Survival Hunters Going Forward

Classes Hunter
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If you have not at least tried survival hunter for several hours in a challenging position I don’t want your post, this is for people who know the spec. I have played survival hunter for the last 2 years of BFA with 50 days of playtime, 5/12 mythic prog in pugs, and a 2k IO score JUST from doing my weekly 15s for gear and no pushing. I LOVE the current survival hunter and I have seen several people in the forums talking about a new Survival or a need for reworking and what not and WE NEED WORK but we DO NOT need to completely remake it, we need to not be ignored by blizzard.

Blizzard, , there is NO need to have arcane/steady shot if we need to macro a weapon swap, either make it usable at all times, remove them and give us something better, or let survival be unique again where we can dual wield a melee and ranged weapon LET US BE UNIQUE AGAIN. Right now we are just some other hunter class with a stick. Give us something special please, we got 0 love in shadowlands so far, the only beneficial unpruning we got was kill shot and hunters mark and hunters mark got nerfed due to its removal of the damage bonus so its only useful against Druids/Rogues/Hunters with camo and Mages with Invis IN PVP there is no practical use for pve now. Also, give us our auras back so we have something to bring to the raid versus the typical 1dps stack because they can pop combustion and spam fireball fireball pyroblast. Surv hunter is denied entry most of the time because we bring nothing that a higher damaging broken BM/MM spec can bring or a buff that benefits everyone for having us there, we need to have something different and, again, unique to separate us from the meta chads with a 2button rotation.

Also, why are we using Staves and Polearms?? Gives us Axes, Maces and Swords and remove the stupid staves, there are 6 classes who use staves but only 3 classes who use swords/axes/maces, what champion of azeroth beats an old god to death with an old stick they found on the walk to the raid entrance??

Next, dont you dare get me started about talents, there is almost 0 room to break away from survival meta and create a unique playstyle with survival, for PVP and PVE there are set metas, YES thats a common thing among all classes but u can atleast give us this ONE thing in making Mongoose Bite replace Raptor Strike as baseline, if u play survival and use anything besides mongoose bite you might as well call yourself Johnny Depp cuz ur getting abused. Open that row and give us something interesting, I LOVE flanking strike, i think its a great ability, hell maybe better than harpoon tbh, its great fun with that one but i cant get around the need for mongoose bite.

Finally in SL literally what the hell are our Legendaries? Did anyone at blizzard represent us or was this some wheel of misfortune? I may just not even wear one theyre so useless like what is that? You gave us azerite traits, HOA abilties, and pvp talents that are weakened from their predecessors and expect us to keep up with stuff like Akaari’s Soul Fragment from Subtlety rogues?? Please give us something original, ask the community and give us a chance for once to improve our own game. “We know what you want not us” well then why the hell are we never satisfied with your answer? Are you asking the right audience even?? Where is our LEGENDARY gear all im seeing is throwaway items you guys didnt even think about.

Other survival hunters, let me know what you think, try to consider both sides, pvp and pve, dont just complain about how it affects your one aspect of the game if you can help it.

EDITED>>

Also, I am hoping we can get a buff as survival hunters, IM NOT ENTIRELY SURE due to my lack of multiple testings, only that done by myself, but the loss of the 20bonus base energy and haste bonus of the Heart of Azeroth in SL I fear that we may become completely obsolete overall whether PVP or PVE, again, based upon my own personal testing alone. A %damage buff or %haste buff as many classes have (maybe not haste but stats in general) to offset this major loss. It has been done to feral druids who were in quite the same spot so I see no reason why it should be taken off the table as an option.

6 Likes
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been saying this for a while myself.

SV is in a good place from mechanics standpoint, but it lacks good visuals.

Give all ranged abilities shots from bow animations if used from range and all ranged abilities in melee range get melee animations!

and this was a good change

Hard disagree here. On low haste or super high mobility fights Tip was beating goose.

And for utility, I suggest each hunter spec brings a unique buff aura and maybe names for em?
SV brings 2% haste, 1% crit, mastery, versa aura (Survivalist swiftness)
BM brings 2% mastery, 1% crit, haste, versa aura (Hunting pack)
MM brings 2% versa 1% crit, haste, mastery aura (Trueshot aura)

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  1. Why was hunters mark a good change? There is 0 use for it for PVE, can you remind me of any other exceptions to this type of behavior for an ability?
  1. Why would u use low haste build? there is nothing to fill the gap of survival BESIDES mongoose, you keep your poison you throw all ur bombs and use kill command to regenerate 0 energy cuz ur still full and then raptor after 3 useless kill commands? I call bs
  1. Exactly on the auras, give them some usefulness to bring to the party
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I think they were more talking about low haste as a product of rng or being undergeared, not the goal. There are time in progression that trend away from the meta, sometimes different talents shine in those times. Not because they’re better, but because they deal with poor situations in ways that better perform.

