SV Hunters are fun, but ineffective. Sorry

Classes Hunter
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Now don’t get me wrong here, I actually am one of those players that love melee SV. It is a fun spec for sure - though i would prefer to see it ranged again, i am ok with it staying melee.

In saying all that however, this spec suffers from total lack of survivability. I am talking strictly PvP here. Casters are ok but if they do damage over time (our arch nemesis since the beginning of wow), you can forget it. I love how everyone says “YOU HAVE MENDING BANDAGE HURRR DURRRRRRRRP”. Yet one lousy magic dot and that thing is pointless.

In WPvP especially you cannot rely on Mending Bandage at all. It’s fine to remove bleeds, poinsons and the likes, but i find it not healing anything because of random magical dot, like the stupid dot on that heart of azeroth neck. Or worse some random caster joins in the fun, puts a dot on you and no healing. The only time you can heal with that thing no worries is in turtle every three minutes (so long as you dont have a dot). I know you can use the feign death talent to remove magic dots. But then that’s picking a talent to use another. And also witholding an ability simply to use for another. So basically you are saying i should take the chaos bolt to the face?

I don’t understand in the state the game is in why they chose to make us a hybrid spec. If we go toe to toe with melee we will die. If we kite we do subpar damage and eventually they will catch us and slaughter. Furthermore, there are all these retarded leech mechanics meaning because of our crusty distance damage we barely get anyone low before they get on us and leech that damage away. All while we have NO self sustaining abilities like this (AS THE SPEC CALLED SURVIVAL NO LESS).

What was blizzard thinking giving us spirit bond the way it is now. It’s what? 2% heals every FIVE seconds… You have to be joking right. That has not saved me once, NOT ONCE! Flipping druids have the same thing where it can do 4% every 4 seconds. LIKE GTFO MAN!

Now as a damage dealing class, remember we are a PURE damage dealing class, no tank spec, no healing spec. Why can we not ever be competing at the top (true for other pures though). Why is the damage of Survival so crappy?

WE HAVE NO HEAVY HITTER ABILITY. Why bother with raptor strike? Why not just make mongoose base and be done with it, and bring back flanking strike base too. Make Flanking Strike hit for 50% more than it does now, and interact with mongoose bite, like it stacks a 5% damage buff every stack of fury of the mongoose, on a 12 second CD. This way we can actually have a heavy hitter.

Have you ever played a DK guys? Specifically an Unholy DK? Their pets are cool right? Responsive, provide good passive damage and most importantly, the pets utility is part of the pets toolkit and not yours. All this makes them much more reliable.

HUNTERS PETS THOUGH!

  • They’re retardedly buggy and unresponsive. My pet attacks whatever it feels like on assist, unless i hit the kill command /w macro. When I click passive, it doesn’t come back, i have to spam that key like im trying to get one off.

  • They’re slow, they are VERY slow. Any auto-cast ability on pet bar, like slow. will rarely ever go off on cooldown because your pet moves so slow it never catches anything. Even if you kill command, it then lags behind its target unable to get an ability off. True for SV and BM (ever tried Spirit shock as BM?).

  • Why can’t we actually make use of the pet where it matters. Its great to have Roar up in a stun, BUT IT WOULD BE BETTER TO HAVE BLOODY INTIMIDATION IN A STUN! Remember monkey stun? That one ability helped me so much with caking rogues. Give us back something bloody useful with our pets.

  • STOP TYING OUR ONLY RESOURCE GENERATOR WITH THE DAMN PET! You ever faced a good player that just CCs your pet and scoffs at you? No, well you havent faced a player like me then. It’s ridiculous that we legit have our focus regen exclusively tied to our pet. Flipping enraging and pathetic.

  • Just revert the damn LoS change you did with the pets PLEASE FGS. That one change made our pets bug to infinity and beyond. They get stuck everywhere and no longer respond to anything. This is because of that one change, it screwed up everything. Why do i NEVER have the same problems on my DK as I do with my hunter? HMMMMMMMMMM! I wonder. I BLOODY WONDER!

Please for love of god, give us real damage, real self-healing and fix the pets. AND GIVE US BACK NORMAL ASPECT OF THE CHEETAH! Why can everyone and their donkey chase us down like we’re flipping priests. Enough man blizzard, you ruined this class completely.

