Hear me out - Survival Hunter Stance based class

So, we all have our complaints and our praises of Classic(Some only one of those) but for me, it’s how “alive” the Hunter class feel. You had to feed your pet, buy arrows and the dreaded “deadzone” which I know lot’s of people hate, but I really liked it because it made sense… I mean, have you tried shooting an arrow with someone right in front of you? They can knock the bow off your hands really easily or at the very least make you lose your balance.

Anyways, my idea would be the following - Play around with both Survival hunter fantasies, the melee survivalist and the ranged ranger.

So, the whole idea behind it is that for the most part, it would have no disparity of damage between the stances, being solely focused on the fantasy of the class, since some prefer being ranged, some prefer being melee and in my case and some others, because you know, you are never “(…) the only one?” enjoy both, while in the same rotation.

Survivalist Stance - Almost completely unchanged from current Survival Hunter.

  • Serpent sting - DoT.
  • Wildfire Bomb - Shared by both Stances
  • Tip of the Spear - Spender.
  • Kill Command - Generator.
  • Kill Shot - Shared by both Stances.
  • Coordinated Assault - Shared by both Stances.
  • New Aspect of the Eagle, PROC - Increases haste by “X” amount, shared by both Stances.
  • Muzzle Interrupt - 15CD secs on this Stance.
  • Harpoon - Replaces Disengage while on this Stance.
  • Carve - Replaces Multi-Shot while on this Stance.
  • Wing Clip - Replaces Concussive Shot while on this Stance.

Ranger Stance - The ranged Stance.

  • Black Arrow - Replaces Serpent sting, DoT.
  • Wildfire Bomb - Shared by both Stances.
  • Steady Shot - Replaces Tip of the Spear. I am still not sure if a “cast time” should be included here, as it might compensate for the extra range, however it would mess up the Mongoose Bite rotation. Regardless, the idea here would be just to have a shot that looks “normal” as the spender.
  • Kill Command - Generator.
  • Kill shot - Shared by both Stances.
  • Coordinated Assault - Shared by both Stances.
  • New Aspect of the Eagle, PROC - Increases haste by “X” amount, shared by both Stances.
  • Muzzle Interrupt - 30CD secs while on this Stance.
  • Disengage - Replaces Harpoon while on this Stance.
  • Multi-Shot - Replaces Carve, functionality the same as Carve and not as the other Multi-Strikes.
  • Concussive Shot - Replaces Wing Clip while on this Stance.

The talents would largely remain the same, only the name would require a bit of changing, really. This is of course working on the hypothetical that if Blizzard were to make a change like that, they were going to use the current Survival design. But alright, this is basically like how I would see it. I know, I know, lots and lots of problems and whatnot, but it was just a quick idea I cooked up while AFKing Dazar’alor and I thought I should share

2 Likes

There is no world where Kill Command should remain an SV ability period, much less a generator. It’s literally stealing BM’s signature ability, and the adding insult to injury by making it a crappy generator instead of a nuke. It’d be like if Fury used Mortal Strike as a generator, or if Aff used Chaos Bolt as a generator.

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Well, again, I am simply using the current formula to make up a different playstyle. I agree that Kill Command doesn’t fit right in, but it is what we got as of right now.

I mean, if we’re going to remake half the spec, why retain something like that?

Realistically, if a ranged version of SV comes back and it isn’t largely WoD or MoP SV, there’s going to be riots regardless.

7 Likes

I’m sure the devs are quaking in their boots about casual on-again-off-again hunters rioting en masse because they didn’t get a historic version of a spec returned to them.

I mean, they could literally just let Steady Shot regen Focus for SV, change like 4 talents to work with Arcane Shot/Multi-Shot in addition to Raptor Strike/Carve, add Black Arrow with resets on Wildfire Bomb, and you could basically play RSV inside MSV right now.

But they don’t want to do that I expect, it’s been suggested enough times in thread with Blue posts they must have seen it by now.

ahh haaa! you thought this was going to be rebutal but instead an agreement!

ya they need to get rid of kill command for survival and give us something unique

It works fine mechanically, they should just change the name.

1 Like

It would be kool if they let only survival equip both a melee weapon and ranged weapon like a old school hunter.

The idea of having a melee stance and ranged stance is intriguing and could make survival a very unique spec.

The only thing is that KC and pet reliance would definitely need to go. And I would like to see more traps and hunter utility replace them. Otherwise its a pretty good idea.

1 Like

nah its just the same thing as BM which we shouldn’t have. give us flanking strike instead and let that give us focus.

i agree however the payoff for survival would then have to be higher then BM or MM since u need more weapons. i can see it working like fury where our damage is affected mostly by weapons we equip.

this sounds like gladiator stance which was a flop.

glad was fun

yea it was but blizz didnt want to go through the effort to balance it so it was nuked

Well, that’s why I made it so it’s mostly an ability swap with no damage changes, at best they should make, considering they remake the spec as a whole, is making the main spender have a cast time for ranged to compensate for the extra, well, range. But obviously it wouldn’t work with Mongoose bite.

To be fair, Glad also kinda went against their claimed design. It was weird, actually, they split Feral and Guardian in the exact same expansion they added Gladiator. I imagine they probably ultimately removed Gladiator for similar reasons as they split Feral and Guardian, namely that a single spec shouldn’t be able to both DPS and tank.

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I do feel like whatever the pet based focus generator is, it should not require the hunter to be in melee range. I like the way KC resets. I like the bleeds and the bloodseeker interactions. I like how it interacts with bombs. I’d just drop the base damage of it and put that elsewhere, and I’d change the name and flavor to something like Harry: your pet distracts and harasses your target, allowing you to recover x focus, reducing the target’s damage done for y seconds and applying a bleed which does z damage over y seconds.

1 Like

I like the intent overall, but much of this seems to feel just a little too half-placed or overly cautious…

If you’re already halfway to building basically from scratch, you might was well not leave anything standing that’d get in the way of your vision.

For now, it’s hard to see your vision in this; it feels more like a lot of shuffled parts.

Personally, I feel like Flanking Strikes should just be a passive. Give Raptor Strike the charge or blink-strike effect, with maximum range recharging over time. Flanking Strikes would then cause your pet’s and your abilities on any target to extend the range of each other’s charge/blink-strike skills against that target by X yards.

I don’t mind Kill Command on Survival so long as the pet remains a central part and requirement of the spec, even as a generator —if only because that means it isn’t mutually exclusive with competing abilities, nor Raptor Strike and Carve necessarily relegated behind it— though I do feel like Survival’s focus dynamics feels just a tad wonky.

Well, the grand reality here is that I was just looking for a way to justify being both sword and bow to relive the old Hunter fantasy, I am not a theory crafter or anything of the sorts, so trying to create a whole new class design would be bound to have more unbalanced spells and whatnot, so I just decided to take what we already have and give a ranged version for it.

The problem with SV having Kill Command isn’t on the SV side, it’s on the BM side. SV is literally stealing BM’s iconic ability and repurposing it as a mediocre generator.