Blizzard has so much class feedback over the entire course of dragonflight and prior, it’s wild that they’re okay with the class as is. There are also some great ideas in the Pack Leader feedback post alone.
Below is my feedback from Pack Leader’s feedback thread and I’ll continue to revise this post accordingly:
More (Passive) Defensives & Externals:
- Defensives in general should be off the GCD, especially exhil.
- Reuse SL hunter’s mark and feign death conduits:
- Marksman’s Advantage - Hunter’s Mark decreases the damage the target deals to you by X%.
- Resilience of the Hunter - When Feign Death ends, you take X% reduced damage for 8 sec.
- Changing the 6% avoidance node to flat-out 6% DR or at minimum, re-tune BM’s mastery so vers is more appealing.
- Aspect of the Turtle can provide a DR to 4 nearby allies to match Mage’s mass barrier.
- Roar of Sacrifice can be a usable external in PVE in the class tree, it’s never taken otherwise as the 6% avoidance will always be taken for self-survivability in pve content.
- Pet specializations, specifically BM, need to be able to leech through pets so leech isn’t worthless - this can be a talent point to not disrupt other pet specs like Demo Lock.
- BM’s Sprit Mend needs a major buff for rot damage and self-sustain.
- It’s silly how many talent points a Hunter needs to give up to make Survival of the Fittest nearly as good as Pally’s Blessing of Sacrifice. The point bloat is unacceptable.
- Aspect of the Beast can be moved to the class tree, preferably with changes to leech so all specs can take advantage of this additional survival, albeit not so much MM.
Better Class Utility:
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It would be nice if explosive trap can toggle between knocking up or side since sanguine still exists, giving us access to an AoE albeit with a travel time that is less than ideal still.
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Perhaps unique to survival is an explosive bomb with knockup as an AoE kick with no/minimal travel time at the target similar to Wildfire Bombs currently but with a larger area of impact. It can deal minor fire damage.
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Hunter’s Mark should increase damage for the first and last 20% by 5% to compete with what other classes bring to the table. An additional 1% overall is very weak. Hunters are known for their Kill Shot execute, the current execution of Hunter’s Mark as a Raid buff contradicts with this.
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Alternatively, give Hunters a 5% agility buff. Mages have a 5% intellect buff and that seems beyond unbalanced in the grand scheme of raid buffs - imagine giving every non-caster as much as 20 ilvls on their weapon. This change alone opens up more possible group comps and better synergy for M+ groups. There’s a reason the M+ meta is always a caster meta.
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On the note of raid buffs, Survival still is fighting for a raid spot with other melees due to lack of utility/externals. Even something simple like “nearby allies +3yd range to all melee abilities” works. It can make it dramatically easier to conserve space in melee if the playable area is suddenly 3 yds bigger on each side.
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Return the ability of pets being able to Battle Resurrect so Hunters can be the Swiss army knife for m+ comps.
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Provide more pet flexibility - let us set any pet as ferocity/cunning/tenacity in the stable. Hunter always needs to give up something to gain another perk i.e leech or a defensive (Fort of the Bear) just to gain a Freedom (Master’s Call) while a class like Monk or Pally gets this with just a talent point.
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Allow hunters to lust without a ferocity pet. Currently, MM hunters are dropping their Lone Wolf buff to lust and BM is giving up Fort of the Bear + Spirit Mend just to lust. Every other lust class gives up nothing to press lust.
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Tranq Shot needs to remove multiple stacks of a buff/enrage to be comparable to Evokers/Druids. Removing 1 stack of say 7 stacks is not worth pressing.
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Allow Aspect of the Cheeta to function identically to Druid’s Stampeding Roar.
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Make Sentinal Owl function like the Kyrian Resonating Arrow, providing additional critical strike chance against the target. Currently, the additional 10% leech does very little HPS.
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Binding shot needs to be played around to get any usage and most tanks tend to not realize that it is even down to take advantage of the stun. Its SL functionality worked well when necrotic/kite meta existed but I don’t see it being as stong now. Functionality similar to DH’s Sigial of Chains as a CC is ideal.
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Ice Trap is essentially useless unless the mob in question is completely isolated. Replace this with Ice Arrow so we can CC any mob, even if they are cluttered between 10 other mobs.
