I’m very confused by removing Death Chakram to get rid of button bloat, but replacing it with another ability rather than a passive option?
Like, that defeats the entire purpose of removing Chakram???
All you’ve did is create a useless capstone talent. I genuinely think that capstone talent will be chosen by less than .1% of hunters. Even in PvP the traps in that slot have very niche uses.
Alright Survival Hunter Feedback Time.
CLASS TREE
Implosive Trap! Heck yeah, this is great. Kind of odd its a longer CD than Hi-Explosive Trap though.
Scrappy being on the opposite side of Intimidation and Bursting Shot now AND having to go through Binding Shot to get it? Not great.
Territorial Instincts, neat. 5 seconds is kind of very little difference though.
Blackrock Munitions, not…sure why it exists? The added damage to Explosive Shot is nice but whys it a whole talent, why not just buff Explosive Shot?
Steel Trap being gone is apparently bad news for PVP, I don’t PVP so I don’t know but I can see it being an issue being gone entirely.
Death Chakram being gone. It’s a bit of a shame we have no Shadowlands Covenant spells now but I’m not unhappy to see Death Chakram go.
SURVIVAL TREE
Alright let’s get the worst out of the way.
Flanking Strike was absolutely fine last week. No reason to change it into …whatever it is this week. Even if you were to take the gap closer out so we don’t accidentally kill ourselves every 3 Kill Commands it just becomes…Kill Command Two at that point. Please just…put it back to last week’s version.
I understand the intent, “one less button to press and make it easier to have Kill Command cleave in AOE and sometimes generate 2 stacks of Tip of The Spear”.
Okay sure then just…give us a talent that lets Kill Command auto cleave in AOE and have a chance to give us two stacks of Tip Of The Spear. Leave Flanking Strike alone.
KC auto cleaving and occasionally giving you 2 stacks of Tip Of The Spear is really nice to be honest, but don’t sacrifice Flanking Strike for it.
Mongoose Bite and Mongoose Fury. I’m not even a Mongoose Bite fan and this change is… pretty meh. Almost nothing about Mongoose Bite feels different from Raptor Strike now.
Coordinated Assault, much easier to manage now. Somewhat.
That “Somewhat” is entirely because Bombardier is still the same way as it was last week.
Bombardier causes: 2 GCDS to dump bombs before pressing Coordinated Assault, another 2 GCDs to spend those two new bombs, and then at the end of Coordinated Assault 2 additional GCDS to spend the Explosive Shots. Bit of leeway when you spend those Explosive Shots sure.
That’s 6 extra GCDS worth of abilities. That’s 8-12 additional GCDS if you want to buff any of those bombs or Explosive Shots with Tip of The Spear. Now imagine that every minute. It’s awful. Getting extra charges of stuff isn’t even fun.
Just make it so Bombardier makes the first two bombs in CA do double damage or hit twice and have 100% chance to proc Explosive Shot or something that doesn’t cost us GCDs. Make it so it makes Bombs and Explosive Shot hit x% harder during CA’s duration or something, I don’t know, anything else.
Sic 'Em is pretty cool now. But I’ve a bit of a problem with it I’ll come back to later.
Quick Shot is pretty good now too. But… I have a bit of a problem with it as well.
Fury Of The Eagle and Ruthless Marauder still aren’t really worth taking right now unfortunately.
It feels like the Wildfire Bomb CDR reductions have swung a bit too much in the other direction now, def not getting as many bombs as I’d like, especially in ST.
BIG PICTURE PROBLEM
Now for the bigger underlying problem I’m noticing with our new talents.
Why is everything centered around Kill Command?
We’re not BM.
And yet, Kill Command gives us Focus, gives us Tip Of The Spear, procs Quick Shot, procs Sic 'Em, reduces the CD on bombs, procs Flanking Strike, can cleave, reduces the CD on Fury of the Eagle, procs Bloodseeker, gains additional reset chance during Coordinated Assault AND is core to the entire Pack Leader Hero Tree (which is still half broken).
Right now on Beta I’m pressing Kill Command as much as BM. I’m pressing it more than any other ability right now. It’s supposed to be a generator.
If I wanted most of my talents centered around Kill Command I’d go play BM.
In comparison Wildfire Bomb interacts with Explosive Shot, Ruthless Marauder and Bombardier. Butchery if you wanna count that. That’s it.
Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite interacts with Bloody Claws, Merciless Blows and Wildfire Infusion. That’s it!
Some of us really like Mongoose Bite and Mongoose Fury. Some of us really like throwing Bombs. But most of us don’t really feel THAT enthusiastic about Kill Command for it to be doing everything and the kitchen sink.
I would love to use Bombs and Mongoose Bite more, and KC less.
