Complete lights out on what the tier set bonus would have been, either pre-nerf or post-nerf for all specializations. There are zero Blizzard posts stating which version we were voting on.
We could infer it would be a nerfed set, but that was only played going into Aberrus, potentially for 1-2 weeks, not during the entirety of Vault of Incarnates.
Logically, the tier set that we should have assumed to be getting would have been pre-nerf.
Also, assumptions are never good. Especially on a macro level. This was a community vote and we had to guess we were getting either a post-nerf or a pre-nerf buff.
The main reason why I even bring this up has nothing to do with damage output by the way - it has to do with the fluidity and fun of the specialization. Doing AoE with the S1 tier feels terrible. Running out of gas because your tier set procs on 5 targets and being forced to do single target…That’s not really fun.
I’m still baffled people voted for S1. Part of me thinks survival hunters might have gotten trolled by RSV hunters who are still living in WotLK days. It’s the only way I can come up with a reason anyone would want S1 back.
I mean, I’m not. S1 tier is good - damage wise, for Single Target.
Simulations indicated we were the best(specialization) tier set on Single Target (pre nerf) on a Patchwerk encounter.
But, it has a pretty big design flaw in AoE.
It feels fine and is fine. It just means your AoE is balanced around more focus-target damage, in turn allowing for a higher target-cap before becoming problematic.
We’re hunters. Why should we be battlefield cleavers without any target focus beyond the 40% extra WFB damage to primary target (itself a new effect)?
Heck, I like Poison Injectors specifically for that interaction.
Why would you be baffled by people voting for the spec that favors Mongoose Bite and slightly decreases KC usage?
It’s fewer uses than pre-nerf. Why make it sound like it’s fewer uses even than in S3, though?
Agreed.
I wrote this in the Community Council posting as a reply to others there, here is the link to that forum post. The original posting is a copy pasta, but we did talk a bit more regarding the charge system and variability there, so potentially a helpful read.
Tradu replied with this:
which was the correct answer during BFA, where we also had poison injections, and played Carve. Again, this is a current design flaw, and the S1/S4 tier set makes it more of a hindrance. There are several ways they can remedy/make the rotation on AoE more fun with the inclusion of the S1/S4 tier set, and I hope they can listen to the player base regarding this. I don’t care about the damage, as I mentioned before.
Funnily, as of yesterday when TWW alpha got NDA removal, one of the Hero Talent trees, Pack Leader, has an immediate resolution to the issue that I’m clamoring about.
Oh for sure, we’ll be rock solid on, what, 3 of the 26 fights in s4, haha. Hence my concern and wondering if perhaps we got trolled a bit by non sv players.
More like a third of the fights we should be shining. Primarily Raiders and PvP’ers shot the rest of the survs in the foot picking a pure ST set which makes us absolutely terrible in m+ and only middle of the pack in pure ST sims. Why anyone would vote for this set is beyond me. Hunter discord is telling people to keep DF S3 teir sets handy for m+ cause it’s a ~46k loss (Like ~6-7%) to run S4 set which will make pushing anything beyond ~15s for higher key pusher painful missing so much 200k worth of stamina.
My only hope at this point is that they add the S3 teir set into the spec tree in the TWW rework cause clearly Blizzard doesn’t know what they’re doing with the spec given half of the nodes are still “Ability does 5% more damage” and haven’t changed since DF Beta. Otherwise, seems easier to reroll to one of Blizzard’s favorite children - blue/purple mage or ret pally that continue to get weekly reworks while hunters are left in the dust.
There’s no sympathy from myself on this one.
SV’s echo chamber in the hunter discord lead them down the incorrect path in campaigning for the wrong tier set due to SV’s place in the Meta from ST sims in raid, they should’ve voted S3 and were warned as such.
Given S4’s meme season i’ll probs not even bother playing my SV alt or any alt since they’re stuck using S3 in keys.
Survival Hunter’s season one tier set how it orginally was at the start of Dragonflight.
2-Set - Hunter Survival Class Set 2pc - Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite, Carve/Butchery damage increased by 15%.
4-Set - Hunter Survival Class Set 4pc - Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite, Carve/Butchery have a 20% chance to make your next Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite, Carve/Butchery cost NO FOCUS and deal 50% increased damage.
Simple fix, change that 10 less focus, how it is now, to “NO FOCUS” (Kisses Chef Gesture)
And while they are at it Buff either Carve/Buchery by 50% or Wildfire bombs by 50% or go half and half to 25% for both. I’m not kidding.
Because Survival’s AoE damage was abysmal during season one.
I kept waiting for some sort of buff all though season one to something AoEish but nothing 
While Balance druids got 4 major tickering around with during season 1, so much so that it changed up the way you played it.
So I know someone was working and not clocking in then going stait to lunch for the rest of the day.
Anyways thats my two cents and its all about worth 2 cents. Have a good day. 
Agreed! For Reasons!
But its to late now, the bed has been made and we are sleeping in it and it sure is uncomfortable.
i love the s3 tier set bonus
And… why? S3 forced FotE, at least a point in Ruthless Marauder, and full WFB talents even for ST. Many do not particularly like longish channels, and enjoy their being required for damage windows even less.
On the other hand, S1 at worst reduces KC frequency (and only faintly, in the case of its nerfed state), while doing basically nothing otherwise to the base gameplay since it could as easily end up with a spec-wide aurabuff atop a nerf to base RS, MB, and Butchery damage that then… provides equal or greater AoE damage to S3’s but without as many forced talents.
