Ranged Survival - Not just DoT Marksmanship. A suggested design

Classes Hunter
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I’ve been engaging in discussion here on the topic of returning ranged Survival as a fourth spec, either in Shadowlands or in the future. I thought I would put down my ideas in this post, as to how it could potentially be designed when it would be returned as a fourth Hunter spec (not replacing melee Survival).

The purpose of this post is to show that ranged Survival is not just a slightly different Marksmanship, that it has its own well defined fantasy, and can be easly designed to play plenty differently from the other Hunter specs.

Edit: I made a new post that contains suggested design for all Hunter specs (including ranged SV and a fourth spec that is like melee SV) here: Potential design for four spec Hunter, ALL spells/abilities/talents, and how to make pets engaging again

- Mastery -

Wild Hunt
Damage over time effects deal X% increased damage.

The cooldown of traps are reduced by X%, and they last X% longer on the ground before expiring.

- Baseline Abilities -

Explosive Shot
25 focus
6 second cooldown
You fire an explosive charge into the enemy target, causing X fire damage initially and every second for 2 seconds.

Black Arrow
30 focus
30 seconds cooldown
Fires a black shot at the target, causing X shadow damage over 20 seconds.

Serpent Sting
10 focus
Fires a shot that poisons the target, causing X nature damage over 15 seconds.

Immolation Trap
30 second cooldown
Hurls a fiery trap to the target location that causes X fire damage over 16 seconds to the first enemy that approaches it. Limit 1 fire trap. Trap will exist for 1 minute.

Explosive Trap
30 second cooldown
Hurls a fiery trap to the target location that causes X fire damage and burns X enemies within 8 yards for X additional fire damage over 10 seconds. Limit 1 fire trap. Trap will exist for 1 minute.

Multi-Shot
15 Focus
Fires several missiles, hitting your target and up to X enemies within 10 yards for X physical damage.

Counter Shot
24 second cooldown
Interrupts spellcasting, preventing any spell in that school from being casted for 3 seconds.

Kill Shot
10 focus
10 second cooldown
You attempt to finish off a wounded target, dealing X physical damage. Only usable on enemies with less than 20% health.

Lock and Load
Passive effect
Black Arrow has an X% chance per tick, and traps affected by Waylay have a 100% chance when sprung, to reset the cooldown of Explosive Shot and cause your next two Explosive Shots to cost no focus and to trigger no cooldown.

Waylay
Passive effect
After 3 seconds, your traps become fully armed, making them especially devastating:

  • Freezing Trap - Once broken, slows the enemy by 70% for 4 seconds.

  • Tar Trap - Moving while affected by Tar Trap has an X% chance per second to stun the enemy for 1 second.

  • Immolation Trap - Damage increase by X%.

  • Explosive Trap - Damage increased by X%.

Serpent Spread
Passive effect
All enemies hit by Multi-shot are also affected by Serpent Sting for 9 seconds.

Steady Focus
Passive effect
Steady Shot now generates 10 focus.

- Talents -

Tier 1

Caustic Venom
Explosive Shot ticks have an X% chance to change your next Serpent Sting into Acid Sting:

  • Acid Sting - Fires a shot that sears the target, causing X fire nature damage over 12 seconds and causing your Serpent Sting on the target to deal X% more damage while active.

Just as Planned
Lock and Load now also generates 30 focus over 10 seconds.

Spray and Prey
Damage caused by your shots and stings have an X% chance to generate 30 focus for your pet and increase your pet’s critical strike chance by 6% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

Tier 2

Airborne Toxins
Multi-shotting a target already infected with Serpent Sting causes 2 enemies within 8 yards of the target to take X nature damage and be infected with Serpent Sting for 9 seconds.

Barrage
Rapidly fires a spray of shots, dealing an average of X physical damage to up to 8 enemies in front of you. Usable while moving.

