Jump to content
FORUMS
Sign in to follow this  
Staff

Upcoming Hunter Changes on the Dragonflight Alpha: August 12th

Recommended Posts

58858-hunter-class-changes-in-patch-91-b

Blizzard today posted a list of upcoming Hunter changes that will go live in the next Dragonflight Alpha build.

Marksmanship Hunters will receive a new talent called Bulletstorm.

  • Extra targets your Aimed Shot or Rapid Fires ricochet to from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to your Multi-Shot damage, stacking up to 10 times.

Blizzard Logo(Source)

Hello again Hunters,

This won’t be a specific list of everything that has changed, but some notes on changes coming to the next build.

Class Tree:

  • Some minor changes have been made to some node connections.
  • Lone Survivor’s cooldown reduction has been lowered from 60 to 30 seconds.
  • Death Chakram should work in non-Shadowlands zones, and should increase all damage taken rather than just Physical damage taken
  • Master Marksman should work with melee abilities as well.

Marksmanship

  • Lots of bug fixes.
  • Legacy of the Windrunners has changed into a 2-point node again, each point will add 3 wind arrows. Also any buffs to Aimed Shot now applies to these Wind Arrows.
    • To clarify the point about Legacy of the Windrunners gaining bonuses from Aimed Shot, this is any buffs to crit chance or damage to Aimed Shot. Trick Shots will not be sending Wind Arrows all over the place.
  • New talent in the bottom left area: Bulletstorm. Extra targets your Aimed Shot or Rapid Fires ricochet to from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to your Multi-Shot damage.
  • Bombardment has changed to a 1 point node and is located right below Multi-Shot
    • There has been some discussion about how Bombardment should work, or perhaps that it should just work like the current 4-piece set bonus with alternate numbers. Tracking resources spent is difficult in the default UI, and most people feel it is necessary to get an addon to track how much more Focus they have to spend to get a Trick Shots effect.
    • With the current design of X Arcane/Chimaera shots required as opposed to Focus Spent, why require a Multi-Shot instead of just granting Trick Shots? Most of the purpose of this talent is to provide some limited options for Trick Shots when you don’t have 3+ targets to consistently gain Trick Shots. If the fight has one target most of the time, and occasionally some adds spawn, getting a buff that guarantees your next Multi-Shot to grant you a Trick Shots regardless of targets hit should grant you increased control over when you want to use the effect. The Bombardment buff currently lasts 2 minutes, so there is no rush to try to jam in some extra shots right as some adds spawn, you have time to prepare and use this.
  • Calling the Shots has had its design adjusted to grant cooldown reduction for Trueshot from Focus Spent, rather than require specific shots.

Beast Mastery and Survival have also had some bug fixes, but no notable design changes this week. That doesn’t mean things are final.

edit: To clarify the point about Legacy of the Windrunners gaining bonuses from Aimed Shot, this is any buffs to crit chance or damage to Aimed Shot. Trick Shots will not be sending Wind Arrows all over the place.

I hope the team looks at the proc rate or damage on the Wind Arrows such that it is a competitive choice in single target talent setups.

This is the goal. It may not be there with current numbers, but these 3 points (yes, they are still 3 total points, Windrunner’s Guidance is 1-point again), is that this should be competitive. Maybe it needs to be from Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Maybe Arcane Shot/Chimaera shot can also cause it. There’s danger in lumping too much extra damage to Aimed Shot for PvP reasons - hypothetical numbers, if Aimed Shot normally does 1000 damage, but via procs can sometimes do 2500 damage, the damage swing is super high. A lot of bonuses were pulled out of Aimed Shot in BFA/Shadowlands and just lumped into Aimed Shot damage to try to keep its damage consistently strong.

