It 100% feels this way me to me. You are attacking in tandem with your pet. You fight with your pet and your bond empowers you.
You have a regenerator that carries a direct damage bonus, encouraging slight delay of your higher ppgcd skills to after using up at least some amount of Focus. Its value does not depend on your pet’s type, buffs, damage, positioning or usually even its health or its being CCed, since outside of PvP neither is affected.
It’s a rebuilder GCD. Outside of PvP, though, its connection to one’s pet is merely nominal. I would prefer something more substantive/substantial.
yes, that encourages the spec fantasy of attacking in tandem with your pet in a neat little rhythm. there’s even pack leader talents that make the two of you attack at the same time with it 
I definitely think you’re right. I personally don’t like that fantasy for SV. I feel like it is too forced because they have to make SV emulate Rexxar to justify to RSV stans the switch to melee. The coolest features of SV don’t fit that fantasy and the “hold hands with your pet” abilities feel tacked on. I like the pet. I don’t want to play BM but I like the pet. That said, I see SV as a sort of tools of the trade commando or scout. Explosive ammo, gadgets, a side arm, a melee weapon, some grenades. I feel like Tristan in Legends of the Fall, scalping Germans behind enemy lines and tracking a bear my entire life.
The rhythm is virtually the same as MM has with Steady Shot—focus generation, favoring use before or between particular actions. Does that make MM shoot “in tandem” with Steady Shot?
Which scales with nothing that ALL other sources of damage would not also scale with. Again, you could as easily replace Kill Command with a focus-generating Arcane Shot that grants increased damage to your next non-Arcane Shot attack via some max-3-stacks buff called “Twin Tactics” or what have you and it would play identically. Outside of PvP, its connection to your pet is merely nominal.
I like the pet as part of our ranged kit.
I don’t play right and don’t claim to, but I think that gives me a bit of a clean perspective because I use abilities intuitively instead of efficiently. I always use the pet attacks that make me charge in as a gap closer, because otherwise it feels stupid to use.
I’m guessing that I should probably be using them to maximize dps but why would I put myself in so much danger if I’m not expecting to get a quick kill?
Yes, that’s also part of the fantasy
I guess that depends, does MM’s spec description mention anything about attacking with ranged weaponry? I would wager it does.
I mean you can say that same exact thing about BM lmao
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Not the thematic answer you were gunning for, I’m sure, but… Because that’s how being a melee spec works?
That’s largely my point though: in PvE (and PvP unless your pet gets rooted, stunned, killed, or feared), you could replace Kill Command with a hand-crossbow Harrying Shot attack and there’d be no difference.
For it to feel to me like pet interaction, it would have to in at least some small way actively interact with your pet across both PvP and PvE (i.e., not just by a byproduct automatic in the course of doing what you would have done without it).
Just as, imo, Serpent Sting felt better when it was briefer, more potent, and more interwoven/interactive and Lunge and Bloodseeker would feel better were each were more potent, I’d prefer to see a bit more going on with Kill Command, or in its place, that would make it feel like pet interaction in more than just name and rare constraints (when pet is dead or CCed). Its primary bottlenecks, after all, are purely you — your range to target, your line of sight, your ability to act.
Not nearly so much, though, since the buffs affecting any such “pet action” are stored and mount separately on the actual pet and therefore actually relate to that pet, while Beast Cleave, Stomp, etc. are also affected by the pet’s positioning.
This is giving me flashbacks to the stuff I heard last expansion about Tip of the Spear when it was a stacking buff (“yeah, it caps at 3 stacks but don’t worry about reaching 3 stacks~”). If a mechanic is a “trap”, then it needs to be addressed via adjustments or be removed from the spec altogether.
This sounds like you’re assuming I wouldn’t hit Kill Command at all, or give it a lesser priority despite all the stuff that has been attached to it. Funnily enough, Bloody Claws addressed a complaint I had last expansion by making Kill Command not eat away at the Mongoose Fury window because of those 1.5 sec extensions.
My point is that if you have a damage window and the design does not prioritize it in gameplay when the window is in effect, the damage window has no reason to exist. That’s the mindset behind things like Colossus Smash or, to once again refer to FFXIV, Wildfire: when active, you throw everything you can at it. Yes, Mongoose Fury is different in that it has a ramp-up element due to effectively having no cooldown and interacts only with Mongoose Bite, but the same principle still applies. And if that has become tangential, as you call it, then it doesn’t really need to be there. They can bake things like the Kill Command resets to Raptor Strike via a talent (just place Bloody Claws down one or two spots below RS), opening up a talent slot for something new.
For clarity, Bloody Claws extends the duration of Mongoose Fury by 1.5s, which is the same baseline duration of the GCD before haste (unless that was changed and I just never heard about it). That’s why I call it a wash outside of high amounts of haste, since at baseline or with low haste, it just prevents Kill Command from eating away at the Mongoose Fury window. With a lot of haste, you’d see slight increases by fractions of seconds that would add up over time provided your KC resets are frequent.
Erm…by “combo system” I meant more like attacks that feed into each other if used in a specific order. Since we’re talking SV, I meant something like:
- Raptor Strike - Deals damage
- Mongoose Bite - Deals less damage, has a chance to grant Mongoose Fury for X seconds.
- Eagle’s Talon - Deals less damage, places a bleed that deals 25% of damage dealt over 15 sec.
