Why is Blizzard IGNORING Survival in 10.0.7

Classes Hunter
1

Was just reviewing the patch notes for 10.0.7 and I am still curious why Blizzard has made no changes to survival hunters. I am not one of those players who thinks they need a rework, but I do think they NEED attention. My suggestions would be as follows:

  1. Add a PVP talent that gives them 50% dodge for 10 seconds to help combat a very melee heavy Expac…lets face it Blizzard wants survival to be melee they HAVE to offer appropriate survivability to deal with the insane buffs to warrior, DK, Ret, WW Monk, etc. coming in 10.0.7

  2. For survival ONLY Kill command need to be off GCD OR NOT share GCD with Mongoose bite so survival can build kill command and mongoose bite stacks effectively.

  3. Spearhead needs to offer more then it does for a bottom tier ability. A damage increase would work or some type of crit bonus…just something more to make it not so lack luster.

  4. Coordinated assault needs to allow pet attacks to also buff Mongoose Bite in addition to bomb and kill shot.

  5. Kill command damage needs to be buffed 25% just like it is for BM…both spec need pet damage to preform.

  6. Survival needs some type of talent that increases armor like many other melee classes have or will be getting…wearing mail should not feel like cloth.

  7. New survival PVP talent allowing survival of the fittest to remove snares and roots.

Please comment below if you have any positive suggestions for survival hunters in 10.0.7

AND thank you in advance to Blizzard for reading and considering this post.

Lets try to keep this post positive and constructive…no haters…Thank you and GLHF!!!

13 Likes
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These are all viable and GREAT suggestions!! What does it usually take for Blizzard to consider these posts…anyone know?

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Survival is pretty strong in pvp it just has a higher skill ceiling than most. For pve they seem to suffer from the same as havoc DH do, needing to gauge distances to maximize damage. Survival doesnt really fit in the pve or pvp meta that DF has by design and maybe Blizzard is afraid of touching them as there are less people playing that spec than others.

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  1. instead of giving rogue evasion, it should be more like LK with aspect of the monkey + counterattack
  2. while i totally agree with all the gcd issues, KC w/o gcd would make the red bomb an issue

Otherwise on our big cd that are coord assault and spearhead, it’s sad that it’s not something more inline with our 1-button style dps.
Like during coordinated assault/spearhead doing X make mongoose bite stacks stays a little longer + up the cap to 8, kinda like old SP voidform where you try to maintain big buffs through a perfect rotation.

Obviously this souldn’t exist in pvp where the problem is more about having a real def cd + some health sustainance

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I would agree that this very well could be something Blizzard is scared to touch because they don’t know what to do. I do however agree that some defensive buffs would help them be more successful in PVP as they are just to squishy to be called “SURVIVAL” LOL

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Agreed…return of the monkey!! Personally, I think Blizzard could remove aspect of the eagle and replace it with an updated version of aspect of the monkey. Survival really doesn’t need aspect of the eagle in most cases unless someone is running from you …which we have several leaps and charges to utilize to stay on target. Also, if Blizzard was willing to put the effort in just make red bomb increase kill command damage by 10% rather then reset it 100% of the time. Really pretty simple if they want to put the effort in.

Also, Blizzard needs to adjust their mastery. The small HoT is fine but the damage buff portion is insignificant. My suggestion would be something more in line with the idea of survivability…maybe rather offers the percentage bonus as versatility instead. This would not only offer the hunter damage but also some damage reduction as well.

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Possible reasons:

  1. Too lazy
  2. Too incompetent
  3. No idea what to do with it
  4. Preparing to rework it again
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Definately. It seems the survival archetype for hunter is supposed to mimic some guy in the woods who carries a spear and hunts like some nordic/amazonian concept. A survival hunter seems like a jack of all trades and a master of none, especially at surviving something haha

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If you use the same metrics people seem to want to use with BM, SV is currently 3rd highest ST in the game, therefore everything is fine and dandy. Neltharax changes will remove the RNG that made BM a ST powerhouse on occasion, so SV will become the second highest ST spec.

Apparently this is how the game works now. If you’re good at some obscure thing, then your spec is fine.

/sarcasm off

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Critiques:

Hard disagree. I don’t want to see skills with any degree of decision making be replaced by a nearly auto-click-able free source of damage (direct and indirect [resource/trigger-based]).

We have Spearhead for that.

Not really, no. Pre-bow, SV has already had higher ST damage than BM. And for SV, pet damage is purely single-target. Our ST performance is basically fine; our shortfalls are elsewhere. And unlike MM, whose opportunities are far more constrained, our usefulness doesn’t so greatly live or die by that burst.

If you want to trade further towards single-target, you have builds for that. And if you want buffs to your AoE capacity in ST specs or vice versa (which… seems reasonable, as that’s among our shortfalls in PvE, too), that’s more a matter of simply siphoning some Mongoose/Raptor damage towards WFB and Carve/Butchery and letting Spearhead affect Carve/Butchery damage (significantly), or having Carve/Butchery better feed into MB/MF, etc.

:: Remember, this stuff has to also work for PvE.

