SV Lone Wolf

[Sagenod]

I don't play hunter at all (so this might be cringe) but I've got a very simple idea that would make me personally a bit more interested in playing a survival hunter.

Replace the 45 talent Tip of the Spear with Lone Wolf. It would retain the effect of the Marksmanship version, granting a damage buff and Survival of the Fittest. However for Survival it would also replace Kill Command with Killing Blow (shit placeholder name) a melee ability that does the same thing as Kill Command, only the hunter does the attack animation obviously since there is no pet to do it. The Kill Command-related talents Alpha Predator and Bloodseeker could be left the same.

Doing it like this, the survival hunter would be incentivized to use their pet for the majority of levelling, which I think is good gameplay-wise and thematically. Instead of allowing a brand new hunter to get Lone Wolf at a low level and ignore one of the core aspects of the class, they will use their pet until the talent becomes available at 45, at which point they can choose. Also, it makes sense that an inexperienced hunter would rely on their pets to help them survive until they become capable enough on their own.

Is this dumb or what? You tell me.

[Bepples]

So you're looking at a class that is based in ranged weapons and pets and saying "You know what would make this great? No ranged weapons and no pets!".

It sounds like Warrior or Rogue is the class for you.

[Sagenod]

So you're looking at a class that is based in ranged weapons and pets and saying "You know what would make this great? No ranged weapons and no pets!".

It sounds like Warrior or Rogue is the class for you.

To me, a "hunter" is not limited to the ranger archetype, which is what you're referring to. I think a hunter in wow also represents the use of guerilla warfare and gadgetry, being the closest thing to a battlefield tactician or combat engineer. That of course, is subjective. Hunters in WoW are strongly tied to the ranger archetype and I would not want to reduce that. However, the idea I mentioned would not do such a thing as it's a talent choice. It gives the option to fulfill a hunter fantasy that is not as associated with beast and bow.

Furthermore, I have made no comment on the melee/range aspect as I have no opinion on the matter. A ranged conversion mechanic would be cool, but that is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is primarily to allow survival to be a non-pet class like marksmanship can

[Fabled]

Smite has a God named Ullr that I wish was just copy and pasted into how Survival should play, good mix of melee and ranged without needing to be forced to stay mostly melee.

[Sagenod]

I think it sounds fun.

But I think if Surv is without a pet it might need some more healing to compensate.
Maybe Mend Pet could turn into Mend Self if you took Lone Wolf as Surv.

I agree with this. Although I would go about it differently (not sure how this would go down balance wise) by giving survival some leech components. It sort of fits with the bloodthirsty theme the spec shares with fury and feral.

[Venziir]

Petless Surv would need a lot of changes though, aside from just adding Lone Wolf. Kill Command is tied to your pet, so is your Mastery, Flanking Strike, Birds of Prey and Coordinated Assault.

[Bepples]

To me, a "hunter" is not limited to the ranger archetype, which is what you're referring to.

I don't care about what the class means to you because, as you said on the first line of your first post, you don't play a Hunter. Your thematic preferences for the class are irrelevant. Survival should not be further redesigned to appeal to people who don't play the class. That's how we got in this mess in the first place.

In your next post you highlighted the shared aspects of Survival with Fury and Feral. Evidently those are the specs for you and not any Hunter spec.

[Niwes]

So you're looking at a class that is based in ranged weapons and pets and saying "You know what would make this great? No ranged weapons and no pets!".

It sounds like Warrior or Rogue is the class for you.

tbh: this „problem“ is not created by the OP. it was created by Blizz in the second they changed a 10 year old pure range class, ppl committed themselfes to years ago.

[Athorha]

May as well just turn it into the mail tank spec then.

[Sagenod]

I don't care about what the class means to you because, as you said on the first line of your first post, you don't play a Hunter. Your thematic preferences for the class are irrelevant. Survival should not be further redesigned to appeal to people who don't play the class. That's how we got in this mess in the first place.

In your next post you highlighted the shared aspects of Survival with Fury and Feral. Evidently those are the specs for you and not any Hunter spec.

Specs aren't allowed to have common themes then? Fascinating...

Also, might I suggest you take a chill pill? Why do I feel like I'm being gatekept about a class in world of warcraft

[DazManianDevil]

I don't play hunter at all (so this might be cringe) but I've got a very simple idea that would make me personally a bit more interested in playing a survival hunter.

