While I didn’t cry, I won’t be ashamed to admit I slammed my desk in frustration after raid night.
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Well isn’t this a whole lot of nonsense. Cobra Shot refreshing Serpent Sting was not something integral to the flow or the skill cap of Survival. Before WoD, you would basically cast Serpent Sting once per target and then just forget it existed. Because of this they cut out the middle man and made Serpent Sting something applied passively by Arcane Shot.
That’s wrong. You could not fire and forget Serpent Sting. Survival was awash in cooldowns and focus and could very easily let Serpent Sting drop off. It made selecting when to use Steady Shot a tactical decision - where in the rotation it could be cast to not let SS drop off but also ensure enough focus for the next Explosive Shot CD, while casting as few Steadies as possible because its damage was chump and other CDs demanded attention. There was finesse to it. WoD baked the sting into Arcane like you said and removed that finesse. Yes, it was integral, because without it Survival became a “hit buttons as they light up” spec.
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Any suggestion about which will be a good covenant choice for a BM hunter?
I am mostly a solo player. I mostly do M+, solo quests, Wpvp, random bgs.
Thank you.
I can assure you, having played this spec recently on a private server, you are absolutely full of it. Survival had an exceedingly simple priority system even in MoP. It was very rare for Serpent Sting to fall off; it was basically only a thing with the T16 4-set where spamming Explosive Shot as it didn’t consume charges took higher priority. The focus requirements of the spec had you casting Cobra Shot enough times that Serpent Sting uptime was not a concern. There was 0 finesse from this mechanic, no matter how much you twist and invent history to pretend there was.
Let’s also not gloss over how you claimed that this somehow justified melee Survival as if they couldn’t have just expanded on mechanics that would have given it real finesse such as Black Arrow multidotting.
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With the exact same experience, I can assure you it was a concern and was a feature of the spec, Bepples. You are the one twisting the history.
Laying that aside, you’re under the wrong impression. I am an adamant supporter of ranged Survival. I used the removal of rolling Serpent Stings as one example of devs dumbing down the spec in WoD, calling them out for their hypocritical decision to remove the spec because it was not competitive against the far more dynamic MM, when they themselves made it that way.
Had it my way, RSV remains, Serpent Sting (or if this so offends you, rebrand it Black Arrow) is refreshed by Cobra Shot and is the primary LnL trigger, making it a very elegant rotation: Sting-> Cobra refresh-> LnL-> Explosive Shot spam, cycle.
Enough talk. Here is the spec in action, recorded just now.
https://youtu.be/TcR-1Ys4t4Y
It’s not perfect, but it’s largely me sticking to the optimal single-target priority which includes prioritising Black Arrow uptime and Explosive Shot casts above all else. As you can see, there is 0 trouble keeping Serpent Sting up. I have to use Cobra Shot enough times Serpent Sting stays up passively.
If I got a particularly crazy Lock and Load combo at the right time, or multiple in short succession, perhaps then Serpent Sting might fall off. I freely admit this has happened before. But in those situations it’s flat out beneficial to let it fall off and spam Explosive Shot instead, reapplying the SS later. Not to mention this is a result of a borrowed power and not a core part of the spec, and that in AoE situations you have Serpent Spread to apply it for you.
Basically, you’re flatly wrong on this.
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seems pretty boring not gonna lie, looks like a quicker version of what MM should be. i can see why they made one of the specs melee. Survival was on of my favorite specs in Wraith and using melee every now and then was exciting for me. this new survival def needs work and they can look at how smooth this survival is
Very well. I concede your point- it was an easy mechanic to maintain.
Please consider mine: it was an elegant mechanic that dovetailed with good play. A lesser hunter would let SS expire. There was a minimum of skill to mind it. I do remember, fondly now, minding the DoT on Garrosh attempts and picking spots in the rotation to Cobra.
And rather than keeping it or iterating to make it more of a skill-differential, Blizzard ditched it and turned Arcane into a half-DoT. They removed what small interaction and skill it represented, and replaced it with a completely brainless, non-interactive ability. It was emblematic of their callous decision-making process that ultimately led to removing Ranged Survival entirely- a decision I am still bitter over.
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What a ridiculous statement. Here’s me playing the current Marksmanship.
Note how my core gameplay here literally doesn’t have a single ability in common with the MoP Survival gameplay I linked. Unless, of course, the fact that both of them use a ranged weapon is enough for you to declare that they’re the same thing?
You’re also not only watching someone else play it but you’re watching gameplay on a target dummy, so it’s pretty absurd to use that as a platform to say a spec is boring.
