Survival Thoughts for 6.0

[jinsoku38]

Hey Everyone else is doing it so why now me. Hunters seem to be in need of a little overhaul in the next expansion. Each spec plays too similar and we have a ton of buttons. Due to all of our buttons there usually isn't a whole lot of damage difference between our attacks. (arcane spam has been suggested here and there, can we ignore our level 90 talents?) Sorry this got kind of long.
I have some ideas for changing the hunter class over all and for survival spec specifically. Hopefully some ideas can be generated from this that could be suggested during the beta.
Survival was always described as a man of the wilderness who focuses on poisons and traps. Right now survival uses no traps for damage (minus AOE) and has one poison attack, which all hunters have. That one poinson attack is fire and forget most of the time.
Suggestions for Hunter class overall.
Lets go with the assumption that Aspects are going away. Hawk is the only one ever used and its compeltely passive, there is no choice now and I can't see how to make them meaningful. This could actually be good since it can lower our passive damage and give our attacks some damage differation.

STINGS:
Once upon a time stings were meaningful choices. We had several and they had their niche. Lets bring it back, but as venoms. (I just like the sound of venoms better than stings)

Serpent Sting: Becomes Serpent Venom, used for PVE mostly.

Widow Venom: Is balanced as the PVP dot. It could have its -10% healing effect, minor damage, and maybe have the effect of only allowing the target to run at max 100% speed. (I think another class has this effect) Maybe concussive shot goes away if that can be implemented. Probly only active on one target at a time. (overall concept is this should be the PVP venom for all specs, benefits can be adjusted)

Black Arrow: Becomes Burning Venom. It deals fire and nature damage and operates pretty much just how it does currently. It never made sense why a hunter was dealing shadow damage.
Only one venom can be active on a target, except for Survival who gets a special passive to allow Burning Venom.

TRAPS
I really believe Survival should become the trap spec. This should be a main source of damage. This means Explosive shot would go away.
Firing Traps
I can see two ways of allowing hunters to shot their traps. One allowing Trap Launcher to shoot directly at a target instead of a location. This would avoid missing a target and would probably be managable in PVP. Second option would be to keep the targeting. I love this idea because it makes the spec completly unique. The trigger time could be reduced and trigger radius could be increased. This may be an issue for PVP.
This would set up Explosive Trap to be our main attack and have this reset by Burning Venom. We would also have a buffed version of Snake Trap to use.

FOCUS REGEN
One thing i have though of is how focus regen might be effected by these changes. If you are quick at aiming and shooting traps (second option) then you are at a distinct advantage over slower people. giving you alot more arcane shots during a fight. Is this fair? Yes. Would Blizzard approve? Who knows. So we can keep the current system of Cobra Shot generating focus and extending Serpent Venom, or we could have Viper Venom be our main focus regen mechanic. Possibly adding RPPM aspect to it and/or maybe the regen ticks could crit. This would make the spec play alot like a rogue which could be helpful if having to manually target your traps.

With the above changes I would like to see the mastery for Survival be changed to something like, "Increases the damage of your Traps and Venoms by x%" Basically the same as now, except arcane shot would not be buffed. Possibly making our main attacks larger and more meaningful.

All of these suggestions have pros and cons. Please discuss thoughts, likes, dislikes, other suggestions. Get our ideas out there for blizzard to see.

[Beoren]

They don't like the way SV is spreading its dots so I think they will get rid of Multi-Shot for SV and will make it a Multi-dot spec, SV will have an ability to spread its serpent sting to mulliple targets at once, could be Snake Trap and it will have a short cd (will work like the Warlock's Seed of Corruption). they might remove BA's cd so we can apply it to more targets. I think they will add a Defensive cd that is unique to SV. other than that they might give some utility to Explosive trap and give the spec a new filler.

[Arcanimus]

Only two changes are needed:
Haste DoT scaling
Increased AP coefficients, and/or weapon damage in DoT calculation.

Anything else is just icing on the cake.

[Drench]

I think they said the only classes possibly getting a overhaul is rogue specs so they feel different.

[Deleted]

I think they said the only classes possibly getting a overhaul is rogue specs so they feel different.

If only Rouges get such overhaul, then Im getting sad. : / Know both Rouges and Hunters need it badly.


Overall, I think Survival either would be; as the name say, Survival, with lots of survavibility, though that would make it to much of a pvp spec I guess, or change it to be like Spellshooters (random name), were they use magic (which will change focus to mana) for them, using same gear as elemental/resto-shamans. Think that would do a big change for sure, and could scale more with haste and such, making it a bit more multidot thingy.

[jinsoku38]

They've stated several times hunters and rogues are getting overhauls. Nothing like a 'lock overhaul though.

[Demilune1]

I was thinking about this today, and im sure some people would think its lame BUT hear me out! When talking about making the three Specs different, the name Survival doesn't really seem like a hunter that tries to survive, am I right? I mean back in the day BM was the spec that had a HOT and survival didn't, Surv got the Stam boost but that was about it. BUT here is my idea

Spell called "set up camp" (name not important)

Essentially I would guess it could be a 3-5 second cast, and it summons a camp with a certain amount of health, when you are 5 yards from the camp you begin to heal, kinda like a lightspring, but it only lasts 1 min or glyph it for 1.5 min and it heals quite a bit.

Just a thought!

[Arcanimus]

I was thinking about this today, and im sure some people would think its lame BUT hear me out! When talking about making the three Specs different, the name Survival doesn't really seem like a hunter that tries to survive, am I right? I mean back in the day BM was the spec that had a HOT and survival didn't, Surv got the Stam boost but that was about it. BUT here is my idea

Spell called "set up camp" (name not important)

Essentially I would guess it could be a 3-5 second cast, and it summons a camp with a certain amount of health, when you are 5 yards from the camp you begin to heal, kinda like a lightspring, but it only lasts 1 min or glyph it for 1.5 min and it heals quite a bit.

Just a thought!

Don't do that, don't actually consider blizz giving hunters utility or anything more than mediocre self healing, let alone both.