The survival changes have been so good the last two weeks. I was ready main this class in TWW and then today happened. The previous iteration of flanking strike where it was a short cd was amazing. This current change could not have left it in a worse state. Flanking strike is borderline unplayable and flat out no longer enjoyable to press. Totally disappointing.
4 Likes
Really love the overall changes to survival thus far, it’s got a great flow to it (minus a few bugs). However, the flanking strike change (being tied into kill command) feels much worse than the iteration last week. It felt much better! I understand streamlining abilities and rotation but the class will feel empty if abilities continue to be removed or simplified/combined. Thanks for the great work so far! Please give flanking strike back
2 Likes
Please make Improved Steady Shot and Crack Shot baseline, thank you!
5 Likes
The Flanking Strike change is horrible. It felt so good to use it last week, and now you may not even want to take it in a lot of situations because of how potentially dangerous the random charge is. It was a big meaningful hit and now it just seems like precarious nothingness.
I’m not super sad to see death chakram go, but some of these changes seem to be a severe overreaction to perceived “button bloat” for our spec. After the first round of adjustments to the changes, the rotation was feeling great. Don’t gut this spec until there’s barely anything left to press.
Also, please buff Fury of the Eagle and make it worth taking. Perhaps consider baking Ruthless Marauder and the Season 3 set bonus into the base ability so that it feels powerful on its own and isn’t a 2-3 point investment. It’s an iconic survival ability, and potentially outright avoiding a capstone AOE ability in AOE builds is just weird.
7 Likes
These are some amazing changes for Survival Hunter.
Imploding Trap is like jump height, and is very underwhelming.
I would just say the points below Coordinated Assault feel even more lackluster now with the Flanking Strikes change and the flow of the tree is not very accessible.
I wish the top of the spec tree was wider with butchery and it’s passives before the gate, and then compress Gate 1 talents with more accessibility to the side nodes.
Flanking Strike procing and disabling > 25yrd kill command is awful I’d rather disable the charge unless ur within 25 yards but let me still use the skill.
Class changes
Implosive Trap - This is one of the things I asked for so super happy to see it added. The long 1.5m CD for an AoE kick is a bit of a letdown though when you have other classes with 1 minute AoE stops like Monk’s Leg Sweep.
Territorial Instincts redesigned - I’m not a fan of this change. This is much worse than the previous iteration. The 8s of 10% less damage taken is really 3s after the 5s of being stunned which I guess is useful in overworld content or the slim chance the mob targets the hunter again with their cast. I’d still prefer this to be a 5 yard stun.
Removal of Steel Trap & Death Chakram - Good changes. DC was kind of button bloat and Steel Trap was not a good button to press as a slightly better Ice Trap.
Notes: I’d still like to see the PvP nodes be usable in PvE. Make Ghillie Suit allow camo in combat and Roar of Sacrifice a 10% DR for a party member.
Beast Mastery
These changes seem pretty minor but are fine.
Survival
Sic’ Em Redesigned - Great change.
Coordinated Assault Redesigned - Great change, much more simple.
Symbiotic Adrenaline Changed - Good change, makes the shorter CA feel more impactful.
Flanking Strike - I feel like these changes were from old feedback that FS was a better KC (in DF) and while I appreciate the less button bloat, there are concerns about ‘leaping to the target’ as KC is a ranged ability. Also, this iteration of FS doesn’t proc/activate interactions with KC making it now a worse KC technically with this iteration.
Personally, I’m fine with this change because we have Aspect of the Eagle baseline, Disengage if needed, and we’re generally in melee already (I also forget FS is even a button at times as it was so unimpactful in DF) but a lot of people in the Hunter Discord seem to dislike this change and prefer last week’s interaction with FS being a spender and feel like this is an overreaction to the button bloat feedback. I’m fine either way.
Mongoose Fury(MF) Reworked - It’s more of a maintenance buff now. This somewhat feels like the right direction since we have a lot of buttons competing to be clicked during the window between bombs, KC/FS, ES, SH, CA, and harpooning for focus with ToE. I suppose since it only takes 2 globals for MB to do more than RS throughout an entire encounter, the change seems positive for raid while maintaining the filler role (or not being taken at all) for M+ still. Overall, decent change in the right direction.
Wildfire Infusion - Haven’t tested this but I’m sure this okay. Quick Shot casting off of KC casts instead of resets probably makes the KC reset chance reduced to 10 fine.
