That’s a terrible comparison since Outlaw doesn’t actually equip Pistols.
Again I have to disagree. Not with your dislike of the Pirate theme but the idea that the Pirate theme is somehow not rogue based.
3 Likes
Oof. Guess I never noticed with people frequently dying in like 5s either way. Well, barely touching pvp since 9.0 probably didn’t help.
But, yea, they should probably cap that again. At the very least cap it to 7. Or just not have double strat.
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Yeah, I’ve already made this point in as many places as I can. Hunters have roughly 16 multi-point talents and a total of 31ish talent options vs nearly all other classes that have only 6-10 multi-point talents and 35-44 talent options.
As a survival main (even before it was good in 9.2), and how the trees currently stand, we still have roughly the same capabilities/utilities as we do now, but there were easy picks to fluff the tree, like putting Chakrams in sv tree so we didn’t have to once again never pick it (since it’s in a choice node with Death Chakram), or change Chakram to a ranged playstyle path (make it replace auto attacks and aspect of the eagle - for a penalty or something), move some of the spec specific stuff out of the class trees and into their spec trees, and give the class tree things like the hunter’s mark conduit, Marksman’s Advantage, and other finesse conduits/utility azerite traits/artifact powers/anima powers. For the SV tree, stuff like Hunter’s Guile artifact power to give us a dps trap playstyle option would have been neat since every single trap talent is in the class tree. As melee, it’s easier to drop that traps in a smooth playstyle. It would be neat to have some of those 3-point talents reduced to 1 or 2, and give the trees more options like a trap route that doubles down on Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus (putting a second one in the survival tree where it is affected by other traps besides frost), and Acrobat’s Razor (where Disengage drops a random trap from where you leap from, and then you can harpoon back in), and Soulforge Embers (since it was easiest to use as survival with @player macros).
Considering how many paths and options DKs, Priests, and Rogues have compared to hunters, these types of changes seem fair. As someone that doesn’t play Shadow Priest or Rogue, their trees look so thematically complete and full of options compared to hunters, and I feel more pulled to play those classes than my own main class…
I use stealth/no stealth macros for that. Pair them up based off of function, as there’s some overlap in what they do between stealth and no stealth abilities. Kinda like how I use heal/harm macros for my priest.
So you can’t use the ability against non-sentient and/or non-living things?
Imagine the animation of Barrage with a hand crossbow…ew lol
Overall I’m super excited for both of the trees and would love to jump in and actually play around with some of the theorycrafted builds!
I have an Assassination/Subtlety Rogue alt and while the trees look fun I’m much more interested and excited by the Hunter tree which I have not played at all in a few years. I’ve been trying to place why I’m more excited and think I’ve found the reasons.
For all 3 Rogue specializations it feels like we have 2 or 3 main “lines” to go down and put our points in without any way to cross from one into the other. For an analogy I think of it as having a set amount of water to divide between 2 or 3 cups - to put more in one cup you have to take it out of another.
By comparison, the hunter tree is incredibly connected and you are able to move from the far right to the far left of the tree fairly easily. This allows you to bypass nodes on the right that don’t suit your build but cross over later and get some nodes that do benefit it.
Another thing I noticed was in Rogue there are many more “dead end nodes” (nodes that don’t directly lead to another node). Having these nodes higher in the tree create branches that don’t reconnect later to other parts of the tree. These branches feel bad because you put points into them and once you reach the bottom (whether it’s 1, 2, or 5 points) you then effectively restart from where it branched off, now spending points in the main line to get further down the tree. An example is in Assassination for Crimson Tempest. It’s 1 point off to the side, not leading to a later node, that gives a lot of AOE damage. Compare this to Marksmanship where you get Volley filling a similar role but leading directly allowing you to continue down the tree towards the final row. To take Crimson Tempest, you put 1 point into it and need to put another point into the main lines to move down the tree, for Volley you only need the 1 point in it to move down the tree.
You give up a lot in taking nodes in branches that do not reconnect to the main tree and the longer the branch is the higher the cost. The extreme example of this is the branch containing Atrophic Poison in Assassination. You have to invest 4 talent points to get it and while you do get a benefit with each point, that means it’s another point you have to invest on the Fan of Knives or Shadowstep branches to get towards the end of the tree.
I counted the dead end nodes in the classes revealed to illustrate the difference between classes, below are the numbers for Hunter and Rogue.