Ok, so quite a few changes to Hunter and SV this patch as well. But a very mixed bag. Not at all the W the last two patches was. Here is my feedback. Starting with the good:
Very nice addition. This is something we’ve been asking for forever. Thank you Blizzard! I would like the effect to be a bit higher though. But ultimately it’s just used as a AoE stopper. Nice!
While sad to see Chakram go (it’s pretty much one of few abilities that actually has a decent VFX/visual for hunters) it was kind of just used to ramp the following abilities. I did not have a issue with it but can see the point. And steel trap, did anyone actually use it?
Very nice change. Getting some nice Kill shot synergy with Kill command is a welcome change and will spice up our rotation quite a lot since it’ll probably always be worth to use on proc. Thank you.
So while I generally see this as a W because the previous CA was quite atrocious to use it’s still…boring. I mean sure it’s easier to use but it’s very uninteresting now. You will literally just use it as any random damage modifying ability. I’ll take it over the previous CA.
So this is nice I guess. Getting more ToTS stacks is nice. But it will also kind of force us to burn ToTS stacks before we use our capstone. Not terrible but will feel bad if you overcap on ToTS. Might be a headache to optimize but might also give some room for complexity. Overall nice to get some areas where we can get a influx of ToTS to then use up.
Thank you! This is 10 times better. The RNG upon RNG was horrible. This is a nice change that fixes the issue. Now if we get rid of the bugs for sulfur-lined pockets this will probably be a nice little proc.
I mean it’s just numbers tuning but a badly needed one. As someone who loves Butchery and wish we could have a AoE build revolve around it instead this is a very nice change.
This was a badly needed fix. It will be nice to test further now and see how the spec feels now. Hopefully all the bugs/issues was caught.
I think this was a nice change. I always felt that we had a bit too much charges with CA, FS, Harpoon and then Spearhead. The capstone itself is still very lacking, but further on that down below.
Nice amount of good changes to be sure. If only it stopped there though. But we got quite a few changes that honestly make this builds SV hunter feel a lot worse than last weeks. Here is my opinion on bad changes this week:
I am sorry what? Why are you adding another X% damage modifier talent? We just got rid of a few and still have quite a few around still. We need to get these removed not add more! Very bad change. If you feel bombs need a buff then just buff it! Or if you feel that we need more talents to smooth out the tree then at least give us something else than X% damage modifiers…
I mentiond CA on the good feedback because it is easier and less cumbersome to use now, which is a good change. But overall the Capstone CA is incredibly boring and lackluster now. I mean now we have 3 capstones. Fury of the eagle is a bad fists of fury, CA is a pure x% damage boosting ability and Spearhead is also just a X% damage booster but via crits. I mean both the latter capstones can just be macroed and used with bloodlust/beginning of the fight and then you are done. We badly needed old CA changed but this was still a bad change. Easy to use but boring and forgettable now.
This change is by far the worst I’ve seen all Beta/Alpha. I honestly don’t know where Blizzard are going with this? Last weeks FS felt very nice and rewarding. I loved to have it as a big spender that hits hard and gives some ToTS. Now the ability is removed and every 4th KC is a FS? It messes with so much of the rotation.
It makes the core rotation feel worse, it removed the fun and good FS from last week and it messes up KC.
this change needs to go ASAP if you ask me. Revert it to last weeks FS. This did not need a change! Please Blizzard!
I understand where Blizzard feels this interfered with the feel of the spec now where we want to weave with ToTS. But changing it to this might fix that divide in the rotation but it instead makes Mongoose fury/Mongoose bite a very boring and bland maintenance buff. And to be honest with how low the numbers are at the moment I doubt it will be worth to maintain.
It also makes Raptor strike and Mongoose bite more or less the same. RS hits slighly weaker but doesn’t have the maintenance buff, MB has the maintenance buff that will just be boring to maintain but hits slighly harder (still very weak, both of them).
This change while perhaps needed from the overall perspective of the spec is still a bad one. I personally think that considering where you are taking the spec perhaps Raptor strike or Mongoose bite with Mongoose fury needs to go? Would be better to just keep Raptor strike, give it the looping visuals Mongoose bite had (dependent on the stacks it had) and then give us something else to focus our ST rotation around? Or perhaps ToTS is enough.
Bad change, might be a needed one? But with the change as is now you might as well remove MB or RS. They are more or less the same!
I would love to see Spearhead either reworked or changed. Or CA made back into a proper Capstone. I mean we have two Capstones that are pure damage boosting CDs. We’re just going to macro them and forget they exist.
Issues that I still have with the spec after these changes:
We still have too many X% damage modifiers for my taste. Especially bad are the 3 talents (6 talent points!) that are blocking our capstones.
The SV spec is revolving way too much around KC I feel. It’s starting to get the problem where 50% or more of your ability presses is KC just to fish for different procs or synergies. This does not feel good. Since KC is our builder it’s natural that most synergies/procs are from it but it needs to be kept in check. Last FS change made it way over the top.
