Survival Specialization Talent Tree Revamp (Fanmade)

Classes Hunter
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Since we haven’t seen any large Hunter changes on the Alpha yet, I took some time to see what kind of spec tree changes I could cook up for Survival as a for-fun exercise. Baseline, I think SV’s spec tree is alright. It just has too many 2-point nodes and boring % damage increases that have no flair or kit interaction. So my main goal with this tree was to improve those points.

I’m not a game designer, but I tried to make changes and additions that fit within the spec fantasy while keeping existing builds intact. I also tried to contrast more complex choice node options with simpler ones, as that seems to be a broad design goal Blizzard maintains. Some of these nodes are ideas I have seen thrown around the Hunter discord, and those are credited where relevant. This is mostly still a draft, but I thought I’d put it out there to see what people think.

The link is a visualization of the revamped talent tree. Below the visual is a text changelog you can cross-reference with.

Any feedback or discussion is welcome!

https://imgur.com/a/sv-tree-revamp-fp9ezIB

Row 1:

Mongoose Bite is now a baseline skill for Survival, replaced on the tree by Wildfire Bomb. This baseline Mongoose Bite has Mongoose Fury at a reduced effectiveness (10% per stack vs 15% per stack previously).

Row 2:

Ranger has been moved to Wildfire Bomb’s previous location.

NEW Ranger - Now a 1 point node. Bonus lowered to 10% from 20%

Tip of the Spear - Now a 1 point node.

Row 3:

OLD Ferocity - All damage done by your pet is increased by 10%. Replaced with Bloodseeker.

NEW Bloodseeker - Moved to Ferocity’s location, gains Ferocity’s effect.
Kill Command causes the target to bleed for damage over 8 sec. You and your pet gain 10% attack speed for every bleeding enemy within 12 yds.
NEW Additionally, all damage done by your pet is increased by 10%

Flanker’s Advantage - Unchanged

Harpoon - Unchanged

Row 4:

OLD Energetic Ally: Increases your and your pet’s maximum focus by 10

NEW Energetic Ally: Increases your pet’s Focus Regeneration by X% for 10 seconds after entering combat, and for 10 seconds after you use Harpoon. Maximum duration of 20 seconds.

NEW Red Truth (1pt): If a target near you is suffering from Bloodseeker, you and your pet gain 4% leech

NEW Wildfire Infusion moved to Bloodseeker’s previous location - Effect Unchanged.

Aspect of the Eagle - Unchanged.

Terms of Engagement - Unchanged.

Row 5:

Guerilla Tactics - Unchanged.

Lunge - Unchanged.

Carve/Butchery - Now possess previous Frenzy Strikes talent node (Wildfire Bomb/Flanking Strike CDR) by default.

NEW Brutal Mongoose (1pt) , Located at Mongoose Bite’s previous location - Mongoose Fury now increases the damage of Mongoose Bite by an additional 5%.

NEW Danger Zone (1pt, connected to Terms of Engagement) - When you Harpoon a target from over 25 yards away, also cast Explosive Shot on that target (Does not incur a cooldown for Explosive Shot if talented).

Row 6:

Intense Focus - Unchanged.

OLD Improved Wildfire Bomb - Wildfire Bomb deals 12/25% additional damage.

NEW Wildfire Cluster (1pt, replacing Improved Wildfire Bomb) - Wildfire Bomb drops an additional cluster of bombs around the target, each exploding for X% fire damage.

OLD Frenzy Strikes - Butchery and Carve reduce the remaining cooldown on Wildfire Bomb by 1 sec and the remaining cooldown of Flanking Strike by 1 sec for each target hit, up to 5.

NEW Frenzy Strikes - Wildfire Bomb damage over time has a chance to empower your next Butchery to deal X% additional damage and cost no focus.

Carve casts empower the potency of all Wildfire Infusions for 4 seconds (Increases the damage of Internal Bleeding and Volatile Reaction, and Pheromone Bomb enhanced Kill Commands to cause you to strike afterward for moderate dmg.)

Frenzy Strikes old effect is now baseline to Carve/Butchery

Flanking Strike - Unchanged.

OLD Spear Focus - Mongoose Bite damage increased by 5/10%.

NEW Venomous Strikes (1pt, replacing Spear Focus) - Mongoose Bite and pet damage increased by 10% against targets suffering from Serpent Sting.

