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Hunter Ranger Mod 19 feedback
gabrieldourden
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,212 Arc User
After a few days testing the Hunter Ranger on mod 19 I came to the following conclusions:
1) Mobs: using a root-heavy setup (Constrictive, Hindering, Cordon) it's almost possible to go back to a trapper-ish playstile. AP generation is massive against mob groups so Disruptive Shot comes in line every 7-8 seconds or so. This setup will work perfectly with the Celestial weapons and Apprentice set. Thumbs up here.
2) Bosses: this is where the issues are. The roots-heavy setup that works wonders against mobs becomes horrible in single target as most of the powers are area ones (Cordon, Plant Growth, Steel Breeze, Hindering Strike) that shine on large mob groups and do very little against single targets. This setup also faces rotation issues when you try to sustain it for long as both Hindering Shot and Cordon of Arrows are charge-based powers that do not benefit from cooldown reduction feats. The other option is to take the feat increasing ranged damage and lowering melee damage and try using high magnitude ranged powers (say Constrictive, Longstrider and Commanding Shot). This setup has serious cooldown issues and with no real ways to improve the pitiful damage of at-will ranged powers it is really clear that it doesn't even remotely compare to what the cookie-cutter melee Warden can deliver with far less effort. With single-target (Zariel) being again the meta I still see the Hunter in a very bad spot
I see two possible solutions:
- bring back the old Swiftness of the Fox feat in place of the existing one on roots. This will fix most issues of the Hunter and let the player focus on the best powers for the task at hand
- massively increase at will damage. Aimed Shot has a nice magnitude but the animation is way too long to make it viable. Making a feat that reduces ranged encounter cooldowns everytime you use aimed shot and putting it as an alternative to Swiftness of the Fox, while boosting Aimed Shot damage could be an interesting option.
A last suggestion:
- move Binding from Warden to Hunter. It doesn't make sense to have it on Warden when all root support is on the Hunter side. By the way no Warden will use it while it could be an interesting single target power for the Hunter.
1) Mobs: using a root-heavy setup (Constrictive, Hindering, Cordon) it's almost possible to go back to a trapper-ish playstile. AP generation is massive against mob groups so Disruptive Shot comes in line every 7-8 seconds or so. This setup will work perfectly with the Celestial weapons and Apprentice set. Thumbs up here.
2) Bosses: this is where the issues are. The roots-heavy setup that works wonders against mobs becomes horrible in single target as most of the powers are area ones (Cordon, Plant Growth, Steel Breeze, Hindering Strike) that shine on large mob groups and do very little against single targets. This setup also faces rotation issues when you try to sustain it for long as both Hindering Shot and Cordon of Arrows are charge-based powers that do not benefit from cooldown reduction feats. The other option is to take the feat increasing ranged damage and lowering melee damage and try using high magnitude ranged powers (say Constrictive, Longstrider and Commanding Shot). This setup has serious cooldown issues and with no real ways to improve the pitiful damage of at-will ranged powers it is really clear that it doesn't even remotely compare to what the cookie-cutter melee Warden can deliver with far less effort. With single-target (Zariel) being again the meta I still see the Hunter in a very bad spot
I see two possible solutions:
- bring back the old Swiftness of the Fox feat in place of the existing one on roots. This will fix most issues of the Hunter and let the player focus on the best powers for the task at hand
- massively increase at will damage. Aimed Shot has a nice magnitude but the animation is way too long to make it viable. Making a feat that reduces ranged encounter cooldowns everytime you use aimed shot and putting it as an alternative to Swiftness of the Fox, while boosting Aimed Shot damage could be an interesting option.
A last suggestion:
- move Binding from Warden to Hunter. It doesn't make sense to have it on Warden when all root support is on the Hunter side. By the way no Warden will use it while it could be an interesting single target power for the Hunter.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Post edited by gabrieldourden on
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Comments
1) I consider that "Disruptive Shot comes in line every 7-8 seconds or so" an issue. With previous iteration of that feat you could get AP boost on bosses. Now on bosses you get... almost no bonus at all.
I hardly believe your previous setup had problem to deal with trash. I like the changes that many powers now actually have roots as it bring potential variety, but I did not feel any need in boosting the trash-cleaning aspect.
Howerver, I literally lost one 250 mag daily per 30 seconds in one per one situations, forcing me to change to that 10% personal debuff instead.
We really did not need a feat specializing in trash cleaning. The change becomes hindrance to single target just to give you the sense of mightiness for annihilating a random weakling by a daily.
2) The power selection for boss fight was literally untouched by the changes. All the changes can be summarised within the lost of one 250 mag daily per 30 seconds. All buffed powers still not worth using there. The only exception is Commanding Shot in trial runs (if you are not the leading DPS) where I believe that 6dps actually can apply 6000 mag damage to a single target within 10 seconds. (10% x6000 translates into about 600 mag damage that Hunter is sacrificing by choosing this power)
I still miss a seamless AoE at-will power. Instead I got a plethora trash-disposing encounter powers to choose from. A thing I have absolutely no use for, I was already doing fine with that.
