While the survival is thought of as the melee spec, its outperformed by both other trees in melee combat. After 7-8 points in Survival for savage strikes, both Deep BM and picking up Trueshot is better for melee damage than deep survival.
here are my 2 suggestions to fix the above issue:
-swap the locations of carve rune (glove) with the duel wield specialization (feet).
-Add the ability for traps to scale to the bottom of the survival tree. either added to the lightning reflexes talent such as “increase the damage of traps by 30% of agility” per point making traps scale to 150% agi with 5 pts (numbers adjusted to make sense). Could even add another 31pt talent that just makes fire traps scale with some % of ranged AP.
This would force BM hunters to choose between duel wield and beast mastery rune, nerfing their Single target dmg but letting them pick up carve for a little AOE and just add a button to the 2-button rotation. Maybe BM becomes a 2h melee build… who knows.
This also opens trap launcher for the deep survival spec allowing them to add traps to their rotation. With the scaling traps, hopefully they become worth the global and again, add some buttons to melee hunters 2 button rotation.
Would love to see SOMETHING that gets melee hunters into the survival tree and gets them using traps. Currently, there isn’t much point in FD trap unless your AoEing.
So if surv is called the “pvp spec” rn becuase its dead in pve, after we buff it to bis dps, what will BM be called when its dead in pve? the levelling spec? the casual pet spec?
Yes to adding trap scaling in survival.
No to forcing BM to choose between dual and beast mastery. BM definitely do not need nerfing, and no one cares about AOE, unless 2handed becomes viable with proper scaling.
Unless you have an actual MM in your group, in which case deep survival would be better.
This would effectively kill the Beast mastery rune and Carve would still be worthless. Melee hunter doesn’t need either Carve or Trap Launcher, neither of those do good AoE damage and melee hunter only shine at single target.
The reason why you can’t have melee hunter without Dual wield specialization is because so much of the damage is in the fact raptor strike gets its extra flat damage on both weapons rather than just one weapon with a two hander.
Traps, Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, and Volley should just scale with ranged AP by default, it shouldn’t be locked behind a talent tree.
What Survival need is Aspect of the Gorilla rune that turns hunter into a tank if they are using a 2 hander and no pet, a buff to carve, RAP scalling on traps, arcane shot, serpent sting, and volley, and a revert to Trueshot Aura.
There you go, Survival is the only viable tree for that because BM needs a pet and MM is a ranged spec.
Not sure why so many hunters want/ feel that we need a tank spec. What does tanking hunter bring to the table that the current tanks do not? Atleast with Warlock tank it brings the niche ranged tank to the table.
Also, how would it play any different than the current tanks or melee hunter as it is currently? We already got a fleshed out melee style that is a top tier DPS with SoD. Something that wasn’t a thing until legion and even retails melee hunter is a ranged melee hybrid. All we need now is continued support and fleshing out of the spec. We don’t need the devs taking a unnecessary detour to try and make some gimmicky tank spec.
Your pet will do more damage running BM rune simply due to it gaining energy back faster compared to carve unless its a boss fight that has full uptime with adds around. Secondly, dual wield will always do more damage than running traps simply due to traps taking up one GCD when you could hit Raptor Strike and get 3x the amount of damage. So youre pretty much still stuck running the same runes, but just in different slots.
didnt know there were other tanks out here utilizing pet management, trap kiting, a mana bar, better ranged kiting than warlock, >50% dodge, root and slow spamming, a 2 handed weapon, and mail armor all at once.
Pet management LMAO, that’s a reach bro. Managing a pet in wow is basically telling them to either kill things or not pull extra mobs. Also, are we not talking about melee hunter here? Kiting mobs would require you to be using the ranged playstyle. For a tanking play style like you just mentioned to be used it would require changing how bosses function, (ex. Allowing them to be slowed) but if that became the case kiting bosses wouldn’t be just hunter tank exclusive because ALL tanks would start using it. Your logic at the end of the day is unfortunately flawed, just like the idea of a tank hunter. We don’t need it.
ur in denial lmao. we dont need to kill BM either but look at you go. i was referring to dungeon and raids and their trash.
if ur coping about exclusively raid bosses, name any other mechanic for ANY melee that isnt stand and hit. including tanks lmao
How am I in denial? Also how does survival being the talent tree for melee DPS kill BM? BM=Pet focused, Marksman=Ranged focused, Survival=Melee focused, it’s actually quite simple. Kiting trash in dungeons isn’t anything new, tanks ALREADY do that. To the stand and hit comment, that’s classic wow for you. That’s how the tanking job works.
You still didn’t answer how a tank hunter would play differently, or bring something to the table that the other tanks don’t already. Each one (other than rogue tanks) bring something different. Warriors are the sword and board, can take a big hit and shrug it off tank. Paladins and Shamans are AoE tanks. Bears are meant to be the you can’t hit me because I’ll dodge you, and if you do my massive HP pool will save me tank. Warlocks are the ranged tank. Also, it could be argued that rogue tanks are meant to be the DPS competing pumper tank. How would hunter play different?
Specs not being viable or dying is the product of the talent system and modern gaming. People are going to play what does the most damage. If BM dies because melee hunters swap to survival so be it. As a melee hunter I would WAY have the survival tree give me talents that let me use my traps in combat and more melee buttons to hit, then talents that amp my pet up. I’m sure most melee hunters feel the same.
Paladins, Shamans, and Warlocks all use mana. As I mentioned above kiting is a strategy all tanks already employ. Let’s not forget that SHAMANs use mail, so would using a 2H be the only thing setting it apart? Data mining is hinting at DKs getting added so I’m sure they would tank with 2Hs. Gameplay wise, what would they bring to the table that’s different? We don’t need it. Just work on the melee hunter. Plus, you’re being greedy. No other class got more than one new role. Melee hunter was ours.
But hey, keep preaching for tank hunter. I’m sure the devs are stupid enough to add it, and I’ll be here to tell you and them you guys are morons. We did get rogue tanks after all.
I have not read through all the comments only OP’s. Sorry. But I do have some comments/thoughts on surv melee hunter. First - the surv does imply a trap based rotation, with trap launcher and dual wield on same rune that’s an issue. while OPs suggestion of moving runes would work - so would an introduction of a 2h buff to raptor strike, as to make up for the loss of dmg.
alternatively, there could be a deep freeze aspect to wyvern sting where it does increased dmg to targets immune to stun/sleep, this could add an extra pve reason to go deep into survival. a more interesting dynamic might be to even add bonus wyvern sting dmg into flanking strike for instance, to encourage saving wyvern for all stacks of flanking and then big cd dmg. those are my suggestions