Row 7 (Big changes from here on out):

OLD Viper’s Venom - Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a 15/30% chance to apply Serpent Sting to your target.

NEW Viper’s Venom (1pt) - Mongoose Bite has a chance to grant Viper’s Venom, causing your next Serpent Sting to deal X% increased direct damage.

Additionally, Viper’s Venom causes your next Serpent Sting to deal X% of its remaining damage immediately if Serpent Sting is already active on your target. (Thyminde’s idea from TSL Discord, not mine)

Quick Shot - Moved from row 8 to row 7, and is now a Choice Node (Quick Shot/Quick Throw).

Quick Throw - When Kill Command’s cooldown is reset, you have a 20% chance to repeat your last Wildfire Bomb at X% effectiveness, and incur no cooldown.

OLD Sharp Edges - Critical damage dealt increased by 2/4%.

NEW Fiery Temperament (1pt) - Your pet gains 5% haste and movement speed for X seconds after you throw a Wildfire Bomb. Stacks up to 3 times (Ironfur-style stacking).

OLD Sweeping Spear - Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Butchery, and Carve damage increased by 5/10%.

NEW Sweeping Spear (1pt) - Every X Focus you spend causes your pet to lash out in an AoE, dealing moderate damage to up to 5 targets. Enemies afflicted with Bloodseeker take X additional damage from this effect. (5 yard range)

Butchery and Carve contribute double their Focus cost to this effect.

OLD Tactical Advantage - Damage of Flanking Strike increased by 5/10% and all damage dealt by Wildfire Bomb increased by 5/10%.

NEW Choice Node: Tactical Advantage/Fatal Flank

NEW Tactical Advantage is now 1 pt, retains its old effect, and also causes Flanking Strike to trigger Flanker’s Advantage (KC Reset) when it hits. Now a choice node with:

NEW Fatal Flank - Your Flanking Strike now costs 30 Focus and no longer gains CDR from Carve/Butchery, but benefits from stacks of Mongoose Fury and from Spearhead.

(Not my idea, something I’ve seen being thrown around the TSL discord for a while)

Bloody Claws - Each stack of Mongoose Fury increases the chance for Kill Command to reset by 2/4%.

NEW Bloody Claws (1pt) - Each stack of Mongoose Fury increases the damage of your pet by 6%.

(DoolB’s idea from Hunter Discord, not mine)

NEW Active Ability, connected to Venemous Strikes: Wyvern Strike - A venom-coated attack that strikes two targets for moderate damage and applies Wyvern Sting (6 sec DoT). 45 Second Cooldown

Each tick of Wyvern Sting builds 1 stack of Mongoose Fury. Capped at three stacks total, regardless of target count.

Cooldown reduced by Carve/Butchery

Row 8:

OLD Wildfire Infusion

NEW Aspect of the Viper (1pt, connected to Viper’s Venom) - Your pet’s Claw/Smack/Bite now deal nature damage and all nature damage you deal is increased by 20% to targets above 70% health.

NEW Choice Node at Quick Shot’s old location: Sharpnel Shredder/Bombing Run.

NEW Shrapnel Shredder - Enemies struck by the initial damage of your Wildfire Bomb take X additional damage from your next physical attack. Kill Shot causes your target to take X% of the full damage of any Wildfire Bomb they are afflicted by without affecting the duration.

NEW Bombing Run - After X yards of movement in combat, you find the time to attach a Tar Trap to your next Wildfire Bomb. When the Bomb detonates, it also ignites the Tar Trap, causing up to 8 enemies inside of the trap to burn for X% Fire damage over X seconds. Targeting an enemy with Hunter’s Mark outside of combat readies this effect.

Coordinated Assault - Coordinated Kill’s old effects allowing Kill Shot to be usable at any enemy HP value and giving Wildfire Bomb CDR and focus generation are now baseline to Coordinated Assault.

OLD Killer Companion - Kill Command damage increased by 5/10%.

NEW Spearhead moves to replace Killer Companion. Spearhead is unchanged

NEW Hunter’s Bond (Connected to Bloody Claws) - Your pet’s Claw/Smack/Bite is reduced by 1.5 seconds during Mongoose Fury

Your pet’s Claw/Smack/Bite have a small chance to grant you 10 Focus

NEW Fanged Blade (1pt, Connected to Wyvern Strike) - Wyvern Strike now hits 1 additional target, and also applies Serpent Sting to all enemies damaged by it

Row 9:

Fury of the Eagle - Unchanged

Ranger- Moved to top of tree

OLD Coordinated Kill - While Coordinated Assault is active, the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb is reduced by 50%, Wildfire Bomb generates 10 Focus when thrown, Kill Shot’s cooldown is reduced by 50%, and Kill Shot can be used against any target, regardless of their current health.

