[DF Build 45480] Survival Tree Feedback

Classes Hunter
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Introduction

I have followed much of the Hunter changes closely and have been very appreciative of the rapid iteration on both the class and spec tree.

Now that that iteration has slowed, there are still two main issues in the Survival spec tree that I think should – and can easily – be addressed before the trees are finalized and Dragonflight launches.

Remaining Survival Spec Tree Issues

Issue #1: Too Many Generic % Damage Increases

I examined each dps spec tree to see how many talent points were dedicated to just “Mongoose Bite damage increased by X%”-type effects in each tree. While I had a hunch that Survival had the most, the results were still surprising.

Note: I was overinclusive in my list, including things such as “Mutilate deals an additional 30% Bleed damage over 8 seconds”, “Tiger’s Fury’s damage bonus is increased by X%”, and even “Increase all Fire, Frost, and Nature damage dealt by X%.” Though these talents are not as generic as the talent nodes in the Survival tree, it only emphasizes the ridiculous amount of generic % damage increases that Survival has.

Spec Cost of % Damage Increases
Survival Hunter 13
Windwalker Monk 9
Devastation Evoker 8
Assassination Rogue 6
Beast Mastery Hunter 6
Frost Death Knight 6
Havoc Demon Hunter 5
Arcane Mage 4
Elemental Shaman 4
Feral Druid 4
Unholy Death Knight 4
Demonology Warlock 3
Marksmanship Hunter 3
Subtlety Rogue 3
Arms Warrior 2
Destruction Warlock 2
Enhancement Shaman 2
Retribution Paladin 2
Fury Warrior 1
Shadow Priest 1
Affliction Warlock 0
Balance Druid 0
Fire Mage 0
Frost Mage 0
Outlaw Rogue 0

Even being overinclusive, Survival has more than double the generic % damage increase talent points than every other dps spec besides Windwalker and Devastation. Five different specs even have zero generic % damage increases in their tree. Not only does this lead to several uninteresting choices (including spending two points in the bottom third to buff Kill Command damage!?), but it leads to many repetitive choices.

Example #1

In a single target build, you’re likely taking Predator: +10% pet damage; Killer Companion: +10% Kill Command damage; and Beast Master: +6% pet damage; and Improved Kill Command: +10% Kill Command damage in the class tree. That’s up to 7 talent points (admittedly spread across the spec and class tree) spent doing exactly the same thing. You’re also likely taking Spear Focus: +10% Mongoose Bite damage; and Sweeping Spear: +10% Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike and Carve/Butchery damage. Again, that’s 4 talent points spent doing exactly the same thing (note that the Carve/Butchery factor is likely meaningless in single target situations).

Example #2

For example, in an aoe build, you’re likely taking: Improved Wildfire Bomb: +25% Bomb damage; and Tactical Advantage: +20% Flanking Strike damage and +8% Bomb damage. Again, 4 talent points spent doing essentially the same thing.

Conclusion of Issue #1

The core issue this creates is that it stifles meaningful choice. If you’re going a for a Mongoose Bite build, you just pick up all the Mongoose Bite % damage increase nodes. If you’re going for a Bomb build, you just pick up all the Bomb % damage increase nodes. You basically start the tree with 4 fewer points than any other spec, if not more. This is especially grating when you consider that if these nodes weren’t in the tree and Mongoose Bite or Bomb weren’t doing enough damage, we would likely just see a tuning buff – and we wouldn’t have to pay 4 precious talent points for it.

There’s no reason that Survival should have so many generic % damage increase nodes, and there’s even less reason that Survival’s generic % damage increases should cost so many talent points.

Proposed Solution for Issue #1: Reduce Both the Cost and Number of Generic % Damage Increases

Remove these generic % damage increases; if they cannot be removed, reduce the talent point cost of these generic % damage increases. Replace them with more talents like Bloody Claws. Talents like Bloody Claws (“Each stack of Mongoose Bite increases the chance for Kill Command to reset by 2%”) are creative and add some dynamic to the spec and rotation.

Idea #1

Were Bloody Claws in the place of Spear Focus, I could easily see a choice node below Bloody Claws that reads: “Choice #1: each Kill Command reset grants an extra stack of Tip of the Spear (extra stacks may exceed 3); Choice #2: each Kill Command reset extends the duration of Mongoose Fury by X seconds.”

Idea #2

Another idea is a choice node that offers: “Choice #1: Mongoose Fury may stack up to X; Choice #2: [some ability or mechanic] extends the duration of Mongoose Fury by X seconds.” Choosing between a harder hitting Mongoose Bite or a longer Mongoose Fury window seems like meaningful and interesting choice to me.

Idea #3

A node that reduces Flanking Strike’s cooldown in the single target rotation such that with proper rotation it is available in each Mongoose Fury window. Another Flanking Strike-related talent that might be interesting is to make it interact with Tip of the Spear.

Idea #4

A choice node similar to Marksmanship’s Heavy Ammo vs. Light Ammo like “Choice #1: Your Wildfire Bombs no longer splashes past 3 targets, but deals an additional X% damage; and Choice #2: Your Wildfire Bomb deals a second explosion if it hits more than X targets.”

Issue #2: Viper’s Venom Costs Too Much

Viper’s Venom should only be one point. In single target situations, the second point is completely worthless, since a 15% chance to apply is more than enough for 100% uptime. In aoe situations, Viper’s Venom at 30% might be useful, but with Volatile Bombs applying Serpent Sting as well, the second point will likely be useless as well. Furthermore, we are absolutely required to spend two points in Viper’s Venom since it is the sole gate to Wildfire Infusions, which is as close to a must-pick talent in every situation as Survival can have.