Boom Operator
The radius of Explosive Trap’s damage effect is increased by 100%, and Explosive Shot now also deals X% of its damage to up to X enemies within 10 yards of the target.

Tier 3

Trailblazer
Your movement speed is increased by 30% anytime you have not attacked for 3 seconds.

Natural Mending
Every 20 focus you spend reduces the remaining cooldown of Exhilaration by 1 second.

Camouflage
You and your pet blend into the surroundings and gain stealth for 1 minute. While camouflaged, you will heal for 2% of maximum health every 1 second.

Tier 4

Steel Trap
30 sec cooldown
Hurls a Steel Trap to the target location that snaps shut on the first enemy that approaches, immobilizing them for 20 seconds and causing them to bleed for X damage over 20 seconds.

Damage other than Steel Trap may break the immobilization effect. Trap will exist for 1 minute. Limit 1.

  • Waylay effect - Root and bleed duration increased by 50%.

Snake Trap
30 second cooldown
Hurls a Snake Trap to the target location that spawns multiple snakes to attack the first enemy that approaches. The snakes melee attacks will apply a stacking nature damage over time effect, and have a chance to inflict a 40% movement speed slow and a 30% casting speed slow. Snakes take 90% less damage from area of effect attacks, have 10% the health of the Hunter, and will exist for 9 seconds.

  • Waylay effect - Snakes now last 15 seconds and apply the movement speed and casting speed slow 50% more often.

Trap Launcher
While Trap Launcher is activated, all traps will be transformed into projectiles, immediately triggering their effect at the location of the target enemy within 40 yards. When Immolation Trap is fired this way, it will also gain the effects of Waylay.

Tier 5

Born to be Wild
Reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Turtle by 20%.

Posthaste
Disengage also frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds.

Binding Shot
45 second cooldown
Fires a magical projectile, tethering the enemy and any other enemies with 5 yards for 10 seconds, rooting them in place for 8 seconds if they move more than 5 yards from the arrow.

Tier 6

Night-Watch
Duration of Black Arrow increased by 12 seconds.

Exotic Munitions
Allows you to modify your ranged weapon to use Exotic Munitions that last for 1 hour:

  • Incendiary Ammo - Each auto shot deals X additional Fire damage to X enemies within 8 yards of the initial target, and increases the duration of Immolation Trap by 1 second.

  • Poisoned Ammo - Each auto shot deals X additional Nature damage over 16 sec, and while active refreshes the duration of Serpent Sting to 3 seconds whenever it would otherwise expire.

  • Frozen Ammo - Each auto shot deals X additional Frost damage, reduces the target’s movement speed by 30% for 4 sec, and no longer breaks Freezing Trap’s effect.

  • Arcane Ammo - Each auto shot deals between X and 3X additional Arcane damage, and causes your next Arcane Shot to deal X% more damage and cost 5 less focus, stacking up to 3 times.

  • Shadow Ammo - Each auto shot deals X additional Shadow damage rapidly over 1 second, and causes Black Arrow to tick 50% faster over its duration.

Sticky Bomb
20 second cooldown
Hurls a grenade at your target which sticks to them and explodes after 6 seconds, knocking them down and dealing X fire damage. Explosive Shot triggers this effect immediately and causes it to deal X% more damage.

Tier 7

Potency
Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Black Arrow and Immolation Trap damage ticks have a 20% chance to deal damage twice, an 8% chance to deal damage three times, and a 2% chance to deal damage 4 times.

Fully Loaded
3 minute cooldown
Instantly activates Lock and Load and for 9 seconds afterwards causes Black Arrow to have a 100% chance to trigger Lock and Load.

Lion’s Den
Traps now instantly deal X physical damage to the target that triggers them, and all traps now cause the target who triggered them to take X additional physical damage whenever they trigger one of your traps, stacking up to 3 times and lasting 15 seconds. Damage from Lion’s Den is increased by an additional 20% for traps that are affected by Waylay.

