Improving on the Hunter/Survival Talent Trees

Classes Hunter
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The hunter and survival talent trees are lacking… to put it nicely. Therefore, I compiled a list of talents/tier sets/legos/etc. that hunters previously had with the hopes of encouraging the team (or person :sweat_smile:) working on the talent trees to make positive changes before the release of DF. I’ve separated these abilities into categories that can be seen below.

Which of these would you like to see added to the talent trees?

Utility

  • Expert Trapper: All of your traps are improved in the following ways:

    Freezing Trap - When Freezing Trap’s incapacitate effect ends, the victim and all nearby enemies movement speed is reduced by 50% for 4s.

    Explosive Trap - Increases Explosive Trap’s knock back by X%.

    Tar Trap: Enemies moving through the tar have a chance to be rooted in place for 4s.

    Steep Trap: Your Steel Trap also deals an immediate X Bleed damage when triggered.

    Caltrops - Increases Caltrops damage by 50%.

    (OP Notes for Expert Trapper)

    I would prefer some version of this as the final talent point over Steel Trap. Steel Trap should be higher up in the tree in my opinion.

  • Guerilla Tactics: Freezing Trap will not break due to damage for the first 6 seconds. Tar Trap reduces enemies’ movement speed by 90% for the first 4 seconds.

    (OP Notes for Guerilla Tactics)

    Another version of Expert Trapper, but better. I can see tons of uses in PvP and dungeons.

  • Hunting Pack: Aspect of the Cheetah has 50% reduced cooldown and grants its effects to allies within 15 yards.

  • Improved Tar Trap: Gives your Tar Trap a chance to knock down enemies (similar to Shaman Earthquake).

  • Interlope (Replaces Misdirection): The next hostile spell cast on the target will cause hostile spells for the next 3 seconds to be redirected to your pet. Your pet must be within 10 yards of the target for spells to be redirected.

  • Narrow Escape: When you Disengage, you also active a web trap that encases all targets within 8 yards in sticky webs, preventing movement for 8s. Or % speed reduction.

Survivability

  • The Shadow Hunter’s Voodoo Mask: Heal for X% of your maximum health when you activate Feign Death, then heal for an additional X% of your maximum health every second afterwards for X seconds.

  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera: Whenever you are hit by a melee attack, the cooldown of your Disengage is instantly reduced by 2s. Whenever you are hit by a ranged attack or spell, the cooldown of your Aspect of the Turtle is instantly reduced by 4s. These effects have a 2 second cooldown.

  • Ambuscade: When a trap is triggered, reduce the cooldown of Disengage by X seconds.

  • Survival Tactics: Feign Death dispels all harmful magical effects, and reduced damage taken by 90% for 1.5 seconds.

  • Resilience of the Hunter: When you feign death reduce damage taken by X%.

  • Mending Bandage: Instantly clears all bleeds, poisons, and diseases from the target, and heals for 30% damage over 6 seconds. Being attacked will stop you from using Mending Bandage.

  • Cower: Your pet cowers, reducing damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds. While cowering your pet’s movement speed is reduced by 50%.

  • Improved Mend Pet: Gives the Mend Pet spell a 10% chance of cleansing a curse, disease, magic, poison, or bleed effect from the pet each tick.

Rotation

  • Hydra’s Bite: Serpent Sting fires arrows at 2 additional enemies near your target, and its damage over time is increased by 20%.

    (OP Notes for Hydra's Bite)

    This would smoothen out the aoe rotation a bit.

  • Mad Bombardier 2-set: When Kill Command resets, it has a 50% chance to make your next Wildfire Bomb incur no cooldown.

  • Mad Bombardier 4-set: Your Wildfire Bombs deal 30% additional damage. This bonus is increased to 80% for bombs empowered by Mad Bombardier.

    (OP Notes for Mad Bombardier)

    Why the Shadowlands tier set isn’t included in the talent trees is beyond me. It actually gave PvPers a reason to press Kill Command (FYI before the tear set we pressed Kill Command maybe once per game?). The tier set also allowed hunters to use Kill Command in aoe scenarios.

  • Primeval Intuition: Your maximum Focus is increased to 120, and Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite increases your Critical Strike by X for 12 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.

