I was thinking about changes that could work for hunters, namely BM and Survival. Something needs to be done for the class as one of these specs is easily the most braindead in the game and the other is a joke that shouldn’t be entertained as is, let me explain.
BM is great for this as it would create a pet/minion based tank not unlike a puppeteer style of play. Since BM is mostly based around buffing your pets going a little forward with this by switching some dmg skills to defensive to allow tanking would be nice especially with the duo of pets BM can use creating a unique playstyle.
A similar fare can be made for Survival just with more focus towards you the hunter and a single pet. Also making Survival a tank would give justification to the name “Survival” as it would finally be able to survive more than 15 seconds in combat. Another idea for Survival would be to change to a healer that focuses on bandages, balms, etc to heal. Basically, a physical healer that uses focus/energy. That is just a thought. Though the real change to Survival should be making it the trap master. Give back the old traps or new ones.
Regardless of whichever could be chosen either would help the hunter class skill tree has with one other spec being a tank it would add defensive perks to the tree giving hunters some much needed defensive options as opposed to their current myriad of utility abilities. Though the big boon with this change I believe would be the fact that you are giving the most played/popular class a tanking option increasing the total tanks available as there seems to be a drought. If nothing else change Survival to actual to capable of surviving a light breeze or rename n re-kit to the Trapper/Trap Master or similar.
BM needs to baseline Hunter specific attacks like Cobra/Barbed and focus more on BEASTS like BM should be able to TALENT their pets. Would just be a regular part of the spec. Want different pet talents? Great, we can save spec loadouts.
BM should be able to command pets while CC’d. We are one with our pets. Let us command them while we are CC’d. They come to our defense, not just auto attack out of boredom.
BM should have access to new traps like Viper’s Nest which poisons the target and slows them. Poisoned targets take more damage from Cleave.
Hive Mind (bees!) should be a BASELINE defensive or an Aura/Stance that you can choose to talent so you can do something like Lightning Shield. It can act as thorns when struck and reduce physical damage by 10% for 5s when struck, can fire once every 10, 9 charges - or apply a slowing poison when struck by melee similar to Frost Armor slow buff.
Mana Hungry - command your pet to soak the next DIRECT NON-PET SPELL (fix reflect for Warriors mkay?) and deal 25% of that spell’s damage or effect to the next target it attacks. 30s cooldown.
Need more authority over our pets. Need more defensives. Need more modern flavor since “but your pet tanks and you can kite, bro” hasn’t been a thing in WoW for a while with how much PvE damage we eat in Raids and how the PvP meta is.
Make BM about that beast flavor. Offer a few more MODERN tricks and defensives. STAT.
I am gonna be the odd one out and say that I actually think it’s a great idea. The only iteration I would make is to keep Survival the way it is (for ppl who enjoy that melee hunter playstyle) and add a new tank spec for hunters. That could possibly work.
I’d like that but don’t think Bliz would make 4th specs excluding druid which is why I suggested one of the two to be reworked. I enjoy Survival I just think they should have defensive capabilities to actual survive.
I don’t need to read it to know it’s a bad idea because literally any permutation of “Hunter tank” anyone can come up with is a bad idea. It’s an inherently poor fit for the class; it doesn’t fit the class identity or the wishes of people playing it.
BM is one of the most consistently highly represented specs in the game. I guarantee 99% of them do not want to be tanks. SV is… a spec, but it at least has a past history of being a broadly liked spec and I guarantee 99% of both the old SV players and melee SV players don’t want to be tanks either.
Hunters have 3 DPS specs because it’s a class that lends itself well to damage dealing. End of story. Making either BM or SV a tank would just mean Hunters would all abandon that spec and it would be yet another massive rework all for nothing just like melee SV.
Take the hint that your suggestion isn’t welcome.
P.S. I lied and I skimmed the post and found this:
Not much to say here. Either you’re trolling or you’re just addicted to horrific takes on what Hunter specs should be.
BM is highly represented because it’s easy to play, you barely need a full bar to use everything. Yes I’m aware of the pushback from players with is why I discussed two specs with you yourself giving a lukewarm defensive for Survival. Survival is fun to play, no one that tries it would disagree I’d think, but it is horrible. It has been constantly reworked in the same manner always falling short. Unless given a ridiculous damage buff it will not work. Also the title of Survival doesn’t play well into the type of playstyle/skills you are given. There is no surviving, you will die. All you are is BM with one less pet and no gun, the spec is a failure.
Yes the rework to a radical new experiment was a failure and didn’t work. That’s not an invitation to jump to the next radical new experiment that inevitably fails and doesn’t work. It means they should look back to what did work: ranged Survival pre-Legion.
