Feedback: Hunters

#1 - July 14, 2022, 6:35 p.m.

Please use this thread to post feedback on the Hunter class, once you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.

Thank you!

#5 - July 15, 2022, 10:49 p.m.

Hello Hunters,

We wanted to discuss some plans we had coming in the next few builds and address a few points of feedback.

Class Tree Changes:

• Improved Mend pet reduced to 2 points for +25/50%. Also now has a chance per tick of Mend Pet to also dispel a magic effect from your pet.
• Scare Beast is no longer on a path that connects to other nodes below it, it’s a one-off thing to the side of the tree.
• There is potentially a placeholder +Agility node where scare beast was. This will be changed if it shows up in your build to something that isn’t direct throughput.
• Chimaera Shot removed from the class tree.
• Master Marksman will likely be changed to also work with melee critical hits.
• Death Chakram will likely be changed to increase all damage taken, rather than just Physical. This should make it more competitive to Survival Hunters, who do a fair bit of non-physical damage.

Beast Mastery

• Dire Pack needs to be reworked.

Marksmanship

• Double Tap is being moved near the middle of the tree.
• New bottom left talent as a selection node:
  • Kill Shot now works with Trick Shots
  • Some number of targets hit by your Trick Shot ricochets also have Explosive Shot applied to them.
• Legacy of the Windrunners has moved, and is consolidated down to 3 points instead of 5.
• Chimaera shot added near the top of the tree. It will once again replace Arcane Shot, and things that modify Arcane Shot will modify Chimaera Shot
• Quick Shot removed.
• Rapid Fire’s Focus generation will just be part of the baseline ability and no longer an upgrade.

Survival

• A bunch of 3-point talents adjusted to fewer points.
• A dependency problem with Frenzy Strikes needs to be resolved where you can get this talent without either Wildfire Bombs.

This is not a complete list of what will change in the next build, or even the next few builds. As more decisions are made, we’ll try to post here. As always, things are subject to change and what is there now, or in the builds to come, may not be final.

Bug fixing is also an ongoing process.

One other quick note:

Serpent Sting is intentionally low on the class side of the talent tree. If it’s up higher, it starts competing in space we have designated for utility options and starts to feel like a mandatory throughput choice. We want to put most of the actual throughput stuff past the second gate, so you have adequate points to get the utility you feel is important while playing. Moving it up higher means you would likely be getting less utility options.

edit: The note about Serpent Sting is specific to the Hunter class tree layout. Different classes have different tree layouts and where utility and throughput is scattered about.
edit2: note about Rapid Fire Focus generation in the MM tree area.
edit3: Death Chakram note in class tree area.
edit4: Frenzy Strikes note was wrong, you have to take Butchery/Carve, but not Wildfire Bombs.

#8 - July 15, 2022, 11:01 p.m.

Current plan: Yes

Same combined effects.

#11 - July 15, 2022, 11:49 p.m.

The intent is every ability on the class side of the tree is usable by any spec, regardless of what weapon is equipped. It may not be in that state now, but is is planned. Barrage might be an exception to this, but Barrage is also much less mandatory as a connection point in an upcoming build.

Hunters had years of history with Serpent Sting, and it is available to Marksmanship as a talent. Multi-shot is also something many people would consider a core button, but is now in the spec trees for BM and MM. There is certainly an option where Serpent Sting is put in each tree and available with your first few points.

In general, we like to put as much class-wide stuff that we can, on the class side of the tree. This gets much more difficult when there are very crucial interactions within your spec with these buttons, such as Multi-Shot->Beast Cleave, or Multi-Shot->Trick Shots.

Serpent Sting is a cool button for Hunters. It is a nice thing for all three specs to have access to. Is it important to have before level 52? Maybe. It is early in the alpha testing stages for Dragonflight. We will get a lot of feedback from sources both internally and externally. If we decide it has to change for whatever reasons, we have time to do so.

#13 - July 16, 2022, 12:42 a.m.

Friday afternoon thought: This is about 1/3 of World of Warcraft’s retail lifespan.

There are no planned animation changes for Hunters right now.

#31 - July 18, 2022, 6:21 p.m.

There are no plans to change the 3+ target requirement for Trick Shots.

