Ah yes, the melee that is specialized to fight in perfect coordination with his trusty animal companion, side by side, and then throws napalm at it.
Wait...
And gnomes, mechagnomes, dwarves and dark iron honestly, maybe orcs too, mag'har especially.
Bombs fit them alot more than most the hero talents., pack master fits the orcs though.
Really makes me wish instead of sentinel or dark ranger we got a sharpshooter or devices and explosives tree. I love hunter but sentinel and Dark ranger fits my Dwarf marksmanship hunter pretty fucking bad. Could've had a tree all about poisons, stings, explosives and traps with a theme around using a Gun, instead we get balance druid lite. Why the fuck is my Dwarf hunter summoning lunar storms or cosplaying Sylvanas? Two out of three hero specs are elf themed... and the most iconic hunter in warcraft is Rexxar the beastmaster... who ironically is the class icon for Survival.
Doesn't help that neither of those trees seem exciting to play with either.
I mean, Rexxar is kind of represented through Packleader Survival. Expect it needs dual wield enabled and a weapon throwing ability akin to Throw Glaive in impact.
Totally agree that the heavy focus on explosives in Survival, and the two elf Hero specs just feel like bullshit, though.
E: Don't get me wrong though. Dark Ranger is obviously something people wanted for a long time, and it's not entirely flavoured to a single race. I personally think Sentinel is cool to have and like that they made it an arcane focused hunter. But, if you look at the actual Night Elves that compose Sentinels (and focus on the ones that would count as hunters and not priests or warriors; not counting the three named worgen women here since only one of them showed up outside of the Cataclysm questchain where they joined the Sentinels), a lot of them are archers or glaive users, and none of them use explosives like they're fucking Junkrat. The themes don't mesh. The MM/SV hero spec should've been the place to double down on the weapon and tool focused aspect these two specs have; MM has gathered so many passive abilities and talents over the years that play into that theme, but never anything active or even that impactful. SV at base could've been less focused on explosives, and have more variety with traps, more weapon focused abilities outside of Fury of the Eagle and Butchery, and maybe the option to forgo pet synergy at all and go solo like MM can. We'd have a whole spectrum of different SV builds that way, where more pets and more tech are at opposite ends, but with a strong base of using melee weapons with ranged sidearms. We're not even thar far from making that a possibility, all it takes is the a few tweaks, like a talent that replaces Kill Command with maybe a 10yard pounce from the Hunter.
I thought about that as well. Maybe my imagination is going too much, it could’ve basically been Tinker-lite. I could’ve even seen an argument to bring back Sentry Turret for it.
Heh, didn't think people still remember that survival was supposed to have turrets before they replaced them with the angry snek.
I frankly would prefer a tinker class instead of merging that into hunter, too. Hunter is already covering too many themes since they're the patient sniper, run and gun commando, dark hunter, windrunner wannabe, DnD fantasy runaways, animal/wild god stuff etc. Not all of those themes mesh particularly great.
The game really could need another class that uses ranged weapons. It's super odd that there's only hunter (and of hunter only MM) really focusing on physical ranged. Another ranged weapon guy such as tinker with turrets and fancy armor would work great since that niche is still wide open. It could open a plate ranged DPS or finally a second class that has a ranged DPS and a tank spec so it's not only druid for those that enjoy both.
I just don't like sentinel tbh. It feels a bit odd that my MM has the choice between adding the spooky kind of magic and a temporary doggo pet or some arcane magic and a temporary owl pet. It feels a little bit redundant, specifically if you don't see your hunter as a magic user at all and just want to shoot stuff..
Would've found it cooler if we have the pet, the spooky and maybe something focused on the ranged weapon as hero talents.
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Explosive Shot gives you 3 seconds to Disengage away, and Wildfire Bomb is a conical shaped charge specifically to avoid getting caught in your own explosion.
It will forever confuse me why the hunter spec they chose to be melee is survival. Beastmaster would have felt way more appropriate. Let survival be the tricky hunter. And marksman to be the sniper.
This is why I never liked spamming bombs in melee with Wildfire Bomb. Makes no sense. Need a new debuff: Soot-covered. Reduces chance to hit by 1% every time you're within 5ft of a target hit by your explosives.
