Those changes are definitely in the right direction, but…
You removed PRECISON, one of the best talents…
Didn’t touched Lunge.
New talent improving steady shot… hummmm
Sorry?
BM still has both KEEN EYESIGHT and THRILL OF THE HUNT, why GUT SV crit talent? please reconsider you hurt me. hurt me really really bad
Yeah I am with you here in the confusion!
I read changes to Harpoon and was like, here we go. Some good start! and then it just went downhill. They give us "ranger for whatever reason but specify that they will Not make the spec ranged. Then what the heck is the point? We can talent into stronger ranged attacks but we aren’t ranged?? eh?)
And the rest of the changes were almost as confusing. Removing our crit talent? It’s literally the single ONLY x% talent that would be ok to keep!!! Why is the rest of these 10 X% dmg X CDR talents still there?
Why are they giving us these weird CDR talents (more CDR talents?!?!) for Flanking strike? Will that become our heavy hitter for melee?
And what’s up with hunkering down on keeping KC? They give us talents to make it even more mandatory to press? More focus… WOHO! The whole freaking community is talking about how we want clearer fantasy around SV and for them to remove the BM abilities and they… add lame inc focus talents for it.
I gotta say I love that we Get replies and work done. But I just wish the work just wasn’t completely delusional. I just guess Hunter is not AT ALL what it used to be and Blizzard is fine with it. I’ll just go to one of the other classes with decent designers/developer.
yes! thats literally my first suggestion in the previous post.
Survival already has a identity crisis, they just make it worse lol , SV has to be melee oriented,
Thats ok and good change, i also suggested this. Its a good talent but 30 seg is too long for such good talent.
Agreed, good job blizz.
Hunter doens’t fair that good against non-hunters melees, they do not tank as a warrior, monk, rogues, DH… this crit talent is imperative to deal against them.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I love the flanking strike ability and would play it at retail if it wasn’t so weak. And I would love it if it got a much bigger role in a actual melee SV hunter.
But as you say, the spec is in such a fantasy-crisis and they sure as fudge are not making it better. It feels like every since the rework in Legion it’s just gone downhill faster and faster. It’s becoming less and less an actual spec and more and more a confusing cesspool of designer ideas.
But Flanking strike has everything to do as sv identity. SV hunters are suposed to attack as one with their pet. DF has increased this identity.
We got coordinated assault, Flanking Strike, Spearhead… makes all sense more interactions in that direction.
I mean… have they really increased the fantasy though? Coordinated assault just works like a gap closer, the actual “buff” is just horrible. And flanking strike? Yeah that is old. However neat it would be to have it being good. And sorry but Spearhead is just old Coordinated assault but with a charge. I doubt they will release us with 3 charges and none of those 3 abilities actually Increase our fantasy, it’s just the same old. And the addition of, for example, “Ranger” just muddies the identity way more than anything else clears it up.
Athamos I know you are a big fan of current SV and think the fantasy is clear. But it really isn’t We are a hunter specialization that use barely any traps, we have a pet with some stolen BM interaction and we have some dots, but also some freaking bombs! and then we have some melee abilities (I mean, raptor strike…). That is not at All a clear identity.
Its not working as a charge anymore. You just got stronger with your pet.
You cannot simplify like this, what you want? lasers? power ranger explosion behind enemy? Survival are not a magical class, if you are a melee and will attack with your pet guess whats suposed to happen? lol
actually I can simplify it like that. Because if you read the actual tooltip of the ability it makes you leap to your enemy (charge) and gives a damage boost to your pet and some of your abilities. Only change is the addition of charge and that the damage increase is spread for balance, instead of a flat 20%.
And so, coordinated assault is not even a charge any more? Then why in gods forsaken name would anyone even consider taking it? The interaction it has is super weird and so weak for the 5 talent points!
Still need more Melee abilities to patch up this identity crisis. If they are doing what Nixom said and wanting SV to stay in Melee and do Melee things then just give us Lacerate again with a Mortal Wounds 2 point talent as well, chance on tick to give free raptor strike/mongoose bite. Its another melee button to press that actually encourages the supposed theme of being ‘melee doing melee things with a pet companion’
Someone with alpha please get in there and reiterate this to him. Id love to have a sit down conversation with the hunter devs just to get an idea of what they are thinking so we can save them developmental time on absolutely horrid Fury of the Eagle buffs.