Proposed Solutions for Issue #2:

Idea #1

There are several easy ways to remedy this:

  1. Make Viper’s Venom a single point talent
  2. Make Viper’s Venom a leaf node
  3. Change Viper’s Venom’s or Wildfire Infusion’s position so that it is not solely gated by Viper’s Venom

However, there are a few further solutions that I have thought of:

Idea #2

Make Viper’s Venom a single point and a choice node: Choice #1: “Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a X% chance to apply Serpent Sting to your target;” Choice #2: “Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a chance to make your next Serpent Sting cost no Focus and deal an additional X% damage.”

Notably, bringing back the live version of Viper’s Venom allows for a combination with Hydra’s Bite that seems impactful and fun in aoe, while also adding the option for some complexity to the single target rotation. Making this a choice node would sidestep any dependency issue with people who choose not to take Serpent Sting in the class tree.

Idea #3

Make the second point of Viper’s Venom (or a separate talent) read: “Applying Serpent Sting to a target that already has Serpent Sting causes a violent explosion” or even something creating a situation where when Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite applies Serpent Sting to a target already affected by Serpent Sting, adds a stack of Latent Poison and deals damage as if it consumed all stacks of Latent Poison without actually consuming those stacks. Note: this should work even if Latent Poison Injectors isn’t chosen – it would synergize well with the talent, but it should not be a dependency issue, just like talenting into Serpent Sting is not a dependency issue with Viper’s Venom.

Remaining Hunter Class Tree Issues

As many others have pointed out, there are still several issues in the Hunter Class tree that need to be remedied. I will focus on the two that I think are most important.

Issue #1: Utility

As others have said many, many times on these forums and in the Alpha/Beta feedback thread: Hunters lack meaningful utility.

Two quick, easy solutions:

  1. Give Hunters a passive aura raid buff (+3% Haste, for example)
  2. Give Hunters an active raid cooldown

For the second proposal, I think thematically something called “Aspect of the Pack” (no relation to the old ability) where the Hunter grants its pet’s passive buff to the raid for a short time would work perfectly. In other words: Hunters would have a cooldown like Stampeding Roar for Cunning Pets; Rallying Cry for Tenacity Pets; and Raid-wide Leech for Ferocity Pets. For Lonewolf Marksmanship Hunters, give them all three abilities on a shared cooldown.

Issue #2: Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus Needs to Go

The overwhelming majority of feedback has been completely negative for this talent. Please “keep utility as utility” and don’t make us use our Freezing Traps for throughput.

Furthermore, because Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus is so undesirable, the cost of Alpha Predator/Killer Instinct is too high. While Explosive Shot/Barrage also costs 5 talent points to get to, its cost is distributed over nodes that unlock other desirable nodes. For example, if you go through Keen Eyesight to get Explosive Shot/Barrage, yes you just spent 5 talent points for it, but you also unlocked Death Chakram/Stampede for just one more talent point. Likewise, if you go through Master Marksman, you unlock both Serpent Sting and Serrated Shots. This is simply not the case for Alpha Predator/Killer Instinct, especially for Survival. If Survival wants to take Alpha Predator, half of our bottom third budget is immediately consumed and we have to start from scratch to unlock something else.

Remove Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus. Even if it wasn’t replaced at all and Death Chakram/Stampede was now also accessible through Beast Master, the tree would be massively improved.

Conclusion

As I said at the start, I am very happy with the attention that Hunter, and Survival specifically, have received. The trees have come a very long way since their initial preview. However, they still have a little way to go. Addressing the above issues will, in my opinion, move these trees that little way.

If you read this far, thanks for reading. I would love to engage in discussion to refine these ideas, so please feel free to respond with any agreement, disagreement, thoughts, comments, concerns, etc.

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I’d much rather just make a ton of the current Class Tree 2-pointers or Active+Augmentor pairs take only point per stack/pair and then bring in a few different, non-redundant ways to bring utility to raids as actual choices.

This would also be decent, as it would at least inherit a degree of choice.

This is all wonderfully formatted and I’ll be working my way through the rest a second time, but all or nearly all of your ideas here sound very reasonable, even if they’re not necessarily my cup of tea.

For instance, a Wildfire smaller target count vs. higher target count specialization a la Light Ammo / Heavy Ammo sounds to me as dull as a generic throughput talent, except with further constraints atop it that result in yet further "menu-play" without (or, in place of) gameplay. That would seem to me a worst of both worlds. Again, though, that complaint's the outlier, not the norm; almost everything here looks good.
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this feels like a consolidated and more concisely put feedback of my current issues with survival

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/opinions-on-hunter-trees/1339214/2

+1 for sure

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Thanks! I really appreciate it.

I’m not going to lie, this suggestion was pretty much added because all of my main suggestions were for the single target rotation—which I think is where they’re needed the most, frankly. I think the aoe rotation has some good choice and probably doesn’t need a ton more to it, besides the option to take the live version of Viper’s Venom with Hydra’s Bite. I just think that would be a fun addition if people wanted it, and if people don’t, I hope Latent Poison Injectors is not only tuned to be effective in aoe and competitive with Hydra’s Bite, but that it also is affected by Ranger.