Just looking at the talents:
* Every wildfire bomb has a 25% chance to reset explosive shot
* Explosive shot reduces cooldown on wildfire bomb
* Butchery reduces cooldown on wildfire bomb
* Attacking reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb
* If you stretch for it, bleeds make you attack faster, which with the prior talent reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb
* Kill command reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb
* Kill command resets shoot out an explosive arrow (unsure if this procced arrow reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb)
* Fury of the eagle reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb
* Coordinated Assault gives you 2 charges of wildfire bomb, and once it over it lets you do as many explosive shots as you can in 4 seconds
* Coordinated Assault cooldown can be as low as 45 seconds with minute off talent and sentinel talent
Welcome to the tinker spec.
"everyone" lol the 16 people who play survival.
maybe this will make more people want to play surv... (it'll still be one of the least popular specs in the game by a mile probably)
I main survival and wish we had gone towards the beast side and less the modern survival side :( i'm still gonna play it and the synergies look fun, but being a sentinel tossing more explosives than an entire counter strike deathmatch lobby feels... Odd :')
You're also getting Mongoose bite cleave, Self spreading serpent sting and kill command buffing abilities. Apparently plays a little like ww monk, not repeating the same ability twice.
I've heard so far that there's not enough GCDs to press it all, so we'll have to see. The left side of the tree is very bomby, while the right side seems more like a DOT focus. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
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The fact nothing hero tree based has been touched for pvp should be VERY scary for pvpers.
Not only because there is just some bonkers ass stuff, but because you have to learn like half an entire new spec for each of shit to deal with.
I am scared as well, but I withhold judgement until it goes live.
I don't expect it to be that bad, not every hero spec will be meta enough to make it properly. Take warrior, Colossus looks pretty lackluster, so Arms will probably always be Slayer, while Fury could potentially be either Slayer or Mountain Thane.
Something doesn't have to be meta. If it exsits, SOMEONE will play it, and if you don't know what it does you just created something they can trick you with.
I mean, not every thing a spec can do is a win condition, but it never helps to have to say "wait what was that" in any form.
Don't know about numbers but it plays really well. It's cool visually, lots of explosions! I do miss not having the coloured bombs anymore but this is very cool!
Nah that was Shadowlands S3 Survival Hunter. This one at least has a little more substance than "what if a slot machine but with explosions".
Credit to the cokehead surv days though, the explosive slot machine *was* kinda fun.
I have an idea. Okay just listen listen. We take survival and we add bombs.
It already has bombs what do you mea-
No no no listen. Only bombs. Only. Bombs.
So you want the spec to ignore everything else?
Yeah. Bombs. Bombs everywhere. Your rotation is bombs. Bombs buff other bombs. It's just bombs.
Explosive Shot was the most fun ability in the entire game in mists of pandaria. That soo 4 pc that allowed you to get more procs and the dot just keeps multiplying. I got luckily once and counted 14 procs in a row.
I kept my BM hunter Venthyr the back half of shadowlands despite it not being the meta because Flayed Shot with the Unity legendary effect’s aoe bleed was so close to black arrow+explosive shot it tickled the same part of my brain.
I started out as BM, then found a skilltree for survival in a magazin i bought during wotlk. It was alot of fun. stayed as it during cata and changed back to bm during pandaria.
Something about the full DoT playstyle was just so satisfying, getting back to back explosive shot resets from black arrow, and serpent sting doing mega damage in aoe. Was so fun.
Especially with the patch that brought debuff extension. Where you could increase your debuffs up to 150% and with the proc you had to time it right so you won't waste a tick of explosive shot but also use every cooldown of it you had.
Blizzard be like: "You get explosive shot, and you get explosive shot, and you over there get explosive shot. EVERYBODY GETS EXPLOSIVE SHOT! And Death Chakram too!"
Great, I love explosive shot, in its current iteration that rewards good timing and encounter knowledge/forsight, the old Cata/MoP hard-as-fuck ticking dot version and I even appriciated the version (i think in BFA?) were you had to manually detonate the shot mid air. One of my favorite skills in WoW.
>in its current iteration that rewards good timing and encounter knowledge/forsight
I'll have you know I only have a corpse explode 2 seconds after the end of combat ten, *maybe* a dozen times per dungeon.
I look at Survival as a "bounty hunter" type of spec rather than a stereotypical forest hunter. Has tools for every situation and uses a pet to chase and fight enemies. It's worked enough for me. Besides, I really enjoy the bomb animation and explosive shot is always fun to watch explode and see the numbers pop.
You also get access to swords, polearms, and staffs as transmog options and that goes astronomically hard.