Deadly Duo - Can the tooltip just be changed to ‘Reduced SH by 30s’? Not sure why it needs to repeat the description of Spearhead.
The Hunter class still has some issues I go over in my feedback post below:
21 Likes
Not thrilled with the removal of the chakrams. Tho I suppose we didn’t need two focus builder spells, since Dire Beast now has that component.
It just makes Beast Master even more boring looking visually.
I hope we really do see a significant uptick in damage for what we’ve lost. 
I’d still rather have Trailblazer where Hunter’s Avoidance is.
Can you all at least make Explosive shot more interesting looking? Make the explosion bigger?
The BM tree is still TOOO expensive.
It feels like there aren’t enough points unless you strip everything interesting out.
Is the intent to have our tree only get one end cap if we go with multi target?
I still would rather have Bloodshed and Basilisk Collar swap positions.
3 Likes
I am dissapointed to see Death chakram pulled from survival. I thought it fit the toolkit and playstyle of resource management and burn phases. I hope you can restore that gameplay.
- Death Chakram
- Developer’s note: One of the biggest complaint’s we’re seeing in the Hunter community is button bloat. Death Chakram was a relatively high-frequency button that you had to click before all of your damage abilities, creating something of a launch sequence for every Hunter specialization. Its removal will let us bake the lost power into each spec’s kit while also reducing the button-presses required before you can begin damage.
6 Likes
Lets not forget Hunters are already excluded/not played when it comes to higher keys (for the most part), we need all the extra help we can get. Were already squishier then clothies and bring nothing to the group. Give us allll the dps
It’s chance to crit and Critical Strike Damage, not a repeat.
2 Likes
Overall I like the changes to survival. There is only a few notes I would like to add to them though. RIP Death Chakram, you just got a new fancy animation too.
Flanking Strike: I can’t count how many times I used the extra range on survival to use mechanics and I forget both flanking strike and CA have a tied in leap that makes me go into a danger zone like Volcoross. Now Kill command turns into FS every three uses and forces you to be melee to use it or leap at the enemy and mess up positioning. In addition do the concept of every three kill commands, you get a kill command replacement that takes none of the KC upgrades we now have a full hero tree and spec tree talents upgrading. Seems silly. Either separate FS to its previous iteration, or take our the leap portion and make everything KC stacks with attach to FS.
Mongoose: I personally am fine with this change but I have seen players say this removes any skill ceiling for survival. My small take is if the goal is to align the new tip of the spear KC weaving with MB windows, maybe add either the capability of Tip of the spear granting double MB stacks when consumed or have tip of the spear increase the duration of MB windows at a diminished rate so weaving can be beneficial at high stacks but still award those manage their MB windows properly.
4 Likes
Developers. please do not remove Death Chakram, I read that your thoughts were button bloat but this is not the case. Please revert the change.
9 Likes
Initial thoughts so far from a BM main.
With the removal of Death Chakram it ‘feels’ like BM lost a button since it wasn’t too bad of a button minus the opener. So overall I understand it getting removed since it must of felt that way for MM/Surv too. Now with out Death Chakram I was going to test with Dire Beast in its ‘place’, but now is behind either Hunter’s Prey/Venom’s Bite which both frankly feel bad to take as Kill Shot is very low prio for BM. Which leads to my next point.
With the changes to the pathing in the latest update, Wild Call is now limited to going through Training Expert(2 pointer). Overall ‘feels’ like we lost a point if we also wanted to go Dire Beast by requiring either Hunter’s Prey/Venom’s Bite and removing the pathing from Wild Call.
Just my feedback at first glance and testing it for a bit. Do more testing as the week goes on. Great rework overall so far and looking forward to Hunter in TWW.
5 Likes
Survival feedback:
- The redesign of Coordinated Assault in this build is excellent and I am super stoked for it. I also think that the 3 stacks of Tip being added to Symbiotic Adrenaline are a great change to make shorter cooldown CA more appealing. The functionality of Bombardier is both great and also awkward; the payoff being after CA ends is still strange and I feel could use some tweaking to make it feel less disjointed.
- Mongoose Bite is still without a clearly defined role or purpose. I am somewhat indifferent to this week’s change, though it really feels like the line between it and Raptor Strike is even more of a confusing issue today than it was yesterday. At this point, either move Raptor Strike to a baseline ability or delete Mongoose Bite. Mongoose Fury should also probably be returned to its previous version, though the lower stack of 3 could be fine. Please, add the animation of the 5-stack Mongoose Bite to the new 3-stack cap.