Sorry man, I just get pissed how they changed this class so much and how much we lost over the years. I wont even start on MM. I will be here all bloody day.

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Sorry to rob the subject but I’m heavily debating levelling this hunter to 120 for SV but atm it feels clunky and I feel like I only have 4/5 buttons to attack with other than traps.

Am I doing something wrong? It seems to be all about timing with this spec what with the mongoose buff?

It seems pretty awesome though and I’d like to give the other two specs a good shot. It’s just this clunky feeling putting me off atm.

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good luck not finding a clunky class in bfa :stuck_out_tongue:
jokes aside, with haste (which is sv best stat) things get better, but it’ll still be clunky, as bm will be as mm will too. Clunky goes hand in hand with hunter this expansion.

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Thanks ^^ yeah it just felt clunky compared to my warrior but I think it’s entirely down to me not knowing the proper rotation/optimum talents etc.

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Its a good spec by design tbh, but they need to start improving it, as it lacks severely comapred to other classes.

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nah, it’ll stay clunky if you compare it to warrior, for some reason they decided that sv needs a 1.5 sec gcd, same as ranged classes and that’s prolly a big part of it. But haste helps yeah

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if they fixed pet AI, the class would feel so much better. Just today in Nazjatar I was messed over at least 10 times in wpvp

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Nothing wrong with that, this is entirely based on subjective views. What you as a individual prefer or not.

We’ve seen people argue for this for the longest time. Should it be melee? Should it be ranged again?

I’m one of those that want to see the old ranged DoT-spec we had prior to Legion make a return(ofc with this, I mean an updated version that fits the design philosophy of today). HOWEVER! I’m not saying that it should make it’s return in the form of a replacement for current melee survival.

Why?
There is no point in requesting it to be reverted. It just won’t happen. If anything, they(the devs) will continue to iterate on the current concept to make it more to what the players want(from it being melee-focused).

Also, there is no need to argue back and forth regarding the Melee vs. Ranged situation.
If you look at the existing specs we have: BM, MM, Melee Survival
And, if you then look at what the past ranged Survival spec could be, both in terms of design as well as gameplay-wise, it could easily hold it’s own identity/unique style(while still keeping the core of what the Hunter class should be about).

Now, there is no perfect spec that suits everybody. It does not exist, nor will it ever do so. But, as far as the ranged, DoT-concept we used to have is concerned, I would very much like to build on that fantasy towards a 4th spec option.
I’m biased ofc, as these are my own suggestions: [Suggestions updated] Pre-Legion Survival [4th spec]

Back to the topic of this thread…

I know they made a statement that, sometimes the best way to survive, is to go on the offense. Bringing the fight to the enemy. Now, I do get their point of view. But having said that, I still would argue that the current spec needs a name change. The old name Survival, it’s a remnant from the design concept of the class back in the days where we did not have specs designed with separate playstyles in mind. We did not actually have specs(for damage dealers) that had their own unique focus on the level of what we have today.

Back then, Survival was merely a manual way for you to focus on just that, improving your toolkit in terms of “Survivability”. I made this post a few days back. It’s ofc a summary, but I believe it covers the essentials of what each spec did for the class(you as a hunter).

Beast Mastery:
•Improved your Aspects
•Improved your pet’s health, armor, movement speed, damage, critical strike chance, focus regen.
•You gained several utility based improvements such as lower cast time on pet res, better pet mending, on-demand stun etc.
•Apart from some utility as well as the signature talent for BM(Bestial Wrath). The spec did not give you anything beyond improving stuff you already had access to, baseline.

Marksmanship
•Gave some additional utility, in the form of targeted shots(ranged attacks), increased attack range.
•Most stuff were in the form of lower mana cost on abilities, increases to critical strike chance as well as critical damage, CD reduction, base damage increases.
•Some of the more iconic stuff you got through MM talents was the improved Stings that you already had access to. Along with a powerful ranged attack, a ranged disorient as well as a party-wide AP buff.

Survival
•Enhanced your fantasy as being a tracker
•Improvements to your focus on utility. Especially in the form of traps you used defensively but also the ones for offensive use.
•It did give you a offensive melee ability in the form of Counterattack. Though you weren’t really meant to focus on it to much. You still wanted to get away from your enemies.
•Part from this, the spec also held options to improve your baseline defenses, with increased health, parry chance, on-demand parry/dodge, improved Feign Death.
It also gave you a ranged CC ability(Wyvern), which was essentially mostly meant as a way to keep distance to enemies. Or to help you manage multiple targets.

