Survival Dragonflight Talents: A Lack of Parity

Classes Hunter
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I. THE PROBLEMS

A. 3-Talent Point Investment Nodes

Survival has 10 3-talent-point investment nodes. Beast Mastery has 3; Marksmanship has 2 (by the way, a 3-talent-point investment node on the last row of the talent tree seems like really poor design. Legacy of the Windrunners and Windrunner’s Guidance seem fun and flavorful, but way too much of an investment that locks you out of picking either of the improved Trueshot talents). The spec with the next highest number of 3-talent-point investment nodes is Feral, with 4.

Here is a breakdown of the currently available talent previews and how many 3-talent-point nodes each spec has:

  • 10: Survival
  • 4: Feral
  • 3: Assassination, Beast Mastery
  • 2: Balance, Blood, Marksmanship, Shadow, Unholy
  • 0: Discipline, Frost, Guardian, Holy, Outlaw, Restoration, Subtlety

Survival is not just the outlier, it is the outlier by an order of magnitude. Inversely, Survival gets 32 unique nodes to choose from. The three Rogue specs have 38, 42, and 45. There’s a spec that, simply put, gets 40% more choice than Survival. These trees were clearly not made equally. The Survival tree needs significant work.

B. The Kill Shot Reset

Each Hunter spec seems to have some form of Kill Shot reset, in the flavor of Flayed Shot, but more streamlined. This is a welcome way to bake a fun proc into each spec, and I appreciate that it is not linked to any cooldown or a specific dot that we have to put on a mob that might die before the dot runs out; it dodges all the drawbacks of Flayed Shot as it is today. However, as the current iteration applies to Survival, it is at an unfairly high talent point cost, for an even more unfairly low proc rate.

For example: Marksmanship has to spend a single (1) talent point in Deathblow to get a 10% proc rate on Aimed Shot for a Kill Shot reset, and has almost no drawback for going towards this talent since it gates Lone Wolf and is in the center of the tree both vertically and horizontally, not gated behind a specific path or a large talent point investment.

For example: Beast Mastery has to spend 2 talent points in In for the Kill for a 6% proc rate on Kill Command to get a Kill Shot reset. Perhaps the thinking for the 4% decrease is that Kill Command will be cast that much more more than Aimed Shot? Or maybe it’s a balance calculation? I’m not sure. Additionally, this talent is in the middle third of the tree vertically, meaning that while it is on the far left of the Beast Mastery tree, it does not require as much of a point investment as Deadly Duo in the Survival tree.

Survival, however, has to spend 3 talent points in Predator just to get Kill Command back to reset without any Kill Shot reset potential. To get that reset proc, Survival has to invest in the entire left branch of the tree just to spend 3 more talent points in Deadly Duo to get a 15% chance of the 25% Kill Command reset chance to proc Kill Shot. That is 6 talent points to get a 3.75% chance to proc a Kill Shot reset.

C. The Coordinated Assault rework and the subsequent talents are at odds

Coordinated Assault does not appear to have a flat % damage buff any more, so my understanding of its power comes from the two unique effects: our pet’s Basic Attack buffs Carve or Kill Shot. Carve gives us more Wildfire Bomb CDR, and Kill Shot does more damage. To make this worth taking at all, we have to sink 3 points into Deadly Duo, which is next to useless without sinking 3 points into Predator, just so that we have a 3.75% chance of even activating half of this cooldown’s power above 20% health, by spending GCDs to press Kill Command, hoping for a Kill Shot, all while spamming the Wildfire Bombs we get from the Explosives Expert cooldown reduction from Kill Shot. While it does sound, thankfully, like an interesting playstyle, it has 21 required points to even make half of the cooldown do anything – this is in addition to the requirements it will place on our Class Tree pathing too, almost certainly forcing us to the far bottom left for Alpha Predator.

Furthermore, the follow up talents simply do not have the payoff that should be expected from such a costly point investment: 3 points in Coordinated Kill just to make our next Kill Command crit is laughably bad. We’re not pressing Kill Command for the damage it does, which is minimal at best. We’re pressing it for the reset.

