[Updated for Dragonflight] Munitions - If RSV was to return

Classes Hunter
31

While I agree that the name-sense of Cobra Shot lends itself to extending or otherwise acting upon Stings, I have to wonder why a spec whose gameplay revolves around DoTs would want a button that merely makes them cast fewer DoTs per minute (by extending their durations), thus deemphasizing the actual variance in playflow in favor of passive capacity.

Of course, I also wouldn’t have minded seeing BM return to its Aspect mastery and accordant procs, and Cobra Shot being a replacement to something like Quick Shot, allowing you to, say, rapidly fire a (a volley of) shots in rapid succession as a way to burst out procs that could feed into your pet’s skills. Or perhaps even they could short-DoT to synergize with certain other pet skills or whatnot.

I don’t much care so long as a thematic component isn’t mere lip service (current BM Cobra shot, which is at best an armor-piercing Quick Shot) or doesn’t detract from otherwise more unique playflow (DoT casts becoming less of a thing on the DoT spec because your filler extends DoTs).

1 Like
32

the infuriating part about the changes they did to survival is that they changed the spec and then seemed to have forgotten that it even exist, what was the point to change the spec and then abandon it?

2 Likes
33

Personally, I prefer to manage for example Serpent Sting as it’s own ability without Cobra Shot extending it. Although there are many players who like what they did in MoP with that interaction between the two.

And for multi-target purposes, sure, why not.

34

To be fair, the new graphic they gave it in the animation revamp in 7.2 has it animated more or less as an actual snake being shot. Heck, even the one prior to that was basically shooting a cobra head downrange.

However, the argument that it be taken as a shot of an arrow dipped in cobra venom isn’t actually far fetched, so I think either fit the fantasy well enough. I do not think, however, that the ability can sustain both concepts simultaneously for the two specs, so I do think it likely that one of the two would need to “own” it, and the other not have it. I believe that the most likely setup for that would be for SV to retain Steady Shot, since it’s a baseline ability and actually does what this ability is intended to do (regenerates focus).

Edit:

While it was convenient, I really disliked the version of RSV where Serpent Sting wasn’t an actual ability, just a passive DoT applied by Arcane Shot (and Multi-Shot, but Serpent Spread is fine, imo), and where Cobra Shot extended it. It basically just became passive background damage that you didn’t care about or interact with at all. Honestly, MM had more interaction with Serpent Sting in WoD than RSV, and that’s an issue.

RSV needs to be the DoT management spec. Serpent Sting should be maintained manually, just like Agony and UA are maintained by Afflocks (and Corruption, if they don’t spec for infinite duration on it). I’d rather RSV gain some variant of the Chimaera Shot interaction that MM had at the time instead.

1 Like
35

Fair enough.

Which was my point although poorly worded. Original Cobra Shot =/= Current Cobra Shot. BM’s spec specific abilities were Bestial Wrath and Kill Command. Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot were used but essentially borrowed from RSV and MM. Blizzard finally tried to make BM’s rotation feel unique with barbed shot, but repurposed Cobra Shot out of laziness. I still maintain that current Cobra Shot doesn’t really fit.

Because I enjoyed that system and prefer it to something like:

[Exotic Munitions] - Your Auto Attacks have a chance to increase the remaining duration of either Serpent Sting, Black Arrow or Immolation Trap by 5 seconds, on an enemy affected by either of these periodic damage effects.

I like the idea of hard casting the other abilities and trying to save globals by maintaining Serpent Sting with a casted Cobra Shot. Doesn’t sound quite as exciting on single target encounters but trying to juggle it on 2-3 does imo. This also makes it feel unique to RSV rather than tab dotting like an affliction lock.

Only if the spec doesn’t increase uptime of Serpent Sting. Blizzard is big on spec identity nowadays. Having Cobra Shot for RSV and a replacement for BM’s focus dump would be optimal.

I personally wouldn’t want Serpent Sting to be auto applied either. I would like it to be maintained however, or potentially extended / enhanced until it expires.

This is also only fits if Cobra Shot is casted… not instant. I don’t want to feel like a BM hunter only shooting instant abilities. Which brings me back to:

It is indeed a neat sounding ability but at the end of the day if it doesn’t have equal or better output than the other 2, it won’t be picked up. Then the spec is right back to only instant spells. I really don’t like the idea of dumping 3-4 instant cobra shots in a row (Serpent’s Focus) -> dump focus -> repeat. Weaving cobras in between spenders/procs is SO much more fun.

