Ah, no. Don’t worry, I don’t overcap focus, I try to blow it before popping KC. I’m just gonna call it a skill issue on my part and keep playing.
I agree with the following:
- Beastmaster + Survival should be able to play with either a melee or ranged focus.
- Melee iterations would need to be equipped with mechanics which justify the loss of range, since ranged hunters typically don’t have to stand still for much of anything.
- Marksmanship + Survival should be able to play without a pet.
- This would largely require granting an option to Survival to move its kit away from Kill Command, since Kill Command is its primary Focus generator.
- Completely restructure the Hunter talent trees.
- There is so much to comment on here…
- Ranger Hero Class
- Trueshot reworked back into an aura with a Bloodlust activatable effect.
- Exotic Beasts available for all hunters.
- I’d add the caveat of permitting this via a class talent node. Beastmaster hunters would instead gain the effects of their current “Animal Companion” talent, and that talent would in turn be replaced with something else.
- The mechanics of Hunter’s Mark and its place in our toolkit need to be re-examined.
- Various abilities and/or ability names need to be thematically re-examined.
Things I don’t agree with:
- Marksmanship should be able to play with a melee focus
- Melee ain’t Marksmanship’s class fantasy. Majority of hunters want access a class with this specifically named specialization, not “Deadeye” or some alternate version which more linguistically justifies a “melee version of Marksmanship”.
- Beastmaster should be able to play without a pet
- Having “guardians” but no active pet would lead to really gimmicky math between “Lonewolf + Guardians” vs. “Pet + Guardians” DPS comparisons.
- Automatic weapon/ability swapping based on range.
- “Stat sticks” and math gets wonky during combat.
- Could feel really clunky having the game automatically swap between one or the other.
- Valewalker Hero Class
- Dark Ranger seems like a more interesting hero class fantasy choice. Valewalker seems a bit too druidic for my taste. While there are aspects to the Hunter class fantasy that jive well with druids, WoW hunters have considerably more variety as a whole.
- Pack Leader Hero Class
- We don’t need something that’ll likely just be a lazy extension of Beastmaster.
2 Likes
Maybe I am mad. I still like the idea of a BM Hunter that revolves around guardians. So far this doesn’t seem to be a popular idea. Are there no other BM Hunters that ever thought of how nice it would be to get all of the thematic fun of a beast army without the clunkiness of an active pet?
The other idea mentioned about a BM Hunter that plays like Udyr from League also sounds very cool too, I hadn’t thought of that at all. That sounds a little more like what I was describing with my Survival tree though.
My goal with this redesign concept was to unlock as many different playstyles as possible, even totally off the wall things like a “petless” BM or melee “marksman” (no? no one wants a axe/spear thrower, for example?), without taking anything away. Those oddball choices may not be the first pick for most Hunter players and that’s fine, you can still have your pet, marksman doesn’t have to go melee. But what about that one Hunter who does want to give it a shot? There’s always those people who wish we had more explosives/demolition abilities in our kit, what about them? Or the ones that want a Hunter to play like a Headhunter from WC3? Shouldn’t they have options too?
If you look around this forum you’ll see that almost all of the feedback is related to this issue; the Hunter falls short on most of it’s class fantasy concepts and lacks an identity. At the end of the day, I’m really just in favor of having a less restrictive structure to this class. What better way to solve the “lacking an identity” problem than to make way more class fantasy aka character identity options available?
I had made a suggestion like this too, weeks ago, of a petless fourth spec that played support. You’d summon spirit beasts that would instantly attack the target, apply a buff to surrounding allies and yourself, then would fade. Your Mend Pet would become Spirit Mend, and could be cast on allies/yourself. The spirit beasts could also be sent on allies for a stronger, more healer-focused effect.
But! It seems all Hunters want to do is whine about Survival being melee, even though the melee is still fun. You’re not mad, you’re just in a small echo chamber.
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You have some great ideas, and I have to admit your solutions are a bit more elegant than my “take a hammer to it” redesign would be. I think at the end of the day I want to see the Hunter rebuilt because I just can’t help but think that it would be so much better for everyone if it was a traditional fantasy Ranger first, and a Beast Master second. Current iteration feels like Beast Master is the core of the class, with the ability to pick up a Bow or a Spear being quite secondary to that. Seems very strange and counterintuitive to me, especially given that it’s the only Archer in the game.
That’s totally fair. Here’s what I would ask you to consider. What if there is a sizable number of Hunter players that would like to see how the class could play if at least some talent points in the tree are dedicated to these more niche appeals? I don’t think I did a great job of laying out exactly how I envision things like the petless BM or melee Marksman could work. I think these are, basically, where niche fantasies like Headhunter (melee but can throw spears/axes), Demolitionist (mortars, explosives, bombs), Rexxar inspired Beast Master with melee capabilities and a lot of guardians, etc, can all come to life.
