Blizzard spent some time reworking the talent trees just to knee jerk nerf the class because of a gimmick burst in the early season. Then they did some work to make pack leader be more viable, but it is still weak. The spec is clearly behind by a lot, it’s absurd that they can’t see it.
Defense is lacking and the burst windows are not strong enough. Fix the spec please.
Can confirm. Anecdotally, Survival feels really weak compared to last season and other classes I’ve played.
I don’t know exactly what it is but survivability is non existent and damage feels like it just tickles. It needs to be looked at and not ignored.
I think dmg is not terrible, but we need to spend an excessive amount of globals to do good dps. The nerfs to spearhead/flaking strike were really bad for us. Fury of the Eagle is a joke of an ability. Making the Butchery and Flaking strike mutually exclusive was another HORRIBLE idea nobody asked for. On the other hand, MM hunters, ele shamans and subs rogues run can kill you in few seconds.
It does seem like Survival requires too many gcds to do any real damage and it is also frustrating when hunter is always expected to D the base/flag in bgb but then don’t have adequate defensives or healing to deal with rogue’s insane CC and burst. Im sure someone will chime in it’s a l2p issue but that’s been my experience on Survival anyway.
That is another. Hunter’s defense of the bases is a horrible idea. Our defensive kit has improved a lot, but not to the degree that we are the best defending nodes.
It really is a sad state when SV , the spec that is supposed to maintain melee range for a good portion of its time, can not stand toe to toe with any melee. The defenses of BM and Marks actually feel stronger at times.
The 4 set proc is too random, the damage is nice but it is not on-damand. I do agree that it takes SV 5 or 6 globals to produce damage that other specs/classes can do in 3. Blizzard has the ability to tune things separately from pve to pvp yet things just linger in terrible states.
I am not asking for this spec to be S tier, I’m asking for it to be “equal” tier. Tier lists for pvp shouldn’t exist anyway.
Clearly very few people choose SV for pvp, because it is clearly behind.
I mean the spec is strong right now.
The problem is just that sv can’t do anything vs the melee train meta atm. You simply die ev en when outplaying, and if you mess up a go you’re behind by about a minute.
Hunter in GENERAL is just in a bad state for PVP atm, not survival specifically. Every spec has its niche, but their niche is just filled better by other classes/specs with less skill requirement and more defensive capabilities.
Agreed here. Hunter needs a modern rework of the mechanics for utility and survivability. They only rework the dps rotations.
Hunter doesn’t need a rework of any mechanic for PVP. What it needs is for PVP to not be as mongo as it is right now. The meta specs simply do too much into it.
Ex. I was playing around 25mmr 3s on my sv. I pre feign a sub rmp go, so in theory their go should already be dead. After my feign drops I’m still required to trinket because the rogue secret techs me for 60% of my health, so now I trniket + wall + exhil + ros myself, and my healer ns’s me to full. I still die through all of that in a half dr cheap shot from the rogue.
When the damage can ignore a majority of defensive CDs + outplay, then there’s a very serious issue. The defensives are strong on paper, hunter having 2 walls is very good, but the meta specs can straight up ignore your CDs and that is the issue.
What you just described is basically the topic. The 3% while close to your pet is straight up bullsh . 3% more on terrible is still terrible. And if it isn’t a rogue doing it, it’s “insert all other superior classes” or as the lingo goes, the meta specs.
And again, we had something that could take 60% health away just like you described and the cryers cried and got it nerfed. Nerfed in to terrible. So they left the “glass” and took away the “cannon “ .
Some make arguments that SV has decent damage, they do buttttt, it is not equal to the meta for PvP, especially when you are taking the dirt nap because you are a “glass average pea shooter “.
I mean you literally have eagle if you need to do damage from ranged, and considering most of your stuff can be done by ranged effectively, it’s doing the same. The BIG problem with SV right now is you’re required to play a heavy haste/mastery build to get optimal globals & damage out, which leaves you low vers. Stats need to be homogenized for SV atm if the meta continues in its way.
If you honestly thought that the speartip flanking strike one shot was okay, idk what to tell you. It was a lot of things for little reward and things like that ISN’T okay.
