Although I like having some melee flexibility and dual wielding, I have to agree with you. I’d gladly take ranged survival back over this 3 button crap.
That being said, I’m doing ranged Survival experiment right now and it’s actually not half bad. I’ve been doing well on damage charts against people with better gear and I don’t even have a coven picked out yet. Also wrecking a lot of people in PvP. I’m a bit overspecialized and still figuring out certain weaknesses against certain classes, but it’s actually pretty good.
I’m having fun again at least, even though I really could use Kill Shot and Muzzle. Not to mention Wyvern Sting.
Playstyle wise? I just want Legion back tbh. I like having a pet. It fits survival well. I miss caltrops. I miss having traps be a combat mechanic. I like the range-melee mix mechanics. I actually like soulforge embers… When it works. I like melee hunter… When it works.
To me survivalist hunter is defined by 3 basic things:
-Traps and a hunting companion (it gets lonely out there. Do people really feel the survivalist spec shouldn’t have a partner?) I don’t mind a lone-wolf option, and I don’t think a super pet-focused playstyle is the way to go.
-Harass and more of a chase-to-exhaustion theme. To be clear this probably means moar dots
-Living up to the term SURVIVAL and maybe having more defensive utility than our sibling specs, not less.
The bleed (Lacerate) was better than SS, even if it was fire and forget, as well as being more thematically accurate to a spear-wielding hunter. Flanking was much more interesting to me than KC, even with KC adding to the greater range repertoire (SS does the same vs Lacerate) in comparison. The thematic of striking together with your pet at a target was frankly effing cool. Your pet played like more of a companion or a teammate than a subjugate beast to be commanded. (For comparison I always saw BM as a class where you command the pets and more manage their buffs and actions than do the lifting yourself). I liked the flow of Mongoose and I also thought it was cool when it was actually allowed to do damage, and not focus gated. It’s hard to say what we want because its hard to identify what we have in our hands.
It is hard to say whether the whole melee thing needs to be scrapped. I personally like it but it is clear that blizzard either does not like it. Or does not have the resources to handle it. If not in BFA, nor Shadowlands, then how many expansions must pass before you get your ducks in a row on the spec design?
The most tragic thing is that nothing that will be done can satisfy everyone, much less make them happy. I will lament the day melee survival dies as much as I did with ranged surv. If it goes back to ranged how many people will stop maining BM or MM for it?
Edit: I wanted to mention I don’t think traps need to be taken literally. And when I say traps I mean maybe something like explo shot (either incarnation), or sticky bomb (glorious fun). To make it clear I mean thematic traps. Not necessarily mousing over the ground and praying the tank moves it over the little chomper.
Maybe. IMO they should never have gotten away from the original design with ranged weapon as a gear slot. If they could slow down long enough to go back to that, with SV having more melee abilities, (perhaps even with talents allowing the spec to play as it does.) And adding some ranged weapon Arms warrior and sin rogue talents, that would be the bees knees.
I like Survival as a melee spec and think the weird hybrid OP describes would be a nightmare. I also hate when people try to bring this “general consensus” stuff into their own arguments. General consensus? Based on what? The fact you don’t like it and want everyone else to feel the same?
Just a couple things in my opinion that would make survival feel better;
remove pet generated focus and kill command. This feels so clunky sometimes, especially in pvp, leave it with BM. Give us a melee ability to gain focus, which would lead to a better identity. I prefer the choice that MM has with pets, if you want to use it,a abilities go for it but survival shouldn’t be focused around a pet.
remove aspect of the eagle. Throwing eagles at something on CD just doesn’t make sense. It’s nice situationally, but I honestly hate the ability. Instead make our base melee range slightly further, like 8-10m. We use spears, use that. Stay ahead of enemies and allow us to position ourselves with more thought in pve, and kite in pvp
mongoose bite should be base, it makes our rotation somewhat unique, and would open for more choices in talents.
I personally think these, especially the focus regeneration and extended melee range would give greater identity to the class with the hand xbow, bombs and traps filling the rest out.
I mean it is useful AF, but if you don’t need to stand directly next the your target it’s not as needed as it is now. Make it a talent and give me a tad more range with my spear
You literally linked the guy’s profile and said he should stop commenting. Presuming there is a connection between those two things, that is an ad hominem attack.
This would be a pretty significant nerf, and the pet is our anchor to class identity, keeping us from feeling more like any other melee.
You arent really throwing eagles. You are throwing spears. The visual effect is cheezy, but it follows a trend in the visual style over the last few expansions of moba style abilities, where everything has a glowy and colorful, easily-recognized effect, even an unarmed attack for monks. It also saves resources on making a unique effect for various melee weapon types depending on what you are wielding.
It can be frusterating at lower haste levels or without AP and Pheromones. Making it baseline could turn people off, and I dont think it needs to be made easy mode with a longer fury window, and I would hate to see it nerfed to compensate. Those exact adjustments have been suggested by the community though, as features of a Raptor Strike that functions more like a Mongoose Lite to introduce people to the more hardcore mongoose bite talent and making mongoose feel less “must have”. This was before SL came and made mongoose less must have, with tots simming better.
Appreciate the feedback, so ill clarify a little bit more.
Why would changing KC remove the identity? IMO the class doesn’t have a solid identity as it is. I love having a pet and wouldn’t want it removed (and adds a lot of additional variety in playstyle), just make us less reliant on it. Currently, if your pet dies, or is just CC’d, we have no way to gain focus. You run from the fight to rez or die.
Cool, I can see your point about AotE, and don’t think I made my point clear. I don’t think AotE is a real problem, but I do think all our melee abilities should have an 8-10m range. IMO I think our theme should be about kiting our targets, using that slight range adv to stay ahead of our enemies. When I think SV hunter, that’s what I envision, KITING, and think that’s what our “identity” should be focused around. Using traps/bombs/hand xbow and our pet to aid us in that. Also would allow for better skill expression in-game.
I can understand that. So if Mongoose bite stayed a talent, it could be a great oportunity to change current talents to offer more diversity. To use you as an example, you like the melee/pet theme if I read you right. So to tie into my above point, if KC was removed for a melee ability, why not make better talents to use the pet? Then still have talents that let me be more about bombs & traps.
this sounds awful. i think the trap focus is terrible and leads to clunky play. they need to stop trying hybrid building this. make it a light armored warrior type with a pet. raptor builds. mong spends. flanking can dump big damage on a CD and ad focus to finish off mong stacks. SV needs good talents and better baseline abilities to use. ditch the poison shot and put lacerate back. shooting owls out of your wep should go too. its silly. truthfully i think SV needs to be its own class and have different builds. one that could do trapping and bombing cause its seems some people like it and one thats more warrior focused for those players. call it ranger? duh. put SV back to the ranged dot class and be done with it.
I dont love KC as a focus generator, but it works. From a fantasy standpoint, I would love to have everything important about my rotation come from my character alone. We run into the same unsatisfying situation with Brewmaster tanking with angry dave and venthyr buddies.
However, making our focus generator tied to melee makes us too kitable. We are awesome the way we are. We can jump in and melee our goes and kite their goes. We can pressure anyone trying to kite us. No, to melee focus generation.