What in the ever-loving hell does making the spec melee have to do with the excitement involved? Your own personal preference for melee gameplay? Why not go play a melee class instead of demanding they turn ranged specs to melee. Survival was perfectly exciting for Hunter players for many years before melee Survival came along. Pretending WotLK Survival was exciting due to melee attacks is also rich given that’s the first expansion where Survival was popular and it was precisely because of the introduction of new ranged gameplay via Explosive Shot and Black Arrow.
You didn’t actually concede anything though because you go on to argue that it was still a skill-based mechanic. The majority of the time the Cobra Shots you did just as part of your normal rotation were enough to keep it up forever. In those times where it DID fall off (long string of Explosive Shot due to T16 4 set) you let it do just that: fall off. You did NOT waste time casting a Cobra Shot to give it an extra 6 seconds. So there really wasn’t ever a moment where you picked Cobra Shot over something else purely to keep Serpent Sting up. Cobra Shot’s purpose in the rotation was purely as a focus generator, period.
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Thinking about playing hunter but with Hunter’s mark designed this way, I’m looking at other options. Seems like it’s going to be a repetitive bad feeling at every multiple enemy encounter by doing 95% of our damage or wasting GCDs. These aren’t great options to say the least. 5% isn’t that much, just enough to be annoying.
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very well it seems u are attached to when survival became popular due to it becoming…more ranged.
this forum post tends to point out that in vanilla wow survival wanted to be somewhat melee. it looks like blizzards original idea was to make it a hybrid FROM THE START. then they went back on it and went full ranged and then reverted back.
People wanted necromancers instead of DKs but got DKs. and your arguement that if i wanted melee i should go to a melee class completely disregards the fact that Vanilla Hunter had a melee side to it.
Just because u liked one iteration of a spec doesnt mean its what blizz intended. you still have TWO ranged specs in a primarily ranged spec. the lore fantasy behind hunters is not one of just ranged. its a hunter using a pet or not using skill traps and weapons to hunt. people have hunted with melee weapons as well.
and im not even saying it should be 100% melee, i like the hybrid nature and wish it had more of a switch like that one forum post about going melee and then disenganing into mid ranged and coming back to finishing it off. seems exciting and new. better then just “keep dots up, at ranged” vs “manage cooldowns” and vs “manage cooldowns but with big pets”
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Classic survival WAS NOT MELEE. It was tools TO GET OUT OF MELEE. This the name survival, it was built around surviving in melee long enough to get out of melee range and back to bow range. The melee skills were in the SV tree like improved wingclip.
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SV was never melee. It had talents that boosted its melee capability in a time where ranged skills didn’t work in melee. It also had many more talents that boosted its ranged damage. SV as melee was a meme build by people wanting to be unique.
This is all extremely documented. It’s only players trying to revise history who try and paint SV as a melee build.
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I was ready to make the swap over to Survival to get away from roll the bones on outlaw but Hunter’s mark is so tedious I’m back to the drawing board on which melee spec to play. Survival could have been good with a few changes. At this point I wouldn’t mind if you just hit a random button to get a brand new spec and identity going.
Anything is better.
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What this post fails to mention is how “specs” were never intended originally to be subclasses. Survival hunters in Vanilla regardless of what patch you want to talk about, all hunters in vanilla through WoD were meant to be ranged, even though they had melee abilities.
The melee in survival was meant to make you more survivable in melee situations, not to make you a melee dps. If you go back to 1.6 and spec full melee and try to melee a rogue, or a warrior, you’d lose.
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I watched that video, and it reminded me how smooth the spec was. I had completely forgotten how fun it was. I miss it even more now than I did before. 
What?!?!? Are you joking? What part is close to MM? Please tell us. It’s the “shooting arrows” part, isn’t it?
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how did the #1 dps on the video get to use that name? lol…
It’s a Details nickname. The actual player name was Smoothlarry.
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Hunter’s Mark Apply Hunter’s Mark to the target, increasing all damage you deal to the marked target by 5%. The target can always be seen and tracked by the Hunter.
Only one Hunter’s Mark can be applied at a time.
The cooldown of Hunter’s Mark is reset if the target dies.
Cooldown changed from None to 20 sec cooldown
Shameful. This just seems like a change made out of spite and not in line with ANYONE’S feedback for this ability. This does not fix the fact that it’s an extra GCD of set up and does not feel good. It’s also still a punishment for target switching.
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And it doesn’t even fix the AoE situations, because you can still cast it on each new target, you just can’t proactively swap it to a new target now.
W 
T F
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