High amount of 3-point nodes
Survival Hunter has 9 nodes in our talent tree that require 3 points to reach max investment. This is extremely high and well above average for every other DPS specialization revealed so far.
High amount of filler nodes and inconsistencies with other specs
Survival Hunter has a few nodes in our tree that provide very similar/identical function to nodes in other specs tree but at 3 times the investment. We have 9 instances of three-point nodes. For example, Lunge increases our melee range by 1/2/3 yards at 3 points spent in the talent. Compared to Rogue, which has the talent “Acrobatic Strikes” which increases their melee range by 3 yards for a 1 point investment.
Additionally, our talent “Predator” gives Kill Command a 8/16/25% chance to reset it’s cooldown. This sort of proc can be compared to “Killing Machine” in the Frost DK tree, which again is a 1 point investment. Both the rest of Kill Command and the Killing Machine effect are both very impactful to SV/FDK respectively yet it is somewhat odd that SV needs to invest 3 points to get something we’ve been playing with for years baseline.
In summary, this means that we have less experimentation available than other DPS specs. We cant not branch out as much as other specs, as we have to invest far more points to open up pathways.
7 Likes
To put this a different way, SV has the most 3-point talents (9, which is more than double the next highest), the highest average node cost, the highest cost to unlock the full tree (58 points), and the lowest number of distinct nodes (32).
| Spec |
Cost |
Nodes |
Average Node Cost |
| outlaw |
51 |
45 |
1.133333333 |
| subtlety |
50 |
44 |
1.136363636 |
| guardian |
45 |
38 |
1.184210526 |
| resto |
43 |
35 |
1.228571429 |
| holy |
46 |
36 |
1.277777778 |
| frost |
45 |
35 |
1.285714286 |
| discipline |
53 |
41 |
1.292682927 |
| shadow |
55 |
42 |
1.30952381 |
| assassination |
51 |
38 |
1.342105263 |
| unholy |
46 |
34 |
1.352941176 |
| blood |
49 |
36 |
1.361111111 |
| balance |
47 |
34 |
1.382352941 |
| feral |
46 |
33 |
1.393939394 |
| marksmanship |
54 |
36 |
1.5 |
| beast mastery |
53 |
34 |
1.558823529 |
| survival |
58 |
32 |
1.8125 |
It’s totally fine though.
8 Likes
Shoutout to Blizzard for creating a worse talent tree than what Survival got in WotLK when they had just 4 years of class design experience 
3 Likes
That’s a great chart. Really eye-opening. As I understand it, the lower the average cost per node, the more actual choice there is, essentially, right?
By the way, Survival actually has 10 3-point nodes. Even worse.
In case anyone hasn’t realised it yet as it stands Survival’s ST build is just going to be Kill Shot and Mongoose Bite spam with the spec CD being a rip-off of DH’s The Hunt and you don’t even take Harpoon or Wildfire Bomb. For AoE you do get the bomb but you still don’t take Harpoon or Mongoose Bite and your spec cooldown is a rip-off of Windwalker’s Fist of Fury instead.
What better do you expect from the brains that made the spec melee in the first place? They’re not capable of making a good Survival spec so they just resort to overtuning it to force people to play it. That’s what SV is now.
3 Likes
Lower average cost per node means you can take more nodes. Higher number of distinct nodes means there are more things to choose from.
SV is the worst in both categories. BM and MM are not far behind.
Suggestions to resolve these issues WITHOUT changing the end result of the talent
- Lunge → 1-point node to match Acrobatic Strikes and grant 3 yard range
- Predator → 1-point node to grant the normal 25% Kill Command reset proc
- Precision → 2-point node to grand 3/6% bonus critical strike chance
- Improved Wildfire Bomb → 2-point node to grant 12.5%/25% improved Wildfire Bomb damage
- Tip of the Spear → 2-point node to grant 12.5%/25% bonus damage to Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite a stack
Without any sort of other consideration or feedback on the current Dragonflight Talent tree, this reduces our overall 3 point node total to 5 which, while still above average, is much more palpable to Survival Players. This always grants us extra points to explore and build our character with.
2 Likes
To add to this, make Deadly Duo 1 point for however many Kill Shots they want you to have. Then do the same for In For the Kill for BM. MM has Deadshot as 1 point for 10% chance on Aimed Shot, so adjust the percentage down according to how much more often you use KC on SV/BM.
