Here is my ideas for the 4. Hunter spec. Name: Stalker Short description: Stalkers are very good melee fighters, spies, informants, and interrogators that are comfortable in both wilderness and urban settings. Primary stat: Agility ofc… Armor: Mail ofc (i think leather is better, but we in the WoW) Weapons: Dual-Wield 1H weapons: Swords and Axes. Few key abilities/talents: Hide in Shadow: Going stealth. Lone Wolf[Talent, Passive]: You no longer summon pet, but you damage increases +X%. Ambush (Only usable in stealth): Ambush your enemies dealing X Physical damage. Serpent Sting: Same as Survival skill. Dual Strike: Strike whit both weapon dealing X Physical damage. Wild Strike: Strike hard whit both weapon dealing X Physical damage, and cause the target to bleed for X physical damage over X sec. Autumn’s Decay: Strike whit both weapon dealing X Physical damage, and reduced the enemy’s armor, and increasing damage you deal to them by 30% for 10 sec. 45 sec CD. Whirlwind Strike: Same as Warrior ability. Wing Clip: Same as Survival. Natural Poison: Poison your weapons for X sec and dealing plus X% natural damage. 1 min CD. Natural Mending: Instant heals for you 30% of maximum healt. 2 min CD. Bladewall: Increases your parry chance by 100% and reduces all damage you take by 30% for 8 sec. 3 min CD.
The pet (if summoned) have only basic pet abilities (Claw, Growl, etc…) there is no Kill Command or other main pet ability.
I think this spec stand between the rogue and warrior, but a good melee Hunter spec.
I very very like the melee Survival, but i need more melee focus for my Hunter. And one new spec is good for this.
And if you have more idea? Then write! See the Blizzard what we want
Why? No need. Hunters have:
BM: pet focused spec whit ranged weapon.
MM: Ranged weapon focused spec.
Surv: 2H melee spec (personaly my favorite)
If Blizz give +1 dual-wield spec, the Hunter gonna be more awesome
I think no need one more ranged weapon focused spec. Hunter much universal class, like that stand in only in ranged. Before the melee Survival spec, hunters very one-sided. Now far better.
Tbh if they just fix the current SV, things would be fine as is. However their stifling opinion on class fantasy and pruning for the sake of pruning is screwing this class up.
As far as additional specs for the hunter class, if anything, we should get back the spec that we lost. As so many loved that playstyle.
I would say that it’s A LOT more to it than that, if you look at each spec and what it’s meant to be as well as how it plays.
I agree with you though. Current Survival I would say needs some changes to it still. The intent is still for it to be a melee-focused spec, but very little focus is actually on what you do in melee range.
Sure, you can stand in melee range and use all of it’s abilities. But IMO, as far as themes go, it should also feel like a melee spec. Opinions on this vary ofc. People prefer different things.
In the tab below, are my suggestions for melee survival. Note that it also holds a way to bring in the dual wield option that you want. A way that fits thematically, if you ask me:
Melee Survival
Any abilities or talents not mentioned below, they can stay as they are IMO.
-Core Abilities-
Remove Kill Command.
Rework Raptor Strike to be the new focus builder(it can work the same as Kill Command did for the spec, just melee-based, and it shouldn’t have a cooldown).
Drag out Mongoose Bite to become the main Spender instead of Raptor Strike.
Rework Serpent Sting into a mid-range CD.
Instead of you, firing a poison tipped arrow at your target, now, when you activate this ability, you coat your melee weapon(s) in snake venom for a short period.
Let’s say the ability has a 30 sec CD. The duration could be something like 15-20 seconds.
The venom itself, could work much like the old Exotic Ammunitions-venom we had in WoD. Where your auto shots(here, it would instead be melee auto attacks), they would inflict that venom on the target.
The damaging effect would stack with every attack.
Wildfire Bomb can pretty much stay as it is. Although perhaps changing it into an actual bomb with a splash effect rather than being designed with a cone in mind would be better. No matter the design here, throwing a bomb in front of yourself does not make sense but at least the splash design allows for less annoyance.
-Talents-
Remove the talent, Alpha Predator(no longer needed).
Put the last tier talent, Birds of Prey in the place of Alpha Predator.
Talent: Viper’s Venom, could be reworked so that if it’s chosen, it causes your new Snake Venom ability, it causes the venom to spread more quickly(stack up higher with every attack).
As well as adding a chance for you to extend it’s duration on the target(s) beyond the default time(up to a set max). Essentially, this could allow you to keep that DoT up permanently.
Hydra’s Bite. This would now just allow you to hit 3 targets at once with your Snake Venom buff that you use on your weapon(s).
Bloodseeker, could work the same, just that it would involve Raptor Strike instead of Kill Command.
