BfA Alpha - Hunter Changes

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Every 40seconds yes, FS has a 40sec cd. But thats how surv works right now, build as much focus as fast as possible and spam RS with other things when they are off cd.

I really wish I could get my hands on it from the look of it now it seems to be all sustain with petty much no burst.

[Gsara]

I really wish I could get my hands on it from the look of it now it seems to be all sustain with petty much no burst.

Coordinated Assault on a two min. cd is where the burst window would be so playing around that surv does have some burst and decent sustain between the cd. I know it sounds like a meme but surv does play like a melee bm hunter right now but of course we will still see changes over the next few months. Surv though is pretty fun to play and you are insanely tanky in the open world.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Coordinated Assault on a two min. cd is where the burst window would be so playing around that surv does have some burst and decent sustain between the cd. I know it sounds like a meme but surv does play like a melee bm hunter right now but of course we will still see changes over the next few months. Surv though is pretty fun to play and you are insanely tanky in the open world.

I more so mean burst out side of the cooldown, like on live you can use fury of the egal at 6 stacks. It more so seems you just sustain until the cooldown is ready on bfa.

[Gardoc]

I just watched some MoP MM hunter videos and I'm really sad. Even though BFA MM hunter looks better than Legion, I just wish they would revert the class to MoP, it was so fun to play. What was wrong with that class that it had to be turned into what we have now?

[Gsara]

I more so mean burst out side of the cooldown, like on live you can use fury of the egal at 6 stacks. It more so seems you just sustain until the cooldown is ready on bfa.

Thats pretty much how bfa is for surv. Eagle basically just lets you throw RS's at range for 15sec in bfa every 1.5 min. I think thats why people are saying surv is just melee bm although I dont think thats the case at all having played all the specs so far in alpha.

[Cedon]

can they just rewind this crap back to MoP MM yet?

Change MoP to Wrath and you've got it.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Thats pretty much how bfa is for surv. Eagle basically just lets you throw RS's at range for 15sec in bfa every 1.5 min. I think thats why people are saying surv is just melee bm although I dont think thats the case at all having played all the specs so far in alpha.

I do so hope the wildfire/ss feel impactful the poison exposition thing was one thing I was looking forward to thematically.

[Gsara]

I do so hope the wildfire/ss feel impactful the poison exposition thing was one thing I was looking forward to thematically.

It could spice up the rotation for sure with vipers venom and guerrilla tactics. With surv there is still a lot of ways things could go as well with specs with both BM and MM being rather cut and dry on the current build.

[Galaar]

I think it is just a wording change. 10 shots in 3 seconds is the same as a shot every 0.33 s for 3s (initial shot + 3*3).

I'm not too sure about that. My assumption is that haste impacted the arrow cast time and they wanted to cap it. Watching the MM overview videos there seemed to be some massive amount of arrows that would fly off. I could be wrong though.

[Lucrece]

The animations for MM without arcane shot look like total garbage....virtually the only visible effect we have now is a bunch of ugly red arrows from nowhere and aimed shot's effect which is the only decent effect we have.

MM could not look more bland from my vantage point. Steady Shot looks like total ass, and I don't really want a cast time filler.

Give me my arcane shot back, it's been with the class since forever.

[Shibito]

Wow survival can dual wield 1h weapons again? Wow that is nuts.... !!!! like the good ol days.

survival actually looking promising

Best news what ive been waiting for!

[globenstine]

The only challenging spec to play, for 11 years of raids, was the Feral Druid with Lei Shen trinket. You actually had a rough time utilizing this item for maximum DPS. Nowaday bunch of elitist assholes flooding forums with "omg 4 buttons spec" comments. When in reality, the difficulty in raids is mechanics and not your ''rotation''.

Method kill Argus in 9 days or so and 99% of people didn't even saw the fight. And what is holding those people? Even semi-hardcore raiders can't do optimal DPS in raid due to stress of a fight or lack of focus on ''rotation'' ot whatever. And some people still want fuckin' piano instead of skill panel?

You have to be fucking blind not to see what is Blizzard trying to do with this game. They are trying to make it fun by making you to interract with enviroment. Tier after tier raid encounters have more and more complex mechanics. In 5 ppl dungeons we now have affixes, that make you play different.