Replace the 45 talent Tip of the Spear with Lone Wolf. It would retain the effect of the Marksmanship version, granting a damage buff and Survival of the Fittest. However for Survival it would also replace Kill Command with Killing Blow (shit placeholder name) a melee ability that does the same thing as Kill Command, only the hunter does the attack animation obviously since there is no pet to do it. The Kill Command-related talents Alpha Predator and Bloodseeker could be left the same.

Doing it like this, the survival hunter would be incentivized to use their pet for the majority of levelling, which I think is good gameplay-wise and thematically. Instead of allowing a brand new hunter to get Lone Wolf at a low level and ignore one of the core aspects of the class, they will use their pet until the talent becomes available at 45, at which point they can choose. Also, it makes sense that an inexperienced hunter would rely on their pets to help them survive until they become capable enough on their own.

Is this dumb or what? You tell me.

For the sake of discussion I'll add my 2cents.
I would be okay with Lone Wolf on Survival, with the notion that you gained every passive from the pet types as opposed to a flat and boring damage buff.
While this could be seen as button bloat, having access to 10% leech, passive movement speed, bloodlust and freedom along with the damage reduction would give the spec some much needed utility.
Hell even the 5second pet stun could be changed to "You intimidate your target, causing them to question their own identity for 5 seconds as they're stunned by your visage" /s

That being said, BM and MM have to swap pets for utility, allowing Surv to forsake the ranged advantage to gain the pet utilities would be a fair compromise and would entice me to try the spec as kind of a Rambo, lone wilderness esk character.
Obviously as it's been mentioned earlier in the thread, half your buttons are tied to your pet so it wouldn't be possible now, but maybe in 10.0 if WoW survives that long.
At this point I'm resigned to the notion we'll never get ranged elemental survival back, so please do something with Surv.
To everyone else in the thread that IS a hunter player, could you ever see yourself playing Melee Survival with some changes?

I for one would play it in PvP or M+ if it had a little extra going for it as in above idea, but never in raid because I'm a ranged brain player.

[Peacemoon]

Hmm part of the reason survival is fun is purely because it is a melee dps with an animal companion. Remove the animal companion and you remove the USP of the class.

The same cannot be said for MM hunters, as hunters are the only archer class in WoW.

[threads]

Specs aren't allowed to have common themes then? Fascinating...

Also, might I suggest you take a chill pill? Why do I feel like I'm being gatekept about a class in world of warcraft

people are very hostile when it comes to SV. blizz took a ranged spec people played for 15 years and made it melee, supposedly it was to fulfill a melee beast master type of fantasy. so when people ask for lone wolf it kind of goes against the whole purpose of the spec to begin with.

[keyone01]

I don't play hunter at all, BUT...

People like you are the reason SV is in its sorry state right now.
Pls stick to your main instead of ruining specs that others enjoy.

[KrayZ33]

I don't play hunter at all (so this might be cringe) but I've got a very simple idea that would make me personally a bit more interested in playing a survival hunter.

Replace the 45 talent Tip of the Spear with Lone Wolf. It would retain the effect of the Marksmanship version, granting a damage buff and Survival of the Fittest. However for Survival it would also replace Kill Command with Killing Blow (shit placeholder name) a melee ability that does the same thing as Kill Command, only the hunter does the attack animation obviously since there is no pet to do it. The Kill Command-related talents Alpha Predator and Bloodseeker could be left the same.

Doing it like this, the survival hunter would be incentivized to use their pet for the majority of levelling, which I think is good gameplay-wise and thematically. Instead of allowing a brand new hunter to get Lone Wolf at a low level and ignore one of the core aspects of the class, they will use their pet until the talent becomes available at 45, at which point they can choose. Also, it makes sense that an inexperienced hunter would rely on their pets to help them survive until they become capable enough on their own.

Is this dumb or what? You tell me.

I think this would destroy the whole theme.
It would turn the hunter into a predator as all the bestial themed talents and skills would be connected to the hunter and not to his pet anymore.
Alpha Predator, Bloodseeker etc. etc.
Not quite the same in my book.

It would fit a worgen more than a class, sounds more befitting to a feral-druid.