Finally in all of this, there are the capstones, Fury of the Eagle and Birds of Prey, which are the only two abilities that would be available after the heavy point commitment Coordinated Assault requires. They are simply at odds. There is no situation where we would want to press Raptor Strike during Coordinated Assault in its current iteration. It has no interaction with the cooldown, it does not accomplish any sort of Bomb cooldown reduction, or Kill Command reset, or Kill Shot proc. We would only ever get value out of this from Carve or Butchery, and it is unclear if we will be using those abilities enough in the 20 second window to meaningfully extend the cooldown, since it will be a lower priority in our rotation than Kill Command, Kill Shot, Bomb, and the 4 second channel of Fury of the Eagle. Because we will hardly ever be using Raptor Strike during the current iteration of Coordinated Assault, and because we will hopefully have more Bombs, Kill Commands, and Kill Shots to press than Carve/Butchery, Birds of Prey seems very likely to have little, if any, value at all for Coordinated Assault as it has been reworked. Indeed, Birds of Prey seems like an unexamined relic of Coordinated Assault as it is today, not how it is going to be.

II. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

There are several great suggestions on the forums and in the discord already, below are some of them and some of my own. I welcome any additional thoughts and discussion; hopefully we can find a meaningful solution that Blizzard will embrace.

A. Reduce the number of 3-Talent Point Investment Nodes

Frankly most of them are weak, uninteresting, and a massive talent point sink for abilities that we already have baseline today. I can swallow having to pay a talent point to get Harpoon or Wildfire Bomb back, but 3 talent points just to make Kill Command have its normal reset chance? And then 3 more to make that reset even remotely worthwhile – to get a 3.75% chance to proc a Kill Shot? Come on. And the number of lazy damage buffs is a clear sign that little, if any, thought was put into this tree. Blizzard is clearly capable of making interesting talent trees (see: Rogue), why isn’t that same effort put forward here?

B. Coordinated Assault and Coordinated Kill need to be reworked (again)

Coordinated Assault needs to be reworked to be a viable pick for both sides of the Survival tree, not just the Bomb/Carve/Butchery left side of the tree. Because Coordinated Assault no longer has a flat 20% damage buff, it needs to interact with Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike somehow. Perhaps Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike does a stacking/refreshing bleed during Coordinated Assault windows. Perhaps during Coordinated Assault, our pet’s basic attack increases the Mongoose Bite window, or our pet’s basic attack increases our Mongoose’s Fury stacks. It just needs some interaction with Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike.

Following Coordinated Assault, Coordinated Kill needs to be examined. First of all, as mentioned above, Coordinated Kill is laughably bad. For the current iteration of Coordinated Assault, it very clearly should interact with the Kill Command/Kill Shot mechanic. I propose that it increases the % chance that a Kill Command reset procs a Kill Shot. I am sure there are more interesting suggestions out there, I’m open to them. I just think that it really has to have some interaction with the actual aoe rotation that will result from the Bomb/Kill Command/Kill Shot/Carve rotation. Making it crit more is meaningless, and a waste of 3 points down a progression path in the tree where we will have invested so many points already.

If Coordinated Assault is changed, as proposed above, to have some interaction with Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike, Coordinated Kill should also have some interaction with Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike. Perhaps Coordinated Kill makes Kill Command extend the Mongoose Bite window by .5/1/1.5 seconds (or just 1 second, because it shouldn’t be a 3-point node).

Finally, following these two talents, Birds of Prey must also be examined. Birds of Prey has almost no interaction with the current iteration of Coordinated Assault: there is no situation where we will want to use Raptor Strike during the window, and Carve/Butchery is at least fifth on the aoe priority list behind Wildfire Bomb, Kill Command, Kill Shot procs and Fury of the Eagle. I do not anticipate that we will be able to meaningfully extend the duration of Coordinated Assault as much as we should as an effect from the very last talent point on our tree.

Perhaps Birds of Prey stays as it is for Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike, but has additional functionality based on the Bomb/Carve/Butchery side of the tree, like Carve/Butchery also reduce the cooldown of Coordinated Assault.

If any of this gets too complicated as a combination, it should be added as choice nodes. I do not believe there would be a meaningful difference between adding both sides of these abilities into one talent node and making them a choice node because they are two distinct playstyles with distinct rotations, but if making them a choice node is cleaner, that would work fine too.

C. Clarify Carve/Butchery

Are Carve or Butchery getting a rework? If, as the latest blue post says, everything that is affected by Carve is also affected by Butchery, why would we ever choose Carve? Will Carve do more damage to offset the fact that it is a frontal not a full circle, and has only one charge instead of three?