If you’re not into any of that, I totally understand, but it’s not as though I’m suggesting we delete the marksman sniper archetype. In fact, I genuinely think that my rebuild would do a lot to bring the Archer playstyle even more to the forefront than the current Hunter design does.
I agree that Valewalker would blur the line a little bit between the Druid and the Hunter, but I personally don’t mind that. There’s already some cross over in the game, multiple classes using the same magic types, etc. There’s also approximately one NPC in the game that is a named Valewalker, you might remember Valewalker Farodin from Legion. I think it’s cool, but I suppose that’s just a matter of taste. WoW doesn’t really have any classes that fill in that role of naturalist fighter without being a shapeshifter like the Druid, the closest you get is through transmog. Anyway, to each their own.
I’m curious, what would you replace Pack Leader with?
Spirit beast as I recall? Played a good bit of Norn Ranger in GW2 but never dabbled with that toolkit.
Soul Beast: The Ranger melds with their pet, gaining increased power and abilities relevant to their pet until they defuse.
Unfortunately, an idea like this is waaay too cool for WoW, and if the Blizzard devs added it, it would be like:
A 2 minute cooldown, that removes your pet and gives you a 20% chance to deal 150% extra damage on your next auto attack, and if that damage crits, there’s a 50% chance to flip a beast coin that would spin the wheel of aspects to grant you a random effect for 10 seconds. Including +25% extra damage at night, on Tuesdays.
And then they’d add it, your Pet would be deleted on use (bug that lasts 4 patches), and there would be a chance that your character gets permanently stuck with a spinning wheel on their screen until next maintenance.
The anet devs would just have it be a switch you flip on or off, with a 10 second cooldown when you pop it off, and it would just flat out give you more stats and new attacks. And then there would be a bug that would last for 4 years with this ability that they’d only catch after a prominent Youtuber complained about it for six months straight on every stream.
Pick your incompetence really. An ability like this, and Blizzard just flat out couldn’t do without it being unfun to play, broken, or an RNG slot machine. At least with the concept of summoning spirit beasts, it would be something more akin to Dire Beast. Hard to mess up something already in the game IMHO.
Yeah, Blizz would turn it into ‘Neutered Soul Beast.’ 
Really amazing how each spec played so differently and having use of tactical weapon swaps.
Feel that’s just creating a second demo lock.
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I get that you like GW2, but I’m not sure “learning from your pet by eating it” is any cooler than “learning from and synergizing with the pet you have out”.
Both equally require each pet having special characteristics and/or customizability. Neither is currently done well. But if the mechanism by which we’re going to add customization is the pet, I’d rather have the pet than get cool pet things by strictly not having the pet.
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Similar in playstyle but completely different in theme/aesthetic, which is also important to some players.
“Anyone who plays a Hunter knows sometimes you just don’t want to fuss with the pet.”
Nah, disagree.
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I like threads like this especially since I have been disappointed with the direction Hunter has been going in over the last few expansions. I know there needs to be a lot more polish to these suggestions but as a starting point I would like to see Hunter trend in this direction:
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Remove Command Pet from being locked to pet spec. Make Counter Shot/Muzzle baseline and replace Counter Shot/Muzzle location with a 3 Option Node to include Roar of Sac, Master’s Call and Primal Rage. This removes the requirement of certain pets being needed for Command Pet and open’s up what pet a hunter wants to run around with. Fortitude of the Bear now shares the node with Hunter’s Avoidance.
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Make a decision on Survival. Is it a true melee spec or is it hybrid. The amount of possible active buttons for Survival is a mess and not all of them can be used at one time but different scenario’s could need them so it is a heavy tax on keybind real estate. Right now Survival almost feels like 3 different specs rolled into one.
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In the Marksman Tree make Lonewolf a meaningful choice. If you select it, then you are petless. Your damaging abilities are greatly increased but your command pet abilities applied by a passive direbeast and have either reduced effectiveness or suffer an increased cooldown.
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I wish the old Aspect buffs could still be incorporated similar to how they did Paladin Aura’s again. Cheetah either needs to go back to original form with the daze punishment or it needs to go away. Engineering Nitro Boost (from Cata) is more efficient to use. I would like a flavor of Hawk increasing haste on a auto shot proc for MM, Beast used to increase pet damage by X% for BM/SV etc.
