Feedback: Hunters

[Linxy]

This thread is dedicated to leaving feedback on Hunters in Midnight. Look in this thread and in the Midnight Alpha Development Notes for adjustments and bugfixes made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Apex Talents

Many Apex Talents are available for playtesting and may be selected using specialization tree points in the final specialization tree node. The current User interface (UI) is temporary for playtesting purposes and will be replaced with a final UI later in development. As with any test cycle, we will be adding more Apex Talents to the test over time and not all will be available with the start of the alpha test.

To help us refine Apex Talents, please consider the following questions as you playtest:

• How gameplay-impacting, exciting, and fantasy forward is your Apex Talent to you?
• Are your Apex Talents and new Hero Talents meeting the approachability goals laid out in our Combat for Everyone in Midnight article?
• Are there cases you would consider not selecting your Apex talent?
• Does the Apex talent disproportionally favor a particular talent build or Hero Talent tree?

For feedback regarding the changes on making the combat system more approachable for players of all skill levels, leave your feedback in the Combat Approachability feedback thread.

Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback and are very excited for you to test out all the changes in Midnight!

[Linxy]

Beast Mastery

Beast Mastery Hunters have a fantasy of consistent, reliable, and powerful pet-sourced attacks, and that’s something we’re looking to lean into as we move into Midnight. We’re reducing the number of conditionals, auras, and modifiers on Barbed Shot to make it more easy to spend as its available. We’ve grown fond of Bestial Wrath’s shorter cooldown, and as such are removing Barbed Wrath’s dynamic cooldown reduction effect to instead give Bestial Wrath a flat cooldown of 30 seconds when fully talented. Multi-Shot has had an odd place in Beast Mastery’s kit, so we’re giving it an update, causing it to be replaced in the Beast Mastery spec tree with a new pet-sourced attack that deals substantial damage in AOE while also activating effects like Beast Cleave and Kill Cleave. We hope this new spell will feel powerful and contribute meaningfully to your area damage. Bloodshed and Call of the Wild felt like they were both competing for a similar role of a cooldown that summoned a few more units to fight for you. As such, we removed Call of the Wild and are focusing on Bloodshed as a cooldown to get a few extra beasts to attack your enemies. With the change to make Kill Shot a Marksmanship only ability, Dark Rangers will now learn Black Arrow as a separate ability if they choose that Hero Talent tree.

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Marksmanship

We are generally pleased with the state of Marksmanship after their Undermine(d) and Ghosts of K’aresh updates, but there were a few bigger things we’d like to address as we move into Midnight. Most notably, the introduction of Streamline as a core mechanic for Marksmanship inflated the amount of cast time reduction Marksmanship Hunters have access to while also contributing an extra aura to track. Aimed Shot is meant to be a long cast that is worth the wait. As its cast time reduces, so too must its damage, and we feel that flies in the face of what Aimed Shot should be about– as such we’ll be removing Streamline and increasing Aimed Shot’s damage. While Explosive Shot found a home as a guaranteed way to gain Lock and Load in Ghosts of K’aresh, we feel that it’s healthier for the spec as a whole to distance itself from Explosive Shot and instead focus on the more fantasy-forward spells like Volley and Kill Shot– spells that more often than not are competing with it in your rotational priorities. Speaking of Kill Shot, we are removing it from the Hunter class tree and letting Marksmanship fully own the execute niche it provides. Trueshot is gaining some cooldown reduction, cast time reduction, and focus cost reduction to compensate for the removal of Streamline.

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Survival

As we head into Midnight, we’re continuing to refine and focus Survival Hunter’s fantasy, giving clearer playstyle, gameplay, and visual direction. Over the course of Alpha, we’ll be reintroducing one-handers into Survival Hunter’s pool of available weapons, which means we’ll also be looking to distance Survival from its spear-only identity that it’s had since Legion. We’ll be doubling down on Survival’s relationship with its pet with new talents that create an interdependency between the Hunter’s damage and their pet’s damage. Additionally, we’re leaning into the rugged, crafty, and bomb-centric fantasy we explored in The War Within with a new Fire grenade called Flamefang Pitch, a new visual and fantasy identity for Fury of the Eagle called Boomstick, and a host of new Wildfire Bomb talents and synergies.

Survival Hunter had a substantial number of abilities that were competing for your attention at any given time. Coordinated Assault and Flanking Strike have been combined into a new burst cooldown called Takedown that strives to take the best parts of both spells and blend them into one moment. We also made the tough decision to redesign Mongoose Bite. We feel confident that simplifying Mongoose Bite will allow us to carve out more interesting design space for Survival both now and in the future.
Lastly, in Midnight, we’d like Survival Hunter’s area damage to come from their explosives: Wildfire Bomb, Boomstick, and Flamefang Pitch, and as such we’re removing Butchery and its associated effects. We expect Raptor Swipe (Survival Hunter’s Apex Talent) to provide meaningful and exciting moments of AOE in between your chunky explosive spells.

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Dark Ranger Hero Talents

Black Arrow provides an unusually high amount of damage relative to the rest of Marksmanship and Beast Mastery’s kits. In Midnight, we’re making some adjustments to ensure that Dark Ranger’s effects don’t completely overshadow the core abilities of Marksmanship and Beast Mastery.

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Sentinel Hero Talents

Sentinel has been rebuilt and redesigned for Midnight. Our goals with this update were targeting the Keystone and Capstone, since that was where a majority of the tree’s complexity stemmed. This updated version of Sentinel should provide more active and directed gameplay, require substantially less tracking, be more deeply ingrained into the playstyles of Marksmanship and Survival, all while being less visually and audibly noisy.

