I think the last tier is extremely unlikely to make it live. One reason is because it's boring as sin. It has zero pve applications (hunters have sufficient CC options for 5 mans, most of it won't work in raids, and other classes have better options than hunters). The only pve application I can think of would be the extremely gimmicky use of dropping a frost trap in a place where it might be activated so you can get a speed boost. That's.....really unfun.

The pvp application you've suggested for the transmorph trap is also an absurd amount of control for any single player to have. Short of having all of those abilities start to share cooldowns, I just can't imagine it'll make it through a balance pass.

Additionally, and perhaps more fundamentally, I think the last tier (and in some way the entire tree) misses entirely what makes a hunter a hunter. What do you think about when you think about being a hunter? 1) shooting things, 2) having a pet. Traps, disengage? Both way down the list. I think the level 90 talent tree could have become far more compelling had it been dedicated to improving pets or changing or improving how we shoot htings. Imagine if the three options were: 1) stable rush in which all of your pets come out and run around being awesome for however long; 2) "mirror pet" in which case 1 duplicate of your current pet spawns for a limited duration, during which your pet's special abilities have no cooldown or a halved cooldown or something (utility/cc/pvp awesomeness); 3) a hunter equivalent of symbiosis in which the hunter inherits an attribute or ability based on the family of his current pet.

Those types of abilities feel very hunter. Those feel (to me) very awesome. Being able to chain a single frost trap or move faster over an ice trap or turn something into a weird...beast...thing? None of that is epic or cool (even if it turns out t be kinda useful), and none of it affects how we do our primary job. It might be a good lower tier, but it definitely isn't up to snuff for a level 90 tier, regardless of what our 87 and 90 abilities end up being.

Reply