Back then, no matter what you spec’ed in/for, you were still a hunter that wanted to engage in ranged combat, and you were aided by a pet/companion.

If you compare the above to what the spec is today, to still call it Survival…it just does not fit anymore. IMO ofc.

Personally, I haven’t played current Survival since the BfA Alpha+Beta. But I agree, it would be better(IMO) if they went back towards the actual melee concept rather than keeping it as a weird hybrid.
They overhauled it again for BfA due to some feedback where people complained that they did not like that melee design. So the result was what we have now. Where, they sort of, have tried to take inspiration from that past DoT-spec we used to have, and bring it into the new version.

If their actual intent was to make the spec more attractive for those that liked the old ranged spec. Sorry, this goal was not achieved. Again, opinions will vary ofc…

My basic thoughts to bring more aspects of melee focus back into the current Survival spec are as below(other players who play it more might have better ideas ofc):

Not saying that they should do a complete overhaul again, but changing a few of the core abilities along with a talent, would do much.

-Remove the survival version of Kill Command.
-Replace it with Raptor Strike as the focus builder(on live, it’s the main spender)
-Put in either Mongoose Bite or a slightly altered version of Flanking Strike as a replacement for the current Raptor Strike. Why they decided to put them both in as talent options, I dno.
-The other stuff, you can keep as it is. Mostly…

What people want, gameplay-wise will ofc differ a lot. But if you ask me, button count does not matter for much in terms of what makes a spec fun to play.
As an example, BM has very few abilities tied to it’s core “rotation”. But you have the option to add in another 5 stand-alone abilities from talents(with a total of 6 choices, 2 on the same row).

The thing with that is, all those extra abilities, have no connection to anything else within the spec design and the baseline abilities you have. The talents all stand as their own, and you press them whenever they are off CD.

I refer back to my first link with my suggestion on that 4th spec option for a ranged DoT-spec. I’ve deliberately stayed away from requesting a multitude of extra abilities that you could get from talent options, in favor of simply building on/going deeper into the fantasy of what you already have, baseline.

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Cheers for the detailed info, my comment on the lack of buttons was more of a ‘am I missing anything?’ Rather than critique.

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Agreed in full briz. Tbh if they can’t decide by now how to make this spec effective, they may as well revert it back to how it was in WoD (My fav version of SV). The spec is truly a waste of potential currently.

Also has anyone noticed that our traps can be seen… Another major pain in the backside if you ask me.

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Fair enough, agreed!

If by that, you mean that you want that DoT-spec as a playable option. YES!

As far as to simply revert it back to how it was designed back then. I would say that this is less likely. The specs we had back then were based on a different design philosophy from today. They were based on different systems than those we have today.

Besides, I’m never going to argue that they should remove the melee-“ish” spec in favor of the old ranged one. Why? I refer to my post above when I say that we can have both. It’s just a matter of changing the mindset of the devs that we shouldn’t have a 4th spec for this class.
Heck, I don’t even know if that’s what they think atm. But going forward, I hope that their minds change on this matter.

I’ve noticed yes. Dno if it’s always the case as I mostly engage in PvE, but as far as PvP goes, this is not how it should be.

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Just thought I’d pop back in, no where near full gear yet but SV is feeling really great for me and I actually love the way I have this ‘Monster Hunter’ vibe from it.

Checked my talents and done some changes and it feels great, GCD Took a little bit of getting used to but other than that having some good fun so thanks for the info!

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Awesome! Anything in particular that you like in terms of abilities, talents, interactions etc.?
Anything you would like for it to work differently?

Been so long since I played anything that has a different GCD. Or well, played anything other than a Hunter really. I’m not all that into being a caster. Melee combat, isn’t for me either. Yeah, I like having that ranged weapon.

Will say this, the change of pace that you get from Aspect of the Wild as BM is nice. The spec apart from those small windows feels a bit slow overall.

I’ve wanted for quite a while to have A Murder of Crows to be a baseline ability for BM. With Kill Command having the effect of extending AMoC’s duration on the target.
Which will allow you to have an impact through your choices.
This is ofc just one thing. Among others…

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I’ve mained SV hunter for entire BFA and it is really good in my opinion. I don’t see the problems you have described as I’ve been on top of a lot of damage meters. Haven’t done alot of PvP tho but in PvE they are awesome.