#34 - July 18, 2022, 8:58 p.m.

While I don’t want to comment for every single tree directly, comparing a class that has been around for 17+ years to a brand new class is very difficult. Evokers don’t have years of precedent and mechanics to build off of. It is a very different experience to design a talent tree for a totally new class with basically zero core ideas that players are accustomed to, compared to designing talents for a class that has years of expectations and styles of play around it.

I’m not saying don’t look at the Evoker tree or whatever other class and see cool ideas and try to relate it to your class or spec or express frustrations where you feel them. That’s always a fun experiment and something we often do with our internal peer reviews. I’m just trying to say, Evokers are very new, and currently have these core interactions created for them within the tree.

#42 - July 20, 2022, 12:51 a.m.

Everything in the class tree, except maybe Barrage, will be usable with ranged or melee weapons.

Also I’m not trying to dodge the other questions, we’re just having discussions about defensives and group utility and want to get that more resolved before adjustments are made one way or the other. Do not take this post as any promises for more or less of anything on this class or others.

#51 - July 20, 2022, 8:11 p.m.

This is an interesting point of discussion. Cooldowns that are significant power swings, such as Combustion, often define your style of play. You likely need to combo in as many effects as possible to skyrocket up your damage in a short timeframe. Whether or not you get lucky with procs and whatever else in that window dictates a lot about your performance over the fight as a whole. You also start feeling much less effective outside of these damage windows, as you peak very high, and then go down into a lower state of throughput until the cooldown is available again.

Not every cooldown needs to be a significant swing. If Trueshot is made stronger, your average damage outside of Trueshot will likely go down to compensate. Should Trueshot be a big damage swing cooldown like Combustion? The current thought is no.

The points made about Precise Shots during the Trueshot window are valid feedback and is something we could work on to make better, but at the same time we’re also currently OK if some things like Precise Shot stacks are “wasted” during this window. Trueshot makes your gameplay feel significantly different while it is active, which is great. If the cooldown was changed to +20% critical strike chance, it remains effective and a good burst window, but doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything special other than getting a few more critical hits. That’s not to say that secondary stats or a percent critical strike buff are bad, it’s just different.

#63 - July 22, 2022, 8:55 p.m.

The next build to alpha will have some pretty substantial changes for the hunter talent trees. Many talent nodes have had their position shuffled around, as well as connections, so this won’t be an exact list of what specific talent node moved to what new position and what it connects to. Some of this may be redundant information with previous posts:

Baseline Changes:

• Mend Pet has been bumped up from 35% of Pet’s HP over its duration, to 50% of pet’s HP.

Class Tree:

• The placeholder Agility % node has been replaced with an Avoidance node.
• Improved Exhilaration (the pet healing) is now part of the baseline Exhilaration ability. This has been replaced with Rejuvenating Winds.
• Viper’s Venom in the choice node after Serpent Sting has been replaced with Hydra’s Bite.
• Binding Shackles is planned to work with any combination of Scatter Shot, Explosive Trap, Binding Shot, and Intimidation. This should make sense with the new tree layout.

Beast Mastery

• Dire Pack has been redesigned. Every X Dire Beasts summoned now resets the cooldown of Kill Command, and reduces the cooldown and Focus Cost of Kill Command for a duration.
• New talent added that increases the duration and damage of any Dire Beast summon.

Marksmanship:

• Steady Focus values lowered to 4/8%, rather than 7/15%.
• Hunter’s Knowledge and Focused Aim now boost Rapid Fire damage and crit chance in addition to Aimed Shot.
• Salvo has been renamed to Bombardment and redesigned - Arcane Shots increases the damage of your next Multi-Shot by X%, stacking up to 4 times.
• Explosive Ricochet renamed to Salvo, and design adjusted. Multi-Shot now also shoots Explosive Shot at up to 2 targets hit. This can only occur once every 45 sec.
• Killer Ricochet renamed and redesigned, is now Razor Fragments - When Trick Shots fades or is consumed, your next Kill Shot does X% more damage, and causes up to 5 targets to bleed for Y% of the damage dealt over 6 sec. This node comes right after Deathblow , which may be in a different position in the tree now.
• Bursting Shot and Quick Load are no longer a dependency for any talent node on the tree.

