Survival Hunter 11.0 Talent Update
The Hunter class and all three Hunter specializations received a surprising and hefty rework in the Beta for The War Within. The Survival update specifically was quite extensive, completely overhauling the entire specialization talent tree while remaining true to the spec's class fantasy and melee identity. This new gameplay for the spec is engaging, the talent tree is exciting, and there are a lot of new options to look at, builds to think about, and brand new exciting gameplay to learn. With such giant changes, you may be a bit daunted about how to approach or the spec—or maybe you're brand new to the spec—so we've prepared an article to give you a quick run down of what exactly these big changes are.
You'll be able to learn the cool new mechanics to the spec, awesome things to look out for, and what the initial concerns are after a rework of this explosive magnitude. We have compiled what we believe is our most important feedback towards the end, but it is quite long!
TL;DR - Survival's gameplay embraces the spec fantasy with a special focus on
and
. You've got a brand new spec mechanic (and pretty much a new resource) with
. You've got a revamped Mastery in
and you're a lot tankier. The gameplay fundamentals haven't changed a whole lot, but you have more interactions and more fun mechanics to pay attention to.
Mastery: Spirit Bond
The new Mastery for Survival Hunters in the rework is a significant improvement over its previous version. Before The War Within, Mastery was generally avoided due to its limited impact on key abilities like
, which hurt both single-target and AoE damage. The new Mastery now boosts all damage dealt by you and your pet (finally including
) as well as including a built-in damage reduction! It also introduces a proximity bonus that strengthens the specialization as a melee DPS, with Blizzard allowing a 10 second "mercy" window for the doubled bonus when you and your pet are not near each other. This gives a more useful AND more thematic Mastery compared to the previous version.
New & Reworked Mechanics
With the reveal of our update and the continued iterations of it, Blizzard added a couple of new concepts to Survival, both being thematic to the spec fantasy and also very fun.
Rotational Explosive ShotBlizzard stated that they'd like
(from the Hunter class talent tree) to be of special importance to Survival. This goal was achieved conceptually and mechanically with talents such as
,
, and
. This package of talents are very easy to path into and provide new elements to the gameplay loop of the spec.
Wildfire Bomb DoT The proc and cooldown reduction loop between
and
through the new
talent brings us to our first small but important mechanical change.
's DoT now rolls over into an existing DoT, meaning that overlapping an old
DoT with a new one will add the remaining damage of the old DoT into the new application. This mechanic is sometimes better known as "ignite", referring to Fire Mages and the way their
DoT works.
We used to rely on the old version of
and the different Bombs colors (
,
, and
) the talent provided us with to get around us accidentally overlapping DoTs. Because these are now gone, this small change is critical to Survival Hunter playing smoothly going forward. Because of the DoT rollover, the removal of the different bombs will barely impact us, while also solving a lot of the clutter and sometimes strange behavior surrounding
and any talent node or effect that modified each of the individual colors.
A New Resource?The next major mechanical change to our kit is the completely revamped
. One very important disctinction between the new version and the old version of
is that the stacks are no longer consumed all at once, but one stack is taken per empowered ability. The damage bonus also no longer stacks, so perhaps it is more appropriate to refer to
"charges" rather than "stacks".
This turns what used to be a forgettable amplifier (that you effectively didn't play around) of
to a new kind of "resource" to the spec (a la combo point) with a bit of
(the Windwalker Mastery) thrown in. Before we get into the gameplay of this talent, we must highlight it's extremely flavorful and a great way to portray the pet and hunter attacking in tandem. Your pets attacks empower you, you weave in pet commands in the middle of your own assault. Delicious!
Now, as far as its gameplay is concerned, the new
mechanic heavily incentivizes you to empower most, if not all of your big-hitters such as
,
,
, and
by weaving them in as you generate
stacks through either
or
itself!
Something to React to! adds a much needed element of randomness to Survival's rotation, slightly similar to
and
combined. This results in some extra moments of "oomph" to a previously very predictable rotation.
New Old Cooldowns! used to be a fairly complex but heavily specialized single target cooldown. Because of its point investment and conflicting nature it was almost never talented into alongside with our other cooldown,
. Given how much each cooldown demanded and elevated a different playstyle, it was difficult to work with both at the same time. To remedy this awkward conflict,
has now been changed to be a simple amplifier that can be enhanced with
, which in turn allows it to line up, and work wonderfully with
, which has now been partially reverted to its previous version with a 20% damage amplifier.
does have some extra enhancing talent nodes as well, both
and
share a choice node, and both can be paired with
.
Overall, the changes and/or introduction to these mechanics have resulted in Survival being a much,
MUCH more coherent and exciting specialization working towards a primary goal; empowering / weaving our powerful abilities through
and into our standard builder-spender rotation that consists of
and
/
and proper
use.
In a much needed change, we also no longer need macros for optimal/ease-of-use for
.
Gameplay
With several additions and removals of mechanics to Survival Hunter, where does that leave us? What does the
gameplay loop look like?
First of all, the core foundation is still there, but with a twist!
and
still exist and form the builder/spender foundation, which in turn also generates
stacks.
is still a frequent, powerful ability, but you'll now use it much more deliberately with these
charges to get the most out of it. Finally,
is new to our single target rotations, and similarly to
, you'll want to empower it with
to maximize the damage.
Let us summarize the primary basic rotational additions and removals first.
Removals
This is now replaced with the similarly named . The loss of the colored bombs seems like a much more drastic change than it is in reality. Ever since Shadowlands, we often didn't find ourselves actively playing around its special effects for a meaningful payoff outside of occasionally leveraging for resets.