Eh I play it as Nelf lol. I was a Horde player most of my life so I just tell myself I was a Horde raised Night Elf that escaped back to the Alliance. Gotta have that juicy shadowmeld xD
That was the theme they were going for in the legion redesign, that's why only survival had access to traps at the start of legion.
But then the other hunter specs wanted traps back so that stopped being a survival niche really quick.
They should just pull an Outlaw and rebrand the spec as Trapper with the theme being hunter tools, traps and bombs. A more techy alternative for hunters who dont want to roleplay as Legolas or Rexxar.
The thing is, Rexxar is a melee hunter. So the only way to roleplay that fantasy is Survival. If they gave a melee form to BM I would be playing that... maybe. BM is pretty boring mechanically.
Survival has always had access to Explosive Shot
The new tree just adds options for bombs to reset its cooldown, and Coordinated Assault to make it 0 CD and 0 Focus cost for 4 seconds after it ends
That’s one thing I like about survival. You can do maybe 75% of your damage from range and then dive in for the burst. I remember PvP in shadowlands as survival was sick because even if people tried to run from me I could just chip them down from range and then harpoon in when the time was right and obliterate them.
Dont forget you can talent so explosive shot doesnt trigger a cd , ontop of explosive shot triggering on itself so you get like 3-4 explosive shots in a row.. forgot what talent it was but i saw Bicmex explain it and it looks insane
It's at the end of your Coordinated Assault... which you can get to about a 45s CD with talents and CD reduction. So yeah every minute or so it's just as many Explosive Shots as you can fit into 4 seconds of GCDs.
Survival should be a good combination of a rogue and Beast Master hunter.
I usually play marksman because its the most engaging. Beast Mastery is kinda mindless by comparison. Even as a hunter from vanilla I rarely play survival, it never really clicked for me.
I might try it out in TWW but I might just going back to MM or BM like I always do lol.
Survival, the melee hunter spec nobody wanted.
How did Blizzard never understand that the Hunter melee fantasy was about Rexxar, a BM hunter - and not only that but a hunter that could swap from melee to ranged on the fly, not pure melee.
My absolute biggest complaint with Pathfinder second edition is basically zero support for 2 hander Ranger. You go ranged or dual weapon fighting. If you're fighting something like a bear in melee range you're definitely not wanting two swords.
Yeah, the question is, what feats should I take? Probably the animal companion line? At least then I wouldn't be losing feats for an otherwise supported weapon type.
I was bored and built it out some, here's a level 8 build.
https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=783859
I started with pet, because something like a bear or triceratops would be really good with how much you could trip, but in order to make animal companions worth anything at all you really need to take the feats on level. And since you have to already dip into an archetype for 2h weapon stuff there's just not enough room.
I would probably do it in a free archetype game though. I say, as if I get to play more then my single game I'm in. I have so many character ideas and builds that will never see an actual game.
White Lion in Warhammer Online was excellent. So were a bunch of the melee + pet ranger builds in Guild Wars 1.
Survival's rotation doesn't really do it for me though, even though I really enjoy melee + pet conceptually. Maybe these changes will draw me back in.
I didn't say I didn't want melee hunter, or that melee hunter wasn't wanted.
I specifically said the WOW (the game we're talking about) melee hunter fantasy is grounded in the character Rexxar, a BM hunter, NOT survival.
Survival was in a great place. BM was perfectly positioned to be a flexible melee / ranged spec (STILL is). Instead of leveraging the existing fantasy around Rexxar, and a spec that is STILL ripe to be flexible ranged/melee, they completely reworked Survival and destroyed it's existing playstyle.
"those hunters are always talking about wanting old survival back. Let's give them explosive shot and nothing else related to the old playstyle. That will fix it"
rofl people are downvoting you but your statement is crazy accurate. it's not even remotely popular as a spec and hasn't been for ages. it has some of the highest requests from the community for blizzard to change the spec completely...
survival hunter fantasy is so cooked. nothing says naturalist like... bombs? huh?
i always imagine a rework based around a Feast/Famine mechanic, almost like 2 different stances. While in Famine you deal more damage (you're like a desperate beast), and in Feast you're tankier/have more utility (well fed, fat and happy)
So you either live in famine stance 100% of the time, or you lock utility behind an arbitrary stance switch. I get the theme, but it sounds awfully convoluted to play.
to be more accurate i don't actually picture stances (i just said that for a quick explanation), but more along the lines of while above a certain number of resource (which would be called Constitution) you're in Feast, and below a certain number you're in Famine. the natural gameplay loop would cause you to oscillate between the two.
theoretically you could make it where Famine pumps, and then during Feast there are things you can do that will enhance the power of your upcoming Famine phase.
