Or some of us played hunter back in the day as we wanted to play a ranged physical dps class and we found survival to be the most fun spec. Believe it or not some people don’t like playing melee dps and prefer playing ranged dps.
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Which has nothing to do with preferring, say, WoD RSV over more complex/involved/skill-expressive ranged specs.
Given how many forms of skill expression the periods of RSV so many have asked (unless being subtly yet severely hyperbolic) to “just bring it back as it was” lacked, it seems more likely that constraints to range, and thereby to positioning, is just one more avenue of skill expression on the “do not want” list, rather than melee play, specifically, being uniquely disliked.
I.e., I want BM-like run-and-gun ultra-simplistic gameplay, but with less in-practice DoT- or resource-management and no overarching theme centered on pets.
Obviously not true for all. I myself would love to see an actually resourceful and tactical RSV returned to the game. But most suggestions I’ve seen here surrounding RSV have been more interested in avoiding gameplay (bringing back an explicitly low-ceiling, easy-mode state) than interested in revitalizing the theme to include novel and engaging mechanics.
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Do you consider current MM as gameplay intensive? Just curious. No wrong answer.
Gameplay-intensive in any broader/absolute sense? No. It’s got a decent bit of small nuances but lets some mechanics overly devalue others, wasting or failing to capitalize upon much (even while still having more jank than seems excusable, let alone necessary).
Compared to most other modern specs? Less so than some, more so than plenty.
And compared to WoD RSV? Obviously.
Granted, that’s true compared to any WoD Hunter spec and plenty more WoD specs besides. But that’s why I find “just bring back 5.4 RSV” or “just reset it to what it was most recently / just before Legion” problematic, not wanting a third distinct and engaging ranged spec for Hunter.
I want the latter. MoP/WoD RSV just isn’t that. Itd have to be rehauled, modernized, and revitalized, which would almost certainly need to include more skill expression than most wanting its return have shown they’d be okay with. I’d say at least a Ghorak Munitions level rework, at minimum, even if still named Survival and keeping more to that name’s broader themes.
Loooooooove that you are bringing back black arrow, A+, and love the theme here.
I absolutely want black arrow to stay going forward, but something will have to be done about the rotation where you barely have time to even press it, especially with Trueshot aura active as you’re getting so many aimed shots, there’s barely time for anything else. Maybe the rotation can have more breathing room to allow for more buttons (reduce aimed shot charges, make it proc less, rework trueshot aura) or remove rapid fire if you won’t give it a proper animation. Chakram can go too.
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Can’t wait to see some PTR coverage of Dark Ranger.
Hmm would it be cool if they made Wailing Arrow replace Kill Shot and have Black Arrow proc KS? Giving the tree some AOE output, as of right now withering fire and dark hound do ST
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Some caveats before I post my thoughts. I did not main hunter this xpac (though this was the first time ever since I started in Vanilla), but I do not think enough has changed that my thoughts would be wrong. Most of this will be from the perspective of MM, though I will comment on the other specs as necessary. I also begin that without a complete redesign for MM, the hero talents are limited in potential.
To begin, I do not think BM was the correct choice for a second spec for this tree. I believe both the thematic elements of the tree as well as gameplay suit SV way better.
Starting at the top, I am thrilled Black Arrow is returning. However, I do not like it’s interaction with Aimed Shot. Combined with the Shadow Lash talent, I see some problems. Trueshot by itself is already messy. We overcap focus, we overcap Aimed Shot charges, we overcap Precise Shot procs, Rapid Fire sits off CD. This just makes that worse, with basically no benefit. If it’s main interaction remains with Aimed Shot (I don’t think it should), I would rather have it amplify Aimed Shot’s damage and convert it to Shadow.
Personally, I would rather see Black Arrow interact with Explosive Shot, just like it used to. Reset the CD, and your next Explosive Shot has no CD. This is one of the first gameplay reasons why I think SV would have been a better choice. Explosive Shot is useless for BM as far as I know, but with the Ranger talent would provide a good burst for SV just like MM. As it is (with MM/BM as the tree specs) I think the only ability that makes sense is Aimed Shot, which feels very uninspired.
Overshadow and Shadow Hounds are OK I guess, not very exciting but free damage.
Death Shade is where things get interesting, at least for MM. With Razor Fragments, we get a powerful AOE Kill Shot to cast with Black Arrow, which could be a nice burst of damage. With Grave Reaper, we could get some frequent uses from this for good damage, though only 12 seconds off the CD limits this. This talent kind of sucks for BM, which is the second reason I think this works better with SV. Kill Shot is modified by SV mastery as well as the Ranger talent.
Smoke Screen is amazing and it might make this tree worth taking by itself.
