Question: The Hunter community is still split on the issue of the melee spec even two expansions after its introduction. With your new stance of “class over spec” and more ranged abilities returning to the class, what does it mean for Survival in the long term?
Ion Hazzikostas:
That’s a good question. I think part of what led Survival to a melee space to begin with was trying to differentiate Survival from Marksmanship. The rotations over the years had become very very similar — OK you might have a couple more magical-seeming shots in the Survival space. Beast Mastery was very clearly its own thing with its clear niche as the pet-based spec. But then you had these two ranged specs that basically did a lot of ranged shots in their rotation.
Some of that is actually fallout from the shift that we did in Cataclysm going into Mists. We moved from the old-school talent trees that could probably better support types of play styles and utility without having to build a whole spec around them. Having a tree like Survival that was about traps and utility and a little bit of melee stuff in there — that worked when it was something that you could put points into as a broader class initiative. But then turning it into its own spec ultimately led us down a path of duplicating a lot of Mark’s abilities.
We want to keep melee as part of the unique identity of Survival but in Shadowlands and beyond, as we start to think about what classes should look like in future expansions, it’s important that there will be this sort of universal base of what defines a Hunter. All Hunters should have access to ranged attacks and Survival Hunters can be ones that specialize in melee but not necessarily at the expense of the universal skillset that everyone had as a level 5 or level 10 Hunter because that’s what being the class means
there’s a very big difference with marks using arcane magic based shots, and survival using black arrow, explosive shot, extra trap perks, and serpent sting.
they play “similar” sure, but in terms of feeling it’s not actually even close especially now with hard casts with marks as survival is peak hunter.
casted generator, dots, and dynamic “rotation” that changes all the times bcus of procs, and in BRF it was the best iteration.
in no way would marks right now be considered “similar” to survival if it was re-introduced as survival was it’s own archtype. DoT based mobile damage dealer that revolves around black arrow usage/uptime, and short quick fire shots weaved in with a casted generator.
serpent stings passively applied with fillers making it important to apply them to multiple targets (regardless if they don’t proc anything, kinda like DK dots)
explosive shot ; short fire DoT on a semi-short CD
lock n load (free explosive shots, 2 charges given with reset CD)
thrill of the hunt (arcane shot/multishot costs 5 focus for the next 3 casts per proc)
and ofc…
black arrow - 45 second shadow dot that gives you lock n load procs.
it’s an extremely different feel wasting black arrow on a mob that dies quickly vs keeping it up on something for awhile making use of it.
i don’t think ion even remembers what RSV plays like; they just hear preach videos talking about “it’s pretty similar between the three specs” in WoD with all his main choosing videos, and same with rogue’s combat spec getting blasted into literal dice rolling.
Let’s not miss the part where he implies SV and MM got more similar over time, which is an unambiguous lie. Go look at how SV and MM played in WotLK then compare it to WoD. They only diverged over time.
How come “someone looking from the side” is the priority for what happens to Hunter development? Why aren’t Hunters the priority here? I can’t tell Arms and Fury apart from the side. Does that give me the right to dictate various massive overhauls to Warrior specs?
We have a ton of classes and specs that do a lot of sword swinging in their rotation. We have two specs that use bows or guns. Double-speak worthy of 1984.
Swapping my spec from marks to range survival made me go into my spell book and replace literally 2-3 spells on my bar. Spells that you pretty much push off cd (example swapping Chimera for Explosive). There was probably no specs in the game more similar than the hunter specs.
if you want your dots, marks has serpent sting now. Want lock n load/explosive shot? Marks has that too now. I think all these range survival players are just scared to stand still and aim shot.
Firstly, MM and SV only shared about 2 rotational abilities (the most basic ones that come with the class: a casted focus generator and multi-shot) and zero passives. I would argue that Arms and Fury were at least just as similar to one another, as well as Combat and Subtlety. If the concern was that the specs were too similar they should have worked with Hunters to figure out new unique mechanics for MM and SV. There were already many candidates. There is zero reason why they couldn’t have sufficiently differentiated them while keeping them ranged if they felt they weren’t already different enough.
Secondly, arguing that MM right now is capable of representing the ranged SV identity is spectacularly ignorant. None of the abilities you named are remotely similar to their ranged SV counterparts. Serpent Sting has no interaction with anything e.g. Serpent Spread. Explosive Shot is a 30-sec CD AoE. Lock and Load has no attachment to a DoT, only has one charge, has an exceptionally low raw RNG proc chance, and affects Aimed Shot. Speaking of which, the spec has abilities like Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire which don’t remotely fit the ranged SV identity or playstyle. There is zero interaction with traps e.g. Trap Mastery, Entrapment, or Lock and Load (the version that procced off traps). There is no Black Arrow.
It really does seem like you came to the class knowing absolutely nothing, looked at the couple of MM talents named after former ranged SV abilities, and said “Oh well, looks good enough to me!”. Maybe you would be better off sticking to the subforum of a class you do know instead of embarrassing yourself here.
I’ve played hunter since vanilla. Yes I know explosive shot is different than it was, but it makes more sense now in terms of this “class fantasy” you all cry about. But if class fantasy isn’t your thing, why care if the damage is instant instead of over 2 seconds. It literally does not matter. But sure If you want black arrow to be another trash tier talent, im all for it. I hope I can find screenshots of my wod action bars of the two specs. Kill command, explosive shot, and chimera all did the same thing with different names.
Blizz doesn’t have to work with you to differentiate anything, it’s their game. They can choose to make SV a healer if they want, and you can either deal with it or quit. Your sense of entitlement is baffling.
Blizz doesn’t have to work with you to differentiate anything, it’s their game.
He/she is paying for a product. To suggest that Blizzard shouldn’t listen to feedback is the reason why BFA was such crap in the first place. Game developers should indeed work with their players using their feedback to improve the game. To suggests otherwise is ridiculous.
