Developer Diary : Hunter Class Changes in Helm’s Deep

By Jinjaah

Hey Hunters! It’s been an honor to work on this class for the revamp and am very excited with the changes we made overall. One thing that we wanted to address was the lack of distinct feel between the various lines pre u12. The hunter overall felt like the Bowmaster was the core of the class and venturing into the other lines was being used to supplement it. With the changes, we focused in on what made each line unique and really expanded upon it. Making the Bowmaster the stationary, long ranged damage dealer, the huntsman the mobile-induction harasser, and the Trapper of Foes the utility hunter who primarily uses traps for damage and crowd control.

Bowmaster

The Bowmaster is a stationary, high-impact build that focuses on bursting down targets before they have they can get into melee. The strength of the build comes from being able to pick and hold a position where they can manage their Focus generation/consumption and maximize their procs. Once forced to move this build will find that it needs to re-establish its rotation and rebuild their focus before they can output their peak damage.

Some of the perks to this build are that among the hunter builds, they have the longest range and higher innate ranged damage, giving them the ability to deal significant amount of damage from a safe distance. One drawback is the reliance on induction based attacks and the loss of focus on movement. This however can be somewhat mitigated by investing some points into the Huntsman to get some additional induction reduction and focus generation from Quick Shot.

Huntsman

The Huntsman is a mid-ranged mobile harasser who excels at sustained damage, while navigating the battlefield. The strength of this build comes from its ability to stay active and keep one-step ahead of them enemy. While lacking in high impact attacks, the Huntsman unload a volley of attacks in rapid succession.

Being able to shoot on the move is a huge advantage over any enemy. Combine this with no focus loss on movement and the Huntsman more than makes up for its lower range than the Bowmaster. While the huntsman damage may feel less explosive, investment into the Trapper line to allow traps to be placed at range allow this specialization to kite like no other.

Trapper of Foes

The Trapper of Foes functions as a utility build that focuses on sustained damage, AoE, and crowd control. The Trapper comes with the tools necessary for controlling the flow of battle while providing the Hunter and their allies with buffs to gain leverage on their opponent. While the Trapper may not have access to the amount of damage increasing traits the other lines do, the amount of utility provided should make this an attractive support and solo build.

The Trapper has many options of dipping into other trees to help round out their build depending on their needs. For example, they could invest into Bowmaster for some more damage as well as adding a root to Low Cut to lock an enemy in their traps to ensure a trap hits or deals all its damage to them.

It’s a Trap!

An important issue that we wanted to address in this update, aside from making each line feel unique, was enhancing the usability of traps for the hunter. With an entire line being built on traps, we wanted to make sure they were exciting and fun to use.

Before the revamp, traps felt a little out of place. Not useable in combat, long inductions to place, it felt like a hunter really had to prep before a pull. If this pull was somehow initiated before the hunter was ready, then traps became something they didn’t concern themselves with anymore. Another concern was many mobs the player encountered, became immune to CC, severely limiting the use of traps. When it came time to revamp the trapper line, we wanted to incorporate traps into their rotations and play. Being useable in combat, reducing the induction or removing it in some cases, being able to place them via ground targeted, etc. all seemed to really make traps a lot more fun and engaging to use. Having the trapper get additional debuffs and buffs based off their traps being used on enemies also helped mitigate any perceived loss of importance in group play.

Overall we look forward to you all being able to experience the new trait trees for the hunter and hope you have as much fun as we did revamping each line.