- The new version of Flanking Strike added this week is a very bad change. The spender version of the spell added in last week’s build was fantastic and I cannot imagine how the version replacing every 4th Kill Command was approved. Replacing a 50 yard generator with a 25 yard LEAP, rotationally, undermines huge elements of how the spec plays and the strategy used in all game modes. Please return Flanking Strike to its previous, independent active button, focus spender version. If you only do one change based on today’s Hunter feedback, let it be this one.
- I am largely ok with having a passive way of applying Serpent Sting, but I really think that the spell itself should be added back to the Hunter class as a baseline active ability. There are many useful ways that this spell was used, and having access to it independent of Viper’s Venom/Serpentstalker’s Trickery/Venom’s Bite will only be a positive for the class overall.
7 Likes
New Coordinated Assault is pog.
New Mongoose Fury is dog (maintenance buff is not exciting gameplay).
New Flanking Strike is truly an awful change. I’m pretty indifferent toward whether Flanking Strike should be a builder or spender (though spender felt more fun), however replacing Kill Command with Flanking Strike is really annoying and removes player agency. It removes the ability to use Kill Command from range if you need to (because it might charge you to boss or just be out of range entirely), and the fact that it doesn’t interact with any Kill Command talents means 1 in 4 presses of your KC button just don’t interact with several parts of your tree.
Flanking Strike should be reverted to being its own button (don’t just remove the charge, then it’s just a glorified KC damage buff every 3 casts which - what’s the point?).
7 Likes
Death Chakram gone, good Change.
Less Buttons to press in a ST situation.
Less buttons to press in AoE Situation.
Flanking Strike is a Bad change because it now forces you into melee range, when in the case of a melee mechanic you press Kill command among other buttons to fill in the rotation.
Needless to say it needs to be separated from Kill command. In it’s current iteration we see how applying Tip stacks is part of the resource management of the spec. But this makes the spec ultimately clunky and inhibitive to play in a situation when you would like to be able to control your character.
In all honesty, Having Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike as abilities with the current builds from the Hero Talent Trees: making us use Bomb and Kill command more often in our rotation, these buttons feel irrelevant to even use in a rotational gameplay loop.
Mongoose Fury changes make the class already feel like the Mongoose Fury buff is strictly just maintenance. If it falls off, Oh well I Guess. There should be some gameplay variation if there were to be a Strictly Single Target Situation which Mongoose fury fit into as a damage variable. If Mongoose Fury had interactions with other aspects of how the spec played, It would make it more appealing. That is however not the case on that side of the talent tree or Hero Talents.
7 Likes
Survival Hunter feedback round 3:
There are some very great changes. After playing around with them, the new Sic’ Em feels very fun to play with and is an appealing talent now. Coordinated Assault is much easier to use, and Quick Shot feels nice not having so much RNG behind it.
However, there are also some changes that are heading in the wrong direction.
Flanking Strike
Flanking Strike is a massive step backwards for several reasons:
-
Kill Command is a ranged ability and would be cast from ranged when we needed to be out of melee. Now Flanking Strike forces you into melee. This is bad in several situations, like running out of mechanics in PvE or kiting in PvP.
-
Flanking Strike does not interact with any of the Kill Command talents. We have an entire hero tree revolving around Kill Command, and half of the Survival tree revolves around it as well.
-
The version of Flanking Strike last week was incredible. This was not a contributor to button bloat or GCD bloat. It felt very nice having it as an individual button, in our own control, that could be used as a powerful focus spender and tip generator.
Mongoose Bite
I am neutral on the Mongoose Bite changes. Mongoose Bite had unique animations for every stack of Mongoose Fury (mostly the 5-stack) and we lost those, which I am sad to see go. Otherwise, it’s just fine. One downside is that this spell is just a red Raptor Strike now. As long as you press it once every 10 seconds, it will do more damage than Raptor Strike for the entire fight. Why do both of these exist?
Bloody Claws
Bloody Claws, somehow, got even worse with the Mongoose Bite change. This talent was already very unappealing. I still firmly believe this needs to buff Mongoose Fury in some way, like buffing the damage per stack of Mongoose Fury. We don’t need more Kill Command reset chances and 6% extra chance from Bloody Claws is not good at all.