Survival

• Terms of Engagement and Improved Harpoon talents have been combined and now only requires 1 talent point total.
• Several abilities reduced to 1 or 2 total points, down from 2 or 3 total points.
• Precision Removed
• Frenzy Strikes now also applies its cooldown reduction to Flanking Strike.
  • Note: there’s an issue where this talent will incorrectly be able to be obtained by a prior node without the Butchery/Carve node, this connection will be removed in a future update.
• Wildfire Infusions - Volatile Bomb has been adjusted because Serpent Sting is no longer a baseline, guaranteed to have ability. This bomb will continue to deal bonus damage to a target affected by Serpent Sting, and will also apply Serpent Sting to some number of targets it hits.
• Viper’s Venom is now in the survival talent tree with a redesign. Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a chance to apply Serpent Sting to your target.
• New Talent - Ranger - Increases the damage of Steady Shot, Kill Shot, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting.
• New Talent - Intense Focus - increases focus generated by Kill Command
• New Talent - Ruthless Marauder - Fury of the Eagle has a 15% increased critical strike chance against targets below 20% health, and Fury of the Eagle critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb and Flanking Strike by 0.5 sec.
  • The critical strike chance and cooldown reduction values go up per rank, the 20% HP threshold does not change.

This is a lot to parse, and things above are not final. Thanks for the discussions so far, we appreciate it.

#67 - July 22, 2022, 9:30 p.m.

Before expectations might get out of hand, we don’t have any intention of making a ranged Survival “subspec” of the sorts. The Ranger talent is not intended to divert your gameplay into using Steady Shot instead of Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite. Hunters as a whole have some ranged attacks, and Survival hunters, while primarily melee, do still shoot things.

The intent of the Ranger talent is to bump your ranged damage up a bit for encounters or PvP or whatever gameplay where that is important, not turn Survival into a full ranged DPS spec. We still intend Survival to be in melee, with a melee weapon, doing melee things. Sometimes they also shoot.

#75 - July 22, 2022, 9:46 p.m.

The 7/15% that is on the alpha right now is just a data error on our end, there was not a goal of doubling the value of the talent from Shadowlands to Dragonflight.

Steady Focus also should hopefully feel less mandatory as a path towards Trueshot with the upcoming layout changes.

#117 - July 29, 2022, 7:56 p.m.

Hello again, Hunters.

We wanted to discuss some adjustments coming to your talents in a future build, and briefly mention a few thoughts.

Class Tree
The current design intentionally has almost all utility above the second gate, which means you have 11 points that will almost certainly be spent only on throughput choices in PvE situations. We like having a bunch of abilities located past the second gate that were previously locked to individual specs. This has also created a situation where there’s a lot of bloat of extra abilities and cooldowns that feel mandatory because they are available and likely worth pressing. The last 3 rows of the tree have been shuffled around a bit and will continue to be adjusted to try to prevent most hunters from feeling obligated to acquire multiple extra active buttons.

• Barrage and Explosive Shot are now a choice node.
• Stampede now replaces Chakram in the choice node vs Death Chakram.
  • Chakram has been removed from the talent tree.
• Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been lowered to 2 points.

Beast Mastery

• Bloodshed and Murder of Crows is now a choice node, and is where Dire Beast previously was.
• Dire Beast has been moved to where Murder of Crows was.
• New Talent - Bloody Frenzy - Barbed Shot has a chance to apply a second stack of Frenzy to your pets. This is located in the second gate area.
• Beast Cleave has been lowered to 2 points, and Beast Cleave’s duration is now 3/6 seconds depending on your rank.

Marksmanship
While Rapid Fire is not a required ability, we’re trying to integrate it to the tree where it would make sense. Marksmanship has very limited passive Focus generation, and Rapid Fire should ideally help with that. We want to avoid situations where you drop Steady Shot entirely while doing prolonged combat.