It NEVER was hard to ''perform'' on a dummy in Orgrimmar. Never. In theory, every DPS spec is ''easy''. But, I rather would have more and more bosses like Operator Thogar and play ''4 button spec'' than fuckin Patchwerks that we had in 2007-2009.

my only issue with this, is raid design has been less than stellar. in order to reach that point of "make the boss encounter more engaging to make up for lack of class complexity", in legion they just crammed all the bosses chock full of raid wipe mechanics that are virtually all the same (such as soak this puddle/beam/meteor). thus, making the bosses "more engaging" but also frustrating and not very inventive. you have a boss that has 30 mechanics on set timers, half of which will wipe the raid instead of 10-15 abilities with one or two new ones on a variable timer. its artificial difficulty.

[Dmitro]

They should make things like Binding Shot and Posthastep.

the entire dev philosophy since wod is to make as less baseline spells as possible, cause I guess its hard for casuals to have 5+ more binds

- - - Updated - - -

my only issue with this, is raid design has been less than stellar. in order to reach that point of "make the boss encounter more engaging to make up for lack of class complexity", in legion they just crammed all the bosses chock full of raid wipe mechanics that are virtually all the same (such as soak this puddle/beam/meteor). thus, making the bosses "more engaging" but also frustrating and not very inventive. you have a boss that has 30 mechanics on set timers, half of which will wipe the raid instead of 10-15 abilities with one or two new ones on a variable timer. its artificial difficulty.

it also killed everything non-pve related in the game, devs must have forgotten that their game is called WoW not world of raidingcraft

Agreed on "fake" difficulty

[ttylol]

Kill Command on cooldown, maintain Serpent Sting, Raptor Strike when you can. Pool focus every 2 minutes.

Butchery, Chakrams, Crows: use on cooldown or save for adds (like Wildfire Bomb)
Steel Trap, new Flanking Strike: use on cooldown

Survival clearly needs a gimmick that talents can interact with (like Wild Call for BM). The only interesting options are Viper's Venom proc and, ofc, their former gimmick. (Hell, even BM's cooldown talents at least generate focus lol)

Perhaps Way of the Mok'Nathal baseline + auto-attacks generate focus? Would be far less punishing than dropping Mongoose stacks, but at least keeps a bit of that flavor. Example talents: Wildfire Bomb consumes "Mok'Nathal" stacks for big single target bonus. KC cd reset chance is increased per "Mok'Nathal" stack. "Mok'Nathal" can no longer be refreshed when at max stacks but, upon reaching max stacks, your pet deals X% increased damage for 10 seconds.

[Ifritlol]

my only issue with this, is raid design has been less than stellar. in order to reach that point of "make the boss encounter more engaging to make up for lack of class complexity", in legion they just crammed all the bosses chock full of raid wipe mechanics that are virtually all the same (such as soak this puddle/beam/meteor). thus, making the bosses "more engaging" but also frustrating and not very inventive. you have a boss that has 30 mechanics on set timers, half of which will wipe the raid instead of 10-15 abilities with one or two new ones on a variable timer. its artificial difficulty.

1. Raid difficulty is going up from patch to patch.
2. Players become more and more experienced from patch to patch, so it kinda evens out.
3. The amout of external help became fuckin' redicilous. Top raiders have Weak Auras for literally everything in this game, which is fuckin' lame.

I am all in for WoW where you have simple class design, but you have interesting content, that must be master by actually playing the game and not using addons that play the game for you. But that's not happening.

[Dannihilate]

Funny thing though I always thought BM hunters should've been the melee spec rather than survival ( seeing how Rexxar was portraited as THE Beastmaster in previous expansions and warcraft 3) and blizzard now decided to give kill command to survival. Next step is giving them exotic beasts, Animal Companion and deleting BMs from the game I guess?

Yeah, BfA SV looks like just a melee BM. They've got Kill Command and a Big Red Pet button. I'm looking forward to later patches to see how they actually make the specs feel/play.

[infinitemeridian]

Make flanking strike replace kill command for flavor's sake. At the very least replace that stupid KC animation with FS's current animation.

Get rid of that talent and put something more interesting in its place.

[Hatexon]

Kill Command on cooldown, maintain Serpent Sting, Raptor Strike when you can. Pool focus every 2 minutes.