The internal CD of Shadow Surge is fine for MM but weird for BM.
Darkness Calls kind of sucks since it amplifies 1 ability and 1 passive only. 2 abilities if taking Wailing Arrow. Shadow Assassin just doubles down on Aimed Shot CD resets, and honestly at this point the tree is starting to feel lackluster and lazy.
Withering Fire is OK, hope it looks cool at least.
Edit: I forgot one of the main reasons why I think this suits SV so well. Even with Grave Reaper, there is generally going to be a 14 time period where you’re waiting for Black Arrow to come off CD. Mongoose Fury lasts 14 seconds. There was a potential dual gameplay loop for SV where you have a Black Arrow loop and then a Mongoose Bite loop and the CD’s and buffs line up perfectly.
TLDR: Very underwhelming as far as theme goes. Not enough shadow and death. As far as gameplay, the interaction with Kill Shot feels like it could create an interesting gameplay loop for MM, but the interaction with Aimed Shot seems like it would be a mess to play with, and feels like it would do nothing to change our basic gameplay loop.
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This is good feedback.
when did hunters started settling for so little… a whole new exp and you are accepting a dot ? seriously? ITS A HERO TREE
MM should be a hard hiting spec, what happened to Power Shot, or double tap?
why are you trying to mix 2 out of 3 specs? to make a hero? whY?
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The tree should be for Marksmanship and Survival Hunter specs not Beast Mastery.
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Make the Dark Ranger more like Sylvanas from HoT’s.
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This would be awesome but they should start by taking BM off the dark ranger hero talent tree. Lets not forget that survival hunters where the ones that specialized in DOTS until blizzard made them a melee class when nobody really asked for that.
It should absolutely not be for SV lol.
Anyways just wanted to throw another post into the “official” thread to remind Blizzard that it’s trash.
The proc rates are super low. The visuals are incredibly boring.
And the overall rotation impact is just another damned GCD to press.
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Would be nice if Dark Ranger had same passive as Sub rogue (Dark brew : Turn our bleed and Nature dmg into shadow dmg)
Also Serrated shots passive need to be changed into DoTs not just bleed and Serpent sting.
Otherwise all (Shadow dmg node) from the tree are useless sinse you have 1 spells and 1 random proc to use them for.
They also need to replace shadow lash BM for Bestial wrath and not Call of the wild
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Why do so many of the dark ranger bonuses rely on shadow damage when BM hunters have no shadow damage abilities? The only ability they’ll gain is Black Arrow and some random shadow hound that has only a 10% chance to proc? At least give it a 15% chance to proc for godsakes.
Anyway…something seems way off unless they are planning to give BM more shadow abilities or higher chances to proc some random shadow damage. Or maybe change Dire Beast from a nature to shadow spell?
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Being that Black Arrow has a 30 second cooldown, I really feel like the dark hounds should be a guaranteed spawn. A little bad rng and you could go a whole boss fight without seeing one. Have one spawn on the first tick and the last tick, or maybe just spawn on cast.
As it stands there is way too much rng in the tree.
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Its so sad to go into the War Within alpha forums and see changes for every other class except hunters. Is there even a Hunter dev?
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unfortunately no. They seem to design all the other classes like paladins, locks, death knights, warriors, mages with love and passion and leave hunter as an unwanted afterthought. Their trees are an explosion of cool visuals and fun gameloops and interaction with their regular talent trees whereas ours are just silly passives. Thats how we ended up with trees that have no interesting gameloop and more procs of barbed shots, kill commands and aimed shots charges when we dont need them, trees that have NO or MINIMUM visual impact like Packleader and Dark Ranger… the only thing good about those trees its their name sadly. With all the amazing visuals and abilities to draw from Sylvanas in WoW, HoTs and the RTS games we get this silly smoky animation that looks like goblin’s fart nothing impactful and those ugly small maw rats that never seem to proc and NO shadow damage apart from the 30s cd DoT that we pretty much get to cast once per pack of mobs or a few times during a fight. It should be a shorter CD dot with an impactful and cool animation and sound that interacts with wailing arrow and lets us spread to multiple targets. Instead of those silly maw rats it should summon banshes or other dark rangers that do shadow damage… It should proc insta cast aimed shots or wailing arrows that extended the duration of Black Arrow dot and reduce its cd so we can apply to muliple targets. IT should also turn our bleeds into shadow damage and turn cobra shot and rapid fire into shadow or poison damage and so on… Honestly theres so much that could have been done but the devs dont care about hunters so thats why we ended up with the WORST hero trees…
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Shamans too, my friend. Shamans too. We don’t even have two of our hero trees yet.
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