2 Likes
36

Yep, atrocious…

One of the worst spell animations they’ve done IMO. Since when does that giggly crap fit the idea of firing a ranged weapon, using arrows/bullets?

Sure.

I would much rather they made it exclusive to RSV then, as per what you said earlier, and just made BM instead have Arcane Shot as it’s main Focus dump.

IMO, Steady Shot doesn’t fit the theme of RSV.

I fully agree.

Yes.

TBF, both Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot were/are abilities we’ve had since WoW first launched. You can ofc argue about thematic accuracy and such, but beyond that, both abilities would “belong” to all 3 ranged specs.

TBH, I prefer what we had on that end, back in Legion. Where we could pick between Dire Beast/Dire Frenzy.

I mean, fair enough if people want Barbed Shot over Dire Frenzy, but at least give us back the choice of either that or Dire Beast. It was such an easy way to allow players to pick their preferred approach to BM gameplay. One that they, IMO, actually did well.

Something like: Beast Mastery - future improvements[Partial rework]

How many you would want to fire, would depend on your Focus model, passive regen, etc.

I did write that it(Serpent’s Focus) could stack up to 3 times, but my intention is that you normally would never want to cast more than 2 in a row. If more is needed to increase Focus, then they should improve the passive regen instead.

1 Like
37

I didn’t play Legion or BFA. In my eyes they butchered my class and I felt no reason to play considering most of my friends stopped playing by then as well.

If it had been up to me, I would have left RSV as is and would have baked it’s current concoction (MSV) into BM. It still baffles me that out of the 3 hunter specs to get redesigned… why would it not be BM? The only thing iconic to the whole spec is KC, Bestial Wrath, and having a beefy pet. A melee hunter that fights with it’s pet! How does that not perfectly fit BM?

Edit - Forgot to mention… one of those iconic abilities was given to MSV aswell. /facepalm

2 Likes
38

And it annoys me to no end… Would have much preferred an especially rapid venom-laced shot.

I guess I’d just prefer the DoT spec to be one which maximizes benefits from (multi-)DoTing, rather than minimizes the playflow required to (multi-)DoT. Thus, having increased Haste per enemy DoTed, ideally with a way to, say, set traps that cut enemies to ribbons and apply their afflicted poisons to enemies conically behind them would be perfect.

That said, I don’t necessarily hate just replacing the filler with a DoT-applying ability either (as per WoD SV), because it gives a greater sense of manipulable downtime. I just hate the bloat of having a skill to apply said DoT only to use another skill, ad nauseum, to maintain it. Such would be the perfect worst of both worlds (bloat and half-assed playflow), imo.

1 Like
39

My favored approach would have been… close… to this.

To me, the only necessities should be that BM must use pets, MM must use ranged weapons, and SV must have an obsession with additional tools/toolkit.

Everything else should, imo, have been player-chosen, SV and BM both being usable from melee, ranged, or both, MM making significant use of ranged-detonated charges or sniping-helpful pet synergies, BM going deeper into getting the most possible out of one pet, summoning more—or rotating—pets to powerful tactical effect, or even going deeply into Aspects, etc., etc.

1 Like
40

Agreed.

Not entirely sure on this.

Feel free to elaborate a bit.

Personal preferences and all that.

I agree, though I’ve seen comments from others who very much prefer to maintain for example SrS via Cobra Shot.

If there’s a way to include both options, why not?(Not saying that my way of doing, it in the OP, is the best option)

Looking back, perhaps, based on how much of it is more or less an alternative version of BM anyway. Although I still stand by the point of how all 4 specs(BM, MM, MSV, RSV) can exist at the same time, and still be sufficiently unique.

MSV doesn’t have to be designed with the same abilities as BM.

41

Let’s say you have a Explosive/Shrapnel Bomb/Trap, and Cobra’s (Something) is just a passive that gives you Haste per enemy you have poisoned. If you blow up an enemy with said bomb/trap, it spreads its poison. Voila, lots of Haste.