5 other melee specs have Armor equal to or less than Survival. Armor isn’t necessarily the answer. Our mail, moreover, doesn’t feel any less like mail than that of any other mail-wearer. We’re just not plate — nor should we be.

Sounds good, but something taking up 1 of 3 PvP talents, I suspect you could draw a whole lot more from that choice, such as by having any defensive CD (Exhil, Cheetah, Turtle, SotF, FotB) purge snares and roots.

More Constructively…

There are currently some dead or basically-dead talents each for PvP and PvE on SV. Those should indeed be addressed.

Additionally, some seem needlessly constrained.

If we have to split/alternate CA’s procced buff behind a higher-priority Kill Shot anyways, why a mere 20% initial damage bonus (less than a 9% overall damage bonus) to WFB from CA? Why not simply have Spearhead amp all melee damage you deal, or at least also affect Carve/Butchery? Why not go ahead and reduce the base damage of Raptor and Mongoose slightly in favor of other damage sources, and ramp Spearhead’s multiplier slightly in compensation so our max ST value remains the same but our AoE is a bit higher? And, perhaps for the sake of a bit more palpable effect, we could have KC resets reduce the GCD incurred by the next KC, etc., so that Pheromone feels more rewarding; just… don’t turn it into literally free/passive/auto-clicked damage.

Apart from removing obvious bits of idiocy / arbitrary constraints put onto SV design (why should a hand-crossbow be able to fire rockets [Explosive Shot] but not enchanted bolts [Arcane Shot]?), those seem the places to touch on next.

That said, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Survival is underperforming in PvP — or even in raids, for that matter. It struggles primarily in M+, and is still pushing 25s even then.

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Survival needs nothing for PvP. They are too good at what they do if you know what you are doing.

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They’re not “too good,” though, especially in raids — merely balanced. With sustainable AoE a bit lackluster and actually putting them behind the other specs in M+.

  • MM’s ST damage ceiling may currently be too RNG dependent. It’d also say it might be slightly undertuned for a job w/o raid buffs, but… it is a top-third spec.

Edit: My bad, Toxik. Not sure how I missed the qualifier there. Been awake too long, I guess.

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I was referring to PvP, I honestly dont care about raiding. Never really been my thing. Il do it, but its not as fun as mercin players

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Honestly I’ve been of the mind for a while now that they should have renamed survival. Like, I get that the theme they want to convey with survival’s visual identity is like… a tauren adventurer living off the land with their companion and trusty spear, but the identity the specs mechanics convey is a scarlet crusade inquisitor(or a bounty hunter) stalking back alleys for necromancers to burn with a saber, hand crossbow and a bloodhound. Just rename a few abilities and change the blade trails from green to red or grey and it would rock that theme effortlessly and any glassiness would feel so jarring.

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My guy. :3

How’s things on the PvP front this expansion?

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Hmm…yeah, I think we can make this work. Some skills would need to be changed, along with probably a new element or mechanic. Sounds like an interesting challenge.

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  • [Surefooted] (3 ranks)
  • Survival, Tier 4
  • Reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30%.

[Surefooted]
30 sec internal cooldown

A passive ability that inhibits applied movement impairment effects for half of its duration, and boosts movement speed by an amount equal to the snare effect for 5 secs. Does not apply to root effects.

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I’m going to have disagree…rarely do I ever see someone even play survival in PVP arenas, but when I do they are KoS and mowed down rather easily. I know…I know you will say well they were just bad…but if that is the case and they are so perfectly balanced why is no one playing them. All MM and BM all day. I agree they need some type of defensive ability that helps them survive in melee combat…I think an Aspect of the Monkey type concept would work great.

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Some of your points are valid but I would say that we need to look at the big picture. Unlike other hunters SV has to be able to stay in melee range most of the time. While this isn’t really a big deal in PVE it is challenging in PVP when pretty much every melee class has or will be getting more defensive buffs. Even if another class has lesser armor we have to look at how many defensive abilities they have too, and how many more they are getting in 10.0.7. My suggestion would be to bring back Aspect of the Monkey offering 50% dodge for 10secs…it is a moderate change that would work in PVP and PVE with out creating any type of imbalance.

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Not exactly “most of the time,” no. Moreover, keep in mind that unless fighting an all plate/melee party, you can melee-harass targets your are advantaged against even while kiting those who could smack you back hard or better take your hits. Poke pressure isn’t what it used to be in ShL under Venthyr, but neither is it skipped over outright in favor of almost immediately meleeing.

That being said, I’ll agree that it certainly puts itself at far more risk than, say, BM — especially so long as its resources depend on the pet, thus making its damage every bit as vulnerable to pet-murder. And though it wouldn’t take much —and idk if I feel that an RNG defensive that wouldn’t work on spells would be the best way to go for that— sure, we could it therefore deserves something proportionate to its melee uptime.

I wouldn’t mind the name if it just felt like playing the edge had real rewards (in that sense of taking the precise and unforgiving choice being, ultimately, the more safe — pushing DPS to beat enrage, your classic "dodge through traffic/the narrow canyon to lose one’s tail)… But it doesn’t.

As such, I honestly thought “Pursuit” would have been a better name for it, starting in Legion, as we were by then the rush-down spec, complete with additional/longer means of slows, roots, and personal mobility.