NEW Coordinated Kill - Coordinated Assault empowerments now stack, up to 3. When Coordinated Assault is inactive, your pet’s Claw/Smack/Bite have a chance to grant you a Coordinated Assault Empowerment at 150% effectiveness

OLD Explosives Expert - Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduced by 1/2 sec.

NEW Wilderness Survival (1pt Connected to Coordinated Assault, Sweeping Spear, and Spearhead) - Mongoose Bite deals an additional X damage and reduces the remaining cooldown of Wildfire Bomb by 1 sec.

NEW Node occupying Spearhead’s previous location, Cornered Prey.

NEW Cornered Prey - Spearhead restores 30 Focus and increases your maximum Focus to 130 for its duration. Additionally, Mongoose Fury’s maximum stacks are increased by 1 during Spearhead

NEW Choice Node, connected to Hunting Bond. Eagletalons/Snake Hunter
Eagletalons- When Mongoose Fury reaches maximum stacks, you gain X% increased damage to all abilities for 10 sec.

Snake Hunter - Mongoose Fury’s Duration is decreased to 10 seconds, but now increases the damage of Mongoose Bite by an additional 7% per stack.

NEW Venomous Cocktail (2pts, Connected to Fanged Blade) - Wyvern Sting damage is enhanced by all Serpent Sting modifiers at 25/50% effectiveness. Serpent Sting damage over time has a small/moderate chance to grant 1 stack of Mongoose Fury.

Row 10:

NEW Spearspark Ignition (Hunter Tier 31 Set, connected to Fury of the Eagle) - Fury of the Eagle throws a free Wildfire Bomb at your current target at 100% effectiveness, causes your next Wildfire Bomb to not incur a cooldown, and increases the damage Wildfire Bomb deals to your primary target by X% for 12 sec.

Ruthless Marauder - Changed from a 2pt to 1pt node

Birds of Prey - Unchanged

Bombardier - Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown is reset at the start and end of Coordinated Assault.

NEW Additionally, during Coordinated Assault: Your Wildfire Bombs cost 10 focus, increase your Focus regeneration by X% for 3 seconds after being thrown, and their damage over time effects stack. (“Ignite”)

NEW Wildfire Satchel (1pt, connected to Wilderness Survival) - Wildfire Bomb and Explosive Shot have 1 additional charge (Thyminde’s idea from TSL Discord, not mine).

Deadly Duo - Now a 1 point node and a choice node with Strike By Scent.

NEW Strike By Scent - While Spearhead is active, Mongoose Bite also strikes additional targets afflicted with Bloodseeker, up to 2.

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I think the old frenzy strikes should definitely exist as it’s been an integral and at this point expected part of the SV aoe gameplay loop, but I do like your new idea as well. I think both can exist as separate talents

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The Bomb CDR element still stays around in this revamp, just baseline to the Carve and Butchery talents themselves without having to take Frenzy Strikes.

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I love that you’ve replaced every % skill node with something interesting and thematic, and also points for moving WFI up the tree instead of leaving it in the bottom left.

Also the CA and SH changes would do a lot for both playstyles to be more usable and fun.

The S3 tier set without the crit buffs seems like an awesome capstone for a bomb-focused no CA build.

Edit: Oh and Danger Zone is probably my favorite idea here that I never considered, that is both hilarious and awesome sounding.

If they were to just steal this I think I would be a happy Surv hunter, thank you for writing something like this up and I hope it gets the views and respect it deserves.

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My two main concerns are Wyvern Sting is a little odd to me and when it might be taken (Council fights?), but it wouldn’t surprise me if Blizzard ended up making up a new DoT that’s similar. My other criticism is that the spec tree has at least 2 references to Serpent Sting. That isn’t baseline for Survival.

I don’t agree with this change, the current (old) Frenzy Strike interaction is what makes Surv’s current gameplay loop fun for me at least in M+.

This seems very SL S3+4 level of degen when combined with bomb clusters again with Red bomb interaction. I’m not opposed to it though.