1 Like
42

So, I’ve been playing PoE quite a bit recently with the new league (equivalent to seasons in D3), and specifically playing a DoT based Elementalist archer that uses a unique mechanism, where when one mob dies with her ignite DoT active, it applies an identical DoT (magnitude, remaining duration, etc) to every up mob within a radius around that target, often causing a chain-reaction clearing an entire room in a wave.

It’s an incredibly fun build, tbh, and I could see it working well with this DoT archer concept for RSV. Either on death, or having sorta a Soul Swap type mini cooldown that, when cast on a target, echoes all DoTs from that target to all other targets within a moderate range (say 10-15 yards, and respecting breakable CC). Could be a replacement for Serpent Spread, or an augment to it, where the basic AoE prep is dropping some DoTs on the target, and then echoing them to everything in range. Would probably work best if there was an additional sustainable DoT added as well (sustainable as in 100% uptime, like Serpent Sting).

1 Like
43

That would be fine and dandy except Blizzard can’t even manage 3 Hunter specs let alone 4. I try to look at it from the perspective of what would work, not what should. Hunter overall has had abysmal design and/or viability in certain facets for years now. I honestly just would never expect Blizz to get 4 hunter specs to a good place.

1 Like
44

While I don’t necessarily think we need or even ought have a second 100% uptime DoT, as a second maintenance factor would imo just kind of detract or make redundant what SpS would already be doing for the spec, I love the idea of payoff and momentum coming from DoTs.

On that note, one example from XIV comes to mind:

In XIV there’s a class (“job”) named Summoner, and it has a DoT-spread oGCD ability called Bane, which is sourced by a sort of ammo system (Aetherflow/Aetherpool) which is replenished 3 at a time once per minute. Bane has gone through a few iterations over time, but my favorite suggested iteration was that it would double the duration of the DoTs on the target and then spread those durations and that of your DoTs afflicting any enemies within 8 yards of the target, evenly among that target and all enemies nearby. So, two relatively simple parts: (1) Doubles DoT durations [ST] and (2) Redistributes durations evenly [AoE].

Some other ideas were usually appended to this, like any enemies hit by an Aetherpool ability (all similarly oGCDs on that same roughly 20-second-recharge ammo system, but some dealing direct damage, some dealing DoT-dependent damage, etc.) then spreading their durations to enemies upon death, but let’s just consider Bane as mentioned above for now.

In practice, this would amount to something like popping Haste buffs to put out your longer DoTs on a few enemies, a mid-length DoT or two (ending on the focus target), and, say, a stronger but shorter-duration instant-cast DoT just before Bane. You could then follow up quickly with synergetic spells. The nuance came from the fact that (1) you’d want to maximize the durations on the central Bane targets, (2) the more time you spend to set up the Bane overall, the more your previously cast DoTs will have ticked away (the shorter ones more so, proportionately, than the long ones), and (3) you had to know how much time and resource you’d have available to play off that mass DoTing.

While that extent seems more the grounds of an Affliction Warlock to me, that kind of subtle nuance (e.g. from the combination of “Doubles duration” ST + “Splits durations” AoE) in the context of skills which can synergize off of DoTs seems pretty appealing.

1 Like
45

In the OP, my approach to the DoT-spread mechanic was to tie that mostly to Serpent Spread for Serpent Sting, like it used to be. And then also incl Black Arrow via ES, but only during the major CD. There’s also a talent which allows you to make ES deal damage to all enemies near the affected target.

And now, you also have the option of Cluster Shot in the AoE-row for a way to significantly increase the AoE-burst damage potential of the spec. At least that’s the intent.

Other than all that, you also have the normal mechanics of applying DoTs manually.

Point is, should the spec have a way to frequently spread DoTs, more frequently than it would as it’s designed right now?

46

I’m not sure. For me, what’s essential is merely that anything attempting to fill RSV’s shoes feels big-brain, i.e., that skills like DoT-spreads don’t merely feel like CD-locked basic affordances nor combos merely like multi-GCD singular actions.

(I realize that RSV was by no means actually “big brain” during any iteration, much like Arms Warriors have never once particularly felt like tactically-minded, veteran weaponmasters (“Masters of Arms”), Balance has scarcely ever had anything to do with balance, regardless whatever iteration they’ve of Eclipse they’ve tried to shoehorn it in through, or Feral even that much like a giant f’ing cat ripping people apart—though it’s gotten a lot closer than the other two. That said, it feels like it’s the primary promise of how the spec should play, the sort of unique rush one should get from playing it.)