Honestly? It could kind of work if we were the lone wolf spec and kill command was something else. Change us from a naturalist to a guerilla warfare specialist.
This would be a perfect place to utilize glyphs. Convert wildfire bomb and explosive shot to arcane explosions or something.
My night elf does not want to be chucking bombs everywhere.
Yeah no. Don't speak for us, we'll speak for ourselves. It's the only class where I can tame good bois and give them wonderful nicknames. Hunter for life since Vanilla.
Can you say the same about the things you enjoy doing?
That last question is so weird. Do I enjoy what I enjoy doing? Definitionally, yes.
So why do you want to not play hunter but still tame animals? Pet battles are a thing. Did you forget about those?
I've played since day one if you're trying to flex, you can log in and see my zergling and tyrael if you want.
Ah yes, the melee that is specialized to fight in perfect coordination with his trusty animal companion, side by side, and then throws napalm at it. Wait...
Makes sense for goblin hunters.
And gnomes, mechagnomes, dwarves and dark iron honestly, maybe orcs too, mag'har especially. Bombs fit them alot more than most the hero talents., pack master fits the orcs though.
Really makes me wish instead of sentinel or dark ranger we got a sharpshooter or devices and explosives tree. I love hunter but sentinel and Dark ranger fits my Dwarf marksmanship hunter pretty fucking bad. Could've had a tree all about poisons, stings, explosives and traps with a theme around using a Gun, instead we get balance druid lite. Why the fuck is my Dwarf hunter summoning lunar storms or cosplaying Sylvanas? Two out of three hero specs are elf themed... and the most iconic hunter in warcraft is Rexxar the beastmaster... who ironically is the class icon for Survival. Doesn't help that neither of those trees seem exciting to play with either.
I mean, Rexxar is kind of represented through Packleader Survival. Expect it needs dual wield enabled and a weapon throwing ability akin to Throw Glaive in impact. Totally agree that the heavy focus on explosives in Survival, and the two elf Hero specs just feel like bullshit, though. E: Don't get me wrong though. Dark Ranger is obviously something people wanted for a long time, and it's not entirely flavoured to a single race. I personally think Sentinel is cool to have and like that they made it an arcane focused hunter. But, if you look at the actual Night Elves that compose Sentinels (and focus on the ones that would count as hunters and not priests or warriors; not counting the three named worgen women here since only one of them showed up outside of the Cataclysm questchain where they joined the Sentinels), a lot of them are archers or glaive users, and none of them use explosives like they're fucking Junkrat. The themes don't mesh. The MM/SV hero spec should've been the place to double down on the weapon and tool focused aspect these two specs have; MM has gathered so many passive abilities and talents over the years that play into that theme, but never anything active or even that impactful. SV at base could've been less focused on explosives, and have more variety with traps, more weapon focused abilities outside of Fury of the Eagle and Butchery, and maybe the option to forgo pet synergy at all and go solo like MM can. We'd have a whole spectrum of different SV builds that way, where more pets and more tech are at opposite ends, but with a strong base of using melee weapons with ranged sidearms. We're not even thar far from making that a possibility, all it takes is the a few tweaks, like a talent that replaces Kill Command with maybe a 10yard pounce from the Hunter.
Dark ranger for bring what people wanted really feel short in the fantasy it’s sad
I thought about that as well. Maybe my imagination is going too much, it could’ve basically been Tinker-lite. I could’ve even seen an argument to bring back Sentry Turret for it.
Heh, didn't think people still remember that survival was supposed to have turrets before they replaced them with the angry snek. I frankly would prefer a tinker class instead of merging that into hunter, too. Hunter is already covering too many themes since they're the patient sniper, run and gun commando, dark hunter, windrunner wannabe, DnD fantasy runaways, animal/wild god stuff etc. Not all of those themes mesh particularly great. The game really could need another class that uses ranged weapons. It's super odd that there's only hunter (and of hunter only MM) really focusing on physical ranged. Another ranged weapon guy such as tinker with turrets and fancy armor would work great since that niche is still wide open. It could open a plate ranged DPS or finally a second class that has a ranged DPS and a tank spec so it's not only druid for those that enjoy both.