[Bricklethumb-anvilmar]

@Linxy

Black Arrow provides an unusually high amount of damage relative to the rest of Marksmanship and Beast Mastery’s kits. In Midnight, we’re making some adjustments to ensure that Dark Ranger’s effects don’t completely overshadow the core abilities of Marksmanship and Beast Mastery.

Please don’t forget that Dark Ranger is a “Hero Talent” however. I know its insane right now with the BMDR builds but gutting it will only make it feel. . meh.

[Leak-2070612 (Leak)]

Hello! I just wanted to provide some shared feedback from the Survival community on this first iteration of changes Survival is seeing in Alpha. Overall, there are some very interesting designs and new talents in the Survival rework and I’m excited to see where further iteration leads.

AoE Gameplay Loop

Currently, the AoE rotation for Survival is exactly the same as the single target rotation. It feels like something is lacking, whether it be an additional button to press or some form of DoT management (or both!). Having to rely on random procs of our apex talent to deal AoE damage doesn’t feel very satisfying or rewarding. It’s something that happens passively as you do a single target rotation.

Serpent Sting used to be a core identity of Survival. Our spec description even lists us as “an adaptive ranger using animal venom”. After spending some time with the new Survival, I think the perfect way to bridge this gap would be to add back Serpent Sting - Hydra’s Bite. This would give Survival another DoT (for Outland Venom synergy), contribute to the spec fantasy, and bring back an iconic ability.

To complete the AoE package, I think some type of talent (akin to the old Volatile Bomb we used to have) could work and keep this separate from Single Target. Some type of “finisher” explosion/bomb that is not worth casting on ST, but is strong in AoE. With the amount of empty space in the Survival AoE rotation, I believe this would bridge the gap nicely. Another solution is to just have Hydra’s Bite be the AoE button and it applies Serpent Sting to all targets in a circle around the player.

Single Target Woes

I want to start off by saying the reworked Sentinel tree feels great! The new Sentinel’s Mark adds some nice gameplay variety by giving us a dynamic proc to react to. It feels rewarding to consume your mark and see a huge Wildfire Bomb hit. This lead me into a problem I have with Pack Leader.

It seems like Pack Leader is intended to press Hatchet Toss when you have Hogstrider procs. However, on Single Target, your Boar does not hit enough enemies to stack Hogstrider high enough to where this ability is actually worth pressing. In AoE, this is not an issue, as Hogstrider stacks shoot up AND Hatchet Toss will cleave. It feels worth pressing in this scenario. Perhaps there is some way to make this ability feel good to press when there is only one target?

Dual-Wield vs 2H Weapon

Now that Survival has the ability to dual wield (although we can only Raptor Strike with a 2H as of writing this post), we have some concerns over the viability of dual wield vs 2h.

Is our ability damage intended to scale with dual-wielding (by accounting for off-hand weapon dps)? Currently, one major concern is that using a 2H weapon is just inherently stronger. Abilities will do significantly more damage with a 2H when there is no offhand weapon scaling; however, solving this leads to the next issue.

Lunge currently grants Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduction for every auto attack. This means that since Survival can now equip daggers, daggers would provide the most bomb CDR. IF the ability damage calculations are updated to account for offhand wdps as well, daggers would be the dominant weapon type by quite a large margin. Dual-wield daggers would have more Lunge triggers, more focus regen (as Pack Leader, since auto attacks grant focus), more Wildfire Imbuement damage, and more Skyfury procs (which feeds into all of these effects).

One potential solution would be to have these function based on weapon speed so that faster weapons don’t just dominate.

Flamefang Pitch

I think there are some issues with Flamefang Pitch in the current form. Firstly, the visuals for this ability are overwhelming. It’s very difficult to see any effects or spells that may be underneath the fire.

Additionally, it’s easy for ground-targeted AoE effects to feel punishing or frustrating. Hunters just experienced this with Lunar Storm in War Within and this was remedied by allowing Lunar Storm to move. This problem was also seen with abilities like Death and Decay, Wild Spirits, and Soulforge Embers (the old hunter legendary that was very similar to Flamefang Pitch). When the player has no control over enemies that can simply move (or be moved) out of an ability with a moderate cooldown, it feels bad.

Talent tree layout

Currently, the top ⅓ of the tree only has 8 talent points. We have to take every single talent before moving further and this feels restrictive. Adding just one more talent point, such as the proposed Serpent Sting ability, would allow Survival hunters to have a little more freedom at the top of the talent tree.

Spec Description
Pretty minor concern but just wanted to mention the Survival spec description in the talent pane.

An adaptive ranger who favors using explosives, animal venom, and coordinated attacks with their bonded beast.

Well, we don’t have any animal venom to use currently, to loop back into my thoughts on adding Serpent Sting Back. Additionally, the preferred weapons do not show our new ability to dual wield.

Thanks for reading all this!

One last note: we are maintaining a bug sheet with a list of all hunter bugs. Currently this only includes Survival but should get updated throughout Alpha/Beta for each spec.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SyyJ9FJ-kU5LMMTsaXIesOUE4dY8cDiTkAVc-s0qw9M/edit?gid=2087243201#gid=2087243201

[Goluboj-moon-guard]

@Linxy

Multi-Shot has had an odd place in Beast Mastery’s kit, so we’re giving it an update, causing it to be replaced in the Beast Mastery spec tree with a new pet-sourced attack that deals substantial damage in AOE while also activating effects like Beast Cleave and Kill Cleave.

So…with Barrage gone, and Multi-Shot out, BM has no multiple target ranged options anymore?

