wow Survival Hunter Changes and Explanations on the War Within Beta: June 26th

[Staff 1,488]

We have more adjustments to Survival Hunters in this week's War Within Beta build. Blizzard respond to player feedback on changes made on the Beta so far, as they're reverting last week's change to Flanking Strike and comment they might have more changes for it later on. Mongoose Bite and Mongoose Fury are also being reverted, as the team look for better solutions.

Survival (Source)

Hello Survival Hunters!

We’ve been reading your feedback regarding the recent changes to Mongoose Bite, Mongoose Fury, and Flanking Strike and want to provide an update regarding those changes.

One of our goals with the Survival Hunter spec tree update was to better define niches for each of Survival’s tandem pet-and-hunter attack abilities. Since then, we’ve made changes to Coordinated Assault and Spearhead to better define their use cases as well as the narrative sell of their effects, and last week we felt that it was Flanking Strike’s turn for an update.

We don’t feel that our previous iteration of Flanking Strike fits perfectly within Survival’s kit, but given your feedback, we also don’t think that it being an occasional replacement for Kill Command is a better direction. We plan on reverting Flanking Strike to its previous iteration, where it will remain a separate ability that doubly benefits from Tip of the Spear. We’ll put more thought into Flanking Strike’s place in Survival’s kit in the meantime, but we don’t expect to have a new iteration on this ability’s direction any time soon.

Similarly, we don’t love how Mongoose Fury and Tip of the Spear can pull you in a separate direction rotationally (as previously stated). It’s clear that this new direction for Mongoose Bite invalidates an iconic part of the Survival Hunter experience. For now, we plan to return Mongoose Bite and Mongoose Fury to their previous iterations. We’ll spend time finding a more elegant way to meld the two rotational styles that simultaneously preserves their gameplay.

That’s all for today. We appreciate your continued feedback! Thank you!

And here are the tuning changes for Hunters in general and Survial specifically, from the development notes:

Tuning (Source)

HUNTER

• New Talent: Blackrock Munitions – The damage of Explosive Shot is increased by 8%.
• New Talent: Implosive Trap – Hurls a fire trap to the target location that explodes when an enemy approaches, causing Fire damage and knocking all enemies up. Limit 1. Choice node with High Explosive Trap.
• Territorial Instincts has been redesigned – Casting Intimidation without an active pet summons one from your stable.
• Talent nodes in Gate 2 have been repositioned.
• Concussive Shot and Wilderness Medicine now connect to Scare Beast and Scout’s Instinct respectively.
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Steel Trap
  • Death Chakram
    • Developer’s note: One of the biggest complaints we’re seeing in the Hunter community is button bloat. Death Chakram was a relatively high-frequency button that you had to click before all of your damage abilities, creating something of a launch sequence for every Hunter specialization. Its removal will let us bake the lost power into each spec’s kit while also reducing the button-presses required before you can begin damage.

Survival

• Sic’ Em has been redesigned – Kill Command has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Kill Shot, make it usable on targets regardless of Health, and strike up to 2 additional targets. This chance is doubled during Coordinated Assault.
• Coordinated Assault initial damage increased by 60%.
• Coordinated Assault has been redesigned – You and your pet charge your enemy, striking them for combined Physical damage. You and your pet’s bond is then strengthened for 20 seconds, causing you and your pet to deal 20% increased damage. While Coordinated Assault is active, Kill Command’s chance to reset its cooldown is increased by 15%.
  • Developer’s note: Coordinated Assault’s previous iterations have been disproportionately complex relative to its output. Our goal with these changes is to simplify Coordinated Assault’s effects, increase the power gain from Coordinated Assault, and disjoint it from Kill Shot so that you can opt-in to Kill Shot bonuses as you see fit. We also believe that the increased Kill Command reset chance will be more broadly appealing with the new talents introduced in the Survival update.
• Symbiotic Adrenaline has been updated – Additionally causes Coordinated Assault to grant 3 stacks of Tip of the Spear.
• Quick Shot has been updated – Now has a 30% chance to fire an Arcane Shot when you cast Kill Command (was when Kill Command reset).
• Butchery damage increased by 100%.
• Flanking Strike now replaces Kill Command after casting Kill Command 3 times.
• Flanking Strike range increased to 25 yards (Medium-Short range).
• Flanking Strike no longer benefits from Tip of the Spear and now generates 15 Focus.
• Flanker’s Advantage no longer grants additional reset chance based on your critical strike.
  • This effect also had a bug that was causing you to roll for Kill Command resets twice per cast of Kill Command, which was creating substantially increased Kill Command resets.
• Mongoose Fury now refreshes its duration when a new stack is applied.
• Mongoose Fury max stacks reduced to 3 (was 5).
• Mongoose Fury duration reduced to 10 seconds .
  • Developer’s note: The previous design of Mongoose Fury was rewarding you for pressing nothing but Mongoose Bite in your damage window while the new Tip of the Spear is asking you to weave in Kill Commands. These two designs were pulling your rotation in two separate directions, and these adjustments should help to harmonize these two mechanics.
• Wildfire Infusion’s Kill Command reset chance reduced to 10% (was 15%).
• Wildfire Infusion’s Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduction reduced to 0.5 seconds (was 1 second).
  • Developer’s note - We’re still making adjustments to Survival’s action economy and reducing how crowded the rotation feels. Part of this is reducing the increased access of Wildfire Bomb from the various spec tree changes we’ve made, particularly through Wildfire Infusion.
• Many effects that were consuming multiple stacks of Tip of the Spear have been fixed.
• Spearhead now only makes your pet charge.
• Spearhead description updated.
• Spearhead visuals and sound effects updated.