• Deathblow has been made a 1-point node. Rapid Fire casts (not damage events) can now also activate this. The chance for activation is different for Aimed Shot vs Rapid Fire.
• Razor Fragments now also works with Deathblow procs, rather than being tied solely to Trick Shots.
• Bombardment’s design has changed - Every 6/4 (2-rank node) Arcane or Chimaera Shots causes your next Multi-Shot to grant you Trick Shots, regardless of how many targets it hits.
  • This will likely be changed to a 1-point node, or adjusted to also boost Multi-Shot damage per rank. The location of this also needs to be adjusted as you can currently select this without Multi-Shot.
• Lone Wolf’s spot in the tree has been moved to above the first gate.
• More things connect to Lock and Load’s talent node.
• Some redundant node connections have been removed.
• Legacy of the Windrunners and Serpentstalker’s Trickery node locations have been swapped.
• Unerring Vision’s design has slightly changed to also increase critical damage while Trueshot is active.

Survival
Spearhead and Coordinated Assault are competing for some space in the tree. We’re hoping to identify a set of abilities to that each augments in a way that feels good, and also would prefer a design that doesn’t encourage you to stack both of them at the same time. Some adjustments are being made to these abilities to try to focus on different parts of your ability sets in a manner that lets both Coordinated Assault and Spearhead hopefully feel both distinct from each other, while still feeling powerful on their own.

• Mongoose Bite should actually replace Raptor Strike now.
• Predator returned to 25%, rather than 8%. This was a data error when changing from a 3 point node to a 1 point node.
• A connection between Lunge and Frenzy Strikes has been removed to prevent a dependency problem.
• Deadly Duo renamed Quick Shot, and redesigned. When Kill Command’s cooldown is reset, you fire a free Arcane Shot at your target.
• Coordinated Assault is back to 2 minutes.
• Coordinated Assault no longer modifies Carve. Instead, your pet’s special attack increases the initial damage of your next Wildfire Bomb.
  • Birds of Prey will likely be adjusted in a future build to more directly work with the design tweaks of Coordinated Assault.
• Bonded Companion renamed Deadly Duo, and redesigned. While Coordinated Assault is active, Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown is reduced by 25/50%, Wildfire Bombs generate 5/10 Focus when thrown, and Kill Shot can be used on any target regardless of the target’s HP.
• Coordinated Kill redesigned, and is now 2 points. While Spearhead is active, Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite Focus Cost is reduced by 5/10, and Kill Command resets increase the duration of Spearhead by 1/2 sec.

#129 - July 30, 2022, 1:05 a.m.

You can fill out the talent tree without ever selecting Rapid Fire if you choose to. It may not be the best way to play, but you could do it. That’s all the original post was referring to.

#159 - Aug. 5, 2022, 7:11 p.m.

Hello Hunters,

There are some notable changes coming to your next alpha build we wanted to share. This won’t be an exhaustive list of changes, but will hit some of the big points.

As far as bugs, we know there are bugs and things that aren’t working right. Things are being worked on.

Baseline Class Changes:

• Tenacity Pets no longer have Survival of the Fittest.
• Tenacity Pets have a new ability, Fortitude of the Bear. This grants you and your pet +20% maximum HP for a duration.
  • Command Pet interactions will probably be a bit broken in the next build, as well as Lone Wolf giving access to Survival of the Fittest as opposed to Fortitude of the Bear. These will be resolved in a future build.

Class Tree:

• Thick Hides removed.
• Survival of the Fittest is now in the class tree.
• There is a choice node to modify Survival of the Fittest to have a shorter cooldown, or have higher damage reduction value.
• Fogged Crystal removed.
• Improved Tranquilizing Shot lowered to a 1 point node.
• Born to be Wild now also modifies Survival of the Fittest, and lowered to a 2-point node.
• There is a new, potentially placeholder, not implemented, not final, not a promise talent added in the core tree. Sentinel Owl.
  • Sentinel Owl grants you unhindered vision of a targeted area, allowing your attacks to ignore line of sight to the area.
• There is a new, potentially placeholder, not implemented, not final, not a promise choice node attached to the Sentinel Owl node.
  • Choice A: The unhindered vision of your owl now also applies to your party members, allowing them to also ignore line of sight to the target area.
  • Choice B: While the Sentinel Owl is active, your party gains some Leech and Avoidance.