I understand the pet-based class fantasy of BM, but the Hunter is still there too, with a gun/arrow. Having your pet do all of the work feels Pokemon-ish. I’ll have more detailed thoughts when I see the rework in total later though, after I get a hunter made.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

1. General hunter tree feedback:

• Hunter’s mark no longer having CD feels excellent, allowing you to swap targets. 3% damage buff instead of 5% above 80% is very good, maybe even too good for PVE.
• The defensive buffs feel really good (1min Exhilaration, 20sec Feign Death, 2min Turtle, 2min Cheetah + dodge talent). Excellent work in this regard.

Hunter CC feels excessively pruned:

• Scatter/bursting shot REMOVED
• Explosive/implosive trap REMOVED
• Tar trap CHANGED to only slow rather than root
• Scare beast on CHOICE NODE with tar trap

So with my setup from live for example, I lost 4!! CC abilities:

• scatter shot
• explosive trap
• tar trap root
• scare beast.

Now, as hunter, your CC consists of Freezing Trap, Binding shot and Intimidation.

All other classes lost 1 CC ability, if at all. Rogue still has Gouge, warrior still has Shockwave, etc.

2. Marksmanship general feedback

• BUG: Every volley damage event gives Lock and Load, rather than casting Volley, resulting in much higher damage than intended during Volley. Impossible to properly test AOE damage until fixed.

• Casting Aimed shot feels very unsatisfying, especially in PVP combat. You can almost never get Aimed shot casts off, and when you do, the result is mediocre.

• The rotation feels too simplified - all interesting buffs were removed. Doing damage as MM hunter does not feel engaging or rewarding. Rapid fire off CD, cast Aimed shot into Precise shots consumer, use Kill shot procs. Literally that is it.

• Trueshot button turning into Withering fire/Arcane chakram is a good and flavorful idea, but both of these abilities are a DPS loss during Trueshot currently.

Overall, I can’t emphasize enough how bad 3sec Aimed shot cast feels. Every time you do it you have the feeling you did something wrong to end up with such a long cast.

3. Survival general feedback

• Survival feels absurdly oversimplified to a level that does not make sense. Use bomb off CD, if you have focus Raptor strike, if you don’t have focus Kill command. This is the rotation. I don’t think any player would feel good or engaged playing this for more than a minute.
• No Aspect of the Eagle feels very bad, a big loss in the kit of the spec.

4. BM general feedback

I had no heart to test BM after seeing MM and SV changes. I will do this another day.

[Slant-drenden (Slant)]

In Midnight alpha Hunter’s Mark is a raid debuff making the target take 3% increased damage from all sources.

This appears to conflict with design goals from the recent dev blog on “abilities without meaningful gameplay” since it should always be used in openers. The only strategic consideration is whether your target will live long enough to be worth a GCD.

I love that hunters are getting a raid debuff, but I don’t love this implementation.

[Dollguts-proudmoore]

Here’s some feedback for Survival Hunter based off of a few days of testing with a PvE focus.

AoE Gameplay too similar to Single Target

As it stands now, our rotation/gameplay loop is nearly identical between single target and AoE encounters. We do not have any sort of AoE buff management like Blade Flurry or Whirlwind (a la Outlaw Rogue or Fury Warrior) nor do we have any dedicated AoE button to enable AoE. We press Wildfire Bomb at the same cadence we would in single target and fill the GCDs with Raptor Strike.

I feel it’s very important to add an AoE button or some sort of different loop to AoE or single-target, or I fear many people will get bored of the same loop regardless of fight.

Perhaps Boomstick could be moved up in the tree and it’s cooldown greatly shortened, perhaps Carve could be added with Beast Cleave, but I really feel something needs to be added to keep moment-to-moment gameplay exciting and different in ST/AoE.

Flamefang Pitch

While conceptually a very cool ability (with an awesome name to boot!) I feel that having a static ground target ability on a 30 second cooldown be re-examined. A large portion of War Within’s feedback for the Sentinel Hero tree (Survival/Marksmanship) was that how frustrating it felt to throw down Lunar Storm and have targets immediately move out of it. To have such a cool concept be marred by frustrating gameplay elements won’t be super fun. I feel either the cooldown should be shortened or it should be turned into just a giga DoT instead of terrain effects. Speaking of terrain effects, it’s very hard to see anything under the fire. As a melee DPS, we’ll be standing right on top of the fiery visuals, so we won’t really be able to see any sort of mechanic underneath.

Dual Wield and Two Hander

As mentioned above, currently dual wield doesn’t function at all, but I assume that will be fixed. However, all of our abilities don’t include any sort of off-hand weapon functionality numerically, so dual-wielding will be a bit weaker right out of the gates. Are there plans to add off-hand weapon dps or off hand stats factored into our abilities?

Boomstick

This ability is just not really exciting on a 1 minute cooldown for how cool the visual is. Obviously tuning isn’t finished, but conceptually it’s very hard to consider this when Flamefang Pitch exists. Maybe this could be our new AoE button, or some sort of gameplay loop CDR added?

[Slant-drenden (Slant)]

@Goluboj-moon-guard

So…with Barrage gone, and Multi-Shot out, BM has no multiple target ranged options anymore?

I’m personally OK with the spec fantasy aspect of Wild Thrash (the BM replacement for multi-shot).

The problem is it’s tied to your pet’s location and doesn’t include a charge component like Kill Command and Stomp. This is really awkward.

Another issue with BM AE is just how many talent points it takes to make the button work, a legacy of many patches trying to fix it over the years. BM needs a whopping four talents. All three “cleaves” could be combined into one talent or added passively to Wild Thrash, which would open-up player choice in the tree.

Reference AE talents:

• Wild Thrash
• Beast Cleave
• Kill Cleave
• Dire Cleave

[Goluboj-moon-guard]

Also Wild Thrash never comes up in the One Button Assist, but that’s likely just because it’s new/in development and the One Button options will be reworked when everything is set to go prelaunch, I imagine.

