I like the ideas behind Survival but a lot of little details really kill it for me.
For one Carve is just a terrible skill in every way. It should just be replaced with Butchery. The problem is taking the talent for Butchery isn’t worth it. If the Butchery talent isn’t competitive you shouldn’t take it but not taking it just feels bad. Carve is just such a mediocre skill that you have to use as part of your aoe rotation.
Another thing is Mongoose Bite. Pooling focus to just hit the same button over and over again is dumb. It’s a sorry excuse for a rotation and it is boring gameplay. You literally just hit the same button over and over again. How did anyone think this is a good idea?
I’d also like a slight rework to aspect of the eagle. The melee ranged hybrid nature of the class is cool but you don’t actually get to do it that much. I think Eagle should be a toggle(off the GCD). When it’s off you are melee as normal and when it’s on you are ranged but your Mongoose bite costs more focus. This lets me pick and choose when I can go ranged, rewards skilled players, and still incentivizes me to be melee most of the time.
You know the more I think about, I’d like to retract my previous suggestion that Mongoose should become baseline.
I know feel that Mongoose should stay as a talent. However, Flanking Strike should go baseline and replace Kill Command. This would provide Survival with a but more Identity if it’s own. It’s just off the DV uses BMs main attack and much much more often at that!
So with Flaking Strike baseline and Mongoose staying as a talent, this tier could all provide ways to pump up SVs playstyle.
The people that enjoy Mongoose and spamming the stacks for burst will still have that. Maybe now we can have 2 other talents that are equal-ish in damage and provide slight playstyle change. Maybe one choice could add a proc or something to react too while the other adds whatever else.
My BIGGEST point though, is for Flanking Strike to comeback as being SVs baseline attack to give its own identity away from BM.
Would be cool to also have some kind of focus back on trap mastery. Like SV needs another trap and shorter cooldown (or ways to shorten the cooldown) on the traps we have.
Would also like to see some more of Survival old roots in the spec. Nothing crazy but maybe bring back Survivalist as a passive 5-15% increase Stamina and Deterrence as a +5% chance to Dodge/Parry melee attacks.
I REALLY like this idea of a toggle for Aspect of the Eagle.
Just make it so if you have Eagle toggled on all(most/some) of your abilities are range is increased to 15-30 yards but the cost an extra 5 focus or whatever ends up being balanced.
You could toggle Eagle off to just melee as normal.
It does feel ghetto that it’s on a 90 second cooldown and 25 seconds long.
If they keep the cooldown I’d much rather it be shorter cooldown and shorter length. Like even 45 second cooldown lasts 10 seconds or even 30 second CD lasts 7 seconds.
If you took 5 minutes to read you would notice I am not asking for the re implementation of Ranged Survival. I am asking for updates to Survival
*Because currently Survival is the only spec in game that has not received a single mechanical update throughout Alpha and Beta
Please read before commenting. <3
I disagree, Mongoose Bite needs to be made baseline because so far it has been the most iconic part of melee survival which has remained somewhat unchanged throughout both legion and bfa. Yes in BFA was made a talent but it was literally the only one used throughout the whole expansion.
It should be remade baseline so that its talent row can actually be used.
I do agree flaking strike should replace kill command again. But I do not believe it is entirely necessary or the thing the spec needs the most.
Not saying your ideas are bad or anything, I’m just debating them. I’m more than happy to hear everyone’s opinions of how to make Survival great.
dude speak for yourself, I fkn DOMINATED BG’s back in vanilla on my hunter… ZG bow and the 2 stratholm axes, to damn near 2 shot people with raptor strike.
the build played awesome back in vanila… pure ranged, but if they came into your dead zone, your pulled out your axes and made them regret it.
At the very least please stop flashing my spellbook indicating I don’t have abilities placed on my hotbars when playing as a Survival Hunter because most of the abilities not on my hotbars are Ranged that I cannot use when I’m swinging around a melee weapon.
Its situational in PvE i’ll admit but its an amazing and unique tool in PvP, i think its fine as is.