Tip of the Spear, can be renamed Sharpened Edges.
Now, when picked, as you would have Mongoose Bite baseline. This talent could be reworked to allow you to stack Mongoose Fury up faster and/or allow you to extend the duration of the buff.
We have a free spot for a talent option in the place of Mongoose Bite.
This could be fun
New talent called Mean Duo (I love that name!).
What it would do, is this:
Each time you hit an enemy target with an ability, there’s a high chance that this will cause your pet’s next Basic Attack(Bite, Claw, Smack) to be a guaranteed critical strike.
Each time your pet hits with a Basic Attack, there’s a high chance that you gain this effect as well. I like the synergy!
Wildfire Infusion might have to change a bit in it’s design to better fit the new core makeup of the spec. But still, mostly, I think it’s the Pheromone Bomb infusion that needs to change. Perhaps into something that benefits your Mongoose Bite?
And last but not least!
In the place of the talent Birds of Prey(that was moved to the first row). I would like to put in a new talent. Some of you might remember the talent: Way of the Mok’Nathal. Explanation follows.
(And no, I don’t intend to bring that specific talent design back).
What I want, is this:
A LOT of players think of the current MSV spec as a visualization of us playing as Rexxar.
The famed Hunter from Draenor that fights with 2 1-handed axes.
So…what if a talent that you call Way of the Mok’Nathal, would do just that? Allow you to equip 2 1-handed weapons.
All your melee attacks(and abilities) would now be executed with those 2 weapons instead of a 2-hander.
As for tuning…Now, you would have to tune the 1h-concept to be on par with the 2 other talents on the same talent row, instead of trying to tune it as a baseline option for players choosing between using a 2-hander or 2 1-handers.
I know it’s not as simple as this, but still, more simple than the alternative.
Considering the amount of players that would want to play with 1-handed weapons. I’d say this would be worth it.
I would say that, suggestions for a 4th spec option, should only be done to classes where it can fill a void in terms of class fantasy. Where something is missing. As well as in the case of the Hunter class, where something was taken away even though there was no need for that to happen.
Whether this is an interesting idea for 4th spec or just Rogue pun I must say I really appreciate the idea of hunter that can dual wield axes and I think this is what is missing for the spec the most.
As for the lone wolf idea, I think if you went full stealth you shouldn’t have any pet to begin with, sure wolf or eagle would work but I still don’t think they help you with urban concealement
Yeah I do, this is pretty much always the case when something’s either added in or taken away. No matter the class or no matter what part of the game it’s about.
There will always be those that complains about stuff that others get.
For me, personally, if they(devs) go with a popular request made by players, I would not mind it. Despite it not being about the class I play.
You shouldn’t be against trying to make the game better for everyone just because some might not like that they don’t get something as well.
Imagine the game and how it’s systems would be designed if this is what we based everything on…
Besides, they(other class forums), did not lose an entire spec in favor of a completely different playstyle.
Why? Because those of us who mained ranged survival all the time got fuc-king pissed when they removed the most fluid range spec in the game and gave us something we didnt ask for?
Hunters are supposed to be freaking ranged, its always been like that. I would be sooo happy if old survival would return. Theres so many melee classes, why do hunters have to be one aswell?
No they have not always been ranged. I have covered this many times.
Once upon a time Survival was a melee spec and later changed into a more ranged oriented spec in patch 1.7 when survival got an overhaul.
They were hybrid back then. They still had a bow and a quiver. They still shot at a range and often finished then up close. It was nothing like it is today.
No they where ranged with melee components beacause of the dead zone as where all hunter specs where and when the dead zone was removed in a tbc or wrath release patch they where designed as imgo the perfect ranges / melee hybrid you can in wrath build a mongoose build (raptor strike i think it was called back then) and do tons of melee burst in a few hits or you could fo the explosive shot proc route and use melee as a suppliment more for sustain.
Regardless the new survival spec is amazing in my opinion all i would like is a ranged option just to suppliment your melee when you are at range, i love the ranged aspect at the moment but i think id be a whole lot happier id it simply had a bow animation and we where not locked into using a CD for a ranged option, give us ammo amount like 8 shots + 2 utility so you could slow, keep someone in combat maybe fire an expolsive arrow or an expose weakness arrow so when you get back into melee in X time frame you can burst and they act as “primers” maybe an flare arrow instead of our usual flare so it moves with the target.
Ammo count would replenish over time, so so we havs a realiable ranged option while still having a melee focus.
Also for pve we are fine righf now we just have this stigma which is unfounded
Not really. Much we had in the past was not to my liking.
Ofc people want different things. Just how we are.
