compromise for SV hunters

[Ghost10491]

The current state of SV hunter is one of the most debated classes I've ever seen in WoW's history. Half of the hunters seem to love it, and the other half (myself included) miss the old SV hunter. I'm not naïve enough to ask the dev team to do a complete 180 and go backwards. It would upset the players that do enjoy the spec, and I've never known the developers to completely revert an idea implemented into the game.

However, I think I have an idea that would satisfy both sides of the argument. I do not know enough about the spec to make an actual talent tree like I did for my MM rework idea, however here are the basics of how it would work.

We'll start with the weapons.
-dual wielding.
-one handed ax (hatchet) in one hand for melee attacks
-a new weapon, called a repeater, in the other hand. basically a small crossbow that fires very fast (I'm talking like .5-1 second fire rate for auto attacks) with low damage. each weapon would have a different set of shots before having to reload. "Fires x amount of bolts before having to reload. reload time is x seconds"

The basic concept
-hitting a target with raptor strike, or some other melee ability, will increase ranged damage by a very small amount (1%) for let's say 15 seconds. This ability would be able to stack very high (50 stack).
-ranged damage would start very low, but obviously, due to the buff above, by the end of a long fight, could provide some very serious damage
-some aspect of ranged phase would apply your stacks of mongoose fury. maybe auto shots on targets afflicted by serpent sting would have some chance of adding a stack
-ranged phase would be used for applying DoT's, getting mongoose fury stacks back, adding debuffs to target, and simply being able to provide some damage in parts of fights where you don't want to be in the target's face (increasing the survival hunter's, dare I say it, survivability?)
-melee phase of the rotation would be constant throughout fight (for the most part), would provide more burst. in shorter fights, this would be the majority of your damage. in longer fights, ranged would probably take over as the majority of your damage, as long as you can keep your buffs going

Mastery
-increased movement speed. small increase per stack of ranged damage buff, small increase in chance of applying mongoose fury


I think this would provide a very fun rotation that fits the class fantasy. I imagine a SV hunter would win fights through carefully planning his advantages, and would be stronger the longer a fight would last. The weapon concept is designed to actually make the hunter think about his rotation. "How many ranged phases should I fit in before I have to reload. It would require precision because mistiming would cause downtime in ranged phase due to reload. I think this would make using traps much more interesting (personally I don't understand why a melee class would need all the strongest traps).

I know this is very incomplete, but I think the concept would be amazing to use in both pvp and pve situations, and would also be the most unique spec WoW would offer

- - - Updated - - -

Obviously this would require some changes to how SV currently works. Applying a new stack of mongoose fury would reset the duration, for instance. You could add an effect to flanking strike that would add 2 seconds back onto mongoose fury.

[Lex Icon]

that sounds terrible... the machine gun crossbow made me chuckle though.

[Bepples]

This is a really terrible idea. Trying to achieve a compromise between melee and ranged is a good way to have a watered down version of both and a convoluted and unfun spec as a whole. You're also more likely to leave both sides of the debate disappointed rather than pleased.

Relevant:



Seriously, even I would rather they would focus on melee over trying to achieve some compromise. And that's saying something because I think it being melee in the first place is a disgrace.

[Bullettime]

Personally, I don't feel that Survival would have seen as much hate if it were released as a more fluid and refined spec instead of the mismash of whatever the fuck it is they were trying for with a ton of disjointed moving parts.

The spec doesn't necessarily need another ground up overhaul. It just needs to be streamlined a bit and have its identity ironed out. If they want to have traps and explosives be a center to have a pseudo engineer spec, do it. If they want to hardcore play into the pet tag team bit, do it. But the current iteration is just all over the fucking place and while the individual mechanics are nice in theory, they feel bolted on and fight against each other. Fix that (not going into armchair dev territory and throwing out suggestions) and it'd absolutely be more accepted.

[TOM_RUS]

Just revert it to ranged and problem fixed.

[Usagi Senshi]

Waiting to see what the rotational/spec clean up looks like when the beta finally starts. If its great, cool, if not, my enhance shaman will be my sole mail wearing class again.

Got the cool looking challenge weapon just in case.

[Ghost10491]

This is a really terrible idea. Trying to achieve a compromise between melee and ranged is a good way to have a watered down version of both and a convoluted and unfun spec as a whole. You're also more likely to leave both sides of the debate disappointed rather than pleased.

Relevant:



Seriously, even I would rather they would focus on melee over trying to achieve some compromise. And that's saying something because I think it being melee in the first place is a disgrace.

"Disgrace" IMO doesn't even come close to how describe how I feel about melee SV. Change can be very good, but change just for change's sake is bad. Thank you for your post though. I'm going to begin school for game design soon, so I've been trying to come up with ideas to test my creativity.

- - - Updated - - -

Just revert it to ranged and problem fixed.

agreed, but seriously doubt it will happen

- - - Updated - - -

Personally, I don't feel that Survival would have seen as much hate if it were released as a more fluid and refined spec instead of the mismash of whatever the fuck it is they were trying for with a ton of disjointed moving parts.

