[SURVIVAL]Legion Alpha Discussion

[Phototropic]

If it's granted bang on prepatch, no reason to assume otherwise, 655 seems about right taking the 640 ilvl granted to boosted characters into consideration.. though I was guessing 650, a la Tanaan. Keeps wf/empowered baleful and HFC relevant, I suppose.

I'd imagine that most, or at least some, that're interested in raiding as SV (at least preemptively at this time) will have something higher than 655 stored or have a way of getting is somewhat quickly. I made sure to off-spec the HC Manno polearm as soon as all of our mainspecs got it for this reason.

[Deleted]

How is survival looking now that it's pretty much only tuning left and the mechanics are more or less set in stone?

Does it feel fun and "solid"? Are the talent choices meaningful?

I know it's kind of a loaded question(s), but I've not really been paying much attention to Legion outside of DKs and was thinking of maybe sticking with my Hunter this expansion.

[Seventeen]

It's not a particularly smooth spec. You have periods of slow gameplay where you use Explosive trap/Flanking Strike/Lacerate on CD and have enough spare focus for the occassional raptor strike followed by moments of spamming Mongoose Bite where you could focus cap.

If you want to PvP it's probably not the spec for you, the mobility isn't great and the survivability is worse but with support it could be OK - you bring burst and lot of snare.

Spec should be good for Mythic dungeons, it's got good AoE tools and burst, survivability could be an issue.

Assuming tuning is there SV should be pretty good in raids, its got single target and AoE burst as well as sustained AoE. Problem is you're up against a ton of other melee specs with probably limited raid spots, SV has the damage tools but thats about it.

Fun is subjective it's probably both the most complicated hunter spec and has the most downtime but with all the changes thats not saying much. The talents choices in general are pretty boring and mostly pick themselves.

[Deleted]

It's not a particularly smooth spec. You have periods of slow gameplay where you use Explosive trap/Flanking Strike/Lacerate on CD and have enough spare focus for the occassional raptor strike followed by moments of spamming Mongoose Bite where you could focus cap.

If you want to PvP it's probably not the spec for you, the mobility isn't great and the survivability is worse but with support it could be OK - you bring burst and lot of snare.

Spec should be good for Mythic dungeons, it's got good AoE tools and burst, survivability could be an issue.

Assuming tuning is there SV should be pretty good in raids, its got single target and AoE burst as well as sustained AoE. Problem is you're up against a ton of other melee specs with probably limited raid spots, SV has the damage tools but thats about it.

Fun is subjective it's probably both the most complicated hunter spec and has the most downtime but with all the changes thats not saying much. The talents choices in general are pretty boring and mostly pick themselves.

Cheers man. Mythic dungeons are probably what I would be doing, so nice to hear that it's looking good there.

[Azortharion]

Except you don't cast Flanking Strike on CD at all, not worth the cost unless you got excess.

[Seventeen]

Except you don't cast Flanking Strike on CD at all, not worth the cost unless you got excess.

With Way of the Mok'Nathal? Admittedly I havn't been using it since they changed talent respeccing, playstyle would just change to maintain the buff with raptors and ocassional Flanking Strike then with spare focus.

[Azortharion]

With Way of the Mok'Nathal which is tens of thousands of DPS ahead of the other two choices with a playstyle that involves dropping Flanking Strike unless you're >90 focus (so as an occasional anti-focuscap).

[Zaak]

So FS should only be used after MB spam? As that's were we'll most likely cap focus

[heskel]

Do you guys think blizz will improve the visuals for the artifact skill? i like the new particle effect with the spears but the animation is still monk punching while it should be stabbing.

[Nakauri]

With Way of the Mok'Nathal which is tens of thousands of DPS ahead of the other two choices with a playstyle that involves dropping Flanking Strike unless you're >90 focus (so as an occasional anti-focuscap).

SimC Way of the Mok'Nathal is bugged and inflating Serpent Stings damage, adding about 10k extra that it shouldn't have when paired together. This was posted here last Sunday and hasn't been fixed yet. To get a clearer picture of Mok'Nathal, combine a sim with and without Mok'Nathal and reduce Serpent Stings damage from the difference. There's also some APL there (prior link) you might want to play with that has some moknathal_tactics.remains>= calls.

[Deleted]

SimC Way of the Mok'Nathal is bugged and inflating Serpent Stings damage, adding about 10k extra that it shouldn't have when paired together. This was posted here last Sunday and hasn't been fixed yet. To get a clearer picture of Mok'Nathal, combine a sim with and without Mok'Nathal and reduce Serpent Stings damage from the difference. There's also some APL there (prior link) you might want to play with that has some moknathal_tactics.remains>= calls.

Why wouldent mocnathal effect serpent sting? assumed that was just a bug, or have blizzard confirmed it somewhere ?

Just says increase your AP by 25%. Serpent sting does x% Ap over 15 sec.

Dont see why it shouldnt affect it?

