[SURVIVAL]Legion Alpha Discussion

[Azortharion]

Survival. 10char

[Troejg]

The new survival hunter is what got my really hyped for legion, always wanted to be a melee hunter. But when i look at the talents and artifact traits they are so generic and boring, rather than feeling rewarding, they just feel mandatory. Most of the artifact traits are just straight damage multipliers - where is the creativity? i think the feral artifact really nailed this, and many traits actually imapct the rotation somewhat.

here are some random ideas i think would be more interesting than just straight dmg multipliers:
-Critical strikes from Flanking Strike rips apart the wound from laceration, instantly dealing the remaining damage.
-Laceration induces a blood thirst in your pet, increasing the crit% of flanking strikes
-Raptor strike has a chance to summon smalll raptors fighting by your side for x seconds
-Increase the duration of Mongoose Frenzy by x/x/x seconds


Stuff like that. What do you guys think?

[Deleted]

The new survival hunter is what got my really hyped for legion, always wanted to be a melee hunter. But when i look at the talents and artifact traits they are so generic and boring, rather than feeling rewarding, they just feel mandatory. Most of the artifact traits are just straight damage multipliers - where is the creativity? i think the feral artifact really nailed this, and many traits actually imapct the rotation somewhat.

here are some random ideas i think would be more interesting than just straight dmg multipliers:
-Critical strikes from Flanking Strike rips apart the wound from laceration, instantly dealing the remaining damage.
-Laceration induces a blood thirst in your pet, increasing the crit% of flanking strikes
-Raptor strike has a chance to summon smalll raptors fighting by your side for x seconds
-Increase the duration of Mongoose Frenzy by x/x/x seconds


Stuff like that. What do you guys think?

I'm in the same boat. Was very hyped for melee Survival but the spec so far is underwhelming. Rotation looks boring and the talent tree needs a lot of reworking. They seem to be moving it in the traps direction which isn't really my cup of tea either. An interesting proc effect would be a good start but I personally think the Mongoose Bite stack system has to go.

[Huggykaze]

-Critical strikes from Flanking Strike rips apart the wound from laceration, instantly dealing the remaining damage.
-Laceration induces a blood thirst in your pet, increasing the crit% of flanking strikes

I really like these ideas, but they leave us with 2 options: OP at high crit vs constant refreshing of Laceration, due to bleed being consumed. I'd much rather all abilities having a chance, to refresh Laceration at X%+remaining amount increased damage. With MB having baseline, FS doubled and Raptor Strike halved chance.

Laceration ticks could have a chance to reset FS cooldown and make it free. Looks like interesting synergy, adding some randomness and dynamic to the spec.

Flanking Strike could have Animal Instincts baked in.

Synergy between traps would be cool - replace AoE fire trap (lost the name-.-) with Immolation trap and make it set tar trap on fire for AoE. Master Trapper should add synergy between traps and basic abilities, like: fire trap increasing the dmg of Laceration, while shortening the debuff.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

The new survival hunter is what got my really hyped for legion, always wanted to be a melee hunter. But when i look at the talents and artifact traits they are so generic and boring, rather than feeling rewarding, they just feel mandatory. Most of the artifact traits are just straight damage multipliers - where is the creativity? i think the feral artifact really nailed this, and many traits actually imapct the rotation somewhat.

here are some random ideas i think would be more interesting than just straight dmg multipliers:
-Critical strikes from Flanking Strike rips apart the wound from laceration, instantly dealing the remaining damage.
-Laceration induces a blood thirst in your pet, increasing the crit% of flanking strikes
-Raptor strike has a chance to summon smalll raptors fighting by your side for x seconds
-Increase the duration of Mongoose Frenzy by x/x/x seconds


Stuff like that. What do you guys think?

I think if we're going to be tossing harpoons on a regular basis, we should be equipping harpoons. Some of the new special effects (Outlaw Rogues too) make even less sense than your typical WoW special effect.

[Sharkcrap]

I wish they would change the spitting cobra back to a sentry turret, had such a cool idea for an engineer build. It also looked much nicer than a 12 year old snake model.

[Deshi]

I wish they would change the spitting cobra back to a sentry turret, had such a cool idea for an engineer build. It also looked much nicer than a 12 year old snake model.

I agree on this! I have built up this fantasy of a survival huntar roaming the wilds using his loyal pet and gadgets to survive. Ones pet should be the only pet to protect you. when the hunter sleeps the pet guards him side by side the campfire. When in dire situations traps and gadgets as grenades and turrets come to play.

