Midnight Patch 12.0.5 OverviewFrost Mage Guide
Patch 12.0.5's Marksmanship Hunter Rework
The Midnight ability pruning and spec streamlining hit certain classes harder than others, but Marksmanship Hunter lost some core components. With the removal of Explosive Shot and Streamline and all their associated mechanics, the class lost a lot of the depth found in the War Within relegating the spec to what some called a 2-button spec.'
With the Patch 12.0.5 PTR, Blizzard debuted changes for Marksmanship that sought to reintroduce some rotational complexity and build diversity largely with return of Explosive Shot and some targeted nerfs to Sentinel and Precise Shots.
Patch 12.0.5 Marksmanship Update Notes
March 12th Patch 12.0.5 PTR Development Notes - Classes
HUNTER
Marksmanship
Developers’ notes: Our goal with the following changes is to reintroduce some build diversity and rotational complexity by adding Explosive Shot to the Marksmanship talent tree alongside a suite of supporting talents from the past. We’re also adding Kill Shot and Black Arrow to Precise Shot’s damage bonus baseline to help make sure those spells are packing a punch and landing in a sensible spot rotationally. Lastly, we’re reducing many modifiers on Precise Shot’s damage bonus and baking some of that lost damage into the baseline power of the affected spells.
New Talent: Explosive Shot – Fires an explosive shot at your target. After 3 seconds, the shot will explode, dealing Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
New Talent: Shrapnel Shot – Casting Explosive Shot has a 100% chance to grant Lock and Load.
New Talent: Precision Detonation – When Aimed Shot damages a target affected by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot instantly explodes, dealing 20% increased damage.
Precise Shots has been updated – No longer reduces the global cooldown and no longer provides bonuses to auto shot. Damage bonus reduced to 50% (was 100%). Now affects Kill Shot and Black Arrow at 100% effectiveness.
Windrunner Quiver has been redesigned – Consuming Precise Shots has a 30% chance to grant Precise Shots. The damage bonus of Precise Shots is increased by an additional 15%.
Unmatched Precision has been updated – Now increases Precise Shots damage by 10%/20% (was 20%/40%).
Small Game Hunter has been updated – Now increases Explosive Shot damage by 15% and Volley damage by 25%.
Eagle's Accuracy has been updated – Now increases Aimed Shot damage by 5%/10% and Rapid Fire damage by 10%/20%.
Steady Shot damage increased by 100%.
Arcane Shot damage increased by 33%.
Multi-Shot damage increased by 33%.
The following talents have been removed:
Bullet Hell
In the Rhythm
Lethality
Target Acquisition
Sentinel
Can't Miss Won't Miss has been updated – Now increases Precise Shots damage by 10% (was 40%).
While the above changes do reintroduce Explosive Shot back into Marksmanship's toolkit, they don't address some of the fundamental concerns for the spec. Removal of the GCD reductions in the patch further highlight the incredibly long cast time of Aimed Shot and how poorly the spec handles movement.
Explosive Shot's damage by itself feels incredibly lackluster often contributing to less than 1% of the total damage breakdown. What's left feels like a RNG proc based setup that continues to disappoint unless you're winning the lottery.
Is it a Numbers Issue?
Marksmanship was performing quite well prior to Patch 12.0.5, so this begs the question is any sort of frustration just a reaction to damage nerfs? If you take a look at Boss Damage in the 95th Precentile of Logs prior to and post-Patch 12.0.5, you'll notice that Marksmanship has taken a hit, though they do still perform above the median.
12.0.1 Boss Damage
12.0.5 Boss Damage
Our Marksmanship Hunter, Azortharion, did a comprehensive review of sims pre- and post-patch showing the damage changes in various scenarios. While sims aren't always perfect, the general take away is heavy reductions in passive cleave and punishments for target swapping with the spec still struggling to overtake Survival and Beast Mastery in Mythic+. Certain encounters MM still performs well, but it's not the best choice on all fights. You can see a breakdown of the percent DPS loss of classes between 12.0 and 12.0.5 overall normalized at 75th percentile in Mythic Raids.
Community Sentiment
While the spec did lose some damage and might account for some of outcry, the major complaints gaining traction are largely focused on gameplay. To vent their frustrations over the slow proc-based gameplay, players are once again taking to the forums and Reddit:
A top Reddit Post heralds the murder of Marksmanship detailing how the unintuitive proc-based gameplay feels like a gamble to play in most scenarios.
Another Reddit Post examines Marksmanships place in Mythic+ discussing the underwhelming nature of Explosive Shot.
A forum Poster laments the latest rework listing the major issues and hoping for additional changes in Patch 12.1.
If Blizzard plans to continue along the same design philosophy for Marksmanship, then it would likely go a long way with players to address the current issues plaguing the spec and how it relates to their design intent. If long Aimed Shot casts are meant to be a core part of Marksmanship, then it needs to feel rewarding when players handle movement well not punishing. Proc-based gameplay can be quite engaging as long as the procs feel intuitive and there's sufficient time to respond.
Blizzard has acknowledged player feedback regarding Patch 12.0.5, so there's hope that they'll continue to listen in the coming weeks. Stay strong valiant Hunters.
