The Hunter class and all three Hunter specializations received a significant rework in the Beta for The War Within. Marksmanship's core mechanics remain the same, with the redesigned Talent Tree focusing on reshuffling talent orders, combinations, and build opportunities while adding some new talents.
Mechanical Changes
Below is a list of the core changes with the most significant impact on gameplay and building a Marksmanship Hunter.
- The pathing for the whole Talent Tree has been completely redone, with significant downstream effects on possible builds.
- 弹无虚发 now always grants 2 stacks of its effect. It used to randomly provide either 1 or 2 stacks.
- 独来独往 now grants a 5% damage increase, instead of 10%.
- 箭在弦上 (Trueshot CD Reduction) and 千里之目 (increased crit chance and damage in Trueshot) are no longer in a choice node together, meaning you can pick both.
- 风行者的遗产 has been redesigned - It now causes all 瞄准射击 to fire Wind Arrows, and gives 急速射击 a chance to fire them.
- 哀恸箭 has been redesigned - once 20 Wind Arrows have been fired from 风行者的遗产, your 瞄准射击 button becomes 哀恸箭 for one cast.
- 迅疾 has been changed - 百发百中 now grants 哀恸箭 immediately, and adds +2 Wind Arrows every time you shoot a Wind Arrow for 百发百中's duration.
- 鹰爪的全神贯注 has been redesigned - 百发百中 still lasts an additional 3 sec and the Focus cost of 瞄准射击 is reduced by 50% during it. Now also causes your 多重射击/奇美拉射击/奥术射击 to hit a second time for 30% damage. This means that you only need one cast to consume both 弹无虚发 stacks during 百发百中.
- 弹幕射击 is now a Class Tree Talent. Just below it is a new Talent, 急速弹幕, which fires 5 急速射击s. One on your primary target for 100% damage, and four on other targets for 30% of normal damage. These 急速射击s are affected by 技巧射击. This also increases the cooldown of 弹幕射击 to 1 minute.
There are also some non-Marksmanship-specific changes that nonetheless have a significant impact on how Marksmanship feels to play:
- 飞轮 has been removed.
- 精钢陷阱 has been removed.
- 爆炸射击 is now essentially a mandatory pick in the Class Tree.
There are new talents, too, but they are either passive, rarely picked, or both. These include things like
迅疾连射,
绝命地带.
Gameplay Impact
Marksmanship is going to play essentially the same in The War Within. Remember that we are losing our much-beloved Dragonflight S3/S4 Tier Set, which caused us to not have to cast
多重射击 to activate
技巧射击 in our cooldowns. On AoE, a new button in
急速弹幕 may be used occasionally, though it is currently a pretty expensive talent point investment with dubious power behind it.
If you liked the core of Marksmanship before, you will continue to like it, and vice versa.
Positive Changes
Alright, that covers the background. It's time to get opinionated.
Marksmanship Talent Tree Changes
- 弹无虚发 granting 2 stacks of its effect flattens out some of Marksmanship's RNG and is a subtle, but good change.
- I personally like having the option of both 箭在弦上 and 千里之目, ensuring no trade-off on 百发百中's power with a shorter cooldown. Opinions are divided on this one in the community, however, with many feeling that it makes the Talent Tree too expensive. More on that in the "Concerns & Feedback" section.
- 独来独往 being a smaller gain (or rather, a smaller loss when you inevitably have to drop it just to use basic utility) is a step in the right direction, but one of the most pervasive bits of feedback in the community is that 独来独往 isn't where we'd like it yet.
- 急速弹幕 is cool and powerful, but expensive.
- While opinions are a tad divided, the removal of 飞轮 is probably a good thing if its power can be put into Marksmanship's own kit.
- The removal of 精钢陷阱 is good, as almost nobody enjoyed that filler button.
There is not a ton more to say here. These changes are good, but they're not fantastic. There's nothing to be extremely hyped about, with none of Marksmanship's pervasive core issues addressed. Which brings us to..
Survivability
These changes are not Marksmanship-specific as they affect our Class Talent Tree. Still, Marksmanship has long been known as the least survivable Hunter spec, so I'd say that these benefits are especially good for Marksmanship.
Here is a breakdown of Marksmanship's survivability tools in The War Within.
- NEW: 2 charges of 优胜劣汰, which gives 30% DR for 8 seconds on a 90-second cooldown.
- NEW: 假死 now removes all Poison and Disease effects.
- 灵龟守护 which deflects most initial hits of attacks (not DoTs) and provides 30% DR for 8 seconds.
- 8% max health from 春回大地, and 5% Avoidance from 猎人闪避.
- 意气风发 heals you for 30% of your maximum health (and 38% with 春回大地) on a variable, but short cooldown.
- 巨熊之韧 increases current and maximum HP by 20%.
Hunters have historically hit a limit on high Mythic+ keys long before most classes, and this should be significantly improved by having much more access to our strongest defensive. Being able to cover more oneshot mechanics on our own means much less handholding required by the team, and an increase in Marksmanship's stock for Mythic+.
Concerns & Feedback
This section will be longer, and a tad more complicated. "Concerns & Feedback" encompasses not just what the rework did, but also what it
didn't do.
Lone Wolf & Utility
独来独往 is now a must-have talent for DPS, with significant and unnecessary drawbacks in terms of utility. This seems unwarranted, as Marksmanship has nothing unique going for it in terms of utility or survivability. The reworked
胁迫 now allows us to use our pet stun without having a pet active. Steps are being made in the right direction and there is still time to implement another, big one.
The most egregious example in actual gameplay is having to Bloodlust in Mythic+, which predominantly consists of AoE. Since pets deal no AoE damage, this is exactly where
独来独往 shines, and having a pet out is the weakest. Unfortunately, because
独来独往 has a significant ramp-up time after you dismiss your pet, even if you manage to perfectly summon a pet, and pre-cast its dismissal, you are still losing damage during your most powerful and exciting part of a pull - particularly as Marksmanship - the burst window.