The rest generally looks solid and I’d be happy enough if this was the final-ish result. I had some other ideas for talents that I’ve gathered over almost a year of being in TSL: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/we-don%E2%80%99t-have-any-specific-hunter-changes-to-announce-at-this-time/1835917/4

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Wyvern Strike is the most experimental addition I made, and would probably need the most iteration if it ever actually made it in the game. Mostly, I intended it to occupy a council/extended low target cleave niche (as you identified) as a “if you want it, it’s there” type of choice for people who really enjoy talents like Latent Poison and Hydra’s Bite.

Initially I also wanted to make a revamp of the class tree, but I think that would be a little more daunting because of potential knock-on effects any changes would have for all 3 specs. You’re right though, Serpent Sting not being baseline means these changes would need to be accompanied by Serpent Sting becoming easier to access in the class tree, or Serpent Sting being straight up moved to the Survival tree. I’m not really sure how attached BM and MM players are to Serpent Sting in the class tree, so I chose not to encroach there.

As I mentioned above, the CDR element of Frenzy Strikes still exists, you just get it for 1 point (with Carve Butchery node itself, rather than Frenzy Strikes).

I share your disdain for the degeneracy of the S3/S4 set in AoE, so I made some design distinctions with Quick Throw to avoid repeating that scenario. It’s intended to be a “small bonus” node just like Quick Shot, and would only repeat the last bomb throw at 50% or lower effectiveness (contrasted to the Shadowlands set, which gave the effect a dmg bonus). It being a repeat bomb means it is more likely you refresh an active bomb rather than apply a new one.

Also, Wildfire Bombs still don’t ignite their DoT effect without Bombardier. If you take Bombardier to get the ignite, your focus generation rate would be higher during CA, so the value of KCing during it would already be lessened. Even if you were still inclined to fish for procs at max focus, you’d be fishing for procs that are at 50% or lower effectiveness and that are likely to refresh previous bombs rather than apply new ones.

The node was mostly meant as a way to potentially have the chance to extend the duration of a currently active bomb so you can get more out of Carve buffing infusions.

Thanks for sharing your collection of pain points/talent ideas for Hunter overall. It’s disappointing that many of the pain points have existed for quite a while, and I really hope the class gets some attention to alleviate them.

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Some pretty great improvements over the existing tree.

Consider the following mostly nitpicks, but hopefully still of some use:

  1. Wildfire Bomb being the new head talent, instead of an obligatory yet later and off-center talent, does change the vibe a bit. You’ve also forgone any alternative to Wildfire Bomb, something we’ve seen a lot of interest in across the forums, an opinion first shared BfA but becoming more vocal with each expansion. If you’ve any interest in, say, a glaive-throw or fan of knives, or pair of whirling axes, etc., you may want to consider also what your tree might look like if made less dependent upon bombs, specifically. (You could, for instance, still make Wildfire Infusions apply to either choice and rename Cluster to produce a similar effect on the alternative.)
  1. Ranger seems like it removes most of its purpose and benefit if it remains an obligatory talent instead of a more interesting but niche one. By forcing it as an early talent point taken, it acts solely as a tuning knob, and a thematically contradictory one at that, as it would at that point have a more powerful Aimed Shot… and in a single point at that, than Marksmanship. If Serpent Sting and Explosive Shot were ever made earlier available, moreover… they’d likewise see disgustingly large gains in the one spec not primarily framed around ranged play.

    My recommendation, then, is honestly to either open up Survival to ranged play from the start… or make this a more niche talent affecting just direct casts of Serpent Sting and primary fire damage on Kill Shot, as not to be obligatory for Birds of Prey CA builds (and perhaps thereby allowing CA to buff every strike instead of just one per 3 seconds). SV’s Mastery already technically outscales MM’s for KS, Serpent, and Explosive Shot damage (and that of any spender), so while it can be neat/funny for a melee spec’s talent to give it the strongest Explosive Shot, it’s also not terribly necessary, provided we just fix SV’s Mastery, allowing us to forgo the tuning knob talent.

  1. Why baseline Mongoose Bite, which some may prefer to avoid in favor of a simple Raptor Strike alone, but not Harpoon, which people would avoid only if forced to out of dps necessity?