    (OP Notes for Primeval Intuition)

    This could easily replace Energetic Ally in the survival hunter tree. Easily.

  • Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus: Whenever a trap is triggered, gain 45 focus and increase all focus gained by 100% for 5 seconds.

    (OP Notes for Nesingwary's Trapping Apparatus)

    I am aware this is in the hunter tree, but the talent can be more versatile by not limiting the trap trigger to just Freezing trap.

  • Soulforge Embers: Launching a Flare into your Tar Trap causes up to 5 enemies inside of the Tar Trap to burn for Fire damage over 12 seconds.

    (OP Notes for Soulforge Embers)

    This was a cool concept. I can’t see why it wasn’t brought back. It’s more interesting than dot and Raptor Strike when bomb and carve in on cd during aoe scenarios.

  • Caltrops: Scatter Caltrops in an area for 15s. Enemies who step on Caltrops will take X Bleed damage every 1 second, and have 70% reduced movement speed for 6 seconds.

Now for a quick rant…

Intimidation vs Hi-Explosive Trap

This is already a dead talent. The only scenario where Hi-Explosive Trap might be used is on the middle flag in EoTs, or on Lumbermill in AB. You could argue the use of Hi-Explosive Trap on Y-axis arena maps, but a stun is way more valuable. Hi-Explosive Trap is such a cool ability, but there will be no reason to take it over Intimidation in the arena, m+, raids, or even the open world. Reconfigure the tree so that you are able to take both Intimidation and Hi-Explosive Trap.

Coordinated Assault

We obviously haven’t tested this new talent out yet, but the eye test shows that the change to this ability is a massive nerf. Why did it have to be changed in the first place? TBH, the original Coordinated Assault was boring so change is welcome, but the new talent is terrible. It only works with Kill Shot in ST so we are forced to take Deadly Duo, which forces us to invest into Kill Command to make it worth pressing that button. I’m not even going to count how many talent points are need to be invested to make Coordinated Assault work; the new design needs to be changed.

Steel Trap

I’m still blown away that Steel Trap is a bottom node. Just… why?

Energetic Ally, Aspect of the Eagle, & Mongoose Bite

These go hand-in-hand, so why are they on opposite sides of the talent tree?

Improved Wild Bomb & Tactical Advantage

5 talent points purely on buffing Wild Bomb… why?

Spear Focus & Sweeping Spear

Another 5 talent points purely on buffing Raptor Strike and Mongoose bite… why?

Precision, Keen Eyesight, & Sharp Edges

9 talent points purely on blandly buffing our crit… why? At least make the crit increase exciting like Primeval Intuition in the Rotation tab.

Fury of the Eagle, Birds of Prey, Wildfire Infusion, & Explosive Expert

Did people actually enjoy the Legion artifact ability? Iirc, sentiments were negative. It was basically a Monk FoF that doesn’t parry and can’t be used while being moved. What about Birds of Prey? I’m pretty sure most survival hunters were happy to spec out of Birds of Prey after getting their 2-set this patch. Lastly, Wildfire Infusion is in such a weird spot. Spending 3 points on Explosive Expert just to get Wildfire Infusion does not feel good at all.

Hunter Lunge vs Rogue Acrobatic Strikes

(Hunter) 3 talent points for 3 yard melee increase vs (Rogue) 1 talent point for 3 yard melee increase… why?

The Path to Mongoose Bite

The path to Mongoose Bite feels awful. You are forced to go Improved Harpoon & Terms of Engagement over Predator & Tip of the Spear due to how expensive the latter talents are, 3 points vs 6 points respectively.

Binding Shackles

This talent feels out of place. I understand why it’s placed below the choice node of Intim/Hi-Explosive trap, but this talent is extremely situational. The only time this talent will be taken is if Keen Insight is a massive dps increase (which feels awful since you’ll be wasting two talent points just to get Keen Insight, and a passive stat increase is incredibly boring), or while doing world content. Possibly unrated PvP. There is no use for this talent in instanced PvE since you don’t want to be tanking hits, and no use in rated PvP since intim is mostly used on healers to secure traps. It would be best to replace this talent with something more general.

