I wanted to write my feedback on Survival Hunter as a person who played it for all of TWW and was excited for the changes to the class yet is ultimately partly disappointed. I won’t be going into gameplay to much as I don’t feel i have the most to say on it. It will mostly be about my problems with the class fantasy and changes I suggest/want to see.
First off I feel the survival hunter needed a rework and am glad for the bulk of abilities removed. I feel the class was overloaded with abilities that rarely came up and am glad at its reduction outside of one ability.
Lets go over what I like first, the addition of one handed melee weapons is so good and is long overdue, so many hunters have used them in lore from Rexxar to Sylvanas and now we finally have the ability to do it as well. I love the addition of the throwing axe thou I hope we get to mog the weapon thrown, so we can throw daggers or spears to line up with whatever race/type of hunter we are playing. The removal of traps to give them more focussed abilities is also a nice change and is appreciated.
Next changes that have not been made but I really want to see removal or changed of a core Survival abilities, Explosives and fire make to me no sense on a hunter, like survival hunters looking to burn down the forest? It’s such a strange focus for Hunter and feels much more at home with Rogue/Outlaw to me. I really want them to change the explosive focus or make it an optional ability to use. Maybe having them use more nature magic or more cleave melee attacks so they dont feel out of place in nature. Also it says they use animal venom and in the specialization text but no ability they have uses that aspect anymore even thou it perfectly fits a hunter using whatever he finds to his enemies. Cause thats what I think when I here hunter, a hunter who gets close and personal using whatever he finds in the wild to kill his pray with melee and cameoflage.
Now for the change I truly dislike and hate, the replacement of Butchery for Boomstick. Don’t get me wrong, boomstick has good audio design and feels like it feels impactful when used, but in gameplay it is a moment you get to do nothing but run arround, unlike butchery which was instant and had a fun animation.
Additionally the Boomstick doesn’t work with so many hunters. Again using the poster boy of Survival hunter himself, Rexxar would never pull a shotgun out of nowhere and fire it for a few seconds. It just doesn’t fit his character, why does the Survival hunter, the MELEE hunter need to pull out a ranged weapon. It feels so against the class fantasy of Survival Hunter similarly to explosives thou less outrageous to me. Please give Melee hunter, Melee abilities with a nature focus instead of a unnatural toolbox focus, it just doesn’t fit so many hunters.
My suggestions for changes to Hunter and how to implement them, first explosives, change them to either a magical nature abilty. The ability itself is fine, just the flavour is terrible, Hunters shouldn’t have abilities that could burn down a forest. I would recommend changing it for a thunder bolt from the sky, similar to a shaman or a mini earthquake beneath them similar to druids. A bottle of natural poison thrown on the enemy could maybe work as well. For Boomstick, I say remove the ability and give us a melee cleave or maybe make it optional along with explosives so that players can choose to pick which type of hunter they wanna be.
In short, to me Survival hunter should focus on Melee and Nature as its class fantasy and this change of focus has been so against its core concept thatthe changes have decreased my enjoyment of hunter so much, I am thinking of swapping classes. I don’t want to but Boomstick specifically is so unfun to me.
Please let me know your thoughts on the changes to Survival Hunter and this post.