Spitting cobra feel more like beastmastery!

[Nefarious Tea]

I think if we're going to be tossing harpoons on a regular basis, we should be equipping harpoons. Some of the new special effects (Outlaw Rogues too) make even less sense than your typical WoW special effect.

What is a harpoon but a spear on a string, though?

I don't like the spitting cobra model either; so pixelated and embarrassing. Make it at least use the snake model from MOP (the deathadders on Timeless Isle) so it doesn't look so terrifyingly awful next to the newer, higher resolution textures and models in Legion.

Overall the spec seems pretty interesting. And I love the new animations; they look cool and a little flashy without being gaudy messes like the new warrior ones. The Mongoose Bite charge system seems like a neat idea, but I worry that unless you sacrifice a goat to the RNG gods and/or have absurdly good gear it'll be clunky, and Survival will just end up playing like a DK who's rune-starved.

[jSewell]

I'll also put my vote in for being super excited for survival but losing interest with the lack of good mechanics and talents.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I agree on this! I have built up this fantasy of a survival huntar roaming the wilds using his loyal pet and gadgets to survive. Ones pet should be the only pet to protect you. when the hunter sleeps the pet guards him side by side the campfire. When in dire situations traps and gadgets as grenades and turrets come to play.

Spitting cobra feel more like beastmastery!

I'm planning to play mine as SV/BM, a troll hunter with loa-derived spirit powers, so spitting cobra sounds fine. Sorry to hear the visuals are so bad though.

[Huggykaze]

I'll also put my vote in for being super excited for survival but losing interest with the lack of good mechanics and talents.

We'll see what next build brings. Mechanics are quite ok, not sure how will they work in the long run. Talents suck tho'.

[Nakauri]

Talents suck tho'.

If you had to change or replace any of these marked talents, what would you change? Why?
Which of them would you keep relatively the same, and which unmarked talents would you like to see changed instead?

[Xloudman]

If you had to change or replace any of these marked talents, what would you change? Why?
Which of them would you keep relatively the same, and which unmarked talents would you like to see changed instead?

animal instincts gets baked in to flanking strike, change the talent to some kind of explosive shot effect passive on lacerate ticks but it effects flanking strike (probably 1 charge instead of 2 to keep mongoose procs from getting out of hand)

Posthaste stays as is

Farstrider reduces the cooldown on harpoon by 5 seconds and lets you target the ground with it

Improved traps is fine

Sticky bomb now knocks down its target as well, the detonation time is reduced to 2 seconds, but it can be dispelled by literally anyone that still has a dispel

[Nefarious Tea]

Sticky bomb now knocks down its target as well, the detonation time is reduced to 2 seconds, but it can be dispelled by literally anyone that still has a dispel

I'm not liking this one. You can't dispel Warrior bleeds... it makes even less sense that someone could dispel a grenade.

[Huggykaze]

If you had to change or replace any of these marked talents, what would you change? Why?
Which of them would you keep relatively the same, and which unmarked talents would you like to see changed instead?

Mok'Nathal - a bit longer duration
Animal Instincts - baked into Flanking Strike or Movement Speed bonus removed.
Instead of Animal Instincts:

Animal Bond
Your pet attacks the target for A damage and restores X Focus to you, but reduces your base regeneration by Y% for Z sec.

This gives you a choice to go GCD capped and have better control over your resources, especially for nuke phases or long periods without MB.

Posthaste - ok
Farstrider -> 2 charges of Harpoon.

Improved Traps - quite weak, add 10% effect increase or chance on trigger to reset the CD
Steel Trap - fine if it can be used against raid bosses

Sticky Bomb - think it's ok, can be useful in dungeons
Camo - should be baseline for all hunter specs
Instead of Camo:

Expert Trapper
Your traps now interact with one another:

Freezing + Explosive - mist covers the area decreasing affected enemies' chance to hit by X%
Freezing + Tar - freezes the tar, knocking down and immobilizing affected enemies for Ysec, also further chance of knock down
Explosive + Tar - current Expert Trapper effect for Explosive Trap
Explosive + Steel - heated Steel Trap penetrates deeper, but also cauterizes the wound, reducing the duration of Steel Trap's bleed effect by Z%, damage stays the same
Tar + Steel - targets into Steel Trap wounds, infecting them and decreasing healing taken by A%
Caltrops + Steel - increased bleed damage by B%
Caltrops + Explosive - Caltrops are sent flying dealing physical damage and applying Bleed in wide area

Snakehunter - 1.5 minute cooldown for 3 charges of MB? That's super weak. Make it:
20-30 seconds CD
OR refresh MB debuff and grant 3 charges
OR max charges up to 4, passive

Serpent Sting - incredibly boring. Make it, an active ability spread by Carve.