In this hypothetical example, Raptor Strike would be your opener skill. Using Mongoose Bite directly after Raptor Strike would increase the chance of gaining Mongoose Fury to 100% (maybe with talents, increase the number of stacks gained when comboed to 2). Using Eagle’s Talon after Raptor Strike, on the other hand, increases the bleed from 25% of damage dealt to 40% of damage dealt.
I see what you mean, but that would require changing the damage-window-with-rampup of Mongoose Fury into something else. Once upon a time I would have suggested a shortcut to max stacks (tie it to Coordinated Assault) and either making Fury of the Eagle interact with Mongoose Fury (consume it for higher damage) or introduce a new single-target spear skill that does same.
Alternatively, make getting MF stacks easier. Add at least one more skill (or just give Raptor Strike a reason to exist) that grants stacks, change the mastery to give pet basic attacks a chance to increase your MF stack count (but not the MF buff). One of the reasons ret works as well as it does is because it was given attacks that generate more than 1 holy power, and I think SV could have benefited from something like that.
What it needed was at least two expansions (Legion and BFA) to get through the growing pains. Too much of the sentiment at the time of Legion was people complaining that SV was changed to a melee spec, and the mess that followed was in response to that. It’s one of the instances where I wish someone at Blizzard had stood their ground and tried to improve the design.
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It’s not a “trap”. It’s a very clear, very intuitive mechanic. You have 14 seconds to use as many as you can, with the buff affecting only itself. No part of that implies a need to rush out the first 5 at cost to the total.
If each stack gave general Haste, then there’d be some case for to be made for sometimes prioritizing early stacks further. But it had affected and still affects solely MB.
If we follow the strictly worded guideline you literally stated you prioritize and thought others should prioritize, then yes, one would have to ~assume~ take that explicit statement as… an explicit statement.
It does, though I’ll agree it could be more condensed as to give both more room and value for optimization.
Except you needed the KCs anyways to provide those MBs, and therefore even at 0 Haste it’s giving you more MBs in your MF window. Outside of the Beta bugged version of Furious Assault, you do not have infinite Focus.
Yes, on-demand as in Disturbed dropping plates, but…
“Umm, because we’d rather you didn’t play Survival.” If it worked with WoD Demo, it certainly worked with post-WoD SV. And the guy who said those words exactly is still active on the team. If Blizz doesn’t want you to play something, they’ll make sure you don’t want to play it. It worked very well with SV for the longest time. It doesn’t matter if you want to play it or not.
I don’t agree. I like the teamwork/Rexxar aesthetic of the spec, it feels more primal, more apt for something named “Survival.” I think current melee survival, particularly pack leader survival, is aiming for how Hunter works in Pathfinder. Teamwork feats are baked in as part of the class (teamwork feats are very strong in pathfinder, it’s usually like pulling teeth trying to get other melee players to change their builds to include teamwork feats, or to even help you flank, so being able to do that with a pet is a huge deal), and there is a greater emphasis on your pet and how you work in tandem with your pet. It’s neat, and I wouldn’t mind them leaning harder into the focus on teamwork or positioning.
I mean, it can be both. I just like the primal feel of this class. We are Arnold in Predator
I’d argue that, in PvP sv is not a melee spec. Wasn’t in SL and still doesn’t feel like it right now, even if there’s more pressure to be in melee.
Not meaning to be rude, but pvp has not mattered in a long long time when designing specs.
And designing specs hasn’t mattered in PvE.
I don’t mean to downplay the skill involved or the fun some people find in the activity, but it’s a rhythm game. You aim for as close to a perfect Guitar Hero run as possible. It doesn’t matter about spec fantasy or melee or range or colors. You can completely cover the screen with UI elements and if it helps you more effectively hit your abilities based on numerical priority, then it’s fine.
Not saying you’re wrong. You’re completely right. But the spec fantasy and how it feels is kind of irrelevant for the content that the spec is designed for.
It wasn’t a trap then, though? what made you think it was a trap?
Which is the intention…if it mindlessly gave you permanent mongoose fury it’d be a complete non mechanic. which is why people complained when blizzard was about to make mongoose fury an infinite duration buff. you might as well replace mongooes bite with a talent that says “raptor strike now has a red icon and does 30% more damage”
It sounds like you would like FF14 since every single job is designed like this.
He seems to be describing something more similar to Aldrachi Reaver than an XIV “combo” (button-bloat chains). You’d still be able to open with the DoT, for instance, even if Mongoose Fury might also cause that DoT duration to tick by faster–instantly.
I guess I’m also lost on why he thinks the current system isn’t “combo”
kill command strengthens your other abilities
raptor strike does damage and gives your other abilities cooldown reduction
wildire bomb gives you full recharges of heavy hitters, etc
like everything feeds back into itself pretty well?
Riffing off this a little, I think yes… But nonsensically so.
Like, Somehow grenades reset heavy hitters? Why? How does that work? BRM monks used to be a perfect example of how abilities should interact. You drink to get drunk and stagger around so you don’t feel the hits till later, then you take a hair of the dog to get rid of the hangover. Super simple.
If I can’t explain how the spec works in a concise little narrative like so, then it’s not really exciting spec design, it’s just interaction for interaction’s sake.
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You can quite easily think of something if this is important to you. Throwing your bomb inspires you to make another explosive shot faster than normal.
There is nothing sensical about getting hit with a building sized sword and not feeling it because you’re drunk and then drinking more brew to sober up.
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