Hunter:
- Hunter Class: 5 all in row 10
- Beast Mastery: 3 all in row 10
- Marksmanship: 6, 4 in row 10
- Survival: 3 all in row 10
Rogue:
- Rogue Class: 9, 3 in row 10
- Assassination: 12, 3 in row 10
- Outlaw: 12, 3 in row 10
- Subtlety: 16, 3 row 10
Counting the other talent trees revealed, Hunter seems to be an outlier in having very few but this also makes it much more engaging to use - particularly for the class tree. Your nodes are not 1 point out of the way, they directly lead to other talent nodes.
I hope we can see other talent trees take notes from the Hunter one in terms of the actual layouts of the nodes before they are too locked in! It’s much more interesting to weave through the tree instead of just needing to pull points out of one line of the tree to get anything in the middle or bottom of the opposite side of the tree.
1 Like
That would be nice to try the shadowdance builds with on outlaw.
Probably go for at least a sinister strike/ambush sort of thing. It seems like Garrote may make it back into the rotation as well.
No one is saying it isn’t, but the “outlaw” archetype in fantasy comprises many more themes, from back-alley hooligans to shirtless blue Welshmen to disgraced Norman Frenglish nobles with a trick archery hobby. The problem isn’t that pirates are outlaws, the problem is that all outlaws are pirates, or maybe wild west desperadoes if you stretch your imagination on the slow mainhand and totally ignore the names of the RtB buffs.
Disdain - nope, it’s like this in all class trees atm. I’m 99% positive it is because of working version of the tree and nothing more.
Don’t hype, and assume that all weapon testrictions stay as it is today.
None the less, this is not how it should be, if you ask me. I ask to take off weapons requirements (every 1h weapons is now normalised anyway), or at least make daggers transmogged with 1h weapons (fist in place of swords or maces is not confusing, so why sword instead of daggers appearently is).
I think they are arguing the semantics that technically “Pirate” falls within the greater set that is “Rogue” while fully understanding the underlying point that many Rogues want to be something else within the set of Rogue that is not Pirate while playing Outlaw.
Its one of the realities of forums that even if a point is effectively communicated, if someone can find a technical fallacy no matter how mundane it’s often irresistible to certain personalities.
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Like dem good ole days, Ima just wait until Icy Veins has all this talent crud figured out, then just copy paste to my cartoons 
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As I have been looking, and reading more through the rogue trees, I would like to add some concerns/opinions.
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I noticed that the de-enrage ability (shiv) is now exclusively assassination, the CDR utility is exclusively outlaw, and the DR poison is exclusively assassination, while Subtlety has a 6-minute cd version of roar. This means that as a sub main, I will be picked for content far less frequently than the other two specs. Please make these utility buttons class-wide as was specified in your design philosophy. - “The class tree contains a core set of abilities available to all specs in a class and has a higher proportion of utility choices. It’s a place where you can, among other things, choose some abilities or passives that draw from the identity of other specializations to give your character some hybrid flavor, or simply to grab something particularly useful for certain content. The specialization tree is predominantly focused on bonuses that enhance your power in your main role. Keeping these separate is one way of ensuring that you have some choices in both areas without, for example, feeling compelled to give up all your utility or off-spec buttons in order to maximize main role performance”. This heavily implies that utility is meant to be in the class tree so that you don’t have to compromise what spec you play in order to provide the raid the utility you are expected to provide. As it stands, I have to compromise what spec I want to play in order to be useful to my raid. That feels really bad.
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I want to reiterate what others have said here, that the subtlety tree specifically lacks a lot of choice, another core feature of the talent tree design philosophy. As it is, the subtlety tree is extremely linear and therefore limited.
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I also want to reiterate some other points made about the subtlety tree, being that the lower levels lack excitement, and having a 3rd version of the worst covenant ability (echoing reprimand) in shadow mist is boring.
Thank you for your time!!
2 Likes
The infinite CC is why i stopped playing arena, it is to much and simply not fun anymore. Also if they don’t drastically change the rogue tree as it sits, no Xpac for me.
So I just check the hunter trees as well.
There seems to be a big difference in philosophy in the tree designs from class to class, and even spec to spec. Look at Marksman hunter; the tree criss-cross quite a bit allowing a lot of mix and match on the sides and experimentation.
Now look at Sub: you are stuck on straight lines, no crossing over. Can’t get to Deeper Daggers in any way shape or form without taking AoE abilities above.
I believe the Marksman tree approach is way more interesting, creating points where you can move over the other side of the trees is fun and avoids frustrations of always having to put a ton of points into dead talents just to get that one fun thing you want to use, or even just try.