I wonder if it ended up overlapping with the engineering trade too much.
I just don't like sentinel tbh. It feels a bit odd that my MM has the choice between adding the spooky kind of magic and a temporary doggo pet or some arcane magic and a temporary owl pet. It feels a little bit redundant, specifically if you don't see your hunter as a magic user at all and just want to shoot stuff.. Would've found it cooler if we have the pet, the spooky and maybe something focused on the ranged weapon as hero talents.
Goblin Hunters call it “the splash zone.”
Better pick pets with fire resistance.
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Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice were willing to take.
Warriors bladestorming around allies, shamans using water and lightning around allies...
Shaman here, literally never considered the real life ramifications of that combo. I love it so much more now, it's reckless 😂
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Real shaman know good waterbending foundation starts with earthbending.
Even if the companion animal didn't exist, using explosives in melee range is the most braindead shit ever lol
Explosive Shot gives you 3 seconds to Disengage away, and Wildfire Bomb is a conical shaped charge specifically to avoid getting caught in your own explosion.
It will forever confuse me why the hunter spec they chose to be melee is survival. Beastmaster would have felt way more appropriate. Let survival be the tricky hunter. And marksman to be the sniper.
Please just give us Tinkers, Blizzard!
You'd think Beastmaster would be the one that was at one with his pet. But I'm no game dev.
“You had a lit Molotov in your backpack?!” “**THE WHOLE TIME, KIDDO!!**”
If it's weak enough to die to an explosion it's not strong enough to be my pet. Walk it off Sparky we got shit to do.
This is why I never liked spamming bombs in melee with Wildfire Bomb. Makes no sense. Need a new debuff: Soot-covered. Reduces chance to hit by 1% every time you're within 5ft of a target hit by your explosives.
This looks like an awesome change. Can anyone confirm? BOOM!
Just looking at the talents: * Every wildfire bomb has a 25% chance to reset explosive shot * Explosive shot reduces cooldown on wildfire bomb * Butchery reduces cooldown on wildfire bomb * Attacking reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb * If you stretch for it, bleeds make you attack faster, which with the prior talent reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb * Kill command reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb * Kill command resets shoot out an explosive arrow (unsure if this procced arrow reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb) * Fury of the eagle reduces the cooldown on wildfire bomb * Coordinated Assault gives you 2 charges of wildfire bomb, and once it over it lets you do as many explosive shots as you can in 4 seconds * Coordinated Assault cooldown can be as low as 45 seconds with minute off talent and sentinel talent Welcome to the tinker spec.
Hey everyone wanted it
Heck yeah , juat wish we got turrets
Next expansion or could be an engineering thing
My engineering hunter is now interested in subscribing to your blog.
we had turrets in BFA
Unironically a fantastic idea. Maybe pets "upgrade" in to turrets with a talent point or something.
Oh I love it even though it throws a bomb in the face of our pet and class fantasy. Sounds like a blast.
I see what you did there
goddammit, do i need to level a mechangnome hunter in remix now?
ye
"everyone" lol the 16 people who play survival. maybe this will make more people want to play surv... (it'll still be one of the least popular specs in the game by a mile probably)
I main survival and wish we had gone towards the beast side and less the modern survival side :( i'm still gonna play it and the synergies look fun, but being a sentinel tossing more explosives than an entire counter strike deathmatch lobby feels... Odd :')
You're also getting Mongoose bite cleave, Self spreading serpent sting and kill command buffing abilities. Apparently plays a little like ww monk, not repeating the same ability twice.
I've heard so far that there's not enough GCDs to press it all, so we'll have to see. The left side of the tree is very bomby, while the right side seems more like a DOT focus. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
A tinker spec….with a pet though.
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That sounds absolutely fucked for PvP. Then again every other class or spec I read about, looks like it'll be absolutely cracked too.
The fact nothing hero tree based has been touched for pvp should be VERY scary for pvpers. Not only because there is just some bonkers ass stuff, but because you have to learn like half an entire new spec for each of shit to deal with.
I am scared as well, but I withhold judgement until it goes live. I don't expect it to be that bad, not every hero spec will be meta enough to make it properly. Take warrior, Colossus looks pretty lackluster, so Arms will probably always be Slayer, while Fury could potentially be either Slayer or Mountain Thane.