The boss fights now selectively require the feat giving 10% debuff to compensate for the lost dailies. I am not happy about it, but it is in "whatever" category.
For a single target fights we got... eh... 25 magnitude boost to one of the encounter powers? I guess that might be it.
So, my summary: The hunter has now even better variety of choices. It is sad that our need of a boost to single target performance was not addressed.
...and, pure archer is still far behind.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Biting Snares: now gives 1% AP everytime you apply roots
Forestbond: now applying Thorned or Strong Grasping roots reduces your cooldowns by 10% and weak grasping roots reduce them by 5%
Commander in Chief: Commanding Shot now gives you a 10% projectile damage increase for 10 seconds.
Aimed Shot: casting time reduced to 1,4 seconds
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Biting Snares - I don't understand why
Forestbond - buff
Commander in Chief - I still don't like it
Aimed Shot - no, no, no... casting times over one sec are evil, even if the damage/time ratio is good
So, I was wrong, we really got some buffs. I will miss Biting Snares, but the 10% debuff alternative is at least not wasted click in feat selection. Imagine a completely useless feat there.
I have to check on this new Hunter set-up/buff. The trouble with Hunters is they eviscerated any form of synergy from the old build(s).
They either have no time and/or have completely no idea how to play Archer Hunter or (Trapper).
Anyway, I commiserate with whatever the Trappers are having trouble with (althought I don't play them) because currently only Melee is getting all the attention and (ridiculous) dps.
Perhaps the best compromise is to move the Rain of Arrows (since they made it completely useless anyway and save it for the warden rework ) to full Warden tree and move Binding to general pool.
I was completely against it long ago because (the unnerfed) Rain of Arrow used to be the pillar of the only archery (stormwarden 'hunter' style) build that is workable from mod 6 onward to mod 15. Since they haven't touched it in two years, might as well give up on it (sigh).
Now for the other trees/styles I don't know if they use Rain of Arrows and its melee equivalent on Hunter melee would balk at losing it to Warden. When they do an Archery Warden rework, they can turn Rain of Arrows to Rain of Roots or Rain of Lightning.
@noworries#8859
I'm not so pessimistic about single-target damage. Both constricting + now commanding get an added 150 magnitude against control-immune targets, putting them at 550 each. I still wouldn't trade out hindering for commanding, though, as each charge of hindering shot reduces the cooldowns of all other powers by 5% and hindering strike will hit control-immune targets for 550 + trigger a 10% cooldown. I may even try out CoA, given that the three-charges hit for 320 mag each + trigger the 10% cooldown, AP gain, etc.
I'm not suggesting hunters are beasts, but being able to cycle through encounters quickly that hit for 500+ doesn't make one deadweight.
I will echo the complaints about at wills, and say again that making careful attack deal meaningful damage will go a long way to helping hunters with single-target damage.
I did a two-dragon test in the WoD running a LS/CA/HS rotation and had almost zero downtime on encounters. I did another with LS/CA/CS and there was a noticeable difference in cooldowns, not to mention the lost dps from having Stag Heart slotted instead of HS. Commanding Shot also takes way too long to cast. All in all, CS and Commander in Chief remain a dud encounter-feat combo IMO.
Re AP gain, I did test runs of a Dread Ring Lair and Biggrins on preview and live, and the new master trapper is clearly inferior.
Dread Ring (using envenomed journal):
Preview
Live
Biggrins (not using envenomed journal)
Preview
Live
I'm not sure what problem they were trying to fix, but it certainly couldn't have been the case that hunters were AP machines. My build stacks AP for the synergy with disruptive and daily-triggering powers and if this change was meant to help, it didn't.
RD
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Truth to be told, I would love to know what they were trying to achieve. Then I might be able to judge the effort better.
It was not viability of a pure archery, that is for sure.
More powers now obey root mechanics, that is nice - but pointless. Hunter was already the best control class out there. Adding more cc does not change anything - we have only 3 encounter slots.
Our bonus AP gain got removed from bosses. (intention?)
The class is thanks to 6 different encounter powers fun to play, with no actual effective rotation it gives variety and responsiveness to momentary needs. However, if you look at the statistics, we drop behind in dps. Honestly, I do not care much, but such people are rare.
The whole rework does little to address that. The powers that got boost in therms of roots... are still damage-wise and with cooldowns far behind what we already had. As long as the end dungeon statistics does not display the damage caused by your debuff as your own, using CS will still show a significant drop in your damage output. Now it can be only "virtual" but that is what people see.
There is a buff in the feat for switching your stance, that might give us a little better "score". But as it stands the whole rework looks more like pure standardising than an actual attempt to address anything. Just seems too random - and that is why it would be interesting to hear the real goal behind.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I'd have to run more tests to see if I'm correct, though.
Re. cooldowns, I really max them out, not only using hunter feats/roots, but with boons, mounts, gear, etc
RD
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80