Some thoughts on Sentinel Owl:
Resonating Arrow from the Kyrian covenant is a neat, unique effect Hunters have to break the line of sight rules. It is very powerful in PvP situations, and situationally useful in PvE. We want to keep the ignore line of sight effect, but do not want to keep the personal or group damage amplification from Resonating Arrow. Keeping utility as utility, and not utility as damage, allows it to be a useful tool when the situation calls for it, rather than something you feel compelled to stack with other effects, or use on cooldown.

Marksmanship:

• A bunch of nodes in the bottom left area have been shuffled around the tree.

Survival:

• Kill Command (the Survival variant) now has an innate +10% chance to reset its cooldown. Predator’s value has been lowered from 25% to 15%.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

#173 - Aug. 9, 2022, 11:04 p.m.

Sentinel’s Wisdom is very likely being redesigned.
Hunter’s Agility changing from Avoidance to Dodge was mostly so there wasn’t a doubled-up Avoidance node on the tree.

#186 - Aug. 12, 2022, 6:58 p.m.

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.

#189 - Aug. 12, 2022, 7:45 p.m.

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’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.

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.

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

#193 - Aug. 12, 2022, 7:56 p.m.

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.

#195 - Aug. 12, 2022, 8:05 p.m.

If they only buff Aimed Shot, does that make Rapid Fire less desirable because it has fewer modifiers than Aimed Shot?

#198 - Aug. 12, 2022, 8:10 p.m.

I did not intend my question to be combative if it came off that way, it was just a question of how things look at a glance. For players who don’t rely on 3rd party sites or high end theorycrafting, if they look at the tree and see 5 things that only buff Aimed Shot, and Rapid Fire off to the side, Rapid Fire probably looks like a much less desirable button. When these 5 things buff both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, maybe it’s a good push in the right direction that Rapid Fire is an important button you should get, and these bonuses also work on that ability so you feel like you’re getting full value from them.

Neither direction is objectively correct or incorrect.

#218 - Aug. 17, 2022, 7:51 p.m.

From today’s update notes:

• Class Tree
  • Improved Traps now also reduces cooldown of Steel Trap.
  • Removed connection between Rejuvenating Winds and Improved Tranquilizing Shot.
  • Added a connection between Tranquilizing Shot and the Intimidation/Explosive Trap choice node.
  • Lone Survivor’s cooldown reduction has been lowered 30 seconds (was 60 seconds).
  • Death Chakram now increases all damage taken instead of just physical damage taken.
• Marksmanship
  • The talent locations of Lone Wolf and Killing Blow have been swapped.
  • The talent locations of Black Arrow and Legacy of the Windrunners have been swapped.
  • Legacy of the Windrunners changed from 1 rank to 2 ranks. Each rank adds 3 potential arrows. Bonuses to Aimed Shot now also apply to these bonus Wind Arrows.
  • Windrunner’s Guidance changed from 2 ranks to 1 rank. It now also guarantees a critical strike for the Wind Arrows, and increases their critical strike damage up by 50%.
  • Salvo now works with Volley or Multi-Shot.
  • Bombardment changed to a 1 rank talent and is now right below Multi-Shot.
  • New Talent: Bulletstorm – Extra ricochet targets from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to Multi-Shot damage.
  • Calling the Shots has had its design adjusted to grant cooldown reduction for Trueshot from Focus Spent, rather than require specific shots.
  • Improved Arcane Shot has been to renamed Crack Shot.

#228 - Aug. 19, 2022, 10:53 p.m.

Happy Friday, Hunters.

Several changes will be in your next build and we wanted to share what to expect. There are also several bug fixes, and some things that were previously marked NYI are now working.

Class Tree:

• Survival Hunters: corrected a missing connection between Kill Command and Improved Mend Pet on the class tree.
• Alpha Predator’s value has been lowered from 30%, to 15%.
• Improved Traps now also lowers the cooldown of Hi-Explosive Trap.
• Stampede now snares targets hit by 30%, and you and your pets gain 10% increased critical strike chance against targets hit by your Stampede.
• Hunter’s Agility is once again Avoidance.
• Camouflage no longer links directly to Improved Traps. The choice node below Survival of the Fittest now links to Born to be Wild.
• New 2-point passive talent, Serrated Shots: Serpent Sting and your bleed damage is increased by 10/20% damage. This value increases to 20/40% against targets below 30% HP.
• New 2-point passive talent: Arctic Bola - Aimed Shot/Cobra Shot/Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite have a chance to fling a bola out at your target that bounces 2/4 times and deals increased damage per point. Targets struck by the bola are snared by 20% for 3 sec.

