You are severely simplifying identity if you ask me. With that reasoning Rogue is a acrobatic melee, Warrior is a brawny melee and monk is an even more acrobatic melee and mage is a spellcaster and Druid is a shapeshifter. It is all true obviously as much as your statement is true. But you need More than that to define a spec. But even looking at your own description of SV identity, where do you fit grenades in there? We have One ability where we tell our pet to attack and One talent that makes us attack with our pet, other than that nothing about the current SV says “a hunter that relies on his melee weapon and attacks together with his pet”. See what I mean? SV is currently very far from this identity and if you try the other way around, to define the identity from what we have we come a very far away from the “melee hunter that attacks with his pet” style.
What is wrong with having the melee hunter be about combat in melee? You state that the identity of the spec is to fight with a melee weapon and attack as one with his only pet but also say that he should not be fighting in melee like monk, warrior or rogue? Instead he should be mostly ranged throwing grenades at his poor pet? And what is wrong with SV being actual melee? I think the hunter class is distinct enough to make it work, just like rogue, warrior and monk is distinct enough that it does not feel or play the same although they are all melee. On paper it “looks the same” if you simplify it as “they use melee weapons”… but that does not work. It’s how they play, what they have for aesthetics, utility and how their rotation works that make them feel different.
I would ask that you think about it yourself. I am pro melee SV even though I think it was a mistake. But I think they need to freaking figure out how it should be done and do it, and it should be melee if it’s… melee! Nothing about the current spec tells you it’s a melee spec besides carve and raptor strike and it sure as heck does not play like it.
I have not played it in alpha so I can’t really speak to how it actually feels to play etc, it’s different when you can only imagine it and theorycraft a talent tree. But have they really made it to a melee spec with some ranged options/adaptability though? The whole AoE build is ranged minus the carve/butcher and the ST build is pretty much spam MB till you need to use KC for focus. Besides that we have a flanking strike as gap closer/focus and then spearhead as a dmg CD and FotE as some AoE ability I think?
Everything else from Serpent sting to traps to Kill shot, Explosive shot, Chimaera shot, chakram/ death chakram, KC/alpha predator, concussive shot and barrage (but that won’t even work for SV so…) is clearly ranged abilities used from a ranged weapon. How does this work for SV? Yeah we pull out a small crossbow and fire them. That is not a melee spec for me, I would understand traps being thrown and perhaps some small poison bolt from the small crossbow but apart from that I can’t really argue why the rest should be ranged. Other than that is the only way they feasibly can get the class to work with how class tree is shared between the melee and ranged specs.
If you think about it, make some reflection…you will see that fits perfectly on spec fantasy.
Tip of the spear is a talent which provides a “hit and run” fantasy,
you need a condition to apply it, you poke your enemy with the tip of your spear and then do something else.
Mongoose bite is intentionally a spammable skill, because guess what, spear is a kind of weapon that you need to penetrate the blade in the enemy, you can only do that if you repeat the same movement. Its not like other weapons which you can switch angles.
Mongoose bite fits PERFECTLY on spear fantasy. Spear has everything to do with “spammin”. It does more damage because hunter is targeting the same place, thats why is different from “Fury of the eagle” skill.
Mongoose bite, hits the same area, does more damage because its the same wound.
Fury of the eagle, hits deliberately in various locations ahead.
Spam mongoose bite, gets tired from it… so what happens? Pet attacks in order to hunter get a breath (kill command, focus generator)… god ITS JUST FITS PERFECTLY.
I think you are reading a Little too much into “spear”. First off most of our 2h options are not even similar to spears and spears were mainly not used as a 1v1 duel weapon where you poked the target over and over at the same spot, one poke and the fight was over.
And you are not really right about how it works in game either. Because have you seen Raptor strike? You know our core ability. It takes whatever polearm, sword or staff whatever you have and Swipe the enemy with it. So drawing strong parallels to how it plays doesn’t really work. And I am not really sure how the whole grenade part fits in, you skipped that huh? Also you skipped commenting on the whole part about how everything else than Raptor strike and carve is ranged attacks
And if you think that the whole “we have a spear so mongoose bite fits perfectly and if we get tired the pet steps in so that is the “focus regen” part” fits perfectly then keep thinking that, still skips all the other things I brought up… and it might fit your identity but the core issue is, it’s bland. it’s boring. it’s unintuitive and uninspired! It does not play well for sure. We had MB/RP spamming in Legion and o boy was it unfun.