[Leak-2070612 (Leak)]

Survival Apex Talents

After playing with Survival over the weekend, there are some concerns over our Apex Talents (Raptor Swipe).

We expect Raptor Swipe (Survival Hunter’s Apex Talent) to provide meaningful and exciting moments of AOE in between your chunky explosive spells.

Visually, this talent is great! The Raptor Swipe talent looks nice and the final talent where your pet attacks looks good as well. However, the actual damage of Raptor Swipe seems lacking in AoE, to the point where we might not even run these talents and instead place them in better suited nodes. It feels a bit odd that the stated goal of Raptor Swipe is to provide exciting moments in AoE but that these nodes feel more impactful in Single Target.

Currently, our talent tree has many talents and effects that modify Raptor Strike but do not buff Raptor Swipe. Looking at spelldata, it seems like Raptor Swipe is intended to be roughly half of Raptor Strike damage, but this falls off quickly when you consider Mongoose Fury, procs like Wallop, and other passive nodes that buff Raptor Strike damage.

Could it be changed so that Raptor Swipe is based off of Raptor Strike damage? For example, it would just hit up to 5 targets for 50% of the damage of Raptor Strike.

This issue, along with the lack of dedicated AoE button (causing single target and aoe encounters to play exactly the same, covered more in my initial post) raises concern for the state of Survival AoE.

[Goluboj-moon-guard]

BM Hunter

Okay, I’ve had some time to really dig in to the talent trees and have a look. I see that we’re back to more or less forcing the Animal Companion talent, since not taking it locks you out of nearly all of your AOE and Beast Cleave abilities.

When I was first rolling with the default talents, I was like, “WHY do I have SO MANY PETS?” Not just two from Animal Companion, but also Dire Beast, the stampede, is that HATI what is he doing here, and there’s ANOTHER Dire Beast. Nearly the whole left side of the tree is built around Dire Beast and it’s just not a talent that I find exciting or that I like.

So okay, that’s what the right side of the tree is for. But here are the abilities unrelated to managing an entire zoo that I lose out on if I do:

• Alpha Predator
• Aspect of the Beast
• Wild Thrash
• Beast Cleave
• Go for the Throat
• Kill Cleave
• Brutal Companion

By not picking any of that, that’s basically all of my AOE with the exception of the underwhelming Stomp and with the removal of things like Barrage and Multi-Shot the right side of the tree has nothing to compensate for that.

My personal class fantasy is a hunter doing fancy shooting while their one empowered, beefy pet mauls the target and keeps them busy. I’d love to get that point in Animal Companion back, but it’s linked to way too many unrelated talents because of its positioning in the tree.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Hello,

Being primarily a PVP player, I tested PVP as much as I could at this stage (duels)

So with the starter gear I have (22% haste) my Aimed shot cast time is 2.5sec

I cannot get off a single Aimed shot in PVP. My stuns are both 3sec. GCD on Intimidation/Binding shot + Aimed shot cast time is more than 3sec, people are out of the stun already before Aimed shot cast is over, and CC me or avoid it in other ways.

Even if I do manage to cast an Aimed shot (f.e. from stealth or off of Freezing trap, which you would never do in arena because trap is for healer) the damage is at best mediocre.

In summary, staying in place and casting long Aimed shots does not work in PVP for MM. Feels slow and frustrating and I’m not a destruction warlock who can set up chaos bolts. I don’t think any amount of gear would change how painful aimed shot feels atm.

[Leak-2070612 (Leak)]

Further Survival Feedback

I just wanted to provide some further feedback for Survival Hunter. Everything in my earlier posts still stands but I wanted to further expand on two problem areas:

Rotational Issues

As we are now in week 2 of testing, it is very apparent that Survival gameplay has some deeply concerning gameplay issues. The gameplay loop for both Single Target and AoE encounters is exactly the same right now. This rotation has been pruned TOO far and lacks skill expression and engaging gameplay. There has been a lot of feedback within the (small) Survival community that this would get boring very quickly. We have no way to interact with multiple targets and relying on apex talent procs for a tiny amount of AoE damage is not satisfying and leaves me worried for the state of Survival AoE.

With how much Survival has been simplified, I believe adding a dedicated AoE button won’t add too much cognitive load. It doesn’t have to be anything complex; it could be a simple “Press X to deal AoE damage”. This ability should only be used for AoE and should not be ideal to press with only one target. It could even interact with our new apex talents.

There is also room to add some sort of maintenance debuff/DoT on single target, such as Lacerate or Serpent Sting. Abilities like this could be given a short cooldown with an equally short duration so it can only be applied to one target at a time to avoid becoming overly complex. This also fits into the kit by adding either an additional bleed or poison.

Dual Wield versus 2H Weapons

Now that dual wielding works on the Alpha, it is clear that there is a disparity between the damage of DW and 2H weapons.

Currently, abilities are dealing noticeably more damage with a 2H weapon vs dual-wielding. All of our abilities do not have dual-wield scaling (no off-hand damage included in the damage calculation), meaning 2H weapons will just deal more damage with abilities.

This does leave me wondering how these choices will be balanced. Pack Leader is leaning into dual-wielding, as talents such as Lethal Barbs provide such a large amount of focus generation and incentivize dual-wielding. Talents like Wildfire Imbuement also incentivize dual-wielding. Sentinel does not lean into one weapon type. Are we expected to carry around BOTH two-handed weapons and two one-handers? Normalizing these effects and adding some type of weapon-speed based scaling onto these talents could help equalize both types of weapons.