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I feel like the largest boons we can give to the single target rotation is honestly just to make Mongoose Bite windows more deliberate and —though this might sound odd— conflicted.

  • Let me clarify this “conflict” by (non)example. Bloody Claws is not a sufficient conflict; it and TotS only incentivize what is already the most braindead approach to an MB window — blow all available Focus on MB, as quickly as possible, recharging Focus via KC only as needed.
    • This causes the TotS bonus to be used on a higher MB stack and for each KC cast to have a higher reset chance… as irrelevant as that will likely be.
  • Gameplay-augmenting conflict would involve when you want to go into your MB window, different reasons to use it at different Focus values, wanting to sometimes use skill B for synergy with A instead of always A first for synergy with B, etc.

Tangent:
Bloody Claws is bad/lackluster/has-neither-any-significant-gameplay-nor-potency-effect and TotS is basically just a fluff/bloat buff by which to pretend it’s more than a mere X% AP buff to KC that scales with Sweeping Spear and Spear Focus instead of Ferocity and Killer Command. Yet this is what passes for complexity on SV.

Off the top of my head, some lucrative approaches to that might include…

  1. Separating Mongoose Bite from Raptor Strike,
  2. Just having more stuff (early access to a potent SS, or Lacerate/Serrated Shot, Kill Shot procs, etc.), and
  3. Including a helpful baseline trait.

I. Separating Mongoose Bite from Raptor Strike

So long as Mongoose Bite IS Raptor Strike, just improved, we can’t meaningfully delay Mongoose Bite windows without Mongoose Bite having absolutely pitiful initial damage and being far too ramp-dependent. Though it could seem a bit bloated, I think it might therefore be worth reworking Mongoose Bite to function nearer to its Legion version or at least to make it no longer remove access to Raptor Strike.

In either case, this also gives us a site for frequent and enjoyable rotational synergies via small tweaks:

  • One could reduce the Focus cost of the other, allowing RS to ready MB windows and effectively inflate your max in-window Focus to be spent and allowing RS to finish off or follow-up a MB window.
  • Just by no longer being a choice node, Mongoose Bite could be far more central to other skill synergies, such as in ramping Flanking Strike or Fury of the Eagle.
  • You could allow for RS, alone, to give (4-piece tier set) CDR but have its CDR be ramped by MB casts prior, giving more to look out for and play around.
  • You could even truly apply MB to everything melee, but by a flat amount and/or at a reduced amp on secondary targets, such that it can allow for a seriously meaty Carve/Butchery.
  • You could replace the likes of chance of Serpent Sting on RS/MB with a chance on melee hit of making your next Raptor Strike (or MB, but still just one of the two) half-cost and apply Serpent Sting. Here, too, having both skills would allow you to bank a “next attack” effect more productively and with greater implications for meaningful/choiceful conflict/compromise.

II. More Stuff

All this is pretty straightforward. Just give us more to use on CD, to track, etc. Optionally, but easily available. Heck, maybe even make earlier-acquired SS damn near obligatory.

III. A Useful Passive

Have most of your spenders scale from 67 to 133% focus cost (e.g. 20-40 for Raptor Strike, 10-20 for Serpent Sting if buffed to be equally worthwhile at 15), based on your current %Focus. Spenders with durations extend duration instead of damage per second. Focus generators will do basically the same, generating more but dealing less damage at low %Focus.

  • The intent here is to allow for more timing optimization, improve burst slightly, and allow SV to more rapidly get into its non-spenders (WFB, KC) without overcapping Focus.
  • This would also synergize, though, with things like Volatile Bomb and Shrapnel Bomb, since your SS durations across n targets would be less bottlenecked by the duration on the first (if used at higher %Focus and therefore lasting longer), and melee triggers for Bleed Stacks could be brought down to half their maximum cost, allowing one to swing at ~20 Focus, Flanking Strike, and swing twice more to max out the Bleed at only ~60 Focus spent.
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I think I generally agree with this. However, I think that conflict is something I want to see in the talent tree as opposed to actively happening as we’re trying to execute our rotation.

For instance, one of the ideas I propose is conflict between having a longer Mongoose Fury window, or having your Mongoose Fury stack higher. You’re making that conflicting choice before the fight about whether you want more potent, but shorter windows or longer windows with a smaller top-end spike damage. I think we could take cues from the Feral tree—you have options to enhance your bleeds or enhance your bites or even enhance your combo point generators; and now it seems you’ll have some choice between things costing less energy or things generating more combo points (I’d have to see the new changes to the tree to really nail what that choice is, but I think that’s the gist).

This is the type of conflict that makes the trees interesting and that allows for choosing between a few different playstyles even if the content is generally the same. If we had talents that tweak how Mongoose Bite/Fury works, we could have multiple options for single target fights.

This is where I really think that choice nodes could play a huge role. As I suggested above, a choice between Mongoose Fury stacking higher or lasting longer would be great. I think a choice between having Flanking Strike be affected by Mongoose Fury, or something like your Mongoose Bite reduces the cd of Flanking Strike by 0.X seconds per stack of Mongoose Fury—tuned in such a way that you’re basically choosing between a big Flanking Strike, or being able to use Flanking Strike in each window. These are the sort of conflicts that I think are really rewarding in the context of these new talent trees—I anticipate that picking a deliberate set up and having it pay off is going to be a consistently good feeling, even if at the end of the day, we’re still pressing the same ability.

