Hey. Just got back to the game after taking DF off. I don’t want to jump the gun, and maybe I’m just not getting the playstyle yet and I’ll like it later, but SV feels horrible to play. It’s like they made the spec play the way Bepple’s said the spec played during BfA and SL. It’s everything that SV haters said was dumb about SV before those things were actually a reality.
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I would wager there’s probably a mistake or two happening in the game play.
Why do you feel this?
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hard to say if it’ll feel better to you with time or not. one thing that may help: try not to overthink tip of the spear. tipping every ability makes for an extremely clunky and inefficient playstyle. instead, use KC primarily to manage focus as we always did, prioritize big hitters when you have tips, and keep your bomb cooldown rolling!
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I liked the gameplay in BfA but loved it in SL. I enjoyed spreading SS and keeping it up. I liked death chakrams and all the other random things we could throw or shoot. I don’t like build/spend specs.
In addition, I’m sure part of it is that I don’t really understand the spec any more.
My favorite content was BGs and with the build I used in SL I felt very comfortable in that content. I could stay out of harms way and spread damage and get off kill shots and harpoon in to spam some mongoose. right now it feels like most of the kit is various evolutions if coordinated assault/flanking strike.
I didn’t play SV because I wanted a melee DPS with low survivability. That’s what SV haters called it but that wasn’t what it was. it was a very hybrid skirmisher with lots of different types of abilities and that feels like it’s gone.
Edit: Just reread the guide on Wowhead and icy veins and in context it doesn’t even sound fun. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to enjoy it. I might have to look at BM or god forbid, marks.
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I think the problem is you weren’t playing it as a build/spend spec in sl/bfa even though it was a build/spend spec then too 
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Sure. I mean, for mongoose. But it was “make sure ss is up before the appropriate bomb”.
They’re still making compromises with MSV. RSV won the war; it’s not winner-takes-all the case being.
I got out today from the can, and that’s the last time I’m ever going to cite a 3P source. WoWHead is a cluttered, unorganized mess. Anything I claim, I’m going to assume you either know the source or you don’t. There’s no telling what actual ILLEGAL stuff the 3P sites we cite actually do.
I don’t really like MSV, but I’ve always been a Stan of the melee weapon being a part of the hunter class.
I didn’t like the way it played in Legion. I really didn’t even care for the PvE playstyle all that much in BfA or SL, except that the full stack mongoose chonky hits felt very satisfying.
What I loved… I mean really loved, was harpooning around a BG and shooting serpent stings, flinging bombs and chakrams and making sure bleeds and poison dots were on everything in sight. Zooming in to whack a stunned enemy with some raptor strikes and disengaging to zoom around and spread my stings around again, tossing a bomb over my shoulder for good measure.
In SL, the sustain was sick. The burst not so much. I don’t really do Arena because I don’t like maximizing burst windows.
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Well now in SoD P5, Hunter gets a quest epic dual weapon set that a chance on hit grants 40% speed for 10 sec and an extra attack with both weapons. So even SoD is doing MSV way better, because Runes can help a Hunter further specialize in melee.
MSV is winning, just not in Retail. The key difference is that SoD is not invasive and doesn’t gain by borrowing like Retail tends to do. A melee Hunter in SoD still has a ranged weapon, though Strength is stacked instead of RAP(ranged attk pwr). But as for Retail, we’re pigeonholed in the cookie-cutter designs at large.
It is actual trash for a rework. Any time a spec makes you press a zdps button before every damage button, it gets changed because it’s bad design. Yet they keep doing it.
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if you’re pressing KC before every tippable button, you’re probably way overprioritizing KC and wasting a lot of focus. i’d wager doing that is worse than playing as if tip of the spear doesn’t exist would be
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This is right, you don’t want to overcap focus or kill command between every ability. Just do the rotation and when you have Tip up be mindful of which CD will benefit the most from it IE bomb in AoE over non-cleave proc Killshot.
Tip of the Spear is just icing on the cake
You would wager wrong if you read the wowhead guide.
Like I said, I mostly do BGs. I’m not doing a rotation so much as reacting and trying to make sure my damage in big skirmishes is up. Landing kill shots. Spreading AoE.
I’m sure it’s still good at all that, but my complaint is that it doesn’t feel good. It feels overcomplicated. Less mobile. More melee. I have a warrior and a monk. I don’t need that “hit stuff” fantasy. I miss the feel of SL SV.
Straight from Wowhead Survival Hunter rotation section:
we attempt to avoid wasting Focus and Tip of the Spear unnecessarily , following 2 simple rules.
- When playing Sentinel, Don’t attempt to regenerate Focus or Tip of the Spear if you cannot hold any more resources. Focus has a limit of 100, while Tip of the Spear has a limit of 3 stacks” -
Maila still winning that wager
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I didn’t play Survival in Shadowlands but we have the same amount of ranged abilities as melee currently so we’re still pretty hybrid in that department. As a PvE’er the ranged bombs are close to if not my #1 damage source but idk how the PvP scaling modifier effects it
The bombs are still the bombs which is cool. The cluster legendary made them cooler but it’s whatever.
In SL, serpent stings was an instant cast dot that you spread around to all enemies by tab targeting and shooting your little crossbow, and it interacted with wildfire bombs and stuff. While this required a fair amount of management in PvE, in BGs you just used it to put dots on people. It was always available.
If you had KC, you cast it. You didn’t worry about capping tis.
You had death chakrams as a necrolord and if you wanted, you had the other chakrams talent.
This was the majority of your pvp damage kit. Not counting steel trap and the various bleed mechanics related to pet damage. Did you raptor strikes? Absolutely, but only during your burst windows and that was more important to manage in Arena than in random BGs. In a big turtle you just gave everyone a serpent sting and drop a few bombs on the group, bounce a chakram off everyone and keep pressing KC when the effect pops up on screen.
They still tell you in the opener to ignore this and then when you look at the rotation priority, mongoose bite is at the bottom which means you are still getting a tip before every bomb, every explosive shot, every kill shot if you do your rotation properly
i… think you may be interpreting the opener section a little backwards? as far as i can tell, it’s not saying “ignore focus and tip everything”; it’s saying “don’t worry as much about focus and tips, just get your bombs spent and sting rolling reasonably quickly so you can go into coordinated assault.” KC isn’t even shown in the list or infographic for the opener
the pack leader priority list does put kill command over raptor strike, focus be damned, but that’s a problem with pack leader. it’s a poorly-designed tree, to the point that for a little while there it straight-up incentivized spamming KC. the only saving grace was/is that it’s numerically worse than sentinel, so its poor design is kind of self-contained
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Copy paste. Also if you actually read the opener, mongoose bite is only used to apply serpent sting. Your first bomb is basically not tipped but pretty much after that, everything is.
- Don’t be too fussed about managing your Focus on the opener. Because we have all of our abilities available right away, it is impossible to perfectly manage both Focus and Tip of the Spear, all we are aiming for is to get our ability cooldowns going in an efficient manner.
In summary, as a Survival Hunter our goal is to limit Focus and Tip of the Spear waste while keeping all our ability cooldowns rolling. ontop of that, we’re aiming to buff all big-hitter abilities with Tip of the Spear.
You should be buffing nearly every bomb, explosive shot, flanking strike, and kill shot with tip or you’re doing something wrong.