1 Like
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We will never have enough haste, even during 8.3 when I had 12% haste boost on EVERY item I was still feeling a bit lacking in haste, thats why in a new edit to the OG post I mentioned a part about a %stat base bonus for us as was done recently to feral druids because of the place they are in after BFA seeing as how the current version of Surv is where it is because of BFA imo.

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Just give us:

  1. A better-scaling Mastery.
  2. Cool skill visuals.
  3. Dynamic melee/ranged abilities, with due visuals: Killing Stroke, Lacerate in place of Kill Shot and Broadhead Bolt (in place of Serpent Sting). The melee/ranged DoT is identical, but the melee application has more direct damage.
  4. Meatier SFX, especially on the crossbows and, ugh, Carve.
  5. A Carve that hits at least like a much thicker noodle. Maybe even make it situationally useful in ST when using Wildfire Infusion by bumping its first-target CD reduction up to 2 to 4 seconds (max 6 to 8).
  6. Ideally, Bloodseeker baseline, benefitting from each separate bleed (rather than just each target bleeding), though at a lower % each. A new talent replaces Bloodseeker.
  7. Ideally, a new passive, Pathfinder, that causes you to leave a wake behind you whenever you move at at least 20% above normal movement speed, granting bonus movement speed to those who follow in your wake.
  8. Binding Shot equivalent now a trap as to be able to set it up earlier. (Survival perk.)
  9. Slightly longer duration on each Wildfire Infusion bomb.
  10. Have Steel Trap’s damage start higher and fade over time.
  11. Buff Murder of Crows, likely by reducing its Focus cost and, if Bloodseeker goes passive, having it, too, count as a Bleed.
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THIS!! Butchery!! I LOVE butchery i feel like a true warrior spinning around like whirlwind its great fun, combine it with a like dot from the wildfire bomb and make so if i butchery it like spreads it/resets the overtime effect!! MAKE IT MORE IMMERSIVE!!!

Bloodseeker is another must have like Mongoose for pve imo I cant not have it for the attack speed buff

Odd one, reminds me of the MM artifact weapon ability.

Survival didnt get it but MM and BM did as baseline which is a bit unfair imo

Depends, sometimes keeping those up is like playing a minigame in itself I feel no need for 2 of em anyways, the Pheromone bomb and Volatile bomb are kind of useless!! Serpent stinging multiple targets is only really something to do if u are pulling them and pheromone bomb requires is to waste like 10 seconds spamming kill command which does 0 damage, yes, it regens, but it doesnt matter if we fully regen over 10s of doing 0 damage our dps tanks due to the lack of mongoose bites! make Shrapnel bomb baseline to give us a bleed style build maybe? especially with bloodseeker/serpent sting/my butchery idea above

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Yeah, a bit odd, admittedly.

I just want Survival’s utility to, well, aid party survival, especially in tricky situations, rather than granting another generic +3% this or +5% that where it’d still be crowded out by anyone with a shared buff type. Ideally, also, I’d want that survival to come in a way that isn’t just cheesy DR.

I kind of wanted it to be that one melee that other melee actually want, rather than feel hampered by the presence of when danger-close mechanics get dense.

Admittedly, those two probably need slight buffs in themselves, but I enjoy cycling through them. They’d need changing regardless if our poisons were made bleeds instead, as the replacement for Volatile Bomb would need to be differentiated further from Shrapnel Bomb.

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So you want an aspect of the cheeta that plays like the druid roar ability for speed?

A buff or a rework are probably in order, yes

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Think area-persisting, directional, and fairly narrow, but otherwise yes, except in that it’d apply to spontaneous movement (Harpoon, Disengage, Flanking Strike) as well, instead of just percentile movement speed buffs. (Spontaneous movement would take the distance travelled over X time, divided by normal movement speed, minus one, and provide a percentile buff accordingly.) Your first reference to the Legion MM Artifact power was also apt. This just wouldn’t necessarily be in a straight line, but instead wherever the SV hunter goes. If he harpoons an add with two melee just behind, that adds gets smacked real quick.

It would make it so hitting Disengage would allow others to bail out at the last second and get back faster, etc, while dropping back to the stacked-up backline and using Aspect of the Cheetah would indeed have the benefits of Roar on that stack, etc. Uptime for melee, some mechanical safety for melee, and some kinda big plays for stacks.

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Great idea but also I feel like this has too much room for trolling and misuse. While not a huge stopping point still something to consider.
(edit was due to a misunderstanding i fixed after rereading)

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Good god hahaha

2 Likes
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Don’t care, gonna post anyway. What are you going to do about it?