  2. Why the redundancy between NEW Energetic Ally and the unchanged Terms of Engagement? Both grant Focus, triggered from Harpoon, which tends to be used right at the start of PvE combat, with ToE just sacrificing some of that Focus in place of a bit of Bleed damage. Are they meant to be redundant, with players generally taking just one unless wanting to avoid KC as much as theoretically possible?

  1. No Carve buff? Even if you had amped Wildfire Bomb in every way possible, the at best 50% greater CDR overall likely wouldn’t be able to outcompete the greater CDR within WFB-damage- or CDR-affecting windows, let alone the 212% greater damage from the melee skill itself.
  1. Why double the value of Butchery and Carve towards Sweeping Spear’s pet AoE damage? That inevitably balances its maximum output down instead of allowing for a low-penalty increase in priority target damage between Butchery casts.
  1. Similarly, why have Fatal Flank remove the CDR from Carve/Butchery, instead of allowing for that higher priority damage among AoE situations?
  1. New Bloody Claws is largely redundant with Fatal Flanking and Spearhead in terms of impact.
  1. It’s been mentioned already, but I’m not sure what gameplay niche Wyvern Strike is meant to provide that isn’t already provided by other mid-length CDs.
  1. Shrapnel Shredder will likely outperform Quick Shot even in ST, to which Quick Shot is limited.

    Would recommend revising Quick Shot itself.

  1. Bombing Run could get quite annoying for tanks, like most CC that must be used for damage.

    If you want traps to be used oGCD via Wildfire Bombs, I’d just have an active cast for that. Toggle it on, and clicking a trap will cause it to be thrown with your Wildfire Bomb, allowing for an instant application of its effect, as per a Freezing Arrow replacing a Freezing Trap, with the trap going on cooldown upon that next throw (or, like Salvo, immediately… with up to 15s to throw the bomb). Toggle it off, and you’re back to normal.

  1. Coordinated Kill having a chance to grant double the effect of Coordinated Assault’s actual empowerments outside of Coordinated Assault seems odd, as we can only start getting the “full” benefit of those procs only after CA itself is over and are then forced to use it on CD in order to get it off CD asap so we can again go from half value (“100%”) to full (“200%”).

    I’d recommend removing the “When CA is on cooldown” constraint and reducing the potency to the normal CA value, even if at a higher chance in compensation. The greater maximum stack count already removed any risk.

  1. Eagletalon’s seems to defeat much of the point of Mongoose Bite — namely, a commitment into single-target focus damage with intentional anti-synergy to all else. Depending on tuning, it would likely become ignored or obligatory and if obligatory, that means you’d have to cycle all CDs like FotE, WFB, etc., around it, especially if also taking Snake Hunter. While our present tuning doesn’t showcase that well (outside of FotE having far greater ease and frequency of use, and average value in practice, un-scaled now than when it was MF-scaled in Legion), MB scaling only with itself is in many ways a perk, not a flaw, given tuning inevitabilities.

    This probably should be a choice node with Snake Hunter to avoid excessive synergy that’d force it to be UP on its own or OP in its ideal context… or it should be removed.

  1. Spearspark Ignition and the 1-pt Ruthless Marauder are both likely OP compared to surrounding talents.
    Consider: Bombardier provides 2 extra WFBs per 2 minutes, neither of them oGCD, while Spearspark would provide more than 2 effective casts of WFB and free up a GCD every 45 seconds due to one of them being oGCD. Ruthless Marauder, while not nearly so OP, adds over 500% AP per minute in physdmg from FotE itself atop 13.5s off of WFB (75% of a charge) and Flanking Strike (45%).

    You’ll likely need to split Ignition’s effects, slightly nerf Ruthless or the original execute crit bonus on FotE that it synergizes with, and/or buff all remaining capstones to compete.

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In bfa alpha there was a different flanking strike talent where if you and your pet were in range, kill command would also cause you to hit your target. I would love to have that instead of some 2 point node

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And you won’t. They already said that there are no changes to be announced, so survival gets to keep their beta dragonflight level talents.

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Didn’t they literally say coming in a future alpha build

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Over a month ago they said they no hunter changes to announce and that they were working to clean up the hero talent trees based on feedback. Since that time they’ve made a single tooltip change to a single word in a single hero tree. So they aren’t really even doing what they said they were doing, they’re certainly not doing work they said they weren’t doing.