D. Swap Killer Companion and Energetic Ally

It doesn’t make any sense to have a Kill Command buff so far away from the Bomb/Kill Command/Kill Shot branch down the left side of the survival tree, and the increase in focus cap makes way more sense on the Mongoose Bite side of the tree where it will actually make a difference.

E. If flat secondary stat buffs are going to remain in the tree, switch Survival’s to Versatility

Survival does not have as much interaction with Crit as Marksmanship historically does through Master Marksman. It does, however, have the eternal problem of being an incredibly flimsy melee spec with a single immunity and a single damage reduction ability – tied to a specific pet family – that has received no attention at all in either the Hunter Class Tree or the Survival Tree. If you won’t address the desperate need for more defensive abilities for Hunters – especially Survival Hunters – at least give them more Versatility instead of Crit.

Additionally, why must the Hunter Class Tree have 9 talent points devoted to healing our pets, or buffing their health, or making them take less damage instead of at least one of those nodes perhaps making their pet abilities better? I understand that Beast Mastery gets Aspect of the Beast, but that is simply a boost to the pet’s passive abilities. How about improving their active abilities – if not all of them, at least the defensive ones? Shorter cooldowns, improved effects, etc.

III. CONCLUSION

In summary, the Survival Tree needs some significant reworking. It needs to have the number of 3-point talent nodes reduced by more than half. It needs someone who has actually considered how the rotation of the spec will work with some of these talents to take a careful look at these interactions. And it needs to be brought into line with other specs in terms of meaningful, interesting choice and power. All of the damage buffs in the world don’t make it any easier to swallow that Hunters have to pay 3 talent points for a 6% movement speed increase, when Rogue pays 1 for 15% – and Outlaw can pay another 1 for 30% total – or that Survival has to pay 3 talent points for a 3 yard range increase, when again, Rogue pays 1 for the same thing.

There is a distinct lack of creativity, thought, and effort put into the Survival tree when compared to any other tree that has been put out so far. This must be addressed, and if there is any chance for it to reach the levels of these other trees, it needs to be addressed and iterated on immediately.

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This guy’s brain is huge.

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biggest brain there is

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Our aoe rotation is going to go back to pre-tier set days at this rate. As much as I hated pressing Kill Command on aoe, at least we had the chance of proccing a bomb.

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I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, honestly. I enjoyed that more than the tier set, which is just spamming two buttons, either Bomb or Kill Command. It’s hard to call that a rotation.

I personally prefer Serpent Sting spreading, trying to maximize the Shrapnel Bomb bleed, etc. And actually, with the ability to get Latent Poison Injectors in the class tree, Serpent Sting spreading might be more rewarding than ever. It’s why I really like your idea that Hydra’s Bite needs to be somewhere in one of these trees.

Now at least it seems that the aoe rotation priority will likely be:

  1. Wildfire Bomb

  2. Kill Shot to spend the proc and for Wildfire Bomb CDR

  3. Fury of the Eagle (interesting interaction in all of this that the CD is reduced by Kill Command resets, but because of the reset fishing we’ll be doing, we can probably get more than one channel of this during Coordinated Assault, which would be a waste since there’s no flat % damage increase anymore)

  4. Carve/Butchery for Wildfire Bomb CDR

  5. Kill Command for reset fishing for Kill Shot procs/Bloodseeker bleed spreading for pet attack speed (particularly important for Coordinated Assault windows since it’s based on our pet’s basic attack)

  6. Serpent Sting spreading for Volatile Bombs as filler

I just don’t understand how Coordinated Assault is supposed to play into it – I mean, it obviously seems designed around Carve/Butchery and Kill Shot procs, but then Birds of Prey seems so weak because we’re pressing Carve/Butchery 1 out of every 4 or 5 GCDs (plus a 4 second channel needs to be woven in there for Fury of the Eagle, potentially more than once!) – we won’t meaningfully increase the duration of Coordinated Assault – and spending 3 points in the mindboggling node that is Coordinated Kill just to get to it feels so bad.

If Coordinated Assault is just meant to be a Carve/Butchery and Bomb-based cooldown, Coordinated Kill needs to interact with the Kill Command/Kill Shot reset, otherwise, what is the point? Having our Kill Commands crit is a laughably bad power increase, spending 3 points to do it feels awful, and giving them a 100% crit chance just devalues the flat crit % increases that are elsewhere in the class and spec tree. As it stands, it would be a pretty terrible choice to go down the Coordinated Assault path and not pick up the Deadly Duo – no matter how terrible the talent is – because you’re just leaving half of the cooldown on the table at that point, so there should be no concern about people getting access to Coordinated Kill and not taking Deadly Duo.