Kill Shot Resets

Trying to talent into Kill Shot resets feel incredibly unviable. You need to invest a ton of points just to get to Deadly Duo, and also invest a ton of points into Kill Command talents in order to make it worth while to press. Kill Shot procs are also severely nerfed in this expansion. Kill Shot procs in SL was powerful due to the 25% Kill Shot damage increased from Flayed Shot; that is currently missing in the survival talent tree.

Agile Movement/Born to be Wild

Three talent points for 6% movement speed. What’s even worse is that you need to take it to get Serpent Sting and Born to be Wild is rarely useful. Meanwhile rogues have two separate talents points that increase their movement speed by 15% each, costing talent 1 point each, respectively (Fleet Footed & Hit & Run). What the…?

Defensives/Squishiness

The general hunter tree is severely lacking in defensives. Yes, buffs to exhilaration exists, but damage reduction would be a lot more interesting. Imo, replacing Binding Shackles and Born to be Wild with damage reduction on disengage and/or feign death.

Heart of the Phoenix/Bullheaded

Not much to say here, we could easily reduce the points for Improved Mend Pet and Thick Hides to introduce back Heart of the Phoenix and Bullheaded. Yes, these two are mainly for PvP but they were fun to have.

There’s so much more I can go over, but I don’t feel like putting more energy into this since historically community feedback has fallen onto deaf ears. All we want is our class/spec to be fun.

Fin.

Edit: Include rant about Binding Shackles, Kill Shot Resets, & Agile Movement/Born to be Wild, Defensives/Squishiness, and Heart of the Phoenix/Bullheaded. Edited Coordinated Assault rant.

If this thread gains traction from the community council then I’ll work on actual suggestions to improve the trees instead of ranting.

9 Likes
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Agreed with everything here.

The utility and survivability options seem very geared towards PvP, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We definitely need some form of Resilience of the Hunter, or Marksman’s Advantage back, otherwise we will be even weaker defensively than we already are. Would love to see Survival Tactics added in some form in PvE, and Mending Bandage in the Survival tree would be interesting as well, although again it is very heavily PvP oriented.

I’m similarly baffled that the Mad Bombardier 2-set didn’t make it into the trees, though I think the plan was to have the Kill Command/Kill Shot reset, and then the talent that reduces the Wildfire Bomb CD after a Kill Shot replace the Mad Bombardier 2-set. But good lord it’s a heavy, heavy talent investment just to piece back together a weaker version of the 2-set. I will say that it is at least a more interesting version of the 2-set in PvE, as I don’t really enjoy being a two-button spec, which is what it feels like when you get lucky and roll a bunch of red bombs.

Hydra’s Bite is a fantastic suggestion, and could easily fit into the bomb path/left side of the tree (where I imagine it would have the most value due to Wildfire Infusion), which is currently bogged down by several 3-talent point nodes that simply don’t have to be so costly. Have one be 2 points, and branch off for Hydra’s Bite.

Agreed on every rant topic. Blizzard desperately needs to iterate on this tree, and fast, if it has a chance of coming close to some of the creativity and innovation that is readily apparent in other trees.

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I lamented about including Marksman’s Advantage in my post. Iirc players b!tched and moaned about having to press Mark before doing dps; players wanted it either removed or put off the global. I would highly prefer Resilience of the Hunter and/or Survival Tactics as our form of defense, as long as there is some sort of reduction on the cd of Feign Death. Timing a Feign Death to mitigate damage is satisfying.

I had high hopes for the hunter talent trees after previewing the rogues, but man was I sorely disappointed. I can’t believe Blizzard thought releasing the rogue and hunter trees together was a good idea; the difference between the rogue and hunter trees is like night and day.

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Sure, I don’t love having to press Hunter’s Mark before dpsing, but 9/10 times it’s not a dps loss because the target is targetable before the pull. And I enjoy that it gives more consistent utility to Hunter’s Mark. But the point I think we agree on 100% is that Hunters need some more defensives. Completely agreed re: Feign Death. Hugely satisfying, and super cool when you can negate a mechanic with it.

Also completely agree re: the difference between Hunter trees and Rogue trees. I fully understand that there are different teams working on each class, but good god, how is there this much disparity between the two classes? The difference feels as stark as that between a master’s thesis and someone who forgot the assignment was due and slapped it together 15 minutes before class. It’s embarrassing.

