy with where things ended up mechanically. I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

Anyway, here's what happened:

Hunter Update Pass 2
* This update pass ended up actually being more substantial than the first.
* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.
* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.
* Skill damages changed more or less across the board to accommodate the new focus cadences.
* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.
* Pen Shot base damage decreased.
* Upshot's damage and damage multiplier per focus increased considerably. Now hits like truck. Cooldown reduced to 15s.
* Press onward and bonuses rescaled as a % health effect. Induction reduced to 1s.
* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.
* Barrage now has a 2s cooldown per shot, and a 15s reset cooldown. Barrage 3 also hits brutally hard.
* Exsanguinate can now be traited to a 100% application chance (same trait cost).

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill. Not sure if this will remain true once you folks start playing extensive trait and set bonus mix & match, so we'll have to see where that goes. This will hopefully be the final 'big' pass, but I do expect to be making smaller corrections in fairly short order once these changes hit the live server and we start getting more in-action feedback on how they perform.

And again, my apologies to any yellow line hunters - not enough time to address any real changes to that at the moment.

- Vastin

It sounds like hunters will have an interesting time testing these changes!

[Siddharta]

* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.

Oil hunter damage is mitigated by Tactical Mitigation stat, so this debuff will not affect Fire-oil(and light) which is main for the hunter now.
Debuff must be changed to +% to ranged damage i guess. And +% to melee if the idea was to buff burglars, champs and etc.

[Joedangod]

* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.

I'd like to express some concern over keeping HS reset as a set bonus on armor rather than making it a part of the traitline somehow. If HS reset contributes a notable amount to Hunter DPS you end up forming two camps, those with the set and those without. Those without the set will struggle to find groups in order to get their set in the first place. It's a bit of a raider vs casual problem where raiders will pretty easily be able to call in a favour from their kin to kit out their Hunters whilst the average player might seriously struggle and as such get passed over for groups.

[Snowlock]

[COLOR="#0099ff"]* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.

So your initial scope was to make the red line the main dps line of the hunter, yet you've just massively nerfed it. The red line hunter, always dependent on rapid focus generation to supplement his induction skills damage based on Stance: Precision and Deadly Precision, . So what is your point here, I don't understand anymore. Now it sounds like you want to nerf blue line below red line, and now bring red line down to blue line. That wasn't your initial scope.

To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.

This doesn't balance the change. You are asking red hunters to abandon precision stance. That means we also abandon its speed, its finesse and its crit from legacies and trait bonuses. YOu want to replace that with interruptible inductions? The fun of red line was managin focus regen with focus output. To do that we needed precision. This reads as you've just massively nerfed red line and trashed the playstyle of every hunter that was red line that knew how to play it. Am I wrong here? Because this throwaway line is huge:

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill.

Our coping mechanism was the regen of precision pared with the damge of red line. Now we're slow and hitting less often (due to lack of finesse) and less hard. How much dps do you do when you're dead all the time, exactly? Even moved Press On over to Blue, the line on the move that doesn't need to stand still and take damage.

[Naranor]

* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.

I think that better way will be - increase quick shot and barbed damage to ~x1pen shot, Swiwt bow to x2,5 pen shot. Any way nobody use swift bow with out insta cast.

[Rexiy]

Ok, I'm kinda out of time on this pass, but I'm pretty happy with where things ended up mechanically. I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

Anyway, here's what happened:

Hunter Update Pass 2
* This update pass ended up actually being more substantial than the first.
* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.
* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.
* Skill damages changed more or less across the board to accommodate the new focus cadences.
* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.
* Pen Shot base damage decreased.
* Upshot's damage and damage multiplier per focus increased considerably. Now hits like truck. Cooldown reduced to 15s.
* Press onward and bonuses rescaled as a % health effect. Induction reduced to 1s.
* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.
* Barrage now has a 2s cooldown per shot, and a 15s reset cooldown. Barrage 3 also hits brutally hard.
* Exsanguinate can now be traited to a 100% application chance (same trait cost).

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill. Not sure if this will remain true once you folks start playing extensive trait and set bonus mix & match, so we'll have to see where that goes. This will hopefully be the final 'big' pass, but I do expect to be making smaller corrections in fairly short order once these changes hit the live server and we start getting more in-action feedback on how they perform.

And again, my apologies to any yellow line hunters - not enough time to address any real changes to that at the moment.

- Vastin

Thinking of changing and balancing is awesome however I only see how the company is limiting the game play and it's own creativity by focusing all of the Devs efforts on making our classes stationary again. Why not add more flavor to the moors, instances and raids by making our classes move while fighting? In my opinion if SSG want to compete with other games on players interest and attention - you should make the blue line of the hunter the hard-core dps and the red line for landscape. Same goes with rks - yellow line should be the hardcore dps. Healers should have good healing skills while moving (rks, minies, beos alike). LM should cast while moving, than hiding and b/p/e would matter. This will also increase the company flexibility and creativity on planning and programing the next instances/raid. It will automatically create a challenge by itself and will make people want to work harder to fine tune the fight. It will add more tactical thinking to the fight using landscape advantages. If you are sticking on making the red line hunter great again I see zero point in discussing it's DPS outcome and how to improve it, since you are taking away all the fun from end gamers and making it dull boring and simple. Landscape solo players don't need the best DPS and wouldn't even notice the difference either way. I am sorry to be a party breaker but I only see how you will lose end-gamers in the end. To conclude, SSG should clarify their goals in this game - there is no point coding stationary fights in mid 2018 for gamers community. If you see us all as casual gamers who need to stand still and press buttons -> outcome numbers of toons doesn't matter just run simple math of morale of mob or a boss versus overall group dps.