I mean it’s me. So I’ll mention Dual wield. Still no dual-wield or comment about it. The least you could do was make a decision around it. Either let us know it won’t happen or let us know you wish to implement it/are working on it. Please and thank you Blizzard!
Pets are still terrible to work with. We are still locked into the same very small amount of pets. Please let us “bring the pet not the pet specialization”. I wish to pick the pet I like depending on spec, transmog, taste or just flavor and then pick what benefits I wish the pet to give me. Give us freedom to use whatever pet we like.
As a finish I’d like to thank the dev team for the actual work that has been done on Hunter and especially SV. It’s not all good but that’s to be expected. Most of it is though and it’s nice to see the class and spec being improved upon. Please keep listening to feedback and doing your thing. I have hopes for a good and fun spec come TWW launch.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Bloody Claws, which already before this patch was both weak and uninteresting (perhaps worked better with other sources of KC resets being removed or nerfed?) are now even worse off with the reduction in MF stacks to 3. Not considering the other changes to MB/MF changes, lowering the stacks to 3 was something quite a few suggested but it always came with a rebalance in each stacks value. Lowering them to 3 but keeping each individual stacks bonus the same is even more of a nerf to MB. And it’s already very weak and often not even worth it in the tight rotation.
Overall this week changes for survival fee so much worse…
Flanking strike was useful outside of being improved Kill Command. If anything it should have see improvements in being important to rotation.
Chakram was useful outside of being just rotational cooldown. it had gameplay to it. I would rather see spearhead removed over chakram.
This weeks changes make the rotation feel not like a rotation… I no longer care about my focus… I no longer care about my cooldown burst window… I no longer care about mongoose stacks… I no longer care about dot management… What is survival managing now? Spam bomb and explosive shot anytime it procs? Overall it feels like we have taken the core mechanics tactical nuked them.
The key points I enjoyed in survival was managing Dots, building burst windows, It feels like survival offers none of that anymore. It feels like it plays like a demon hunter which honestly is my least favorite class in the game… it feels like it has no agency for skill expression in the spec.
Blizzard really needs to be listening to this man!
The biggest glaring issue with this to me is the forced movement, both in PvE and PvP. Kill Command is our focus builder and tip generator and tying that every 3 Kill Commands (or even at all) causes a lot of issues.
Let’s say you’re fighting a boss who has a soak mechanic that requires you to run out and soak, or a mechanic that you have to run out from that the boss casts around itself. Well now you basically can’t use Kill Command because it’s going to take you back out of position or you are going to be out of Flanking Strike range and now it has become a dead button.
Aspect of the Eagle becomes a dead talent if you spec into Flanking Strike because again if you are not in Flanking Strike range your builder (KC) just becomes a dead button.
In it’s current form it just doesn’t work, you would need to change it so after every 3 Kill Commands it just empowers your next Kill Command granting extra damage and 2 TotS stacks, and if you have Exposed Flank it hits 2 additional nearby enemies. Or remove the movement aspect from the FS that replaces KC but not from the FS that you manually press.
Seems people dislike this change though and I have no real opinion on the builder vs spender side of it. I just see the problems this will cause in it’s current state.
From a PvE perspective no one is going to lose sleep over Steel Trap going in the bin. Have mixed feelings about DC. It gave you something to push (especially true for BM) and generated focus (which was at times helpful for MM) but I also didn’t like the ramp up in certain cases or the “launch sequence” as people seem to call it.
This might be a dumb question but does ANY other class have a forced “slam you into the mob” rotationally necessary attack? I just don’t understand the need to do this, but combined with losing things like Lunge, and the whole “all melee need to be closer to the mob” company line we’ve heard has me concerned. and on top of that, button bloat stripping feels like code for “playable with a console controller”, especially as we keep getting more and more passives.
I don’t want Survival to lose all of it’s uniqueness and simply be the “2h + bombs and pet” melee class. And I definitely don’t want WoW to become an XBOX ARPG.
Havoc Demon Hunters have Felblade. It is however something that you have control over. Flanking Strike replacing Kill Command after every 3rd use and retaining the forced movement is the problem.
I dislike the new version of Flanking Strike. I preferred the version that cost focus. Thank you!
If you mean explosive/Implosive trap, it’s the first AoE kick that hunter has and I’m very happy with it as I suggested it. It being a capstone is odd and the 1.5m CD is a little long and while it can be reduced with talents to (I assume) just above a minute, it’s still less than ideal. Anyway, it’ll be taken by every M+'er and there’s plenty of those, myself included.
WW monk has a talent with tiger palm. But it is a very short range and tied to a melee attack, not a ranged attack.
They scrapped it in tree for a reason.
