Thoughts on Survival Hunter Changes

[Jaransan]

So. Ive been thinking this for a while now but, ALOT of what survival hunters do is all over the place. I havent seen another spec with as many blatantly useless talents or with so much of its power budget spread around in such an awkward way.

It feels like 4 people worked on new Survival and none of them agreed on what to do.

You can spec for Mongoose bite spam yeah, but there are so many traps in the talent tree that trick you into thinking maybe something else is viable. Ive been pvping as SV since the expansion dropped and well... It sucks. Everything you could hope to achieve as SV is theoretically possible - but itd be easier literally anywhere else. So heres some changes I figure would tweak the spec a bit.

WAYLAY
So this.. Has basically no support in spec aside from having the ability. In pve you dont need its benefit solo EVER, in dungeons no one slows down to let you 'get ready' or cook your traps as it were and in pvp good luck getting anyone whos not a straight up idiot to stand on a trap you deliberately didnt hit them with unless you have a DK backing you up. I figure you change waylay to a buff that generates on some arbitrary condition to show your waylaying the opponent. If you crit an enemy you have slowed get waylay - then your next trap comes out with the appropriate buff. This changes the tactical decision from 'ignore this passive exists' to 'do I use this waylay to hit the warrior and use a normal frost trap on the healer or do I waylay the healer woth frost trap and burst' etc.

CAMOUFLAGE
Again. Garbage. You cant use it in combat because youll never get your pet to drop attack fast enough to be able to 'vanish' with it. The healing is negligible since if your in an arena your probably opening with it just for stealth. Its basically just for avoiding mobs while questing, and it breaks on interacting with most things so its crap for that to.
Make it useable in combat, double the cooldown to 2 minutes, and make your next trap count as having waylay when you use it. Bam. Thats the class fantasy. The hunter stalking its pray with well timed traps. The Predator.

STICKY BOMB
Just.. So useless. Isnt a stun. Negligible knockback. The timer after cast makes interrupting with it hard. Just make this talent so its knockback attempts to push enemies into the nearest trap. Or do damage. Or have a stun. Or do ANYTHING.

RAPTOR STRIKE
The sv hunter power budget is so spread out that you can rotate between traps, dots, mongoose bite and flanking strike and almost literally never cast it. Make all the talents that effected this work with flanking strike and then get rid of it. OR make it so it clears your mongoose bite stacks for big damage. Its not like we have a viable execute and were losing Talonfury next xpac anyway so well have literally no ability that interacts with those stacks.

The thing with all of this is that a Survival Hunter cant outfight any other melee without being genuinely smarter than them. Youll never beat someone else numerically, not if their competent. And thats fine. Our strengths lie eslewhere. When the warriors bursting I want to disengage into tar or frost trap and just avoid him till his buffs fall off. I want to confuse mages trying unload on me by disappearing and peppering them with traps.

DONT force me to sit on my enemy praying for arbitrary charges of something I can only keep rolling with gear and not skill. Mongoose bite is such a vast portion of what we do that applying any amount of your time budget to other things in any kind of content is a loss and that SUCKS. It doesnt feel smart, I dont feel like an elite trapper, I feel like a discount fury warrior.

So... Thats MY thoughts anyway. What about you guys? And try to keep it constructive. None of that 'turn the spec back to how it was' stuff.

[Bepples]

It feels like 4 people worked on new Survival and none of them agreed on what to do.

This is probably exactly what happened. Someone would have brought up the idea of a melee Hunter, the rest of them got over excited, and they just threw mechanics at the spec to see what stuck with no real plan (because any careful planning would have revealed it was a bad idea to begin with). The result is a mess of a spec which, despite being touted as a thematic improvement (reminder: the primary purpose of the remake in the first place), probably has the weakest theme out of ANY spec.

[Donkeywing]

Blizzard loves minorities, you can almost hear them getting off knowing they created a super niche minority group within their game.

