I know this may seem redundant for a “melee” spec, but with the return of common pool abilities, we’re able to play survival as a ranged spec now with Arcane and Steady Shot replacing Raptor strike and Wildfire bomb and Guerrilla tactics replacing Carve (if you choose so). This likely won’t be optimal for end-game, but I’m finding a lot of success in pvp scenarios with it, with the major downside of not being able to interrupt!
The common pool abilities have opened up the much needed space for player choice and enabling our interrupt ability in a ranged scenario would be a big quality of life improvement (also going to take this time to tack on killshot being a melee only ability at level 42 for survival, with the message being in the same vein).
I know it’s niche and goes against the spirit of the spec, but choosing to use a bow instead of a spear is our prerogative, and it works! Hopefully this will get some traction from my fellow hunters!
If they remove the weapon swap from the GCD all those problems would be easily fixed via macro to swap weapons tied to said abilities.
However I would like to see SV going in the direction of being a melee/ranged hybrid where via talents you would improve your prefered playstyle (between ranged and melee). With stuff like Wildfire Bomb baseline and in place of it you’d get Explosive Shot, so in that row you would choose between Explosive Shot or Butchery to improve either your ranged or melee playstyle, and so on and so forth. It would however requiere a passive where weapon swap would have to be off the GCD to be viable, as it is right now it works and I do play it swapping between melee and ranged, but it is clunky due to the GCD.
Do you find it to be useful to switch to ranged now and then? I’m actively looking for excuses to do it, but I can’t seem to ever find myself in a situation where I’d want to do that.
There’s literally only been one case where I’ve been stuck at range having to stare lamely at a mob, and that was tonight in Torghast where those mobs place permanent AoE zones that trapped me in one spot.
Arcane shot just seems so pitifully weak that I don’t even glance at it, and I’m thinking it’s not worth the GCDs and focus usage in case I get a chance to close in for mongoose rushing.
I don’t use it as often as I’d like but I do use it sometimes. The most common scenarios are:
Opening from Cammo with Steady Shot + Arcane Shot and then Harpoon to my target;
I disengaged someone and Aspect of the Eagle is on CD (kinda rare);
I’m fighting a boss that does too much dmg if I am close (happend a few times).
Other than that, yeah, DPS-wise it’s better to remain melee. As you said, AS just doesn’t do enough damage to justify, not to mention it doesn’t synergize with anything in our kit sadly.