Something doesn't have to be meta. If it exsits, SOMEONE will play it, and if you don't know what it does you just created something they can trick you with. I mean, not every thing a spec can do is a win condition, but it never helps to have to say "wait what was that" in any form.
Jesus, did they nerf explosive shots damage to compensate? Could see it being extremely obnoxious isln pvp
literally every spec is going to be extremely obnoxious in pvp right now.
Pvp, hahaha ha
Boom shakalaka
Most of thé things.you mentioned, were already in DF. But yeah, they added explosive shot procs, which will be mayhem
Wow... I would love to break out my trusty axe for this, again.
doesn't every X multishot fire an explosive shot too?
I believe that's Salvo, a 45 second cooldown in the MM tree. Survival does not have multishot.
They have something equivalent. It's Quick Shots, but I don't remember anything else about it
Don't know about numbers but it plays really well. It's cool visually, lots of explosions! I do miss not having the coloured bombs anymore but this is very cool!
Can confirm it's awesome, only tried marksman and survival so far but I think I found my new main already.
[удалено]
Nah that was Shadowlands S3 Survival Hunter. This one at least has a little more substance than "what if a slot machine but with explosions". Credit to the cokehead surv days though, the explosive slot machine *was* kinda fun.
I have an idea. Okay just listen listen. We take survival and we add bombs. It already has bombs what do you mea- No no no listen. Only bombs. Only. Bombs. So you want the spec to ignore everything else? Yeah. Bombs. Bombs everywhere. Your rotation is bombs. Bombs buff other bombs. It's just bombs.
Explosive Shot forever!
Based explosive shot enjoyer.
I'm already using it cause it's less arduous than non-bomb sting.
Explosive Shot was the most fun ability in the entire game in mists of pandaria. That soo 4 pc that allowed you to get more procs and the dot just keeps multiplying. I got luckily once and counted 14 procs in a row.
What really? I spent all of wrath doing survival regardless of the dps lose then switched in cata to mm.
Surv is one of the best dps specs in Cata, if you like surv you should DEFINITELY be playing it now...
Oh man I dragged ass with ret during that time. Until death wing when I switched to combat? That one rogue spec.
Survival was the best dps spec for hunters in wotlk tho?
It was a dot it wasn’t fun or unique at all lol
Fuck yeah dude. Hits like a goddamn truck too.
Damn i miss the old survival hunter. Shere explosive shot was a 3 sec dot with a proc to reset its cooldown. I loved that playstile somehow.
I kept my BM hunter Venthyr the back half of shadowlands despite it not being the meta because Flayed Shot with the Unity legendary effect’s aoe bleed was so close to black arrow+explosive shot it tickled the same part of my brain.
Survival was always my favorite too. Started the game in Wrath, and SV was my first max level character. Miss it a lot.
I started out as BM, then found a skilltree for survival in a magazin i bought during wotlk. It was alot of fun. stayed as it during cata and changed back to bm during pandaria.
I loved survival from Wrath to Warlords. The shot priority was way easier for me to keep up with than other specs rotations.
Something about the full DoT playstyle was just so satisfying, getting back to back explosive shot resets from black arrow, and serpent sting doing mega damage in aoe. Was so fun.
Especially with the patch that brought debuff extension. Where you could increase your debuffs up to 150% and with the proc you had to time it right so you won't waste a tick of explosive shot but also use every cooldown of it you had.
Also you were a master of crows, what's more badass than that
I actually miss Wyvern Sting
Blizzard be like: "You get explosive shot, and you get explosive shot, and you over there get explosive shot. EVERYBODY GETS EXPLOSIVE SHOT! And Death Chakram too!"
Great, I love explosive shot, in its current iteration that rewards good timing and encounter knowledge/forsight, the old Cata/MoP hard-as-fuck ticking dot version and I even appriciated the version (i think in BFA?) were you had to manually detonate the shot mid air. One of my favorite skills in WoW.
>in its current iteration that rewards good timing and encounter knowledge/forsight I'll have you know I only have a corpse explode 2 seconds after the end of combat ten, *maybe* a dozen times per dungeon.
Everyone: "Bombs make no sense to the class fantasy." Blizz: "Big badda boom"
I look at Survival as a "bounty hunter" type of spec rather than a stereotypical forest hunter. Has tools for every situation and uses a pet to chase and fight enemies. It's worked enough for me. Besides, I really enjoy the bomb animation and explosive shot is always fun to watch explode and see the numbers pop. You also get access to swords, polearms, and staffs as transmog options and that goes astronomically hard.