Additionally, again, if Coordinated Assault is just meant to be an aoe, Carve/Butchery/Bomb-based cooldown, I think Birds of Prey needs to be changed to replacing the duration-extending ability to be Kill Command, since that’s an ability we will be using much more than Carve/Butchery (and certainly more than Raptor Strike) due to the Kill Shot fishing; or I think that Birds of Prey should go the way of many other Survival mechanics and just become a CDR for Coordinated Assault – perhaps Carve/Butchery reduce the CD for Coordinated Assault as well as Bombs. I’m not sure, but in its current form, Birds of Prey seems awfully weak and far too costly to get to.

Alternatively, if Coordinated Assault is not just meant to be part of the Bomb/Kill Command reset/Kill Shot aoe rotation, and is supposed to have some interaction with the Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite part of the tree, then it needs some actual interaction with Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite! The fact that it is no longer a flat 20% damage increase means it literally does nothing during Mongoose Bite windows, since it only affects Carve/Butchery and Kill Shot. Make it do a stacking/refreshing bleed from a % of Mongoose Bite damage or something, make it extend the Mongoose Bite window by a second with each Mongoose Bite. Perhaps make Coordinated Kill interact with the Mongoose Bite window somehow so that there’s more than just one build path that makes any sense with Coordinated Assault.

As it stands the end of the tree makes very little sense, and the Coordinated Assault branch in particular needs to be reworked, among everything else I’ve mentioned in the original post.

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Agreed. I’ve felt that the Hunter spec designers in general have lacked any imagination even through shadowlands with for example, how the Tier sets and Torghast powers were designed.

It might be that the designers that are working on it now don’t seem to know what to do with it. But in comparison with other specs the talent tree needs some work.

Really feels like someone at blizzard only plays BM hunter, lol.

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I think its just because at this point no matter what they do its gonna end up badly. There are too many people negative about the spec in the forums. If it doesnt cater its gonna be a load of REEEEEEEin.

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Since WoD they’ve definitely haven’t had any class designers enthusiastic about ranged weapon specs and it really shows. The most “bold and innovative” thing they could figure out was just making one of them melee and keeping the class in a state of stagnation and “maintenance mode”.

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In the Hunter tree, why is Master Marksman restricted to crits from ranged special attacks? That feels an awful lot like a slap in the face to Survival Hunters.

In the Survival tree, get rid of the choice between Carve and Butchery. They’re essentially the same thing. We don’t need 2 versions of a melee AoE. Instead give us an option for our pets to generate some AoE if that’s a route we want to take. Something like Stomp would work well here.

Swap the placement of Terms of Engagement and Mongoose Bite. Mongoose Bite has such a major impact on the playstyle of the spec that players either love or hate it. It needs to be positioned where it can easily be passed over without blocking off a large portion of subsequent talents.

Change Spear Focus to a single point talent, Opportunist - Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite deal 5% increased damage and generate 10 Focus for your pet.

Change Killer Companion from 5/10% increased Kill Command damage to Your Kill Command hits an additional 1/2/3 targets within 8 yrds of the primary target.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with Coordinated Assault. Just keep it as it is on live with the addition of having the player and pet gain 50% of the Focus gained by the other.

There are a lot of options to generate DoTs on the enemy, often by abilities with a chance to reset. Please consider allowing these DoTs to combine the remaining damage of an active application to the amount of the freshly applied DoT instead of forcing players to choose between essentially erasing active damage or discarding a proc.

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Because Hunter is a ranged class and SV doesn’t fit the class. That’s always the answer. The class is BM and MM, with SV as an experimental deviation. That’s why the base tree only makes sense for BM and MM. This is the reality Blizzard and melee SV fans accepted when they embraced melee SV.

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Its good, but a few key points.

  1. The trap playstyle is garbo and needs gone.
  2. Birds of prey needs removed. Cordinated assault is still garbo.
  3. Deadly duo and other kill shot oriented talents need removed.
  4. Bomb clusters and mad bombadier need added.
  5. The tree is TINY compaired to other trees. It needs EXPANDED.
  6. Why harpoon? Why? Just sucks.
  7. Why lunge? Why coordinated kill? Why bomb-kill shot playstyle? All this is bad. EXTREMELY bad.

