We need range Survival Hunters back

They could rip off Final Fantasy 8 and make Survival use a gunblade. If not Survival, they could rip off ff8 and give a class a gun blade just because.

Yeah, this still baffles me. I mean, it’s not like either of the other specs had that strong DoT-focus.
Besides, the worst part of it all really was that it wasn’t going to matter going forward anyway. As neither of the specs were going to stick to their design. They were all going through drastic changes.

Yep. That’s what I thought as well. Except that Black Arrow, while it caused shadow damage, it wasn’t actually meant to be a “magical” arrow, but rather another type of poison of your own making.
As for Arcane Shot, I never liked that it did Arcane damage. IMO the only class that should have access to Arcane damage is the Mage.

That’s IMO because they went away from the original spec design we had in Vanilla. In Vanilla, your talent trees weren’t meant to assign you to a particular “spec” or a specific playstyle. No matter what you picked in terms of talents, you were a hunter. The talents only served to enhance certain elements within the class you were playing.

Nothing here is meant to criticize what we had back in the day. It’s purely here to highlight how different the class was back then compared to how it is now.

Beast Mastery:

  • Improved your Aspects
  • Improved your pet’s health, armor, movement speed, damage, critical strike chance, focus regen.
  • You gained several utility based improvements such as lower cast time on pet res, better pet mending, on-demand stun etc.
  • Apart from some utility as well as the signature talent for BM(Bestial Wrath). The spec did not give you anything beyond improving stuff you already had access to, baseline.

Marksmanship

  • Gave some additional utility, in the form of targeted shots(ranged attacks), increased attack range.
  • Most stuff were in the form of lower mana cost on abilities, increases to critical strike chance as well as critical damage, CD reduction, base damage increases.
  • Some of the more iconic stuff you got through MM talents was the improved Stings that you already had access to. Along with a powerful ranged attack, a ranged disorient as well as a party-wide AP buff.

Survival

  • Enhanced your fantasy as being a tracker
  • Improvements to your focus on utility. Especially in the form of traps you used defensively but also the ones for offensive use.
  • It did give you a offensive melee ability in the form of Counterattack. Though you weren’t really meant to focus on it to much. You still wanted to get away from your enemies.
  • Part from this, the spec also held options to improve your baseline defenses, with increased health, parry chance, on-demand parry/dodge, improved Feign Death.
  • People argue that Survival was essentially a melee spec back in the day. The thing is, it wasn’t. It did improve your Wing Clip, your Traps, your overall ability to endure incoming attacks from enemies that were in melee range from you.
    It also gave you a ranged CC ability(Wyvern), which was essentially mostly meant as a way to keep distance to enemies. Or to help you manage multiple targets.

Back then, no matter what you spec’ed in/for, you were still a hunter that wanted to engage in ranged combat and you were aided by a pet/companion.


If you mean that it(name wise) did not fit the DoT-spec we got with Cata. I can agree. And like you say, it doesn’t fit particularly well with the current MSV either. Although, perhaps marginally better.


I wouldn’t actually mind calling a potential 4th spec(in the style of the old RSV), I wouldn’t mind giving it the name “Tracker”.

A strong focus on the use of traps, both improving those you use offensively as well as in a defensive way. Also having a deep understanding for the nature/the wild. Knowing how to make the most of it to better suit your needs.
Knowing what you can use from either animals or flora to gain an advantage over any potential foes. I’d say this fits pretty well in with the definition of what a Tracker was(if you refer to real life ones).


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I see this a lot and idk if I agree. I think being highly mobile and having improved traps that made it a great kiter fits perfectly with the name Survival. Or in terms of being a “survivalist”, augmenting arrows with different elements like venom or fire fits pretty well with the idea of using resources from the wild. Atleast this was always my idea of what the spec fantasy was.

I also see a lot of people say something like “it should be a tank it’s name is survival”. Most tank specs use names that suggest they would be at the front of battle, Protection, Guardian, Vengeance, etc. And generally, if you are trying to survive you wouldn’t plunge into everything headfirst. This is also why I think melee doesn’t really fit the name either.

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They actually removed the dot clipping somewhere in there, but the shot weaving went es, es, as, es. Otherwise you would lose a tick of explosive shot. Think they fixed it in mop though

Survivalist, think more ranger, uses what’s around him, makes traps, arrows, armor, friends with animals. The old theme worked well at first, we originally had a couple melee moves (raptor strike gave dmg reduction, wing clip was slow, stuff like that) then we made traps, poisoned arrows. It worked well, so yeah, just depends on your frame of mind.

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Survival turning into what it did in Cata, MoP, and WoD isn’t a deviation from the pre-WotLK design. It’s really just the natural result of looking at a spec that doesn’t really have anything going for it in terms of being an independent damage-dealing spec and deciding how to make it so. It already had a utilitarian theme so why not derive a damage-dealing archetype from that by looking towards buffing their arrows/bullets?

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All good points really. And like it has been said, it’s very much about what we imagine it to be.

Can agree on this. Considering the route they took when making all specs more independent and adding unique playstyles/fantasies to each. This kinda had to be the case really.

As if compared to the class/specs in the earlier days where each just focused on different aspects within the same class. Back then you couldn’t be the ‘‘survivalist’’, as in you couldn’t specifically opt into a unique style that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

And no matter really at this point. I doubt they will go for a name change for the current MSV just to pass the name to a potential 4th spec.
We, most likely, have to look for a new one.