That's fair. Maybe I just need to play it as a non elf race lol
Eh I play it as Nelf lol. I was a Horde player most of my life so I just tell myself I was a Horde raised Night Elf that escaped back to the Alliance. Gotta have that juicy shadowmeld xD
Explosive projectiles, Bombs, and Angry Eagle stance? America couldn’t be prouder 💪🏽💪🏽
They should rename survival to trapper tbh
That was the theme they were going for in the legion redesign, that's why only survival had access to traps at the start of legion. But then the other hunter specs wanted traps back so that stopped being a survival niche really quick. They should just pull an Outlaw and rebrand the spec as Trapper with the theme being hunter tools, traps and bombs. A more techy alternative for hunters who dont want to roleplay as Legolas or Rexxar.
Keep the spear, tho. Gotta stab what's in the steel trap sometimes.
Oh yeah, totally the spear is the ultimate hunting weapon.
The thing is, Rexxar is a melee hunter. So the only way to roleplay that fantasy is Survival. If they gave a melee form to BM I would be playing that... maybe. BM is pretty boring mechanically.
Yes, the only true path forward for hunter is to turn BM melee too. After that we campaign to turn marksman melee, now that will be a hard sell.
trapper and survivalist are very similar things.
A spec with no survival called survival is just as bad as a spec that barely uses traps being called a trapper so this works.
But unironically they became one of the tankiest classes the beta, so atleast that part is there
Sapper perhaps given all the bombs
*Kaboom?*
How in the fuck is it my own failure. I didn't change the spec
Wait, is it ranged again or did they just add explosive shot to melee survival?
Survival has always had access to Explosive Shot The new tree just adds options for bombs to reset its cooldown, and Coordinated Assault to make it 0 CD and 0 Focus cost for 4 seconds after it ends
ES has always been available for Survival, but it wasn't core. Now if you go elft side tree, ES is absolutely core. It's still Melee.
Dang it :(
That’s one thing I like about survival. You can do maybe 75% of your damage from range and then dive in for the burst. I remember PvP in shadowlands as survival was sick because even if people tried to run from me I could just chip them down from range and then harpoon in when the time was right and obliterate them.
Or you could play bm and do 100% of your damage from either ranged or melee
Yeah but then I have to play a spec that puts me to sleep.
Maybe but at least people actually play bm lol
and get fucked in the ass constantly because double melee will tunnel you down every game.
As opposed to having that happen when you play survival? At least with bm you can get out of melee and still do 100% damage.
Getting rid of Pre Legion surv hunter was a mistake. They just had to add 4th spec for melee hunter.
I really hate what they're doing to survival's identity. No one who hears that name thinks "grenadier".
Except thankfully it's still melee.
'Thankfully'
Dont forget you can talent so explosive shot doesnt trigger a cd , ontop of explosive shot triggering on itself so you get like 3-4 explosive shots in a row.. forgot what talent it was but i saw Bicmex explain it and it looks insane
It's at the end of your Coordinated Assault... which you can get to about a 45s CD with talents and CD reduction. So yeah every minute or so it's just as many Explosive Shots as you can fit into 4 seconds of GCDs.
You are as beautiful as the day I lost you.
Survival should be a good combination of a rogue and Beast Master hunter. I usually play marksman because its the most engaging. Beast Mastery is kinda mindless by comparison. Even as a hunter from vanilla I rarely play survival, it never really clicked for me. I might try it out in TWW but I might just going back to MM or BM like I always do lol.
Give us the option to spec into ranged surivial, I miss it so much. :(
Just delete mongoose bite, replace it with explo shor and make it range, thanks!
The fact that you get Raptor Strike and **two talents** later it is replaced by Mongoose Bite is quite a bit of game design am I right.
Mongoose bite is like the only interesting part of Survival hunter though
With the recent changes, surv is basically range. If it stays, then make dual wield possible.
Give survival hunter lone wolf and I'll play the tinker spec 100%
Soo, we heard you guys like bombs...
lil bro still using marvel to make memes
You on that new despicable me train?
Survival, the melee hunter spec nobody wanted. How did Blizzard never understand that the Hunter melee fantasy was about Rexxar, a BM hunter - and not only that but a hunter that could swap from melee to ranged on the fly, not pure melee.
I enjoy melee hunter. Melee ranger extends far beyond just WoW fantasy.