General Class Tree Suggested Changes:
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The 'Ability does 5% more damage" or ‘Gain 2% Crit damage’ nodes need to go, they’re such lazy, uninspiring placeholders for tuning that have been around since DF Alpha. Those nodes should just flat out be added the spec accordingly. Hunter, specifically Survival, has more than any other spec in the game.
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It needs to be pointed out that you have classes like Pally have a 1-point node providing them with an additional 5% crit damage plus an execute while Hunter has a 2-point node giving them just 4% additional crit damage. This is unacceptable and unbalanced.
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Barrage is a useless talent that sees no viable usage in raid or m+, replace it with Flayed Shot or an alternative ST option so this capstone is more interesting and flavorful.
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Kill Shot is shared with all 3 specs and needs to hit like a truck. With current tuning, this button is almost not worth pressing for BM. For Survival, the button can hit harder to give more of a bursty profile.
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Steel Trap is a dot an awkward ground-based trap with a travel time delay and can miss the target. This trap is just not fun to use and is not usable for large raid boss encounters such as Sennarth, Terros, and Volcoross.
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Stampede requires a buff to be competitive with Death Chakram.
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Scare Beast just exists, it had no usage outside of afflicted week and even then, it’s useless as ice trap is a better solution for the affix with no cast time. This node needs to be removed.
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Throw in a secondary stat bonus depending on which pet is currently active based on family for some fun/interactive flavor.
Survival Suggested Changes:
- Surv’s CA should be a 1:30 CD and Spearhead 45s. CA’s kill shots and bomb empowerments just need to flat-out be stronger and hit like a truck, same with Mongoose bite which is for the most part, interchangeable with Raptor Strike.
- Add the DF S3 tier set to the Survival tree as it’s very popular and desired for AoE content.
- Carve bs Butchery - At the moment, there is no reason to ever take carve and both spells have identical usage.
- Similarly, Mongoose bite and raptor strike have extremely similar damage with mongoose bite tending to do a bit more for ST. This either needs tuning or scrapping of raptor strike.
- Survival’s mastery is effectively a worse version of versatility that works for only focus spending abilities making it pretty much worthless since it doesn’t make AoE buttons like bombs hit harder or offer much passive defense.
- Reference previous successfully liked legendaries and liked abilities or previous talents like from Season of Discovery and add them to TWW spec trees such as for Survival:
- Flanking Strike - (30s CD) You and your pet deal simultaneous instant 100% melee damage. Afterward, your Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike deal 10% increased damage for 10 sec, stacking up to 3 times. Raptor Strike has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown on Flanking Strike.
- Energized Ally - Damaging a new enemy grants you 3% haste for 10s, up to 5 stacks.
- Frenzy Strikes - Butchery/Carve increases the damage of your next Wildfire Bomb by x% for each target hit, up to 5, stacking up to 15 times.
- Venomous Fangs - Mongoose bite deals an additional 10% damage as Nature damage to targets affected by Serpent Sting.
- Hellcarver - [Butchery / Carve] deals 3% increased damage for each additional target hit.
- Energized Wrath - Uncaps Mongoose Fury stacks for Xs.
BM/MM Suggested Changes:
- Misdirection does not direct the threat generated by pets rendering an otherwise great tool useless for BM.
- Remove the cast time on Wailing arrow. The cast time makes it slightly unpredictable if it will land in time and contradicts the design of BM being fully mobile.
- BM suffers from being too simple and resource-capping Barb Shots due to Barb Shot’s buff duration lasting 10s in the last round of changes in S3. This has resulted in BM’s skill ceiling being at the floor and it has truly become a mash 2 buttons spec that many believe it is.
- BM must spend 4 talent points to enable any AoE. While this is similar to some other specs, it doesn’t feel particularly great. If talents are meant to be choices, this could be a single 4-point node instead or at minimum, Multi-shot can be moved to the base kit. On that note, Multi-shot hits like a weak noddle for BM and is in dire need of a buff, especially if it continues to have interactions with hero talents.
- Bug: Legacy of the Windrunners wind arrows for some reason consumes weapon durability when they proc.