Freezing Trap and Steel Trap are not broken by damage from Lion’s Den, and no longer break from your Serpent Sting, Black Arrow or Immolation Trap damage over time effects.

- End -

To reiterate, this post is to show that ranged Survival can easily be its own well defined spec, and is not just Marksmanship but with DoTs. I didn’t take much effort to balance these abilities/talents, so it could be that some are over or under tuned. But Blizzard could just adjust the numbers to fix that. The purpose was not to show a perfectly numbers balanced spec, but rather an interesting one with a strong fantasy.

Any constructive feedback is welcomed, as well as your own suggestions as to what ranged Survival could be like if/when it returns.

14 Likes
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I really just wanted to say that I find the names you come up with for some talents to be quite charming. Funny, too. :grin:

Edit: I DO like what I’m seeing here. I can see bits of various expansions in this — the WotLK through MoP era, and even some Legion (via Waylay).

I really like your idea of the mastery. The trap aspect at least. The DoT part might be a wee bit strong, but I love the class/spec fantasy.

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Thank you! I really got a kick out of some of the talent names too, lol.

As for the Mastery, it could be tuned down to a lower percentage, but other than DoT damage increase I don’t know how else to give it the damage boost aspect that Mastery usually entails. Old SV mastery increased magical/elemental damage, which is basically the same thing.

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Serpent Spread being a talent is a non-starter.

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You’re right. Just realized that BM has Beast Cleave and MM has Trick Shots. I’ll make a couple alterations.

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I really like the idea of exotic munitions. I kind of even imagine that arcane shot should’ve been brought in as a munition type since we haven’t had mana since the implementation of focus.

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The painful thing is Exotic Munitions is actually a talent that used to exist in WoD. It was never tuned well but it would have been cool to keep rather than unceremoniously removing it in Legion.

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I liked the idea of Arcane Ammunition so I added it, and added Shadow Ammunition too cuz why not, lol. But yes, Exotic Munitions was too short lived. Such a fun talent, especially compared to the upcoming SL talents. LnL and Volley which were baseline now made talents, and a passive that reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire ‘Trueshot’.

Seriously, why do Hunters have such boring bland talents?

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i’d play this spec.

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I still got exotic munitions on my action bar and it didnt turn into a red ?.

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I like most of what I’ve read here. It would be a fun spec to play and it reminds me of the glory days of RSV that i played in pvp. My only question is this…

  1. Is this a petless spec? There’s nothing mentioned about the pet at all? I just didn’t know if it was intended? I always thought it would’ve been nice for SV to somehow interact with the pet. Not like current SV does. But any interactions between the pet and dots, maybe being SV would alter your pets abilities somehow. I dunno, just food for thought.
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Also, I enjoy rated pvp and did prefer SV in arenas when it was ranged, over MM or BM. My question is, would this iteration have any type of dispell protection? I remember playing RSV in arenas and that was an annoyance until dampening would kick in… With the current state of DOTS damage VS player health pools / Essences and what not, the dots would have to tick very hard, or explosive shot would have to hit like a truck in order to cover the damage.

Maybe the Arcane shot dmg would make up for it… I dunno, was just thinking about it.

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The Spray and Prey talent in tier 1 involves the pet. The tree is kinda limited because it is being weighed down by the two ‘universal’ trees that all the specs share. Then you gotta have a simple tier for tier 1 and an AoE tier, then I wanted there to be a trap tier as well.

A potential additional pet related talent could involve the pet’s attacks applying a poison DoT, or interacting with the ticks of SrS. I didn’t want to make a whole lot of pet-centric talents though. Mostly wanting to focus on the poisons, explosives, traps, etc…

I imagine that the PvP talents would play a role here though for PvP. Perhaps something like this for dispel protection:

Warp Stalker Sting
40 second cooldown
Stings the target with the venom of a Warp Stalker for X seconds. While active, whenever one of your damage over time effects would be dispelled, all of the Hunter’s damage over time effects and Warp Stalker Sting are warped to the dispeller with refreshed durations, and the cooldowns of all affected abilities are finished.

