Mastery for Survival Hunters needs an update

Classes Hunter
1

Current Mastery

Mastery: Spirit Bond
You and your pet’s Focus spending abilities deal 13.0% increased damage.

While your pet is active, you both regenerate 1.0% of maximum health every 5 sec.

Boosts Doesn’t Boost
Raptor Strike Wildfire Bomb
Mongoose Bite Kill Command
Carve Flanking Strike
Butchery Fury of the Eagle
Serpent Sting Coordinated Assault
Kill Shot Spearhead
Explosive Shot Stampede
Barrage Death Chakram
Arcane Shot Steel Trap
High Explosive Trap
Steady Shot

Comments

Survival’s Mastery doesn’t work with most of its damage dealing abilities, even ones that are critical to its DPS rotation such as Wildfire Bomb or any of its major cooldowns.

Also, having 50% Mastery increases the 1.0% healing per 5 seconds to only 3.0% per 5 seconds. I don’t think the survivability increase is large enough to merit pigeon-holing the Survival Hunter’s “viable” talents builds to focus around Mongoose Bite (since Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite are one of the few core rotational abilities that actually benefit from Mastery) when/if the hunter wants to focus on Mastery as a secondary stat.

Proposals (to be considered individually)

  1. Consider removing the healing mechanic into its own hunter class tree talent.
  2. Consider changing Mastery to affect all spell and ability damage/healing.
  3. Consider having Mastery also increase the chance for Kill Command to reset.
  4. Consider making Mongoose Bite the primary ability instead of Raptor Strike, and have mastery (also) increase Mongoose Fury’s damage bonus.

There are a ton of other things that could be done, but fixing/adjusting the mastery would be a pretty easy win for Survival Hunters.

5 Likes
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there are many masteries in the game that don’t affect all damage sources so I don’t believe blizzard really sees that as a problem unfortunately

this would quite literally just be versatility :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
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Yes, and?

Focusing on X part of the kit over Y part of the kit is… largely the point of having a stat like Mastery, instead of just Versatility-without-DR.

Consider also: Are Barbed Shot, Death Chakram, Master Marksman, Auto-shot, Cobra Shot, and trinkets all irrelevant to BM’s damage?

It needs better scaling and faint readjustments (be that per what scales with it or just by adjusting, say, Carve/Butchery damage) not to simply be OP for ST while UP for AoE or the like, but it’s not a problem for it to leave WFB, KC, FS, etc., unaffected.

  • You have Crit for those if you want to build generally, giving you actual choice over whether to focus on spending windows or spread that impact broadly. That choice is not a bad thing.
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There was a node in Talonclaw that healed for X% after killing an enemy.
I wouldn’t mind if they replaced the healing portion with that effect.

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I think that would be a bit limited for a Mastery, but it should definitely be on the Hunter tree itself

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When they first presented the shift to melee I suggested the mastery increase the damage of your damage over time effects.

What has allowed humans to survive throughout history to become the dominant species on the planet is our ingenuity and use of tools. If you look at each DoT we apply, that is exactly what’s going on. Whether it be Serpent Sting, Wildfire Bomb, Steel Trap, Bloodseeker…all of it comes from the Hunter using ingenuity to convert the resources at his disposal into tools that allow him to survive and overcome the threats he encounters.

I would like to see something like:

Survival Training:
Your DoTs are increased by X% and Raptor Strike and Kill Command deal 1% increased damage for each of your DoTs on the target.
You and your pet are healed for 1% of max health every Y seconds for each of your unique active DoTs.

1 Like
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Not really a fan. Feels too Affliction. And more importantly, maintaining all your DoTs is already a default behavior for sustained combat; making you further dependent on that just reduces the value in accurately guessing the target’s remaining TTK ----Time-til-Kill(ed) or Time-(needed)-to-Kill— and thereby potentially forgoing ramp-up where optimal. Forcing the ramp-up in all situations would then remove/reduce those rarer situations may make the spec feel a bit less responsive or dynamic (more sluggish/routine).

Granted, my current spitballs certainly aren’t any better*, and it is thematically a step in a better direction. I just feel like it actually reduces choice and total complexity slightly when compared to the current Mastery. I certainly wouldn’t hate it, but I don’t think it’d be a net improvement.

*One of my (terrible) spitballs, so that I’m not just critiquing without putting out anything of my own for ridicule:

Rhythm of the Hunt
Your generators briefly also increase your maximum Focus by up to X% of Focus generated, and your actions consume proportionately greater Focus to deal increased effect.

Critical Strike chance and Speed are increased by Y% for each %Focus held, and Haste and Leech increased by Y% for each %Focus missing.

  • Took some cues from Blood and Arcane’s Mastery’s affordances, to the effect of trying to capitalize on pre-frey pursuit and in-frey ferocity.
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Is “arbitrarily avoiding ranged weapons just for fun” part of that?