Beast Mastery:

• The top of the Beast Mastery tree has been shuffled around a bit, and now starts with Cobra Shot rather than Barbed Shot.
• Barbed Shot damage has been increased by ~75% (this is unrelated to talents and just a change to the ability)
• Loaded Quiver has been removed. Barbed Shot is now 2 charges always.
• Barbed Wrath is now 1 point, down from 2. It no longer affects Aspect of the Wild.
• Wild Call has been reduced to 1 rank.
• Call of the Wild’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes.
• The Bloody Frenzy that adjusted Barbed Shot Frenzy stack generation has been removed.
• New 1-point talent: Brutal Companion. When Barbed Shot causes a 3rd stack of Frenzy, your pet automatically uses their special attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) with increased damage.
• Aspect of the Wild has been redesigned.
  • Aspect of the Wild now fires a Cobra Shot at your target and another nearby target. While Aspect of the Wild is active, Cobra Shot’s Focus cost is reduced by 10, and each Cobra Shot fires a Second Cobra Shot at a nearby target.
    • New choice node below Aspect of the Wild:
      • Each temporary beast summoned reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 5 sec.
      • Cobra Shot damage increased by 30% while Aspect of the Wild is active.
• Several talents shifted around past the first gate due to the above changes, but the tree’s structure is very similar.

Marksmanship:

• Dead Eye now also reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot.
• Windrunner’s Guidance has been lowered to 25% critical strike damage bonus.
• New choice node below Wailing Arrow:
  • Wailing Arrow resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire and grants a charge of Aimed Shot.
  • Wailing Arrow now fires 5 wind arrows at your primary target, and up to 10 split between any secondary targets.
• Crack Shot lowered to a 1-point talent.
• Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus have swapped spots.

Survival

• Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, and related talents should be working.
• Explosive Expert tooltip updated, it has no interaction with Kill Shot and is just some cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs.
• Birds of Prey has been redesigned. Kill Shot now strikes up to 3 extra targets while Coordinated Assault is active.
• New choice node against Birds of Prey: Bombardier. The cooldown of Wildfire Bombs is reset when Coordinated Assault is activated, and when it fades.
• Guerilla Tactics increases the initial damage of Wildfire Bombs by 50%, down from 100%.
• Fury of the Eagle once again grants 50% critical strike chance against targets below 20% HP.
• Ruthless Marauder increases the HP threshold for increases critical strikes by 5% per rank rather than increasing critical strike chance.

Thanks for the continued feedback and testing.
And yes, have a nice weekend everyone!

#289 - Aug. 25, 2022, 1:16 a.m.

Complete list of Hunter changes in today’s update:

