Would it be worth the time to spec just 19 points into survival just to get Surefooted/Survivalist 3% hit chance and 10% health increase. From the research I’ve done hit isn’t on a lot of items at max level. but I’ve heard survival is bad. just looking at these two talents makes me really tempted to spec into survival whats your opinion?
Hit stat on items
Survival isn’t bad at all as of patch 1.12. You should put as many points in it as you want. And in general, you should take talents that look fun to you, not try to squeeze every bit of damage out of your build. Even if you’re actually one of the 2% or so who will actually down a Naxxramas boss, you shouldn’t be basing your playstyle on that at level 10.
1 Like
When you hear “Survival is bad” people are thinking of pre-1.7 talent changes. My hunter was already 60 when 1.7 hit so I don’t know how it is for leveling, but it was fine at end game. Marks is a bit better until later tiers of raiding, but Surv is good for DPS and the lower half of the tree is great for PvP.
Also, there is plenty of +hit gear later on. You just have to fight Rogues and Warriors for it.
I played a hunter back in vanilla (very early days). I remember after the hunter respec i was about 10th on dps chart (playing mainly mm talents) after i went a hybrid talent spec that works for pvp and pve. I went up to top 3 on dps through bwl with the change. Think i ended up doing a 5/23/23 build or something similar to that. You gear for 6% hit (from gear) then focus on crit on all your other pieces and you actually dont do bad dps.
Marks was top dps in vanilla until something like 400agi, there was a threshold, but I don’t remember exactly what it was, then 0/21/40 edged it out on raids if, and only if, your group wouldn’t benefit from TSA/already had a Marks hunter.
This became further complicated when they nerfed hunters to 1ap/agi and when they started itemizing mail dps gear to have AP instead of AGI to appease enhancement shamans.
Personally, I was never a fan of the survival tree pre or post revamp. Pre 1.7, it was completely useless. The only redeemable talent was improved freezing trap. Post 1.7, it just felt like Marksmanship-light.
Youll need that hit %/chance for a while until you hit cap with gear.
Survival is pretty much complete complete garbage outside of some extremenely niche builds at very high agility levels(400 or something, was it).
And yes, Survival could use some changes, not only is it identical to Marksmanship but fantasy-wise, it was actually a complete melee spec before the 1.7.0 talent rework.
Since Survival has no unique gameplay currently it would make perfect sense to rework it back into the melee.
Here’s my idea; combine the old Hunter talents with some of the new DPS steroids, and in general, modernize the old Survival tree so it’s at least unique and not this homogenized garbage it became after 1.7.0.
Um… where is all this Survival hate coming from? Vanilla Survival remains my favorite iteration of hunter. 0/21/30 was the best of times, cannot go wrong with agility stacking.
Sure, if you’re a bleeding edge raider in a server first guild there are other builds for min/maxing, but be honest… how many of us were or plan to be on that level? I geared myself through PvP, first blues and then purples. The survival tree gets you ready to fight. Be a rogue killer, kite everyone while being unkiteable. Learn to manage your deadzone and you’ll have great fun.
- Highest Agility (good for damage, CRIT(!), and dodge/parry).
- Extra Stamina.
- Burly traps (double traps in dungeons).
- Strong melee attacks (you will need them in PvP).
Survival hunter in Classic will be viable and an argument can be made that it is the preferred dungeon crawler and PvP build. Again, if you’re raiding hardcore you’re doing another thing, but for the rest if us Survival tree is the best of times.
4 Likes
Pre and Post it was definitely good for PvP, but it was pretty lackluster for PvE when compared to MM.
Not in the slightest. It was still a ranged tree, but it had a couple of melee survival boosts… and Lacerate. That definitely did not make it a melee tree.
Well, it was and it wasn’t. It had talents that gave melee crit, and melee hit percent. But the only melee abilities it added were lacerate (which added ~3 damage per second at rank 1 and didn’t get much better) and counterattack which required you get hit. I get the feeling that their initial thinking behind survival might have been an avoidance tank that could tank for his pet, but they never went through with it. (Hunters could even use shields in early builds). I think the bigger tragedy with the class was that the survival tree was so bland even after the revamp. The 31pt talent was trash, and except in very specific instances (small gear windows where survival could increase your damage, or needing hit rating temporarily until gear caught up) it was just a lower damage version of Marks and there was seldom any reason to put more than 13 points into it.
Yeah, it had some good melee talents but it still wasn’t a melee spec. You did the vast majority of your DPS, even without a point spent in MM, at range. Those talents are what made it so good for PvP though; disarms, extra dodge & parry, making Raptor Strike crit very often (for chunking people dead zone dancing), etc. It wasn’t like Survival now, that changes the class into a melee class though.
Regarding Surv being a quasi-tank spec… I could see it. Enhance was one too, especially before the Shaman talent changes. Just another of Blizz’s weird choices that they never followed through with in Vanilla… probably thinking of Hunters like EQ1 Rangers that could technically tank but sure weren’t ideal (and often, usable) for it.
1 Like
Short answer is yes, it’s worth going far enough into survival for the hit talent if you’re not capped as long as you’re raiding. You don’t want a tranq shot to miss on a raid boss.
You still go MM for TSA though. The remaining points (2 usually if you needed all 3 points in surefooted) are best in imp AotH.
Deep survival really doesn’t pull ahead until you get really good gear.
If you’re hit capped, 20/31/0 is very strong as well but only if you’re good at keeping your pet alive which takes a lot of micromanagement. Very few players will comfortably pull that off.