Here are my 2 cents as a consistent top 1% key pusher and near CE BM/Surv main playing since end of BFA:
Vicious Hunt
- This is incredibly boring. Just add the visual clutter of an additional pet companion so you have your “pack” - that alone solves half the complaining. it’s going to hit like a wet noodle but gives hunters something, so they’re not complaining their tree is lacking or unimpressive while appealing to the variety of hunters that love pet collecting and showing off. It gives them a somewhat ‘unique’ visual that distinguishes them from their Dark Ranger/Sentinal counterparts. This additional pet’s damage can’t be too high or it’s busted for BM’s beast cleave. I don’t personally love this option as it’ll feel lackluster when finally played when your pets just dive at an enemy and you forget they even exist while doing your rotation.
- I suggest also making it so that depending which pet(s) you have out, you gain a 1-2% buff to a stat depending on the pet family (Exotic = mastery) or even more in depth with each pet type providing a stat buffs (Scalehides = vers) but I doubt that the 2nd option will happen even though it would be my preference so we can mix and match pets for the situation. Whether or not that’s a personal or stat buff to the group, I’d leave up to the devs but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a personal buff despite it allowing Hunter to bring more to the table for raid, m+, and PVP beyond lacking utility and buffs currently.
- Alternatively, stealing this idea from Altani (above), having pets spawn when you hit ‘Aspect of the X’ seems really neat if an effort was put in to rework hunter’s trees finally to solve their lacking utility.
Pack Coordination
- This is simple but works. It has great synergy with SV’s kit utilizing pet attacks and it’s just free passive damage for BMs.
Howl of the Pack
- Free crit, nothing to complain about here. Both specs like crit.
Wild Attacks
- Works with the above Howl of the Pack which is again, free crit. It’s fine but would be better if it was just combined with Howl of the Pack into a single talent. That allows this node to be a fresh spot for something new.
Den Recovery
- This is very lackluster compared to the other classes and specs’ DR. Especially if pet mend doesn’t also heal the hunter to help deal with rot damage that only really BM struggles with. We are usually already topped up before outgoing damage making this hero node dead on arrival. I suggest using Hunter’s Mark and making the target deal 3-5% less damage to the hunter and pets as they help ‘hunt’ the inferior mob, just like the original SL conduit worked.
Tireless Hunt (or)
- This is another lackluster node. If it functioned like druid’s Stampeding Roar to give hunters some utility, that would be ideal, or again, take anyone else’s ideas for this node.
Cornered Prey
- This name doesn’t even make sense and would be better suited for the Hunter’s Mark node suggested in place of the Den Recovery node. The 5y is kind of nice for surv and doesn’t do a whole lot for BM. Some have suggested giving surv Aspect of the Eagle. Maybe a flat additional 3 yards for the hunter and nearly allies works better for this (though I doubt it’ll happen given the lack of utility provided in trees for specs I’m familiar with).
Frenzied Tear
- It functions well with survival’s kit triggering free arcane shots when talented into Quick Shot and BM loves free KC resets.
Covering Fire / Scattered Prey
- This node seems great for both survival and BM. Less multi-shot uptime babysitting and had a good feedback loop for survival.
Cull the Herd
- Kill shot could use a decent buff for both specs, otherwise, great node that benefits the handful of bleeds survival has. BM’s killshot is embarrassingly weak and survival needs killshot to hit harder for Birds of Pray to make more sense to take currently.
Furious Assault (or)
- Good node - BM loves free barb shot resets and Surv loves T29 (VoTI) teir set bonus.
Beast of Opportunity
- This node does a whole lot more for BM than Surv. If this was tied to fury of the eagle, it would be closer to balanced given BW is about a 45s CD after all the CDR. Surv currently will never take this node. If it needs to stay on a longer CD, Spearhead makes a lot more sense than coordinated assault as we spam KC during Spearhead a lot.
Pack Assault
- This node works amazingly with Coordinated Assault providing empowered spells but admittedly, it is quite boring for BM. I would move Vicious Hunt (top node) to combine with this node if the 1st node gets reworked to anything that better fits the hero tree fantasy.
General notes and class feedback:
- More defensives (like the popular SL Hunter’s Mark and Feign Death conduits) and better utility would be nice like explosive trap knocking up or having the option to since sanguine still exists. It’s also silly how many talent points a hunter needs to give up to make Survival of the Fittest nearly as good as Pally’s Sac. In its current state, Hunter struggles to compare to other specs in high-end m+. Dark Ranger will be the default for BM hunters pushing due to Smoke Screen while Pack Hunter offers no DR. Admittedly, the rest of Dark Range seems very lackluster.
- Speaking of Hunter’s Mark, it should increase damage for the first and last 20% by 5% to compete with what other classes bring to the table such as DH and Monk’s debuffs. 1% increased damage overall is very weak, arguably the weakest raid buff and by the time I’m casting Hunter’s Mark on a target, it’s usually down to 90% already.
- Defensives in general should be off the GCD, especially exhil.
- Surv’s CA should be a 1:30 CD and spearhead 45s - survival’s CDs are incredibly weak to the point that they are comparable and at times worse than not taking them at all (No CD build). Bird of Pray should shoot 4 kill shots regardless of targets so it’s more bursty and makes it more justifiable to take and use over a no CD build. Those kill shots and bomb empowerment just need to flat out be stronger. At least with Pack Leader we’ll be getting more so this might be fine but even then bomb empowerments still are extremely underpowered. Last I checked, an empowered bomb needs to hit like 50 targets to do similar damage to an empowered kill shot.
- Roar of Sacrifice can be a usable external in PVE in the class tree, it’s never taken otherwise as the 6% avoidance will always be taken for self-survivability in pve content.
- Tranq Shot removes needs to remove multiple stacks of buffs to be comparable to evokers.
- (Surv) Can we remove the awkward Mongoose bite/Rapter strike and Carve/Butchery nodes and stick to popular Mongoose Bite and Butchery? It makes no sense having an alternative button that do the same thing.