The reason so many players want for example the old SV spec back, is not because the version we have now is worse. It’s because now, we have NO old SV spec at all. They removed it.
Prior to patch 1.7 Survival was a melee spec with bonus to traps. 31pt was Lacerate.
Survival was called outdormanship, but was changed right after release.
You mean the exact version of SV we had during MoP or do you mean the general playstyle of SV as a whole, as it was designed prior to Legion?(when it became melee)
Ofc, opinions vary on this as well.
Personally I did not play WoW a lot during MoP. A big part of this was because of the changes made to the talent-system. Where they stepped away from talents being focused on each perspective specialization that we had, and gave us the modern design with fewer choices.
Now, the modern design in itself with fewer choices, I’m not necessarily against. It was more so, the specific talent choices we got in MoP. WoD talents were slightly better IMO, but not by much.
I found them overall to be fairly bland, and non-focused on SV and it’s playstyle/fantasy.
Having said this, as far as re-creating any version of the old SV spec, and making it fit into modern WoW and it’s systems + design philosophies. While I preferred Cataclysm as far as Survival goes, over MoP or WoD. We can’t just simply bring back either version of them.
Things would have to be altered to fit todays WoW.
What I did, was to simply look at each expansion where we had any playable version of the old ranged SV spec and then, think of which elements that I liked the most. And then try to bring them together for the new design.
But to also bring in certain elements from other hunter specs. Elements that could either be helpful for gameplay or elements that somehow enhanced the design.
This is ofc subjective. And opinions always vary.
Anyways, the result will ofc look different from any past version of the spec that we had as they looked A LOT different from how specs are today in general.
I hope that people can find that the core of it is still there. Note: I know that the link here makes it look like a giant wall of text. It’s not. Apparently, links to other posts makes those look horrible…
You are idd right on this. Or I should say that you are, sort of…
I should say that I had to look this up as I could not remember the specifics of it. Also, I could not find any official records of the old “Outdoorsman”-spec, which was what SV was called before 1.7.
Nor could I find anything similar to a talent calculator that actually showed the exact layout of the talents.
I did find this though(correct me if anything here wasn’t actually there prior to patch 1.7). And if anyone has a link to a website where you can find the old Outdoorsman-talents, I would very much like to see it again. Thanks!
Here it is(all talents have max points in them):
Outdoorsman (Old Survival spec)
Entrapment
Rank 5/5
Gives your Immolation Trap, Frost Trap, and Explosive Trap a 25% chance to entrap the target, preventing them from moving for 5 sec.
Savage Strikes
Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance with melee weapons by 5%.
Precision
Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.
Improved Raptor Strike
Rank 5/5
Reduces the cooldown of your Raptor Strike by 1 sec.
Improved Wing Clip
Rank 5/5
Gives your Wing Clip ability a 20% chance to immobilize the target for 5 sec.
Lightning Reflexes
Rank 3/3
Increases your Dodge chance by 3%.
Melee Specialization
Rank 5/5
Increases the damage you deal with melee weapons by 5%.
Improved Freezing Trap
Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Freezing Trap by 6 sec.
Improved Explosive Trap
Rank 2/2
Increases the initial damage done by your Explosive Trap by 60%.
Improved Frost Trap
Rank 2/2
Increases the duration of your Frost Trap’s movement slowing effect by 3 sec.
Improved Immolation Trap
Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your Immolation Trap by 15%.
Deflection
Rank 5/5
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
Improved Mongoose Bite
Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your Mongoose Bite ability by 20%.
Deterrence
Rank 1/1
Instant 5 min cooldown
When activated, increases your Dodge and Parry chance by 25% for 10 sec.
Counterattack
Rank 1/1
45 Mana
Instant cast 5 sec cooldown
5 yd range
A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent’s attack. This attack deals 40 damage and immobilizes the target for 5 sec. Counterattack cannot be blocked, dodged, or parried.
Lacerate
Rank 1/1
65 Mana
Instant cast
5 yd range
Requires Melee Weapon
Wounds the target causing them to bleed for 77 damage over 21 sec.
Now, if you look only at these talents, then I can very much see why people claim that the old SV(Outdoorsman) spec was a melee spec.
But the thing is, you still had many ranged abilities/attacks baseline. Neither of which were removed if you specced into the above talents. What does this mean?
Spec’ing into the old SV talents allowed you to be more powerful when you had to fight an enemy(player or npc) that was in melee range of you.
As, in melee range, you could not use your ranged weapon against them.
Conclusion: the old spec did make your melee capabilities better, as well as your traps and your overall survivability. But did picking these talents make you an actual melee hunter? I would say no.
Back then, we had no such thing as being only a ranged hunter or being only a melee hunter.
![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
![:smiley:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
But is ok.