And that's if you perfectly manage a cheesy precast without losing uptime on the pull.
解散宠物 is a 3-second cast that does not scale with Haste.
If 'clunky' was ever a term with real meaning and substance, it is when used to describe the slog it is to try and bring what should be baseline Hunter utility to your Mythic+ party in Bloodlust. Despite their "nerf" to
独来独往, it is still 3-4% DPS loss to have a pet out on AoE, which is most of Mythic+. If the goal was to make it less painful or even numerically tolerable to run a pet and have your utility, this change does not do enough for Mythic+ where the lack of utility is felt the most. In raid, having a pet out to get some Leech is far more acceptable - provided of course that it is a pure single-target fight.
My favourite solution to this is the ability to swap between different pet-related bonuses via "stances". Perhaps
独来独往 could be a 3-way choice node, perhaps you just get a stance bar that lets you pick the pet utility you want at a similar cost to Beast Mastery and Survival. There is no reason that Marksmanship's utility should be locked behind such clunky gameplay as: Summon Pet > Activate Bloodlust/Master's Call > Dismiss Pet > Wait for
独来独往 to reach full power > Repeat in 10 minutes' time if you're unfortunate enough to be the group's only Lust.
Expensive Talent Builds
The Marksmanship Talent Tree is
expensive, particularly if you want AoE options. Previously, we've talked about how Hunter specs tend to incur a huge single-target DPS loss in order to do acceptable AoE damage. This remains the case in The War Within, but it gets worse.
No matter how many single-target talents we sacrifice, we cannot create a build with every AoE mechanic.There are several reasons for this, and I think re-evaluating this list should be a high priority for Blizzard before launch, second only to
独来独往's utility woes:
- 弹幕射击 is a useless Talent and only serves to lead us to 急速弹幕, but 急速弹幕 is seldom worth picking precisely because it's a 2-point investment. It is also puzzlingly locked behind 精确瞄准 which has dubious value for the Mythic+ scenarios where 弹幕射击/急速弹幕 are supposed to be enticing options. Suggestion: Remove 弹幕射击, replace it with 急速弹幕, and swap the positions of 精确瞄准 and 迅疾连射 in the Talent Tree.
- 强化稳固射击 and 锐眼射击 are fundamental passives to Marksmanship's design, and them being talents only serves to make the tree needlessly more expensive, while robbing the tree of cooler and more interesting options. Suggestion: Make them baseline.
- 绝命地带 is a neat talent for enhancing the short-term burst that Marksmanship is known for, partly making up for the loss of 飞轮's 45-second burst, but is too expensive for its modest power. Suggestion: Merge it into 乱射.
- 风行者的遗产 and 专注瞄准 are needless and weak 2-pointers with powerful, borderline-mandatory options locked behind them in 哀恸箭 and 齐射. Suggestion: Make them 1-pointers.
- While Marksmanship loves 百发百中, 4 points of talents to bring it to full power seems needlessly expensive. Having to spec into our main cooldown is bad enough (relatively common, so fair enough), but all of its juice, including the part that enables our tier set to not be a complete joke during it (though, it's still a joke), requires a talent point investment: 鹰爪的全神贯注, 箭在弦上, and 千里之目. 箭在弦上 is an example of a good talent - we do not always care for a lower 百发百中 cooldown, depending on the fight. But 鹰爪的全神贯注 and 千里之目 are not just mandatory for power, but also gameplay reasons. Suggestion: 箭在弦上 would be a more interesting capstone, with 千里之目 and 鹰爪的全神贯注 made baseline.
- 多重射击 is useless without 技巧射击, and anything that makes 多重射击 more powerful is locked behind 技巧射击 anyway. A 2-point investment just to obtain the most fundamental AoE mechanic of the spec seems needlessly steep. Suggestion: Merge 技巧射击 into 多重射击.
The Loss of the Dragonflight Season 3/4 Tier Set Gameplay
The Dragonflight Tier Set of Season 3 (and then 4) has been one of the most successful and popular tier sets in recent memory.
A quick reminder of the relevant things it did:
Trick Shots causes Rapid Fire to launch a Volley for 6 sec, dealing 100% of normal damage.It fixed two of Marksmanship's most significant drawbacks, rotationally and numerically:
- It enabled unhampered 2-target cleave during cooldowns, and decent 2-target cleave outside of them.
- It made the AoE 百发百中 Rotation far more satisfying by eliminating the need for constant 多重射击 weaving that caused constant resource capping.
It is probably too late to hope for a redesign of the War Within Season 1 Tier Set, nor can Blizzard be expected to do the same great set bonus every season, but there are several ways in which the practical effects of the Tier Set could be made baseline, or part of our talent tree. If the suggestions above are implemented and AoE builds become more flexible, the tier set - or a similar effect - could be implemented. For instance,
千里之目 could have a choice node alternative that activates
技巧射击 for the duration of
百发百中. This would be very similar to the much-liked
狂野本能/
血腥狂乱 choice node for Beast Mastery, which offers an increasingly powerful cooldown on one hand, or a passively AoE'ing one on the other.
Final Thoughts
Most of the significant, positive changes for Marksmanship in The War Within are related to survivability, and not Marksmanship-specific. The Talent Tree Rework for Marksmanship did do some good, but seemed to miss the mark on the most important issues plaguing Marksmanship, and introduced a new one by making the Talent Tree extremely expensive.
But, I think these problems can be addressed with relatively little work on Blizzard's end, save perhaps for a redesign to
独来独往. I have focused on feedback and suggestions that I think are reasonable to expect/want at this stage in the Beta cycle.