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I recall a WF raider leaking that Blizzard only has 1 person working on each class talent trees. I hope he was wrong; but man the evidence is stifling…

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Unless you are Lone Wolf MM, in which case you are obligated to take Hi-Explosive Trap because Intimidation is less than useless.

Keen Eyesight is a class talent though, and having a generic crit talent available class wide has value, especially located where it is in the tree so all 3 specs can pick it up.

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The path to Mongoose bite is probably my biggest concern right now (there are minor ones like so many 3 caps, awful 1,2,3% increased ranged, why is so much of the “fun” stuff so deep down the tree etc…). But dam why do you have to pick up so many harpoon traits to get to mongoose bite unless you go the “buff raptor strike route” but then if you do that, mongoose bite replaces raptor strike thereby invalidating all the raptor strike talents- something can’t be right.

As for the trap stuff I would love if they leaned a bit back into the whole “master trapper” flavor that SV had but that seems to be as forgotten as the class accessories.

I am a little befuddled as to why death chakrams and nessing way are the legenedary/covenants that made the cut to talents.

Overall the tree needs work to be sure but I don’t think it is to the level of “burn it down and start over”.

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But dam why do you have to pick up so many harpoon traits to get to mongoose bite unless you go the “buff raptor strike route” but then if you do that, mongoose bite replaces raptor strike thereby invalidating all the raptor strike talents- something can’t be right.

Just want to point out that Tip of the Spear would almost certainly still work with Mongoose Bite too. The point remains that the two talents are at odds with each other; you want to be spamming Mongoose Bite during your window, and perhaps using Death Chakrams/Flanking Strike to generate quick focus, not filling with Kill Command.

The point also remains that there are far too many talent points wasted in Harpoon. Some of the pathing makes me wonder if the creator even tried to actually fill out a few builds just to see what they might look like, because several paths are very counter-intuitive.

I am totally agreed both that there are way too many 3 caps, and that it’s not “burn it all down” bad. I think there is actually a decent base to work from, and in the process of reducing the number of 3 caps, they can introduce some more creative and fun options to play with.

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Well thought out post!

Having never played SV since they made it Melée (and rarely before that), I can’t speak much on it.

However, as a BM-til-I-die Hunter, I agree with you ∞% on :arrow_right: As fun as Hi-Explosive Trap sounds, I’m never choosing it over Intimidation.

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The following thoughs are by Bicmex. For those who do not know, he is a rank 1 pvp survival hunter.

He posted a video talking about sv talents as well as a 10k word essey that I will be linking down below.

twitlonger com / show / n_1ss32lm

I still can’t post links :confused:
What sort of loony world we live in? Can post videos, but not links :confused:

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Its probably true tbh. You can see the horrible mistakes the person did across all the specs and generic tree.
You can tell they barely knew anything about BM and ZERO about MM as well as Surv.
Idk if this person was a temp or an intern, but if they were a full time person they need fired. The trees were at an intern level quality of work.
I mean, there are just soooooo many mistakes and the trees are so horribly made.

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Plus, look at the rogue’s tree. Its HUGEEE compaired to surv’s tree. Like its black and white. Its horroble.

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Not necessarily. Using two points in Binding Shackles just to get to Keen Insight feels god awful.

Fortunately for you, BM is looking the juiciest out of all the hunter specs. I was playing around with the talent calculator and the zoo build with Blood Frenzy might be insane.

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I mean I’d like the thing above Keen Eyesight to be actually worth taking, but I meant being in the center column is a good place to be since it’s easily accessible to any spec.

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The main thing I hated about the old talent trees was the “tree” part. Making me waste points on something I don’t want just because it’s a required fence I must jump to get the the talent/s I want feels stupid, regressive, and punitive.

I was playing with the calculators and could never get to what I have now and have anything new because so many things that should be baseline I’ve got to spend stupid points on. :pouting_cat:

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Fair point. It just feels terrible having to put 3 points into just a stat increase, meanwhile other specs are getting much cooler thing in their trees. At least we can both agree that Binding Shackles is useless.

I wholeheartedly agree. We can hope that the developers working on the trees actually listen to our feedback, because we are not the only class that need to waste points to get to talents that we actually want.

The developers have a hard job. They need to make the trees work for open world, pve, and pvp. I’d like to be optimistic but releasing the survival tree in this state is holding me back.

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