Clear enough for you? NO CHANGES. You jump from thread to thread trying to start arguments. /ignored

Source:

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I mean if you’re gonna gloat that you must be right surely wait till alpha is over and you can say I told u so :man_shrugging:

How many threads at this point are just you and altani going back and forward lmao

No one cares who you block on the internet :+1:

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They also said they will balance s4 sets

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why do you lie lol

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Sharpnel Shredder/Bombing Run, Eagletalons/Snake Hunter, and Quick Shot/Quick Throw are all choice nodes, so you will only ever have one of each pair. I’ve edited the changelog so that point is hopefully clearer on a first read.

  1. I was pretty disappointed that the Sentinel Hero tree didn’t involve any Glaives; I felt that one of the Hero talents replacing Bombs with Glaives was a slam dunk idea that they ignored for some reason. Overall though, my goal with these talents was to sharpen existing gameplay, not completely upend Survival’s current design/thematics. So I agree with you here, but I considered replacing Wildfire Bomb outside of the scope of my goal (improving the tree mechanically).
  1. I moved Ranger because it’s quite powerful at the capstone level, and crowds out other options as a 2 point node. Moved to row 2, it would only be a 10% bonus 1 point node to fit better in that area. This revamp provides other bonuses to Serpent Sting/Kill Shot/Explosive Shot in other areas. There’s always been tension with the Ranger talent, but I’m not really interested in tackling the thematic dissonance there. I’m more focused on making the tree provide mechanically interesting choices for people who enjoy the current iteration of Survival.
  1. Frankly, I just think Raptor Strike is difficult to design interesting talents for, being a generic spender with no hook. Making Mongoose Bite baseline gives design space in the tree for more interesting talents. The revamped, baseline Mongoose Bite here is still weaker than the live iteration and so I don’t think it would be burdensome for newer players or people who want a simpler playstyle. I was considering baselining Harpoon as well, especially since there are a couple of talents that build off it. If I were to further iterate on this tree, I would probably baseline Harpoon and replace its node with another talent.
  1. Energetic Ally and Terms of Engagement aren’t quite mirrors because this revamped EA only affects pet Focus and ToE still only affects the Hunter’s Focus. Survival does have a consistent history of back and forth interactions with pets. For example: you do something that buffs your pet, and your pet does something that buffs you, or you both attack at the same time, or one of you follow-up the other’s attack etc. So here, Harpoon buffs both your focus regen and your pets.

I attached the Energetic Ally effect to Harpoon because it’s still an early talent, and I wanted to be evocative of your pet frenetically following you into the fray without it being obnoxious to trigger; Blizzard also likes to randomly throw in a few talents that are geared towards open world questing/leveling more than anything else, so this fits in with that. I’m not opposed to changing it though; anything other than the current live Energetic Ally would be an improvement.

4.* I was more interested in giving Carve a gameplay hook to distinguish it further from Butchery, rather than finding the exact numerical tuning value to make it an actual choice node. At its heart, Carve has always been a fine talent; Blizzard has just never bothered to tune it to be competitive since the talent tree rework. They just need to make the number go up.

  1. It’s meant to demonstrate synergy between you and your pet attacking, and to tie into the name of the talent. The effect triggers more often when you use Butchery and Carve (Sweeping style attacks) because your pet recognizes that you’re using wild AoE attacks more often, and responds by attacking with its own AoE with increased frequency. The effect still triggers in ST, just more often in AoE. Focusing on the Hunter-Pet synergy also helps differentiate it from BM’s Beast Cleave.
  1. With Fatal Flank I was just being cautious, given that Spearhead and Mongoose Fury modifiers could make Flanking Strike a very strong burst tool with a 1 point investment. I wanted to give it some sort of drawback, but I think my caution was misplaced. I’d be fine with leaving in the CDR element even with Fatal Flank talented tbh.

A better tradeoff might be removing the gapcloser portion and possibly increasing the Focus cost further/giving it a tuning modifier in PvP so SV Hunters aren’t leaping around 1-shotting people in Arena (my primary worry for this talent).

  1. How so? It’s maybe a little boring, but it increases pet damage, not your own, which is separate from what Fatal Flank and Spearhead do (stronger Mongoose Bite window for the Hunter themselves).
  1. To reiterate, Shrapnel Shredder is a choice node with Bombing Run, not Quick Shot. Quick Shot/Quick Throw node has been moved up and leads into the Shrapnel/Bombing Run node.
  1. True, rotational slows you can’t control can be annoying in dungeons. The main limitation here is that Blizzard seems to have an aversion to adding off GCD abilities and trap QoL, even where they make sense. So I was trying to design the ability to not be obnoxious within the design space Blizzard currently favors.