Again, just to pull an example from Feral, you’ve now got talents that make Ferocious Bite cleave, Ferocious Bite makes Rip do more damage for a few seconds, Primal Wrath consumes some of Rip’s dot damage and deals a portion of it instantly. All of this combines for a situation where you’re pressing the same buttons you were pressing before—alternating between Ferocious Bite and Primal Wrath as finishers in aoe—but they feel so much better, they feel so much more deliberate, the payoff is there.

I think we can achieve things like this on the Mongoose side of the tree by adding talents that interact with the Mongoose Fury buff. Whether it’s changing how much it stacks up, how long it is, making it affect other abilities, giving it other benefits like Bloody Claws, and so on. I think it’s really a shame that there are only two talents following Mongoose Bite, and one of them is a lousy generic damage increase, and the other is, admittedly, not an exciting talent in a vacuum. But if Bloody Claws had support from other Mongoose Fury-related talents, I think it would have much more potential.

As for your suggestions:

I’m not sure I’m convinced by the idea of splitting Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike. I think it’s interesting, but I think it’s probably too complicated with things like Tip of the Spear. Just quickly point by point: I like the idea of something reducing the cost of Mongoose Bite—though I think we already have that in Deadly Duo, and I like the impact that’s going to have during our cooldown window. I also think there are different ways to apply Mongoose Fury to other abilities without having to split it with Raptor Strike. I’m not sure I totally understand the CDR point, but I definitely think that there’s room in the rotation for CDR on something like Flanking Strike, and I think it could very easily be tied to scaling with how many Mongoose Fury stacks you have when you use Mongoose Bite. Your last point is interesting, but I worry that it might just be a more complicated version of the live Viper’s Venom.

As for the rotation just having something else to it, I think that with essentially the removal of Serpent Sting as an active button in the rotation, we could very easily have Lacerate back and give it our Flayed Shot treatment, making it so that a tick of the bleed has a chance to proc Kill Shot. It’s not much, but it’s something to maintain (now that Serpent Sting is essentially gone in single target) and it gives a little something dynamic to the rotation with a meaningful proc.

Finally, as for the variable Focus-spending, I think it’s an interesting idea; however, I just think it’d be nearly impossible to implement.

I think three key points of agreement between us is a talent that affects the decision-making around Mongoose Fury windows, having something extra in the rotation, and talents that apply Mongoose Fury to other abilities and/or reduce the cooldown of other abilities. Let me know if you disagree with this summary!

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My 2 cents.

  1. Vipers venom should have interaction with hydras bite, since vv procs replace raptor strike animation with SS.
  2. Leveling as survival is absolutely horrendous. I have 5 hunters at different levels. 1 of them is at max lvl, lvl 40, 35 and lvl 30 ones are all twink level geared and one randomly geared 35. All non max lvl hunters feel like absolute :poop:
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Agreed, I think we should be able to choose between the passive Viper’s Venom talent that’s in the tree already and the active Viper’s Venom that we have access to with the current talent system. Tangentially, I don’t like that the passive Viper’s Venom replaces the Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite animation – it seems to me that it should be flavored in such a way that our spear is just coated in the venom and applied through these strikes, so it should not override the strike animation.

As for the leveling issue, I can’t really comment other than to say in my experience, leveling takes less than a day. All talent trees have been pretty geared towards endgame, max level content. These are no different.

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I’m obviously not opposed to having meaningful choice within our menus, but unless choice also extends to game-play, SV is going to be about as interesting as an unvarnished slice of stale bread.

There needs to be more to do than just shifting between…

  1. [Not MB window] Avoid overcapping > use CDs (highest charge) in order of alignment opportunity cost > second charge
    —and—
  2. [MB window] Spend Focus on MB > use CDs (highest charge) in order of alignment opportunity cost [KC only if you’d otherwise run out of Focus before the remaining MB window duration ends] > second charge

Moving beyond that stale-as-can-be, flat-as-can-be gameplay (especially in ST) requires there being real choice and a greater number of criteria for opportunity costs within gameplay, not just menu-play.

It may well be, but I think trying to protect something as banal as TotS at cost to any quick and easy ways to introduce rotational depth would have priorities painfully backwards. The intent is rotational interest, no? TotS has no rotational interest. It’s a fluff buff to KC damage, just delayed and capped to no more than 3 KCs per RS/MB (which, especially with Pheramone Bomb bugged, isn’t happening anyways).

  • Without MB, it’s no different from just adding a separate instance of 43% AP damage to each KC cast. With MB, its reward for “proper management” is at most 2% AP of damage from switching the order of a MB and KC to have TotS’s bonus affect a MB one stack more charged. Gameplay-wise, it does virtually nothing.

On the other hand, having two no-CD attacks that can have synergy with each other gives you events potentially as noticeable as those from Coordinated Kill… but available every ~3-18 seconds (depending on which mechanics you want to include) pre-Haste, instead of only every 120 seconds. That’s a hugely fecund area to seed with additional mechanisms.

We can’t use the live Viper Venom, though, because SV doesn’t necessarily get Serpent Sting. You’d have to add an active SS cast back to SV (which I’d be all for) or, if —as is most likely— we’re stuck with it as only a wasteful* Class Tree element, then any chance of its being triggered manually will require that its non-discrete trigger (be that KC or RS or MB or Harpoon or whatever else, since SS cannot get its own button) can, in effect, be banked.

