How is perception and morale on survia hunter currently?
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For most, somewhere between “why do we bother” and “what’s survival”? For a very limited set, “MSV IS LITERALLY THE BEST SPEC EVER AND IF YOU EVEN SUGGEST IT’S LESS THAN AMAZEBALLS, I’LL FIGHT YOU”.
I’m not even really kidding with that. Nearly everyone out here either looks at SV with some mix of disdain and hopelessness, or they think the spec is literally the epitome of spec design and rabidly attack anyone that suggests otherwise, even just to ask for some QOL improvements.
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Playing around with it a bit it’s ok but it certainly needs ALOT of TLC to be taken seriously. The play style is a little disjointed at times and I am personally not a fan of mongoose bite windows, it’s far too punishing and incredibly easy to screw up when it’s supposed to be a “filler”. I would prefer if they shifted focus more over to DoT damage instead of a mongoose burst but that’s just me.
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Honestly, while I still wasn’t a huge fan of SV in Legion, I liked Mongoose Bite much better (edit: or rather, disliked it less) when it was a recharge-limited ability rather than a spammable focus consumer. Right now, anything that’s not either Mongoose Bite or directly contributing to Mongoose Bite (ie. Kill Command) is usually a DPS loss. In Legion, you had much more flexibility, and you had Fury of the Eagle to cap off the window.
Still, overall I’m not a huge fan of the “squeeze as much as possible into this window” as a rotational mechanic. It’s like Colossus Smash and the worst parts of insanity drain, where you’re frantically scrambling to cast as many as possible within that short expiring window, and any mistakes are incredibly punishing, as they are always clipping casts from the end of the window when everything is hitting the hardest.
Edit: that’s one reason I’m so skeptical of making Mongoose Bite baseline again. They removed it baseline because of mass feedback that disliked the Legion version of it.
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Current SV hunters are generally very happy with the spec, but unhappy with the combination of negative community perception and top-tier pve non-viability due to the combination of melee role without being competitive with certain other melee specs.
If you want a detailed breakdown of the SV spec from BFA and going into shafowlands from a couple months ago, I recommend Sloots Survival hunter discussion on youtube. Its on his channel. The clickbait image is rambo with sloots face photo shopped and it says Survival Revival? which is pretty misleading because nothing has really changed. But the SV hunters who joined the discussion are Varkyrion, Avakuro and Doolb. The information they brought with them is enlightening and very detailed. It doesnt sugar coat anything and its uniquely PvE focused which is rare for an SV discussion.
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I like having two pets out, but I hate that the rotation is soooooo easy… Easiest char I have by far is my BM hunter.
The mass dislike was pretty much just origin loyalists attacking the spec because it was changed, and it was largely abandoned after that.
I still hear people to this day muttering survival should still just be a range spec like in the old days.
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If you don’t mind melee, and like to PvP, there is very much lacking with Survival. In raids, it still does okay, although there are certainly better options. In M+ you’re going to have a hard time finding groups, for many of the same reasons as Feral Druids, the class has other specs that bring all the same utility, but are ranged, which is preferred by most groups in melee-punishing content.
It had a lot of potential with the Beta, Blizzard could have made a few things baseline, fixed a couple QoL issues, and made the spec much better overall in PvE. The problem is, they didn’t. For the same reason Windwalkers are always going to be near the bottom of a raid in DPS. They’re amazing in PvP.
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Ive been torn on what to main going into Shadowlands for months.
Hunter was very high on my list but wasn’t the clear cut winner until I finally gave Survival a go for myself and ignored the community perception. It’s to the point now where I am pretty sure my main spec will be Surv and I was planning on going into this expansion maining a ranged class. It’s phenomenal.
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Expressed another way;
People that play it love it.
People that don’t play it and haven’t played it since Legion prior to its last rework (like Xaedys here) are vocal about hating it and go out of their way to portray people who enjoy something they lack familiarity and muscle memory for as ravenous.
The consensus of hunters that actually play survival is pretty good; we’re just concerned about the pet res cast time change mainly. Unless reverted, that will limit the viability of BM and Survival.
Our focus regen early in Shadowlands is gonna be a little painful, but that’s expected and normal and can be compensated for partially with “suboptimal” talents.
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You understand this is circular reasoning, right? People don’t play things they don’t enjoy. So if someone tries MSV, as many players have both in Legion and BfA (myself included), and don’t enjoy it, they stop playing it.
Trying to argue that the only opinions that matter are those that actively play SV is like trying to argue that the only people that should have input on business regulations are current C-level officers of publicly traded companies. It’s absolute lunacy.
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And given that SV doesn’t have many players, carry the two…
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That isn’t so simple, people didn’t play survival in legion because it wasn’t performing, its dps and trap idea at the time were not working out,
People want a reward for their effort, not crazy low dps.
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We’ve already explored in a thread last week how you haven’t actually touched your hunter in BFA and have no idea how the BFA survival playstyle even functions, with your entire conceptions of the spec being based around its PVE performance in Legion (a completely different version of the spec, mind you)
It’s strongly correlated with why you post as a DH instead of on your hunter. You’re a big fan of obfuscating how little you play this class while conflating the time you spend on the forums (lots) with your experience (lots less)
The reality is your hunter has half the played time of this toon that I made at the tail end of Legion and is supposedly your long-time main from expansions past. Everyone should be aware of that so they can take your posts with the massive grain of salt deserved.
