Originally Posted by
Jthecrazed
What I see in one the beta forums troubles me greatly. Lots of people are complaining about everything from the MM AOE still being boring, to the now also boring single target rotation.
The WoD hunter was simple, but a lot of fun to play as they gave you a lot of freedom in what you wanted to do. They had the awesome ability to always be on the move while casting and switching targets without penalty. I was fun to stand still for three seconds and then move again for three trying to get as much mastery uptime as possible. In legion both are gone. Aimed shot FORCES you to stand still all the time while casting it. Marked shot requires you to stick to a target or suffer a massive dps loss. Second the MM hunter had a burst that could be used on command after pooling some focus. Now there is just this endless weaving with an occasional dps increse from Deadeye...
Blizzard had aslo been talking about embracing "Class Fantasy", but marksmanship has gone in the opposite direction, straying further from it's identity as it is forced to adapt aspects of survival that don't belong in the marksman spec a.k.a. magic stuff. When I think of a marksman I think of sniper, the old mastery best reflected this. Besides that casting is something that annoys me aswell especially if there's only one baseline ability using it. Then there's the utility. It's nonexistent. Exhaliration and busting shot are the only basline ones and are both horrible. exhaliration is only useful when leveling as only then the cd will go down more quickly and bursting shot is a more pathetic version of scattershot.
So I started to think what would make a better set of abilities for the mm hunter. I decided to stark looking for ispiration at wow's "source material", no not the warcraft games. D&D is the most famous tabletop RPG ever so I decided to look where the ispiration came from. Let's start with the Ranger. The ranger is the inpriation for hunter's mark and eagle eye for example. A lot of the ranger spell are found in the arsenal of the hunter. But marksamship Just doesn't fit with the ranger as they are not centered around nature or magic. So we look at the other ranged class in the game: The Fighter. Although you don't think about them very often with a bow and arrow in hand, they are the closest thing to the marksman hunter. alass they don't have ranged focussed abilities apart from maneuvers or "trickshots" (if you take the gunslinger spec) these are ver marksmanlike though. Include stuff like aiming for a specific body part to stun, disarm, cripple or just deal more damage, or you can just increase accuracy.
All this caused me to think of a new system they could use, building up hunter's mark stacks (counted on the player, if you please) and each ability using an amount of stacks. Examples of abilities that I thought of were: Flaming arrow, cost: 50 focus, produces a dot on the target that does moderate dps over 12 sec every 1 sec and has a 5% chance to give 1 stack of hunter's mark.; Headshot, cost: 3 marks, causes your nex autoattack to deal a high amount of damage and stun the target for 4 seconds. 25 sec cooldown.; Tar Grenade, 2 marks 35 focus,1,5 sec cast time , can be cast while moving drenches an area in tar applying the "Smeared!" debuff and spreading the flame arrow to all targets in the area. Being smeared causes that opponent to take 25% more damage from flaming arrow. Smeared stacks 3 times. lasts 12 seconds.; These are examples of things that are possible, the three kinds of abilities you might find are deadeye generators like flaming arrow and quick shot that cost focus, but have a chance to generate a stack (autoattacks also have a chance to generate marks and crits have double) , The trick shots, that have powerful effects, but cost a certain amount of stacks of hunter's mark and finally grenades, the MM hunter utility. Grenades all have a effect on a bunch of people and are the only abilities with cast times. the rest of your abilities will either empower your autoattacks (trick shots) or be instant (deadeye generators).
The mastery seems a little dull and I decided it should still involve movement. So now while walking the your haste increases gradually and while standing still crit increases gradually while the one incresed the other dimishes, the rate at wich this happens and the cap to it are determined by mastery an alternative would be teh old wod mastery. this rewuires les ramp and gives more aoe. If you have a few stacks you can dump them for on demand burst or go for a weaving approach.
If you either agree or disagree please let me know.