Ask any hunter who has played on beta, and they’ll probably tell you that survival feels a little empty without any baseline cooldowns or executes. We know Blizzard wants to push for survival to be the multidot/sustained damage spec, but many hunters feel it’s gone a bit too far. The good news is, it sounds like they are still mulling over the idea of survival having a cooldown.
@Jademcian Yes. Still undetermined.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) July 4, 2014
Now’s the time to give Blizzard your feedback on the issue. If you’re in the beta, post in the class feedback forums (constructively). If you’re not in beta, tweet Celestalon your ideas or suggestions. Post on the MMO-C hunter or official forums. Get involved!
You can probably guess what was coming next. Yep, it’s armchair designer time! That means, throw out all your ideas, regardless of how unrealistic or short-sighted they might be, because maybe they’ll actually spark a good idea!
Here are 3 imaginary survival spec cooldown buttons I came up with (one thing to keep in mind if you didn’t see it yet, but LnL can stack up to 5 charges now):
- Loaded for Bear: Consumes all of your Lock and Load charges, causing your next Explosive Shot to deal the combined damage of all consumed charges to the primary target and to all targets within 8 yards
- Needs a mini mushroom cloud graphic for full effect.
- Locked and Loaded: Instantly adds 5 Lock and Load charges.
- I’m sure you can picture the sound effect for this one!
- Fast-Acting Venom: For the next 15 seconds, your newly applied damage over time effects expire 300% faster. 1.5 minute cooldown
- Imminent Doom (passive): Targets below 20% health suffer from your damage over time effects at 3 times the normal rate.
- Similar to Mamba Bite above, a passive execute that makes everything tick much faster.
The other option is to just have a “You do more damage for 15 seconds” cooldown. Easier to balance, I guess.
I can get down with the idea of survival being a sustained damage spec, but I still think there’s an inherent disadvantage to not have a baseline cooldown when the other two specs have one. BM gets Bestial Wrath and MM gets the Rapid Fire + Careful Aim combo. They also have Kill Shot! Which now works at 35% health! One could argue they are trying to push for survival to be the PvP spec of choice, and are therefore avoiding any crazy sources of burst damage. Flat-line damage is boring though. It also has the side effect of making the spec perhaps a little too simple to play.
After the marksmanship mastery change from the last build, nothing could really surprise me at this point.
Happy Fourth of July to my American readers out there. 🙂
I could see Survival having something like this:
Fast-Acting Poisons
When activated, all abilities which normally deal periodic damage will instead deal their full damage instantly. In addition, using Black Arrow will automatically generate 5 charges of Lock ‘n’ Load. 15 second duration. 3 minute cooldown.
That would give on-demand burst as well as make your priority BA>AS/MS>>CS for the duration, followed by 5x ES to bleed the charges. That addresses another complaint – that Survival just does the same thing for 6 minutes every boss, while BM/MM change their rotations based on boss HP, cooldowns, or procs.
“The BIG one”- your next exsplosive shot will deal increased damage based on your multistrike and crit chance (lower CD to keep in line with survival’s sustained damage, but give it access to burst).
“Spray and Pray”- All abilities that cost focus are free for 12 seconds
I really like the loaded for bear idea.
“Burn with Fire”, a stacking debuff from explosive shots that lasts longer and does more damage per tick that normal explosive shot ticks plus shorter CD. The targeted mob would have a burning animation.