Survival and Pre-Patch PTR

Classes Hunter
41

A quick question for you all:

Right now, the Survival Tree seems roughly split into an Auxiliary (or, Non-spender) left side and a Core (or, Spender) right side.

  • Side-note: This means the right side scales with Mastery, but the left side does so only to the extent they source the right side (e.g., via Focus generated).

Does that seem appropriate to you?

If so, does it also seem sufficient?

If neither, how else might the tree be broken up positionally (be that left, center, right; left edge, left, center, right, right-edge; top-left, left, bottom-left, top-mid, mid, bottom-mid, etc.; or however else) as to be more sensible, thematic, exciting, lucrative, etc., in your opinion?

1 Like
42

As opposed to what? I’m so used to spending focus then spending CD skills and going back and forth. I think the none spender Auxiliary skills are fine. Our defensives are sufficient for PvE more than PVP and even more for BM and MM in PvP because of kiting but if they are making all classes faster in DF I hope they don’t forget to make hunters a lil faster than the rest or we are going to have a harder time.

I kind of wish there was a utility focus spender that is damage and damage reduction or damage and leech that could mean the difference between soloing or in a group and using a core ability spender maybe more synergy with each aspect ability or transform the aspect abilities into stacking effects rather then long CD abilities so we can build towards Turtle damage reduction ect. Also, a “power move” that spends a resource generated by a mongoose bite or Raptor strike would make spec feel slightly more gratifying maybe?

43

As opposed to other, and/or less mingled, ways of laying out the spec, such as by having more discretely for bombs, or bleeds, or poisons, or the pet, etc.

For instance, imagine a sort of spectrum or graphical spread of themes between 2 to 4 extremes. What would those extremes be? And where would the likes of bombs, from-downtime ramping damage, during-burst ramping damage, bombs-advantaging-melee, melee-advantaging-bombs, etc., fit along those spectrums?

Just for purposes of visual aid in my own imaginings, I tend to just take 2 or 3 colors (red to blue for warm to cold or all three primaries; for 4, I take warm->cold and dark->light) and use those for the extremes. Then I just try to apply those colors, mentally, across the spec. Is it swinging across the spectrum left to right, across 3 extremes from top-center to Row 7’s left corner and Row 7’s right corner? Etc., etc.

1 Like
44

I mean sure how would that look? I like it when there is a flow to what you need to do basically and XYZ with some situational deviation. My thought is to put CD longest to smallest then spam them on attacking then spend my Focus then Kill command it back up then spend it then hit the CD abilities as they come off CD letting my focus regen then repeat. If there was way more synergy and nuance instead of just waiting for CD and spamming mongoose bite and kill command as a filler.

The only downside is we are going to be talking about this for another 2 to 4 years this expansion is just tunning stuff we already had into a format of a skill tree with only a few new or tweaked additions there was never going be a big redesign. But yea 100% on more synergy and less on filler DPS in between long CD abilities.

Long-term hunter redesign would be ideal but could the class be tuned to feel and play better with tweaks before launch or after few months after launch? I think whats not going feel good is lack of new abilities and toys going into DF.

Im sure everyone has a hunter wishlist some things long term other could come out in a patch.

45

Just to second this I think a good example of a tree that has this sort of build variety/focus is the arms warrior tree. There’s colossus smash-focused talents, bleed talents, and execute talents along with even more options in the tree to buff your aoe with whirlwind, cleave, and sweeping strike-focused talents as well. I think survival currently sorta has that with the bomb side and the raptor/mongoose side but I feel like the raptor melee side doesn’t go for enough. Most of the talents are just “melee button do more damage” with the exception of that one talent that makes KC reset more often with more mongoose fury stacks. Wish our tree looked more like the arms tree.

1 Like
46

Already in this single season ive played surv every other healer or dps ive arena’d with has told me “i have no idea what surv does”. I think players that want to play melee will traditionally look to the more flashy melee specs, whereas players that want to play range play hunter or the other casters. The end result leaving survival in a strange spot. I truely think its tons of fun but its just… like i said weird. It isnt immediately obvious to other players what its doing coupled with barely seeing it.

47

Hmm, interesting. My experience has been largely the opposite, where most duos that weren’t especially synergetic with MM were wanting Venthyr Survival over anything else.