  • *Hydra’s won’t spread to targets you’re not yet in combat with, so it’s not useful on pull; Volatile now applies SS anyways and is capped to 3 targets to compensate, so it wastes Hydra’s; its DPS falls far short of its former state, etc.).

Any reason you think it’d be impossible? I’m just copy-pasta-ing it from other MMOs, so I wouldn’t have thought, given implementation elsewhere, that it’d be impossible in WoW.

Not that WoW has ever shown such formulas in a player-facing manner, but it’d essentially just be full cost at 100% Focus, and half-cost at zero spare Focus (i.e., when current Focus - base skill cost =< 0).

The summary seems accurate. I’d just offer the further soundbite that, to me, Survival needs significant gameplay available to it, not just different slants or shades of what would still amount to shallow tedium. Depth of menu-play is no replacement for depth of gameplay.

I don’t necessarily find that true, personally, on live, but if you mean this in PTR terms, then… well, sadly, it doesn’t get much better in the 60s, either. I’m at lv67 atm and SV at least kills decently quickly and gets to run through a few different attacks (especially if taking RS over MB, so you’re not wasting the MB ramp potential in spending GCDs on Flanking or WFB), but it does feel a bit dull to level as — especially compared to DF MM, whereas they felt about equal before.

  • No, I can’t say leveling builds of DF MM are much better than before. A bit, though. The Kill Shot procs certainly work out better without the extra GCD required for Flayed Shot, and being able to take together some of the formerly competing talents certainly feels nice.
  • Once the Animal Companion bug is dealt with, I’ll be able to experiment with more BM builds, which might likewise then exceed Survival. That said, it too has an issue of talents just seeming way too memp. Talents like In for the Kill feel like they should have about twice the chance, with all other talents’ gameplay impact being scaled up to match (at cost to baseline power, but never gameplay, as necessary).
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Quick caveat: I think the single target rotation is the perfect candidate right now to have something like Lacerate with the Flayed Shot mechanic added to it.

With that said, I think that gameplay choice is a bit of a myth. There’s an optimal way to play and it will eventually be figured out no matter what you choose. I think the menu choices are the “real” area of choice, because you actively change what optimal means.

To go back to the Feral comparison, in single target, you’ve got all the same abilities you’ve always had, Rake, Shred, Thrash, Rip, Bite… But the gameplay is looking very interesting because you’ve got the opportunity to talent into something that extends Tiger’s Fury based on combo points spent, or you can make your bleeds last longer, leading to more Bites, or you can make your Bites hit harder per bleed on the target, and so on. But at the end of the day, you’re either pressing Rake, Shred, Thrash, Rip, or Bite. It’s the different talent choices that change how meaningful each button is that affects the gameplay.

The unique part of the Survival single target rotation is the Mongoose Fury window, which is why I think the menu of options would be best if it revolved around affecting that window by, either:

  1. Extending the window
  2. Increasing the maximum stacks; and/or
  3. Applying the buff to other abilities

Yeah, I know this creates a dependency issue, but I have to think that there’s a way to make the choice node either dependent on picking Serpent Sting in the class tree, or making the node be the baseline Dragonflight passive Viper’s Venom and then make picking Serpent Sting modify the node to be the live active version of Viper’s Venom.

Though I think they could code these new systems competently, I have much less faith in their ability to code actual abilities given all the persistent bugs, especially with Survival’s kit. I also just think this wouldn’t be a truly significant gameplay change, and if it would, I think it would feel pretty bad. It sounds to me like it incentivizes playing at or around 0 focus for everything but Serpent Sting. How would that lead to anything other than alternating between Mongoose Bite and Kill Command? And you didn’t say this explicitly for spenders, but if you do less damage at low focus, that also would feel pretty bad—it basically just counteracts Mongoose Fury stacks.

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Aye, gameplay “choice” is a bit of a myth, but no more so than any other choice. There is a typically best class for a given context. There is typically best spec. There is a typically best build. Yet, when balance is tight enough, the player itself can bring enough conditions to the table to make those factors insufficient to solve the equation. That’s essentially what I’m looking to do here.

Gameplay choice is a matter of “Do I want to prioritize A or B?” where both are contextually appropriate.

  • Do I want to sacrifice a bit of total damage, making the pack potentially take some 10 seconds longer to finish off completely, in order to remove this focus target more quickly?
  • Do I want to use my CD on this pack, where a bit of duration would be potentially wasted at the tail, or save it for next, where recharge time would be wasted (some 3x the likely wasted duration)?

Those each have criteria that guide those answers…

  • Will the CD be back up in time for the really big pull / the boss pull / Lust duration during the boss?
  • Is there anyone else we’d be waiting on?

…but there’s also a degree of gambling —tightened though it might be with experience and effort— and different paths of deliberate action accordant to it.

Those different paths, different ways to go due to tight balance, without each being so close anyways that there is neither relative risk nor reward, are what I’m aiming for. “Choice” might be an illusive term, but it’s no less fitting here than in any other degree of customization, all without requiring diversion from gameplay (and into menu management) to experience.

If you’d prefer, though, the term “depth” would also suffice.

Somewhat. But I also think that can actually be a weakness, to that regard.

If the conditions for optimization are never expanded upon (simply refreshing at X seconds out of 20 or at those same X seconds out of 30 without having to adjust anything else to make active, optimized use of that added duration), nothing has been cognitively added to the spec.

