I’ve been looking at Survival a little and I’ve noticed that aside from Wildfire Bomb, basically all Survival abilities are thematically and mechanically based around pets. There is nothing in the tree that is inherently “survivor” themed about Survival. In fact, the poster boy for Survival, Rexxar, is actually a Beast Mastery hunter more than “survival”! Every iteration of him is all about all his many pet friends!
There isn’t really a point to this. Just found it odd.
I think 99% of the hunters think the same, survival used to be the trap and poisons hunter but the hunter devs (if there are any) are so bad they cant get anything right
When I think of poison/trap hunters, I always think of Demon Hunter from Diablo 3. Lots of traps, poisoned blades, etc. And you can’t get sued if you rip of your own IP!
Ironically they said they were making survival melee as ranged survival and mm were too similar, but now survival is basically bm but worse because you are stuck in melee.
They were.
They aren’t.
In what way?
They were.
How were they similar? One was a stationary turret and one was a highly mobile caster with dots.
The problem is the implementation of the talent trees don’t /really/ work for hunter, as designed. That might be problematic in its own right… maybe it’s true of other classes, I haven’t played in a long time and I’ve only truly played hunter in DF (just toyed around with warrior and evoker).
I would say before we argue that SV is actually BM … let’s talk about how BM isn’t BM. You have a second pet and then summon random animals. And that’s… it. Your pets can hit harder. The spec is a mess. And that’s why you are feeling that SV is actually BM.
If BM were more BM then SV would feel less like BM.
Ehh, more like all three were a bit too similar (though with MM being the more distinct), in much the same way that RSV then would also be too similar to BM’s damage profile now (“What burst?”).
I feel like it’s more execution/implementation than the fundamental design that’s at issue in this case, but…
Exactly. Though I do still think that SV should have more alternatives its current degree of pet-dependence.
I actually think BM in Dragonflight does a really good job of interacting with its pets. Kill Command is its signature ability, for starters, but on top of that it has the Barbed Shot/Frenzy interaction, Bestial Wrath and its CDR, the Beast Cleave/Kill Shot interaction, and a lot of other minor pet-associated procs and effects like Dire Beast, Bloodshed, Qapla, etc. It heavily reinforces the bond between the Hunter and the pet so the pet feels like an integral extension of the Hunter. It’s a ton more pet interaction than SV, which just feels like a weak imitation in comparison.
I like how Rexar has always been duel wielding axes also.
As… it should, no? Survival’s currently the semi-eclectic spec that borrows from the other two while focusing on munition interactions and self-buffs.
I just still think the BM-themed aspects should be no more forced than the MM ones (outside of Kill Shot), with even more special tools/weapons stuff being possible instead.
Yes it should be less pet interaction than BM, but even less than it is now.
Also what you described isn’t “focused” in any sense but rather a haphazard mix of random stuff.
None of them have ever been similar.
This is like saying mage’s specs are similar because it’s really just spells but one is arcane, one is frost, and one is fire.
Personally I think they purposefully made SV so reliant on the pet so it was more than a dot with legs and arms.
For BM, the damage comes mostly from your pet. That feels mostly right (though I would still like a lil more “specialness” from the pet interaction…)
For SV, the damage comes from the player (which good, especially as a melee spec) but you’ll be focus starved without the pet.
So, the same as Survival had traditionally been?
It was actually a lot more focused as a ranged spec.
I would say the only thing that felt out of place was Black Arrow. I know why it existed: because it was a cool and unique ability from Warcraft 3. However it was more magic themed while the rest of the spec was more about practical utility like explosives and venom. I think in WotLK when they added it the thought was “it’s all magic damage so whatever” and no one (neither Blizzard nor players) really cared about the deeper thematic underlining of those abilities.
Even so, that’s a far cry from melee SV which mixes entirely irreconcilable themes into once. The gadgetry/grenades is an entirely different thematic realm to the pet focus yet the spec tries to treat them as natural extensions of one another.
It was originally comprised of
By TBC it also included…
…which WotLK built further upon.
Auras are now class-wide, if present at all…
…and granting party MP is hardly worthwhile these days.
By the end, then, its primary themes one talents towards/into were centered on…
Today, its primary themes one talents towards/into are…
The largest difference is merely that, especially since Shadowlands, there’s a lesser emphasis on procs and a more pervasive emphasis on stacks as Mongoose Bite is painfully free and a couple former proc-based skills/passives have been lost or mangled.
I wonder why this one would strike you as odd, though? You use poison-dipped arrows and there’s often been overlap since WC2 between the war-painted swampland rangers or berserkers and darker or shamanistic arts.
Why should an arrow that’s already been cursed with manifest enmity (originally of/towards a Ranger-esque favored enemy) be so out of place while an Arcane Arrow is not? It’s not as if the one is any less likely to be pre-enchanted than the other.
Meanwhile, Black Arrow saw its thematic ‘cursed arrow’ precedents among those same older guerilla warfare specialists, silent and deadly, that’d brought us Serpent Sting and
the likes even before Sylvanus’s conversion to the Banshee Queen, while Explosive Arrow can be rather… contradictory for such purposes (no real burst nor collateral advantage, but loudly explodes multiple times per shot).
I feel like they were all fine, honestly, but if something were a better thematic fit for the behind-enemy-lines, deep-forest/-marsh survivalist, I’d have thought it’d be Cobra (not of the snake-catapulting variety), Serpent, and Black Arrow more than the likes of Arcane and Explosive Shot?
In this case, why include the era before it was turned into a core spec?
Granted that WotLK was a bit of a mix inbetween the different core design structures. Though, it was the primary transitional period in terms of development, going from the older days where SV was simply about survivability in general, to what it became as a defined, more involved playstyle and fantasy.
Looking at what it was steered towards, becoming a core spec/playstyle, there was no haphazard mix of random stuff. The design theme was munitions(augmented shots) and enhanced traps.
Cobra Shot, Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, these all fit into that design theme.