Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

With the change to raidwide totems, and the combination of Strength of Earth and Grace of Air (woot), we can now expect to see the benefit of them to a greater degree, right?

Originally Posted by Chul

Assuming we get a shaman in our group, yes, as SoE totem is still party only

Originally Posted by Razzmatazz

I'm working on compiling most of the information and feedback about the talents, skills and changes I've heard in this thread and putting it in an easy to read format. I was wondering if you guys would mind if I put it up in the beta forums as a kind of summary of what the raiding hunter thinks about the talents (with some important disclaimers of course, such as "I do not in fact represent Elitist Jerks or its members in any way" ). We can only hope that all the constructive criticism that's been piling up in this thread comes to Blizzard's attention that way.

Originally Posted by Sean

Aren't they all supposed to be raidwide though and it's just mostly unimplemented?

Originally Posted by Sean

Aren't they all supposed to be raidwide though and it's just mostly unimplemented?

Originally Posted by Ulthwithian

Paladins do have an ability to heal multiple people at once. It's called Divine Storm. ><

Originally Posted by motif

Longevity is interesting too because of the -30% cooldown on all pet abilities. Dunno how it'll all work out, but it seems very handy for some pets to say the least. Especially since almost all the pet family specials now have a cooldown rather than being spammable.

Also interested to see if they make Furious Howl raid wide or increase it's range at all. Could be decent since Wolves are now DPS class.

Originally Posted by TunA GoD

Originally Posted by TunA GoD

Originally Posted by Helot

Just to touch on the JoW pally snippet: So far it looks as though JoW scales based on the paladins AP/SD. This means that at level 80, a ret pally will be keeping up JoW for mana regen, as theirs will be superior to a holy pallies in terms of mana refunded.

Currently it's theorycrafted at ~270/proc at lvl 70, and 460/proc at lvl 80. Sweet, no?

Originally Posted by Soulbeast

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

just like i said....JoW at 460 a proc is enough to keep us above 50% mana an entire fight without invig or even wisdom/mana totems. yes that means not even downranking. personally even considering downranking and losing 60 DPS is ridiculous imo. if we were forced to downrank to be more efficient, then blizzard would not have added 2 new ranks of sshot. plus they wil probablly nerf the effects of downranking anyway.

Originally Posted by Catalept

Which implies that the point of the large increase in Steady Shot cost is to make us less efficient when soloing (by having to downrank, or drink every couple of kills), and making us drink between pulls in the absense of JoW or a spriest. Yay! We're turning into casters!

Originally Posted by orinaccio

I thought I'd share some preliminary, unscientific results from my brief testing on Dr. Boom last night using a MM build both in Live and Beta.....I'd be happy to continue sharing my input if there's any interest. Hopefully I will get a little better at testing, so if theres advice from more experienced hunters out there, I'm open to them.

Originally Posted by Sean

Growl's cooldown on Beta is currently 5s, and it is not effected by Longevity.

Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

Don't know if I like that. Undoubtedly Growl is going to be weakened to be on a faster CD. And Longevity not working on it... Damn. But a Crocolisk with Longevity. Ah the image of constant AoE tanking is real nice. Oh well, that's for solo all.

I doubt Hunting Party would have much impact on our pets if it did restore 10 focus (or whatever), with GftT we shouldn't have trouble getting enough back. And given that Hunting Party has a cooldown we should be pretty lucky to have it come just when we are critstarved. But I guess it is worth a little effort to get if we can't find anything else.

Originally Posted by Chul

Should Hunting Party also restore focus?

It restores everything else, including Runic Power, so I don't see why it shouldn't restore say 5-10 focus?

Originally Posted by Varelse

Probably because they can argue that our crits already restore 50 focus (with no 8-second cooldown) with an investment of two talent points. Not much call for a 10 focus return for an investment of five.

Originally Posted by Gonktarget Beta Threadshitting!

Survival here.

Counterattack should either be an active (rather than reactive) ability with a 30 sec. or more cooldown. Hunters basically only parry when they have Deterrence popped, and that effectively means that Counterattack shares its cooldown with Deterrence. That's strange.

Surefooted is much better now that the previous RNG lottery. Consistency is a good thing. I would make the snare reduction stronger, however. Bring it up to par with the Shaman's Toughness snare duration reduction and we'll talk.

