So basically most of what was part of the survival hunter’s toolkit has been moved to the class tree. (Kill Command + Alpha Predator, Steel Trap, Serpent Sting + Viper’s Venom + Latent Poison Injectors, Chakrams)
This results in a specialization tree that feels so bland and boring. We can either spec into Wildfire Bomb or Mongoose Bite, wooptidoo…
I would like to see the devs embrace the ranged hybridness of the Survival Hunter. Make use of different kinds of Chakram abilities, different kinds of traps with some unique interactions (Flare into Tar Trap was a neat idea, but something a bit less clunky than this).
Fury of the Eagle also looks so underwhelming, as a matter of fact the whole Kill Command reset stuff seems like you’re just playing a slot machine. Pull the lever and pray for success! How about we remove all of that stuff and just add Shadowlands’ 2 and 4 set bonusses to the tree so we can have Wildfire Bomb resets. Then we can add Kill Shot resets as a separate playstyle via Flayed Shot and the Pouch of Razor Fragments legendary. (maybe call it Black Bolt as in a crossbow bolt and a throwback to Black Arrow)
There’s just way too many filler nodes which in turn causes the tree to feel like it has no real options to choose from.
Most people, including me, wanted old-style Talent Trees back because they allowed a freedom of choice. Sure many people were just going for a max DPS selection that community sites suggested. But there were many of us that didn’t. In the old Trees there were many combinations you were able to take while at the same moment there were only a few mandatory, one leading to another Talents. This way they where clearly superior to the three Talents per row dumbed-down version of a system we had for years now.
And while they somehow listened and brought kind of old Talent Tres back, the new DF Talent Trees have NOT been designed with the old freedom of choice in mind. For example, why can’t I go Raptor Strike → Harpoon → Predator → Bloodseeker → Wildfire Bomb but not take Ferocity?. There clearly is a connecting path there. Why am I being forced to take Ferocity?
But the worst thing about all of this is, after all the past experience people still say stuff like “relax, it’s just the Alpha” like it’s a mantra. And while Blizzard posted a lot about the Hunter Talent Trees during the last days and weeks I have little hope for SV in Dragonflight.
Since the Alpha days of WoD, as well as Legion, BfA and SL everything shown in the Alphas and Betas was pretty much set in stone. They had an idea - they sticked to it, no matter what. Besides little tweaks here and there nothing substantial was changed before each of their releases. But the SV Tree needs an almost complete overhaul already. And I doubt that will happen.
Yeah, the survival tree just feels so uninspired vs all the other spec trees. They wanted to give survival hunter it’s “own” identity by turning it into a melee spec, but right now it feels like it has even less of an identity by moving so much stuff to the class tree AND not giving the spec tree any new goodies…
Yeah this is by far my biggest gripe with all this. Sure the tree is pure garbage and it’s so blatantly uninspired and lazily done (it’s basically some of what we have now torn to pieces and spread out amongst some X% dmg filler talents…) that I almost feel offended as a SV main. Is this intentional from them to make the last few that play the spec abandon it?
To ruin a old, actually liked spec for “reasons” and then completely bungle the rework so badly you have to rework it again the next xpac and then fail again… only to pretty much abandon it screams poor management and poor development, from the Hunter designer to the development leads.
Honestly, I still think BfA rework of a rework was a mistake. Legion SV had a fun base (I can’t be the only person who loved the flow of mid to early late expansion SV) , it just needed the artifact effects baked in, combined with some refining and streamlining, not completely upending to try again, but now without any heart.
At least decouple Mongoose Bite from Raptor Strike, and make it a beefy focus generator with a CD (I can live with or without charges) and bring back the glory of Legion’s Flanking Strike, 50 Focus, 6 sec CD, meaty sound effect, and damage for days, and chance to reset Mongoose Bite CD. You could even make the generator MB replace Kill Command.
I do also like the idea of keeping Flayed Shot with spec appropriate flavour and as a call back to old Lock’n’Load, instead of this pitiful chance on for Kill Shot on KC reset.
To keep the discussion a life.
What has a survival hunter to do in order to survive.
Take a bear attack in real life, i throw a STEEL TRAP on the ground in order to root the bear.
Then i take some distance to attack him and i send my dog in to keep the bear occupied.
Would i throw a bomb to it so my dog dies?
Would i jump to the bear and attack it with a spear knowing that his paws are longer than my spear and arms killing me in the fight, i can use my TURTLE but i can’t do anything while in it and the bear keeps hitting it untill it fades and kills me after it.
I could throw a FREEZING TRAP so i can get some distance again.
I can then try to shoot it in the heart from a distance.
So after this, is the question.
Should a sv hunter be a melee or a ranged class in order to survive against the attacks from classes that are in a melee range of me.
I like playing melee as a hunter though, but the way they implement it, it feels more like a fake melee bm hunter impersonator with the addition of a bomb and 2 melee abilities.
And DF doesn’t fix all the issues it has.
No defensives to play a melee in the class tree, none in the spec tree. They should bring back the glyphed detterence and a lot of traps and utility we had before.
Wyvern sting was also nice and the expose weakness as well.
I miss black arrow and the L&L procs.
Iff they steal so much from bm they can take L&L from mm also that doesn’t proc AIS.
No actual traps in the sv tree or anything usefull, even playing survival now is staying as long as possible out of melee range.
The new alpha build really didn’t improve a lot. A bunch of these nodes feel really bad like Bloody Claws, Coordinated Kill, Ruthless Marauder. And then the weird placement of nodes like Viper’s Venom, Energetic Ally, Killer Companion.
The Ranger node is also weird, are we supposed to weapon swap so we can use Steady Shot? That would be awkward to use…
Also a 2 point node to get Coordinated Assault back to a 2 minute cooldown feels a bit much, even with the new effect on it.
The whole Kill Shot, Wildfire Bomb build still looks even worse now, Viper’s Venom in the way of Wildfire Infusion. The whole “spam Kill Command for a tiny chance to get a Kill Shot” also seems very boring to play.
BTW, I also agree that Wildfire Bomb is SUCH an unnatural skill for a hunter to have. A hunter, home in nature… Is gonna throw WILDFIRE bombs, like what? But I doubt they’ll rework that in Dragonflight.
PS: why is Scatter Shot still an incapacitate? Literally all mages have access to Dragon’s Breath now which is a disorient, and spammable Polymorph… Talk about unfair.
They seem to be really afraid of giving SV more than 4 button core rotation since BfA. Just turn that node into Flayed Shot already. And then you get nice chain of interactions with Flayed Shot > Kill Shot > Wildfire Bomb. Though they moved Explosives Expert away from Deadly Duo for…some reason?
I belive a big issue is that serpent sting aint in the survival tree. For two primary reasons:
1: A lower level survival hunter should in my opinion be using serpent sting, you should atleats have the option to pick up early and not have it be something you can only pick up close to max level.
2: Serpent sting could get more synergistic talents if it’s incorperated as a core sv ability. Vipers venom could come back into the tree instead of the dragonflight variant and we could get latent poison injectors as a somewhat late option in the talent tree.
If we want to keep it in the class tree aswell we could just have a small text that says if you picked serpent sting from more than one place increase it’s dmg by 10% or so. Simular to how a frost dk can pick up empowered rune weapon from 2 different places (class and spec tree) and gain 2 charges.