I would like to believe so, but so far the only conditionality we have is based on specialization (Warrior capstone passives change their secondary effects with spec, along with all pre-capstone throughput talents save for Blood and Thunder), and already we have people like Bepples railing against even that (on the basis of their being unintuitive / detracting from the class “core”).

PPR (potency per resource) would be completely unchanged between using a skill at high or low %Focus. The only optimizations would occur when a skill is a trigger for a separate flat (does not scale with trigger’s damage) damage bonus (see Shrapnel Bomb bleed stacks, or Mongoose Bite stacks themselves), which encourages use at low %Focus, or if the relative value of a sequence of attacks would be otherwise partly wasted by the duration of its initial applications (see SS spread leading into a Volatile Bomb), which may encourage initial use at high %Focus.

Even Mongoose Fury would not be “counteracted” by Mongoose Fury stacks. Quite the opposite. At most, you would be faintly less encouraged to delay a Mongoose Bite window until near full Focus IF you had a large Focus generator coming up (allowing you to ramp cheaply, get that focus, and then exploit it on full damage hits).

Overall, the effect would simply be less Focus waste. Avoiding Focus overcaps would no longer require you to RS/MB melee once each before WFB and KC after opening with SS, and it’d be harder to be outright too Focus starved to, say, get off a final SS before Volatile Bomb.

But, again, I could do with or without it. It’d just be a small QoL buff with some additional, space for optimization synergetic with our existing optimizations.

  • Bloody Claws and TotS already ask that we, essentially, go to low Focus on MB about as quickly as possible without outright wasting CDs, so that would be unchanged—only made at least a little noticeable for a change.

To be as clear as possible:
The proposed passive would affect only generators and spenders, simply making it harder to overcap/starve while retaining identical resource-efficiency and offering, only in the presence of certain effects like Shrapnel Bomb, a bit more to game/optimize.

  • There would be no ubiquitous damage aura based on %Focus akin to an old Arcane Mastery or the like. Not at all.

Final/Quick Note:

I would actually appreciate the ability to shorten the window, with due compensation…

  • though with perhaps more %amp per stack, or even
  • each MB stack falling off individually (“Multiple applications may apply simultaneously”)

…more than the ability to extend it passively.

It feels long enough that the time outside of it feels very short by comparison… to the point that the windows are scarcely noticeable anyways and don’t really offer decent room for (or conflict / conditional optimization in) skillfully playing around those windows with your SS and WFB casts — or, worse, if we dare add anything to those two. Just doing what you’d do anyways is… weirdly close to “optimizing” those 14s MB windows.

Of course, if that extension were instead active and choiceful, such as being provided by a lower-priority flexible rotational element (likely on charges and a 15-30s-ish CD), extension could be attractive, too.

But yes, otherwise agreed. Making MB a bit more central and creating more sub-builds from it could be really effective.

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So I think we agree on the issue and the definition of meaningful choice, because this all sounds like exactly the type of choice that I want to see added, but I think that the choice is best made in the talent trees themselves.

Take the conflict between talents like Explosive Expert and Ranger—and since I’m talking without the benefit of sims and tuning data, let me explain my tentative assumption that Explosive Expert is aimed at more consistent damage, while Ranger is aimed at more damage spikes, especially around execute range. (No idea if that’s actually how it will work out, especially since Fury of the Eagle with Ruthless Marauder will mean more Bombs in execute… but let’s assume this is the conflict for the sake of discussion). If you knew you needed priority target execute damage, Ranger has to be the pick. If you, however, wanted a more even pack kill, Explosive Expert suddenly becomes much more enticing.

Same thing if we had a talent that offered a choice to have Carve/Butchery charge up Flanking Strike instead of reducing its cooldown. Do you want big priority damage on a longer cooldown, or more consistent on a shorter cooldown?

So that’s the kind of choice and conflict that I think makes for interesting gameplay and meaningful choice in the new talent trees. That’s why I think things like choosing between a more powerful Mongoose Fury window or a longer Mongoose Fury window; or choosing between a Flanking Strike that hits twice as hard or being able to cast it twice as many times, those are the type of choices I want to make, and given a full menu of options, I think it would make for a properly interesting spec tree.

But you’re necessarily changing—let’s say we’re talking about Rip, and it lasts either 20 or 30 seconds depending on your talent choices; if it lasts 20 seconds, it’s likely doing more damage in that time or perhaps you’ve taken the talent that does extra damage on Rip’s application, but if it lasts 30 seconds, you have 10 more seconds to try to fit another finisher or two in before you have to reapply Rip. The meaningful cognitive choice is in where you want your damage coming from—Rip or Bite, how long mobs are going to live, and so on.

Word on the street is Bepples has given up, so I think the one person who had a problem with it is gone—Blizz should have a green light go ahead now :smile:

That’s really all I think is needed. I think Survival’s aoe rotation is in a truly wonderful spot. I think the single target rotation is a little lackluster, could do with something like Lacerate with Flayed Shot, and a menu of options to customize the Mongoose Fury window. Higher stacks, shorter, longer, more variable, applying to other abilities, there’s a bunch to choose from.

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Wow players are so soft nowadays man

15

They are, but they’re opposite in their impact.

One, gameplay, is about moment-to-moment estimations of what is optimal, minimizing (and then gambling around what remains of) unknowns. You interact with it frequently.

The other, menu-play, is about broad-strokes estimates of what will be, on average, optimal across a given span for which one cannot effectively swap out their talents. It is more burdensome but is interacted with only once per content-category of similar type.

