Concept first. Personal Thoughts at the end.
[b]Perk 1[/b]: Ensnare
[i]Old Desc[/i]: Throw a Smoke Bomb from a distance with this Melee Ability. The Smoke Bomb sticks to surfaces and detonates when enemies are near, slowing and disorienting them.
[i]New Desc[/i]: Throw a smoke bomb from a distance with this Melee Ability. The smoke bomb sticks to surfaces and detonates when enemies are near, pulling any combatants into its radius while also disorienting.
[b]Perk 2[/b]: Keen Scout
[i]Old Desc[/i]: Sprint and Sneak faster, and gain an enhanced tracker. Tethered enemies are marked for easy tracking.
[i]New Desc[/i]: Sprint and Sneak faster. Aiming at an enemy for a short time marks them. Killing marked enemies will provide you and allies with a temporary increase to ability and super regen.
[b]Perk 3[/b]: Deadfall
No changes here. This works fine.
[b]Perk 4[/b]: Vanishing Step.
[i]Old Desc[/i]: Dodging makes you invisible for a short time.
[i]New Desc[/i]: Dodging or crouching makes you invisible for a short time.
[b]Details[/b]:
Snare Bomb will mark enemies caught in it. The bomb will no longer cause the knockback animation on an enemy, instead pulling them in and immediately disorienting them.
Keen Scout's mark will only be active on one enemy at any given time. It will give the multiplier to an already existing stat(1.5x while Keen Scout is active). Keen Scout lasts for five seconds and it’s duration can not be reset. The radius at which allies will gain Keen Scout is eight meters. The aforementioned rules apply to them.
Deadfall will still mark enemies. While the anchor is attached to enemies, Keen Scout's duration will remain in effect until the tether dissipates. It will then return to the five second buff before disappearing.
Vanishing Step's crouching variant takes two seconds to activate. The crouch variant will last seven seconds without any exotics, while the dodge lasts five. One cannot shoot, sneak, or jump while trying to activate Vanishing Step. Dodging while invisible will reset the cooldown, but crouching while invisible will not.
[u]. .[/u]
Personal Thoughts: There are two things that have always bothered me when playing the hunter in Destiny 2; one in PvE, and one in PvP. One, this isn't the most mobile class, even though that's their whole idea(PvP). Warlocks are centered around recovery, titans are resilience and hunter's are(not, at least not to what I think it should be) mobility. And two, the hunter top tree subclass for nightstalker is not nearly as synergetic as bottom tree, or as crowd controlling as middle tree Gunslinger(PvE). It's also not nearly as supportive as Well of Radiance or Ward of Dawn, which bothers me as a support main. So, I wanted to make it more of a support role, as well as turn it into something that can make the top tree much more self-sustaining.
I also wanted more synergy. On hunters, I typically see a subclass tree that only has "things to do", not necessarily "things to combine", when it comes to hunters. A primary example of a subclass with "things to do" would be top tree Gunslinger, or middle tree Nightstalker. You have a tripmine knife, and you reload faster on precision kills. But, in my opinion, the two Golden Gun perks should've been combined into one perk, while the fourth could've been something to combine the three aspects together. Meanwhile, Spectral Blades has crouching wall hacks. What's that smoke grenade going to do besides deal minor tick damage? And that weakening melee while invisible? It is synergy, but it's too situational to be good in PvE.
However, I'm not saying that it's bad to simply have things I can do. I totally understand that, because it's built for PvP. I often use bottom/middle tree Arcstrider, because the things I can do are much more effective in a competitive setting than against normal enemies. The same goes for top tree Dawnblade; the things one can do don't exactly synergize over long periods of time, but they can earn an edge in quick gun fights. The only problem I have with hunters is their Void "PvE" trees. Bottom tree works fine in both areas, middle tree is made for PvP, but top tree is almost entirely exclusive to PvE. In Destiny 1, Nightstalker PvE builds were focused entirely around supporting the team with the Dusk Bow. That worked, because supers appeared extremely quickly, and orbs of light were very generous. In Destiny 2, the Way of the Trapper follows a similar formula. However, that can't work, because even with everything in the game that increases super regeneration, it's still not nearly as fast as Destiny 1, making top tree less effective overall.
The synergy is also lacking, when compared to other crowd-control, or support supers. The dodge is nice, especially when it's the reload variant. The melee variant, isn't that good, because the smoke is practically useless on the top tree. It doesn't trap enemies(or, more specifically, corral them), instead pushing them out of its radius with the blast alone, or the enemies simply walking out of the smoke before I can deal with all of them. The tether is nice, but it doesn't do much more than a small amount of crowd control in a single area, or a temporary, single-use damage buff. It's not like Well of Radiance's 30 second buff, or like the Banner Shield's quick and destructive ad clearing.
I want a real supporting subclass for the Nightstalker hunter. I want something similar to bottom tree, but built for a single, larger, stronger arrow. I want to be able to defeat my enemies with one nick, not six. I want to be able to believe I'm a Trapper, not just a Tether.