Ranged weapons are in fact pretty unique in this game, so I guess it’s correct that SV lacks uniqueness given it throws away the most unique and identifying feature of the class.

BM and MM aren’t broken because they made a bad choice with SV by making it melee. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this problem coming from a mile away (especially given we already had 2 classes that face this exact dilemma) so naturally the Legion class developers ignored it and steamed on ahead with their repulsive Hunter redesign. But as I said this doesn’t make BM and MM unfair/broken. SV used to have no problem at all competing with those specs. If you want SV to be on par with BM and MM, give it a ranged weapon. Simple as that. Holding token buffs/utility hostage in SV is not the answer.

P.S. that also means no nonsense melee restriction like pre-MoP.

To be frank, any time spent on refining melee Survival is time wasted.

Besides, SV talents are in a much better spot than many specs in the game arguably including the other Hunter specs (granted: this depends quite a bit of SV being extremely bare in the baseline and depending on talents to complete the spec).

Having to use HM in PvE would be a bad thing. It would add nothing but a GCD requirement to every target swap which would be terrible. I would prefer it had some utility benefit such as increasing the ranged attack range against the target (yeah SV would not benefit so much from this but I really don’t care) but not having to use it at all in PvE is fine by me. We also don’t have to use Eyes of the Beast or Scare Beast in PvE but they are still nice to have.

Call me crazy but the spec should feel like a true Hunter, not a Warrior. If you want to spin around with whirlwind you can go do that in the Warrior class.

6 Likes
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Melee doesnt mean bad, look at DH’s until pre patch and why should that make sense? ranged should just naturally be better??

Dont know what youre talking about here

Better spot how? All I hear are how OP Warriors/Rogues/Enhancement are but I NEVER hear about Survival, were a dying breed because we can’t keep up with other specs despite being my favorite class

Doesnt need to be reapplied to every target, boss fight before hand alone is amazing “why only boss”? because Heroism, its just something thats nice to have, a boost in damage, youre right no point putting hunters mark on each target, do you see people casting frostbolt on a single target out of the 10 pulled? noooo, they use their aoe abilities.

Yes, poor wording, by warrior i just meant a melee fighter, not the class, it adds some animation into the otherwise dull look of survival in terms of animation style

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Not what was said.

What was said was the choice to make survival melee was bad, not that melee was bad.

Ranged is naturally better in most situations because they can avoid mechanics much easier than melee can without losing dps.

You’re right, we should just do 95% of our damage potential to everything that isn’t a boss and in aoe situations…

2 Likes
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The lack of attention toward SV at least pre SL I think can come down to one of 2 conclusions:

  1. Blizz is overall happy with how the spec plays, hence barley any changes.

  2. Blizz is planning on reworking the spec next expansion and thus sees no point in making changes to a spec that will be massively reworked come the expansion after SL.

I want to believe that “1” is the case but even so it would have been nice to get some kind of feed back from blizz, a blue post something etc…

For the mongoose bite stuff, people have been advocating for a while that MB should be baseline and the talents replaced with something to supplement MB but Tip of the spear is still a thing so it is what it is.

For the legendries I am kind of mixed. Yes I am glad that the cluster bombs and the stacking poisons are still a thing but I wish they where built into the spec or given as a talent choice. So yes while I want original legendries I am glad that we get to keep some of our azerite traits at least…

In terms of something unique, yes I wish SV did bring some unique buff. But perhaps the bigger question is how/why does blizz deicide which class should bring a raid buff and which class shouldn’t? Is it arbitrary is it a matter of popularity a la- 'well if we don’t give Monks X buff then no one will play the class"? I am sure SV could bring a buff that wouldn’t make them OP but for whatever reason blizz is not going in that direction.

Overall I like how SV hunters play and yes while I wish it got more love coming into SL but I don’t think it needed a massive rework at least in the vein of “make SV ranged again” and I am hoping blizz feels the same.

MSV “survives” for another expansion and unless someone at blizz is carrying some vendetta against the spec or blizz has truly given up on the spec then I assume tuning changes will happen if needed. But again anyone hoping for any large scale changes to SV was probably going to be disappointed from the start.

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It’s always problematic to have a melee spec share a class with a ranged spec. This has been the reality for Druids and Shamans since the start. The simple reality is that ranged specs are inherently favourable over melee specs so game mechanics must compensate melee enough to make them desirable. The class barrier makes this easier, but when the barrier is just a respec it’s harder to make the melee spec stand out as an appealing option.

Now, this isn’t me saying they should never do it. It can work, but it requires a lot of attention and care. They can make Feral and Enhancement appealing specs and although those specs tend to be less played than the ranged specs in their classes they at least usually have sizeable playerbases. The point here is this: knowing that having a melee/ranged split within a class is an extremely difficult situation to balance, why would anyone ever think it would be a good idea to add yet another spec to that same situation? It’s actually worse for SV because it’s competing with 2 ranged DPS specs instead of 1.