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Serpent Sting, Kill Shot, Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot. Doesn’t seem like anyone is avoiding anything to me

The only concern I have is that fluctuating resource levels would kind of make it hard to play around especially if you have any Mastery related proc items—and the secondary effect might be overloading with 1 stat providing 2 secondary and 2 tertiary stats

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If the mastery changed to:

I would expect to see a shake-up of talents to support it. Examples would be:

First Blood - The first time you apply a DoT effect to an enemy, 50% of its damage is dealt in the first tick and the remaining damage is dealt in 50% less time. Feign Death resets this effect. (DoTs with front-loaded damage.)

Venomous Fangs - Kill Command has a 100% chance to apply Serpent Sting the first time it damages an enemy. Subsequent Kill Commands have a 30% chance to do so. (Only one GCD to apply Bloodseeker and Serpent Sting.)

Culling - Kill Command strikes all enemies with your DoTs within 8 yards of your pet. (Replaces Carve because no one uses it because it’s terrible and we have a better AoE weapon strike with Butchery. Throw Wildfire Bomb to make Kill Command become an AoE attack applying Bloodseeker and Serpent Sting.)

Kill or Be Killed - If you have more than 50 Focus, Raptor Strike consumes 20 more Focus to deal 100% more damage. (Choice Node with Mongoose Bite. Should be one of the first talents. Spending more Focus to deal greater damage allows for more build up of Tip of the Spear and practical use of frequent Kill Command resets.)

Prometheus - Your weapon is set ablaze, causing your weapon strikes to deal 30% of their damage as Fire damage over 6 seconds. (An additional DoT that requires no additional ramp and pays homage to the Greek deity.)

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That would just make those DoTs even more routine, while removing the point of Volatile Bomb.

The desire for ramp-up still applies identically to before. Before, you could get to full ramp via KC; WFB; KS under CA; Serpent Sting, MB/RS (Viper’s), or VB; and at least one crit, for at least 5 GCDs.

With those proposed talents, you’d get to full ramp… with exactly the same number of GCDs; you’ve just made most DoTs auto-cleave as to make them less of a deliberate choice. Well, that and it devalues the existing optimizations, especially by making Volatile Bomb a waste and Pheramone Bomb largely a waste.

It’s kind of the opposite direction from what I’d want to see from anything “DoT-focused” or “debuff-capitalizing”, to be honest.

To use a quick analog, it’s like old Volatile Bomb vs. DF Volatile Bomb. The old one tool longer to ramp, yes, but it had quadratic reward, meaning that you’d actually change tactics over time; some fights weren’t worth spreading Serpent around at all on; others would be so worth it as to actually just purely prioritize spreading Serpent Sting, especially if taking Hydra’s with Volatile about to coincide with old CA. The new one retains reward for appropriate pacing and foreknowledge but replaces changes in tactics with just… more filler casts. Which, to me, seems a bit less tactical on the whole, even if it’s arguably a bit more resourceful (able to forgo individually weak GCDs).

To me, something that’d better suit a Mastery like the one you’d proposed would be just variable focus spending (for proportionately greater reward), to provide a bit of additional balancing buffer between low-cost preparatory actions and RS/MB, and things like, idk…

Predatory Rush (Passive, Talent)
Kill Commands grants Predatory Rush, applying 15% greater Haste towards your next action. This amount is not consumed when Kill Command resets its cooldown, instead stacking up to 5 times, but reset Kill Commands deal 10% less damage per stack.

  • Such would keep the spread deliberate but creates new cases whereby it may be worth overcapping Focus to DoT-spread. It should add diversity of action and tactics, rather than reducing it.
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I don’t feel your proposed talent adds diversity of action and tactics, especially with how dots don’t snapshot stats anymore. not to mention I feel like the damage loss of sitting max focus + not spending your focus for upwards of 2-5 gcds + lowering the damage of your KC just for an oddly large almost invariably well past DR haste buff on a single action doesn’t really seem like it’d be appealing

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Take a look back.

Throwing a Wildfire Bomb into a group of enemies would create a DoT on each of them. This would allow Kill Command to strike all of them, making Pheramone Bomb a powerful tool for increased AoE since your AoE Kill Command would have a 100% chance to reset.

And with Venomous Fangs, your AoE Kill Command would apply Serpent Sting, which would allow Volatile Bomb to react on all nearby enemies, so I’m not sure how you think this would make Volatile Bomb a waste, unless you’re referring to the tacked-on part of applying Serpent Sting to 3 enemies.

Ramp isn’t typically a single target issue since you’re typically talking about a raid or dungeon boss or another player. In most cases, your single target ramp is balanced against other spec’s single target front-loaded damage because the single target will live long enough for your DoTs to catch up.

This isn’t typically the case in AoE because you’re typically talking about trash enemies with lesser health. This is compounded by other specs just pressing something like Eye Beam or Bladestorm that nukes down all the trash before your DoTs get a chance to start rolling.

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Both of which make the original DoT applicator redundant as a DoT applicator, instead simply adding further direct damage that’d depend on the (now all the more routine) AoE DoTs.

