Beta Classes: Ghostcrawler Explains Changes to Survival

Blizzard is asking for feedback on class balance and answering theorycrafting questions. This article continues our coverage of hunter-related discussions in the thread. You’ll find all of the official posts regarding hunters in MoP in the WHH MoP Hunter Guide.

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Ghostcrawler: Some updates on other recent changes:

Survival Hunter

We wanted to make Explosive Shot more powerful than other shots, such as Arcane. To do so, we shifted some damage from their DoTs:

• Increased the damage of Explosive Shot by 20%.
• Reduced the damage of Black Arrow by 25%.
• Improved Serpent Sting now increases the damage of Serpent Sting by 50%, down from 100%. [link]

Kennyloggins: Surely this wasn’t the sole reason for deciding to nerf Serpent Sting? Personally, I was quite enjoying hunters having something that actually resembled a dot, rather than what serpent sting was and now continues to be: something you only use once per fight (except when target switching). I’m just curious if that’s your design intent, and whether having some form of multidotting utility was seen as overpowered. [link]

Ghostcrawler: No, we actually like Survival getting a bit of the multi-dot style. This change shouldn’t invalidate that. [link]

Zeherah: Was it also intended that this change bring down SV’s AoE damage? I’m not sure how we were doing at 90 AoEwise, but this definitely has a significant impact. […] [link]

Ghostcrawler: There was also a recent bugfix which significantly increased Survival’s AoE damage. The instant damage from Improved Serpent Sting would not be dealt if there was already a Serpent Sting on the target that was greater than 15 sec long. This meant that during AoE, when casting Multishot repeatedly, only some of them would trigger the Improved Serpent Sting damage. We fixed that, which also of course increased their AoE damage significantly. The nerf to Improved Serpent Sting and this bugfix offset each other. [link]

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