To be fair, I doubt you’ve ever turned your quarry into a giant block of ice, set it on fire, or attempted to bash it to death after dodging its attempts you bite/claw you, either, yet those were core elements of even the Vanilla take on Survival. It’s always been the eclectic spec.
my point exactly…its like a bunch of disconnected second thoughts jammed into a spec
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Right, but that has, to many, been a very real and sufficient identity.
It’s just a matter of how well those different tools synergize.
Relatively few specs are any less vague, ultimately, than Survival’s “synergetic tools,” in any manner beyond an arbitrary damage type designation.
What gameplay value is remotely held in Mage’s being “Frost”? It’s just a damage type. You could give them crit-ramping, a simultaneously castable oGCD auto-crit, and instant-cast Flurries on double-crits and they’d still be “Frost” in that arbitrary sense, but their playflow would be that of Fire.
What makes a Frost DK? Gameplay-wise, a ranged attack used only for DoT application or upon procs, dual resource systems that regenerate each other, and melee-enhancing procs from AAs (and potentiallty spenders of ranged procs and the second resource system), but that can be said for many other specs as well.
They’re both, at best, cohesion in color palette with maybe a single mechanic that stands out much if at all (Shatter/Brain Freeze or Killing Machine). The first just happens to better hide or conflate how arbitrarily its gameplay is packaged together since you can just say “Frost spells!” like that actually means anything palpable, the second less so, and others like Assassination or Subtlety even less still.
That doesn’t make the later sets a jumbled mess, though; they just can’t as easily hide that, yes, they’re just a bunch of mechanics sown together to create hopefully entertaining rhythmic or deliberate rotational moments.
As long as Survival can feel alternatively engaged in (led by) the moment or preparing for the next in a way that palpably seems at least vaguely predatory and/or tactical, a broad range of tools is still fine.
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Most wow specs have gone thru that in one form or another. This DF version of surv might the worst offender I’ve ever seen in 13 years of wasted time playing wow.
They basically started some iteration, found out it probably be hard to finish, tried to slap some bandaids on it, gave up, told the boss “all done and looking good!”, clocked out “its Miller time boys!” and are hoping no one will notice.
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I liked playing SV, I dont like looking at it, lol. Like the frankenstein spec of the class.
I havent tried it yet on beta, almost afraid to. Seeing some of the complaints already, I probably will just stick to BM. Id be surprised if they can screw it up enough for me to not want to play it, lol.
SV was a lot of fun to play, just left a lot of ??? moments wondering what on earth they were thinking.
maybe they should revert SV to some previous iteration that players liked better.
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Visually, at the least, it is… so very bad. Our character doesn’t just look confused, but rather to be outright convulsing (see Serpent Sting RNG shots or from Viper’s Venom cancelling other animations or Volatile Bomb now likewise shooting Serpent Sting, canceling its own bomb animation).
Gameplay-wise… it at least needs to give Fury of the Eagle more reason to be used in ST, to revert Viper’s Venom back to activating a free and direct-damage-empowered manual Serpent Sting or replace it with something like Deathblow (chance to reset Kill Shot and make it usable regardless of enemy health), and to allow all features to scale as would seem intended (Viper’s with Hydra’s, etc.).
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It’s over my friend. There wont be any actual developments to the Survival Talents or Gameplay. It will continue to be an enigma of a spec without a true identity. And personally. Im finished with Survival Hunter. I’ve moved on to Shaman. It is a near finished product that has functional gameplay and defined identity. I will be praying for you all that cling to Survival. I just wont play garbage any longer. Ill check back in after 2 years for the next expansion. When Blizzard makes the common sense changes we rallied for and see if it is enough to make the spec and class playable once again.
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I appreciate your optimism.
If they just add good tier set like in SL it will be playable again. Like every spec in game it’s played when it performs amazing. Or it’s overturned.
In BFA, despite all it’s many failures, surv was pretty fun to play. For some reason they didn’t baseline a few critical azerite powers that really made surv flow well.
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It seems like I didnt like SV in legion and did like it in BFA. Cant remember why, honestly. I didnt like it with something they did in SL’s, though.
Its been fun to play here and there, but it feels so last minute tossed together.
Like I woke up late and forget to comb my hair before leaving the house, lol.
MM and BM are much better at having a cohesive theme, IMO.
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Bright side is atleast you have eh?
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My job leaves me with neither the energy/patience nor, especially, the schedule to do more than PuGed Heroic raiding, so I would much sooner play a slightly underperforming class that’s actually well designed in its gameplay than one that overperforms but plays like crap.
I’ll likely enjoy both DF MM and SV in dungeons, though SV likely just on Fortified weeks. For raiding, though, I’ll probably be trying other things. Elemental, Arms, or Arcane, maybe.
I am at the point now where i will pretty much sit my hunter. I cant even look at surv on the ptr and its been hard just to get myself to create a build for bm and mm. So unless those two wow me, it aint happening for me.
But on the plus side, druids are looking good for their dps specs, mages are not spectacular but they are always solid, warlocks are looking good but the button bloat will sink your ship, and warriors look good.
Just too many better classes and specs out there that had better devs who knew those classes better. Hunter just doesnt rate with nearly, if not all of the other classes.
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Strong, but not good.
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What would you put as tier set that is strong and fun to use? Big damage proved to be fun
Something that makes you more powerful without ruining the gameflow.
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Did it? Because the way it was last introduced was anything but fun. It was a contradictive mess.
What it adds newly can’t deflate or make irrelevant the prior, more general and intuitive conditions for optimization (like, idk, actually managing your central resource appropriately).
Hey I speak for myself. I played SV when it was ranged, during legion, BFA even now. Sure can always use some improvements but it will always be my favorite spec. It’s always fun for me.
I even think that play style is getting worse , but I don’t plan to change to MM or BM
I was referring specifically to tier set effects being sold on the sole basis of power, not gameplay. To me, good power is not a sufficient substitute for good gameplay.