The patch notes seem to indicate that survival is going to be completely gutted in AOE. Butchery going from 8 sec to 15 sec cd and losing charges means MUCH less wildfire bombs (since butchery reduces the CD of bombs by 1 sec for each enemy hit). And even if the damage is the same (doubtful) the rotation sounds boring AF. Especially since we are losing the incentive to raptor strike in AOE as well (butchery will no longer let your next raptor strike hit 2 additional targets). Any feedback would be appreciative! I really wanted to main survival in my fairly serious M+ group and I’m having serious doubts now.
Won’t be gutted at all anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is ill informed or trolling
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Yep, it is. I made a couple threads on it and “blizzard can do no wrong” fanboys got their panties in a bunch.
It plays like absolute garbage on the PTR, with massive downtime on your AOE abilities now due to Butchery changes, yet these morons resort to “but durrrrr pushing buttons is too hard, i’d rather have a bleed and just stand here watching the ticks”.
I’d recommend logging in on the PTR and getting used to the new rotation on some target dummies, and get your M+ group over there to run some dungeons and test further.
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Ah yes world renowned lfr raider calling other people bad 
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Coming from a level 74 toon. Big words for a nobody who posts on an alt and just trolls a forum all day looking for arguments.
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I hit 80 on it today its my main I just didn’t level till now cuz haven’t been bothered but yes continue to roleplay on the forums as an expert when ur clearly dog at the game
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11.0.5 is only on PTR and with no release date so any of this can change : the T is for TEST
But when i see this
Bombardier gives an explo shot that hits 3 targets instead of 2 separate explo shot
Butchery base AP ratio from 184 to 276
FotE base AP ratio from 127.6 to 158 and deals dmg faster 3s instead of 4s
Kill Shot being a recharge instead of CD so procs won’t overlap with cd
Death Blow for KS on 3 targets
Also more flat damage in the Pack Leader hero tree
Seems quite good for now even if we have slightly less bombs (finally we can use more of our kit meaningfully)
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Should listen to Ghonhir they are DoolB and the guide writer for SV on Wowhead. They should have more knowledge about Survival changes than listening to forum posters.
Man I don’t care. Melee survival has been garbage since it was first introduced. And the reason for that is it should never have existed in the first place.
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A 720% attack power, uncapped Bleed is not gutted. FotE is actually usable now too with the now freed up GCDs, the buffs to FotE, and the greatly reduced channel time.
You hardly used more than 2 charges of Butchery in the time frame you’re talking about, so I don’t think you’re really going to notice anything
especially when cornered prey gives you 2 seconds butchery of CDR when you use WFB CDR, which gives you WFB CDR.
no you’ll still need to spread serpent sting
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I wouldn’t say gutted - it just plays differently and primarily strays away from the fun feedback loop of Frenzy Strikes’ Butchery providing massive bomb CDR. I’m not a fan of Survival changing every single patch personally but at least Merciless Blows is out and being less reliant on another bleed class for Bloodseeker might be nice.
On PTR, I played around with it for a few minutes, the rotation seems to have a bit more MB filler now which is a neutral change at best as you’re still spreading SS that you would have from Merciless Blows anyway.
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It’s not “slightly less bombs”, it’s about 2/3 less bombs.
These talents you’re referring to weren’t even taken by a lot of players if you focus on the left side of the tree with Sentinel.
These new changes are entirely meant to force players in Pack Leader and the right side of the tree, which I have no interest in since the bomb spam playstyle is what makes Survival so much fun currently.
The real question is “will these new survival changes draw more players to the spec?”. I can’t see that happening here.
People don’t take FotE because of how busy the AoE GCDs are right now. This directly addresses that.
These new changes are entirely meant to make Pack Leader at least appealing to play lol. Sentinel completely eclipses it in every way currently which is not the intended way hero trees are balanced.
I promise you that you will still have plenty of bombs.
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I’m playing on PTR and my overall bomb damage has went down by 60%+. Symphonic Arsenal is nerfed by around 80% with the Butchery change and would require a 500% buff on PTR just to get back where it currently is on live. Doing less than 1% of overall damage is just incredibly laughable for a hero talent node when it offers no functionality otherwise.
I have zero issues with buffing Pack Leader and it should certainly be buffed. My issue is with them changing the foundation of the spec in order to accommodate this. Pack Leader was obviously designed with Beast Mastery in mind and Survival got shoe horned into it as an afterthought.
Someone mentioned in another thread that they could simply change the Butchery node back to having Carve as an option, like it used to be. Allow Carve to have the bleed and synergize well with Pack Leader and bleed talents, and allow Butchery to stay as it is and synergize better with WF bomb spam. I see zero problems in this method.
Merciless Blows - great talent if you don’t want to invest in bomb spam, but I don’t use it in dungeons and see it as an option for Raids with cleave mechanics. If that’s too limited and they want to change it to a passive in order to clean up the rotation, I have zero issues with that. People mistaking this purely cleave mechanic as a high-priority AOE mechanic is the issue here.
Contagious reagents - Doesn’t do enough damage and forces otherwise unnecessary Raptor/Mongoose into an aoe rotation. It either needs to affect more targets, or needs to be baked into another ability. I never take this and feel this node introduces a lot of problems that people are mistaking for fundamental issues with the spec, same as Merciless Blows.
Fury of the Eagle - definitely agree with the lower channel time and dps increase, along with reducing Ruthless Marauder to 1 talent point, but the haste buff is very odd. They can keep the haste buff and give us some CC immunity like Whirlwind gets. Fury ends up being 9-10% of my overall dps in dungeons currently, so while it isn’t spec-defining, it is a solid choice IMO, despite the hate it gets. I always line it up with Coordinated Assault in multi-target. bomb > bomb > Coordinated Assault > bomb > bomb> Fury > bomb…makes for a huge dps window.
Flanking Strike and associated talents - should all be moved to the middle or right side of the tree. I never use these in PVE as they’re just more unnecessary clutter and play better with Pack Leader anyway.
Ranger and Terms of Engagement being swapped - Not a major issue for me as I take both talents anyway, but Terms should be higher up in the tree so low level players get it sooner. Harpoon/Disengage gameplay is another defining feature of the spec and lower level players should have access to the movement ability ASAP because it makes for way more dps uptime in dungeons.
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This is the problem, though. They aren’t changing the fundamentals of the spec for pack leader, they’re changing the “fundamentals” because the AOE GCD economy is bloated. It is too busy for anything but pressing butchery and WFB, which drastically reduces the value of things like fote, sic’em, etc.
A 720% attack power, no target capped bleed on a 4 second cooldown is insane.
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It will never make it out of PTR doing much damage once all the other modifiers that currently don’t apply to it are fixed.
It will be target capped and damage reduced considerably.
Wait then you mean to tell me that the development cycle will be developed and things will be iterated on?
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They won’t allow that much damage tied up into one ability, if I had to guess. On the other hand, they seem to have no clue what they’re doing with this spec, so who knows.
They seem to have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing with the spec as a counter-argument, so I will trust them as they’ve done a phenomenal job so far.
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