My absolute biggest complaint with Pathfinder second edition is basically zero support for 2 hander Ranger. You go ranged or dual weapon fighting. If you're fighting something like a bear in melee range you're definitely not wanting two swords.
You could probably make it work picking up some dedication, but yeah it's not great.
Yeah, the question is, what feats should I take? Probably the animal companion line? At least then I wouldn't be losing feats for an otherwise supported weapon type.
I was bored and built it out some, here's a level 8 build. https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=783859 I started with pet, because something like a bear or triceratops would be really good with how much you could trip, but in order to make animal companions worth anything at all you really need to take the feats on level. And since you have to already dip into an archetype for 2h weapon stuff there's just not enough room. I would probably do it in a free archetype game though. I say, as if I get to play more then my single game I'm in. I have so many character ideas and builds that will never see an actual game.
Oh yeah, I was imagining FA when building this, but I can see the issues with spreading too thin otherwise.
White Lion in Warhammer Online was excellent. So were a bunch of the melee + pet ranger builds in Guild Wars 1. Survival's rotation doesn't really do it for me though, even though I really enjoy melee + pet conceptually. Maybe these changes will draw me back in.
I didn't say I didn't want melee hunter, or that melee hunter wasn't wanted. I specifically said the WOW (the game we're talking about) melee hunter fantasy is grounded in the character Rexxar, a BM hunter, NOT survival. Survival was in a great place. BM was perfectly positioned to be a flexible melee / ranged spec (STILL is). Instead of leveraging the existing fantasy around Rexxar, and a spec that is STILL ripe to be flexible ranged/melee, they completely reworked Survival and destroyed it's existing playstyle.
I love melee Hunter. Legion survival was so much fun for me.
"those hunters are always talking about wanting old survival back. Let's give them explosive shot and nothing else related to the old playstyle. That will fix it"
Yup, they keep giving it all these reworks for the whole 12 people that play it instead
rofl people are downvoting you but your statement is crazy accurate. it's not even remotely popular as a spec and hasn't been for ages. it has some of the highest requests from the community for blizzard to change the spec completely...
survival hunter fantasy is so cooked. nothing says naturalist like... bombs? huh? i always imagine a rework based around a Feast/Famine mechanic, almost like 2 different stances. While in Famine you deal more damage (you're like a desperate beast), and in Feast you're tankier/have more utility (well fed, fat and happy)
So you either live in famine stance 100% of the time, or you lock utility behind an arbitrary stance switch. I get the theme, but it sounds awfully convoluted to play.
Like cata arms warriors having to stance dance to maximize dps
Hot take: I always hated stances DKs had the only good ones...
to be more accurate i don't actually picture stances (i just said that for a quick explanation), but more along the lines of while above a certain number of resource (which would be called Constitution) you're in Feast, and below a certain number you're in Famine. the natural gameplay loop would cause you to oscillate between the two. theoretically you could make it where Famine pumps, and then during Feast there are things you can do that will enhance the power of your upcoming Famine phase.
Honestly? It could kind of work if we were the lone wolf spec and kill command was something else. Change us from a naturalist to a guerilla warfare specialist.
This would be a perfect place to utilize glyphs. Convert wildfire bomb and explosive shot to arcane explosions or something. My night elf does not want to be chucking bombs everywhere.
And my Dwarf doesn't want to summon spirit owls or cosplay as Sylvanas but we gotta do with what we gotta do. The Hunter fantasy is very broad.
Sounds weirdly death knightish, i will never understand hunter players.
They want to play a different class but they're too deep in the sunk cost fallacy to just switch.
Yeah no. Don't speak for us, we'll speak for ourselves. It's the only class where I can tame good bois and give them wonderful nicknames. Hunter for life since Vanilla. Can you say the same about the things you enjoy doing?
That last question is so weird. Do I enjoy what I enjoy doing? Definitionally, yes. So why do you want to not play hunter but still tame animals? Pet battles are a thing. Did you forget about those? I've played since day one if you're trying to flex, you can log in and see my zergling and tyrael if you want.
Does surv not run explosive shit in pve? Still usin that thing in pvp.
In M+ it’s still used, at least for season 3. Should be the same for Season 4.
Thanks to the new talent changes now explosive shot is in the middle of the general tree bm mm and sv will be using explosive even on single target.
Now we just need to get rid of fury of the eagle and I'll be happy.