All too often, just like in your post, the blame seems to be directed at BM and MM… for being competent ranged specs, I guess? It doesn’t make sense. They deliberately chose to put SV in this situation knowing all the problems it would cause yet somehow it’s the fault of the ranged specs when it doesn’t work out.

I don’t think going back to the pre-MoP model of having both a melee and a ranged weapon is a good idea. People like to think of it as a good compromise and there especially seems to be a lot of marketing spin about this version of the Hunter somehow being “more versatile”, but the fact of the matter is as it stands now BM and MM are both 100% effective for the entire 0 to 40 yard range, while SV is 100% effective within 5 yards and only ~50-70% effective beyond that (not exact figures and obviously it depends on talent choice and the amount of time you spend far away, but you get the point). Before MoP all 3 specs were 100% effective from 5-40 yards and only about 50% or so effective in melee.

People often focus on the thematic side of things here but practically speaking there is no way to argue any melee-using Hunter in WoW has ever or will ever be more versatile than a Hunter that can just use its ranged attacks from 0 to 40 yards. The only way to make it work is by perfectly balancing the melee and ranged toolkits which is unlikely to say the least. If the melee is weaker, you’re a ranged spec with a minimum range restriction and therefore weakness in melee range (Hunters before MoP). If the melee is stronger, you’re a melee spec with high ranged capability (Survival post Legion).

I’m talking about talent viability and choice. Survival has (or at least had, I don’t know how this holds up after 9.0) multiple viable builds with distinct playstyles from its talents. It has fewer dead talents in general than the other specs. This is largely a result of the fact that Blizzard spent a lot more time and effort designing Survival talents in BFA (BM and MM talents were hardly touched from the beginning of BFA testing all the way to the end of the expac), the fact that Survival was essentially going into BFA as a brand new spec and therefore had a clean slate, and the fact that Survival has a core toolkit almost totally lacking in interaction and therefore dependent on slotting in different talents to complete the toolkit (most infamously Mongoose Bite).

We’ve heard this all before. Working around a bad mechanic doesn’t make it a good mechanic.

It’s also hard to follow your logic here because you tend to post in big run-on sentences while changing your train of thought multiple times mid-sentence. Are you under the impression that HM gave any sort of group utility like Heroism? Because it didn’t. It was a 5% buff to the Hunter’s damage and only his/her damage on that target.

It’s also not as simple as pure single target v.s. AoE. You have spread target situations which our AoE can’t cover, plus priority add burst. A major appeal of Hunters in recent expansions is the ability to start up with high burst on a new target with little setup. Hunter’s Mark directly infringes on that while adding no other gameplay value. Seriously ask yourself: how would it improve your experience with the class if you had to apply this debuff to every target you had to kill?

I’d argue Survival does have a unique and interesting aesthetic but most of that lies in Wildfire Bomb and Serpent Sting which are the ranged-centric mechanics of the spec.

4 Likes
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Which is why i think the unique dual weapon for survival is such a great idea personally, they are jacks of all trades, give them the ability to rotate as needed, a highly mobile ranged/melee class we havent really seen since the original wow classic with hunters back then with a new polish on the class

not every fight has combustion, heroism, coordinated assault, army of the dead, stuff happens when u cant always be at 100% make it a cd, dont, idc, make it useful besides me finding something ive ALREADY poisoned or sent my pet after, something i cant see with one of my 4 different possible traps or a flare. IDK, im spit balling here to see if we as a community can make something work to improve a class that I enjoy and im sure plenty of others do, i dont want to drop the spec just because blizz threw us scraps for the next 2 years.

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Are you really trying to compare cooldowns to an ability that is meant to be on a target for 100% of it’s life?

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The biggest issues is that SV hunter isn’t SV hunter anymore, it’s basically a poor man’s BM. If anything, BM needs to be more like current SV, except melee fighting with two huge exotic beasts, two axes, throwing weapons and berserker rage instead of grenades and poisons.

Since the start of WoW, SV Hunters have largely been characterized as masters of our environment using traps. We’re more akin to Dunedain rangers or Rambo. We specialize in mobile damage over time ranged combat, poisons, exotic traps, and the ability to hold our own in melee combat. We use brains over bruit force.

We also need Legion’s ‘Trap Mastery’ talent back to give our traps a powerful bonus after 2 seconds of arming time. These were devastating and seriously fun. The only reason it didn’t work is because Blizz turned us into a broken melee spec that no asked for.

I elaborate further on this in my thread here. Check it out if you want. The current spec has its element of fun, but is overall broken, especially the mismatched talents that literally make no sense.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/survival-enough-complaining-lets-talks-solutions/646367

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