Explosive Shot is only mildly useful. It hardly justifies its place as a 51 point talent, especially in the Survival tree. It's very oddly placed, the mana cost is relatively high (100 more than Rank 10 Arcane), and the damage is only so-so. Make Scatter Shot trainable, and move Explosive to the 21 point Marksmanship position, and you'd be much better off.

That'd do three things: A.) Provide all Hunters with Scatter, consequently giving them more survivability/utility/PvP control. B.) Move Explosive to a much more logical position given its relatively small niche, in the talent tree that would allow it to benefit much more from AP than it does as the 51 Survival talent. C.) It'd free up the 51 point Survival slot for something that is actually worthwhile for a Survival Hunter. Possibly a Cold Blood style timer (useful for both PvE and PvP, and further justification of Readiness as the 51 point pre-requisite)?

Wyvern Sting is still a joke because it will only be harmlessly dispelled in under a second, wasting only the Hunter's mana, GCD, and time. The cooldown reduction is welcome, however the ability itself is still terminally weak. The DoT effect, even with Potent Venom, is pathetically weak, and there is absolutely no dispel protection on it at all. The only thing it takes to completely negate any possible benefit Wyvern Sting might have is a Druid/Shaman/Paladin within 40 yards of the victim, or a PvP trinket, or Will of the Forsaken, etc. etc. etc. The reason Wyvern Sting has been lackluster from day one is that there is, quite simply, 1001 ways to rid yourself of it, and no reason not to.

How do you improve Wyvern? You either modify its current functionality significantly, including both upping the raw damage of the DoT component, possibly with the added benefit of a decent mana burn component to boot, as well as improving the scaling coefficient so it actually hurts things. Then you can go ahead and provide it with a Lifebloom/Unstable Affliction style dispel protection that applies regardless of the method used for breaking Wyvern during EITHER aspect of it's debuff (the sleep or the DoT). I'm including breaking on damage (even damage dealt to the victim by anyone during the sleep duration), because I'd like to see an actually dangerous Wyvern Sting that burns a decent chunk of Health/Mana that can be effectively utilized both offensively and defensively, without being considered a massive joke. Wyvern Sting, quite simply, does not justify its existence, nor its position as the 31 point Survival talent, nor its (considerable) cooldown, nor its mana cost. It provides no tangible benefit besides a neat gimmick and burning through your mana bar.

(I kind of hate Wyvern Sting, can you tell?)

Moving on, to reduce some talent bloat, why not combine Trap Mastery and Clever Traps into one talent? That always seemed logical to me.

Deflection is just straight up awful and I don't think I've ever seen anyone take it, at all, even if they were taking Counterattack. It's a waste of 5 talent points. (But then again, I suppose talent trees need some garbage here and there.)

Potent Venom is bad because it has Wyvern Sting as a pre-req, and only buffs your damage if the target already has Serpent or Wyvern on it. Let's face it: If you're a Hunter and you're using Serpent or Wyvern Sting in any serious fashion, you're probably not playing with a full deck. Serpent is nothing but a waste of mana (with the sole exception to that being annoying Rogues that just popped Cloak of Shadows in an attempt to Vanish), and Wyvern follows suit with the added benefit that it seemingly randomly decides whether or not it will stick to a mob. A talent that buffs a bad skill AND a bad talent is a bad talent. Go figure.

Master Tactician is still really strange. It scales inversely to your gear, which is odd. As you get better gear, MT becomes worse and worse. The best change to MT was unlinking it from Readiness, since the latter is actually useful at times.

In summation, Survival has some crap talents, some amazing talents (Expose/Hunting Party in particular), and fills the raid utility niche quite nicely. It's strange that a tree named "Survival" doesn't actually help you survive, however. A Survival Hunter suffers in PvP to the point of being damn near a free kill. I love it for raiding, however, and that's why I spec into it.

As for the other two trees I only have a few points:

Chimera Shot is quite strange. It's expensive, it does little to no damage in and of itself, it's targeted at PvP (specifically Arenas), and yet we all know how quickly a Hunter's Sting gets removed in the dreaded tiny boxes of doom (yes, even with improved stings). The best suggestion I've seen regarding Chimera is to change it to a Passive ability that provides Lifebloom/UA style dispel protection to your Stings, with the same general effect as what it currently does through an expensive shot with a travel time and 10 sec. cooldown right now. It forces those that can remove Poisons in Arenas to stop and think for a second instead of just mashing Cleanse Poison while yelling at their team to just kill that annoying Hunter already. At the very least, remove its travel time, and possibly consider taking it off the GCD (it is, after all, effectively pointless unless you have a Sting on the target already).

