Hey all, I do not have access to the Alpha and I came across an EU alpha tester who put together a great post about Survival that I thought needed to be shared to the hunters on the NA side.
https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/shadowlands-survival-hunter-feedback/142393
I think Thyminde talks about doing exactly what all us surv players want to have happen.
Well, I can’t read it because I don’t have a level 10 character in a European server. Sorry.
Neither do I and i was able to read it, try logging into the EU forums.
FROM Thyminde
Throughout Battle for Azeroth, Survival has been a very balanced specialization when it comes to talent options and player agency. Survival is one of the specs with the most variety in viable builds across almost all spectrums of gameplay (PvP, Raids, M+) within its own specialization. Azerite traits worked well to reinforce certain playstyles, and over the course of the expansion many builds with different trait and talent combinations emerged. Builds known as “Cluster”, “VVHB”, or “BBB” within the Survival Community for mythic+, “BoP” and “WFI” for raiding, with the latter being the go-to in PvP aswell. Not to mention the various essence viability given the amount of playable Builds.
All things considered, the design in BfA has been a success, when it comes to interaction and choice within the spec. This level of customization hasn’t been common in many classes, or even individual specializations, with them instead resorting to “cookie cutter” builds. Even when there was a small degree of “cookie cutter” within Survival, typically you’d have multiple approaches for various content. This level of customization is something we hope to see going forward in Shadowlands.
As one of the most recently updated specs in the game, we are relatively up-to-date going into Shadowlands, All but two of our talent rows have seen variety of selections Thoughout BfA and the ones that remained consistently picked (>90%) are going to be the focus of this feedback
The primary target being moving Mongoose Bite into a baseline part of the Survival kit.
This is the most important piece of feedback gathered from Survival mains from Legion and BfA, Mostly from the community within the Trueshot Lodge / Survival Discord channel. The rest of the feedback is presented as a suggestions how to handle and accommodate the change if Mongoose Bite were to become a baseline ability.
Mongoose Bite has the very buildup feel it is designed to have, the animation changes based on how many mongoose fury stacks you have, becoming more aggressive weapon swings as you approach maximum stacks. This in itself adds to the rewarding feel. The ability itself has a goal built into it, and rewards you for playing this out correctly.
The fact that it has been our main ability ever since we have been melee, whilst at the same time being a talent since BFA really just prettymuch has invalidated the talent row. The alternatives are too weak. and aren’t interesting enough to offset loss of Mongoose Bite and its interactions. aswell as limiting design choices for Mongoose Bite elsewhere. as you cannot assume the talent to be taken when designing various effects for the spec. This means anything designed for Mongoose Bite, has to function for Raptor Strike aswell. This is very restrictive considering Mongoose Bite has its own Internal mechanics that could potentionally be tapped into by other talents or effects, upcoming conduits and legendaries.
The alternative untalented version of Mongoose Bite (Raptor Strike) is highly uninteresting in itself; it is supposed to be your main spender, but does nothing satisfying other than raw damage, it doesn’t hit hard, it doesn’t feel strong, there is no rewarding payoff for playing “correctly” with it. And its animation is incredibly dull for a main “finisher/spender” move, using just the standard racial special attack swings.
Mongoose Bite is currently a talent, so the current iteration of Survival’s talent tree would need slight modification. I originally made a suggested talent tree alongside some possible QoL requests to some talents. It stays true to the design of Survival as much as possible, aswell as leaning a bit more into the un-pruning happening in Shadlowlands. However i am not currently allowed to share links as it seems. So i hope i can properly convey the feedback with just text.
Now i’m writing this in an effort to provide feedback and to explain as to why Mongoose Bite should be baseline, aswell as giving some of the unpruned abilities an opt in, or enhanced purpose. so that we too can benefit (more) from the unpruning in Shadowlands.
Mongoose Bite - Baseline
Mongoose Bite has seen incredibly high use over the entirety of BFA as per data available to the public (~96%+). This ability is what many consider the signature of Survival Hunters ever since the transition to melee. The primary reasoning behind Mongoose Bite to be considered baseline is the fact tat as a talent, it restricts mechanics that can be designed around it or to create interesting synergy. Think of Azerite Traits, upcoming Soul Conduits, the potentional return of tier bonuses, talents, aswell as Legendary effects.
Past examples would include the Fury of the Eagle ability, Nighthold set bonus, Snake hunter and Mortal Wounds talents, and more.
If leveling pacing is a concern, mongoose Bite could perhaps be learned at a higher level instead to replace or supersede Raptor Strike.
Tip of the Spear - Removed
As a result of Mongoose Bite being made baseline, this talent wouldn’t make much sense paired with Mongoose Bite. Although its removal not necessary and it can be retuned, doing so would free up room on the talent tree for talents to interact with our new abilities returning in Shadowlands: Arcane Shot and Kill Shot. This would introduce the new abilities into a more thematically Survival aspect while still maintaining class identity.
Arcane Shot talent
A talent to modify Arcane Shot to enable us to fire it from our sidearm, like Serpent Sting. Examples could include, but are not limited to:
"Arcane Shot can now be fired from your sidearm and deals X% extra damage, spends all your remaining focus, and incurs a 15 second cooldown."
The 15 second cooldown lines up perfectly with Mongoose Fury. The purpose of all remaining focus would be for it to act as a Mongoose Fury window finisher, where your focus is naturally low. To increase this payoff the extra focus spent would not grant you extra damage, but instead give you the most focus efficiency when used at lower focus thresholds."Arcane Shot can now be fired from your sidearm and deals X% extra damage and costs up to 40 focus. 15 second cooldown."
