i feel like DF prepatch was the best survival’s ever been. i miss flayed shot. i miss wildfire cluster. i miss the synergy with mad bombardier.
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There’s something endearing about the vanishingly small playerbase of SV insisting that some of the least-played iterations of the spec were in fact the “best it’s ever been”.
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You forgot to mention the best talent point:
Energetic Ally
Literally waste a talent point.
Almost like some obnoxiousass goblin who can’t let go of the past I know of
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thank you bepples very cool
I’ve returned a month later in a fit of inspiration to ask if a Survival Specialization Tree involving the left half being bow focused abilities, the middle being bomb abilities, and the right half being melee focused abilities would be something that could potentially be well received.
I haven’t put nearly enough time into thinking about specifics but the bow side would include things like a bow based version of mongoose bite that replaces arcane shot. Most of the talents not related to bombs on the current tree could shift positions (or be removed, in the case of a lot of the generic increases) to the right side of the tree that would focus on the current style of play.
In the center of the tree would be bomb related talents and maybe damaging trap related talents as well as the current butchery/carve choice node, but redesigning carve to instead be a charge based aoe that is only usable with a bow that plays similarly to butchery.
Ideas for trap related nodes could include things like a talent that makes enemies slowed by tar trap take increased damage from you and your pet, or even have something like “deal reduced damage to your allies”.
There could be a node that would cause enemies to take increased damage from an ability for any reason, but it could be tied to if an enemy was recently under the effect of one of your traps.
Perhaps you could even tie in defensives on the tree itself:
Further right into the 2nd section of the melee side there could be a cheat death-like ability that automatically feigns death if it isn’t on cooldown to avoid the blow that killed you once every 3-5 minutes, and a talent directly under that that causes casts of feign death to heal you/cleanse bleeds or provide some sort of damage reduction (speaking purely from a PvE stance, I am oblivious to the plight of the PvP’ers)
Further left into the 2nd section of the ranged side there could be a talent that lets you attack while turtle is active, and below that a talent that reduces turtles cooldown in some way similar to the generic tree’s exhilaration reduction.
I think with the current bloat of talent points being lessened there would be room to fit talents such as these in without feeling like there would be some major loss of damage to take the defensive talents, which is the main reason I am even suggesting placing such pivotal things on the tree (outside of the constant desire for survival hunter to be able to survive).
I also think there could be potential of a large class identity with a system such as this that would aim to promote survival as being able to play either melee or ranged, while keeping the existence of things like traps/bombs core to its kit.
(Sorry to bring this thread back up after a month, I’m unaware of the etiquette of that but I had just felt like this is an idea that I wanted to get out there that was still relevant to the topic originally posted)
DPS traps are very hard to make work right as most players really do not like using them as they’re quite awkward to use compared to regular abilities with no real benefit. Furthermore, DPS traps that depend on the traps actually affecting the target(s) (i.e. tar trap slow increases damage received) would not work on anything that can’t be CC’d. Futhermore, some bosses just don’t even trigger traps at all.
Oh the catastrophic irony. How does one person become so infatuated with their own opinion and at the same lack any semblance of self awareness. You befuddle me daily.
As far as trap related abilities go, I think what I’m suggesting is more along the lines of the rogue talent on their generic tree that makes an enemy do 30% reduced damage for 6 second after they come out of sap, in this case freezing trap or high explosive trap. The suggestion of having like a damage increase from enemies slowed by tar trap would be just another talent point that is very clearly taken for M+ (or fights with cc-able adds) and provides little to no benefit against a raid boss, or even give it use in raid via steel trap’s bleed working on creatures that cant be cc’d.
I assumed these talents would be near the center of the tree where taking them would have the least impact on pathing while still being easily within reach of either sides build path.
The proposed tree would look something like this:
https://imgur.com/kEygi3X
I hope this actually posts the link to the image I don’t mean to come across as technologically inept but I’ve like never linked an image on here before and almost never use forums of any game so oops if it didn’t work.
Edit: I have made an absolute fool of myself, a buffoon if you will. 