Still allows for counter play to the Hunter’s DoTs, but can still be very punishing and allow the Hunter to get multiple Black Arrows going at once and get lots of LnL procs. Also might be OP, but I dunno, I don’t PvP much.

As for DoT damage, perhaps something like this:

Temporal Shot
2 minute cooldown
Fires a special temporally imbued shot at the target, pausing the duration of all the Hunter’s DoTs but causing them to tick twice (or perhaps thrice, or maybe four times, depending on balance) as fast. Lasts 8 seconds.

If this is too ‘Magey’, then perhaps:

Composite Demolition
Your DoTs have X% increased critical strike chance for every other one of your DoTs active on the target.

Or

Volatile Explosions
Your Explosive Shot ticks deal bonus damage equal to X% of the remaining damage of all of your DoTs on the target.

Basically they encourage you to stack up lots of DoTs, and the latter encourages you to keep them at high durations too.

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Not bad, while I was away (working) lol I thought of something as well.

Maybe I’ve been thinking about this the wrong way. What if this would occur upon someone dispelling dots.

  1. SV with pet (no lone wolf): When your target is dispelled of one of your DoT’s you and your pet gain a stack of dmg increase for x seconds per DoT dispelled.

This way, healers can still choose to stop your DoT dmg, but you would gain an increase to your direct dmg spells and pet dmg. So the hunter is not gimped in pvp until dampening, and it would make a healer and their team mate play smartly against the hunter as well.

Di spell team mate, then they would have to pillar as the dmg from Arcane shot and explosive shot+pet may actually be too high. But by them dispelling it gave them enough time to catch up? I dunno… My ideas aren’t perfect, and i can see why blizz has a hard time balancing ideas.

If Blizzard did something like this, they wouldn’t have to worry about PVE and PvP balance either, as it would strictly be a bonus ONLY if your dots were removed, dispelled. I’m sure there might be situations in pve where the hunter would benefit from this, but it probably wouldn’t be often.

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It is a good potential solution, but I dunno I’m not a fan of straight damage increases. Perhaps instead of +% damage it could grant crit or haste. It could also grant a unique buff, such as causing your next Serpent Sting or Black Arrow to have twice the duration and be undispellable. Or perhaps having a DoT dispelled could immediately trigger Lock and Load, with no internal cooldown. That way for each dispelled DoT they would have to prepare for three incoming Explosive Shots, potentially making it not worth dispelling, but still allowing for counter play to both attempt to dispel the DoTs while protecting against the Explosive Shots.

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Perhaps you are right, flat dmg increases aren’t always the most efficient way to handle situations. I do like what you’ve said though, as long as explosive shot does enough dmg to matter. My fear is even if blizzard added RSV back, that the dmg would just tickle players. DoTs have been far to weak in pvp for far too long.

This would be a nice addition, there was nothing more annoying in arenas then throwing your BA and serpent sting onto a target and then BAM, they are gone, only to incur a CD on black arrow.

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This is way to trap oriented for an MM build IMHO.

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It’s meant to be a potential iteration of ranged SV if it returned. The title is mostly just referring to how some people have said that SV is too similar to MM, or that it is just MM but with DoTs.

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Generally speaking adding more confusion to any situation is bad.

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…Maybe i’m just a much older survival hunter, but i could care less about DoTs. Not saying this doesn’t look interesting…(it does look fun.).

-But i wan’t my GD*** improved frost traps back (that oil slick is pathetic by any measure of comparison)
-I want my Wyvern Sting
-I want a return to a time when ALL of my traps could root.
-I want my reduced trap cool-downs

After that, i don’t really care if my shots are exactly the same as Marks…seriously.

I was JUST PLAIN BETTER AT CC THAN ANY OTHER HUNTER HANDS DOWN(hence the name…Survival). I think that gets forgotten A LOT with these builds…

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