Recent changes to the survival hunter tree and how I feel about them. Many of my points have already been brought up by other players in the community though.
Statistics:
With the recent changes we’ve received to the SV tree it’s better than before, but still far from optimal.
Old alpha build (IIRC)
32 talents in the tree
16 1-point talents
6 2-point talents
10 3-point talents
For a total of 58 points in the whole tree, across 32 talents.
New alpha build
36 talents in the tree
20 1-point talents
14 2-point talents
2 3-point talents
For a total of 54 points in the whole tree, across 36 talents.
This is quite a big step up if you ask me. I still think there is too many 2-point talents. There is quite a few talents where I still question if it’s worth 2-points but we at least got less 3-point talents, in line with most other talent trees. Just too bad they decided to add in two 3-point talents, as our Cap stone talents as well.
Improvements:
- Lunge becoming a 1-point talent was pretty much a dead given but still nice to see it happen. This talent had no right to ever be a 3-point talent.
- Harpoon still being a talent is quite bad, but at least you can easily skip it. And they at least took the 2 talents (3 points) supporting it and baked it into just one talent (1 point) which is a big improvement.
- Aspect of the eagle is further up and easier accessible. And is in the utility part of the tree, where it should be.
- Wildfire bomb is moved up further, making it even easier to get. In its basic form it’s quite weak (tuning not accounted for) but might be a nice addition to any SV builds toolkit.
- Coordinated assault talent and supporting talents have been streamlined and improved, better than previous iteration for sure but… Still quite uninteresting and really only good in AoE scenarios because of the synergy between Coordinated assault, Wildfire bombs, Birds of prey and Carve/butchery. Still extremely lacking in any ST combat/builds though.
- Terms of engagement is now a 1-point support talent that is off the side from Harpoon, good change that I would like more supporting talents to be, off the side and just taken if you want. Not needed for any pathing.
- Deadly duo is no longer a 3-point talent. But it’s still so undertuned I’d feel bad for anyone picking it. See further down for explanation.
No changes or changes for the worse:
- Predator is changed to a 1-point talent, this is good, but its effect is not adjusted and it’s just 8% chance now? I hope this is just a tooltip error on the talent calculator.
- Bloodseeker is required for Lunge. I think Bloodseeker is too strong (albeit very boring) to skip anyway but it doesn’t help that it is also made even more mandatory due to being the only path to Lunge.
- Energetic Ally is still, for some reason, on the very left side of the talent tree. Even though the left side is heavily focused around AoE via Wildfire bombs. Our AoE build is much less reliant on focus and the talent is mainly just wasted there. What makes it really bad is that it’s a very strong pick for the focus-heavy ST build, which is mainly on the right side. To be forced to pick Wildfire bombs and 2 points into Ferocity (measly 10% pet damage) feels very bad. Also they changed it to a 1-point talent which is good but according to the tooltip it’s just 10 focus now, might honestly never be worth it… Hopefully this is a tooltip error.
- Carve/Butchery is still a choice-talent node. I still think this “no change” is bad because why would we ever pick Carve over Butchery? It is just like Death chakram and Chakram in the class tree. One is a stronger, better and improved version of the other. As is you’d never take the basic ability over its improved form. It is nice that we can get Butchery without losing other AoE talents though, like Guerilla tactics or Hydra’s bite.
- Intense Focus is probably a good talent albeit very boring. But again, why is the talents focusing on our resource Focus and its regen so far into the AoE side of the tree? The AoE build will probably never be focus starved due to its low focus costs. I would much rather see this and Energetic Ally over to the middle or right side of the tree.
- Improved wildfire bomb and Tactical advantage is still untouched, near identical boring X% damage talents. These will always be boring but mandatory because of tuning issues. The class will almost guaranteed be tuned with these in mind. Because if you tune it without these talents picked you get too much power from them but if you tune it with these in mind then they become mandatory. Bad design all through. Especially considering it’s supposed to be in the “utility part” of the tree.
