actually the most hilarious comment I’ve read on the forum in at least a year
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Not… really.
For cats, that tree basically makes bear a slightly better, if cumbersome defensive cooldown.
For bears, it will be ignored.
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Then you and I will have to disagree, I watched the videos from Blizzcon, yes they made a big deal about these trees which spells these are a big deal an important part of our next expansion, we are giving new trees for your next level, wait and see what we come up with… that by itself says these will be new and exciting… this is big and requires us to give you brand new themed (Again they where quite clear these would be themed) trees that you will be excited to take, and you will look forwards to what will be there. (And instead they give us boring if X Y)
Looks to me like well we have done the bare minimum of effort, these really did not need new trees but we said we would give you themed trees and the theme is just in the name not the abilities.
If this is all they had in mind, why
A) Make a big deal about them (They did) They held a whole panel about them and what they might bring to game.
B) not just either A) Bake them into the class as all they do is effect abilities you have, they dont even change anything they just tack more if X then Y’s onto standard abilities we already have, or B) just add these talents to the tree we already have.
And they have given exciting things to hunters before, when they finally listened to us and gave us the ability to have a second pet, and gave us the ability to bring out more pets for shorter times. That was exciting, that is the type of thing that adding new themed tree makes sense for. Not what they are giving us right now.
I also never said that they had to give us a third pet, just an example of something that would fit the theme of “Pack Leader”
Reaver: oh wow, I’m pressing buttons I press anyway!
Colossal: oh wow, a 2 second channel!
Rider: oh wow, 4 entirely passive pets that dont do anything to my gameplay!
Excellent post, sums up how alot of survival hunters are going to this tree with me being one of them. Lets us enjoy the Mongoose Bite playstyle more after these last few seasons of bomb heavy tier sets.
I hope that whatever they end up changing on this tree, they keep the KC resetting and doubling aspect of it while maybe giving the choice nodes some BM support with multi pet so that both specs can be happy with the tree.
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The “alpha predator - deadly duo” SV build seems too “expensive” to me in a sense that you can’t take a lot of fun talents if you go for it. But if people like it and pack leader plays nice into this build, fair enough.
I was hoping for something more “spectacular” myself - a new ability and fun gameplay around it… maybe Sentinel will be this. I play MM and alt SV so if Sentinel turns out good I’d be more than happy. Maybe I’m not the target audience for pack leader.
It might seem expensive, but Spearhead was the meta single target build for all of season 1 and competitive in season 2 as well. It worked very well and was a fun gameplay loop.
It didn’t use Alpha Predator, since Latent Poison was a better investment, but it’s not impossible to shift to the left side of the class tree instead with the additional pet interactions.
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you won’t necessarily need to go alpha predator, because of the extra kc resets that frenzied tear can give you
a lot of hunters in the dark ranger thread explicitly said they dont want any more active buttons that are regularly used because of button bloat. they can’t act on “give us new abilities” and “dont give us new abilities” at once 
fwiw there is a solution where you do get a new button, but it’s on 2 min cd…
however then people would be complaining that it’s used too infrequently to be noticeable and different
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Be nice, nerds.
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I think this is partially due to hero talents trying to work with two specs, one may have bloat while one does not?
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Me from Legion on unfortunately =(
but BM is the only spec that has both PL and DR. it can’t be too bloated with black arrow but too bare bones without black arrow lol
Lets just go over some information to give a better idea as to why the design of the Pack Leader conceptually aids to SV benefit.
Vicious Hunt: Kill Command prepares you to viciously attack in coordination with your pet, dealing additional physical damage with your next Kill Command .
Vicious Hunt is easily taken adventure of with everyone’s favorite Wildfire Bomb; Pheromone Bomb! Allowing you to have 100% chance for it to reset for the duration of the bomb’s dot.
