Ranger is at least passable because it’s enough % damage on off rotation abilities but the rest are just so boring. This is not a comment about throughput, on the contrary these are just “do more damage” talents that are highly effective but absolutely don’t do anything for your ability to pick & choose according to the situation. Can we get a rework on the tree pretty please so i can use my tree to design how I want to play instead of spending half my points so that my spec is a spec? At least consolidate a few of the points - we don’t need bomb damage or MB damage on 2 separate 2 point nodes.
we also have the least amount of nodes in the entire game and one of the most, if not the most, expensive tree for a DPS spec. affli used to be tied with us, but they have a confirmed talent refresh in the works.
Thank you for calling attention to this. I normally don’t like to necro posts, but an amazing post was made by a moderator from the hunter discord explaining the shortcomings of survival a few months ago. Please see below:
You failed to mention that you’re forced to take a talent (raptor strike) that you then can take a talent to replace (mongoose bite), making your forced talent effectively a 2 point talent. They should just make wildfire bomb the top node talent and raptor strike/mongoose bite a choice node.
It’s also crazy to me that, unlike every other dps spec in the game, you have 0 baseline dps abilities you can effectively use as survival. You get kill command as your first talent in the class tree and raptor strike in the spec tree. The rest of your dps abilities all come later as well. So you can’t even play a melee spec hunter until you get to level 10 out of 70, unless you want to autoattack the whole time.
You also didn’t mention the passive crit damage %.
Raptor vs Mongoose seems to be the exact thing choice nodes were made for so it’s really questionable that the talent tree is set up like that. SV is a melee spec in a mainly ranged class so I can understand SOME quirks but it has been multiple expansions since and some of the stuff like RS should be made baseline.
Also I mention the % crit damage node on the first line of the post body lol
Sorry I missed the first line lol I just looked at your list. I’m not sold on the melee in a ranged class argument though since enhancement is fine. They added primal strike for them a few expansions ago, so they should have already been prepared for this if they spent the time on it.
I think hunter class designers are not as…good, as some of the other class designers (imo evident from how lacking in flavor the hero talents are). And yeah Raptor Strike and Wing Clip used to exist as baseline hunter abilities so there’s really no excuse for them if they’re going to support this melee survival archetype, which is my fav spec in the game despite everything.
It’s lazy design but presents good dps without complex gameplay.
For me, I would rather keep those talents, make survival hunter not become like outlaw or affliction warlock or ww monk or enhancement shaman, over designed and lacking integration, they just become something not fun to play.
It’s not like those things are mutually exclusive. I’d argue that the current state of the spec is clunky and without good integration. None of the abilities really interact with each other. I like having a complex rotation and knowing that my mastery of a complex rotation will be rewarded. You don’t like that and just want to stab things with a spear? That’s fine! This is why choice nodes are a thing and this is a design pattern used very prominently in the feral tree. Bloodtalons is a complicated talent so you can just take a flat % damage increase if you don’t want to think about it. This is why I’m arguing that MB and RS should be choice nodes. If you don’t want to deal with the complexity of Mongoose Fury or if the encounter does not favor it, you can just take RS and not think about it.
That being said there’s no way affliction is “overdesigned” at the moment: their talent tree is all over the place and suffering from similar problems to survival. That’s why their talent tree is getting reworked in the TWW alpha. WW as well. Survival should too.
Survival has hands down the worst talent tree in the game:
These are 2-point talents:
“Wildfire Bomb deals 12% additional damage.”
“Damage of Flanking Strike increased by 10% and all damage dealt by Wildfire Bomb increased by 4%.”
And so are these:
“Mongoose Bite damage increased by 5%.”
“Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Butchery, and Carve damage increased by 5%.”
What is the point? Increases the damage of A. Increases the damage of A and B. That’s the least creative talent tree, and also the oldest one in the game at this point. The survival tree was even more atrocious, got updated early in DF beta, and is still the same.
Not only is it ridiculous that they’re 2 point talents, but you’re spending 2 points to adjust an ability’s damage by 10%, that they’ll just go behind the scenes and tweak the baseline ability up or down with the assumption that you took those talents anyway. Those talents just get you up to status quo.
Thanks for this - it’s crazy that people don’t understand this. They look at hero talents and say WOW so MUCH % increased DAMAGE! but realistically that’s going to be relevant for the first few weeks of the expansion until blizzard puts everything back in line (admittedly they’re very slow so have your fun in the first few weeks). That way % increased damage talents are actually just tax you’re paying to get access to the interesting parts of the talent tree because it quite literally does not matter.
Don’t get me wrong, the ones in the hero trees are okay I guess, because you don’t get “options” in the trees beyond the 3 choice nodes. You get all the nodes and your only real option there is the first or second hero tree as a whole. However, the ones in the spec trees gotta go. You don’t get your entire spec tree, but for survival specifically like 6 or 7 talents are just 2 point nodes that bring you up to status quo. That’s nearly 40% of your spec talents just to get to the status quo for damage with no real profile or playstyle versatility? That’s far and away worse than affliction, ret, or windwalker, which is getting attention and it’s fine they do because at least aff & ww do need it. However, to flat out ignore hunters is ridiculous, while giving druids yet another make over for about the 5th or 6th time since Shadowlands for balance druids.
what’s even funnier is that you look at newer trees (fire or ret, for example) and they only have one or two 2pt nodes total. we have swiftly power crept talent trees within just a year to make it so any tree with so many 2pt nodes is just garbage.
there is no benefit to a 2pt node. they do not gate anything interesting, there is no satisfying pay off.
They will try to balance all DPS specs, so no matter if your damage comes from 20 talent nodes, or from 2, in the end it will be the same. More throughput nodes in the talent tree does not equal to more damage. It just means it’s spread thin.
Therefore, the other nodes are more valuable - the ones that provide utility/defensives/situational skills/fun!
The survival tree is notorious for the worst of reasons. It started as the worst talent tree in DF beta (with record-high number of 3-node talents, including the “increases your range by 1/2/3 yards” one for 3 points, and what they did since then was to make the 3-node ones into 2-node ones. Otherwise, all the bad design remained.
it boggles my mind- blizzard does a huge spec redesign to sv in legion, does some adjustments in bfa, then never touches it again. Why are they letting this spec just die off? Survival could be so cool as a similar spec to ff14’s dragoon, and ff11’s even since they had a dragon pet- its main weapon is a spear according to legion so why not get some cool jump attacks and stuff?
I agree, a lot of the theming for this spec is lost. As previously stated above, the dps spec in itself has 8 talent nodes that all read “increase damage by x%”. There are no interactions with your pet other then flanking strike and there are many abilities that were seen on alpha and beta but then later scrapped.
I would like to see survival actually get a long hard pass for once instead of the crap adjustments they’ve been getting all expansion.
There are very few active effects, very few 1 point nodes and frankly the lowest amount of NODES IN GENERAL any melee spec has in the ENTIRE GAME.
So please, a crumb, a bite, anything Blizzard! ANYTHING!
You don’t need “melee” in this sentence. Survival has the lowest number of nodes across ANY spec and yet the most 2 point nodes of any spec. It’s rather ridiculous.
and one of the most, if not the most, expensive tree for a DPS spec. affli used to be tied with us, but they have a confirmed talent refresh in the works.