Hi there,
This is a repost from the Community Council forums I wrote up.
Wanted to post here so the entire community can respond rather than just Council.
a thread started by Tettles has received a lot of responses and feedback regarding the S4 winning Balance Druid tier set, as to how the tier set bonus is currently worse than S3, even until you reach max item level for S4, 528. Attached below is the thread that he created regarding this.
In his thread, I responded with a similar issue as to what the Balance Druid set experienced - it got nerfed going into our 10.0.7 patch, almost in identical ways as well.
If this is done for the Boomkin S4 tier set, it should be done for the Survival S4 tier set as well. Blizzard did the same treatment to our winning tier set as they did for Boomkin.
The tier set that won for Survival is also only good on ST, and it’s pretty laughable on AOE. Please revert both of these to their former glory, and if possible, buff the butchery/carve damage on our tier set, or make it so it doesn’t consume a charge of butchery/Carve.
As mentioned in my response to his thread, there are a few ways we can go about remedying the tier set bonus. As this is the final “season” of the expansion, and like Tettles mentioned, we did not know what we were voting for. Understanding that the way the tier set would potentially work the same way it did at the expansion launch, and not the nerfed set we received going into S2.
Problems with Season 4 Tier Set for Survival Hunter
Because the tier set makes your next Butchery “free” – of focus – you eventually run out of Butchery charges. This means you have to stop AoEing and instead do raptor/mongoose bites on 5+ target cleave. This never feels good. There is merit as to why this is not a bad thing, like poison injection stacks that should be “ripped” from targets, i.e. mongoose biting a target that has 10 stacks, but even with our current S3 tier set, we already do that at some points. With the factor that Fury of the Eagle will be a weaker button to click going into S4 as we will be moving back to the old S1 tier set, this means fewer bombs to add to the rotation, meaning, more Single Target time.
The nerfed version of the Season 1 tier set now makes it so the “free” mongoose bite is no longer “free”, it is a reduced cost. Because it is a reduced cost this makes one of our endpoint talents, preferably the “Single Target” cooldown talent, Spearhead, weaker. Will we still play Spearhead on Single Target even with the nerfed version? Yes, of course. But, because it cost focus for the tier proc, this means in general less Mongoose Bites during the Spearhead window, which in tandem, just makes the talent closer in Single Target damage to Coordinated Assault.
This is less so an issue with the tier set, and more so about Blizzards’ variability toward the Survival Hunter specialization. All three bottom choice nodes on the Survival Hunter tree are designed for different goals; the Spearhead talent though, if you look at Warcraftlogs or other sources, is a “weak” talent in comparison to Coordinated Assault for all forms of gameplay (except pvp). S2 and S3 of Dragonflight, on Single Target we opted to not take Spearhead, our “obvious go-to Single Target” talent, and instead took Coordinated Assault, as it worked better with our tier set bonuses, and had interaction with them as well, and the damage was even slightly higher in comparison to a pure Single Target Talent.
Potential Fixes
Revert the tier set back to being a “free” Mongoose/Raptor/Butchery + Make it so Butchery charge is refunded. This makes it so you don’t run out of Butchery’s as much on AoE as you did in Season 1.
Buff the damage of the “free” ability by 30-50%. This is less so a factor for Single Target, and more so for AoE. Again, because you run out of Butcherys you eventually begin to plummet in damage for pulls that last longer than 35-40 seconds. Yes, buffing the damage in general for Single Target would also make Spearhead a more sought-after talent as well, but we will be forced to take it anyway because of how the tier set works (raid anyway).
Bring carve in line with Butchery cooldown/damage. I don’t know why this is a choice node. Carve deals an insignificant amount of damage in comparison and is not readily available because of its cooldown to be wanted for AoE. With this change, you don’t need to make the tier set refund a Butchery charge, as Carve doesn’t have a charging system. Instead, it will be available when we want to cast it.
I’m hoping we’re able to get to some kind of resolution regarding this tier set. It ultimately makes playing the specialization on Single Target less fun, and on AoE, less impactful/wanted for Mythic+ content.
The un-nerfed version didn’t even happen until the next tier set was available to discourage people using them both, its 100% expectable that we would get the un nerfed tier.
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.
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?
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.
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 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 reworks while hunters are left in the dust.
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.
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”?
i love the s3 tier set bonus