We actually had spec specific talents(the early version of this) during Cataclysm. It wasn’t as restricted as what we see with talents today, but the categories we had in Cata were tied primarily to the newly introduced Core Specs we got back then.
You’re right; I was referring to MoP and WoD era where core kits were more-or-less unique to specs but talents were still shared. Cata was that phase where talents were unique to each spec and your primary nuke was tied to the spec, but the rest of the core kit was shared between specs. I liked that system, at the time.
I like some of your suggestions. My pet idea (don’t tell Bepples) was to bring back the Cobra Shot adding Serpent Sting duration, then allowing Serpent to proc LnL. DoT everything in sight and then skilled hunters would minimize GCDs with strategic Cobra Shots- Beps showed it was too easy to maintain it at +6 seconds so maybe scale it back a bit to make it a skill differentiator. Get it rolling and you’re spewing Explosive Shots left and right and lighting your screen up with numbers.
Survival needs a complete rework to be more like it was in Vanilla: A melee ranged hybrid with a specialization in traps and damage over time. They’d remove the dependency on pets for focus restoration and replace it with focus being restored by DoTs. No more Kill Command because that’s BM.
Focus costs would be removed from all damage over time effects while Mongoose Bite, Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot, and Chakrams, would be your focus consumers. NO Steady Shot, thank you. Additionally, Legion’s trap bonuses must be restored, allowing for methodical trappers to get that setup bonus after a 1.5 seconds. This would make traps dangerous again. You still get the instant effect, but you just better effects for being more prepared.
Duel wield should also be restored and change up your combat style slightly: If you like the current mongoose burst with a two hander, cool, however if you’re more about DoTs then duel wielding changes Mongoose Bite to Lacerate - an attack that causes your target to bleed and drastically speeds up your melee attacks for 5 seconds, each consecutive hit refreshing and increasing the damage over time effect. This would create a synergy between melee and ranged, because you’d need to do both to apply all your DoTs.
Traps and Wyvern Sting would be part of how you expedite this balancing act.
And finally, useless talents like Sticky tar will be reworked into older style talents like in classic: Increasing the radius and slowing effect of the trap to 60% and having a 25% chance to immobilize targets trudging though it. This would give survival excellent support role cc - one of our primary functions.
This would restore Survival to the fast paced, rapid damage spec that it’s supposed to be, not the clunky burst format of MM, or the pet dependent combat of BM.
It was a fairly popular element back when they added it(I personally disliked how they just ended up, baking SrS into Arcane Shot in WoD).
I included a version of what you mentioned in the talent section; Spitting Cobra, with the added bonus of more manual focus gen. That entire row/tier is focused on DoT-management in different ways.
Mostly to allow players to pick w/e they prefer as the choice affects your gameplay decisions. Balancing is what it is ofc, depending on the encounter, there will always be that “optimal choice”, no question.
The vision I had for a ranged Survival had 2 dots: Serpent Sting and Black Arrow (possibly rebranded to something else to better fit the theme).
Serpent Sting would be cheap and its ticks would return focus with no internal CD. There was actually a focus return on Serpent Sting ticks but it had a 3 second GCD. This way having Serpent Sting up on multiple targets means the focus regeneration scales up. Cap the focus return effect to 5 applications (i.e. can apply SS to however many you want but the focus return doesn’t give any more after the 5th target) so it doesn’t go nuts.
Then you could have Black Arrow which procs Lock and Load just as it did in WoD: one guaranteed proc per BA application, more by chance scaling with a stat (multistrike in WoD but they could tie it into the spec’s mastery). This time Black Arrow has a cooldown reduction effect tied into Serpent Sting so you can multidot with it.
This way you would put the cheap dot up on everything (Serpent Sting), and that focus return and CDR chance per tick allows you to apply Black Arrow to more targets and this scales up. Having Black Arrow on many targets is not only heavy dot damage but also gives Lock and Load procs to funnel into single target.
The obvious problem with this is that on single target there’s no difference to what ranged Survival already had. Perhaps a talent that allows Black Arrow to stack on one target for ST situations? I’m not sure. But they had something interesting going on with HFC with the trinket that allowed for Black Arrow multidotting and they should have leaned into that. It would have ended up with a playstyle that Hunters had never seen before. I know funnel cleaving can be problematic when it comes to balancing but there are only so few specs in the game that can do it and we’ve never seen something like that in this class.
Agreed. Not seen you mention exactly this before but, I def agree with how it could’ve been an interesting playstyle for RSV. I incl something similar myself.
I just liked the mechanic of taking a boring focus generator, Cobra, that you generally didn’t want to press but had to press, and making it extend your DoT, making it interesting to press. I don’t especially care if the DoT was Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, or a new ability.