2 Likes
You can also add:
Birds of prey needs deleted.
Deadly duo needs removed.
Nesingwary’s needs removed.
I mean, surv’s tree is already like 2/3rds smaller then the rogue’s trees and i still want to remove most of it bc it all sucks.
This is a great start. I don’t know why they went crazy for “make everything 3 points for SV” but they did and it sucks. Let’s start with the easiest fixes first, trim the bloody fat. We have way to many 3 point caps, bump them down to 2 or 1, adjust the values-that would be a good start to build from.
Also if I am being cheeky I would rather lunge give us 6 or 9 yards… you know the whole spears should have a longer range than a dagger, knife, sword…
Or have Lunge just be a passive effect attached to Aspect of the Eagle? A minor range increase is not the end of the world for a spec that already has so much flexibility where range is concerned
I wouldn’t mind that, but honestly I wish aspect of the eagle was baseline. Such a cool and niche ability is so far down in the tree.
1 Like
It does feel out of place so low. Really I would love for it to be up by Harpoon and have the cooldown reduction talent baked into Harpoon. It makes more sense in the “mobility/Raptor Strike” part of the tree
1 Like
The guy who did the survival tree got handed the real rough task. Imagine being handed the objective to create a new talent tree for a spec that has pretty much no synergies, no diversity. It has no real identity and above all, it has barely Anything “old” to bring back.
Pretty much everything we have as survival now we’ve had since it was made into MSV… Liquid Max and Co talked about this at length, on his stream, when they evaluated (TL;DR they think it’s crap!) it and what pretty much all other specs have gotten is a lot of the current stuff baked into class and spec trees and then they flesh them out with a very few new options and mainly bringing back some old goodies.
The problem with this is that Survival has barely anything to bring back and it’s so hard to develop new stuff because I doubt even Blizzard themselves know what it’s supposed to be. So there he is, this poor designer/developer, with the smallest tree with two super generic builds that are literally 2-4 abilities Max and he still lacks 20-30 points to force the feel of “choice” (we can’t just have 32 talents and 30 points after all) so what does he/she do? Make a bunch of them into 2/2 or 3/3 talents. Problem solved. What it does not is solve the already atrocious spec tree.
To be honest, I main MSV and I have liked it on and off mainly due to how boring I’ve felt BM have become (rotation/theme-wise) and it has been neat to actually be wanted, to be powerful but man oh man, Liquid Max said it best: Survival is the red stepchild that has never really been a success. It did not work when they released it, the rework did not work and the only way to actually get more than a 1% of the player base to even play it is to make it so OP/overtuned that you kind of Have to bring it.
This tree most likely will see some Serious overhaul and I pray to god they figure out what to do with Survival and make it actually good. This will be their chance to a second big revamp of the spec and I hope they a) take the chance and b) nail it!
1 Like
To add insult to injury, SV baseline melee range was 8 yards during Legion.
1 Like
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.
1 Like
I don’t want to get my hopes up to much for beta. In the past unless X spec was getting heavily re-worked you rarely saw a blue post in the class beta forum so I doubt there will be any great change in communication this beta cycle but who knows… I remeber back in Legion every class, every spec they had a post going over what they wanted to do with the spec, where they felt they have succeded, where they fell short etc and I don’t think I have seen anything like that since Legion unless X spec was being heavily reworked… I want to be hopeful but tis hard.
For me, if they can do the small stuff of trim the over indulgent “let’s give SV all the 3 caps cause some spec has to have it”, that would be a good start and we can go from there.
I know WoW isn’t based on realism, but consider that melee is 5yd range, so you are already reaching 15 feet with whatever weapon. Adding another 9 yards on top of that would mean you have a 42 foot long spear you are stabbing people with. If it was a thrown spear, that would make sense, but not for stabbing people.
Meanwhile ranged weapons only hit up to 120 feet away.
1 Like
Yeah sarissa pikes that the Greek pike phalanxes used only got to 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) and they only work in packed rank formations
1 Like
The tree is a mess. Since some things ae being brought back, there were talents/spells that could come back. Caltrops was a great spell/talent that could find use, a few other spells reworked could be of use.
I am hoping though that the discussions are taking in considerations and that the tree gets a rework. It is still in alpha phase, so hopefully things are being looked at.