The spec doesn't necessarily need another ground up overhaul. It just needs to be streamlined a bit and have its identity ironed out. If they want to have traps and explosives be a center to have a pseudo engineer spec, do it. If they want to hardcore play into the pet tag team bit, do it. But the current iteration is just all over the fucking place and while the individual mechanics are nice in theory, they feel bolted on and fight against each other. Fix that (not going into armchair dev territory and throwing out suggestions) and it'd absolutely be more accepted.

There is nothing they could have done with a melee SV spec that makes me hate it less.

[c313]

Half of the hunters seem to love it, and the other half (myself included) miss the old SV hunter.

Half? You're giving Blizzard too much credit.

I would be surprised if more than 15% of the entire Hunter population likes Survival.

[jaimelannister]

Yeah, I’d even say 15% is pushing it. And even if it was the coolest spec ever, it’s still yet another melee spec in a game that already has far too many melee specs. Add that to the fact that they took away one of only 3 non-magic/caster ranged specs from the game and you have a recipe for disaster. At least if they had made it a tank spec, it would have filled a role that is generally lacking, but another melee dps spec is just not what the game needed AT ALL.

[threads]

i don't see the problem reverting it. they obviously didn't give a fuck about the people that liked ranged SV for 8 years so why would care about the 2% of hunters that like the 1 year of failed melee?

[Spiral Mage]

My S.O. wants them to go back to SV being ranged, I'm sure.
But has told me SV is the most fun Hunter spec ATM due to how it plays.
But she's pretty much abandoned her Hunter for her Warlock in response to the Hunter reworks.
And SV is for questing, a far better spec I think. Why try to keep things at a range when you go toe-to-toe with them and smash them down easily? Especially with the powerful AOE/cleave SV has.

I personally haven't even level'd my Hunter. Once I saw the reworks on Beta, I was done.
If I do level him, it will be as SV due to the aforementioned reasons.

Hunter was mostly fine in WOD, each spec needed some tweaks and small changes,
but what we got, was a total disaster IMO.

[Deleted]

Terrible design... could work in games like Diablo, but sounds horrible in a MMO-setting.

The only part i like is: Dual-wield. Giving them a choice to either go DW or 2H... just tie dmg to item-level of either main-hand or average weapon ilvl and voila. (Same should be applied to DKs, but that's beyond this subforum)

edit: Yes, i quite like my survival hunter; the spec just has way to many buttons to hit or buffs/debuffs to track at the moment.

[Deleted]

The problem with Survival was always that it didn't know what it wanted to be,

Traps not being used for what they were traditionally for
Grenades
Throwing axes

It just feel like it's a very cohesive class

[Soisoisoi]

As others have said, it won't work to half ass both sides of the spec. I mean, I'd rather have the current iteration than your idea if I'm honest OP. Every single pull (where 90% of the time everyone pops CDs and hero) you're doing 50% of less damage than you should be because you have to waste 50 globals on stacking up your buff, and that's just to increase ranged damage.

As someone who played windwalker with the original Tigereye Brew stacks, that was awful enough not having full damage on pull. It's a horrible concept in reality. Add m+ into the equation now and it becomes far worse.

I think I'd rather just have them revert it to full ranged again or fix the current iteration!

[Ghost10491]

i don't see the problem reverting it. they obviously didn't give a fuck about the people that liked ranged SV for 8 years so why would care about the 2% of hunters that like the 1 year of failed melee?

I would love for them to put it back to ranged, but I feel like this dev team is too damn stubborn to fix it. all this xpac hunters have been calling to the devs to fix our class, and the only thing we got was adding a charge to dire beast. oh yeah, lets not forget that porcupines are now classified as rodents. they've refused to even acknowledge MM and SV complaints.

[Shibito]

I like it will keep playing survival all you that want it ranged again can just stick to mm and bm

[Ghost10491]

I like it will keep playing survival all you that want it ranged again can just stick to mm and bm

For almost 10 years i played SV over MM and BM because i liked the playstyle better. Then they got rid of it. So telling me to just stick to MM and BM doesnt really do me much good

[Bullettime]

I like it will keep playing survival all you that want it ranged again can just stick to mm and bm

Even if it stays melee, it needs changes so it can have an actual direction. The current SV is back to the whole recycle bin garbage, just with melee skills now. It's a disjointed amalgamation of individually interesting, and some redundant, mechanics, that end up fighting against each other and becoming a mess.

[Ghost10491]

For those of you that dont like my SV, what do you think of my MM. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-hunter-rework
This is a spec i know much more about and im pretty proud of that one

[Halfsharkalligatorhalfman]

Pure melee was an awful idea from the very beginning. If you really want to make the spec interesting make the spec similar to Saboteurs from Rift. Center the spec around traps and sticky grenade combos, imo it was the most fun class/spec I've played in any mmo.