Also, if you don’t want to drop a slow while the tank is gathering, you could just not use Hunter’s Mark to prime it on pull. It would charge itself as you move towards the pack, and likely only be primed once the pull is gathered. You could also just pick Shrapnel Shredder during Sanguine weeks or if you CBA in general. If all else fails, the ignited Bombing Run Tar Trap could simply not slow.

  1. Good point! It might make more sense for the procs to trigger while CA is inactive. I just wanted to avoid potential highroll situations of the empowerments proccing while CA is already active.
  1. You’re right, Eagletalons has the potential to be a rotation warping node, so it would need to be tuned very carefully. I would start off with the bonus being something very conservative, like 10% or so. The talent could always be thrown in the bin if it’s too problematic. It’s already a choice node with Snake Hunter at least, so hopefully that mitigates a potential synergy snowball.
  1. Yep, you’re probably right about Spearspark Ignition needing to be weakened/split up. On any encounter with AoE, the investment for the 3 point FotE suite is probably a little TOO efficient. I was just overly cautious about point-gating the capstone talents too harshly in this draft, given how many points Coordinated Assault and Spearhead require on the live talent tree just to be functional.

Thanks for the in-depth feedback!

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Tbf, that’s mostly because either the forums keep bugging out and listing new posts to threads (and somehow limited only to those from Luca) or he keeps hitting the Reply button beneath my posts to add comments to threads in general, instead of the actual thread’s Reply button. I wouldn’t be pulled into as many general conversations if the forums didn’t list them as specifically a reply to me.

Thanks. Most shouldn’t need it; I’m just dyslexia-adjacent. v.v

  • (Items of roughly even size and function words can shuffle around me – “certainly not” <—> “not certainly”; contents of items A, B, C, E, D, etc. – so it can be harder to track what’s a choice node with what else.)

Fair, but then that means your including this as a non-option tuning knob despite its not being particularly “Survival”. It just seems like at that point you’d be better off removing it as you’d done to other %damage nodes and shifting something else thematic up into its space.

I don’t feel like that’s really any truer than for MB without Eagletalons. But alrighty. Especially given Wyvern… fair enough.

Ahh, I see. Mb.

That said, what thresholds are you aiming for with that X%? How many more empowered Bites, for instance, should one get?

On that note, would you be at all interested in removing the CD from Bite/Claw/Smack and letting Focus be the only limited factor, so that there might be reason to actively control those attacks beyond just CA and so pet Focus talents could have synergy into CA and indirectly into SH and perhaps even into Flanking Strike (with some small modification).

Certainly doable; it just means an awkward period of leveling before which one has any AoE not gated behind an 18s CD.

The PvP modifier should be plenty. If anything, removing the gapcloser would oblige it to be held for execution, making it more annoying both to use and (seemingly) to face.

I should have clarified that I meant impact on rotational priorities / holding considerations, not impact necessarily on damage profile. Spearhead and NEW Bloody Claws seemed like they’d adjust KC APL in a fairly similar manner. And both Fatal Flank and Bloody Claws oblige holding Flanking for 5 stacks of MF. Once one takes Bloody Claws, the other two seemed like they’d end up with quite a bit less gameplay impact. Imagining it out more thoroughly though, I probably worried overmuch.

It still just seems really awkward to me. I’d honestly much, much rather that if traps are to be used at all (and if not, just add a flamepatch to WFB directly), then it should make good use of them. Let a Freezing Grenade additionally make enemies brittle, Flame-Tar nade leave a circle and cone of flaming tar, a Needler Nade (Binding) lance enemies for a bleed as it pulls them towards the primary target and tethers them to it, etc. We’re the survivalist spec; it’d be perfectly fine for us to have the best traps interactions available in a pseudo-rotational manner (not enough charges and recharge speed to use it on every trap, leaving some for pure CC).

Yep, that’d be fine. So long as you’re not pushing CA especially towards use-on-CD.

Fair. It just will need eventual balancing, and I suspect you’d rather see it remain powerful but split over two nodes/points over being halved in strength to remain one-point.