Yeah it honestly Sounds like they are on top of how bad the survival tree is. We hear more concrete things about the other trees tho, especially MM. But I would guess that’s because how rough/early in development Survival is. It’s less about moving some things around there. They need to do some Real serious work on SV so might be more silent until they have more thorough changes coming.
Hope or Copium?
The CC thread and current alpha feedback thread is getting the most activity hunters have gotten in years combined and its the devs communicating with an absolute miniscule representation and obviously working off of and changing based on ideas they are posting. That along with it’s not even a matter of what I think there’s cases where they objectively mistate the usefulness of talent combos like serpent sting paired with serpenstalkers trickery, which saying one renders the other useless is just not a thing when considering how the spec would play without our 4pc currently giving us infinite aimed shots. That specific example had a change already made so it’s not like things can’t continue to go that direction.
I get what you mean. And I don’t know if I’m just assuming too much or being more trusting. But the large amount of response from the devs is good, always! But yes, the pool of hunters being actively testing at the moment seems small. Doubt the will lock anything the first 2 days of alpha testing though… skepticism aside it’s too early to start the “don’t say it’s alpha because then it will ship as is” is honestly too soon, especially as long as they listen.
With that said, I am prepared to believe they know More about how the class/spec plays and what feedback is null due to changes already done but not in the build, or feedback they’ve themselves had for weeks or months internally or how they actually envision it going.
I, as a complete noob in designing/development, would rather let them do the work and listen Slightly to feedback rather than let us steer the development. It’s a very hard balance to make. Gaming is full of flops/failed games where the devs have listened too much to the community.
From previous alpha/beta/PTR experience, this is a big shift. They are making bold changes in response to feedback, not just from the CC thread but clearly from other sources as well, and engaging with people in a way that hasn’t been done for years.
Back in BfA beta it took probably 6 months or more to get mandatory always-on Lone Wolf reverted to the current live iteration, any complaints about Rapid Fire feeling like garbage were ignored with “it’ll be better with Azerite”, and complaints about Azerite in general were also largely swept aside. SL beta was more of the same, except the discussion was heavily centered on Covenants, conduits (and the minimal available time to test them), etc, and we saw very little changes from day 1 alpha to release.
Even if they are making missteps (and I don’t think they are, I think every announced change this far has been great), I think they’ve earned a little credibility with their actions so far.
Alpha has been out literally one day and we have a ton of impactful changes to Hunter, plus a back and forth dialog with the devs. Can you honestly even remember the last time that happened?
“we” have not had a back forth dialog with devs all of like 5 people are and they are giving me every reason to think they are inexperienced with the levels of play that their feedback so far is going to be most impactful to
I understand the skepticism, but it’s been literally one day. More invite waves will go out, more people will post in the alpha forums, more people will stream alpha hunter gameplay.
If we’re still here in a month with major concerns not addressed (especially for the SV spec tree) I’ll bring the pitchforks.
For now, it’s nice to feel optimistic for a change.
Can we have a community council person actually posts good feedback? that would be a start.
Community council is a collection of players from all walks of life. Maizou isn’t the hunter rep for pve, and wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the only one if they were.
I thought they were picked as CC for the game and their class specifically? Not just a certain part of the game… and if so what part is he/she supposed to represent?
Also how was the CC picked? Did we vote on people from our community, did Blizzard pick people they liked?
I don’t think that was ever a thing. We have rpers and pet battlers on the council.
I mean yes of course. It’s important to not just pick top raiders and a few PvP:ers as Community representatives… that does not mean they are only allowed to leave feedback about the things they do most.
But yes, I do not agree with a lot of what was said in the alpha testing forums as of yet. I would like them to (especially this early in development when most people can’t bring their own feedback to the devs/alpha forums) represent the community more/better. Their own feedback is certainly viable, as much as anyones. But let’s not forget they should represent the community. If they don’t want/can do that then we’d perhaps need a new one yes.
Would it be possible that, instead of a talent to flip one or the other exclusively (melee or ranged), survival’s identity could very well be a mix of both? One of the great joys of playing classic survival (and fond memories of it in vanilla) is having an answer to so many problems that came up and creating opportunities from those problems. I think there could be a two-phase gameplay loop here in the SV spec—depending on the range of an enemy.