Blizz needs to fire whoever made surv’s tree. Its not even remotely close to being ready for alpha.

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OP is right but I see way too many 2-3 point investments across the board with all trees. This is specially true with Survival though.

You can’t get the same amount of “meat” as other classes can with their point investment.

2/4/6% increase crit for pet and you just make is 2/5 2 points if even that

2.5/5/7.5 CDR on bomb just make it 2 points or 1.

These are just 2 of the egregious “talents” that make up the new trees. I know there will be filler but adding in all of these on top of making players invest points to “learn” bomb, raptor strike, ect… is a joke.

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I usually don’t agree with your RSV takes but man you are right on this. The fattest tell is that every new class has been melee. It only took them 3 tries to come up with a new ranged class.

  1. I think the trap playstyle should be part of the tree just as an option, but you actually have to make it interesting and appealing.
  1. Facts.
  2. Kill Shot reset would work if you didn’t have to invest a lucrative amount of points just to make it work. You need to invest points into KC since you’ll need to press it for resets. Also, Kill Shot procs were good in SL because of the buff from Flayed Shot. Flayed Shot gave Kill Shot procs a 25% dmg buff so it was worth pressing. Unless Kill Shot was significant buffed then I don’t see a reason to spec into Kill Shot resets.
  3. Facts.
  4. Facts.
  5. Improved Harpoon and Terms of Engagement could have easily been combined together. Wasting 3 points just to get to Mongoose Bite feels awful.
  6. I actually wouldn’t mind a bomb/kill shot playstyle, if I never have to press Kill Command. But yeah, lunge bad. Coordinated Kill bad.
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I am posting this in every hunter thread I can find it is important. I am not going to repeat a lot of what is already said here. The only thing I would like to share is there are too many 3 point thing in this tree. Drop them all to one. The rest of those points I hope to put into “Buffs” that beef me up to help me survive. I am after all a survival hunter that does melee.

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  1. I agree but its not the appealing partz its the technical part. Even with a mouseover macro, the effort it takes to lay down a trap every 15 seconds or so is INCREDIBLY tasking. Its just NOT fun. Plus when you screq up and send a trap and the boss moves… just NOT a good playstyle.
    Plus, your incredibly hampstringed when you cant use ur traps for what they are supposed to be used for during a fight or else you wont make numbers.
  2. My problem with the kill shot play is that your investing soooo many points for rng. Sorry, but i dont trust blizz’s rng. Also your right. Without flayed shot the playstyle is dead.
  3. I just dont like relying on a spell that can only be used at 35% or lower without procs. Hate it.
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A lot of great ideas in here so far. Love it. It’s vitally important, in my opinion, to have a well thought out consensus to present either to the Community Council so they can bring it up directly, or that blue posts may see naturally, as hopefully they give this thread the look that it deserves.

I see two main issues voiced by the chorus of this and the many other threads currently popping up on the Hunter forums and in the Hunter Discord: 3 point nodes, and Coordinated Assault.

ISSUE 1: THREE POINT NODES

This really is the biggest problem that the tree faces. It has so many more 3 point investments than any other spec, and that severely limits the amount of choice and flexibility we have in navigating the tree.

Example

Let’s say you want to make a build that focuses on Wildfire Bombs. If you are following the Bomb path of the tree, you’ll have to take:

  1. Improved Wildfire Bomb for increased Bomb damage (and because it gates Wildfire Infusion), which leads directly to…
  2. Explosives Expert immediately after that, because again it gates Wildfire Infusion, and now it has introduced a synergy with Kill Shot. To get any synergy with Kill Shot, you’ll need to take…
  3. Deadly Duo, which gives Kill Command resets a (paltry) chance to proc a Kill Shot. This in turn requires…
  4. Predator, a 3 talent point sink that just gets Kill Command back to where it is baseline today in terms of reset chance.

Just to get Wildfire Infusion for your Wildfire Bombs, you need to sink 6 points into 3 point nodes. Then to make those 3 point nodes make any sense (specifically regarding Explosives Expert), you’ll need to sink 6 more points into 3 point nodes. 12 points for 4 nodes. Nearly half of the talent points you get to spend are sunk into just 4 talents.

Comparison

Compare this with Feral, which has the next highest number of 3 point nodes. The 3 point nodes are split on either side of the tree, and only 1 is required to progress through the tree, not a chain of 2 in a row, and certainly not 4 separate ones that are required just to make good on the synergies they introduce.