2 Likes
I’m just adding a comment in the hopes that you guys change your mind from death chakram to something that isn’t the worst covenant ability that hunter got all expansion, it’s weird to me that druid is getting convoke, dk is getting slappy hands, but you’re giving hunter their worst ability across the board. I’m not a fan of Wild Spirits playstyle, but anything is better than death chakram. I’d prefer flayed shot personally but even resonating arrow feels better than death chakram.
2 Likes
Some thoughts about the survival hunter tree.
Positive
- The new kill shot talents looks great. I dont think we will reach a point where u are just spamming kill command to fish for procs like with current tier set and ks is a nice skill to use. Althought the proc chance may be too low.
- I love the new reworked design of Coordinated Assault, it really looks like a coordinated assault.
- It will be fun to play with talents that before the talent tree were incompatible, like tip of the spear and mongoose bite and flanking strike.
- Fury of the eagle is back and even has synergy with the kit!
- Spearhead looks like a good idea to drop as a talent, so we can have a real offensive cd (current coordinated assault is horrible) not tied to Birds of Prey.
- I like how many extra ranged skills will become available to survival (i hope they are usable without a ranged weapon). They will increase the feeling of sv being the melee with range skills in the game
- I also like how new CA and Spearhead are a charge with your pet to the enemy and flanking strike being easier to pick than with current talents adds a lot of “Attack with your pet” skills that fit nicely with sv theme.
Hmmm…
- Lunge (increase melee range by 1yd up to 3 per talent rank). Many survival players wanted this baseline. Is good to see that dev team is thinking about it, but its sad to be in the spec tree AND being a 3 rank talent. It feels incredible bad to compare this 3 rank talent in the 7th row with Improved wildfire bomb, another 3 rank talent in the same row that increase bomb damage. Looks like its against the design of the trees to offer an utility option inside the spec tree that is directly competing with a lot of dps traits.
- Tree has too few nodes, while its not necesarily bad, it feels like the tree is empty and we dont have that many choices.
- Butchery vs Carve node is a good idea, but it will require good balance between them. Currently butchery is just an upgraded carve version, u cant just drop both current version and expect a meaningfull choice in the node.
- Serpent sting has always been one of the iconic SV skills. While i think its fine to add it to the generic tree, MM unironicaly has more talents that interact with it, or if wfi still has green bomb both are equals. This feels off.
- While current cluster legendary is overpowered, i think its a neat addition to bombs attaching a bit of gameplay to bombs, because if the enemy will dash/tp soon, u may fail cluster bombs. Its sad to not see it in the talent tree and instead seeing passive bomb damage increase.
- Currently nowhere its said that sv kc restore focus. Is intended? Maybe its a passive outside the talent tree? Maybe its part of a new sv mastery so the mastery becomes relevant?
Negative
- Why rogue has Lunge (increase melee range by 1yd up to 3 per talent rank), but theirs cost only 1 point and give them 3yd???
- The tree has few nodes AND also have a lot of filling talents that are passive % damage increase or just passive stats. SV has 32 nodes in the whole tree. 1/3 of the nodes are just passive damage increases. If instead of counting nodes, we count how many points u need to spend we get to the same conclusion, 1/3 of our available. Comparing with BM, bm has 4 nodes that are just passive damage increase, and even then, those 4 nodes increase BM skills damage, they are not just stat sticks like increasing crit damage. This point feels horrible and is the major problem with sv tree in my opinion.
- While coordinated assault design is great, current iteration is mostly useless. It only increase carve/butchery cdr, skills that u dont want to use in solot, and if this makes them usable in solot, it will be a pirric damage increase…(what happens if u dont pick the cdr talent?). It also buffs kill shot, a skill that naturaly we cant use above 20% enemy hp, we can get the talents to get ks procs but ks procs have a low chance. So many times u will press CA, not get procs, and cry because u wasted your cooldown with 0 benefit.
- Birds of Prey talent increase CA duration whenever u carve or use raptor strike, it would make sense for kill shot to increase its duration too, because u know, kill shot interacts with CA and is a skill pretty similar to raptor strike.
- Aspect of the eagle is an utility talent in one of the last talent rows. Its competing with big talents like wildfire infusion, coordinated assault and the talent before spearhead, precision(2/4/6% more crit chance). I cant see a fight where u would choose to pick this talent instead of just more dps. Looks like it goes against the design of the talents tree of ofering utility choices, eagle is not a choice, is a dps lose. Its even worse eagle is gated behind one of the worst talents in the game sharp edges (2/4/6% increased CRIT damage)
- Harpoon suffer from the same as aspect of the eagle. Is one of the main mobility skills of sv, and now is gated behind 3 ranks that are directly competing with wildfire bomb and KC having a chance to reset itself. Seriously, no one will pick harpoon when its competing with dps traits all over the place. Only if u intend to get Terms of engagement you would pick harpoon, and at that point, u no longer have harpoon for mobility purpouses because now is another dps skill
Final thoughts
I like the talent tree overall, all new aditions are good or have potential with some extra additions and fixes.