Even though i kinda question its place in our toolkit in Shadowlands if they give us a semi-functional ranged DPS toolkit like they half-did already on PTR.
I personally like the idea of having us carry both a Spear and a Bow though but its also bound to keep us into the niche position we’re in, cause i don’t think there’s a way with the current UI to support that so we’d have to use old school Weapon Swap macros, which isn’t going to roll well with a lot of people.
Looking back on Legion’s version, I don’t know why they went away from it so much.
I’d prefer throw axe to be poisoned tipped as apposed to using serpent sting. I even liked lacerate better than serpent sting. Butchery should be baseline, get rid of carve, and in Butchery’s talent row, put back explosive trap, or even better, Fury of the Eagle. Why’d they take that away anyway? Maybe it looked a bit “monk-ish” but I liked it.
MB needs to be baseline, flanking strike baseline would be nice but baseline KC x2 is okay as well.
SS dot needs to do more damage with more haste without the time on the dot being reduced.
I agree that we need a spam AOE to make AOE fights enjoyable, and so no CD carve/butchery makes sense ( Nerf the damage if it’s scaling too high).
Chakram needs to be moved to a more competitive row or added as a baseline ability (nerf damage if moved to baseline)
Kill shot shouldn’t be restricted to just pole-arms. Honestly, allow hunters to DW & 2H with any weapon we want without there being restrictions. It doesn’t make sense that blizzard is allowing other classes such as Frost DKs & BM monks to have 2H & DW, respectively.
I 100% agree with OP btw. I’m typing this out to show my support & I hope blizzard takes a look at our spec and updates our talents, so that survival is more enjoyable & less clunky.
There was an F bomb here. Still is quite annoying I can’t update now to add stuff many amazing people have written here.
I enjoy both BM and SV, mostly because I started playing Hunter entirely because I wanted a pet. I still play both and swap around depending of what I feel like doing at the moment.
BM is in an acceptable state coming into Shadowlands, could be better yes, but it is good enough to go live.
SV, on the other hand, needs a lot of help.
Blizzard Plz do not forget Survival in this upcoming build
I know, but I was writing that stuff with way to much passion to notice I wrote it, by the time I noticed a moderator had already corrected it.
I am not angry at the moderator or anything at the correction. shrug stuff just happens.
aniway to go back into the conversation.
I agree with everything you have said, and I feel that we specially need to bring more attention to this issue.
Currently, Survival can equip all matter of weapons, but to be able to use our abilities we require two handed melee weapons
Now that we have kill shot which has been made only useable with pole-arm exclusively this is a stealth nerf to our spec, pole-arms are one of the rarest weapon types and normally there is only one per raid. Which leaves us with very little option about what stats we want in our weapon.
if this goes live we will be stuck with only been able to get one weapon out of every raid, unlike most specs and classes that have at least the option between two. And if that pole-arm does not even have our BiS stats to begin with we will be in a worse position.
DKs, and Monks are getting the option to choose between one handers and dual wielding. We should get that option too. specially when Every single Survival NPC in game dual wields
But if Blizz wasnts to be stubborn and keep us chained with spears, at least let us keep our “two handed melee weapons” requirement instead of poke-arms only
The best ranked SV Mythic Hunter in PVE (Thyminde) basically sums up one of the biggest issues we currently have in SL Beta. Blizzard cut our focus regeneration from 5% down to 2.5%. This is not okay, in BFA other hunters were at 10% focus regen & SV was at 5%. This has huge implications on an already clunky spec that’s now more resource starved. This also affects pet focus as well.
This video showcases the stealth nerf Survival has gotten in Shadowlands.
So not only is Survival the ONLY spec which has not received any mechanical updates throughout all of alpha and beta, but we have also been nerfed in the worse possible way, by making our rotation more clunky that it already was!
Blizzard, Survival deserves help! if you won’t give us a rework like shadow priests got at least fix the bloody issues we have instead of adding more!