Butchery, Chakrams, Crows: use on cooldown or save for adds (like Wildfire Bomb)
Steel Trap, new Flanking Strike: use on cooldown

Survival clearly needs a gimmick that talents can interact with (like Wild Call for BM). The only interesting options are Viper's Venom proc and, ofc, their former gimmick. (Hell, even BM's cooldown talents at least generate focus lol)

Perhaps Way of the Mok'Nathal baseline + auto-attacks generate focus? Would be far less punishing than dropping Mongoose stacks, but at least keeps a bit of that flavor. Example talents: Wildfire Bomb consumes "Mok'Nathal" stacks for big single target bonus. KC cd reset chance is increased per "Mok'Nathal" stack. "Mok'Nathal" can no longer be refreshed when at max stacks but, upon reaching max stacks, your pet deals X% increased damage for 10 seconds.

You got to remember in Alpha, we aren't level cap with level cap gear. I don't think Mok'Nathal is an interesting enough mechanic (in actuality it is a poor buff maintenance mechanic.). Serpent Sting procs are fun, and I think is something should be baseline. Mongoose Bite as a talent is also boring, though does create a more 'interesting' gameplay.

Survival certainly needs a set in direction. I don't think it should be a pseudo buff stacking enhancement shaman playstyle. I'd love to see it become a true dot melee class. Even more so than it is now. More bonuses for keeping dots up. Kill Command should leave a bleed naturally all the time. Raptor Strike getting bonus damage for dots up.

With that said, I am having a lot of fun with the serpent sting proc spec in Alpha. The Mongoose Bite spec can be fun but obviously doesn't mesh well with the Serpent sting proc talent. I'm not sure how they would fix that or if they should at all. I do think moving away from tiny high burst damage windows is a much better direction though, despite enjoying Mongoose Bite. I'd personally completely remove Mongoose Bite as a talent. I don't understand Alpha Predator and Viper's Venom being on the same tier as well.

Personally, what I would do with their talents is this.

- Make Bloodseeker baseline minus the attack speed effect.

- Put Alpha Predator where Bloodseeker is.

- Maybe put Flanking strike where Alpha Predator was.

- Make Bloodseeker Dot do much more damage for the loss of the attack speed.

- Change Tip of the Spear to increase damage by 30% with no stacking. This means that there is less question of how to apply Tip of the Spear in general for the normal player instead of waiting for theorycrafting to come in.

- Mongoose Bite change - Instead of increased damage Raptor Strike changes to Mongoose Bite. If you Mongoose Bite a target with Serpent Sting, the Hunter and Pet gains % increased attack speed for 15 seconds. This could stack, though as I said previously I am not entirely a fan of keeping up minor buffs all the time and would rather see Survival become the real melee dot class.

- Alternate Mongoose Bite change - Raptor Strike changes to Mongoose Bite. Mongoose Bite applies a stacking bleed dot. I'm no math scientist, so I am not going to attempt to say how high and how much damage it should do. Make it last 10 seconds.

- Move Chakrams down to where Flanking Strike was. This talent is certainly not a worthy 100 talent IMO. Not sure if math would mean it has to change in damage or not for such a change though.

- Obvious missing 100 talent - Wildfire Bomb buff/change - Something to make it a purely single target power house ability. Alternatively this could be in another spot in the tree, but I think making Wildfire Bomb more interesting for Single Target, and buffing it for said use (as in, the talent possibly removes the AoE Effect) and some how works with Guerilla Tactics would be neat. Though I am personally not a fan of Guerrilla Tactics anyway.

- Other obvious missing 100 talent - A different bomb in general! - Why not play with the fantasy that Survival Hunter uses traps and bombs way more than the other specs? Give us another bomb that may have some synergy with Wildfire Bomb. Or doesn't!

Just some ideas, as I rather not go back to Mok'nathal/Mongoose Bite again. I think it is super limiting in general even if you are very good at playing the current survival.

[ttylol]

Yay, a fun talent!

Lace your Wildfire Bomb with extra reagents, giving it one of the following properties:
Shrapnel Bomb: Shrapnel pierces the targets, causing Mongoose Bite, Raptor Strike and Butchery to apply a bleed for 9 sec that stacks up to 3 times.
Pheromone Bomb: Kill Command has a 100% chance to reset against targets coated with Pheromones.
Volatile Bomb: Reacts violently with poison, causing an extra explosion against enemies suffering from your Serpent Sting and refreshes your Serpent Stings.

[scrappybristol]

New Pet?



if I were to guess, the starting pet for Dark Iron Hunters.