Blizz if you’re dead set on keeping the flanking change, make it a choice node that keeps last build’s flanking and make it a compelling on use ability comparable to the “baked-in” option.
It wouldn’t be the only time you’ve give choice nodes to reduce complexity for those who want it (see Brewmaster). But again, the underlying mechanics of the forced charge are going to get you killed in a lot of scenarios.
Crack Shot really doesn’t feel like a good pick in an AoE build where you’re mostly spending precise shots on Multi-shot instead of Arcane Shot. I think these two talents, Improved Steady Shot and Crack Shot could use some adjusting in pathing or usefulness, but I’m not really sure what a good solution is right now.
There are a ton of AoE related talents in the second half of the tree. Picking up the necessary components of an M+ or cleave build isn’t very intuitive. I think a major problem is the pathing within the tree, and I want to provide some feedback and solutions on places where I think things can be improved.
On the left side of the tree we have the Barrage and Rapid fire nodes, but we also have Careful Aim mixed in. Careful Aim’s inclusion here is confusing, and it acting as a gate to Barrage is even more confusing. I think swapping the location of Fan the Hammer and Careful Aim would make the most sense here.
In the middle of the tree we have 4 AoE related nodes that lead back into the lower part of the tree. Because these nodes do not directly lead into more AoE talents, they make further investment in AoE much more expensive. Creating a build that incorporates these 4 nodes (Multi-shot, Trick Shots, Bulletstorm, and a Heavy/Light Ammo selection) leaves us with a choice of the following potentially useful buttons in AoE: Rapid Fire Barrage, Volley/Kill Zone, Small Game Hunter/Salvo, Razor Fragments, and Wailing Arrow, and our Trueshot related nodes. This is a lot to choose from, and we can really only have about half of it. So, here’s my cook on how to fix it:
Kill Command is now an incredibly bloated ability for Survival.
Generates Focus.
Resets it’s own cooldown.
Reduces bomb cooldown.
Resets Killshot and makes it AoE.
Procs Arcane and Explosive Shots.
Gives Tip of the Spear.
Bleeds the target.
Can strike 3 extra targets.
With Pack Leader
Echo’s it’s damage.
Causes pet special procs.
Procs amped RS/MB.
I might even be missing some effects.
And now it also:
Every 4th use it doesn’t interact with your entire kit or any of the above effects
Yeets you to your death.
I do not mind Kill Command being central to our kit but this flanking strike change has so many problems with it. We did not have a button bloat problem, we had a GCD bloat problem and this does not address that problem in any way. There was a ton of feedback given that was originally listened to to turn flanking strike into a spender (and tip generator) and it was granted, and it felt GREAT. Flanking Strike as a spender fit nicely into the rotation, it had use in PvP, ST, and AoE, worked well with the goal of playing around tip of the spear and now it’s just… bad. Please reconsider and revert this back to being a focus spender that consumes AND generates the tip stack. I don’t like calling design decisions bad but turning your 50yd focus generator into a 25yd leap is just not a good design decision, ignoring the fact that flanking strike does not interact with our entire kit and you have to use it prior to getting kill command back.
Yeah, I remember that, I never take it. It’s an optional talent, split between having it move you or not. They have that other new thing in the class tree where you roll and get ported to the mob, but you are actively choosing to take that as an option, too.
really not fond of the simplification of mongoose bite. MB was one of the things that made me really fall in love with survival back in legion.
imo, MB and TotS being available at the same time here in the beta created a good tension. we were already weaving KC’s in because if you sit on full KC charges for too long you focus starve yourself. TotS just added a bit more thought re: when exactly you weave them in. you’d prioritize mongoose bites later in the window to further empower them, which felt good
without the limited mongoose fury windows it’s going to be much more “just use KC before X ability and you’re good”
To be fair, this didn’t really simplify mongoose bite. We didn’t play around Mongoose Fury since basically legion/BFA. There was a small time frame in Vault of the Incarnates where it was a small gain in DPS to sit on your bombs until fury fell off but MFury has been largely a thing you ignored in favour of managing Kill Command. If you managed Kill Command properly, it naturally managed Mfury windows.
It just feels really bad because maintenance buffs feel really bad, and the decision stated behind the change is flawed: We did not prioritise Mongoose Bite over other abilities during fury. It was not pushing us in 2 different directions. MFury has always been about managing Kill Command properly, and making Kill Command even more important with the tip change did not change this fact.
ye, that is true. maybe it’s more of a “gameplay feel” thing than actual numbers. i liked the feeling of executing MB windows, even if it was hard to really mess up as long as you weren’t doing something fundamentally wrong
the animation cycle probably helps with that a lot too. LOVE getting to 5 stacks and having my character do the big jumps while saying “YAAH!”
Yeah between the loss of DC, wildfire infusion, and mb animations, it feels like we are losing the visual flair of the spec.