[Nuba]

honestly I just hope they make it a healing spec (seriously)

[Nefarious Tea]

I remember thinking "waylay is stupid" back when they put it on the PTR, because it is a wildly nonsensical mechanic from a gameplay perspective. I'm not sure I like your camo/waylay idea because it essentially sounds like a Rogue. Actually, thinking about it, Outlaw should have gotten the waylay mechanic (somehow), because that's literally what a highwayman does.

I wouldn't be surprised if they DO make Fury of the Eagle baseline. Most classes/specs will probably get their artifact active ability made baseline because a lot of them are mechanically or rotationally mandatory (now). I mean... if you look at BM, they'd literally press like 1.5 buttons without the artifact ability.

But you do bring up a good point; a the vast majority of time/effort/etc in SV is based around trying to pump out as many Mongoose Bites in the window as possible.... but the stacks are generated by a single ability which buffs the same ability (ignoring Fury of the Eagle), so the effort expenditure versus gameplay engagement is very misaligned. The Mongoose Fury buff needs to either do more or mechanically change. Perhaps rather than other abilities giving charges of Mongoose Bite... what if they added a stack of the buff instead? I rather like that, because it would promote you using different abilities while still retaining the "core" massive Mongoose Bite hits from managing to hit six stacks.

*snip*

Good gods shut your fucking pie hole. We get it, you don't like melee Survival. Boo hoo. A) no one gives a shit about your opinion, b) Blizzard doesn't give a shit about your opinion (arguably more important than a) ), c) it's not going anywhere, and d) your constant complaining about it derails every thread about Survival. Just... stop. You DO realize that Black Arrow and Explosive Shot, which were the only SV-specific abilities, are now in Marks... right?

[Tehterokkar]

I wouldn't be surprised if they DO make Fury of the Eagle baseline. Most classes/specs will probably get their artifact active ability made baseline because a lot of them are mechanically or rotationally mandatory (now). I mean... if you look at BM, they'd literally press like 1.5 buttons without the artifact ability.

What? BM gets Hati as artifact ability which adds 0 button input and a 1 minute ST CD. The amount of button presses BM loses by giving up it's artifact is literally 1 per minute, and even that is not on the global CD.

[DeicideUH]

Waylay only exists because they gave traps to the other specs, and needed something to make Survival traps special. Thus, they added this weird waylay concept that is almost useless outside of a few PvP situations. They should've made Expert Trapper baseline IMO.

[Bepples]

Good gods shut your fucking pie hole. We get it, you don't like melee Survival. Boo hoo. A) no one gives a shit about your opinion, b) Blizzard doesn't give a shit about your opinion (arguably more important than a) ), c) it's not going anywhere, and d) your constant complaining about it derails every thread about Survival. Just... stop. You DO realize that Black Arrow and Explosive Shot, which were the only SV-specific abilities, are now in Marks... right?

No, but thanks for the suggestion.

Go look around on this forum and the official forum. There are plenty of people wanting ranged Survival back, and that demand is not going to go away. Remember, there was next to no demand for a melee Hunter spec and there was no melee at all in the class for years, but with a new set of developers eager to prove themselves it happened. What makes you think melee Survival is immune to such a shift in opinion from the developers, especially given its record of constant failure? It was clear to everyone that this developer team wouldn't abandon the idea after one expansion. They're too prideful and stubborn for that. Even I was saying that the most likely outcome of Expansion 7 was a continuation of the current set-up as far back as 2016. That does NOT mean the spec is here to stay forever.

And I'm glad that my posts derail Survival threads. Why do you think saying that would make me want to stop? Plus, the OP was asking for thoughts on the Survival changes and he had a part of his post to which I wanted to add. I'm allowed to do that and its entirely relevant to the topic of the tread. Ironically, your rant here got another reply out of me in a thread in which I wasn't going to continue posting had you not said anything at all, so who's derailing Survival threads now?