SV does the highest DPS out of any spec atm. You, on average, do about 250k-280k more DPS than any other spec in the game if you’re able to do your rotation. The problem with SV is the defensive issue (which all 3 hunter specs suffer from atm), and that your burst takes far more time than almost every spec in the game atm.
Single target in PVP you do around 950k DPS.
2 target you do about 1.2M DPS.
Damage isn’t the issue, the globals and defensives are the issue, which conveniently enough, are the same issues in PVE.
Please go read the first post. In the last statement, I ALREADY SAID THE SAME THING YOU JUST SAID.
“Defense is lacking and the burst window isn’t strong enough”
I also already stated that the one shot burst WAS A GIMMICK, I didn’t say it was ok. I was trying to elude to the fact that they knee jerked and nerfed too much trying to change it.
An Ele Shaman, with little to no gear has a burst that exceeds the early season mastery pumping gimmick that SV had, and they haven’t touched it. And yes, I would hate it if they broke the spec trying to change it.
At the end of the day, the fact that very few people play SV in PvP is UNDENIABLE. That fact is unquestioned evidence that the spec is lacking.
It wasn’t a knee jerk, they nerfed it because the ability to 100-0 someone isn’t okay. That’s called proper tuning.
A slap on the wrist nerf to crit modifiers doesn’t kill the ability, you can still play it over fury. A slap on the wrist nerf to flanking strike didn’t kill the ability, you still play it AND use it for burst windows, and it still hits incredibly hard especially in assault windows.
This is such an extreme example to compare it to. Ele has so many more issues going on with it that it’s completely unfair to compare ANYONE to ele atm. Ele is the king of dampening, it has unmatched durability (always has), and it’s whole core rotation of flame shock > LB being instants while weaving in purge globals, frost shocks, and other utility is a bad gameplay loop. If you gave anything similar to any other spec in the game then suddenly it’s a fundamental issue.
Ele itself being allowed to do what it does shows that Blizzard has its extremes that they believe is okay, and hunter, especially survival, being how it is shows the extremes in the complete opposite direction.
But it’s not. The spec has so much that allows it to be viable, the problem comes entirely from the garbage stat prio. Being hard forced into 10% vers to be able to do optimal damage because the haste scaling and mastery scaling is so poor makes it an unreliable spec. SV has a fundamental issue, and if they decided to do an ele 2.0 to it, then SV would become what it was in Legion/BFA where it was an unkillable demon that had no counters, and countered EVERYTHING because it did too much for too little.
The reliance on an RNG proc from 4p to create optimal burst, while having it happen during stacked mongoose windows also hinders the spec. It’s juggling too many variables atm. It’s a strong spec, it just relies way too heavily on its team atm, which is comparable to a lot of the wizards in the game right now that aren’t ele/mage. It suffers from the exact same problems that spri does, which is where it has the highest damage in the game, but gets run over if 4-5 specs are on the other side of the arena AND you don’t have 1 or 2 specific ones on your side. It’s not like Kasuxoxo isn’t going to get r1 this season playing SV Jungle or Bicmex won’t get r1 playing thug, they’ll still get it, but they’re just going to end up losing game rn because the low vers problem makes them a viable kill target, and the glass cannon damage sometimes just won’t happen.
Another issue is tip the spear. The entire spec is balanced around tip. Throwing non damage skills constantly to buff damage skills is terrible gameplay.
So since it’s balanced for this, our damage is just 15% lower because you don’t do this in pvp. Too many globals and can’t use it during burst windows. It’s just a terrible concept.
Cutting a burst in half because it takes people from 100 to 20 is not proper tuning. It’s like if you fall off a bike you decide to never go on a ride again. A nerf was warranted. Proper tuning? You don’t play it so you don’t care long as you don’t get owned is my guess. Where’s the proper tuning of rets pally flooding games right now, bursting you from 100 to 0 in one rotation if you don’t bubble? We could go on and on.
But it’s not. The spec has so much that allows it to be viable, the problem comes…
Lmao. You retort to my statement that the spec is lacking with “But it’s not” and then go on to say “the problem blah blah blah” So which is it? The spec is not lacking and there is 0no problem or the spec is lacking, and the problem comes from something?