As Shadowlands approaches I have felt inclined to pick back up my hunter. I am liking the direction they are going specifically with MM and after an entire expansion in which it has been the red headed stepchild spec it appears to have some promise. I was messing around with the Beta Talent Calculator and looking over the covenant abilities and a very specific build potential caught my eye. If a hunter was to go the Venthyr covenant to pick up Flayed Shot and simultaneously ran the talent Serpent Sting they would have a nice dot ranged build. Now, where this could further compound to become an amazing alternative play style would be if Blizz decided to revert the talent Explosive Shot and have it become the damage over time ability it used to be in the old days of Survival. I don’t know many players that are overly fond of the current explosive shot and with the addition of Volley I don’t believe anyone would really miss the current AOE rendition of it either. A purely optional build play style encompassing dots would feel great in my personal opinion and it gives the spec options which I find to be very welcomed as well as missed from the days of the old Survival spec.
What are all of your thoughts? Anyone agree? I believe build diversity is what makes a great class. No one wants a cookie cutter spec anymore.
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Current Explosive Shot: Sucks
Older Explosive Shot: Very nice
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I often wonder, its its ranged SV or just Explosive shot that people miss.
Since it would be near impossible to bring back ES without making SV ranged again and it seems that time has passed, how about a compromise…
Lets say we replace the clunky Trick Shots with Explosive Shot for MM?
Trick shots is what gives MM AOE. Reverting explosive shot to its former glory would be a simple talent change. It seems to make a lot of sense to me. They also need to remove barrage. It’s essentially a dumbed down AOE version of Rapid Fire. It was cool before Rapid Fire existed and now it’s just meh… we need the flavor of MM back. I feel that at the core the current rendition of MM works it’s just the talents that are unmeaningful and make the spec feel bland and boring.
Honestly, for me it’s Explosive Shot. The sound, the animation, the fact that it felt and looked different damage wise was amazing. In only have 3 ticks of damage it actually felt like you were doing damage to your enemy. Black Arrow was alright but it’s damage was spread out over a longer period of time with more ticks of damage making the ticks themselves seem small in comparison.
People have a lot of reasons. Just a couple of my major reasons (given I haven’t played SV hunter since WoD and my memory is not what it used to be):
I hate Aimed Shot
I hate being 100% reliant on my pet, or not having a pet all of the time.
I miss ES/LnL
Finally, I miss the focus management. Having a generator and spender was much more fun that relying on focus regen which either floods you with focus or starves you of focus.
If I sat down and played an old MoP SV Hunter (probably available somewhere online), I’m sure I could remember more. Off the top of my head, these are the things I miss the most.
There are a lot of other things I miss about older hunters too, especially the traps. I can’t recall if they were SV only or MM, but I don’t have them any more.
I really need to play an old RSV Hunter again. It’s so sad.
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Proposition:
Change Explosive Shot talent to old Explosive Shot. Instant damage followed by the 2 second 2 tick DoT. Have it replace Aimed Shot*. Trick Shots would cause Explosive Shot to gain the ability to deal damage in an area similar to its current talent iteration. Replace Lock and Load with Black Arrow, and give BA its innate chance to trigger Lock and Load, which could affect Aimed Shot or Explosive Shot.
This does make sense but I doubt Blizz would remove a staple of MM game play, as in Aimed Shot. Additionally it would still make the build 1 dimensional. My proposed change would enable the spec to have more than 1 option for game play. Serpent Sting + “old” Explosive Shot + Flayed Shot + Dead Eye + “current” Lock N Load. That’s a bunch of instant cast opportunity and would make the game play feel fun. Instant cast abilities = Lock N Load Aimed Shots + Flayed Shot triggered Kill Shots + Explosive Shot + Serpent Sting. Super enticing game play imo. Outside of the procs you would still have a casted Aim Shot + a channeled Rapid Fire + and steady shot to build focus when needed. It’s all encompassing. As MM players would be able to choose whether or not they want to be a sniper or a fast shooting gun slinger
It is available but you have to break the ToS to do it. Let’s just say I have a cheatsheet when talking about MoP Survival.
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