Lone Wolf talent for Marksmanship Hunter?

[Littlebirdd]

A talent for Marksmanship Hunter that would give a fair amount of all damage increase if the pet is not summoned would be nice?

[Pauloricardo]

A talent for Marksmanship Hunter that would give a fair amount of all damage increase if the pet is not summoned would be nice?

Yes, it could work.....

[Mekunekud]

No. I get the reasoning but part of the class is managing pets. I get it can be annoying but removing a core aspect of the class just to buff ranged damage is the kind of thing that came about in later versions of WoW and should be avoided.
If you don't want to use the pet, you don't need to. It just means you are losing a little DPS for ignoring a mechanic. Same as if Paladins don't use Judgements or Shamans don't use totems.
Ofc you can claim that Warlocks do it but Warlocks are about sacrificing things to gain power lore wise. Not so much with hunters.

[Totuga]

16

[Gnomoerectus]

+1 from me. I understand that going petless doesn't fit a hunter but petless marksmen were present in the Warcraft games and that archetype got baked into the Hunter class. Anything that enables people to play WC3 units without gimping themselves is a positive change in my book.

[Snakeman]

I'm with Mekunekud on this one.

The thing with marksmanship is that it's already far and away the best hunter spec in the game for raiding with due to how trueshot aura works, so we already have relatively little choice in what spec to pick at 60 (not that it really matters anyway because every spec plays exactly the same).

The biggest issue for me here lies in that lone wolf historically hasn't been balanced well at all - if you want to play MM in retail, you're basically stuck not ever summoning your pet for the damage boost - and in vanilla this would only serve to lower the skill floor of the class even more than it already has been with the addition of a steady shot that just straight up deals weapon damage.

And like... It's not like half the hunters I've played with on this server even use their pets anyway.

We've already deviated far too much from a blizzlike vanilla playstyle, can we please just leave hunter be?

[Gantulga]

The class is already braindead to play and do very high DPS with thanks to the custom Trueshot, per avoidance, the ability to ignore most mechanics and avoid losing consumable money on wipes.
Making it even simpler and safer to play would be ridiculous.

[Artofwill]

As a hunter I also vote against this as I can see it being both the preferred raid spec AND pvp spec due to further increased burst potential.

[Totuga]

14

[Shamma]

I think you guys are seeing it as an addition instead of a replacement.

Adding lone wolf without removing anything would be bad, I agree.

Making lone wolf a talent that changes the playstyle, now that would be interesting.

I agree that without major buffs (like the ones added in wotlk), pets will be ignored in pvp. But as Snakeman said: the problem lies in the fact all three specs play the same.

Marksmanship should have lone wolf, but at the same time, BM should be tank (pet tanking) and surv be a completely different playstyle too (maybe melee?)

The whole point is exactly beating the "all three specs play the same" ridiculously bad design.

This is breeds a much deeper discussion, and it could peobably end in "leave MM as it is right now and instead change the other 2"

But having 3 specs that play the same is bad gale design.

And u trust turtle to make changes that will end up working well? Look at their track record with class and spell changes/additions. Track record with zones - amazing, track record fiddling with the classes - questionable at best.

[Totuga]

13

[Kefke]

I agree with Totuga on the lore side of things. Most of the iconic characters that Hunter should ostensibly be allowing us to play like were not pet users. Unless we're going to ask Turtle to make a dedicated Ranger class to fill that role, the best option to fulfil the class fantasy is to tweak Hunter so that there's a viable non-pet spec.

[Artofwill]

I do that all the time when I'm too lazy to revive my pet in AV.

[Snakeman]

Making lone wolf a talent that changes the playstyle, now that would be interesting.

That's my issue though, it doesn't change the playstyle other than making it even more brain dead to play than it has already become under Turtle class changes

I do agree that all three specs playing the same is terrible design, but I feel it could be done through adding rotational abilities at the capstone rather than essentially making the class only playable without a pet (after trueshot and the ret changes + lone wolf in retail I don't trust anyone to balance it properly to the point where it's actually a choice). In theory - not so much in practice, because they stripped all of the fun jankiness of the class away by the end of TBC - I loved surv in WotLK because it got two really cool abilities from talents in Black Arrow and Explosive Shot. While I don't think we'd feasibly get both into a vanilla talent tree, all three warrior specs gain core rotational abilities from capstone talents (Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam), all on 6s cooldowns, and I think something like that would "fix" hunter's spec identity moreso than giving MM the illusion of choice in playing with or without a pet

Y'know what. I'm gonna write up another topic about this cause I think it'd be a lot nicer than the current bandaid fix trueshit is

[Totuga]

9

[Snakeman]

It would be a massive undertaking but a man can dream haha

Call me biased as well but I just can't stand surv as a melee-only, sure it is a ranger archetype but I like the way it works currently where you can control the range you want to keep yourself at