Disappointment end-gamer who see how SSG takes us back to the past rather than advancing forward.

[Altair6]

I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

I assume this is tongue in cheek? Or should we add it to the "one skill" rotation list? If a dev can't optimize gear and traits then who can?

Anyway, if you've broken Hunter (from my point of view) or if you expect me to spend time grinding out changes to my LIs, etc., I'll just park mine for now. So carry on. Have fun.

[Macroscian]

Please don't forget yellow, although you are focusing on red/blue right now. Adding this debuff to penetrating shot should be something for yellow not red/blue, since yellow is the debuffing/CC support line. Otherwise It will stay the way it is since HD. Yellow has -60% dps compared to red/blue and +20% support(debuff/CC) not a fair trade.

It's no use.
LW is a proc to tier, slow ticks, slow animation, application damage extremely low, has a legacy that does little-to-nothing despite being yellow tree-specific and this is unlikely to change.
Imagine the leg going to 150% (which is not a lot when the base damage is so Eru-awfully low, heck, make it 250% max and noone would notice) or one additional bleed tick per four-five emps.
Now I hear the bleed is lowered damage instead and the legacy unchanged.

[Geventh]

Ok, I'm kinda out of time on this pass, but I'm pretty happy with where things ended up mechanically. I'm sorta nervous about actual final DPS numbers though - mine never match up with your guys very well, mostly because I don't have the time to hyper-optimize my gear and traiting, so I'm always well below the optimized parses. Hopefully they are at least in the ballpark.

Anyway, here's what happened:

Hunter Update Pass 2
* This update pass ended up actually being more substantial than the first.
* Focus generation heavily tweaked. Traited Precision stance generates less focus than it used to, and Deadly Precision is now much further up the Red line.
* To balance this, quick shot inductions shortened to 0.5s, and Swift Bow Induction shortened to 1.8s - this allows for a faster cadence of manual focus generation in either build, though red relies on it much more than blue.
* Skill damages changed more or less across the board to accommodate the new focus cadences.
* Pen Shot now applies a 10s debuff to the target's Inc phys damage, True Shot now traits it to add an additional ranged crit vulnerability on top of that. This buff will not stack currently.
* Pen Shot base damage decreased.
* Upshot's damage and damage multiplier per focus increased considerably. Now hits like truck. Cooldown reduced to 15s.
* Press onward and bonuses rescaled as a % health effect. Induction reduced to 1s.
* Heartseeker armor set bonus now has a 30s cooldown and a reduced proc chance (15%->10%)
* Heartseeker now has a long term bleed effect.
* Heartseeker will now consume 3 focus IF you have it - but does not require focus to fire or benefit from it. Kind of an odd experiment. Bear with me.
* Barrage now has a 2s cooldown per shot, and a 15s reset cooldown. Barrage 3 also hits brutally hard.
* Exsanguinate can now be traited to a 100% application chance (same trait cost).

My experience with them using my own fairly simplistic trait loadouts on landscape were that it really was much easier to handle landscape mobs and multi-pulls on blue, while red seemed to have a better outright optimal DPS, but kind of lousy coping mechanisms once things are up in your grill. Not sure if this will remain true once you folks start playing extensive trait and set bonus mix & match, so we'll have to see where that goes. This will hopefully be the final 'big' pass, but I do expect to be making smaller corrections in fairly short order once these changes hit the live server and we start getting more in-action feedback on how they perform.

And again, my apologies to any yellow line hunters - not enough time to address any real changes to that at the moment.

- Vastin

I'm not sure about the Pen Shot & Barrage changes. Will test it out when next build comes out. Some changes are looking really promising.

I seriously hope Upshot is balanced in terms of output whether it's for landscape or PvP. Because a one shot skills especially on such a low CD is really bad. As others have mentioned keep the old CD as you can actively reduce the CD further down.

Exsanguinate imo needs a CD reduction from 45s down to 20-30s. Keep the old proc chance.

The only thing I'm missing are some skill interactions. This could make rotation interesting and not straight forward. Also adds a small skill cap to master the class.

[dselden]

Oil hunter damage is mitigated by Tactical Mitigation stat, so this debuff will not affect Fire-oil(and light) which is main for the hunter now.
Debuff must be changed to +% to ranged damage i guess. And +% to melee if the idea was to buff burglars, champs and etc.

Incoming physical damage would include hunters, since they do physical damage that goes through fire mits.