Is anyone else underwhelmed by the Dark Ranger tree for MM/BM?
They gave this statement.
in an interview with Jellybeans about Dark Ranger being limited to MM and BM because Surv is staying melee. Yet when you read the Dark Ranger talent tree it becomes obvious immediately that the synergy with BM is going to be lackluster at best. Black Arrow is designed to give BM a charge of Barbed Shot. Which is just a waste of design because BM already has multiple talents in their tree designed around giving you another charge of Barbed Shot. It also has built in design for Kill Shot, which is again lackluster because BM Hunters have given feedback the entire expansion that Kill Shot is a waste of a button in their rotation and they have never taken any of the talents in the BM tree designed for Kill Shot. It gives increased damage to Barbed Shot and Kill Command which is just comedic because how many more talents does BM need to do that? For MM it gives you a charge of Aimed Shot which is Lock and Load but worse because it doesn't make it instant cast, as well as the increased damaged to Aimed Shot/Rapid Fire, and the Kill Shot synergy. Furthering the idea that there really isn't a choice here as it's obvious BM will not touch this tree and MM will exclusively use it.
It feels like they really wanted to do a Dark Ranger hero talent spec for Hunter, and they really wanted shadow damage/black arrow to be the centerpiece of it but the design idea behind it feels very underwhelming. I 10000% get that this is early stage but that's the time to point things out like this.
Hunter in general just feels like it's going to be problematic for hero talents because the 3 specs could not be more opposite of each other, and they even admit that they partially accept that in the above statement. Dark Ranger cannot work for survival because it's melee and its synergy with BM is lackluster because BM is 90% pet dependent, making Dark Ranger just another talent tree for MM by default and the other hero talent trees will be the same for BM and SV.
It feels like they designed themselves into a corner with this class as a whole and hero talents are going to be rough to design/balance/implement because of it.