Only the last possibility has any potential impact on gameplay, though.

The rest is solely damage. Until the change is significant enough to affect internal balance by changing your priorities —your rotation, your APL— it hasn’t done anything besides number goes up (and in a way typically visible only on repeated use of a parser by which to compare your performance against itself in mostly the same situation).

Until there’s something more to watch out for, something more to manage, nothing has been added to gameplay. If there’s no new trap to fall into in “refresh DoT at 4 seconds or fewer,” there’s no real difference between a 30s Rip and 20s Rip.*

  • *…except that the 30s Rip is probably going to have a longer redemption period and thus be used in fewer situations unless transferrable (with duration scaling) to other enemies.

To me, such choices would be good signs, but not sufficient ones.

If two options would be chosen in the same situation, and neither is more involved than the other, that “choice” seems… underutilized, and mostly likely decided simply by what sims higher.

  • Even assuming you’re including the minimum to average potency value of Focus generated by Flanking Strike, that choice at least offers contextual affordances, if only in PvP and only if Flanking Strike can actually hit hard (which… to be honest, isn’t terribly likely for a generator). On one side you have burst damage. To the other side, mobility. In PvE, though, those are mere “use what sims highest.”
    • I still like it, though, in that the non-choice can help make real choices out of other nodes by being able to absorb their more frequent would-be lulls or take advantage of increased Focus generation by other means.

Or, to put it more simply…

…this seems paradoxical to me. There is no “cognitive choice” so long as the choice is being made separately from the factors determining its optimization.

You don’t see how long the mob is going to live when choosing between a Rip talent or a Bite talent (menu-play). You see it when choosing between using Rip or using Bite (gameplay).

The menu-play in that analogy merely adjusts your comfort zone (mildly adjusting how often you want to bother thinking about even using Rip / whether you want a more demanding or less demanding spec) and/or flavoring (same overall damage, but from a red-on-black icon vs. a red-on-white icon).

Now, that degree of customization is still good. Both are ways to attract a broader audience to a spec. But if that’s all a spec tree offers, I would not yet consider it sufficient.

TL;DR:

Spec Trees should support both breadth and depth of both apparent theme (which can come more from visuals or from gameplay) and playflow (changing what criteria must be tracked and to what degree and interconnectedness, and to what typically perceived total difficulty). Simple adjustments akin to old neutral-value glyphs (a means of changing a skill to function a little differently but with typically identical performance, as to better fit subjective preference) are therefore a great thing to have, but I’d like to see more than just that.

I feel like the maximum depth for a given spec should be more “giga-brain” than most players would want, just as the minimum should be more passive / zug-zug than most would; there should be a wide range, and I want enough talents that add available complexity that we can have a large range.

Shorter still…

Allowing players to manipulate the SV’s core mechanics, such as the MB windows = A great start, and certainly good and worthwhile customization, but not enough to bring the spec tree up to what it should be, imo (especially if the choices don’t feel significantly different and would therefore be left to sims).

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16

There’s a handy term-pair in XIV that might be illustrative.

There, a well-designed moment in rotation can be either…

  1. Rhythmic
    —or—
  2. Deliberate

A rhythmic moment is something of near-guaranteed value. At most it’s merely saved briefly for a slightly greater opportunity. These are the things through which you “feel” the “pace” of your rotation.

  • “After third {rhythmic}, I do {some action fork}.”
  • “I ready A, B, and C, for my second {rhythmic}.”

For something to be “rhythmic” instead of merely “bloat” (as you’d always be hitting it anyways), it must either feel good to press (in that literal tactile sense, given surrounding APM, or in its effect on APM, etc.), or must interestingly “cluster” other packets of actions such that they, in turn, feel decisive.

A deliberate moment, on the other hand, is one which you not only have to decide what’s best in a given GCD for that given GCD, but essentially have to choose between paths of actions consequent to them, each with their own available forks of actions.

  • This is seen in terms of net change to what seem like impactful decision-making. If that initial choice starting down a particular path denies later choices, it must feel more than satisfying enough to make up for those moments lost.
  • Similarly, if the choice can do nothing thereafter, the choice is likewise considered mere “bloat”.

To me, it seems that SV has the barebone beginnings of decent rhythmic moments, if we could just get it to click for more players, but it has very few that feel deliberate.*

  • *This was significantly worsened by the loss of Serpent Sting (rhythmic in itself, deliberate in synergy with Volatile), the changes to Volatile, there being no burst use for Butchery that would compete with banking charges for Shrapnel Bomb, etc., etc.

P.S. All this is not to say that moments are the goal, and never, say, progressions. Certain design philosophies promoted there even go so far as to focus on liminality — the idea that any moment should feel tightly connected to moments before and after. Mongoose Bite windows, for instance, would a pretty classic example of a progression, rather than a discrete moment, though only if it affects and connects multiple moments of decision-making across said progression.

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17

You don’t see how long the mob is going to live, but that’s the point—you think about what level key you’re doing, or what other dps are joining you in that key, will the mobs live 30 seconds? Will they live 60 seconds? How much will you be impacting your single target damage by focusing on some aoe Rip talents? In a raid situation, you think about how much uptime you’re going to have on the boss? Will you need to leave it frequently, so might a longer Rip generate more value?

Replace Rip with Mongoose Fury (and pretend that we’d use it in aoe) and I think we’re on our way to more interesting gameplay if we have those menu options to choose from.