- New CA doesnt have kill command synergy despite the talent below CA making kc crit whenever it resets during CA. It CA could buff kill command and interact with that talent, something like “the next kill command has a 100% chance to reset itself”.
- If we consider that spearhead buffs rs/mb, so mostly buffs solot damage, if CA buffed bombs too it would be a good AoE cd, so adding bombs to CA skills would be great. Maybe making the next bomb deal increased damage?.
I dont like how some of sv QoL skills are now gated behind talents in the spec tree directly competing with dps. Looking at what we have been told the talent tree design is, this clearly goes against it.
- Lunge should be something baseline, it was baseline in legion and it felt good. Would be cool if we could choose between harpoon and eagle at the start of the tree, so at least we are chosing between 2 utility skills and not between a damage and utility skill. Idealy eagle and harpoon to to be baseline. Instead of eagle u could drop flame infusion there, makes sense because eagle is between the carve branch and the bombs branch.
I specialy dont like how many nodes only give a basic damage increase when sv has a good bunch of azerite traits and effects that u can add to the talent tree that already exist in game.
- I dont think its fair to say u could add a lot of passive more interesting nodes without saying any example, so im going to give one example for every passive stat stick talent in the tree. Of course they are only some of my personal ideas. There are probably better ideas out there:
Precision, above spearhead, (2%/4%/6% crit chance). Considering that this branch of the tree is all about rs/mb u could add lucid dreams passive effect to rs/mb. If we want to mantain the 3 rank, something like rs/mb has a 10%/20%/30% chance to return its focus cost. Whenever this happens u get 5% versa, or whatever.
Spear focus, below-right Mongoose bite, (5%/10% more rs/mb damage). U could add primaveral intutition azerite trait instead. Every rs/mb increase critical strike for 12s, stacking up to 5.
Killer companion, below Spear focus (5%/10% more kc damage). U could add Dire consequences bfa talent. KC does extra damage and has a chance to summon a dire beast that increase haste for 10%. Knowing that summon pets its a beast master thing, u could just remove the summon dire beast and make it just a haste proc on kill command.
Tactical advantage, below-right flanking strike (10%/20% more damage on flanking strike and bomb). ¿Why is bomb buffed here? You could make: flanking strike has a 50%/100% chance to return double focus. This would give it a meaningfull diference with kill command and also support a mongoose bite style of gameplay where u dump focus and then regain it with flanking.
Swiping Spear, below flanking strike(5%/10%/15% more damage to rs/mb butchery/carve). This talent is in the middle of the tree, and looks more like its in a carve/butchery path more than rs/mb. So a carve/butchery talent that could fit in could be hellcarver, a legion talent that many people still love. Every target hit by carve/butchery increase its damage by a 3%/6%/9%. maybe with reduced damage increase past 5 targets, to make it in line with carve butchery softcap. Or maybe, because this would just make carve/butchery stronger where they are supose to be strong, do it the other way around. Butchery/carve deals 33%/66%/100% more base damage. Every target hit by carve/butchery reduce its damage by 6%/13%/20% up to 5 targets.
Improved Wildfire Bomb, below guerrila tactics (8%/16%/25% more bomb damage). Instead of flat boring extra bomb damage, you could add cluster here! 1/2/3 bomb clusters when bomb explode. Its moreless the same talent, but it has a new cool animation and also helps to tune bombs if necesary, just nerfing cluster damage so it doesnt affect ALL bomb talents at the same time.
Sharp Edges, below lunge (2%/4%/6% more crit chance). Considering we are in the bomb area, wilderness survivalist azerite trait could be added. rs/mb does aditional damage and every time u use rs/mb, bomb cd is reduced by 1s. Maybe, because this is closer to carve/butchery area than rs/mb zone, instead of more rs/mb damage, more carve/butchery damage.
Ferocity, below-left of raptor strike (5%/10% more pet damage). This feels like a talent that should be in BM tree (and bm indeed has this talent). Some kc/pet synergy should be here. You could add here bfa-alpha flanking strike where using KC at melee range would reward extra focus. Fits as a kc/pet talent like current one, also fits because sv is melee and that talent rewards being at melee. That talent was removed in alpha because some reason. It was probably a valid reason, so if u dont like that, u could simply add current strength of the pack shadowlands conduit, whenever KC resets itself, u get a damage buff. Tho u should replace KC resets node with this one in such case
Improved harpoon (5/10 less cd on harpoon). Make it baseline so harpoon still has the same cd as current. I would directly remove this talent and drop terms of engagement on its place, so u dont need to expend as many talent point to take terms of engagement, making harpoon more desirable as a dps choice.