Instead of Expert Trapper:

Of One Spirit
You share the consciousness with your pet, combining your and your pet's Focus pools, Focus regeneration, increasing them by Z%.
Causes your pet's Focus spending abilities to affect your Focus pool at A% decreased rate.
Causes your attacks to affect your pet's Focus pool at A% decreased rate.
Also gives your and your pet's special attacks a X% chance to (make your and your pet's next special abilities to affect 2 targets)/(automatically use Flanking Strike. This attack will not trigger GCD or Flanking Strike's cooldown).

Think of it as high skill, high reward talent adding some pet management. Using this, your pet's Bite (or whatever) could no longer be set auto cast, but would still be valuable ability due to proc part.

Spitting Cobra - I really dislike this talent, it's renamed Dire Beast.
Instead of Spitting Cobra:

Frenzy
X Focus
Y sec cooldown
Being outnumbered, you and your pet go into frenzy making all your attacks hit every enemy within Z yards for A% of original damage.
Only usable with 3 or more targets in range.

Stronger version of Beast Cleave, also affecting the Hunter.

[jSewell]

I've lost a lot of my hype for the spec. I was dead set on it when announced and after first seeing it, but it doesn't seem to be going down the right path. I think they need to iterate more on the mongoose bite mechanic. I didn't like the refreshing buff mechanic and I don't like the flat timed buff mechanic. Maybe they could try it with each successive MBite adding x seconds to the buff as well as adding a stack?

The announced changes coming to traps is good and bad. Them all sharing a cooldown was going to be terrible. However, I don't like the idea of using Explosive Trap single target.

Dragonsfire Grenade and Sticky Grenade are cool, but could do more.

In alpha right now, we are less mobile and have less CC than most other melee. On top of that, we have less defensive capabilities from what I can tell.
Disengage was cut, which I would have been fine with if we had a buff to Cheetah or Harpoon.

Bad defensives and bad CC added on top of our 3 min CD sprint and 15 second laggy charge is depressing. Here's what I suggest:

Defensives:
Aspect of the Turtle: 3 min cd, 8 sec duration pacifying want to be Divine Shield. As long as we can't attack during this, I'd rather have almost any other defensive cool down in the game. Deterrence should be brought back and used for MM/BM. Survival needs something different, so use the Aspect of the Turtle name since it fits into the whole "Aspect" theme. But make it more interesting and not such a hindrance. Example:

Aspect of the Turtle: You and your pet hunker down, using the technique found while studying turtles (or other flavor text), reducing damage taken by 30% and chance to be critically hit by 50%. 8 second duration, 1.5 minute cooldown

Exhilaration: It works, though it is rather bland. Feels kind of forced into the three specs. Could be a lot better, seeing as rogues have a 30% heal on a 30 second cooldown (with a resource cost of course, but still)

CC:
With the changes coming to traps, which we don't know the exact numbers, this could change, but we are going to have only Freezing Trap as a hard CC. I don't really know how Sticky Bomb works against players yet, so that could potentially be good. A 30 second cooldown on it might be too strong depending on the CC effect, but the worst part is the three second delay. The delay makes it near impossible to use it for "clutch" plays, though. I feel like the CC could be tidied up and made more effective in an arena environment, easily such that it wouldn't harm PvE..

Mobility:
Cheetah leaves a lot to be desired. Really, I feel like all the "Aspects" should be a survival thing, seeing as our DPS Cd is an Aspect. Cheetah either needs to have a much shorter cooldown or be made a 30% passive for survival. I'd prefer the later. Perhaps shorten the CD slightly and then make the Dash talent shorten the cooldown even further. I really don't see people ever picking a talent that increases a 12 second sprint to 15 seconds.
Harpoon is cool but not very great mechanically speaking. The delay/animation is just too long. You can speed it up, sure, but that may make it look worse. As is, you could Harpoon a mage, they could blink mid animation and hit you with an instant cast from their new location while you are still flying to their old one. It just needs cleaning up to be more in line with charge, imo. That or completely redesign the ability into something completely different.