It is the most glaring deficiency in the Survival tree. We not only have the most 3 point nodes, we have the highest cost to fill out our tree, and we have the fewest total nodes. For reference, see:

Conclusion

This is inexcusable. It simply means we have significantly less choice and flexibility than other specs. This must be fixed, and it must be iterated on quickly if there is any hope to have this tree in a position of parity when Dragonflight launches.

Drastically reduce the number of 3 point nodes, and introduce more 1 and 2 point nodes to allow equal choice and flexibility to other specs.

ISSUE 2: COORDINATED ASSAULT

I think that Coordinated Assault is a potentially interesting aoe cooldown now. But, as you point out in a later comment, without Deadly Duo, the Kill Shot part of the cooldown is only active in execute range.

Additionally, Birds of Prey seems like it was not changed with Coordinated Assault, since it still seems to envision the Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike playstyle of extending the window. This is not to mention that Coordinated Kill does not have any synergy at all with Coordinated Assault, and is just a weird damage buff that would devalue any crit % we have.

I think there is a relatively simple three-part solution:

FIRST, move Deadly Duo up to where Lunge or Sharp Edges are generally. Deadly Duo clearly plays into Coordinated Assault because of the Kill Shot functionality, it should be above the ability, not below it and off to the side.

SECOND, add more functionality to Coordinated Assault and Birds of Prey to stop them from being at odds with one another. Birds of Prey still hearkens to the single target Mongoose Bite spam playstyle, and Coordinated Assault is now tied into Bombs, Carve, Kill Command, and Kill Shot.

I propose that Coordinated Assault be changed to have some interaction with Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike. Perhaps our pet’s basic attacks empower our next Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike to either give it an extra Tip of the Spear stack or Mongoose Fury stack.

I propose that Birds of Prey be changed to a choice node, where it is either affected by Mongoose Bite/Raptor Strike for the single target wing, or Kill Command for the aoe wing.

THIRD, Coordinated Kill has to go. It simply should not be a 3 point talent, and it has no meaningful interaction with Coordinated Assault. Instead I propose another choice node, where during Coordinated Assault, Kill Command either extends your Mongoose Fury stack duration or Kill Command resets have an increased chance to proc a Kill Shot from 15% to XX%.

Conclusion

If these three changes were made, Coordinated Assault and the talents following it would give a nice, middle-of-the-tree path that can benefit both the left/aoe side of the tree and the right/single target side of the tree.

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Well said op, I would only add that Wildfire Infusion needs to be moved up in the tree or just baked into wildfire bomb tbh as its one of the most unique talents/abilities that survival has gameplay wise.

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Some suggestions if you’re headed back to the drawing board for Survival.

Kill or Be Killed - If you have more than 50 Focus, Raptor Strike costs 50 Focus and deals 100% increased damage. (Option talent. Choose this or Mongoose Bite.)

Culling - If there are at least 3 enemies with your damage over time effects within 8 yrds of your pet, Kill Command strikes all enemies within 8 yards. (Option Talent. Choose this or Carve.)

Opportunist - Raptor Strike causes your pet to gain 10 Focus.

Spear and Fang - While Coordinated Assault is active you and your pet gain 50% of all Focus gained by the other.

A Murder of Crows - I always liked this as an option for Survival, especially since the spec has so few reasons to bother with mastery.

Wailing Arrow - Survival can’t have nice things too?

On a side note, I can’t help but notice Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Turtle seem to be missing in action on the Hunter tree. Luckily there are plethora of 2 and 3 rank talents that can be consolidated to a single rank to make room (Looking at you Agile Movement and Keen Eyesight).

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i thought spearhead was meant for right side.

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I don’t understand this response, and you’re not the only one to make it, so please don’t take this as an attack on you.

Why, when every other spec gets at least two capstone nodes to combine and play around with, does Survival have to have a path that leads to only a single capstone?

Yes, Spearhead is a great capstone ability for the Mongoose side, but Coordinated Assault isn’t even the middle capstone – it gates the middle capstone, which is Birds of Prey, which has very specific Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite synergy. So why doesn’t the reworked Coordinated Assault also interact with Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite?

Now that alpha has dropped, we will see shortly if they’ve addressed this or not, but if Coordinated Assault is not going to have the flat 20% damage buff that it used to have, and is only going to interact with Carve/WFB and Kill Shot, then it either needs to be moved for some other branch or it needs to have some Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite synergy added.