• Class Tree
  • Survival Hunters: Corrected a missing connection between Kill Command and Improved Mend Pet on the class tree.
  • Alpha Predator’s value has been lowered to 15% (was 30%).
  • Improved Traps now also lowers the cooldown of Hi-Explosive Trap.
  • Stampede now snares targets hit by 30%, and you and your pets gain 10% increased critical strike chance against targets hit by your Stampede.
  • Hunter’s Agility is once again Avoidance.
  • Camouflage no longer links directly to Improved Traps. The choice node below Survival of the Fittest now links to Born to be Wild.
  • New Talent: Serrated Shots – Serpent Sting and your bleed damage is increased by 10/20% damage. This value increases to 20/40% against targets below 30% HP.
  • New Talent: Arctic Bola – Aimed Shot/Cobra Shot/Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite have a chance to fling a bola out at your target that bounces 2/4 times and deals increased damage per point. Targets struck by the bola are snared by 20% for 3 seconds.
• Beast Mastery
  • The top of the Beast Mastery tree has been shuffled around a bit, and now starts with Cobra Shot rather than Barbed Shot.
  • Barbed Shot damage has been increased by 75%.
  • Loaded Quiver has been removed. Barbed Shot is now always 2 charges.
  • Barbed Wrath is now 1 point (was 2) and it no longer affects Aspect of the Wild.
  • Wild Call has been reduced to 1 rank.
  • Call of the Wild cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes.
  • The Bloody Frenzy that adjusted Barbed Shot Frenzy stack generation has been removed.
  • New Talent: Brutal Companion – When Barbed Shot causes a 3rd stack of Frenzy, your pet automatically uses their special attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) with increased damage.
  • Aspect of the Wild has been redesigned – Aspect of the Wild now fires a Cobra Shot at your target and another nearby target. While Aspect of the Wild is active, Cobra Shot’s Focus cost is reduced by 10, and each Cobra Shot fires a Second Cobra Shot at a nearby target.
  • New choice node below Aspect of the Wild:
    • Each temporary beast summoned reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 5 seconds.
    • Cobra Shot damage increased by 30% while Aspect of the Wild is active.
  • Several talents shifted around past the first gate due to the above changes, but the tree’s structure is very similar.
• Marksmanship
  • Dead Eye now also reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot.
  • Windrunner’s Guidance has been lowered to 25% critical strike damage bonus.
  • New choice node below Wailing Arrow:
    • Wailing Arrow resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire and grants a charge of Aimed Shot.
    • Wailing Arrow now fires 5 wind arrows at your primary target, and up to 10 split between any secondary targets.
  • Crack Shot lowered to a 1-point talent.
  • Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus have swapped spots.
• Survival
  • Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, and related talents should be working.
  • Explosive Expert tooltip updated, it has no interaction with Kill Shot and is just some cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs.
  • Birds of Prey has been redesigned – Kill Shot now strikes up to 3 extra targets while Coordinated Assault is active.
  • New choice node against Birds of Prey: Bombardier – The cooldown of Wildfire Bombs is reset when Coordinated Assault is activated, and when it fades.
  • Guerilla Tactics increases the initial damage of Wildfire Bombs by 50% (was 100%).
  • Fury of the Eagle once again grants 50% critical strike chance against targets below 20% HP.
  • Ruthless Marauder increases the HP threshold for increases critical strikes by 5% per rank rather than increasing critical strike chance.

#290 - Aug. 25, 2022, 1:43 a.m.

This is likely a bug, the 8-point gate should still be after the 4th row, not after the 3rd row. Sorry for the inconvenience.

#292 - Aug. 25, 2022, 2:15 a.m.

Correct, that should be adding 5% increased health threshold per rank, not 15%.

#378 - Sept. 2, 2022, 8:50 p.m.

Hello Hunters,

Some quick notes on changes coming in a future build:

Class Tree:

• Hunter’s Agility is being changed from a 2-rank node down to 1 rank, and will reduce area of effect damage taken by 6%.
• Improved Traps and Rejuvenating Winds will have their positions switched.
• Note on Arctic Bola: The snare value is 20%, and should not be changing per rank, the tooltip showing 50/100% snare per rank is incorrect. This is not intended to be a big snare or something you are relying on to kite enemies around.

Marksmanship:

• Windrunner’s Guidance is having its design changed to: Each Wind Arrow has a 3% chance to grant you 10 sec of Trueshot.
  • This includes Wind Arrows from either Aimed Shot, or from Windrunner’s Barrage below Wailing Arrow.

Survival:

• Ferocity lowered from 2 ranks down to 1.
• Intense Focus lowered from 2 ranks down to 1.

Thanks for your continued feedback and testing.

P.S. I hope you all have a nice weekend every week, even if I don’t post that here.

#384 - Sept. 2, 2022, 10:34 p.m.

Quick clarification here, the proc chance is actually 25% right now. There’s leftover data on the spell. We will get the tooltip updated and just include the proc chance.

#422 - Sept. 6, 2022, 8 p.m.

This is not intended. Binding Shackles should only work from something you actually affect with the linked spells.

This is likely an oversight, we will look into this.

Others who posted lists of bugs, thank you, we will get them investigated and worked on.

#459 - Sept. 8, 2022, 7:37 p.m.

The change to Binding Shot’s root to break from damage is intentional, and there’s some history with this ability. As many probably remember, it was briefly changed to break from damage in Shadowlands, but that change was reverted.