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm’s design is currently a buff that stacks up to 10, but doesn’t refresh duration as you gain stacks. It lets you get some big Multi-Shots in, but in a cyclical fashion.

additional talents that specifically buff Rapid Fire

There’s some potential tree restructure that has to happen if this is the case, because Rapid Fire is technically optional, and having a line of things coming off of rapid fire and not connecting anywhere else limits how you can move your points around the tree. That isn’t to say this isn’t possible, just that it’s more involved than just putting a node somewhere that buffs only Rapid Fire.

replacing Survival’s Mastery

There are no plans to redesign any of the Mastery effects for Hunters.

Post 2

I should clarify my post above a bit more.

PvP is a concern for abilities that sometimes deal big damage or heal lot. This is true for the game as a whole. We have tools available to change things in PvP compared to PvE. While these tools obviously work, it’s not intuitive that Aimed Shot does 1000 damage against a kobold, and 500 damage against a player because of a hidden multiplier.

There are also PvE concerns of your abilities swinging in damage a lot. Partly for tuning reasons, but also for how the game feels. Again using hypothetical numbers, if Aimed Shot does 1000 damage, but sometimes 2500, your damage variance from each boss attempt, or on that difficult M+ pack, or in the Mage Tower challenges, or wherever, is very unstable. Sometimes it’s OK for your damage to be very swingy, some specs inherently have a lot of randomness in how they play and that’s by design. Critical strikes are already a thing that exist that changes your damage a lot, but you don’t often pull a boss and think “oh, my aimed shot didn’t crit, lets reset and try again”. That’s obviously an extreme example, but if there’s so much randomness tied to one ability’s damage, and that ability is a significant part of your total throughput, maybe it’s a problem we should try to address.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
Sign in to follow this  

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

  • Similar Content

    • By Starym
      We have another triple entry in the hotfix ledger, as Radiant Echoes gets more improvements in retail, while Season of Discovery and Cata Classic get additional class changes.
       August 7  (Source)
      Player-characters
      Steady Flight should no longer be removed after entering an Arena. Quests
      We tuned up the Prototype Shredder MK-03 so that “Eye for an Eye” can be completed. Radiant Echoes Event
      Increased Flightstone and upgrade Crest drop rates in the event. Reduced the HP scaling on all event bosses so that they should be killable in a more-reasonable timeframe. Developers’ notes: This includes both ‘minibosses’ (e.g. Hogger, Thorim) and final bosses (e.g. Remembered Onyxia, Ragnaros). Season of Discovery
      Hunter Heart of the Lion once again has a 100 yard range. Warrior The Focused Rage rune will now correctly reduce the cost of Meathook by 3. Cataclysm Classic
      Fixed an issue where Faerie Fire did not deal intended amounts of threat when used on NPCs targeting another unit.
    • By Stan
      Due to a bug introduced with the War Within pre-patch, some players are receiving item level 250 gear from the weekly cache.
      We've seen numerous reports on Reddit and the official forums that the Last Hurrah weekly quest on live servers drop low-level gear for some players. Apparently, the bug was first introduced with the War Within pre-patch two weeks ago and still hasn't been fixed.
      Here's an example of a low item level drop from the Cache of Awakened Treasures by Omnifox.

    • By Starym
      Week 2 brings quite a few changes, as Hunters in particular rise up, while Shadow has a really bad time. The top 3 remains the same and very consistent, so let's jump in and see what's going on.
      Warcraft Logs Points
      The below logs are based on POINTS, and not actual damage or healing, meaning they log the timed completion for the specs, with higher keys getting more points, obviously. The time in which the dungeon is completed is also a factor, but a much, much smaller one, as it grants very few points if you do it significantly faster than just any in-time completion. We're also using the Normalized Aggregate Scores numbers, for clarity, meaning the top spec is marked as 100 and then the rest are ranked in relation to that peak point.
      All Keys
      95th percentile DPS
      The top 3 remains quite stable with the Evoker-Paladin-Warrior trio reigning supreme. We see the first change of the week right after that though, as Frost DK continues its upward march in dungeons as well as in raids, taking 4th from Elemental. Both DKs are on the rise, as Unholy also moves a spot up, taking advantage of Shadow's precipitous 5-spot fall to the bottom of the top 10. Arms remains stable as two Hunters burst in, Beast Mastery taking 8th and Marksmanship 9th, as Frost Mage disappears down towards the bottom. Speaking of the bottom, Devastation gets some new roommates there, as Outlaw and Destruction fall and give Enhancement and Feral a break.