Similar to the BfA Enhancement Shamans Overcharge talent, this would serve as a way to introduce Arcane Shot to the rotation when it normally wouldn’t be. Much easier to balance than the above suggestion.
Kill Shot Talent
a talent to modify Kill Shot. Examples could include, but are not limited to:
"Kill Shot now grants one stack of Mongoose Fury. If you are already at 5 stacks of Mongoose Fury, Mongoose Fury is instead extended by X seconds.""Kill Shot now costs 10 focus allowing it to benefit from your Mastery bonus. Successfully defeating the target within 5 seconds of casting Kill Shot refunds X focus over Y seconds"
If particular scaling or synergy is a concern, for example with effects like the Venthyr Covenant ability. This specific talent could be gated behind a 20% health threshold indepedent of factors like the current iteration of Flayed Shot, so that it does not benefit from such proc effects.
Flanking Strike and Viper’s Venom - Swapped
Viper’s Venom and Flanking Strike: We believe these two talents should swap positions on the talent tree.
This would mean Flanking Strike moves up to the level 15 talent row and would make our first talent selections revolve around Focus generation and offer a variety of different play styles and complexities.
Viper’s Venom, being a talent using our sidearm, would make sense in a talent row together with the proposed Arcane Shot and Kill Shot talents. This creates a “Sidearm” talent row and allows us to explore some of the newly returned abilities in Shadowlands more, without overloading the melee specialization with ranged abilities.
Overall this seems like a lot, essentially the short version of this is:
This would allow us to both benefit from the unpruning, making some hunter abilities a bit more part of Survival, creating a somewhat dedicated sidearm talent row. aswell as removing a barrier enabling more interesting design choices around our main attack.
Failing that:
Not ideal, but would at least salvage the talent row to change it into what could potentionally be an actual choice, whilst maintaining the interesting aspects of Mongoose Bite no matter the choice, alongside the associated design benefits baseline Mongoose Bite could have.
The following feedback is more focused on the specific talents themselves, either focusing on issues within these talents, or certain QoL aspects that would be very welcome for these choices.
Bloodseeker
This is a very good example of a passive, simple talent option. It can be interesting but it plain does too much compared to its competing options.
The attack speed bonus currently works of bleeds caused by other players. The primary downside of this talent is how buggy its bleed detection is, It measures its detection distance to the center of an enemies hitbox. This causes bigger monsters such as Nzoth, Blackwater behemoth, Ghuun, Laminaria, and many others to not give you the attack speed bonus despite being in their melee range. The talent also has a history of plain not working, where the attack speed bonus never applies untill you either relog, or retalent Bloodseeker.
Perhaps not a pretty solution, however removing the attack speed bonus would solve its overtuning, as well as bandaid fixing the issues that this talent has with minimal effort. This will perhaps be at the cost of making it a less interesting pick, but with the benefit of its competing talent choices being given a chance to shine.
Chakrams
Next to Birds of Prey and Wildfire Infusion, this talent suffers from almost the same problems that Raptor Strike does. In this case its animation looks impressive, but the damage is just not there, and offers no interesting synergy with other abilities when its competing talents do.
Not everything needs to synergize with eachother, and simple talent options can be a good thing. It still feels as if chakrams would benefit from a slight tuning bump, aswell as receiving some other niche effect. Potentional examples could include a 3 second root effect on a previously slowed target, 1 Mongoose Fury stack for every target hit by the bounceback, or perhaps spreading Serpent Sting in the bounceback if the main target was affected by Serpent Sting.
Terms of Engagement
Definitely an interesting and capable talent, it currently performs very well if not the best in specific talent and trait configurations. its quirkiness when it comes to hopping out of melee range to use it doesnt do it any favours however. Even more so on static bosses that Bloodseeker also struggles with.
Static bosses have a single point on their unit hitbox where harpoon will launch you. often making harpoon Risky or even deadly to use in some encounters; Attempting to use it on Nzoth’s last phase often results in you being dropped into the Evoke Anguish puddles. Even though the talent would in theory be amazing for these bosses as they involve many adds, its usage results in depositioning yourself, or occasionally even dying. making it plain unusable in these scenarios.
Terms of Engagement would heavily benefit from making Harpoon usable in melee range, and when doing so, disable any movement harpoon would cause in addition to its current effects.
Again, lots of text. so to summarize this part:
My apologies if the formatting is a little weird, the whole post was originally going to be in a slightly different format, including some images with the example talent tree. As i cannot post links I shall continue to edit it to make it a little more readable over time.
I hope its understandable either way. Ultimately the goal of the post is to provide feedback on the Mongoose Bite vs Raptor Strike and its acompanying talent row, aswell as unpruning benefits going into Shadowlands.
I’m really not a fan of Mongoose Bite. I was glad to see it moved to a talent slot and I very much hope it remains such in Shadowlands. I don’t find it fun spamming the same ability over and over to the exclusion of other abilities coming off cd or DoTs falling off. I don’t enjoy the ramp up of 5+ GCDs to get your offense going and find the mechanic of going all-in for a single ability for an extended duration to be contrary to the very nature of the spec.
Tip of the Spear might be inferior numerically, but it offers a similar effect in that the player is rewarded with greater power for proper use, but does so without punishing the player for using the rest of the tools in your arsenal as the need arises. It’s a much better design, in my opinion.