The launch of an expansion is a good time to change things where necessary, as it’s almost a reboot for many parts of the game. Binding Shot is intended to root targets who move too far away from the center point. Root effects from players in the game such as Druid’s Entangling Roots or Mass Entanglement, or Mage’s Frost Nova, traditionally break after taking some amount of damage. Roots that don’t break from damage are inconsistent, and consistency is important for understanding rules within the game. Binding Shot was an unintended exception to this rule, the root effect not breaking from damage was never intended to be part of its identity.

This does reduce the potential power of Binding Shot, yes. With the amount of change coming in Dragonflight, and options for new control abilities such as Scatter Shot or Hi-Explosive Trap being available, we feel this is an appropriate time to make this change.

#499 - Sept. 9, 2022, 11:15 p.m.

Going to make a quick post addressing Binding Shot before making a follow-up post.

We still feel like a root that doesn’t break from damage is not a good thing to have in the game, because it’s not at all clear why it works differently than other roots. That said, Binding Shot is a powerful tool Hunters have to manage some situations where you want to both do high damage to a group of enemy targets, as well as have control over their ability to chase you.

We’re changing Binding Shot from a root that breaks on damage to a 3 second stun.

There are some other minor Hunter changes we wanted to discuss, but wanted to address Binding Shot specifically.

#504 - Sept. 9, 2022, 11:39 p.m.

There’s some other minor Hunter changes coming in a future build, and we also wanted to talk about the new Lesser Dragonkin pet family.

Class Tree:

• Improved Traps and Rejuvenating Wind should actually have their places swapped. Really this time.
• Concussive Shot will now replace Wing Clip, and no longer requires a ranged weapon.
• Wing Clip Focus cost reduced by 10. This was a rank 2 upgrade that was incorrectly not baked into Wing Clip.
• Fortitude of the Bear should have all of its interactions properly setup now with Command Pet, tenacity pets, as well as Lone Wolf Marksmanship Hunters.
  • The Kindred Beasts PvP talent has also been updated to work with Fortitude of the Bear.

Lesser Dragonkin
As some of you may have noticed, there’s a new pet family you can tame creatures from, the Lesser Dragonkin.

• Lesser Dragonkin are a Ferocity pet.
• Lesser Dragonkin have a new pet family ability, Shimmering Scales. This reduces your pet’s magic damage taken by 70% for 8 seconds, on a 90 second cooldown.
• Cloud Serpents have had their pet family changed from Serpents to Lesser Dragonkin, but the ability to tame Cloud Serpents has not been changed in any way.
• Lesser Dragonkin taming is currently planned to be a reward from the Valdrakken faction.
• Lesser Dragonkin includes creatures like the new Hornswogs from Dragonflight, or the Feathered Drakes in Ardenweald, or even some of the Faerie Dragons in places like Feralas.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

#672 - Sept. 16, 2022, 9:56 p.m.

Hunters,

We wanted to discuss some changes coming in a build next week.

Class Tree:

• Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been removed.
• Serrated Shots has moved to where Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus was.
• Sentinel Owl and the choice node below it have moved up 1 row.
  • Sentinel Owl and its choice node are no longer NYI, but still have some issues to be work out.
  • Sentinel’s Wisdom has changed in design. It now grants your party 5% leech and 10% magic damage reduction (everything except Physical) while the Sentinel Owl is active.
• Binding Shot is now a 3 sec stun (see earlier post about Binding Shot)
• New 1-point Talent: Entrapment. When your Tar Trap is activated, all enemies in the Tar Trap’s area are rooted for 4 sec. This root can break from taking damage, and is magic dispellable.

Beast Mastery

• Wailing Arrow silence lowered from 5 to 3 sec, and the tooltip now clarifies it only silences non-player targets.
• Qa’pla, Eredun War Order should now work.
• The pet damage reduction from Animal Companion no longer reduces the damage dealt by other summoned creatures. How Animal Companion pet damage modifier works with Call of the Wild is still being worked out.

Marksmanship

• Lone Wolf and Hunter’s Knowledge have swapped spots again.
• Wailing Arrow silence lowered from 5 to 3 sec, and the tooltip now clarifies it only silences non-player targets.

Have a nice weekend!