I feel like we too often miss an important fact: if the tier actually improves gameplay to (nearly) everyone, and is maintained even after the devs have learned that, its continued existence works just to hold would-be baseline gameplay changes hostage to prior gear grinds.
Tier sets, as a whole, are a pretty terrible idea for anything beyond forcing rotated experiments onto specs.
Otherwise, it’d actually involve choice, rather than just being an uncontrollable coin-flip merely between whether…
current gameplay is made worse by it, or
would-be improvements are delayed in order to include it.
Though, even if we were given that choice, many would likely complain about it being a customization option separate from the other customization options (talents and stat selection). And, yes, even then, would just devalue the talent trees. Because, again, tier sets are not a particularly good system; they’re just a PTR change to one’s spec without a means to opt out except by horribly nerfing your performance.
Inb4 claims of bias:
I voted for S3 because I liked the loop of WFB, Explosive Shot, Chakram, Trinket and FotE, and FotE in general. I just can easily understand why many would not.
I agree with Greìl, Surv raiders from Trueshot Lodge wanted to be relevant during a meme season under the false hope that the set would be reverted as if they’ve not played this game for years, know how Blizzard works, or how little they care for hunter as a whole.
S3 forced FoTE but it’s not like it really felt bad to press and we’d be taking it either way for 2/3rd of the bosses and always in m+ anyway. The difference is that we’d be good at AoE too with extra bombs and crit.
Honestly, I’m pretty tired of aura increases, the spec needs to be rebalanced so spells like Kill Shot hit like a truck and surv’s CD like CA are more meaningful and bursty. Either way, this leads down a rabbit hole of speculation and copium till they announce some hunter talent rework for TWW as other classes have gotten - assuming we even get one.
…They do. Every SV CA KS Crit hits for up to, what, 2521.5% AP? Even with nothing but the CA buff itself (no externals, no trinkets, no FotE buff, Chakram, SV aura buff, etc.) and meta talents…
So you’re looking at up to over 9500% AP per CA-buffed KC GCD, with only 4 targets required to reach those heights. …How is that not “hitting like a truck”?
people on this forum tend to ignore reality sometimes
Maybe I’ve got some bias with FotE since SV took over as my main alt since legion onwards having since played it in Mythic raid alt runs, M+ and pvp (less so this xpac tier sets and their elite versions haven’t really been good enough look wise for me to bother chasing but that’s another gripe).
FotE’s reintroduction in DF has been nothing short of amazing, having a solid animated attack that does quite a bit of damage in it’s short burst window with minimal set-up especially shines when priority targets need to be nuked in a short interval (think brackenhide’s totem on last boss, FotE shreads it like no tomorrow).
Forced talents into it enabled a shorter cooldown gameplay which was in honesty the best version of SV this xpac so far all due to S3’s tier set bonus.
I never got the complaint about forced talents with tier sets, they are meant to synergise with your spec for a reason, and for them to have actual intuitive tier sets each season that feel unique you need to incorporate talents into the design process as so much that was baseline in specs is now in the talent trees.
If we only alter baseline abilities via talents we’ll stagnate into boring tier set combinations leading to their eventual removal again.
Another thing as a longtime player of this game, you cannot ever believe that blizzard will balance the way you think they will because they will generally leave classes and specs in the lurch for patches at a time with barely anything added to them in making them compete with the higher end.
SV’s lucky that it’s got some good AoE damage options for S4 in their baseline kit, however the fact that you’re already numerically better in not taking that ilvl jump to the new tier, and losing out on secondary stats, agility and stamina on 4 of the highest budget equipment slots make this community’s awfully thought out choice a massive hinderance to their own playerbase.
Pushing higher keys in your S3 set will be nigh on impossible due to having a lower health pool especially with the sark cloak’s reintroduction to the megarares this season which will provide a further stamina penalty so SV’s going to flop massively in keys.
Gameplay differences as well between S3 and S4 are near non existent outside of their cooldown windows FotE’s shorter cooldown leads to much better flexibility than Spearhead.
If you look at surv’s damage profile on warcraftlogs, it’s as flat as BM was prior to their CoTW rework with CA contributing minor spikes. KS from CA needs to hit harder to justify taking those talent points over 8% more bomb damage for the NoCD build for m+. Even a talent like Mongoose bite needs to hit harder to justify the point to ‘upgrade’ it. It’s pretty much interchangeable with Raptor Strike currently. Like I said, the spec needs to be better tuned so spells hit harder and are worth their weight in talent points.
If I was ignorant of reality, I wouldn’t be complaining. Ignorance is bliss.
I’d be really curious if it would be too crazy to just remove the Carve/Butchery choice node altogether replace it with just Butchery, and make the ability just have no CD or charges. Maybe it’s a little too pushed but idk it doesn’t seem too bad since you will just get limited by focus anyways.
Except your solution to that is to weigh KS higher…??? Not, say, to revise CA (e.g., to have it instantly inflict a basic pet attack on each enemy struck by WFB/KS, with KS also triggering its current bleed)?
Only about 16% of SV Hunters go for the no-CD build in M+, decreasing as you go up in keys. Birds of Prey is already the norm, taken 95% of the time over Bombardier, with either being taken by 84% of Hunters.
Then you’re just actively misconstruing data or purposely offering unintuitive/less-fit solutions?