Seeing how ludge is a 3 rank talent, u could remove it and instead add two nodes, one below bloodseker and one where ludge is right now. To add some serpent sting synergy as i said in the , below bloodseker you could add that serpent sting does extra damage against bleeding enemies.
and u could remplace lunge node venomous fangs, bfa azerite trait that increased pet damage against targets with SS. Or u could simply add this nodes anywhere as a little SS synergy branch so the whole tree gets more nodes. I would also like to see hydras byte in this branch if possible, its a cool talent that no one could use because it was in the same row as guerrilla tactics, and 2nd bomb charge was too strong.
The talent tree may still have few nodes , but we still have some traits that could be added to expand the number of nodes:
- Eagle’s bite from legion artifact, harpoon makes the enemy bleed and autoattacks extend the duration.
- Talon strike from legion artifact, your autoattacks have a chance to proc extra autoattacks, would be interesting because currently sv is the only melee without autoattacks synergy.
- Talon bond from legion artifact, when u proc Talon strike , your pet also autoattacks 2 time, would interact with the previous talent and with CA considering this could increase the number of buffed skills?
- Focused Energy from bfa essences. Whenver you attack your target, u get a minor haste buff that stacks up to 10 times, if u swap targets or stop attacking, u lose the stacks.
- Soulforge Embers from shadowlands essences, but make it so u need to use flare in enemies that are doted by wildfire bomb to do extra damage, so it fits as a sv talent and is not as clunky as in shadowlands when u had to use 2 skills that did no damage.
- Pouch of razor fragments from shadowlands legendaries. KS procs from deadly duo talent do AoE damage.
- Resonating Arrow from shadowlands covenant skills. A ground targeted skill that increase crit chance.
- Enfebled mark from shadowlands conduits. Resonating arrow also increase the damage of ALL the hunter skills.
- Effusive anima acelerator from shadowlands conduits. Resonating arrow does extra damage and its cooldown is reduced per enemy hit.
- Hammer of genesis from shadowlands soulbinds. Resonating arrow also increase your haste per target hit up to 5.
- Butcher bones from shadowlands legendaries. Please, dont add this, please please. Its better to not see it in the tree than see it and never pick it.
TLDR: Survival has a lot of cool skills that could fit in the talent tree to make it richer, bigger and more interesting. Dont let it fade with boring passive multi-rank talents and a small tree.
I hope this is not as long as it seems to me. I know i added a lot of possible extra nodes and remplacements, but i really feel like thats what survival talent tree currently need most, and just tuning on a later date cant fix this.
Sorry for any typo, I’m pretty sure there are more than one. (Credits to Ohar-Sanguino EU for the input and writeup here)
4 Likes
I think the Sub tree could be improved by swapping Veil Touched and Replicating Shadows. This doesn’t totally remove AoE from the right side path, but it lessens the impact a little since Black Powder and Improved Shuriken are at least currently baseline. Plus it would make the Rupture spread optional so we’re not randomly breaking/preventing our own cc!
That, or make Stiletto Staccato connect horizontally with Shadow Finishers and Planned Execution to go around the AoE cluster.
If you look at all the current trees in comparison to Hunter, the class side just doesn’t make sense. DK class tree has a Frost path, Blood path, and Unholy path. Druid class tree has a Feral/Guardian path, Restoration path, and Balance path. Priest class tree has a Light path and Shadow path. Rogue has an Assassination path, an Outlaw path, and Subtlety path.
Now look at Hunter’s class tree. We have some Beast Mastery stuff on the left, some trap stuff on the left, concussive shot, MD, and more pet stuff in the middle - ending in chakram/death chakram and some Marksman stuff (I think), and some Survival stuff on the right (I think).
As a hunter main, it’s kinda weird that I can’t even tell the 3 “paths” because the bottom becomes so messy.
I feel like the middle needs to looks cleaner like all the other class trees, which all have nearly-symmetrical class trees.
I think the Hunter class tree could have 4 paths at the bottom: Beast Mastery (as it currently does), Survival (as it will likely share more talents with BM), a trap-focused path (with things like Hunter’s Guile, Acrobat’s Razor, Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus, and Soulforge Embers at the bottom), and a Marksman path.
Blizzard, please do this to the Hunter Class tree to create a more defined trap path:
Thank you.