10 Likes
Beta Build 6/25/24 Hunter Feedback
Disclaimer: Most of my feedback is going to be Marksmanship focused.
Miscellaneous (Edited to put this at the top because the Lunar Storm point is one of the things I feel most strongly about in this post.)
Odds and ends that I feel compelled to put into writing. Could be about anything!
- Lunar Storm from the Sentinel tree HAS to change. Please don’t make this another Wild Spirits situation where we’re panic typing to our tanks not to move out of our circles. Just as a point of comparison, Voidweaver Priest’s Entropic Rift will track and follow enemies. You’re telling me that our literal BIRD has to be stationary at the point its summoned? It either needs to attach to the initial enemy targeted or it needs to be able to follow your target. This should not be controversial or a point of contention between players and developers.
- I didn’t play hunter way back in the day but during Pandaria Black Arrow was a Survival thing, and the Black Arrow / Explosive Shot proc iteration of that era was the golden age. I don’t know if or when the other specs had access to it but its strange that Survival can’t be the Hero Talent spec that has Black Arrow.
Class Tree
- Death Chakram
It might be a hot take but I’m not particularly sad to see this ability go. As for the reason given being ‘button bloat’ I’m not entirely sure this was a bad culprit. In most play it was just one of those ‘push whenever its up’ buttons and pruning those kinds of things is fine in my opinion. There were moments when you’d sit on it for the damage amp but as long as overall damage is adequately adjusted I’m just as happy to not have this. My biggest concern with this change coincides with some MM specific issues with focus economy. Death Chakram generated 21 focus every 45 seconds which isn’t very much overall, but getting that focus going into a damage amp or CD was really really nice. Now with Multi-Shot being more expensive as well, going into an AoE burst phase is going to be really rough. More on focus economy in my MM section ahead.
- Intimidation and Bursting / Concussive Shot
Its pretty clear that Intimidation is going to be a dead talent for MM at this point. Despite the changes to Lone Wolf, in any content where you would want a stun, you won’t want to lose that damage buff even at its current 5%. With today’s changes Bursting and Concussive Shot are now on the left side of the tree locked exclusively behind Intimidation. If there are no changes to the way MM interacts with Intimidation I will probably never want that talent ever, which means I have to take it as a completely dead point if I want to get Bursting Shot. Aside from the PvP implications which I’m woefully unqualified to discuss, Bursting Shot can be extremely useful for dungeon content. Since its now in the class tree instead of the MM spec tree, I want to have access to it. Intimidation could also be used in this content but practically speaking, it won’t be. Losing 5% damage might be close enough to warrant a pet in single target situations if you need the utility, but in AoE there is no way we are going to give up that damage for a single stun, especially now with the changes to how ‘stops’ are going to work in dungeon content. I just cannot grasp why you’re so against MM specifically having that utility. I want to close this section by quoting the Beta Development patch notes regarding Lone Wolf - " The opportunity cost of having your pet out as a Marksmanship Hunter is so high that it can feel as though you’re locked out of all pet based utility, especially in AoE situations. Marksmanship is always going to be the Hunter spec that provides more throughput without a pet, but lowering this talent’s power should help to make those times where you’re the only lust or need an extra defensive feel a bit less bad." “FEEL A BIT LESS BAD” - as in you know it still feels bad, we know it still feels bad, and it quacks like a duck. Its still bad. Not to mention nothing has changed with regard to the AoE potential, 10% or 5% the result will be the same for how it feels to play. This really doesn’t need to be the point of friction you insist on making it. Please.
I was completely wrong here as of this build. After further testing it appears that Intimidation with Territorial Instincts will now auto dismiss the pet and you don’t lose Lone Wolf stacks. This is better.
- Explosive Shot
I like this ability but I’m a bit confused about the intent here. I know Survival has a lot of interactions with Explosive Shot but I’m coming at this from an MM perspective. Is the intent that Explosive Shot gets used single target? Because that’s kind of how its shaping up to feel. With the new talent replacing Death Chakram being another 8% damage increase, Explosive Shot is quickly turning into one of those short CD ‘push whenever its up’ buttons. So the read I’m getting on this is that Death Chakram every 45 seconds is button bloat, but Explosive Shot every 30 seconds isn’t? At least Death Chakram generated a little focus instead of costing focus. If they’re both buttons that we’ll (mostly) want to be using on cooldown in both single target and AoE then what makes one bloat but not the other? I’m genuinely curious. What makes a button ‘bloat’ instead of a rotational ability? Is it synergy with the rest of our kit? If so then at least for MM Explosive Shot doesn’t really synergize with anything else we do - its just a button we hit every 30 seconds. I might be overcooked on this point but like I said, I’m a bit confused by the intent here.