Pack Coordination: Attacking with Vicious Hunt instructs your pet to strike with their basic attack alongside your next Barbed Shot (Beast Mastery), Raptor Strike, or Mongoose Bite (Survival)
Pack Coordination gives SV an easier option for playing Coordinated Assault and maximizing empowerments by weaving in Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bites instead of having a macro to turn off the pet autos, a macro a pet basic attack whenever you kill shot, then a macro turn it all back on when the cooldown is over.
Howl of The Pack: Your pet’s Basic Attack critical strikes increase your critical strike damage by 5% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.
Easy and simple buff for crit damage.
Frenzied Tear: Your pet’s Basic Attack has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Kill Command and cause Kill Command to strike a second time for 30% of normal damage.
More Kill command resets as a result of using your single target spenders; Mongoose Bite or Raptor Strike.
Covering Fire: Kill Command increases the duration of Beast Cleave by 1 second (Beast Mastery). Wildfire Bomb reduces the cooldown of Carve or Butchery by 2 seconds (Survival).
This encourages a feedback loop that has existed for awhile now of carving to generate more bombs, Covering Fire allows the opposite.
Cull the Herd: Kill Shot deals an additional 30% damage over 5 seconds and increases the bleed damage you and your pet deal to the target by 25%.
Based on the verbage used, This would impact your bloodseeker, shrapnel bomb bleeds, Master Marksman Bleeds as well as your Bleeding Gash bleeds from empowered kill shots during Coordinated Assault.
Furious Assault: Consuming Frenzied Tear has a 50% chance to reset the cooldown of Barbed Shot and deal 30% additional damage. (Beast Mastery) Consuming Frenzied Tear has a 50% chance to make your next Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite free and deal 30% additional damage. (Survival)
Each time your pet’s Basic Attack resets Kill Command, you effectively gain the tier set bonus from Dragonflight season 1 with the empowered Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, having the later enable getting to 5 Stacks of Mongoose Fury quicker, which means more max stack mongoose bites for big damage!
I never quite understood this.
Are people actually experiencing unavoidable downtime on SV?
Because otherwise it seems less that KC buffs make the spec “faster” as just… make the player need fewer KCs and/or reduces the spread of damage per GCD (bringing builders and spenders closer together as to reduce any sort of mini pseudo-burst that could otherwise be formed by shifting things around).
its not “downtime” it just speed. being faster doesnt usually mean a way to “close downtime windows” theres a guy further up that explains the kc engine better than i could
this guy
I love these QoL improvements. I like that Pack Leader makes you a little more Tanky. But I have two gripes.
Beast of Opportunity has a GREAT opportunity here to have survival hunters actually have a pack to lead. The problem is, In survival, Coordinated Assault has a 2-minute Cooldown. With the pet being only 6 seconds, we would have a pack of 3… really only a pair of pets. Instead, What if Beast of Opportunity was tied to Kill shot? It fits perfectly into the theme of taking an opportunity (you have a kill shot so you take it) It would mean that if we could get a target to 20% we could overwhelm them with pets. Would still be proc-able with Coordinated Assault, and if used correctly the cooldown would allot an additional pet, making it possible to have 3 pets and feel like a real pack!
Covering Prey and Scattered Prey… These talents imply we would be forced to spec into Carve or Butchery to utilize this tree. I hate that. Call it controversial but I love playing survival single-target. I already don’t like that I have to spec into Fury of the Eagle in Dragonflight Season 3… Forcing me to spec into carve for an entire expansion seems miserable. Either consider giving us a single target option here or make Carve baseline </3
Can we at least get a different animation for kill command? Flailing my hands around is not cool.
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As SV you hardly ever press KC and it does 20k damage anyway, so “empowered” nothing is still nothing
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the discussion of this talent tree… It’s that I don’t play Survival like others. I’m spamming KC to keep my focus up. I usually save CA for lust and FS for when I run out of focus. My dps is pretty decent all expansion. I’m having a lot of fun. Genuinely what are y’all doing to never use KC???
Except survival are effectively a pack of 2 so that fantasy is completely lost on SV spec.