They capitalize on them, but again, my issue was that it makes the DoT more a default for all situations as compared to something deliberate, not that it lacked impact by gating large amounts of damage behind it.

Remember, for any spec not hugely underpowered, any new burst damage you introduce to capitalize on those DoTs… has to be siphoned from what all you had before.

As such…

While you end up ‘solving’ the ramp-up ‘issue’ in AoE by making it mostly a non-choice —one then produced routinely (and likely, therefore, having to avoid certain quadratic-scaling attacks that depend on slower, more deliberate ramp-up for balance)— you’ll also have further nerfed Survival’s immediate tools, too, in order to fund those capitalizations.

As such, SV under your proposed Mastery would become more dependent on DoTs in order to perform even its basic functions (i.e. making them largely inseparable from burst AoE, etc.)… even while those DoTs themselves feel less like DoTs / less deliberate or open to decision-making in their own right (or, any right, in this case).

That’s why I wouldn’t be a fan.

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SV is not avoiding ranged weapons. You still use it, in combat.

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That’s semantics. You use a generic alternate animation independent of your weapon, while still using your melee weapon’s stats, in order to perform each ranged attack on Survival.

If by ranged weapons he means the actual equipped weapons, he’s not wrong about us avoiding them.

The real question, though, if taking that tack, is why anyone would fail to notice the differences in efficiency between the physical power (literal pressure per inch and force) that can be conveyed via spear or bow… in combat vs. hunting small and skittish animals. The bow wasn’t used over spears for hunting rabbits because it’s a more powerful weapon; it was used because the damage, past a miniscule point, did not matter, while the element of surprise did.

That element of surprise, though, is only the first second of the 300+ seconds of any WoW boss fight. Here, surprise/stealth lacks relevance, while the damage does not.

Why then would a WoW Hunter, with any basis from real-life hunters or otherwise, arbitrarily avoid using the more physically-efficient melee weapons (just stab it directly, forgoing the energy loss of using a spring system like a bow) when there is a net advantage to do so (the disadvantages in range are outweighed by that greater physical efficiency)?

  • Yes, the game also has guns, but it we were to base what ought be off muskets that can somehow perform a WoW Barrage and never needs reloading, any Hunter should be able to instantly clear fights, repeatedly/continuously.
  • And, if we were to look at WoW as a game, it’d have long since become clear by the continued existence of melee classes that lack of range comes with due compensation in other ways, as it always has and will probably always continue to.
17

I’ve been thinking about this more and here are some more alternative masteries to the one we have currently. there are some guidelines i consider though, when it comes to masteries

  • they should be relatively simple to understand
  • they should be a bit more exciting than just versatility for specific abilities (i.e. flat damage buffs)
  • a good mastery can function as training wheels for the spec (e.g. fury wants you to be enraged, balance/shadow wants all of your dots on the target, enhancement wants you to use stormstrike)
  • a good mastery is related to the spec fantasy and theme
  • a good mastery should apply regardless of the fight style (st, aoe, etc)
  • a mastery stat should be able to be impacted by talents, tier-sets, or other forms of borrowed power (something I think is criminally overlooked in current wow)

Example A: Strength of the Pack

this mastery encourages focus management, buffs both you and your pet (a la current mastery) and is simple to understand and use. this mastery would help a new player learn that kill command is an important ability, and the CD resetting should be a fun burst of “woah cool!”. as the buff does not stack, it would encourage players to not fish for KC resets

Example B: Wild Arsenal

this mastery encourages DoT maintenance (serpent sting + WFB), WFB cd management, and is a fun enhancement to SV’s “adaptive ranger” fantasy of having multiple tools (arctic bola + arcane shot side arm). it’s a very straight forward mastery, however, and the extra resources gained might necessitate an increase cost of focus for other abilities, or encourage a more spammy gameplay to an almost gCD locked spec. however, the extra focus would definitely help newer or less-than-confident players master the spec.

Example C: Wildfire Cluster

This is a very straightforward Mastery while being more than just versatility. Spending Focus makes you do more damage. This encourages players to, well, spend Focus.

1 Like
18

You’re taking my post to serious. Chill out and don’t be like Beppe

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Aye. It’s instead… an RNG-based uncapped-AoE form of the current Mastery… :grimacing:

With some/graduated fall-off, it wouldn’t be too bad, though, if still no more interesting than, and carrying the same issues as, the current Mastery.

Better. I like this. I have the same worries, but likewise don’t think those worries are anything difficult to maneuver design around.

This one seems the best bet to me.

Not a fan, for the same reasons discussed earlier. I don’t like how it wastes Pheromone (due to successive resets providing so little relative value) or, after some amount of Mastery, may eventually necessitate hitting KC on CD regardless of Focus cost (and certainly before popping any damage CD like Explosive Shot, BoP-Kill Shot, or FotE).

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I don’t believe this would ever be the case because wasted focus means your damage would plummet. Sure, you may have high uptime of the buff, but if you’re not buffing any meaningful damage it wouldn’t really have a purpose.