How to Improve Survival Hunters?

Community General Discussion
22

Here are things I would like to see as someone who has like 3 survival hunters currently (mostly cause of the mail collecting from shadowlands).

  1. Pets - ability to choose there spec again. We often want ferocity pets for lust and the leech in solo content. Would be nice to spec any pet species again. I miss my crab with a shank and other pets that don’t get used in my play sessions. Scale hides are just good for being multi spec.

  2. Duel wielding stance balancing. Would be nice to have an option to duel wield. A daggers stance would also be nice for the ranger themes and gameplay.

  3. Adjustments to mastery. Would be nice if it increased magical damage of your abilities. And gave you cooldown reduction for aspect of the eagle.

  4. Polearm/2handed weapon perk of increasing ranged abilities melee range. Usually pole arms in games give you enhanced range. It’s weird to have the same melee range as rogues. 2h weapons tend to come with increased range.

  5. Let us use the ranged slot as a cosmetic option for ranged abilities. This would be nice for animations like serpent sting. And maybe incorporate some new ranged abilities. Would be nice to switch to other weapons as needed as hunters would do.

  6. Bring back explosive shot - give us a bazooka animation for it!!!

  7. Some talents should be baseline or some changes needed. LIke the bombs build would be nice baseline for aoe fun gameplay. Stuff like green bomb should apply serpent sting dot if the target doesn’t have it already for maybe like 6-9 seconds. And reapply serpent sting if it’s already on the target to its full duration.

  8. Would be nice to have a specialized ability that changes based on weapons you choose to use. For example daggers do something daggery. Spear would do something like a dragoon. Swords can do a nice combo. The numbers can be the same just switch the animations up.

1 Like
23

DPS Rankings in Shadowlands Season 2 - Mythic Sanctum of Domination Weeks of February 1st and February 8th

Position Spec and Class Population Size
1 Balance Druid 32517
2 Fury Warrior 10892
3 Assassination Rogue 11634
4 Havoc Demon Hunter 29119
5 Subtlety Rogue 12014
6 Arms Warrior 23062
7 Outlaw Rogue 2781
8 Windwalker Monk 10546
9 Fire Mage 15951
10 Frost Mage 19387
11 Elemental Shaman 7776
12 Arcane Mage 4802
13 Frost Death Knight 4485
14 Retribution Paladin 9345
15 Demonology Warlock 17746
16 Feral Druid 4496
17 Survival Hunter 2162
18 Shadow Priest 19339
19 Affliction Warlock 2754
20 Marksmanship Hunter 11772
21 Unholy Death Knight 11189
22 Beast Mastery Hunter 31960
23 Destruction Warlock 10994
24 Enhancement Shaman 11245

Bosses will only be included in the aggregated data below after 50 public kills of that boss have been logged.

Spec Score Max Parses
Balance 80.30 122.12 32,427
Beast Mastery 74.82 103.97 31,872
Demon Hunter 80.79 106.90 28,988
Arms 79.89 109.51 23,021
Frost 75.47 109.03 19,245
Shadow 75.36 100.88 19,221
Demonology 75.55 113.13 17,822
Fire 76.61 112.15 15,899
Subtlety 81.17 106.59 11,996
Marksmanship 74.17 99.79 11,625
Assassination 82.16 112.11 11,593
Enhancement 71.35 91.88 11,192
Unholy 73.98 98.97 11,127
Destruction 71.75 97.32 10,928
Fury 79.64 109.53 10,791
Windwalker 77.69 109.92 10,461
Retribution 75.49 100.29 9,300
Elemental 75.88 104.85 7,744
Arcane 75.86 99.78 4,778
Feral 76.41 97.88 4,446
Frost 75.58 97.94 4,443
Outlaw 80.73 101.90 2,791
Affliction 73.00 98.36 2,752
Survival 73.98 93.18 2,147

Survival can out preform both BM/MM in DPS yet it is still miles behind in popularity all the way at the very bottom. It been 5 years since Survival Melee version was introduced something is missing to encourage more players into playing it.

2 Likes
24

Put it back to being what it originally was, a ranged class expert with traps and initially great in pvp.

3 Likes
25

Survival is easily the 2nd or 3rd most difficult melee spec to play and doesn’t offer anything useful, utility wise, that a BM or MM hunter also can’t offer while also providing the advantage of being range and avoiding the “melee tax”. If the best thing your spec can offer is “can interrupt more frequently than my other spec and I’ll be either good at trash or bosses but not both and I have a super high skill cap so I am far more susceptible to mistakes that is going to tank my DPS on top of being melee which is already a harder role to pull off in a mythic+ than range and I’m competing against a literal glut of other melee players” isn’t going to nab you too many invites.

Add on the stigma where if you aren’t the best, you’re the worst this community eternally suffers from and the inherent bias people have losing their “beloved” spec and punishing people who like the better version and you just got a recipe for failure.

1 Like
26

3 Likes
27

I have a crazy idea.

Make Survival as a Tank Role Spec.

… Since nobody rolls or invites a hunter as a Melee Deeps.