My first thoughts went towards
1: Tracker(it just fits with the proposed style/design).
2: Trapper(might not be the best fit, depends on the potential design).

Although, I’m open to other ideas :slight_smile:

Our old frost trap and imolation trap were fun with ranged survival.

Frost trap was a bit, op I guess, with a glyph it would give you crit chance to enemies affect(including bosses and mobs, players, whatever, increased movement speed across it and decrease enemies speed) while overpowered, it gave a reason for the hunter to use traps.

A lot of people didn’t like that it tied our utility to our dmg though. Hunters have always had to deal with that, easy to play but hard to master, playstyle.

The imolation trap scaled with our mastery to apply a long dot. But it got nerfed fairly often after they started playing with LNL.

I will say, right before mop dropped, end of cata, they had our rotation down pat, separated from our traps some but our traps could still increase our dmg in specific instances, and kept useful through the death of garrosh when we used explosive trap or power shot to wipe out his adds

Idd

The idea of enhanced traps was one of the aspects of RSV that i liked the most.

My proposed design for an updated RSV sought to bring that back. Where you would now have traps used both for damage as well as the regular ones like Freezing + Tar trap.

One of the suggestions in my design that I find the most interesting, in terms of the improved traps aspect, is the talent Resourcefulness combined with the passive Enhanced Traps effect for your Freezing Trap.

Now, the talent wouldn’t exactly turn your Freezing Trap into an immunity, but it would certainly have it’s use. Both in PvE as well as PvP.
It would be particularly fun if the protective ice block you can put up, you could choose to help an ally instead of using it for yourself.

For PvP, i would say that abilities such as Charge, Leaps, Shockwaves and more would instantly shatter the Ice Block, while
pure damage would take a little longer to do so.

For PvE, whenever you need to CC, you could do so, but when that’s not needed you could use it to empower(and protect) yourself, or to help an ally out.

It’s a niche that, afaik, does not exist in WoW. Something very fitting to the hunter class if you ask me.
(Not to mention that it would make us much more of an attractive choice for group based content).

Have some sort of castable immune might be fun. But an ice block like that would be pulling a littttttle heavy from mages pool. Think they would freak lol

It wouldn’t be an immunity.

My thoughts for it’s design are these:

With the passive effect from the enhanced traps, you can use your Freezing Trap on enemy targets like usual. CC them for up to 1min.

You could also choose to, place the trap wherever you want, click the ability again, this will trigger the trap manually(even when no enemies are near).
You can then position yourself behind the ice block which will essentially absorb 1 direct attack thrown at you.
The ice block would only do so if it’s between you and the source of that attack.
If an attack hits you from behind, or if you take pulsing AoE damage(often seen in raid encounters), the ice block would do nothing.

The normal CD on the trap is 30sec. It starts ticking as soon as you place a trap. However, if you manually trigger the trap, the CD would restart from 30sec again. No matter how much time has passed since you first placed it.

The talent Resourcefulness improves the Freezing Trap so that, if you CC an enemy, they could take maybe a few hits before the ice block shatters.
If you manually trigger the trap, the ice block would now be able to ‘‘absorb’’ maybe 2 direct attacks instead of 1. And if it does not take any damage it could last for a few more seconds before shattering. And you would also gain a passive damage increase(currently, it says 10%, tuning will have to decide the actual number), as long as you remain behind the ice block(again, til it shatters/breaks).

As far as the mage argument goes, hunters have had access to this trap for a very long time. It would not be an equivalent to the mage Ice Block(immunity). Not even close.

And also, it would kinda fit the fantasy of you having improved on your traps and their functionality.

IMO ofc :smiley:

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No they don’t. They should add another bow/crossbow spec to Hunter or another class, I’ll agree to that. Survival Melee one of the fun spec on hunter and in game atm. It a blast in both pve and pvp with nice movement and damage.

(did not see it was nine days old when posted)

Is it fun because it’s melee or in spite of it?

For a significant amount of people playing the class, being melee rules it out as a playstyle option. That’s why it should never have gone melee in the first place. That, and the fact that it took away a ranged weapon option which was already something that was scarce in this game.

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Well, until Azshara’s Eternal Palace is released and we know more about the bosses, range is more desired right now.

So, right now Hunters are down to only having two specs as option for raiding. If your a melee hunter your not going to get a spot, unless it lfr or your running with your guild.

My point is we need to have SV range again by having it as a fourth spec, or brought back through talent choices.

Melee can stay for those who like the spec, but for the many others Blizzard needs to give hunters three range options again.

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Lol this thread. A fourth spec, for a DPS class
and people think that’s a realistic option.
MSV is where it’s at. Sad so many people are hung up on an extinct spec, when MSV is the best, and most distinct the spec has ever been.
Fml

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Thanks once again for the bump kid, can always count on you:wink:

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Sure thing champ. Lol a fourth spec
hahahaha

Not my thread just adding it cause of other non-hunter opinions.

This is the.kind of thing people who don’t main hunters, or are newer to the game come up with.

Eye roll

It has basically delegated me into playing either BM or MM. The class has turned into a clown car.

If I want to play melee: I’ll roll a damn melee class.

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SV Melee is a stillborn. They should have aborted it when the community said “no”.

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