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That’s my point. No one really has problems in PvE, you only really notice mechanics, talents and ability problems in PvP. In PvE you really only watch numbers. The only time anyone complains in PvE is when they are at the bottom of the meters.

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I’m afraid that I have to disagree with you on this. Many players that engage in PvE are very concerned about mechanical issues in regards to specs they play.

It is true that many of the issues you encounter in PvP as far as abilities goes, those issues might not stand out so much in PvE.

In PvE, what you want to look at is mechanical issues with your class/spec that might have a severe negative impact on your ability to sustain yourself or what you can do to help other members of your group/raid.

If you look at numbers and what might be unbalanced. I can give the example of the Animal Companion talent in the BM talent section. Currently, there is no point in picking that talent if you’re at all interested in performance. Simply put, it would be better if they(devs) just redesigned it to work like Hati did in Legion.

Sure, the second pet wouldn’t stand for as much of the damage total from your pets as it is currently supposed to. But at least it would be easier to keep it on par with the other talents on the same row.

Also, that specific talent this long into the expansion still has the same mechanical problems that it did in the Beta. Spawn time, movement, responsiveness overall. Etc.

I might only be interested in PvE. I might focus on mythic raiding. But I still want to have fun while doing it. The actual numbers, I don’t care about at all. Heck, I don’t even display them on my screen.

The proposal for a 4th spec option for the hunter class that i posted above, I did purely to bring something back into the game that I enjoyed playing with. I played that past DoT-spec from Cata to WoD when they removed it. The only time I ever switched away from it was during HFC, where it was miles behind MM in performance. To the point where it was lacking so much that you couldn’t really play with it in Mythic raids.

Striving for balance is always good, but perfect balance? There is no point as that can never really be achieved.

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The problem though Briz, is that all PvE problems are PvP problems plus all the extra of lazy mechnanics implementation that are just left there, that doesnt impact pve anywhere near the way it does in pvp.

A bugged pet in pve dont mean half as much in pve as it does in pvp. Its a fact that well designed classes do better in pvp. Our class as a whole is trash. SV is still a good pvp spec, but could be A LOT better. It has no identity and doesnt know what it should be half the time. If i am to kite, give me proper tools to do so. If i am melee give me more than one melee ability.

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Yeah I agree mate, you have a bit more leeway in terms of dealing with some…mechanical issues related to your class in PvE. Sometimes at least. Compared to PvP.

I did not dispute that, I only brought up the statement of yours regarding where the focus for people in PvE is at.

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Carve is stupid, should have a bigger cone with higher range. No one uses Butchery. Butchery is cool and should be a default ability.

Bomb can sometime be annoying, no point in also being a cone splash attack if there is no extra benefit to it. It’s just frustrating when the splash doesn’t hit everything.

Hydra’s bite is actually nice thematically but mostly never taken because of a better talent. Wouldn’t mind having it at all times if some damage between abilities were redistributed. Also how about making the poison tick faster (more ticks in default duration) rather than shortening the duration of the DOT (ability still does same damage) as you gain haste? I’d rather use the excess focus for Mongoose.

I’d rather go the path of making BM what survival is now, a melee fighter. Rework Marksman completely and give it best of all ranged abilities. Keep the Survival spec but turn it into a melee tank, keep pet for synergy, effects and cool downs. Who cares if there’s only one ranged specialization. It would still be better than what we have now if it were done right.

Biggest problem in the game currently are the classes that are limited to only a DMG role. Adding new classes doesn’t make anything better. People will quit some classes completely and queues will still be bad. Why play a hunter when I can play a druid, be able to tank+heal+dps as both ranged and melee role?

Turn mage into a healer (time magic?), make something out of both warlock and rogue. I doubt having 3 melee or ranged DMG specs feels fun 15 years later, when they all play nearly the same.

Allow automatic dungeon finder to combine both alliance and horde players together to shorten the queues. We are adventurers first and foremost, to hell with factions at this point. There, I fixed the game for you. There’s also more healer and tank classes and more groups can be formed.

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Sv realy needs redisign of tallents.Current tallent build looks like it was made right before release of xpac…

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