MAKING IT RANGE IS NOT THE OPTION. You may want it, but we are working with what we have now.
Now let’s talk Survival Hunter! The forgotten spec of Shadowlands…
SL is almost over it is still feels overshadowed by the other 2 specs significantly and is underperforming against other melee specs. However, Survival still has positives that are over looked compared to it downsides:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Very high burst AoE damage | Hectic AoE rotation |
| High single-target DPS | You will never find a room for two Survival Hunters in a Raid party |
| Amazing mobility for a melee class | Mediocre defenses compared to other melee classes |
| Easy and powerful single-target rotation | |
| Decent crowd-control |
Below I’m going to split this into 2 segments- PVP & PVE and open up some changes that can fix the most fun yet most underrepresented class in the game.
PVP
Simple… revert the revive pet nerf or at least give us a 3min instant revive pet like Warlocks have. It feels horrible to play in its current state. Imagine if killing a UH DK pet removed their ability to generate Runes and Runic Power entirely and had a 4 second cast for pet just so their spec can function again. As a ranged spec this might not be so bad but as a melee that’s just really poor spec design in my humble opinion.
Damage boost to single target would be nice too given that we have arguably the lowest single target damage in the game.
Give it a talent that increases the duration of Aspect of the Eagle not by a crazy amount just for when there is more than enemy you have some more wiggle room to get around them before they all mob on you. If not let Aspect of the Turtle be cast even while under the effects of most crowd control effects (Polymorph, Fear, etc) and acts as a universal “cleanse” removing nearly all debuffs, or just give it Mimiron’s Shell.
PVE
Survival is quite decent, if not good, in M+ since it has uncapped AoE on top of being a melee-ranged hybrid, then less affected by anti melee mechanics. Its main problem is ST damage; even though it was buffed in 9.1, and competing for the same spot with the ranged hunters with almost no change in utility except for a shorter cd interrupt, which means if you need a hunter you will most likely bring a bm/mm.
Just look at every dps spec & M+ tier lists online and again no surprise to see SV Hunter is bottom. It’s clear to see Survival is in a rough place and has been for a long time even during BFA. As an absolute minimum, if you Blizzard are not prepared to improve the class design due to resources and trying to balance all these borrowed power systems you’ve implemented (I get it) despite so, so, many positive changes that could be made to Survival Hunter, at very least a number tuning buff is absolutely essential to revive this class to a playable spec in PVE.
You can spec AOE with talents and do moderate but not overpowered AOE and you sacrifice all single target damage to achieve this. You can spec single target and still be massively underperforming in both single target and AOE. As a melee / range hybrid spec we suffer from the ‘Melee tax’ so why would you bring a melee Hunter when it brings quiet literally nothing that the other 2 range specs provide including the most important part… Damage! Then there is the other side of the coin it becomes downed out in a sea of other melee spec options that also have other utility attached to them. Look at Enh shaman they have Totems, or Rogues with their range of CC, so why can’t Survival have a small unique selling point?
What does this do to the player experience for a SV player? Survival has issues with being invited into groups, or invited and removed from groups because they showed up as Survival and not MM/BM. It’s the unfortunate reality that the general player base still sees SV as the noob/ joke class.
So… How do we fix this? Well Surprisingly easy…
- The Quick Fix
Just pump the numbers up!! Very little work needs to go into this. Fury Warriors during PTR got a 10% blanket Damage buff and another 5% is on its way I read. I’m not saying this is the answer for Survival but as a bare minimum make Survival competitive with their damage. This will also compensate for the 2 hour (4 second) cast on revive pet which is a massive damage hinderance to us if the pet dies which they do because you also made them squishy for some reason as if the pet revive wasn’t bad enough… Coupled up with low damage, no group specific utility not to mention the Melee Tax it’s tough for other people to accept a SV Hunter in their M+ or raid groups.
- Do a proper job!
As the forgotten class in Shadowlands it’s not too late in my opinion to fix them. The following are some suggestions but really the options are endless it just depends on how committed the developers are when trying to balance the game and a class you designed be relevant to the game.
Some of my personal suggestions;
Gorilla tactics - make baseline.
Absolutely no reason why this cannot happen. If you don’t take GT talent you may as well not have bombs in your tool kit as they do zero damage. There is no choice in this row if it stays as it currently is.
Mongoose bite - make baseline
It is the staple ability for Survival. As soon as haste level increases with gear it will be the mandatory talent to use just like it was through all of BFA. Replace talent with something that further buffs mongoose single target for example increasing the mongoose bite window or make mongoose bite stacks leave a bleed which will synergize well with blood seeker talent. This could also solve the low single target damage that we are suffering from.
Survival specific party utility
As a Survival Hunter you bring absolutely nothing to the table in terms of buffing your party that MM & BM have. This would be the perfect opportunity to give Survival a unique selling point when being invited to Raid or M+. Doesn’t have to be game breaking but something! Could be a % increase to max health passive similar to Monks and DH. Could be combat health regeneration similar to what we have with our pet. Could be a damage alternative, but just give us something that gives people a reason to bring a Survival Hunter!
Give Survival the option to go dual wield (my personal fav)
Like Death knights obliterate (2hand) build vs breath spec (duel-wield) build for Survival you could have.
2h Birds of Prey Mongoose Bite build vs dual wield Wild Fire Bomb build.
For example- Whilst wielding a 2h your mongoose bite damage is increased by 5% stacking (for example) again this would help our single target damage.
And
Whilst dual wielding your spells and abilities have a chance to reduce the cooldown of your bomb by 1 second.
Obviously, the numbers can be tuned but the play style is what I’m getting at here. You have successfully done this with frost DK and other classes why not Survival Hunter? Not to mention the lore of being DW Hunter like REXXAR! Survival is a true melee hunter spec and dual wield add some class identity and some variation to the spec.
I know many survival hunters have many more positive suggestions to make us viable and exciting to play and if your one of these people reading this and haven’t fallen asleep yet then please provide some additional suggestions for Blizzard to make this forgotten class of SL exciting to play and viable.
I’m no pro but by making these changes I’m confident it would make a massive improvement to a class that is so fun yet massively overlooked as this is the most underrepresented spec in the game and for many understandable reasons as mentioned above.
Thank you again for reading and I hope Blizzard does take action as it really is needed.