And we have even more physical melee weapon specs.
There are a lot of specs and only so many modes of damage.
I think it would fit an archer spec really well. Poisoned arrows are something you see both in real life and in pretty much any RPG that has archers at all, as is the concept of arrows/bullets buffed by magical effects. Look to Final Fantasy 14: their archer class, the Bard, is centred around high mobility and DoT/magic effects that tie into the single target damage.
If they apparently canât maintain 3 different ranged weapons specs there is no way they will make a new ranged weapon class. They are too set in their ways, which is making new melee spec after new melee spec.
I could be wrong and I hope to be, but I would also hate for the only option for the ranged SV playstyle and identity to end up in a different class. This is my Hunter toon, it was the one on which I played ranged Survival and I would hope to again be able to play ranged Survival on this character one day.
It doesnât even need to be a talent.
In WoD our Sniper Training mastery existed as a buff that was only permanent as long as we stood still; as soon as we moved it fell off after ~5 seconds and would only reapply after standing still for ~3 seconds (donât remember the exact values). Meanwhile Aimed Shot was a mobile cast. This was a really good mobility compromise.
This would be a really cheap, budget version of what ranged SV was and could be.
Notice how none of us are advocating for a 1:1 remake of MoP/WoD SV. Look at Ghorakâs suggestions. What should happen is an evolution on the foundation of ranged Survival. For example, for a DoT-based spec, SV lacked any real incentive to multidot beyond using Multi-Shot to spread Serpent Sting to clumped targets. There was a lot of potential in Black Arrow with its Lock and Load interaction; if we could multidot with it our single target damage would scale up. This was something that was tried a couple times but they never committed to it. This sort of interaction canât really be duct-taped together with MM talents.
It goes back to what I said earlier; ultimately you would just end up with 2 watered-down specs in one: the sniper archetype and the munitions expert archetype.
I would imagine that a casted focus generator would be gone entirely. They might go with what Legion and BFA did for Survival focus generation: a short cooldown instant that gives focus, given that âfocus over timeâ is already used by BM with Barbed Shot and âfully active casted focus generationâ is owned by MM⌠I donât know what ability they would go with for that; they would probably have to make a new one. I think they would have definitely avoided Cobra Shot and Steady Shot entirely as those are already used by other specs. The often-forgotten Viper Venom passive could have been expanded (Serpent Sting ticks giving Focus) at least in multi-dotting situations.
Lock and Load charges would become the major resource of the spec, alongside Focus. In early WoD beta they experimented with a system where Lock and Load procs were more frequent and gave 1 charge at a time, and they made Explosive Shot incur no cooldown just like the old charges but the ES was no longer free. This effectively turned ES into the main focus dump of the spec, removing the need for Arcane Shot. It also allowed charges to be built up for burst damage. They cancelled this (likely because they determined the spec wouldnât last beyond WoD anyway) but in an alternate universe this would probably be the future of Survival.
Arcane Shot would be gone, again as MM would own it. They could have possibly gone with Serpent Sting as an active ability again (like today) with higher initial damage to make it a good focus filler between Lock and Load procs.
Black Arrow would have some sort of multidotting functionality, probably via CDR. The Archimonde trinket in WoD made Black Arrow have a high chance to reset CD when using Cobra Shot/Arcane Shot. Effects being seen on items/sets first and then later on the baseline class is something the game has seen before many times, including with Survival itself; Expose Weakness was a tier set bonus from Vanilla before becoming a Survival talent in BC/WotLK. Some sort of Black Arrow CDR would be tied into the base spec. Iâm not sure if it would be a total CD reset as it would resemble Wild Command from BM but it could have been something like a few seconds taken off for each Serpent Sting tick.
So the core of the spec would be Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, and Black Arrow at this point. They would probably add something else, such as Wildfire Bomb. They could also have tried (and failed) to incorporate trapping into the core gameplay. But Legion demonstrated people really donât like that.
They would also have some sort of spec-specific CD, but I canât imagine what they would have gone with. In WoD they were going to make one but just like the LnL change it got cancelled. It was going to be âBear Trapâ, but letâs be honest: that sounds pretty crap and is again tying the specâs core damage priority to a trap.
Itâs surprising how long this thread has gotten, lol.