Also, LOL at the "MM has old SV's stuff" argument. The attempt to represent old SV's playstyle in current MM is an infamous failure known by all Hunters. It's one thing to be in favour of the idea in the first place (old SV should really be its own spec). It's a whole new level of stupid to argue that they succeeded at it. Fucking Explosive Shot? Do you have any idea what the spell used to do v.s. what it does now? Because if you did, and you were being even the slightest bit honest, you wouldn't make such a ridiculous statement. Plus, it's not only about specific active abilities. Where's Serpent Sting? Trap Mastery? Lock and Load? Oh, wait, that last one is there but there is no interaction with traps, it affects Aimed Shot instead of Explosive Shot (which, as previously detailed, doesn't exist in the same form at all), and is mutually exclusive with Black Arrow. Not to mention the baseline MM mechanics which don't match up well with the old SV playstyle at all. So... pretty much not ranged SV at all. I would say "nice try" but that would be a lie.

[DarkAviator]

If we have to stick with this melee hunter abomination, just change it to a tank spec. The name "survival" would be really fitting, then.
Throw bombs or traps to gather adds, have a special pet taunt that works on bosses and has the pet be very resilient during it, as a tank cd. Another might be some "spirit of the snake", giving the hunter leech. "Spirit of the monkey": high dodge. "Spirit of the turtle": Damge taken reduced.
Or call them aspects, have them work like the old ones (permanent bonus), with an active CD to enhance the aspect for a tank CD.

[Nythiz]

despite being touted as a thematic improvement (reminder: the primary purpose of the remake in the first place), probably has the weakest theme out of ANY spec.

I agree that SV needs a truckload of work. I wouldn't say that it has the weakest theme though, it's just that for some reason they sidelined the theme of a Survivalist DoT spec and pushed through this weird Mongoose Bite mechanic. I mean without the mongoose bite spam, the spec would be DoT heavy and be more of a melee version of the old survival with a heavier theme on the DoT aspects and traps.

Biggest problem with WoD Survival was (and in this regard I completely agree with blizzard) that it was too similar to MM when at the rotation and execution.
Both specs had a signature ability on a ~10 second cooldown that had top priority (Chimaera / Explosive). Both specs had similar styles of focus regen (Cobra/Steady). Both specs had similar styles of proc mechanics to set up burst. And for most of WoD both specs had high degrees of mobility.

Biggest mistake made going into Legion (other than trying to enhance SV as a ranged spec) is taking away SV's gameplay without offering it to MM as an option through talents. The MM meme spec comes close, but is not quite it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they DO make Fury of the Eagle baseline.

I would. FotE is really one of the worst artifact abilities in the game. Really doesn't enhance the SV theme, nor does it enhance the gameplay or anything else. Even the animation is just a direct copy paste from Fists of Fury; all they did was give it a green hue.
And gameplay wise the only good part about FotE is that it extends your Mongoose Fury window a bit, but frankly that whole mechanism needs to go.

Most classes/specs will probably get their artifact active ability made baseline because a lot of them are mechanically or rotationally mandatory (now). I mean... if you look at BM, they'd literally press like 1.5 buttons without the artifact ability.

I doubt it. There are only a handful of specs where the artifact ability has become integral to the spec. BM is FAR from being on that list; neither Hati nor Titan's Thunder are very integral to the spec. Hati is more of aesthetic thing really, it doesn't enhance gameplay much as it doesn't interact with any of your skills really. Titan's Thunder is boring and doesn't really interact either. (Not sure how you get that BM only presses 1.5 buttons without artifact ability.)

So I think the list of abilities that will follow through into the next expansion actually isn't that big. Stuff like the Moon mechanic for Balance druid is on the short list I would say.
Marksman's Windburst might be something that gets implemented. It fits the theme and adds a strong shot that triggers vulnerable. On the other hand the spec doesn't really need it either. If MM just gets something to more reliably trigger Vulnerable the spec no longer needs Windburst and gets more enjoyable at the same time.