I think Survival spec fantasy certainly is summed up as guerrilla fighter.
They improvise weapons (poisons, bombs,
spears), use terrain to their advantage (traps), and generally operate in small groups or in pairs (this is where the pet comes in).
Translating that to game mechanics is pretty difficult i guess, but i don’t think the hit and run playstyle is impossible to work with.
They could make it so we’re on a 15/45/90 timer with our cooldowns (assuming we have 3). Playing from a pillar, keeping up our slow rot (whittling down the enemy is a very effective and widely used guerrilla tactic) until it’s time for the ambush to kill them. Our pet being our partner in crime, i think, our kit should buff both hunter and pet. Sort of like what Coordinated Assault, Flanking strike, and Spear Head do but i don’t think they’re designed quite right to accomplish that goal.
This sounds like a nice way to play PvP if you are into that playstyle. Kind of like BM hunter used to play. But I can’t imagine it being feasible or even possible to implement in a PvE build that is remotely fun. At least not in a MMO. Who wants to kite quest mobs around pillars, kite them into traps so you can whittle them down with traps, poison and bleeds while kiting? And how would that playstyle work in Dungeons or raids?
It sounds cool though, I am with you on the identity/theme of it. Just don’t think it would be feasible as a PvE playstyle.
It is very subjective to say that PvP is the better environment…
And I don’t really see how it’s “PvE feasability” or " spec fantasy"… do you really think those Can’t be done together? Obviously they can. By that reason no class ever would have both fantasy and PvE feasability… which I’d argue quite a lot have. It’s mainly SV that is in such a bad spot.
Its objectively better environment for a single reason.
Because theres a human perspective through both sides.
For example, you (player 1)could feel that you are playing a hunter because you are hunting somebody in open world…
The prey (player 2) could feel they are being hunted by a hunter.
this kind of experience expresses identity much more than pve
Im not the one who suggested sv spec fantasy and pve feasibility are mutually exclusive. I don’t think they are, and it won’t be any different than it is right now: pet tanks the mob while hunter goes ham
I am sorry but you can’t just state that something is objective and then it is so. There is things that is what it is. The color green is green and no one can say that no, that is the color blue. Something subjective is a thing where it’s different depending on who you ask or other circumstances.
In our example here you think that PvP is the better environment to realize a class/specs fantasy/theme because you feel like a hunter in this game should Hunt other people. And in your eyes this is only achievable if there is another human being in the game. But this restriction is just in your imagination. I for example do not think PvP is the best environment because I think the game isn’t even about PvP, so how can the class/spec/game even be defined by PvP? I would like to define my specs identity in how my rotation feels when I do PvE encounters, for example a quest boss. So that quite clearly makes it subjective because neither one can say that the other one is wrong.
But let’s leave this where it is, in differing opinions. I think we both agree that Blizzard needs to do a hell of a lot more work for the SV tree to even be viable. I guess we can just hope they do a good job and that it will fall within both our taste (which funnily enough is the biggest issue with any development of this kind. It needs to satisfy a lot of different people).
Besides the fact you have to go 3/3 in it to get WFI, its a rng chance on top of a rng chance to slightly reduce the cooldown. Thats just terrible. WFB cdr should 100% go on RS/MB.
I have already explained in detail, it makes no logical sense for two perspectives to represent less of a value than a single perspective.
There is no scenario were a single perspective translates more quality of information about a class than two perspectives as a framework for evaluating qualities.
Sorry to inform you but hitting a dummy won’t establish a hunter’s qualities any more than hitting another player and getting the point of view of both of them. It is objectively better.
Sigh, yes yes. Whatever. Use the word objective however you want to validate your point I guess. That is objectively the best way is it not? Or sorry, the only way😉
If we took WFB as our 15s CD, Flanking as our 30s, and Spearhead as our 60s, while the rest of our kit works with the rot aspect
Without looking over the tree item by item
Bloodseeker could be reworked into adding Lacerate effect onto RS/MB and KC extends the bleed duration, instead of its current state.
FS could cause any dots currently on target to proc at 40% damage of a normal tick, in addition to being a gap closer/ mild damage button.