It sounds to me from the rest of your post that you agree, but that you want something more as well. Is that right? I definitely would not be opposed to more, and I totally agree that the removal of active Serpent Sting usage from the single target rotation is a huge loss. It’s why, especially with the bleed boosting Serrated Shots, I really hope that Blizzard considers adding Lacerate into the single target rotation and potentially give it the Flayed Shot mechanic.

I think I understand the Rhythmic vs Deliberate distinction. Rhythmic is kind of like Whirling Dragon Punch, you set it up by getting Rising Sun Kick and Fists of Fury on cooldown to allow you to use it? Deliberate is perhaps more like choosing to forego the normal rotation to start setting up Spinning Crane Kick stacks for big aoe damage?

Ultimately, I think I’m pretty much in agreement with what you’re going for. I think the first, most crucial step is to get the menu choices right—we desperately need to get rid of these generic % damage increase nodes, and while that gets fixed, I think we can absolutely look at changes that need to be made to add depth to the single target rotation.

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18

Yup. The main thing is that sure, we can have “tailor your kit to your key,” but… that’s one decision per range of keys (maybe 2 revisits / retweaks over a 20-hour span, loadout saved, and no need to make a decision there again)… as opposed to a similar decision happening maybe every 20 seconds. That’s, again, the difference to me between menu-play and gameplay.

If you took the existing tree and replaced the BS damage filler that you HAVE to take (rather than it being a slightly inferior alternative to complexity) like Sweeping Spear and all the really lackluster stuff like Bloody Claws and Sharp Edges, and even fixed up the stuff that has changed a formerly active mechanic into a passive, non-deliberate one (new Viper’s Venom)… you’d still have only a barely-acceptable tree, not a good one.

Each of those changes would be, individually, really good, maybe even great, but they wouldn’t be sufficient to make a good tree. Now, I don’t expect to see a good tree by Dragonflight release (SV is notoriously a sidenote), but I do hope they won’t fall into contentment with a merely ‘mostly decent’ one for further expansions. …Granted, we don’t even quite have that yet.

But, that’s quite long enough on that tangent of what I mean by a good tree and what I eventually want to see for SV. To return to the pragmatic / for-now stuff…

First 4 steps I’d like to see, in order:

  1. Allow for better tailoring of core play, such as through meaningful menu choices, replacing any non-optional banal (no gameplay effect) nodes. Amp certain nodes whose gameplay effects could be decent if they were just more powerful.
  2. Amp easily pathed to/through complexity slightly, such as through the re-addition of baseline Serpent Sting or Cobra Strike (SS but from melee), etc.
  3. Round out certain seemingly undue anti-synergies.
    • At level 70 in dungeons, Fury of the Eagle can frequently feel difficult to make use of just because of how long its channel is. Making its damage decay over time from a higher base DPS would reduce the cost of ending it earlier and thus reduce its opportunity cost from leaving other CDs at full charge.
  4. Give us a bit more to do with other thematic grounds. If pets are to remain forced upon SV, then that could be a fecund ground for further development.
19

(The link below leads to a picture of a very quick Talent Tree Manager mock-up of a Survival Tree with minor node shuffling, a handful of talents marked for revision, and a few recommendations for positions for new talents.)

prnt.sc/A42eFZxVhyzF

This is about as far as I feel SV has progressed.

The nodes given the placeholder icon are those that I feel need to be spiced up but have at most been moved around only slightly.

The nodes with the Default [?] symbol are recommended spaces for new additions.

Idiosyncrasies:

  • Raptor Strike node (not the ability) replaced with a passive that converts all ranged attacks into empowered melee attacks when a melee weapon is equipped and you are within melee range of target. If not within melee range, the hand-crossbow is used instead. The hand-crossbow damage does not scale with your melee weapon, but that is a relatively minor penalty compared to simply that you’re not getting the added efficiency or other perks
    • I ran SV in a 70 dungeon on the beta with a level 10 white weapon bought from the Stormwind vendors because Blizz couldn’t be bothered to give test Hunters a melee weapon and still did decent damage, so that’s not some world-ending penalty.
  • Harpoon is essentially baked into Raptor Strike, and now runs opposite to an axe-throwing means of maintaining uptime. This is to reduce bloat and increase flexibility.
  • Terms of Engagement aids both the blink-strike option (replacing Harpoon) and the Axe-Throwing option (opposite in choice node).
  • Mongoose Bite moved up and is now on a choice node.
  • Mongoose Fury (the ramping buff) gets a choice node, below Mongoose Bite.

Also going to toss up a link for a temp Discord server, if anyone would prefer the more rapid responsiveness of that environment.

  • Remember that you can adjust your nickname on a server-by-server basis. I’d recommend just naming yourself by your forum avatar here.

discord.gg/3grJqzm5

20

I agree with most of what you’re saying.

  • Quick shot and Wfi should switch spots. There should a link between wfi and imp wfb. Now ppl that want free random dmg are free to waste points.

  • DF version of FotE with RM to me seems just bad. Even if they tune it to op levels, don’t see how it would be fun to use. Basically an aoe execute like ability?

  • Sharp Edges is way, way undervalued. It needs to be a minimum of 10/20%.

  • removing NTA was a good move

  • pvp side note; would like see Kindred Beasts instead interloper be class wide. It has way more general applications and be better in other forms of pvp then just arena. And the 15% leech will help surv will more sturdy in melee.

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