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Bring back the frozen arrow tech for all traps. Bring back Caltrops to replace Steel Trap.
it’s a melee spec? this isn’t even confusing in game, it’s like as much of a melee spec as enhancement or unholy.
can you explain what you mean? I don’t know if I agree with you
I am not going to try and “gotcha” with a “Does Enhancement or Unholy” pull out a little crossbow to use an ability". Ret has as many ranged abilities as traditional 8 yd melee attacks as well but Hunter’s still have a identity problem with SV. SV only has 2 melee abilities of Rap/Goose and FoTE. All of the other abilities are 15 yards are greater which makes it more of a hybrid melee spec. If they still want to keep this way just let SV use a ranged weapon and base Rap/Goose/FoTE from RAP. I would just like to see it move more into a Heavy Melee focused spec that uses more sweeping strikes, cc and pet abilities.
Most classes base toolkit start with minimum of 7 keybinds consisting of a builder, spender, cleave, major defensive, minor defensive, a heal, and some sort of mobility increase. The complexity in terms of talents for each spec begins after that. Let’s say the average player uses a minimum of 3 12-slot actionbars which is 36 keybinds then through in modifier’s for macros.
SV’s first 7 keybinds go to
- Rap/Goose
- KC
- Bomb
- Turtle
- Command Pet
- Exhil
- Cheetah
Now throw in the remaining abilities to our keybinds.
8) Freezing Trap
9) Kill Shot
10) Wing Clip
11) Pet Management (let’s assume an all-in-one macro for Call, Mend, Rez, Dismiss)
12) Feign Death
13) Flare
14) Disengage
Now let’s add abilities that we will pick up along the Class Tree via a Talent that could be used fairly often or needed to get to the next level of talents.
15) Kick
16) Tar Trap
17) Tranq
18) Misdirect
19) Intim/Expo Trap
20) Scatter/Bind
21) Roar of Sac or Dead Keybind
22) Camo
Now here are the optional active abilities from the class tree that you could pick up a combination off but not all at the same time so there are some guaranteed dead keybind slots when not in use.
23) Scare Beast
24) Sentinel Owl
25) Steel Trap
26) Death Chakram/Stampede
27) Explosive Shot/Barrage
28) Serpent Sting
28 Keybinds and I haven’t even gotten into the Spec Tree. This is an issue for all 3 specs but the dead keybinds start to come out with the SV tree.
- Harpoon
- Bloodseeker or Dead
- Aspect of the Eagle or Dead
- Carve/Butchery or Dead
- Flanking Strike or Dead
- CA or Dead
- FoTE or Dead
- Spearhead or Dead
Now add back in the non class/spec keybinds for
- Health Pot
- Damage Pot
- Trinket 1
- Trinket 2
- Focus
- Mount (addon or macro)
- Extra Action Button
I am omitting any possible PvP talents that could require a separate keybind but Survival has 4 non-passive PvP Talents that would need a keybind and a general “known” macro command would not work in the event that you need to use 2 active talents at the same time. In general SV Hunters need to have 43-50 readily available keybinds allocated if they want to keybind active abilities that they could potentially use depending on the scenario or PvP, Raid, M+, etc.
Abilities that I omitted but could be keybound:
- Tracking
- Eagle Eye
- Eyes of the Beast
- I omitted Hunters Mark above.
I have more keybinds on my Druid but with a lot of abilities sharing space with the form actionbars the dead keybinds are not as taxing.
Nobody is doing a “gotcha” I’m just saying that Survival isn’t the only melee that has plenty of ranged abilities.
and Butchery and Auto Attacks 
Yes, just like Enhancement? I am confused why this doesn’t apply to them.
You didn’t really highlight a problem with SV, you just seem to be concerned that the Hunter class itself has too many buttons? 95% of what you listed is generally applied to the class itself and mostly defensive or utility buttons—things not regularly pressed in an average combat scenario.
Also nobody in their right mind is going to keybind Eagle Eye or Tracking.
Are you arguing that some utility spells should be removed?
All specs suffer from part-time keybinds in the class tree but the survival spec tree has more of a part-time keybind problem than the other two hunter specs. No one is saying to remove any utility that hunters cannot spare to lose. Survival just needs to be more thought out. That does not mean dumb-downed, just streamlined.
And yes people do have tracking and eagle eye keybound. Some players even allocate a macro slot for abilities like this. Just because you may not does not mean that other’s do not. They may not be doing the same content as you or myself.
But it has the same as Beast Mastery and MM lol? I’m confused why you think SV has more key binds. In your entire list that you typed out, 9 buttons are SV specific and are replaced by, you know, BM or MM abilities.
Also you listed Bloodseeker and I’m a bit confused why since that’s a passive ability
these are the only abilities on your list that apply to SV and not BM/MM.
BM would instead have Barbed Shot, Cobra Shot, Multi-shot, Bloodshed/Crows, CotW, Bestial Wrath, Dire Beast, Wailing Arrow or 8 keybinds, for example.
So if we take your point at face value the “more of a part-time keybind problem” you’re referring to is…1 extra button? I’m not sure what you would even streamline in this.