This is all in the context of RSV coming back, but I’m kind of just in despair that the current dev team has any interest in doing that in any form. Imagine swapping Explosive and Serpent Sting, Explosive reverts to its old form, replaces Aimed, and inherits all of its interactions. A minimalist, straightforward change that would recreate the core of RSV within MM- but it’s an approach rejected by devs and distasteful to hardcore Marksmen. Ditto a lot of these “RSV within MSV” ideas. It’s disheartening.
Even Preach said something about Survival in one of his more recent videos. He made a video of classes that he will be playing. And he said he won’t be playing Survival because well it’s terrible and he said it’s a shame because he really loved survival back when it was ranged. I think it was either a main or a main alt Of his back in MoP. Yes I know a streamer saying something isn’t the end all be all, but when you have multiple big streamers and more than half of the hunter community screaming about issues with SV, then there is something really wrong and Blizzard shouldn’t ignore it. Now I don’t car which way SV hunters go. Would I prefer ranged? Yes. But I wouldn’t want melee to be erased even with it’s very small base, I still wouldn’t call for the deletion of a spec. Hunter also set the precedent in the entire game for having a spec deleted. They could have added a talent that allowed you to play ranged. They could have added it as a fourth spec. Heck I wanna know what happened to glaive toss and why they got rid of that.
Love how forumers and streamers love to use the phrase “the community wants this.” Its a big stretch when you or anyone else says “everyone wants ranged hunter back.” Keep in mind the largest majority of hunters don’t even waste time visiting the forums or watching streams.
I personally enjoy the melee version. Hunters have been the noob spec of the game for the longest time and thankfully they got this melee spec to add some spice to the gameplay. Its the one spec that to some, like myself, feels like somewhat of a good balance between easy and yet has mild complexity. Granted it has issues I wish they would address. It definately needs more work in shadowlands. The legendaries really suck just as an example.
Hunter’s were never the noob class they only had 1 noob friendly spec and thats Bm and even then it took some actual know how to get wins. every other hunter spec actually took a deeper dive into the tool kit of hunters as a whole, especially ranged survival.
Melee survival isn’t a tough spec to play at all,
Ranged survival was actually one of the few specs in the game that could 1v2 if you knew how to play hunter in Mop and was only outshined by Mm because of how simple MM’s play style was in comparison to RSV during Pre WoD.
I have never played hunter as a main toon in any previous expansion since wrath. I have however played and mained every other class, except DH/Monk. Hunter in comparison to other classes is a lot easier and simple, ignoring that fact is simply ignoring the obvious. That is why I have had no interest in ever playing one, it just feels so bland until recently for some odd reason became interested in playing survival. /shrug
I never stated it was tough to play. It is more complex than the other specs though, in PVP at least. I remember playing some old survival, it was fun, I wont deny that but I am still happy with the melee iteration. I think they need to add more to it though. They need to balance out the talent tree as well because so many talents easily outweigh the others.
no offense but like u shouldnt talk about hunters cause u dont get an opinion u dumb druid. ranged survival was better and the melee version is dumb and not wanted just like ur thoughts gtfo thx
Surprise surprise, players who main hunter don’t want to talk about why their class should be changed based on players who don’t even play or enjoy the base hunter class. Who would have thought that such a reasonable position would have been taken.
But the other specs MM and Ranged survival compared to other classes no, this is where you’re wrong,
and Melee survival isn’t complex at all, it’s extremely over tuned thanks to borrowed power compared to other classes along with Mongoose bite self buff and it’s interaction with wild fire infusion.
now remove aspect of the eagle, lower the base damage on wild fire bomb, replace kill command with flanking strike req 20yd on a 12 sec Cd, and rework serpent sting into a strike requiring melee range then i would agree that melee surv has some complexity to it.
it’s a spec that rewarded from both fighting at ranged and in melee distance.
Arcane Shot focus nerfed, 30 to 40 base cost. Marks stays same with deduction, so I guess this fixes BM and Surv ever wanting to use it. What was the point of the unpruning again?
It really feels like Blizzard goes out of their way to avoid making changes suggested by players, so I’m not sure what the point of this thread is to be quite honest.
This is probably the most accurate statement about Blizzard’s changes for hunters so far. There has been hundreds of fantastic suggestions by players who seem very dedicated to the hunter community, but it really feels as if Blizzard purposefully tries to over-engineer their changes so they ‘fix’ the problem in a way specifically not suggested by players.
Arcane shot wasn’t only better dps wise for BM, it felt 10x better. Nerfing arcane’s focus cost is just obtuse. This change feels just as petty as the HM change tbh. Why is blizzard trying to slow down hunter gameplay, i dont understand. Who complained about not having enough dead time in the rotation?