Trueshot Aura: No really, how can you possibly have gone this long without making this scale as a % AP buff? How do you go about listening to us in such other fantastic ways while ignoring something that would appear to be both common sense and simple? TSA needs to provide innate scaling, because both Ferocious Inspiration and Expose Weakness do. Period.

Scatter Shot should be a trainable skill. It's a basic survivability/utility timer, just like Iceblock, but not nearly as powerful, while still useful in different ways. In regard to what would replace it as the 21 point Marksmanship talent: MAYBE EXPLOSIVE SHOT OR SOMETHING? Who knows?

The first three tiers of Marksmanship are INCREDIBLY bloated. You can spend 55+ points in MM while skipping an ENTIRE TIER OF TALENTS and not even notice it. To me that means that MM needs some bloat reduction. You absolutely need to have at least 17 points in Marksmanship regardless of your spec anyway (Max Lethal Shots/Mortal Shots/Steady Aim/Careful Aim/Aimed Shot, to say nothing of Go For the Throat, Rapid Killing, or Imp. Hunter's Mark, the latter of which is pretty much required if you're a raiding Survival Hunter.)

The problem with MM's early tiers is that there's just TOO MUCH good stuff in it. It's got the exact opposite problem of almost every other talent tree I can think of: Instead of crap crap and maybe one decent 5 point talent that you take just to move deeper into the tree, early MM has a load of really good talents (with the possible exception of Imp. Concussive, though that is more of a PvP talent, again modified to provide consistency rather than the RNG stun, which is nice), some of which are absolutely essential unless you feel like being a huge ranged DPS gimp. The non-essentials are generally good enough that I hate playing without them (especially GftT when soloing, as it is just about the only way a Survival Hunter's pet ever has any Focus at all, without gimping its damage (and thus threat) output by turning off auto-cast Claw/Bite). Something needs to be done to better design the first three tiers of Marksmanship, they're just too FULL.

Wild Quiver needs to have a higher proc chance to justify the reduced damage, the three talent points, and the extra ammo spent on it.

Piercing Shots scales, which is nice, but 6% armor isn't really all that hot unless your target has a ridiculous amount of armor AFTER all the raid debuffs come into play. Consequently, it seems rather lackluster, as it scales both up AND down accordingly. A good solution might be setting a minimum armor pen cap, which would make it plain that the talent will provide 250/500/1000 armor penetration, or 2/4/6% of the target's total, using whichever would be more effective on the current target.

Combat Experience is bad, and always has been. But then again, trash talents are sort of a necessity, especially in a tree as fat as MM.

BM, on the other hand, has the same problem as MM, but inversely. Deep BM is crawling with a lot of great talents, but if you want both them and the requisite 17 in MM, you're basically out of luck. I'd suggest thinning out the crowd a bit. Either reduce the talent point investment, or combine one or two of them. The real problem lies behind the fact that Invigoration, Longetivity, and Beast Mastery are all generally essential in a raiding environment (or at least, the latter would seem to be, I reserve judgment until its implementation on the beta servers). There's not really any room for Cobra Strikes unless you skip Aspect Mastery in its entirety (which is thankfully possible as it is not the pre-req for Beast Mastery, which is a nice option), while still taking things from MM like Lethal/Mortal Shots, Steady/Careful Aim, Go for the Throat, and possibly Aimed Shot.

So basically, the trees are in need of some pruning. I'm not saying that you should ditch certain ideas entirely, but at least tweak their current functionality to be a bit more, well, useable.

Originally Posted by Shaker

It's like Xi mad libs. Fill in with your latest opinion that nobody cares about!

Originally Posted by Gonkish

However, it would allow you to skip spending 2 more points in an already bloated tree (cough Marksmanship cough), as HP is going to be just as much justification for your raid slot as Expose Weakness is in Sunwell. If HP restored Focus (say 20-25 per crit), it would free up 1-2 talent points that could be spent elsewhere in a secondary tree.