Just a few of my opinions, I guess. I hope the spec will feel complete and fun enough for me to main once Legion comes out.

[Xemik]

I really want them to give Disengage back to Survival. Maybe replace the Farstrider talent with Disengage if they insist on it not being baseline for SV.
Alternatively they could just change Harpoon into "Engage" and make it work exactly like the opposite of Disengage. Leap forwards instead of backwards.
The suggested idea of letting Harpoon be ground targeted could also work. I just really disliked them taking away our mobility that didn't require a target and replacing it with one that does.

I'll also add that taking Disengage away from SV was even more dumb when they just gave Demon Hunters the same ability, only vastly superior.

[mindw0rk]

Big problems of surv atm:
Almost non existant survivability in PvP which is ironic considering how spec is called.
Lack of reliable gap closers other then Harpoon which means when its on cd, surv is easily kited. Also no reliable saves to get out of trouble.
No ways to improve energy regen. Hunter is often resource starved.
Traps are awful. Hopefully improved next patch.
Many talents are random and underwhelming.
Artifact tree perks are boring and dont improve interaction with abilities. Mostly just passive buffs.

Some QoL changes I would like to see:
1. Harpoon changed into 20 seconds cooldown, 2 charges base. Every moongoose bite hit lowers cooldown by 5 seconds. If you dont have enemy targeted while using harpoon, it just pushes you forward like Heroic Leap.
2. Every moongoose bite strike lowers all dmg recieved by 30% for 2 seconds. Baseline passive. Artifact traits adds 15% dmg reflection to this mitigation proc. This would be the main defensive capability of spec.
3. Higher range of melee attacks. I LOVE this idea on official forum, it will make class unique among all melees. Make it 8-10 yards for every melee attack.
4. A new swappable aspect that you can toggle between A or B effect (depending if you need offense of defense). Effect A: each of your pet auto attacks gives you 3 focus, Effect B: regenerate 1% health every 1 second (stacks with camo).
5. While your pet is 15 yeards from you, he eats every 10-th direct hit on you recieving dmg done and becoming enraged dealing 200% increased dmg on his next auto.
6. New talent: after you succesfully reach 4 stacks of moongoose bite, your next ability with focus cost will deal 50% additional dmg and be a garanteed critical strike.
7. New talent: when ALL your traps are on cooldown, cooldown of trap that has the most time till available has its cooldown reduced by 10 seconds. Can occur only every 20 seconds.
8. New talent: ability that instantly refreshes cd of all your traps. 2 min cd.
9. New PvP talent: gas trap. When activated, creates a gas cloud in 15 yards area preventing any healing effects for everyone staying inside.
10. New PvP talent: target self or an ally and place a ticking mechanism on them. After 3 seconds it will unleash explosion dealing massive dmg, pushing back and disorienting all enemies around. 45 seconds cd.
11. New artifact trait: all your bleeds have 15% additional change to crit.
12. New artifact trait: flanking strike energy cost reduced by 5/10/15/20/25/30
13. New artifact trait: your harpoon ability refills 50 energy when connected to target.
14. New artifact trait: wingclip has a 33% chance to immobilize target for 4 seconds. This cant happen more then once in 20 seconds.

Raptor Strike should be similar to old Heroic Strike and be off gcd.
Also camouflage should be base for Surv (only spec that can use it) while on its place in talents there is talent that improves it:
Cooldown of Camo is reduced by 50% and you move 30% faster while in Camo.

testers, feel free to post my suggestions in official thread :>

[Nefarious Tea]

Some of your "quality of life" changes are pretty OP; they're hardly QOL as much as they are massive buffs. (Incidentally, is Survival's damage really that low in Alpha that a massive damage buff is considered a QOL improvement?)

Harpoon being ground-targetable gets thrown around a lot. Hopefully it gets implemented. It would give Surv mobility that isn't tied to a target or a long CD.

[mindw0rk]

Some of your "quality of life" changes are pretty OP; they're hardly QOL as much as they are massive buffs. (Incidentally, is Survival's damage really that low in Alpha that a massive damage buff is considered a QOL improvement?)
Harpoon being ground-targetable gets thrown around a lot. Hopefully it gets implemented. It would give Surv mobility that isn't tied to a target or a long CD.

Notice that those changes dont boost dmg much, they improve focus regen, mobility and survivability. Three weakest areas where surv should be buffed alot