Additions- - (Particularly the DoT rolling periodic / ignite)
This effectively nullifies one of the primary reasons we even took to begin with; the different bomb colors had different DoT IDs, allowing them to stack on the same target. This change removes the need for the different DoTs.
Previously, this only affected and , but it now affects anything. As mentioned before, stacks are spent one at a time, and the damage bonus remains static regardless of the amount of stacks, so perhaps refering to them as "charges" is more accurate. What this means from a gameplay perspective is that you'll want to make sure you buff your big-hitters such as ,, and . You will also want to make sure you are regularly spending your as it can only stack up to 3 times.
Technically not a new addition, but its place in the talent tree and high damage practically guarantees we will always play with this talented. Its high upfront damage and ability to benefit from means we will also consistently use it in our single target rotations. We also have several talents that directly synergize with this as mentioned above.
- - (Particularly its interactions with )
Has special interactions with , getting increased benefit from its damage increase as well as generating extra stacks. This is comboing very nicely with . It is also a focus spender rather than a generator.
With this in mind, Here is a very simplified and very basic idea of what your core priority/rotation will look like as it stands now in The War Within.
- Use if you have a stack to spend, this also sets you up for the next few empowers.
- Use if you have a stack to spend.
- Use if you have a stack to spend, or if you have 2 full charges of .
- Use if you have a stack to spend.
- Use if you will not over cap the Focus it generates.
- Use / , or if fighting multiple enemies.
Further complexities and abilities can be added to this core through various talents, for instance,
adds a consumable effect to
that you'd ideally want to avoid overlapping,
adds an extra powerful ability to spend
stacks on, and our cooldowns such as
and
further amplify this core.
You might notice the distinct lack of
mentions. This is intentional and something we will adress further down in the feedback section.
Surviving as Survival
While Hunter started Dragonflight as quite squishy with weak defensives, we gradually got tankier and tankier all Dragonflight which has now got cranked up to 11 in The War Within. We have a tool as a class for almost every situation with some extra Survival specific...survivability. Additionally, Survival has usually appreciated versatility has a stat and does not mind stacking this more than our more popular cousin, Beast Mastery.
We have gone from a frail damage dealer to quite bulky, which will certainly help you get into groups!
- - Passive 6% Damage Reduction (Survival specific)
- - Passive 8% Max HP increase
- - Our defensive has been strengthened to 30% with an entire minute off of the cooldown + an entire second charge with
- - Very easily obtainable CDR for
- - 6% passive Leech (The go to pet buff for Survival)
- - The classic Turtle shield
- - While only applying to Diseases and Poisons, this can directly help with certain M+ or Raid mechanics and on such a low cooldown too. For a class that traditional struggles with DoT effects, being able to clear a few is appreciated
Concerns & Feedback
Mongoose Bite Misconceptions
currently has a bit of a notorious yet incorrect reputation of being complex and punishing. Looking at the tooltip, it makes intuitive sense to feel urged to continue to press it as you accumulate stacks, but ever since we moved over to the Focus system for this ability instead of charges in BfA this isn't
actually an important factor to your
output over longer periods of time, such as a raid encounter or a dungeon boss fight. Basically, you'll want to manage your Focus more than you manage
as Focus is your only limited resource.
Blizzard themselves has recognized this confusion and somewhat unintuitive nature of the ability as they said they're looking into making
work more elegantly with
as they believe the latter conflicts with the formers seeming goal of pressing as many
as possible. Recently, they briefly experimented with a more maintenance buff orientation of the ability, but they walked that back and are currently looking into a solution that matches the stacking nature of
.
One such solution could be a flat extension of the
window itself to allow players more time to stack up and enjoy the maximum stacks—we do go into a bit more detail below in the toggler regarding this feedback and community misconceptions about
.
Click here for details
This chapter is mostly meant to be informative, but also as feedback to our
community regardless of which side you're on:
, is already effectively a red and plays nearly identical in practice. It genuinely isn't as complex as it seems, and with that in mind my stance on the change
was actually completely neutral. It would have had practically no effect on the playstyle because Focus management would still be the key.
That may seem like a bold claim. To give a bit of context here, Thyminde has maintained the Survival Hunter Action Priority List (APL) that Simulationcraft (and by extension Raidbots) runs for Survival going back all the way to BFA. Our community optimizes this throughout expansions, and as it stands the primary limitations to your
output are your opportunities to regenerate Focus; if you neglect
in favor of spamming
you achieve a
short term payoff until the Focus deficit kicks in.
In the absolute worst case this eventually leaves you with no buttons to press at all. Prioritizing
Focus management has been the dominant
optimal playstyle for the majority of the patches with very few notable exceptions. The bizarre part is that this holds true even for
, it's just that this ability doesn't "urge" you into making this mistake.
Optimal
usage is a
marathon, not a
sprint, The most extreme min-maxes of the mechanic results in less than a 1% DPS gain. I often joke about making a /cast
macro, just to give it a
icon. The playstyles are just that deceptively similar.
So what is this paragraph even for? Well, Recently on the beta,
received its first mechanical rework ever since its original change to run off of the Focus system, but it was quickly reverted and blizzard provided some additional context here:
We don’t love how Mongoose Fury and Tip of the Spear can pull you in a separate direction rotationally (as previously stated). It’s clear that this new direction for Mongoose Bite invalidates an iconic part of the Survival Hunter experience. For now, we plan to return Mongoose Bite and Mongoose Fury to their previous iterations. We’ll spend time finding a more elegant way to meld the two rotational styles that simultaneously preserves their gameplay.
