Cause on top of serpent sting and kill shot, now we have chimera shot explosive shot, barrage and concussive shot?
They don’t need to revamp those talents for the mini sv cross bow just make sv use both a melee and a ranged weapon and its solved.
Most sv hunters have a ranged weapon any way if they dabble in the other specs from time to time and this would allow sv hunters to feel like they are still hunters who just so happen to specialize in close range combat and maybe let them have higher stamina than other hunters giving more to the name of “Survival”
I am 99.9% sure that SV would use their mini-xbow for concussive shot, barrage, explosive shot etc… Similar to how SV uses their mini-xbow for kill shot, serpent sting today.
No it would be a balancing nightmare. Do you get the stats from the ranged weapon? Should MM and BM get a melee weapon and get stats from it?
What about Warrior or Rogue? They can also equip bows and guns. Do they get to equip a ranged weapon and get stats for it? What about casters and wands?
I don’t mind if survival hunters use some nifty generic x-bow for their ranged abilities. Is it lazy? yes. Does it look bad? yes! But at least it let’s us cast the damn abilities.
I do think it will be incredibly lame if that is the way they will do it though. Since if so then potentially a few up to almost all of a survival hunters abilities (depending on how you spec and how optimal you play) could be fired by this generic and ugly, very small x-bow that we magically just have but never use otherwise. But I can sadly see that this is the route they will take. I would very much love a blue post clarifying how all these ranged attacks from the class tree will work for survival!
I would personally prefer if they instead just gave us dual wield. I’ve accepted that survival is and probably forever will be melee and I don’t mind it. I thematically like it. But it’s blizzards complete lack of capability to get the spec to work that’s my problem, that and that it’s locked to 2 handed weapons. We have like 2 abilities that actually use our weapon and one is a ranged attack (raptor strike and kill shot). Just let us dual wield if that is the playstyle/esthetical look we like! It’s possible for warriors (1h/2H) and DK (1h/2h) etc. Just give us dual wield already, stop holding back fun for zero reason!’
Edit: I actually, back in patch 9.1.5, played survival hunter completely ranged with a bow instead of melee weapon. It was around a 10% dps loss but I found it funny and so did it. A lot of people was like “what?? Survival is ranged again?” and I found that funny as well. Have not bothered to get a new ranged weapon in patch 9.2.5 but I think, by looking at my logs, that it would probably be an even smaller dps loss now considering you pretty much Never use raptor strike, carve or kill shot. It’s literally all about fishing for WFB procs with KC and spreading serpent stings in the few open GCDs. And with the addition of all these ranged attacks in the class tree it’s probably even more viable…
I’m pretty sure this is how it will work, as well. I doubt that Blizz would offer this many ranged abilities with the idea that SV would have to weapon swap to use them. But if that’s the kind of crazy we’re in for, my macros are ready.
No it really wouldn’t, hunters have done it in the past and it wouldn’t take much numerically. And cosmetically it would give sv hunters better agency over the random crossbow they pull out.
But unlike them, they don’t have multiple talents from their spec tree that use a ranged weapon, sv does so it having a dedicated range weapon would make actual sense.
Casters can already use wands without issues, it takes the place of their main hand weapon, its just that no new updated wands drop so they aren’t used.
I do think the ideal state of SV is pure ranged, but I do believe in incrementalism and if SV had a ranged weapon and melee weapon it would be a lot closer to ranged SV and, IMO, only increase the pressure to make it fully ranged. DF Survival looks to be a load of rubbish, possibly even more than usual, but it’s evident Blizzard is struggling to keep up the facade that SV makes sense and fits in with the class. Notice how now SV doesn’t build on anything at all in the baseline tree other than Kill Command which is just mimicking BM anyway. You’ll also easily be able to have far more ranged abilities than melee abilities including Explosive Shot and Serpent Sting (albeit the BFA versions) themselves.
Blizzard keeps making SV more proportionally ranged each expansion. It’s as if they can’t avoid the fact that Hunters are a ranged class but they’re still clinging on to the tokenistic melee weapon out of pride and spite.
This i agree with and thematically i would enjoy sv moving to a more dot based playstyle, the new spearhead talent is a step in the right direction, but sv needs less pet interaction not more and whats more is they need talents that can support a less pet involved playstyle. the three paths in the sv tree should focus on poisons, explosives, and bleeds.
Instead its more like explosives, pet/hunter damage, and some bleeds but its not well executed currently and is still suffering from melee bm symptoms that they’ve been pushing since bfa and its been robbing sv of what little identity they left it with.
Funny thing is if you had to use an actual ranged weapon for explosive shot, barrage etc… you would then see SV hunters rolling against BM and MM for weapon drops which I am sure blizz does not want to see happen.
Most drops are personal loot, and in a raid setting most people would agree that sv hunters would be lower on the totem pole so the trades would got to the bm and mm mains first. Also it would establish that all sv hunters could easily switch to mm or bm if needed.
Honestly I think blizz would just avoid any drama of should a SV keep the bow/gun because he needs it to use explosive shot, barrage etc… and just allow the SV to use the mini-xbow for ranged attacks like how we do for kill shot and serpent sting right now
They could make all attacks weapon-agnostic and just have independent range requirements. Melee Raptor Strike with your Rhok’delar? Why not? Explosive Shots hurled by Talonclaw. Okay.