But you do bring up a good point; a the vast majority of time/effort/etc in SV is based around trying to pump out as many Mongoose Bites in the window as possible.... but the stacks are generated by a single ability which buffs the same ability (ignoring Fury of the Eagle), so the effort expenditure versus gameplay engagement is very misaligned. The Mongoose Fury buff needs to either do more or mechanically change. Perhaps rather than other abilities giving charges of Mongoose Bite... what if they added a stack of the buff instead? I rather like that, because it would promote you using different abilities while still retaining the "core" massive Mongoose Bite hits from managing to hit six stacks.

Mongoose Fury and the whole Mongoose Bite mechanism needs to go, or at the very least severely overhauled.
They need to decide on a direction with the spec and focus on that.

The survival theme doesn't yell: Big single target hits. That's MM's theme; always has been.
It has always been about DoT damage. They should refocus on that. Enhance the DoT aspect and make Mongoose Fury a proc that increases MB damage or make it more like Haunt works/worked for affliction locks where it enhances your DoT damage.
Problem they should tackle is: how do you make Survival an interesting DoT melee spec (Note: I'd prefer SV going back to being a solid 3rd ranged spec for hunters, but as that's unlikely I'll just focus on the melee side); without SV being too similar to other DoT melee specs such as Feral and Assassination. Not that it's bad to share some common ground (most of the melee specs that deal with heavy burst are alike as well), but it's more fun if it's slightly different themed.

[Nospmas]

All they need to if they want more people to play the spec is just dumb it down. The days of people playing a spec that is more difficult then other specs but puts out equal-ish numbers to some of the other super easy specs are long gone, and even back then those spec's were always on the lower end of popularity.

Looking at World of war graphs right now the top 2 most played specs from people that have at least 2/9 mythic kills are Havoc Demon hunters and Beast mastery Hunters, arguably the 2 easiest specs in the game ( and neither is exactly tearing up the dps charts).

Now looking at the lower end of that same graph you have Survival ( Difficult rotation in a mythic raid environment), Outlaw ( Low dps + still has the crazy rng stigma), And Demo Locks ( Difficult annoying rotation).

Now I'm sure we'll get some Internet hero's in here and laugh at the term difficult in a wow rotation, but I use the term more compared to some of the other specs as opposed to brain surgery knowledge.

[threads]

i think everyone already knows what needs to happen to SV but it will likely take another full xpac of it being a failure before we see ranged brought back.

[Jaransan]

It has always been about DoT damage. They should refocus on that. Enhance the DoT aspect and make Mongoose Fury a proc that increases MB damage or make it more like Haunt works/worked for affliction locks where it enhances your DoT damage.
Problem they should tackle is: how do you make Survival an interesting DoT melee spec (Note: I'd prefer SV going back to being a solid 3rd ranged spec for hunters, but as that's unlikely I'll just focus on the melee side); without SV being too similar to other DoT melee specs such as Feral and Assassination. Not that it's bad to share some common ground (most of the melee specs that deal with heavy burst are alike as well), but it's more fun if it's slightly different themed.

I figure the way to do it would be fast ticking dots that have a much burstier damage output. Old explosive shot only used to tick like three times, it wasnt the type of dot that you put up and left for 20 seconds before refreshing. In an ideal world I'd even say you could do stuff like cause Tar trap to provide a 'Covered In Tar' debuff that when detonated with Explosive Trap or Dragonsfire Grenade does bonus damage or becomes its own DoT.