      Mythic+ All Keys 95th Percentile Data by Warcraft Logs.
      All Percentiles
      As with the top percentiles, the top 3 remains solid, but 4th is immediately changed, thanks to Shadow's massive drop in performance this week. The Priest loses even more ground here, falling 9 spots into 13th, opening 4th up for Arms. Beast Mastery moves even higher here, grabbing 5th and moving in front of Elemental and Frost DK, as Marksmanship brings up the rear and completes the Hunter sandwich in 8th. Affliction breaks into the top 10, just ahead of Unholy which dropped to the final spot.

      Mythic+ All Keys All Percentile Data by Warcraft Logs.
      Raw DPS U.GG DPS Rankings
      U.gg's rankings are based on actual DPS taken from Warcraft Logs data, focusing on the top players and span the past two weeks.
      Frost DK finds itself on top in the raw DPS rankings, as Augmentation isn't calculated properly here. Fury and Arms grab the next two spots, moving ahead of Ret, and the Fyr'alath wins continue in 5th, where Unholy finished the legendary axe streak. Even Survival joins the Hunter good times in 8th, where all three specs gather, just ahead of Balance who closes out the top 10.
      Mythic+ All Keystone DPS rankings by u.gg.
       
       
      For even more in-depth data for each individual key head on over to Warcraft Logs. And if you're interested in more info on the specs themselves you can always check out our class guides (updated for the pre-patch), as well as our Mythic+ guides and Mythic+ tier list.
    • By Stan
      For the next two weeks, the Archaeology quest for Spirit of Eche'ro is available on live servers, so don't forget to get the rare mount before it's gone for 6 months!
      How to Get the Spirit of Eche'ro Mount
      1. Download MapCoords or some other add-os that displays coordinates in the game.
      2. Teleport to Azsuna from the Stormwind/Orgrimmar Portal Room or use your Dalaran Hearthstone to reach Dalaran (Legion) if you have one in your inventory.
      3. Seek out Archaeology Trainer Dariness the Learned in Dalaran at 41,26 and learn Archaeology if you already haven't.
      4. Accept The Right Path quest from the Archaeology Trainer and make your way to Thunder Totem in Highmountain.
      5. Talk to Lessah Moonwater to accept Laying to Rest. For the quest, you must collect 600 Bone Fragments of Eche'ro by rotating between four digsites in Highmountain. The exact locations with coords are outlined below.
      Digsite 1: Darkfeather Valley (50, 44) Digsite 2: Dragon's Falls (58, 72) Digsite 3: Path of Huin (44, 72) Digsite 4: Whitewater Wash (39, 65) it takes roughly around 2 hours to get the mount.
      Spirit of Eche'ro
      "The spirit of Huln Highmountain's pet moose."

      Hurry up! You only have until August 21, 2024, to get the mount!
    • By Stan
      MoP Remix characters that will transfer over to retail will receive a gear boost!
      With Patch 11.0.2 now live on Public Test Realms, you can copy over MoP Remix characters from retail! It appears all MoP Remix characters will receive a character boost so you can dive straight into action when the War Within expansion launches.

      We can't unfortunately log in to the game with the MoP Remix char on the PTR so we can't confirm the Item Level of gear for max level characters. However, keep in mind that the gear boost will scale with your level, so if you're below max cap, you will receive gear appropriate to your current level.
      When Can We Expect MoP Remix Characters to Transfer to Retail?
      MoP Remix ends on August 19, so we assume the characters will need to be transferred to retail by August 22 when Early Access begins.
×
×
  • Create New...