Of course, the statement above is a hyperbole.
28

Just make it a spearthrower spec. Change the last couple of melee abilities to throw their spear instead of stabbing.

29

Dead horse abuse incoming. Revert all the changes back to cata surv. Tune numbers to fit today. Tada fixed surv.

3 Likes
30

This what Ion Hazzikostas said about Survival switching back to a range spec during an interview :

Question: The Hunter community is still split on the issue of the melee spec even two expansions after its introduction. With your new stance of “class over spec” and more ranged abilities returning to the class, what does it mean for Survival in the long term?

Ion Hazzikostas:

"That’s a good question. I think part of what led Survival to a melee space to begin with was trying to differentiate Survival from Marksmanship. The rotations over the years had become very very similar — OK you might have a couple more magical-seeming shots in the Survival space. Beast Mastery was very clearly its own thing with its clear niche as the pet-based spec. But then you had these two ranged specs that basically did a lot of ranged shots in their rotation.

Some of that is actually fallout from the shift that we did in Cataclysm going into Mists. We moved from the old-school talent trees that could probably better support types of play styles and utility without having to build a whole spec around them. Having a tree like Survival that was about traps and utility and a little bit of melee stuff in there — that worked when it was something that you could put points into as a broader class initiative. But then turning it into its own spec ultimately led us down a path of duplicating a lot of Mark’s abilities.

We want to keep melee as part of the unique identity of Survival but in Shadowlands and beyond, as we start to think about what classes should look like in future expansions, it’s important that there will be this sort of universal base of what defines a Hunter. All Hunters should have access to ranged attacks and Survival Hunters can be ones that specialize in melee but not necessarily at the expense of the universal skillset that everyone had as a level 5 or level 10 Hunter because that’s what being the class means."

You lost a spec, that’s sucks, and you want it to return, sure you and more, but the likelihood of that is as close as Survival becoming a Tank spec. Also which version as there’s a division in those that want MoP and those who want Cata.

I’m focusing on what there is now and not maybe some day. I’ve noticed both in terms of the community and browsing these websites since the Survival Hunter change is that the class is both under-played and under-powered. I used to believe it was because of the drastic changes to the class, making it unappealing to many. Most responses in chat regarding the class consist of comments that trash on the class, with many others feeling almost prejudiced just for playing it. Most topics regarding Survival Hunter seem toxic, something you’d want to stay away from. I originally believed this stigma came from the community rejecting Blizzard’s changes to the class. Now, years past, I believe it is in fact Blizzard that is causing the stigma.

Blizzard just seems to be embarrassed of their rework, and actively attempts to brush it under the rug. At the end of the day it just doesn’t make sense to me to drastically change a class like this, hype it up so much (e.g. the Legion legendary weapon reveal, legion reveal etc.), and then basically forget about it. I really do think Blizzard itself is at the root of the Survival Hunter Stigma, does anyone else agree? Is there a good reason the class shouldn’t be still worked on?

31

I find it much easier to play survival in m+ than any other melee I’ve played this season (frost, unholy, arms, and ww). While WW is cheese, hitting spinning crane kick and bone dust for hours on end absolutely ruins the good feel of WW kit, anyways… SV has a lot of flexibility, should do more overall than BM, doesn’t have to have pet macro/summons for lust like mm, and being a melee hybrid and full range temporarily make it fantastic for dealing with mechanics and keeping solid uptime.

Either way, SV could definitely use some better single target damage. I also like the idea of making Mongoose Bite baseline, solid feeling gameplay loop and priority decisions to be made when running the kill command conduit vs # of targets etc… priority choice making seems far more important as SV than most melee.

1 Like
32

Arcstrider hunters maybe borrow some inspiration

33

Keep pet and base the class off ff14 dragoon. Only make it fit into wow so don’t copy completely. Give us the jump attacks and one combo as a rotation.

34

Dragoons have some nice abilities jump seems iconic

One of my favorite dragoons.

35

Yup and it would be fun. Ffx14 dragoon is slow and the animation isnt right is lags or something. So I wouldn’t want a direct copy. Since surv hunter uses a spear might be neat to look into something like that.

Wows combat system is smooth it would make that play style awesome.

36

I wouldn’t mind it also getting a weaponmaster sort of feel either. Can add stuff like throwing axes, duel wielding stances, bazooka for explosive shot, a shot gun ability, chakrams like death chakrams baseline.

37

That would be awesome as well.

38

Nothing wrong with SV hunters, in fact they do better than some other classes, you just need to know how to play them. I’ve had my BM hunter beaten on DPS in M+ against an SV hunter, and I am by no means a bad hunter either. In fact it was quite surprising to see just how well they were doing.

39

Spearthrowers are already a core part of Warcraft. It’s really surprising that they haven’t represented them in a class yet.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Headhunter

40

Throwing this in cause Gilgamesh says something funny on p2 that relates to sv going melee xD.

Also Noel’s Meteor Javelin is cool at the end.

41

Let BM be ranged or melee depending on the equipped weapon.

Bring back RSV and re-skin it as a dark ranger.

The spec already had black arrow and Dark Rangers are part of the hunter class.

2 Likes