The class is fine the way it is when you want to play a melee hunter.
99% of the time, you don't really control your pet anyway. (as this seems to be the thing putting you off?)
the other 1% is when you make a target switch from 1 target to another 60 yards away... like during Eye of the Jailer or something. You always have KC ready as Surv, so your pet basically always has a charge ability. And you can deal semi-normal damage at range for quite a while. That's the upside of having a pet that uses abilities and I think it should always stay that way so hunter remains different from Rogues or Warriors

[Sagenod]

people are very hostile when it comes to SV. blizz took a ranged spec people played for 15 years and made it melee, supposedly it was to fulfill a melee beast master type of fantasy. so when people ask for lone wolf it kind of goes against the whole purpose of the spec to begin with.

But most people don't even like the current playstyle and on top of that, I am sure many besides me will agree that BM should be melee before survival. I mean, if we're talking about weapon choice for someone focused on "surviving" you can't do much better than a gun.

And I don't even want to make it petless anyhow. I would see it function like Marksmanship does, in which there are situations where you still want to summon your pet and forsake the damage buff from Lone Wolf. Also as I mentioned in the original post, it should be implemented as a talent and it would be replacing one that, as far as I know, is a dead talent lol.

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I think this would destroy the whole theme.
It would turn the hunter into a predator as all the bestial themed talents and skills would be connected to the hunter and not to his pet anymore.
Alpha Predator, Bloodseeker etc. etc.
Not quite the same in my book.

It would fit a worgen more than a class, sounds more befitting to a feral-druid.

The class is fine the way it is when you want to play a melee hunter.
99% of the time, you don't really control your pet anyway. (as this seems to be the thing putting you off?)
the other 1% is when you make a target switch from 1 target to another 60 yards away... like during Eye of the Jailer or something. You always have KC ready as Surv, so your pet basically always has a charge ability. And you can deal semi-normal damage at range for quite a while. That's the upside of having a pet that uses abilities and I think it should always stay that way so hunter remains different from Rogues or Warriors

And I wouldn't want to remove that theme from the class, hence Lone Wolf would be a talent option.

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People like you are the reason SV is in its sorry state right now.
Pls stick to your main instead of ruining specs that others enjoy.

Yikes you're a salty one.

Too emotional to consider the actual substance of the post, it would seem. Would having Lone Wolf as a talent choice really ruin the spec for you?

[3liiil3]

I’m okay with having it as an option, although I assume that devs sees Survival in a good state, giving the minor changes at start of Shadowlands.

[Saltysquidoon]

Survival as it stands (range v melee issue and the greater meta issue for the wole game aside for the moment) needs more cohesive themeing not less. Further, it should be less reliant on talents to feel like a complete spec, not more.

In short, the proposal of this thread would directly adversely impact an already flagging spec on basically every level that matters.

[KrayZ33]

And I wouldn't want to remove that theme from the class, hence Lone Wolf would be a talent option.

It being "only a talent" doesn't change that.

To exaggerate the issue to make it more clear.
A paladin getting a talent that turns his skills and spells into arcane magic would change the theme of the class.

If you want to play a class as melee but not the pet attached to it and the whole theme that goes along with it, play a different class that has a better matching theme.
It's like... adding a trap talent to the Fury-Warrior tree and implying it wouldn't change the theme.

[F Rm]

But most people don't even like the current playstyle and on top of that, I am sure many besides me will agree that BM should be melee before survival. I mean, if we're talking about weapon choice for someone focused on "surviving" you can't do much better than a gun.

What many are saying/implying is that no hunter spec should be/have been turned into a melee-spec. If they wanted us to have a melee-oriented playstyle it should've been added as a 4th option from the start, or not at all.

Replacing an existing spec, which throughout it's history was the most played hunter spec of all in end-game, with something that different will never achieve anything other than what we've seen so far. Why? Because when playing this class, as evident, most players don't want such a playstyle.

And I don't even want to make it petless anyhow. I would see it function like Marksmanship does, in which there are situations where you still want to summon your pet and forsake the damage buff from Lone Wolf. Also as I mentioned in the original post, it should be implemented as a talent and it would be replacing one that, as far as I know, is a dead talent lol

Lone Wolf was introduced as a talent for MM and RSV in WoD. They later kept it as such for MM for Legion, but made it into a baseline passive with BfA. For good reason.

Lone Wolf is one of those things that heavily defines your gameplay experience and a lot of players do not want that to be a forced talent choice. It's the same with Animal Companion for BM atm.

In addition to how difficult it's been for them to tune/balance LW against other talents, throughout history.