- Again, it is so bad that Sweeping spear and Spear focus is still in the tree. They have no reason to be talents. Just tune the abilities a bit higher and be gone with them. That they are near identical to each other just makes the problem bigger and more obviously a bad design/decision.
- Bloody Claws, a 4% increased chance for Kill command to reset per Mongoose fury stack… It’s on the “correct” side of the tree because we’ll probably be forced to spam KC for yet another 2 years but this time to be able to spam more Raptor strikes/Mongoose bites as our ST rotation. Even with full Mongoose fury stacks it’s just 20%. What is this obsession that our whole spec should revolve around Kill command resets? There is no satisfaction from pressing Kill command, it’s purely our Focus regen ability (stolen from Beast mastery) that should not be the core synergy of our spec. How can this not be an April’s fool joke? I almost rather have the X% damage talent it replaced back.
- Viper’s venom. So for 2 talent points we can get a 30% chance for Raptor strike or Mongoose bite to apply Serpents sting? It’s in the AoE tree for starters, blocking the path down to Wildfire Infusion. It’s very boring and undertuned and what is even its purpose? If we don’t take Serpents sting in the class tree then we for sure don’t want it here. And if we take Serpents sting in the class tree then this talent is near useless. And it’s made even worse due to being mandatory for any AoE spec, which will rarely if ever use Raptor strike/Mongoose bite. And it’s a 2-point talent? It’s probably the contender for worst talent added, tied with Bloody claws.
- Sharp edges. A 2-point talent that increases your critical damage by 2% per point. For a total of 4%. I don’t think I need to go into detail about how this is a bad talent. To spend two points (7% of our total talent point pool) for a 4% increase on our critical damage is almost as bad as when Lunge were a 3-point talent.
- Deadly duo, no longer a 3-point talent but still so bad. Especially now when our Predator talent is heavily nerfed (might be tooltip error). In best case scenario it’s a 2.5% chance per Kill command to give us a free Kill shot… If the tooltip is wrong and Predator is still a 25% reset chance on Kill command. Worst case it’s a 0.8% chance. 8% chance for resets on Kill command times a 10% chance on Kill shot proc. Granted, this chance can, situationally, be buffed with Pheromone bombs from Wildfire infusion or increased chance during Spearhead buff. But those windows are small and far apart and you are, in both cases, having other things to press with higher priority than Kill command.
- What is up with Coordinated kill below Spearhead? It does not synergize with Spearhead at all, not as the tooltip says at the moment at least. And even if the tooltip is fixed to perhaps make it work with Spearhead instead of Coordinated assault what is even the point of giving us 100% crit chance on Kill command? It’s our focus regen ability and hits for near nothing… And how can a supporting talent be our Cap stone talent? And be a 3-point talent at that? So bad and unintuitive.
- On the other side of the tree we have Fury of the Eagle. It’s a cool concept, but it’s just a weaker copy of Monks Fist of fury. Can it get any less intuitive and fun? Half the Survival class feels like it’s copied from other classes/specs. And the animation back in Legion was lackluster to say the least and it seems like it’s just straight up the same animation. But they have added synergy to it! In the form of even more Kill command fishing… What is up with this love for Kill command?
- Ruthless Marauder, a 3-point talent that makes Fury of the Eagle have a 95% crit chance in execute range, and each crit lowers CD of bombs and Flanking strike? Is this supposed to be like our execute that opens up for smoother engagement on the next target/pack? I am having a really hard time figuring out where/when this synergy will be good and worthy of a 3-point Cap stone talent. It just seems so weird that 2 out of our 3 cap stone talents are 3-point talents that are just so lackluster.