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after spending some time on the toilet ruminating about it i have come to the conclusion that the hunter class tree and spec trees are bland and unengaging because of how much of their strength lies in their pets.
what i would do is just remove passive leech/hp gain/move speed from the pet and work it into the class itself by having it be talented into. make aspect mastery from bm a class talent and give bm something else. have hunter learn bloodlust at 50/whatever level shaman does, add fortitude of the bear and master’s call as talents.
with the addition of these to the class tree, a lot of work would need to be done for the spec tree. to start us off, baseline mongoose bite at level 10. absolutely insane that a melee dps spec has to talent into actually being a melee dps. baseline carve, replace the choice node with a passive that makes it into an aoe version of lacerate to actually compete with butchery. next, there’s quite a few decent azerite powers that would make for decent talents like elemental whirl or dire consequences, as well as primal intuition. all far more interesting than 10 extra focus, or mb/butchery/wfb dps increase talent #328.
as far as sl abilities go, i always liked the torghast ability that let you drop a random trap at your feet whenever you used disengage. that could make for an interesting gameplay loop with harpoon. i feel like this would be the best compromise for using traps for dps since it would essentially remove the clunkiness of manually aiming them. stick in wildfire cluster, flayed shot, and maybe rylakstalker’s strikes too for good measure.
we have a talent that does this already on the class tree and nobody takes it because it’s very annoying to play around. traps are really not that great to use
That talent isn’t ran because its awkward or annoying to play around though. I’d largely say it isn’t ran because its worthless, but also because the hunter generic tree is EXTREMELY stretched for talent points. 10% damage reduction to only you isn’t nearly the same as the 30% reduced damage/healing dealt to everyone from sap. I also think things like tar trap/freezing trap are infinitely easier to justify tying such talents to, largely because they aren’t awkward to hit in a lot of the situations they are used.
Tar trap has seen use in raid via encounters like Razageth, slowing the small minions to prevent them from crossing sides quicker. Freezing trap has been used in raid situations like Barghast’s shades on Huntsman from Nathria.
Tar trap is commonly used in large pulls in m+ to assist the tank with kiting whenever they need to. It also can be used to organize a pull to not all be striking the tank at the exact same time by staggering their hits via slowing specific enemies down. Freezing trap also sees regular use in m+ situations where you would similarly Sap, Poly, Hex, etc, a singular creature. It can also be used as an extra single-target stop to prevent a deadly cast from going off in many situations.
I could be an outlier but I find myself using these abilities regularly, regardless of a proposed benefit.
For reference this is my hunter and I clearly largely do M+. Edited this first part down because I felt it might have come across snarky or passive aggressive, which wasn’t in any way my intent.
This all also comes from a genuine place of enjoying survival while wishing the small issues could be looked into/fixed/changed while attempting to point out said issues and provide solutions.
I really hope more people start realising that survival’s current thematics are cheeks.
Specs usually are explorations of classes’ central ideas. So for Hunter we have: MM, for ranged attacks, trick shorts and barrage of arrows; BM, for Pet empowering; And Survival for… bombs? Why not traps… or poisons, or even bleeds… or frenzied attacks in junction with your pet… or all of them?
But no… bomb spam is the way to go.
This is all my - passionate - opinion, of course.
traps are really bad to play with
there are 3 poison talents in the tree
tip of the spear, flanking strike, kill command, coordinated assault, spear head
bloodseeker, spearhead
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Depends, dot traps like Steel trap feels fine honestly. With better design they can work great in pve content.
3 poisons (2 of them being application of said poison) talents compared to 15 bomb talents.
Tip of the spear empowers more bombs and explosive shots and melee attacks in the best case scenario.
Flanking Strike is more a generator for Tip than anything else, is fine… but not as central as I wish it were.
Kill command barely lives to the pet coordination, is more of pet command than actual coordination.
Spearhead is not bad, but old CA did a better job of giving the coordination feel that survival claims to have.
Only 2 (3 if you count Outland venom) bleed talents…
Again - compared to 15 explosive/bomb talents.
you mean if it was designed like a regular targeted spell 
Honestly, they could. At least for me this is more a discussion of themes than actual gameplay.
But in my expirience Steel Trap never felt bad or clunky to use. Underwhelming? Yeah sure there’s nothing really synergized with it. But unless you’re chucking it half a screen away its really hard to miss it. (Happened twice for me in a whole season of raiding.)
With better design though, they’re no longer traps, it’s just an ability like any other 
the problem with traps is that there are enemies and bosses that cannot trigger traps—the eye in shadowlands was a good example of this
Yes? There are still plenty of poisons talents. I suggest you re-read the in game description of the spec
Tip of the Spear is the direct fantasy you asked for about attacking with your pet. You get Tip of the Spear by your pet attacking, which empowers your follow up.
It heavily benefits from tip in TWW, which again is the direct thing you’re asking for about attacking in junction
Kill Command triggers you following up with Quick Shot, Explosive Shot, or Kill Shot; and again empowers you because you’re attacking in junction with your pet 
or you can play pack leader which is another example of the attacking in tandem w/ kill command
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They can fix that… that’s the thing I mentioned with ‘better design’.
Tip itself is not bad, even though old CA represented way more coordination than it. My point is that just tip is not enough thematically for a spec based on ‘pet coordination’.
A shame also that what Tip of the Spear ends up empowers is usually bombs/explosive shot.
True, unfortunately its more bombs and beloved kill shot.