To explain how this might work, the first weapon slot (main hand) can be for melee and the second (offhand) for range. There are still two slots there; let’s use them. Counterpart abilities are already being designed so every talent in the class tree can be used already, and this two-style of play could make some really good use of that legwork already being done. For example, Wildfire bomb becomes a more explosive shot at range. If you get the talent to infuse the type of wildfire bombs, it alters both the melee (the bombs) and range (the explosive shot) ability to include those variants. Many of the baseline abilities can be one-to-one, with ability power adjusted for the increased range. The survival spec itself would focus on better defense (dodge, parry, health), mobility (harpoon, faster disengages), and talents centered around expanding the range or melee phase of the gameplay loop that the player favors. Let’s say I favor range. I pick up barrage and explosive shot from the main class tree, and the wildfire bombs and maybe some range single target abilities (serpent sting and a ranged raptor strike, for example). Now I can stay in that range gameplay loop longer before I must dash in, plant a few traps, clip some wings, expose weaknesses, and get back out as those big cooldowns reset. Or mayhap I’m more of a melee-minded ranger, and focus on talents like cleave, traps, bladework, coordinating with the pet, and counterattacks. The range phase becomes more of a way to throw dots (like serpent sting and bleeds) and safely recover (mending bandage, reapply some kind of adrenaline or dodge buff, and exposing melee weaknesses) so that I can stay in their face for as long as possible before I need to disengage to set myself back up for another pass.
For it to work, the abilities have to be fairly equivalent and not change the action bar around—if I cast serpent sting, but they get too close in that split second of hitting the key, the melee equivalent needs to do the same thing as a seamless switch. Keep the only difference to the range factor/trade-off itself and if I have a better range or melee weapon equipped. So maybe not the exact same damage, but the same dot is applied for all intents and purposes. This allows the phase shifts to happen seamlessly and in a non-frustrating way because it is at least partly smoke and mirrors on the mechanical back end.
The two phases could be done by balancing the unique cooldowns (shorter cooldowns for the ones you favor) or offering a buff for the hunter’s preferred phase (ie you can Expose weakness for melee or range in the off-phase to set you up for your main phase). Or maybe by giving the preferred phase abilities extra charges to keep you in that gameplay loop longer. But the key to this suggestion comes down to a duel-phase gameplay loop where we are extending one phase or the other.
I suggest this because that flexible play style has most prominently defined Survival to me in classic (and vanilla way back when) because those original options could make you very difficult to kill with very good DPS sustainability as part of its utility. Granted, it is not something for always-top-of-the-DPS charts type players unless it’s a long fight, but it is very utilitarian that does capitalize on the theme and history of the spec. Even getting somewhat back into the once important role of threat control. As a survival spec, you will be very good at surviving whatever is thrown at you, and you will have many options for achieving that as the spec that can fight at both melee and range fairly well. Might not be able to keep in melee as long as a warrior or rogue, or stay at range as long as an MM or mage—but you can safely be where they can’t. And that is what can make the spec truly special and stand out against all the rest in WoW. And what’s more, after watching the discussions on Serpent Sting and the dev responses, I see that they want to keep survival as having utility first. I think this solution of leaning towards sustained DPS adheres to that notion and can open up other utilities like a return of exposed weaknesses and dancing around the encounter area as you get mobs off squishier party members and back to the tank as battlefield control.
While what you suggest seems cool I think it would take such a massive undertaking they might as well start over from scratch. It’s not just some fine tuning or changing a spell or two, like you hint at the start of your post.
Also it seems that at the start you say you want them to let us choose via a talent or a toggle? But then further down you want the abilities to work seamlessly between range/melee, your example being that if you use your ranged serpent sting but the target moves into melee range just as you press it, the game should change it to the melee option? Would not that mean we are literally both ranged and melee interchangeable all the time? The only difference would be if we are in melee or ranged Range?
As much as it would be cool to get some kind of hybrid or RSV/MSV choice I honestly think it’s a way too big ask. Honestly, they can’t pull off the current iteration of MSV… what makes you think they can design, implement and balance a spec that is both at the same time?
As unpopular as this might be, I just say I want Blizzard to make a decision, hunker down and design the spec Good for the first time since they reworked it 6 years ago. I am tired of this weird Neither but not either MSV but still 90% ranged mess. All melee specs/classes has some ranged utility sure but for the love… decide on ranged or melee! And make it work well and with some identity/stability.
I’ve been having fun at the camp — it’s hard work, though!
You guys have a lot of good posts discussing talent trees and class design.
I have one more week at camp, and truthfully I’ll probably take a couple days to rest and recover… but then I’ll finally start posting again! The first on my to-do list is to reference the few “BM/MM/SV Dragonflight talent trees” threads here.
Thank you for your patience.
Check mine out Watermist! Would love to hear feedback, the good and the bad!
take your time
Enjoy, definitely take your time.
It will be informative for you to look at some of the threads here, as there are so many good ideas rattling around in them, but just in case you haven’t been able to keep up with every single post, we are anticipating a new talent build sometime soon that will hopefully address several of the major concerns.
Hopefully your timing of camp ending will coincide nicely for you to be back in the feedback flow with the next iteration of the talent trees.
Blue post in the Hunter feedback topic on the alpha forums. Mentioning some stuff about coming builds, in case anyone missed it:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/feedback-hunters/1279513/5
Holy crap! Very nice indeed.
here my fan made talents tree yes it not perfect and it bring thing more in the way legion was but its just to show how many cool thing we can have there is a part where it blank didnt know what to put there tell me what you think