I think what I like most about the Arms tree, oddly enough, is its degree of redundancy. Normally, that’d sound like a bad thing, but the way Arms does it allows you to have at least 2 ways to do any particular cool thing or meet a particular niche, even…

  1. across wildly different paths, and
  2. without removing the choice to take both/all such choices (if you really, really want to focus on the overlap even to the point of taking some anti-synergy).
    • Both are affordances not available to choice nodes, for instance.

Do I want to chain cleaves via Exhilerating Blows and Battlelord? Just use it every other GCD via Reaping Strikes? Literally just AoE via CDs (Bladestorm, Warbreaker), Dreadnaught and Blood and Thunder? So many options for granular changes in capacity and playflow.

I fear I must have been unclear before.

My follow-up question was, essentially, what are the components —visually, mechanically, in terms of affordance, etc.— that make Survival… Survival, to you? And then, how do you feel those components relate to one another?

Is Kill Command, for instance, more alike to Wildfire Bomb or to Mongoose Bite? Is Tip of the Spear a Kill Command talent (since there lies its first trigger and where the bonus damage is generated) or a Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite talent (since there lies the second trigger and where the bonus damage is spent)?

More importantly, how many degrees of choice or interaction would you ideally like to see available each to, say, Mongoose Fury, to bombs, to poisons, to bleeds, etc.?

1 Like
48

Well to survival is the class that should fight in a way that feels like a cross between a bounty hunter and a monster hunter with maybe a stretch that there is some wuxia trickster in there. You got the big sword or spear to go against thick hide beasts you got the chain grapple to get in close but then you got an arsenal of hidden bombs and weapons and traps and skilled camo so I feel like its the hunter trained to fight things stronger than it or just as smart as it.

I wish survival had more interaction with leech or bleed or both and a way to spread it along with poison and burn damage I like the spread dots playstyle from when it was ranged and don’t mind if it comes back in the melee version. Maybe meleeing a bleeding target grants melee strikes Leech. Other than that I don’t have any big ideas on changing the spec playstyle much. Maybe more interaction with aspect spells with spender spells buffing aspect of eagle and aspect of turtle with duration or cd.

2 Likes
49

Then as a tree it should have a lot of relatively specific tricks, tools, and techniques? A deliberate something for every occasion, with further useful interactions among them that one might not first imagine?

If so, I could really dig that. The Aspect integrations, too. Let me know if I’m reading your intent correctly and, if so, I’ll send a TTM mock-up and general distribution concept your way as soon as I can.

It’ll have the usual problems of talking concrete stuff for pipedream changes, but should at least be illustrative for those okay with thinking ahead/flexibly on such things.

(For now my big questions are just how much to build around existing BfA-onward tools, and what/which among those tools perhaps ought to be in class tree instead.)

So, some versatile, no-bloat manner of meeting a given capacity (self-sustain, in your examples there). Admittedly I was thinking of something a bit more (inter)active than your upper examples or even the AotT example below, but that all makes sense.

As not to crowd up the thread any further since no one else has taken up the question on what a Survival tree ought to be like, I’m going to pass along a discord link to a basically empty server (will read: “Hunter Talent Trees Workshop”):