[Nakauri]

I imagine their intention with Mok'Nathal was to increase physical damage, and it simply wasn't made clear enough, since it also does not affect fire damage effects such as explosive trap. It might just be a bug that it's supposed to increase serpent sting and explosive trap damage, but given they've been trying to streamline their balancing knobs it seems purposeful to leave magical or 'optional' DoT effects off Mok'nathal (lacerate is affected).

[shade3891]

I find myself not using Raptor Strike, also didn't pick the talents for it. Using Butchery in my single target rotation instead if i got spare focus, since that hits like a truck.

edit: also hoping fury of the eagle gets an update, feels way to monkey

[Deleted]

What's intended and what's good is so all over the place it's worrying.

- - - Updated - - -

Using Butchery in my single target rotation instead if i got spare focus, since that hits like a truck.

I mean come on.

- - - Updated - - -

With Way of the Mok'Nathal which is tens of thousands of DPS ahead of the other two choices with a playstyle that involves dropping Flanking Strike unless you're >90 focus (so as an occasional anti-focuscap).

Stuff like this.

[Nakauri]

SimC Way of the Mok'Nathal is bugged and inflating Serpent Stings damage, adding about 10k extra that it shouldn't have when paired together. This was posted here last Sunday and hasn't been fixed yet. To get a clearer picture of Mok'Nathal, combine a sim with and without Mok'Nathal and reduce Serpent Stings damage from the difference. There's also some APL there (prior link) you might want to play with that has some moknathal_tactics.remains>= calls.

This should be fixed now, along with a flanking strikes bug that was not providing it a double chance to proc hunting companion (mastery). It won't be built for the gui until the next time it's uploaded though.

[Reefguy88]

I'm sure this may be answered somewhere in the many pages of this thread but as I just got around to trying the beta, I dont want outdated information.

What is the current "rotation" for survival hunters at lvl 100? I'm looking at it and it seems like we don't have a focus generator.

[Vurrin]

For trash mobs/leveling. I Harpoon in, Lacerate+ explosive trap mongoose bite x3 then I Snake Hunter into Mongoose bite x 3 again then flanking strike, then Artifact power, then hopefully can mongoose bite 1-2 more times ( if you have good haste you want to flanking strike more in the Bite spam for procs, but you want to be able to fury of the eagle with max stacks and possibly have time to bite afterwards). For AoE pulls I sometimes replace lacerate with dragonfire grenade. Its worth noting that for leveling most mobs will die to 3-4 mongoose bites alone so pulling a couple isn't a bad thing especially if you're gonna snake hunter into a good fury.

As for rotation outside of mongoose fury keep Explosive trap lacerate, flanking strike, and talented abilities (like dragonfire grenade or hatchet toss) on cooldown, and if all of them are on CD and you have like 70+ focus raptor strike once. If using serpent sting you can probably also put in an early raptor strike as well jsut to get the DoT rolling. All in all you probably raptor strike once or twice per lacerate cooldown max.

For non snake hunter mongoose fury. get nearly 3 charges of mongoose bite, then bite once and flank on CD while maintaining other abilities on CD and not reaching 3 charges of bite with the goal being to get max stacks of Mongoose fury before it drops. If you're doing a boss/raid you probably want to plan to have 3 charges shortly around the same time Fury of the eagle and snake hunter come off cooldown. Note that I didn't talk about aspect of the eagle, but you can largely treat it as a way to max out your snake hunter fury if you have good haste, or as a way to get 6 stacks on a fury without snake hunter.

[Deleted]

After getting onto beta on sunday, & trying out SV, I really want to like it & I think its got potential, but it feels very disjointed rotation-wise, as I said in another thread, it feels like you have to talent to make it smoother or so, instead of having a base & talenting to suit your play-style. Also, the artifact ability 'On the Trail' (the dot added when you harpoon over to a target thats refreshed by auto-attack), is it meant to drop off? I thought, looking at the tooltip it was just some extra passive damage, but it extends by 6 seconds then drops, so, whats the point of it?

[Nakauri]

I imagine their intention with Mok'Nathal was to increase physical damage, and it simply wasn't made clear enough, since it also does not affect fire damage effects such as explosive trap. It might just be a bug that it's supposed to increase serpent sting and explosive trap damage, but given they've been trying to streamline their balancing knobs it seems purposeful to leave magical or 'optional' DoT effects off Mok'nathal (lacerate is affected).

With the new build this is now no longer true. Mok'Nathal was reduced from [5 stacks / 25%] to [4 stacks / 12%], but the damage affects all magical damage including DoT talents like Serpent Sting.

[Deleted]

After getting onto beta on sunday, & trying out SV, I really want to like it & I think its got potential, but it feels very disjointed rotation-wise, as I said in another thread, it feels like you have to talent to make it smoother or so, instead of having a base & talenting to suit your play-style. Also, the artifact ability 'On the Trail' (the dot added when you harpoon over to a target thats refreshed by auto-attack), is it meant to drop off? I thought, looking at the tooltip it was just some extra passive damage, but it extends by 6 seconds then drops, so, whats the point of it?

Trail bleed does not extend on dummys. Works fine on everything else.