Alpha Bugs

We are maintaining a spreadsheet that contains any bugs we have found so far. We are reporting these as we find them but perhaps this sheet will be of use as well:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SyyJ9FJ-kU5LMMTsaXIesOUE4dY8cDiTkAVc-s0qw9M/edit?gid=2087243201#gid=2087243201

[Dollguts-proudmoore]

Posting on Behalf of Babbs from EU:

Hi, I really welcome this Survival rework and I’m looking forward to the testing evolving. I really support work on better defining the spec theme, being clear where we fit into the game, and I particularly welcome anything that aims to address the skepticism we face from the rest of the player base.

I agree with others in this thread that this new iteration of Survival is both not hitting your stated design goals / philosophy and isn’t what we’d hoped for the future of the spec. I don’t think this first iteration makes Survival game-play clearer or easier to understand for new or non-seasoned players. Our little Survival community is currently engaged in theory crafting and speculation about what you might be intending to do / achieve, but its frankly taken some time for us to get this far. Nothing is immediately plain or understandable. I believe this goes against your stated design philosophy and intent to move away from specs that require prior knowledge or guides to understand. Consequently, I don’t think this iteration comes out as very approachable.

Combat rotation and ‘Dump’ Play style

• The new Mongoose Fury and no CD on Kill Command seems to establish a Focus ‘dump’ and recovery cycle that is more akin to an Arcane Mage. It is unlike any other Hunter spec’s resource management design (or indeed the current design of Survival Focus management.) There are currently no clear prompts or indicators in game that align with this play style. I also personally don’t think that mostly repeatedly hitting one button (Raptor Strike) during burst windows is very ‘fun’.
• Your new version of Mongoose Fury itself has the potential to require parsing conditions to know when to enter a Focus recovery phase, i.e., whether a player continuing to press Raptor Strike is better damage output than pressing other abilities that have come off cooldown during the burst window (currently something that would require addons or rote rotations).
• This is most obvious for Pack Leader, where the importance of Kill Command in the kit feels misaligned with this ‘focus dump’ play style. I think this Survival iteration is at risk of creating scenarios like in Dragonflight S1, where, even if you’re core abilities (i.e. Wildfire Bomb) come off cooldown, you might not press them if you are in a burst window (which happened during Spearhead back then / and could possibly happen during Takedown now).
• The setup for this ‘dump’ play style itself risks being prescriptive and punishing. There is potential that you’ve created a Boomstick/Takedown ‘cooldown’ chain in ST that will be part of sequence of abilities that players will need to cast in the same order during the cooldown window and learn by rote to setup properly (see Mongoose Rounds functionality). This doesn’t align with your ‘Combat for Everyone’ post.

New Abilities and Specialization Tree

• The basic combat rotation feels over pruned and overly simplified. The removal of Explosive Shot and Butchery is really noticeable. I’m concerned that you might have misinterpreted our community’s current frustrations with how they fit into the Survival rotation / toolkit as a desire to see these abilities removed. This is not the case.
• There are currently very few triggered effects (sometimes none depending on talent choice) to react to, which amplifies the monotony.
• Lethal Calibration is a maintenance buff without any other strategic considerations (in contravention of the ‘Combat for Everyone’ post).
• Hatchet Toss seems to have little purpose for a completely new spell (outside of Hogstrider functionality) and is now taking up the slot of an ability / spell that could be far more interesting. I can see very few use cases for this ability; if you’re out of melee range, you’d just hit Kill Command, because of the role it plays in the toolkit. I’d rather see Kill Shot return.
• The Survival tree has a lot of modifiers that make it very confusing – it seems that there is a design intent to establish ‘Fire’ pathing and ‘Bleed’ pathing, on top of distinct ‘ST’ and ‘AOE’ parts of the tree. But it’s currently not obvious or intuitive about how the player goes about bringing all of that together. The spec tree and the talent dependencies don’t correspond (or aren’t ‘weighted) to these choices and the pathing to the capstones isn’t very intuitive. There are also currently far too many 2-point nodes in the tree that are just +dmg modifiers.
• The Bleed talents don’t really synergize with the rest of the toolkit at all. I’d love to see you go big on a design that works with poisons and bleeds, provides rotation interaction (akin to other spec DoT functionality, i.e. Feral and Assassination), and aligns well with the Pack Leader Hero Tree.

AOE Rotation

• The AOE rotation is not well-defined. The game doesn’t make it clear what the right thing to do is in multi-target situations when Wildfire Bomb and Flamefang Pitch are on cooldown. Pressing your ST spender in AOE is not intuitive – this is something you seem to have moved away from elsewhere (even for Arcane Mages!) You’ve also created the opportunity for really unfun possibilities in the current gap in the AOE rotation e.g., potentially having to spread Sanctified Armaments or Sic ‘Em DoTs manually through tab targeting. This would be against your aim to reduce concentration demands. I’d really like to see Butchery back to fill this gap (ideally with some kind of DoT [Serpent Sting!] spreading mechanic.)
• Unpredictable (chance to proc) AOE abilities (Raptor Swipe) are also not fun, particularly because this ability has both a positioning requirement (which isn’t made clear to the player) and a target cap. Raptor Swipe is comparatively underwhelming, arbitrary, and punishing when set against the other spec Apex talents.
• Flamefang Patch as a targeted reticule and a static ground effect is counter to much of the encounter design in WoW and is particularly punishing when participating in PUGs or group content without comms. I’d like to see Explosive Shot return. An option for you to consider is that the current ground effect of Flamefang Patch could be a talent that adds a ‘fallout’ of an Explosive Shot detonation. This would remove the targeting requirement.
• If you are committed to the current design of Flamefang Patch, I’d hope you’d be open to some compromises, such as: i) Flamefang Patch being a choice node between “this spell is cast at a selected location” and “this spell is cast at your target; and/or: ii) NEW TALENT: Uncontrolled Firestorm: Your Flamefang Patch becomes even more volatile, seeking targets afflicted by Wildfire Bomb.