discord.gg/Eg2Vbw8g

1 Like
50

You know, i find it quite humorous to wake up (i am overseas atm), grab my cup of coffee, go down and completely destroy the hotel’s breakfast and hereof destroy my room’s bathroom afterwards, then check e-mails and wow forums to get my daily laugh from the white knighters supporting ‘any’ type of survival being legitimate because blizz deems it so. Of course, what could be more authentic then white knighters embracing a majority-shamed DF surv then streamers cutting lines of “insert drug here” with fentanyl before screaming on their daily videos that blizz is all knowing and anyone who questions them are not “true” gamers. Such as the way of today’s gaming experience. Its much different then previous experiences that one would be naturally expected to move out of fire and manage resources without them being a key element of being “good.” Even more so defining a spec to be “good” past the very notion of resource management and spamming 1-2 spells during a predetermined period of time that the player themselves actually set up by using the very same spell that they must spam.
But is that truly spec identity? To define a spec as a ReXxAr spec even though that mythical creature was BM proven by playstyle, lore, and identified elements of play. To spam mongoose bite as a core element of ST spec when the top part of the tree for ST specifically is based on increasing damage for raptor strike. Is that really establishing identity? To b**** about bombs but then announce to the world that the best surv rotation is based around spamming 1 spell? That is like passing a bill that spends over a trillion of dollars that must be printed and pushed into circulation yet its primary goal is to lower inflation. lol. That is like proclaiming immigration is amazing until they show up to your high class golf course on an island.
But that is the whole point, is it not? To ignore the majority of the hunter player base that screams to fix an absolute horrific spec only to listen to those who kept quiet during blizz’s “college days” in the office.
It is almost like blizz is saying “we built the spec to say we did such but we really didn’t mean for it to be played” and “it was a great way to filter out who is truly a dedicated white knighter and who is most likely going to switch specs.” These perspectives are not just perspective based considering that hunter’s were, what, the third class to be presented to the player base yet surv still continues to be the worst rated spec in DF testing? Or was that “accidental” by the dev so that they can provide BM and MM with more labor time only to realize that those specs are not any better and the entire class is rated near the bottom. Players scream for raid-wide utility only to receive some leech based on an old covenant spell. Players want better visuals to see beast cleave hit yet they are focused on providing hunters with a “mini” pet class. Speaking of which, those little pixels that follow you around haven’t been modified or upgraded in a decade, still do not have a reasonable part in the class short of being able to push cds, use a “mini” version of lust, and allowing you to use KC.
But isn’t that what your proclaiming is so amazing? That the hunter player base must ‘bend the knee’ and acknowledge that blizz did an amazing job with surv even though its nothing like everyone wished it would be no matter what is considered the “ideal surv playstyle.”
Like always, i had a wonderful time writing this post, and will receive even more enjoy as I later end my work day and I come back to find the massive amount of hurt feelings, cherry picked information, or even a reported post in my inbox will provide me enough energy to go site see the beautiful city around me. Because in reality, it doesn’t matter whether someone claims the spec is good, or whether we must always obey blizz, the joy lies in the power simply close the window and walk away.

2 Likes
51
...

You realize upgrades to skills inherit the augmenters of their replaced skills, right? If you take Mongoose Bite, Tip of the Spear then buffs Mongoose Bite instead of Raptor Strike. It doesn’t just go to waste.

Given that the bomb playstyle being complained about was strictly because it made Survival spammier and self-contradicting, how is again complaining about something being spammy contradictory?

Politics, mate? Though at least the warning was given in the non-sequitur prior.

That has never been the intent, no matter your fixation with “white knighting” (or, more accurately, calling a “white knight” anyone who dislikes something you liked or liked something you dislike). Their being okay with specs like Demonology or Feral or Survival being more niche in their target audience when the specs aren’t overtuned is not some massive conspiracy to churn out drones.

I don’t mean to fetish-shame, but… maybe you should take a weekend to oblige whatever this kink is you have going here rather than projecting it upon every interaction between a game’s players and its developers?

Cool. Good on you. Sometimes I just wish you had more often had a greater intent in your writings beyond that (or your, alternatingly, public venting and haranguing). /shrug

1 Like
52

Pretty much my intent I try to be straightforward but flexible on my ideas.

there were BFA azerite abilities that could be rebranded for a hunter like

[Resounding Protection] Every 30 sec, gain an absorb shield for 208 for 30 sec.

[Blood Siphon] Increases your Mastery by X and your Leech by [X/2].

are 2 traits that really speak to me

Resounding Protection could become a buff for as long as Aspect of the turtle is on CD it activates and Aspect of turtle change to a 30% damage reduction in 8 sec and you can attack but if you receive damage that kills you within 8 window it shrugged off and you become rooted and withdraw into a turtle shell deflecting all attacks for 8 sec where you can pop any heals you have or receive heal from the healer or if not you just buy yourself a few seconds and get stomped anyway.

And Blood Siphon could be renamed and become an optional buff on the right side tree and effects our single target spells and abilities like Raptor strike and mongoose bite and Flanking Strike and Spearhead while a buff to leech will affect our pet damage and auto attacks. Every time I have suggested something like this people have said no i want something better and flashier but never gave the feedback on what would be better than this for survival surviving besides more damage reduction CD type skills.

If you look at my past feedback history I’m pretty open to change and have suggested some pretty crazy stuff. I hope that if our survival means we have to kite half the time that we get more then 15sec Aspect of Eagle and we get a mini-crossbow arcan shot as filler or they animate a magic slash with out melee weapon. If nothing changes defensivly.