- Intimidation / Explosive Shot / Binding Shot talent row
I talked about this in my previous post so I’ll keep this brief; having to path through this row is a bit odd. All three of these abilities are AoE or dungeon focused. For a single target raid fight all three of these are odd picks. As just discussed in my last point, if Explosive Shot is good enough to use single target then I guess this is less of a concern. Previously I was advocating for swapping Explosive Shot and Death Chakram’s locations, a solution that is now moot with the removal of Death Chakram. This is a minor issue comparatively.
Marksmanship Tree
Basically nothing has changed since my post two weeks ago which is frustrating and disappointing. This tree was a step in the right direction but it still needs a lot of TLC put into it. If this is the tree going into TWW launch then MM will be in some trouble.
- Trueshot
I’ve got to go back in time here for a second but Trueshot has never felt as good as it did in Legion. Obviously MM is very different than it used to be, but Trueshot giving 40% haste was the best iteration of Trueshot. Nothing feels quite as neutering as entering a Trueshot window and then having to weave in Multi-Shots and Arcane Shots with a normal length GCD. With that out of the way, I’m concerned about how Trueshot feels in the Beta as of this build. Losing our S3 and S4 tier from Dragonflight feels massively bad during Trueshot. That set bonus was such a good QoL for us. Being able to pound out Aimed Shots while keeping Trickshots running with Rapid Fire is what you should be striving to replicate. Eagletalon’s True Focus’ new iteration feels like a bandaid on a gushing wound. Yeah its nice that we only have to cast one Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot in between Aimed Shots during Trueshot, but what if we didn’t have to cast any? If Trueshot gave haste and our GCD was lower during that window then I think this would be fine, but that’s not how Trueshot has worked for like six years. As it stands now Trueshot will be a mess of overcapping charges of Aimed Shot and feeling like we’re missing out on casts. As the expansion goes on and we get some haste I’m sure it will feel better, but we shouldn’t have to wait until 11.2 for our only cooldown to be fun. I can’t stress this enough - it feels bad as it is as of this Beta Build.
- AoE talents
Our AoE kit is too expensive. Obviously we can’t have every talent in the tree, but getting a good feeling AoE build off the ground has less than zero wiggle room. Too many capstones are AoE focused and too many of the last gate talents are too much of an investment to justify taking over spreading those 3-4 points around (looking at you Wailing Arrow). Salvo is in a decent position because the 3 points leading up to it are useful all the time, whereas Legacy of the Windrunners is completely useless in AoE, yet we have to invest two points in it to get to Wailing Arrow, which seems like it will only be taken for AoE. It feels like we have to make too many compromises to have what a baseline AoE kit should have. Bake Trick Shots into Multi-Shot, or make Multi-Shot baseline, but something has to give here.
- Focus Economy
In the previous Beta Build we were able to get by without taking Improved Steady Shot and we were happy that Steady Shot wasn’t really needed. That should tell you all you need to know about how focus works in MM currently. If you insist of focus economy being balanced around using Steady Shot then Steady Shot should generate focus baseline and not need to waste a talent point making it have the bare minimum functionality. However, balancing focus economy while pretending Steady Shot doesn’t exist would make the spec feel better in general. Optimal play would be rewarded by not needing to use that ability while sub optimal play would still have a way to generate some focus on demand to compensate. Which leads me to Multi-Shot; increasing the focus cost of an ability that we’re only pressing to activate Trick Shots feels bad - especially with the damage decreases to Multi-Shot in this build (which are completely justified). This seems like a disconnect between the community and the devs but the way focus management works in MM with Steady Shot just isn’t fun. If focus management was more Rapid Fire based I think that would go a long way to making the spec play and feel better. The less Steady Shot the better.
11 Likes
Flanking strike should not replace Kill command if anything, it should replace Raptor strike/Moongoose bite
1 Like
It’s already pretty strong. It’s the damage of 6.2 Butcheries over 2.67 GCDs.
Adding any part of the Season 3 tier bonuses would make it required for all PvE content and quite likely even PvP.