Overall, this version of Survival does not currently feel that fun or appropriately accessible. The potential to master the spec or optimize your performance currently resides in doing things that feel overly repetitive or unfun.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Hello friends,

Here is my updated feedback after the Wednesday alpha build, along with 2 bug reports (see below)

1. Marksmanship

• Volley giving endless Lock and Load procs bug fixed. Great job!
• Aimed shot got it’s PVP modifier back (1.6, same as on live). Very good change as it was hitting for quite low numbers on players for a 3 sec cast (like less than 5% of total health). Better now.
• Moonlight chakram now gives Lock and Load and Spotter’s mark. Excellent change! Now Sentinel has 2 guaranteed Lock and load procs - one from Volley, one from Moonlight chakram and 2 guaranteed Spotter’s marks - one from Trueshot and one from Moonlight chakram. Feels great to play, very fluid and chakram is no longer a DPS loss to press during trueshot.
• Bug: the “Sentinel” talent (first point in the Sentinel hero tree) does not seem to have a DPS effect in game, only changes the eagle to an owl. The damage buff is the same as Spotter’s mark, until you take that 15% damage increase talent down the tree.
• Bug: kill shot does not work with Aspect of the hydra (as stated in the tooltip).

2. Beast mastery

• Wild trash (new AOE ability) is by far the strongest attack in single target. If you have 2 enemies to attack so you can activate it, your single target DPS increases significantly. I’m not sure if this is intended, although it feels good to play.

This is all for now

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Hello,

Feedback about Survival after 2 days of playing the spec:

• The Apex talents incentivize you to only use Raptor strike during the 8sec Takedown cooldown window. Otherwise you’re missing out on 50% of your Apex talent points.
• The optimal play is to use Boomstick first to build 4 stacks of Mongoose fury, and then to use Takedown (and only spam Raptor strikes - see previous point). This is counter-intuitive. Players would think they must use Takedown and then Boomstick during your cooldown window.
• Hatchet toss lacks integration with the rest of the kit. There is only 1 talent point in the Survival tree that interacts with this ability. The only true interaction is from Pack leader.
• The CD of Harpoon is 30sec instead of 20sec. This makes it longer than the CD of Freezing trap (25 sec) which feels weird in PVP. Harpoon should be 25 if not 20sec CD.
• The Apex talents have unavoidable cleave damage which breaks Freezing trap in PVP. If you trap the healer and the kill target moves to them, you have no way of avoiding breaking the trap during Takedown.
• The rotation feels like “spam Raptor strike and Kill command”. Every 1min you get to do something fun for 10 sec (Boomstick and Takedown) and then for the next 50seconds you hit raptor strike, kill command and the occasional bomb.
• The Sentinel hero tree feels much worse to play than Pack leader. Giving Survival the MM Spotter’s mark mechanic does not work out well in practice in my opinion.

[Portergauge-moon-guard (Portergauge)]

After having played Survival Hunter for about a week on the Alpha, I have quite a lot of thoughts, that I will break down into the Good, the Bad, and the Cosmetic.

THE GOOD:

Mongoose Fury:

• Overall, I think that the biggest triumph of this new Survival is the reworked Mongoose Fury. It is much more intuitive to know when to use Raptor Strike now, while still having a place for skill with knowing how to build high stacks at the right time. I worry that the lack of individual buff timers may lead to some complexity (especially with no WeakAuras to help), but I think that as a baseline, this is a much healthier direction to go with stack management than the existing talent. It also retains the animations of Mongoose Bite, which is a plus.

Build Diversity:

• Another really good thing in the spec tree is the current build options. Even just from a casual view without in-depth build creation, the options between a Bleed build versus a Fire damage build are very enticing, particularly with the animation change on Wildfire Bomb. I think that these are really strong options to emphasize two different builds centered around consistent bleed upkeep vs Wildfire Imbuement windows, and I hope they’re properly capitalized on.

1-Handed Weapons:

• Likewise, now that the CDR issue from Lunge has been solved, I think that bringing back dual-wielding 1h weapons will be a fairly easy success. There are some talents to still work out, like Pack Leader hard-mandating daggers because of its new Lethal Barbs talent granting focus per auto attack. Hopefully once talents like that are fixed, it can come down to a simple matter of preference/min-maxxing and not core spec design.

• I do also think that, similar to what Fury Warrior is getting with the ability to transmog 1-handed weapons onto 2-handers, Survival should get a system that allows them to transmog a 2-hander over their dual-wield weapons and vice-versa. This is already possible via Artifacts on a spec like Frost Death Knight, and with the new transmog system separating your item appearances from Gear Slot, there should not be an issue of not being able to transmog onto an empty off-hand slot.

Hatchet Toss:

• Lastly, while it is minor and not super relevant to core gameplay, I do generally like the idea behind Hatchet Toss adding back a freely castable, no cooldown ranged button. Losing the separate Serpent Sting button in TWW was a huge loss for easy mob tagging and running old instances. The high focus cost might be a hindrance to this, but it’s still a better step.

I do have a lot to say about Hatchet Toss in the base rotation, however, which leads to…

THE BAD:

This section will, unfortunately, be quite a bit longer than the previous one. I think there are a lot of things that have been removed that lead to a worse quality of gameplay loop for the spec, and a lot of needless loss of utility.