Spearhead i can’t think of anything since it actually looks like a fun ability as is
Could change IWFB to a damage debuff talent, so like theyre doing X% less damage per stack (up to 2) while wfb dot is active
CA could be changed into a party buff CD or reverted to it’s state on retail or conversely it could be changed to something like every crit landed has X% chance to add a charge of WFB up to your max charges +1. Idk… i can’t think of anything good for CA i guess.
I also think RS/MB should be point 1 choice node. Also that Survival should have Serpent baseline but that’s unlikely to change, even though infusion directly interacts with it, so if we don’t pick sting 1/3 of infusion talent is actually useless.
Basic style would be to SS > RS > WFB > FS and kind of alternate between KC RS SS as needed until WFB comes back off CD, throwing in FS and SH as needed?
Could also replace a couple of the 3/3 flat % to something that buffs our traps. Like making Steeltrap not have a damage cap, Tar trap buffing wfb dot/reducing cast speed/ becoming a disarm, freezing trap causing a slow after it ends, e.t.c
I am just waiting to see the slightly reworked talent tree. They said they are aware that there are to many 3caps- so lets see what happens. I am happy they did say that explosive shot, serpent sting etc… can be used with our mini-xbow. For barrage I am more eh… about it but seeing barrage being shot out of a tiny crossbow would be funny.
Also I am hoping the master marksmen talent affects melee attacks as well-though it seems they are still on the fence about that.
Overall I don’t want to get my hopes up to much, we will see.
The surv tree is trash and ive explicited stated what is wrong with it countless times on other threads. What is comes down to is that you have those 1 or 2 1%ers who play surv after progression is over and they only like to play a certain playstyle. Thats why you see nesingwary’s/birds of prey still in the trees even though the entire hunter community has called for the end to rotational trap play.
I mean, lets be honest here, who in their right mind thinks synergizing KS and bombs together was the right move? I certainly dont. Yea, just what i want to do is tab target Mobs to use KS once for 3k dmg. Talk about annoying. Plus, deadly duo… guess what, procs only every 1.5 minutes. Ah yes, THATS such a good talent that it deserves to be the second most bottom talent on our BOMB side. Then fury. Who thought it was a good idea to go KC on top of tree, then bombs, then KS, THEN go fury? Seriously, not a single person with a realistic understanding of the spec thinks its a good idea.
Thats just the bomb side, i havent even gotten into the sheer amount of dead talents we have, why surv’s tree is the SMALLEST out of all them by over TEN nodes to rogues, why there are so many KC buffers when its only a filler and does zero dmg, why we must completely rely on KS even though its only reliable under 35%, why we dont have bomb clusters and mad bombadier in our tree, why coordinated kill is even a talent when its been rated the WORST talent ever created, why we have 3 talents for harpoon, why we have an abundance of crit nodes when surv is literally anti-crit. FINALLY, the way it looks now there is ZERO reason to take any of the last 2-3 talents on the tree, across the board, except for spearhead for ST. What that means is that the bottom 1/3rd of the tree is useless. The second 1/3rd isnt any better, and the top 1/3rd is nothing but KC and Harpoon.
Do i seriously need to go on? This doesnt even bring into the generic tree.
So anyone who thinks there is nothing wrong with the surv tree is a complete white knighter who will accept any crumbs blizz throws their way.
Honestly, with how much viable feedback mm and bm are getting, who wants to touch the meme msv anyways? Just wait for blizz to overtune it then play it.
SV tree feels like they didn’t put the same amount of ressources than the other specs/classes.
I’m not here to judge (yet I do) but it feels like poor quality work and we are not even in the tuning phase.
Just asking Blizz to put the same amount of effort than for other specs and I will be happy.
This just highlights how SV steals from BM. Originally BM was the one focused on the bond with its pet. Hell, even now this whole “you attack with many pets!” angle remains a talented option. The default state of BM is a single pet.
I don’t know how any SV stan can feel honest in their arguments when they say SV was made melee to be more unique when it robs so much from BM. Instead they just ask for more and more like exotic pets.
Legion ruined the identity. It was working fine before that. Blizzard often throws away good ideas and replaces them with bad ones.
They did before Legion, or perhaps WoD when Celestalon got in charge.