I absolutely agree that Survival needs to be refocused around the DoT aspect, but from what I gather in recent Dev Interviews, NO class is getting SUPER reworked next x-pac, which means its unlikely that mongoose bite is going away. Thats why I put so much emphasis on Waylay as a mechanic in the OP. Its probably the only unique thing survival has right now - since they gave traps back to the other two specs when they whined about it. Waylay is just a genuinely interesting mechanic to work around as opposed to 'press buttons create DoTs, switch to mongoose bite, refresh DoTs'

I dunno. I hate mongoose bite, and I'd prefer that if it HAS to stay (which it probably will) that its self contained. Make it so the stacks don't fall off until you hit 6 stacks or something. then you can prepare your burst window and switch to it when all your other shits on cooldown. you can prep mongoose bite, while chunking with traps and things. Mongoose bite becomes more of a finisher you know?

[Deleted]

Completely agree with shifting the focus from Mongoose Bite and its associated mechanics into DoTs and traps, and I’ve whined about this same topic before too but it feels like Blizzard just completely gave up on the spec after the first few Legion patches.

[Bepples]

Biggest problem with WoD Survival was (and in this regard I completely agree with blizzard) that it was too similar to MM when at the rotation and execution.

You and I will NEVER agree on this. I think both you and Blizzard have deluded yourselves into creating this non-issue.

Both specs had a signature ability on a ~10 second cooldown that had top priority (Chimaera / Explosive).

When you start saying two abilities are the same because they're both signatures, you're already off to a terrible start. You might as well be telling me they're the same ability because they both deal damage. Explosive Shot was a 6-second cooldown which got charges from Lock and Load procs. Chimera Shot was a 9-second cooldown which did a two-target cleave.

Both specs had similar styles of focus regen (Cobra/Steady).

This is the only thing that actually was the same between the two specs, and it's easily explained by the fact that it was part of the baseline Hunter class. See, one thing you people consistently fail to understand (whether deliberately or out of pure ignorance) is that specs were never expected to be 100% distinct before Legion because they were part of the same class; you expected these shared elements and that was absolutely fine. You're projecting modern (and flawed) standards into past expansions.

Both specs had similar styles of proc mechanics to set up burst.

No they didn't, aside from the shared Thrill of the Hunt talent (again, shared class mechanics). Lock and Load was unlike anything MM had. Baseline MM didn't actually have any procs at all, unless you called the focus return on Aimed Shot crits a proc. It had passives like Careful Aim and Sniper training, which were unlike anything SV had.

And for most of WoD both specs had high degrees of mobility.

"For most of WoD" implies to me that you're yet another person who forgot that Aimed Shot was fully mobile for ALL of WoD, even when it had a cast time. Nevertheless, Marksman had Sniper Training and thus limited mobility to achieve full damage potential. Survival had no such mechanic and had full damage potential.

What about Serpent Sting and Serpent Spread? MM did not have that mechanic. Or Trap Mastery and the dynamic between traps and Lock and Load? MM didn't have that either. Instant-cast focus dump? MM didn't have that. You can't gloss over these differences and pretend everything was the same.

Biggest mistake made going into Legion (other than trying to enhance SV as a ranged spec) is taking away SV's gameplay without offering it to MM as an option through talents. The MM meme spec comes close, but is not quite it.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'other than trying to enhance SV as a ranged spec'. The biggest mistake is making Survival melee, period. Probably the biggest mistake of class design in general. Yes, that includes all previous expansions. No, their failed attempt at damage control is not the worse decision here; that's deflection. They wouldn't have to do that damage control if they hadn't made the first mistake to begin with. And no, the MM meme spec is nothing like old SV. Trying to cram old SV into current MM is a detriment to both specs. Why are we treading on eggshells around melee SV? It's clearly the problem here. The preferential treatment of that spec simply due to it being melee is mind-numbing.

[Frogguh]

You and I will NEVER agree on this. I think both you and Blizzard have deluded yourselves into creating this non-issue.



When you start saying two abilities are the same because they're both signatures, you're already off to a terrible start. You might as well be telling me they're the same ability because they both deal damage. Explosive Shot was a 6-second cooldown which got charges from Lock and Load procs. Chimera Shot was a 9-second cooldown which did a two-target cleave.



