In Vanilla, Hunters have an issue of scaling, wherein in PvE, their damage is mostly limited to autoshots and the occasional Aimed Shot since Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot don't scale with ranged attack power, so in most cases, the damage of these spells will be the same for a fresh lvl 60 wearing greens and a full-tier 3 raider. This greatly affects their viability, as bringing a Hunter to your raid in Vanilla has the opportunity cost of not bringing a better DPS. Due to this, Hunters are usualy brought to a raid for their utility of pulling, tracking, and tranq shot.
Turtle WoW attempts to fix this by introducing Trueshot, a Steady Shot clone: 1.5 cast time, weapon damage + small boost (+10 at lvl 36 to +60 at lvl 60), for a very low mana cost compared to their other damaging shots (5% of base mana at all ranks). This synergizes with Hunter's strongest source of damage, their autoshots, and takes a bit of getting used to since you want to cast Trueshot as close as possible to your Autoshot, to minimize the Autoshot downtime that casting Trueshot may cause as Trueshot pauses your attack timer: it's an interesting tool that requires some mastering to properly use.
A few issues with Trueshot are as follows :
- In Vanilla, top hunters mitigated the worthlessness of Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting by weaving melee attacks between their Autoshots, since the cooldown of both are on separate timers. This was a great example of emergent, creative gameplay to circumvent an issue with class design, and created a cool dynamic feel to the class where Hunters had to make quick decisions to adapt to the situation in which they were: do you go for the high-risk, high-DPS strat of weaving, or do you stay back and shoot from a safe distance ? Unfortunately, Trueshot completely removes the need for weaving, as sitting back and spamming Trueshot synchronously with Autoshots creates much higher DPS with no risk of getting hit by melee-ranged spells like Cleaves or Tail Swipes compared to Melee Weaving.
- In addition to the previous point, gameplay centered around Trueshot is a bit redundant with Slam Warrior, who also want slow weapons and press the Slam button as close as possible to their auto-attack. In other words, Trueshot punishes hunters for opting to play their class uniquely, like no other class can, rather than being ranged Slam warriors. This is also true for itemization: a bow with higher DPS might be worst than a Hunter's current bow because Trueshot synergizes with slow weapons' high damage table ; currently, Hunter's synergy with fast weapons is limited to proccing Improved Aspect of the Hawk (1-5% per autoshot, depending on rank), which is generally inferior to Trueshot. Due to this, Trueshot is harmful to class identity by replacing unique class gameplay with one already found on another class.
- Trueshot is generally a bit overtuned from the moment it is obtained at level 36, making your 2 other main damaging shot spells somewhat obsolete. At level 36, Trueshot costs 50 mana and deals weapon damage (depending on gear, between 150 and 200 dmg), versus 83 damage for 105 mana for Arcane Shot and 210 damage over 15 seconds for 115 mana for Serpent Sting. Arcane Shot still has its use cases (eg kiting and PvP) but for most cases it's fine to simply take Arcane Shot off your Action Bars and stop learning new ranks of it as soon as you have access to Trueshot. This precipitates what happened anyways in vanilla for PvE hunters : removing tools from their kit due to their poor scaling, high mana-per-damage cost, and opportunity cost compared to Trueshot.
- This is just a personal gripe but I greatly enjoy that Turtle WoW's class changes are often unique to this server, and I think it's a shame that a BC spell has taken the reins of raiding Hunters, rather than something unique to TWoW.
Some proposed solutions, which could be tested individually or batched together :
- Give Trueshot a cooldown. This would reintroduce the opportunity for melee weaving while Trueshot is on cooldown. Optionally, Autoshots could reduce the remaining cooldown of Trueshot, which would give Hunters some incentive to use faster weapons: more shots = more instances of cooldown reduction on Trueshot in addition to more Imp Aspect of the Hawk procs : as such, fast weapons could be more definitive for Hunters who prefer ranged, while slow weapons (which already synergize with weaving in Vanilla by giving more time to go in and out of melee ranged before your autoshot timer is ready) would be preferred for weaving.
- Increase the incentive for Hunters to weave Melee attacks in between their ranged attacks. This could be done by nerfing Trueshot damage, buffing Melee Hunter damage, or making Trueshot and Melee Hunter synergize in some way (eg : Trueshot buffs your next Raptor Strike, Raptor Strike buffs your next Trueshot). This would reintroduce the reward to Hunters who go for the harder to pull off and riskier strat of weaving, while still giving them situations where Trueshot is the better option thanks to its safety.
- Replace Trueshot with a variety of other possibles changes to address Vanilla Hunter's issues, such as an attack that synergizes with Hunter pets, buffs to Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting and their associated talents (5 points for -1 cooldown on Arcane Shot whose damage is just terrible for a prohibitively high mana cost is just not worth it), or something else !
Thanks for taking the time to read me ! What do you think of Trueshot ?