- Ranger, this ability must be one of the most controversial of them all. You spend two expansions developing the SV spec more and more towards ranged, up to the point today where we are almost exclusively ranged with the tier-set. And then you add the talent “Ranger” that improves the damage to some shots (steady shot, hello? We can’t even use it without a ranged weapon equipped). And it’s by quite a lot. 20% per point á 2 points. But just minutes after this is announced Nimox goes out making a very clear statement that SV is meant to stay melee and that this is just to give us some boosted damage to ranged attacks, if we wish it. Even the statement that SV is a melee class who sometimes shoot are just so jarring because it tells me that the developer have no idea how the spec is currently playing. It’s, in live, a ranged spec restricted to melee weapons that sometimes strike in melee range. This felt like such an intentional drama-bait. I have issues with it, even as a melee SV advocate!
- Coordinated assault. It has been turned into a, presumably, quite strong burst CD for the AoE build but it’s greatly diminished by the fact it’s a 3 min CD and only lowered to a 2 min CD if we spend 2 points into Bonded companion. It’s also more or less useless for any ST build. The synergy is with Wildfire bomb and Kill shot, one is the AoE core ability and the other is our “once in a blue moon” execute. This CD either needs to be tweaked to work for a ST build as well or they need to add some decent DPS CD for the ST build. Or perhaps Spearhead is supposed to be our ST equivalent to Coordinated assault?
- Bonded companion. This talent screams lack of ideas to me. Who ever thought it was interesting to increase the CD to Coordinated assault just to be able to add a supporting talent that lowers the CD back to what it was before? This is just more of the same mentality that gave us the worst talent tree in the game! Don’t invent a problem just so you can put in a solution, all to fill some space/take up some points.
Conclusion:
First off, I would really love it for Blizzard to reevaluate the incessant obsession with having Kill command be the core of the spec. It has a bad animation, it does not feel impactful to use and should simply be our Focus regeneration ability. Move synergies elsewhere. Preferably I would personally love to see them removing Kill command (let Beast masters keep it for themselves) and make Flanking strike or something else be our Focus regeneration ability.
Some good changes and additions for sure and I am happy to see that they, at the moment, seem to be putting some work in. But until the spec is actually implemented (I mean, currently we can’t even use half the abilities because they are restricted to ranged weapons or straight up does not work. And the only new ability we get isn’t even implemented yet) it’s hard to say what feels good or not.
But even with these few good changes the spec is so far from decent it is worrisome. The talent point bloat is still quite high, it’s just moved from many 3-point talents to even more 2-point talents. And many of those are either just weakened due to removed points or straight up bad talents.
Many talents are also, what seems to be, in the wrong place in the talent tree based on what they do. I don’t know if this is intentional to promote us to spread out in the tree or if it’s just poor placement but this seems weird and feels rather bad. For an example what does Energetic Ally, Intense focus and Viper’s venom do in the middle of the AoE tree, which focuses on bombs? And why is Viper’s venom completely blocking Wildfire infusion? This feels very bad when trying to peace a bomb-build together.
With perhaps another 2-4 improvement passes like this last one we might have a spec that is more in line with the other classes/specs. If it is to our taste, that is a whole other thing. And I personally feel this is a big issue with having primarily one person responsible for a class’ development. It’s even more alarming when it seems that this one person is responsible for several classes.
For example, after what I’ve heard, the same person that is responsible for the poor job with hunter trees is also the one who did the shamans trees. How can this be? The person who did the shaman trees are obviously talented! Is it simply that he/she does not give a fudge about hunter? Because the hunter class have at least as much history and fantasy to draw from as the shaman. And there is no excuse to why the hunter talent trees are in such a bad state, especially the SV spec who are still struggling with poorly implemented, badly developed talents. There is barely any diversity in the SV talent tree. Most of it feel forced and unintuitive. You know it is bad when the community made talent trees/suggestions are clearly more refined and interesting.
I would rarely advise this because I firmly believe that any professional team can do a better job than a community of fans/players. But when it comes to the survival hunter I think it’s time the developers start to take in ideas and suggestions from the community, because they clearly have a hard time to figure out what to do with it themselves.
