Hi! I am a returning player, havent played much since beginning of DF.
I am between Survival Hunter and Ret Paladin.
When I use to main Survival Hunter back in Legion, I was constantly getting told to change specs because its a bad spec. I even got kicked from a couple LFR raids because I wouldnt change. Its really the only Hunter spec that I enjoy playing. Do people still refuse to party up with Survival Hunters?
Ret Paladin I like because I am a sucker for those type of classes. Love everything about the spec other than the horse gap closer. I wish there was something better, like Warriors leap or Survivals Harpoon
Ret paladin with speed enchants
Survival is actually really strong and fun right now. Unfortunately BM is a little bit better so nobody plays survival. If you like survival you should play it.
2 Likes
given its not hard to level or even gear/ prepare an alt, i’d just go with the one you enjoy playing the most. then level and gear the other once you feel your progression has slowed down for the week so you can have multiple options for play at any given time.
i recently had my Monk geared up to about 439 ilvl within about 8 hours spent at max lvl.
Play ret, dont play hunter
1 Like
Anyone who kicks you out of LFR for playing the wrong spec is doing you a huge favor, by saving you from having to spend time in their miserable company. They’re the ones who are going to spend the whole raid whining and blaming and throwing screaming temper tantrums. Play what’s fun, that’s what you’ll be best at anyway.
I haven’t played much Survival this expansion, but it feels a little awkward to me, compared to SL at least. But it seems to do good DPS pretty easily, and harpooning around is never not fun.
2 Likes
Play anything but sin rogue. You’re welcome.
Right now, I would say Ret. Its talent re-word really made the spec more fun to play. Granted it isnt pulling the best numbers in the 99th percentile of mythic raiding, but by and large Ret is really good.
Survival hunter is in a different spot. I myself like survival hunter too. But it drastically suffers from identity and tier reliance. Still, currently, there isnt a cohesive vision or identity for the spec. With its mastery only effecting certain abilities and generally being a poor stat. There are interesting talents and builds, but again, there isnt really a good identity to the spec.
Groups will shy away in top end from Survival Hunters, but that is just because other melee specs, do what survival does, but they do it better and have better survivability and utility. And the game is a little melee heavy.
The other Problem is that pretty consistently out of the three hunter specs, one or both of the ranged specs outperform survival.
If you play survival well and enjoy it, and are not pushing the highest of the high difficulty, you will be fine. And the same goes for Ret.
But all it could take is a Survival Re-work and it could be an amazing spec.
They made the ret Paladin horsey closer stronger than before. It lasts longer if you spec into it
I think which one you chose comes down to this: do you want utility to help your group?
Ret pally has way more utility than hunters do, I love survival hunter but it’s the lack of utility to help my group in tough spots that has me not really playing my hunter. That’s of course not to say hunter has no utility but throwing down freezing trap in niche situations as well as throwing a Hunter’s Mark where I can versus off-healing, cleansing, freeing people from roots, bubbling to get rid of hazards (the giant mushrooms from the keepers in DHT for example) isn’t really comparable.
Of course, if you have the time you can always gear both. My ret pally is my ‘main alt.’ 