I mean thank god, yes! Fury of the Eagle is just such a boring and bad ability! It was god awful and looked so horribly out of date back in Legion and now, 6 years later, we get it back Exactly like it was. The whole interaction with FotE in execute range is so cringe… Like why use that in execute range? we are supposed to use our improved kill shots then? And what is up with it decreasing CD (such a boring interaction) on Flanking strike? Why is our cap stone talent on the AoE side reducing CD on our charge/focus building melee ST attack? And to have yet More CDR from it towards WFB? That is like 3 places where we can get CDR on WFB? They are really ham-fisting WFB down our throats…
Melee is the cause of the identity crisis, not the solution.
Throughout SV’s history its success has been more or less directly proportional to how ranged it is, with its most successful years being the ones in which it didn’t even have a melee weapon.
It’s evident now that Blizzard still feels the pressure of ranged combat when it comes to SV’s design and can’t resist making SV more and more ranged each iteration.
It’s time to rip off the bandaid. At this point SV is mostly ranged with only a couple token melee abilities left. It makes zero sense to double down on being melee and complete sense to double down on being ranged.
Having a few shots hit does not make SV range. Also it has been clarified AGAIN they (Blizzard) has no intention of making SV range again. So hopefully that conversation can be put to bed.
Having some range abilities will be welcomed. I think it will be interesting to be able to do the harder hitting shots, but still doing melee hits. I do agree that KC should perhaps be changed as our main generator, perhaps make another ability, but I doubt that will happen. I guess we will see.
So I am happy that we are receiving feedback. And we still have 4 months. Seems long but its not. Hopefully though things will be settled and button up. I think its off to a good start.
Heh I am trying not to get spoiled because there are actual comments from a Blue. I hope this type of communication continues all through beta but I don’t want to get to excited. But yes for the moment there is feedback, actual blue feed back that is a cause for joy.
Before anyone says anything, lets make this clear.
[Talking PvE]
As a PURE dps class, all of the specs are going to be picked, at the high end, depending on which one does the most damage on whatever fight. That will always happen no matter if it’s hunter, mage, rogue, or warlock. THAT BEING SAID… even when it was balanced with the other specs in the game damage wise (WHICH IT SHOULD BE), it has seen staggeringly low gameplay representation. The ONLY time it raises above about 20% rep is when its overtuned to a large enough margin to convince hunters to run it. Looking on Warcraft Logs, Surv is at the top of the list with Warlocks and it STILL only sees half the parses of BM and about 20% fewer than MM.
I hope they improve SV melee style more then focusing on some hybrid $hit 
It’s allot cooler then just another version of MM mixed with BM
Survival was always they ugly duck between hunter specs. When they made it fully ranged they killed the world survival. It should be called shadow hunter or some bull$hit. I like this style where you fight side by side with pet. Those few patches it saw some play nah put it under dogs bowl
Because people love to stay ranged. Easier to deal with mechanics, in group pvp they stay in back watching their a$$. Survival has to go toe to toe and hunter mindset is “ o cAnT deal wITH tHat”
exactly lmao, why would I willingly put myself in melee if I had two other options that were just as good if not better 
My point that’s why people want ranged SV back. I didn’t like that whole shadow arrow, explosive shot , “trap master” gameplay.
It was called survival but had nothing to do with survival. At least now it fits the name survival
I feel like the old RSV should be like a build you can have in the MM talents, to fill a kind of Arcane Archer or Shadow Hunter theme. The name “Survival” sounds good for a game that has an actual open world and needs surviving in, but in the context of WoWs gameplay it sounds more like a tank spec than anything 
I imagine it will taper off for us when there are more classes available in alpha - they seem to be doing much more focused testing this time around, with many classes still not available for testing.
That said, I’m loving the back and forth, the changes in direct response to feedback, everything.
As opposed to just being Arms Warrior mixed with BM?
This is a tired-old revisionism designed to make melee SV fans feel better about the spec. In fact SV was just fine before they made it melee. It has only been in “readheaded stepchild” status since becoming melee.
This overuse of emojis and aliased profanity is exceptionally juvenile.
You’re posting from an all-ranged class so you’re one to talk when trying to throw shade at the ranged specs.
What about charging into the vastly-more-dangerous melee range speaks “survival” to you?