This is the only thing that actually was the same between the two specs, and it's easily explained by the fact that it was part of the baseline Hunter class. See, one thing you people consistently fail to understand (whether deliberately or out of pure ignorance) is that specs were never expected to be 100% distinct before Legion because they were part of the same class; you expected these shared elements and that was absolutely fine. You're projecting modern (and flawed) standards into past expansions.



No they didn't, aside from the shared Thrill of the Hunt talent (again, shared class mechanics). Lock and Load was unlike anything MM had. Baseline MM didn't actually have any procs at all, unless you called the focus return on Aimed Shot crits a proc. It had passives like Careful Aim and Sniper training, which were unlike anything SV had.



"For most of WoD" implies to me that you're yet another person who forgot that Aimed Shot was fully mobile for ALL of WoD, even when it had a cast time. Nevertheless, Marksman had Sniper Training and thus limited mobility to achieve full damage potential. Survival had no such mechanic and had full damage potential.

What about Serpent Sting and Serpent Spread? MM did not have that mechanic. Or Trap Mastery and the dynamic between traps and Lock and Load? MM didn't have that either. Instant-cast focus dump? MM didn't have that. You can't gloss over these differences and pretend everything was the same.



I'm not sure what you mean by 'other than trying to enhance SV as a ranged spec'. The biggest mistake is making Survival melee, period. Probably the biggest mistake of class design in general. Yes, that includes all previous expansions. No, their failed attempt at damage control is not the worse decision here; that's deflection. They wouldn't have to do that damage control if they hadn't made the first mistake to begin with. And no, the MM meme spec is nothing like old SV. Trying to cram old SV into current MM is a detriment to both specs. Why are we treading on eggshells around melee SV? It's clearly the problem here. The preferential treatment of that spec simply due to it being melee is mind-numbing.

Melee Survival is the most fun spec they've ever created. That makes it a huge success and a great decision, and I applaud Blizzard for making it.

Go play something else. Melee Survival is here, it's great, and hopefully it's here to stay. Ranged Survival was not fun at all.

[threads]

Melee Survival is the most fun spec they've ever created. That makes it a huge success and a great decision, and I applaud Blizzard for making it.

Go play something else. Melee Survival is here, it's great, and hopefully it's here to stay. Ranged Survival was not fun at all.

lol it's so fun that the game director just said how it was a failure and is being revamped in BfA.

[Usagi Senshi]

lol it's so fun that the game director just said how it was a failure and is being revamped in BfA.

Outside of the asinine rotation with Mok, it really is a fun and badass spec with a lot of flavor.

I just hope the traps are adjusted and the Mok shit gets pulled back a bit. Throwing axes is a way cooler talent anyway.

[Happyducky]

And I'm glad that my posts derail Survival threads.

This is never okay. I don't even disagree with some of your points, but this idea alone should land you some infractions. I'm sick of every single survival thread being derailed and taken off topic because of people constantly beating a dead horse.

I get it, you hate melee survival, you want ranged survival back and you miss the old playstyle. I don't even think you are incorrect and you make great points BUT STOP TAKING DISCUSSIONS OFF TOPIC JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT. I really wish mods would do a better job of this because not only does it make on topic reliable discussion difficult, it keeps happening.

You bringing the threads of survival hunters off topic isn't going to suddenly change the spec back to the way it was and it honestly isn't fair to the people who are just trying to discuss the workings of the spec the way it is NOW.

These forums are a damn cesspool sometimes.

Edit: I will add that your first post in this thread is fine, but as a whole the concept of purposefully derailing threads shouldn't be allowed

[Bisque]

Legion was more or less beta testing for melee survival. While there will be a rework of SV come BFA, I don't think they are going back to ranged. I am not sure where people are getting the impression that SV will go back to ranged next expansion. Rework probably means bettering the current melee version.

I will eat my hat if they make SV ranged in BFA-that is how confident I am that they are reworking the spec instead of going back to ranged.