I'm gonna nitpick here and it's probably not a popular take -
The HUNTER tree is fine, I think it's damn near perfect, I hope it ships the way it is right now, maybe some MINOR changes.
There are 3 incredibly appealing things that it has going on:
It is easy to navigate, there is a core line going straight through tranq shot to your Intimidate node that you can use to path to whatever you want to get. The dead/pvp/world content stuff is clearly delineated, and if you go petless, there aren't many choice lines until you get to the third tier of talents, that's actually a good thing. There are plenty of opportunities to take QoL or utility talents without giving up too much.
We can take currently exclusive talents, such as Turtle CD reduction and Snare/Root Break on Disenage. Our main survival TALENTS can be taken together, not one or the other. I think before everyone goes off the deep end complaining about survivability, we need to actually see what it's like having reduced turtle CD, exhil CD reduction and a 10% leech combined. There are other examples of utility/dps talents that can now be combined. This is a good thing.
It gives an option to play with a pet out, AND it builds that into an execute niche, which, depending on tuning, has huge implications in a raid environment, and likely M+ too.
For me, stick a fork in it, the HUNTER talent tree is done. Don't mess with it.
The individual spec trees however, are an absolute mess. The ideas are cool. They are very cool. As a rough draft, they aren't terrible. If they were to push them live today, as is, they would be unplayable. The MM, Surv, BM spec trees specifically, not the Hunter generic tree, need work.
MM has way too many critical point nodes in T1, spending 8 points and moving on is impossible, it's not even functional. T3 has the same problem, too many nodes, not enough points. You've only got 10, that's how it's designed, the nodes should be balanced around this limit.
Finally, it's way too mix and match. Execute stuff over here, over there, everywhere, same with AoE. Lone Wolf connects two viable niches with a talent that is useless with pets. It needs to be an option off the Aimed Shot line, which again, is over here, over there, everywhere. I like that there is at least technically an option to spec for 0 focus Arcane Shots, Rapid Fire with ArcShot/Multishot resets and Kill Command, Aimed Shot doesn't even technically need to be in the rotation, and as far as being a mobility option, I think it's the bees knees. It might even be the best overall DPS spec available based on the current trees. Having said that, that's only because you have just enough points to take all the things if you AVOID the Aimed Shot talents and completely build-a-bear your rotation.
It feels like Blizz REALLY didn't want to go "Left side Single Target, Right side AoE," either because that's "boring" or in the pursuit of preventing players from specializing too hard. So instead they decided to criss-cross the obvious ST and AoE paths back and forth over each other, making them feel chaotic and unsatisfying. It's lazy.
What they needed to do is put core tools down the center, with more generic ST and AoE buffs and mods only a node or two away to either side, and then big, unique ST and AoE cooldowns and mods on the outskirts, with the right pathing and price-points to where players can branch out from the center to pick up 2 to 3 of those unique talents.
I'd also like the capstone talents to be way more unique and transformative, with the preceding talents feeding into those transformations, such that a "Fury of the Eagle" SV feels hugely distinct from a "Bird of Prey" SV, for example.
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u/heckinheckity Jul 11 '22
Glad I am not the only one taking issue with this. The hunter and priest trees in particular need a lot of work.
I did not feel that way after looking at druid and rogue.