How those perceptions are weighed will vary from person to person, but I think some criteria that are at least typical and/or indicative would be something like…

  • in-play options having meaningful competing choices (such as seen in spenders sharing a resource system) where the obvious or typally-fit choice might not ultimately be best, and choice efficacy depends greatly on future choices, and
  • response systems that have relatively long reach (i.e., impact future choices) but are nonetheless integratable into nuanced play (i.e., do not dismantle or otherwise cause your current strategy to suddenly become an inferior choice, such that you’re better off wasting the actions spent building towards it).

Now, those are really high bars, but (1) we can nonetheless work towards them and (2) such, or similar concerns of how the spec actually feels to play, ought to be our lead concerns.

To all connect that somewhat to the ideas you’ve presented here, just to be a bit more concrete, let’s compare your utilization of Freezing Trap as a potential (quantizing, I’d assume) defensive against, say, Exotic Munitions (currently an AA-based chance to extend a random one of your DoTs).

The first isn’t necessarily a deliberate sacrifice, but if used defensively it is an affordance that you must be wary of wasting (by actually trapping an enemy, unless the effect works even then) and can stem from cautious or otherwise divergent play.

The second, on the other hand, does not alter your gameplay in any sense, since Catalysis is unlikely to be worth holding Explosive Shot until your next Black Arrow, since the latter has thrice the prior’s CD and thus the occasional avoidance of that need (i.e., being able to use ES instantly, rather than holding for BA) would not be notable.

The same can largely be said of allowing Black Arrow to stack up to three times. By doing so, you’ve sacrificed negative gameplay (again, not necessarily “bad” or even more punitively-minded than anything else, but simply moments in which to hold onto X or Y) in favor of less unique or more reliable/unaffected capacity. There’s less to playing with Black Arrow for having made it less susceptible, and any cleave niche the spec would otherwise have is that much less emphasized.

/rant

1 Like
47

I started in 2020, but RSV seems really fun. How did it play?

1 Like
48

Was a ranged spec, first off. It played somewhat like a cross between modern MM and an affliction lock. Cobra Shot (which at the time was a reskin of Steady Shot) to generate focus, a short-CD (6s) Explosive Shot (which at the time was a short-CD single target fire DoT, not an AoE like the current MM one) as a regular filler. Maintain Serpent Sting and use Black Arrow on CD for DoT damage. Ticks of Black Arrow had a chance to reset the CD of Explosive Shot and make the next 2 casts not incur a CD, so you could triple-tap it. Like BM (and MM at the time, actually), it was fully mobile, everyone was instant except Cobra Shot, and that was castable while moving. SV’s approach to AoE also used Multi-Shot, but the damage wasn’t in the shot itself, but that it applied Serpent Sting to everything hit (and later, that applying Serpent Sting to a target that already had it would deal a burst of nature damage to them)

Basically, where MM focused on a slower rotational pacing and heavy hits (Aimed Shot, Barrage making Multi-Shot hit substantially harder, etc), SV focused on continuous rot damage. In fact, in WoD SV was the only spec in the game that completely lacked any form of DPS cooldown, instead just doing really good constant damage the whole time. The short CD on Explosive Shot, the regular resets from Black Arrow, and the fact that everything except Cobra was instacast meant that the spec was noticeably more fast-paced than MM (excepting MM in HFC (final tier in WoD), where Aimed Shot became instacast due to the tier set bonus).

In terms of gameplay, it had a somewhat similar feel to Affliction.

1 Like
49

Hmmm, that seems really fun. I might have liked RSV, perhaps with an Exsanguinate-esque type thing on a short CD.

1 Like
50

There were a ton of places they could have taken it during the Legion push towards big spec identity differentiation. Instead, they decided that this game needed another melee spec, because adding 5 other ones since launch apparently wasn’t enough. They literally only gave DH a single DPS spec, despite it having at least 3 very different playstyles in the talent tree (Demon Blades + Momentum, Chaos Blades, and Demonic). They easily could have put RSV in as HDH’s third spec instead of straight deleting a spec so many enjoyed so much.

But Ion was just like “lol they shoot arrows, they’re the exactly same spec lolol”.

1 Like