I anticipate the sound of angry wing flaps up next.
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Incredibly obnoxious dismissal there.
Played it in Legion along with both other Hunter specs.
Just finished leveling a mag’har hunter 99.95% Survival.
My opinion having played both is that Legion Survival wins hands down as a melee spec while BFA Survival is a meh mismash of melee and ranged that looks and feels bland to play and that I personally don’t find nearly as fun or functional as Enhancement, Windwalker, Havoc and Fury.
I like how frenetic Enhancement can be, that the procs are on more rewarding abilities, that I can sacrifice some DPS with these procs for some healing, and that the abilities all carry the same elemental theme.
I like how Windwalker just flows well with a fairly fluid rotation. Fewer procs, but they hang out longer and don’t frustrate you with coming too fast when you don’t need them and not at all when you do. Xuen (talent), Xuen (azerite), and SEF clones are both more bursty and more life saving than hunter pet. Meh but reliable in combat healing with really good on death healing. Really captures the look of kung fu fighting too.
Fury can get frenetic, procs always feel good. So many ways to self heal it’s ridiculous. Cool downs feel meaningful and worthwhile. Looks pretty awesome while attacking. Super mobile. Love that I can be nearly dead, pop a cd, and self heal nearly (or all the way) to full.
Havoc is fun. Super Mobile. Meta is nice. Eye beam feels really good. Would love to be able to extend the window via a talent or underlying mechanic of some sort. AoE being part of the core rotation while also picking up your healing orbs is great. Improved healing in Meta is nice. Spell effects are pretty good.
On all 4 of those things fit together pretty well even if Enhancement is a little button heavy. I feel pretty strong even though they all have crap gear. And I feel like I have more and better survival skills.
Survival though:
Decent mobility mob to mob with harpoon’s death reset, not so much outside of that. 2 abilities that don’t really fit with the rest of the theme and with animations so fast you need slow motion to see them (at least in melee). Procs don’t feel fun at all particularly when you get 2 right after a Harpoon at nearly full focus and lose one trying to spend down focus to not cap. Then getting into a long fight and getting to sit on your hands with zero procs and everything on cd.
Pet is either crazy strong or tissue paper without much in between. Don’t misdirect in packs (or get caught with patrols or respawns with 25 secs left on the cd) and the PC gets utterly trounced with Spirit Bond, Turtle, Exhilaration, and Feign being less than useful even combined. Use Misdirection on 4 or more and Fluffy’s probably going to get trounced despite all the pet Mending in the world.
Tried out Flanking Strike. Damage was meh, cool down really didn’t let it fit in nicely anywhere. Could replace Kill Command and be good though. Tried Mongoose Bite, not really a fan, just felt like hitting Raptor Strike more except orange.
TLDR, it’s not a bad spec it’s just that others are better put together (objective) and/or more fun to play (subjective).
It was the top DPS Hunter spec for at least 1 patch but Hunter players prefer Range and Ranged is preferred in group PvE so that’s 2 strikes against the spec.
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I won’t be responding seriously to someone that thinks havoc DHs are well designed, I’m sorry.
I cannot understand how someone can competently hold that position, even if they are a PVE player who deeply enjoys MOBA-style gameplay.
Quite the red flag.
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A whole lot of content in this post yet a whole lot of dodging the point at hand: defending SV on the basis of “people that play it love it” is circular logic. This is a very common tactic from you, including in your hours-long meltdown at me in Discord earlier this year.
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I apologize profusely for not pretending I am a scholastic member of the debate team on the World of Warcraft forums from the desk of my menial day job. 
The logic on both sides of the “debate” is circular, because this is a video game, not a matter of philosophical praxis. There is no governing universal truth or logic, it is all subjective, and only an intellectually dishonest imp would attempt to portray it as an objective matter while congratulating themselves on their faux-academic approach to the subject.
I am not here to engage with you and “prove you wrong”, I am simply weighing in the other side of the coin lest OP be misled by the effect of the vocally unappreciative in comparison to the silently appreciative.
Notice I’m not calling you the vocal minority, because we don’t actually have that data; I’m simply reminding you that people prone to being upset about changes in video games are more likely to be daily users of the forums than people who are content with them.
It’s part and parcel to why they’ve never given forum feedback much credo.
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There have been tiers where MSV has actually simmed higher than both BM and MM. Peeps still didn’t play them. Heck, before the pre-patch, SV was only 5 slots down the DPS chart from BM (looking at mythic Shad in particular, since it’s the closest to a straight DPS race in that instance), and 8 slots ahead of MM. And even still, more than twice as many parses existed for MM as SV. Clearly it’s not just a performance thing.
Ya, haven’t touched it at all.
This is pure genetic fallacy wrapped with circular reasoning. You argue that the opinion of anyone that doesn’t actively play SV is worthless, which by selection bias means you hold that only the opinions of those that more or less by definition enjoy the spec should be listened to. That’s patent BS, and even you know it.
Yada yada yada, “I can’t defend my point so I’m going to attack you and put you on the defensive”.
You tried it last time, and you’re doing the same thing here. Your time afk in town doesn’t translate to authority on the class, and you don’t get to simply discard out of hand every opinion that doesn’t come from a group that by definition enjoys playing the spec. Sorry buddy.
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Bepples, I dunno, did you hit the “I played thiiiiiis much” yard stick for your opinion to matter here? Otherwise Scabbers just gets to ignore your opinion because they spent more time afk in town than you! 
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