Rotational Simplification:

• This is clearly a stated aim of the overall class design for Midnight, and I do think the removal of certain uncontrollable passive effects like Kill Command resets are worth pruning to make the rotation easier to understand. However, I also unfortunately think that this simplification has gone way too far.
• Most notably, I think that the loss of Tip of the Spear is a massive blow to the core of the spec. Its addition in TWW was a massive boon towards giving each of Survival’s core rotational buttons a clear purpose. Similarly, Kill Command’s current iteration (with a cooldown) has a much clearer place in the spec beyond how it feels on the Alpha, which is a frustrating filler to prevent you from using Raptor Strike.
• As a result of the removal of Tip of the Spear, the core rotation of Survival is just… boring. There is no meaningful thought made for what to press, it is simply a choice of:

1. Is Wildfire Bomb up? Use Wildfire Bomb until you can’t.
2. Do you have focus? Use Raptor Strike until you can’t.
3. Do you not have focus? Use Kill Command until you can use Raptor Strike.

• The only moments outside of this core rotation with abilities like Explosive Shot, Fury of the Eagle, or Butchery/Flanking Strike have also been removed and replaced with short-duration, 1 minute cooldown abilities, resulting in a spec with very little excitement outside of those short 8-second windows.

Hatchet Toss:

• While I appreciate the idea behind Hatchet Toss, it unfortunately feels quite useless in Survival’s current alpha iteration. Its only point of use is when you have the Hogstrider buffs from Pack Leader, which comes with its own issues.
• Currently, the Quick Toss talent counts as an automatic usage of the Hatchet Toss ability, meaning you are discouraged from actively pressing Hatchet Toss on the global cooldown with the Hogstrider buff active. This leads to the ability feeling more punishing than rewarding, if RNG does not favor you with a Quick Toss proc.
• If I had to make a recommendation here, I would instead Kill Shot back to the spec, and tie procs like Hogstrider and Quick Toss to that instead. It has a much snappier animation, a much more iconic place in the Hunter fantasy, and would allow for Survival to retain an execute phase.

Utility:

• Currently, Harpoon feels quite barebones as an ability without Terms of Engagement as a talent option. The 30 second cooldown feels particularly restrictive compared to the engagement tools of other melee specs, and the loss of the reset on kills significantly lessens the mobility of Survival in Mythic+.
• This applies to all hunter specs: while the addition of Horsehair Tether to the class tree is a welcome change, it comes with a significant caveat: Hunters now have no way to independently trigger this. Both Implosive Trap and Bursting Shot have been removed from the class tree, leaving the class with no displacement options. This may be an overall intended move away from these kinds of spells in Midnight, but on a personal level, it makes Binding Shot feel much less useful.

Takedown:

• I understand the intents behind Takedown (something more than a mere damage buff major cooldown), but unfortunately in its current state, it simply has the feeling of less impact for the same cooldown as Coordinated Assault. The difference of an 8-second buff compared to 20-seconds is staggering, and the auto attack speed does not feel significant enough to make up for that.
• The gameplay inside the Takedown window is also very unsatisfying. Thanks to the design of the Raptor Swipe Apex talent, you are incentivized to simply spam Raptor Strike as much as possible, with a significant DPS loss if you are forced to cast Kill Command for Focus. This is a significant step back from the simplicity of Coordinated Assault as a window of overall increased damage.
• Lastly, I think the current animation for Takedown is unfortunately awful. It tries to retain the leap animation of Flanking Strike, but at any significant range it results in the player tripping over themselves and stumbling the rest of the way. I think it should just be a straight charge like Coordinated Assault (ideally with the same 40 yard range, but that’s personal preference).

AoE Abilities:

• At the moment, there will very likely be almost no differences in the core rotation of Survival between Single Target and AoE scenarios.
• Currently, this also leads to an extreme reliance on our Apex Talent, as it is is our only AoE in the base rotation besides Wildfire Bomb. Unfortunately, it is also entirely RNG-dependent, leaving very little self-determination for your damage output.
• At its core, I think this comes down to the lack of a dedicated AoE button of any kind. Currently, this function is served by Butchery and its talent node against Flanking Strike, and I do not see why such an easy and simply choice cannot remain in the spec design. It would both add a clear difference in AoE vs ST builds, and also offer another button to the core rotation.
• Flamefang Pitch adds an option for some small changes to the ST vs AoE builds of Survival, but it comes with a downside: it feels terrible to use. It feels very similar to Death and Decay as a static ground ability, but without any integration into the rest of the kit. Abilities like these have always been frustrating, especially in Mythic+, and this will significantly reduce the mobility and fluidity of Survival if it goes live.

THE COSMETIC:

Beyond gameplay concerns, I think a major frustration for me is the continued indecisiveness of what the Survival Hunter fantasy is supposed to be. This has arguably been an issue since the specialization was first reworked, where they have always had a dissonance between their semi-ranged bombardier fantasy and their agile pet coordination fantasy. Unfortunately, in the efforts to redefine that into something definitive in Midnight, the specialization is more confused than ever.

• If you want to be a semi-ranged bombardier with gadgets and grenades? That fantasy is undercut not only by the reliance on pet attacks, but by the replacement of the crossbow abilities like Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, and Kill Shot with Hatchet Toss.

• If you want to be a Rexxar-style pet coordination fighter? That fantasy is not only undercut by Wildfire Bombs, but by Flamefang Pitch as well, which essentially requires you to ignore your pet being in a pit of burning tar on a cosmetic level. It doesn’t lend to feeling very “coordinated” with your pets.

• Do you want to focus on the melee agility aspect, with the spear (and now 1h weapon) visuals? That fantasy has been undercut by the removal of all melee attack abilities except Raptor Strike, with the snappy animation of the spec’s Artifact ability from Legion, Fury of the Eagle, now replaced by slow shotgun blasts with Boomstick.

All of this is to say: Survival is fighting with itself for the fantasy it wants to tell. Newly added abilities like Boomstick and Flamefang Pitch undermine the unique melee pet coordination fantasy that was established in Legion, but at the same time, the removal of abilities like Kill Shot and Explosive Shot undermine the stated intent of a ‘crafty and bomb-centric fantasy’ that was stated in the Midnight patch notes.

The cosmetic and roleplay fantasy aspect may be secondary to the overall gameplay flow, but it is an important aspect of the spec fantasy to many players since the rework in Legion. There is no spec in the game like Survival, even with its at time muddled fantasies, and it would be a shame to see these changes muddle its unique archetype even further.

CONCLUSIONS:

Overall, I understand where many of the changes are coming from. The simplification of much of Survival’s kit is not unique to the spec, and comes alongside the overall push for clarity and simplicity in spec design across the game in Midnight. However, I do think that Survival was not a spec that had a large number of the unhelpful, untrackable modifiers in its existing TWW spec design, and I think that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of over-simplification that leaves the base rotation in a very unengaging position.

TWW Survival already has a very simple and intuitive design at its core: the relationship between Tip of the Spear and your builder/spender buttons. It has a heavy-hitter with Wildfire Bomb, a filler with Raptor Strike, and a choice between Single-Target vs AoE focus with Flanking Strike/Butchery. Even if many of the other spells and passives remain pruned, I believe that the core rotational framework of Tip of the Spear should remain at the heart of Survival.

I don’t think that many of the intents behind Survival’s rework are bad. Many of the overcomplicated, unintuitive things like ability resets are probably wise to remove to amplify the core spec fantasy. My hope is that through feedback, some of the engaging aspects of the specialization can be returned or replaced over the course of Alpha, to keep the pieces of Survival that were so well honed into the spec we have now in TWW.

[Kirenaika-daggerspine]

Hello,

Gameplay feedback for Marksmanship after 1 week of playing:

1. Long aimed shot cast time is killing the joy of playing the spec:

• in dungeons mobs die too often while you’re casting 3sec aimed shots and you just wasted 2-3 sec doing nothing, and you start casting it to the next one. There are times when you try to cast for 5-6 seconds and you can’t get a single aimed shot off for different reasons (mobs dying, repositioning, etc.) and you feel absolutely useless.
• in the open world if a mob doesn’t die quickly enough, it’s just hitting you at 20-30% health and you’re standing in place casting the 3-sec aimed shot while any other spec would have killed it off in 1 sec or so. Feels slow and painful.
• in PVP - good luck landing a single aimed shot! You don’t have scatter shot, explosive trap or tar trap root to set up the long aimed shots. You cast for 2-3 sec - stunned at the end of the cast. Try to cast again - they move away. Try to cast again, stunned/disarmed again. You can spend a good 10 sec trying to cast one aimed shot to get your rotation going, and you can’t, while they’re killing you. Best chance is to use the Cheetah dodge talent and try to dodge melee CC while you’re casting. Miserable experience.
• Volley is 6sec duration. Aimed shot cast is 3sec. What you can do in Volley is Rapid fire → Instant Aimed shot. By that time you have 2 -3sec of Volley left. You start casting Aimed shot but very often by the time the cast ends Volley is over.

2. Every 45sec / 1min 30sec you get to do something fun and then the rotation slows down a lot. You can cast volley → instant aimed shot every 45 sec, and when you have Trueshot you can do 2 instant aimed shots (one from volley, one from Moonlight chakram) which feels good and fun, but after Trueshot it slows down even more.

3. Kill shot procs feels unimpactful. Since you don’t have Improved Deathblow/Razor Fragments any more, you just fire normal kill shots when you have procs, which hit for very little damage and are not the “oh wow” moment you have on live. Sometimes you have a Kill shot proc, but not 2 stacks of Precise shots, so you delay the Kill shot till you have cast an Aimed shot, which essentially means delaying it for 3 seconds. Feels bad.

4. Kill zone (attacking through walls) was very unique MM damage/utility since shadowlands that is now gone. Niche but allowed cheeky play in PVP/sometimes in PVE. Was sad to see this go.

5. I miss Explosive shot as a separate ability. If it existed, this would break out the monotony of the out-of-trueshot rotation and make it more fluid with instant aimed shots.

In summary: the way Marksmanship feels and play on live is perfection. The best it’s ever been. Going from this to Alpha gameplay with no Explosive shot → Lock n Load and 3 sec Aimed shots is a big shock.

I think players would appreciate the simplification of Alpha MM hunter gameplay if it was more fluid and less “stand in one place and cast”.

[Lvladen-sargeras]

@Portergauge-moon-guard

• If you want to be a semi-ranged bombardier with gadgets and grenades? That fantasy is undercut not only by the reliance on pet attacks, but by the replacement of the crossbow abilities like Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, and Kill Shot with Hatchet Toss.
• If you want to be a Rexxar-style pet coordination fighter? That fantasy is not only undercut by Wildfire Bombs, but by Flamefang Pitch as well, which essentially requires you to ignore your pet being in a pit of burning tar on a cosmetic level. It doesn’t lend to feeling very “coordinated” with your pets.
• Do you want to focus on the melee agility aspect, with the spear (and now 1h weapon) visuals? That fantasy has been undercut by the removal of all melee attack abilities except Raptor Strike, with the snappy animation of the spec’s Artifact ability from Legion, Fury of the Eagle, now replaced by slow shotgun blasts with Boomstick.

Beautifully said. Survival feels like it has no sense of clear direction right now, both gameplay and fantasy wise. I hope everyone gets a way to enjoy their fantasy of survival hunter but clearly its not there right now on the Alpha.

I hope they take a hard look at Legion survival and bring back a lot of what made it cool there. Midnight survival has lost its class fantasy while making the gameplay overly simplified.