Wouldn't it be nice if WoW was a game where all damage specs were viable and did equal damage? Not just the ones the devs liked better.
Still the meme spec is what I am reading, shame. Maybe they will make changes soon?
Bring back an old WoD/Ranged survival variant and delete this abomination of an attempt at a melee spec.
Do it like druid. Make Survival a range "dot" spec and create a 4h spec to bring back the legion interaction of Survival with traps and windows of really bursty damage.
Nice write-up. It's hard to believe there was so little changed. I really think blizzard needs to stop fiddling with specs that work and flow well, so that they have time to work on the ones that need the most help. People probably wouldn't mind that much if well liked specs weren't changed too much; if blizz changed only half the specs every two years, they'd probably get more attention. That said, I wish these write-ups wouldn't always be lamenting how we're losing power in our secondaries/corruptions - we're ALWAYS weaker at the start of the expansion than the end. Otherwise we'd eventually go into an expansion with all of our secondaries maxed out.
Removed
was hoping for a few talent changes but still nothing. mongoose bite being a talent i just can't understand the reason for it.mongoose bite, flanking strike,and butchery should be all baseline ability's. carve is the most boring aoe in-game.
I personally am a fan of Melee survival but i will be open to try ranged survival if they decide to go back to it. Only gripe is it needs more then jsut buffs to under used talents, seriously i still wont pick Charkram as long as Wildfire Infusion or even Birds of Prey are other choices. Also it seems on the PTR its passive focus regen is horrible. MM fully regened focus passively in half the time while BM was in a third of the time compared to Survival, its terribly slow. I will add that it was upheld by azerite/essenses and corruption a lot. If they really want to keep melee survival maybe Make Mongoose Bite and WildFire infusion Baseline, without those Raptor Strike and Wildfire bomb are boring AF to use and maybe make the infusion a set patern instead of sort of randomly (i say it like that cos it'll always set to Shrapnel if out of combat long enough and never be the same one twice in a row). maybe increase their max focus to 120 and have a look at their current passive focus regen, again really slow compared to the others. Replace Mongoose bite talent with Primeval intuition's stacking crit buff when using Mongoose bite and Wildfire infusion talent replaced with a new one that could give each infusion an extra perk orsomething. Spit balling Ideas but again if they want to keep it Melee they have to do more than Buffing lesser used talents (personally still dont see people going Chakram or Tip of the Spear especially while Mongoose Bite and Wildfire infusion are still options against them) Not looking to play survival next in SL but have messed about with it in my free time, have enjoyed it but still wouldnt genuinely go it over other Melee options like Rogue, Monk or DH.
I wish they would just prune Mongoose Bite entirely and then balance around the spec.I actually enjoy it outside of Mongoose Bite.Also, honestly, Wildfire Bomb is just a thrown version of Explosive Shot but with a different angle cleave.Not to be a dismissive &*!@ about it, but so many of the people I see complain about MSV don’t actually understand the spec. With some, it’s way too obvious they played it briefly in Legion and haven’t touched it since. There are issues with the spec, but we aren’t going to get improvement if most of the commentary comes from people who don’t even play it.
Making mongoose baseline would help out much since on BETA SV is really focus starved (please fix ;_;) and being able to pick FS from 5th row would aid in gaining a bit more focus on rotations.Been playing SV since legion and I prolly will be going into Shadowlands as SV.
There's not even an author for this... I think someone had picked the short stick and didn't want to be named for writing this.I wonder if Blizz will even humor this.
Of course it's not a popular opinion but I love the spec and play it as my main (although I liked it more in Legion), but I'm under no illusion that it's perfect or that it doesn't need lots of tweaking. However it's disappointing to see that even the person doing this write-up, warranted or not, is referring to it as a meme spec and making it yet another ranged spec as a potential fix. Although of course I expected all of the typical ragging on SV in the comments.
Lotta the stuff mentioned here is pretty accurate to what limited things I've experienced on PTR. I've also felt plenty more that feels bad and wonky. For starters, Survival's focus regen is abysmal. It takes roughly 30-32 seconds just for your focus to go from 0 to 100 (or about 36 seconds if you have the azerite trait to give you +20 to your focus cap). It honestly leaves me feeling starved and unable to really chain together mongoose bites without running out of focus in a few GCDs and having to wait for kill command and hoping that pheromone bomb comes up. Also, as nice as having Tranquilizing Shot is, it doesn't work with melee weapons, so you're left having to, of all things, also carry a ranged weapon on you for the specific purpose of being able to macro a weapon swap just to use it. It's a nice lil' slap in the face and I hope they at least work that out somehow.I'd personally love if they went back in some way to how SV was in Legion if they REALLY want to keep it melee, or just go back to how it was around WotLK, Cata, MoP, etc. Sure, I can go to BM or MM any time and I wouldn't mind it. I can play 'em all. But the fantasy and feel of SV is the one that I feel at home with the most, and seeing how weird it's gotten just makes me a tad sad and quite annoyed.
Blizzard hates Survival, 16 years in a row.
Survival simply isn't going to progress as a spec until Mongoose Bite becomes baseline. The core functionality of the spec is based around Mongoose Bite and the fact that it's still a talent so many years into the melee rework is laughable. Survival could be fun if one could actually justify taking something like Flanking Strike but Mongoose Bite just makes me salty every time I look at Survival's options. It's like needing to take Kill Command as a talent for Beastmastery.
I was considering really playing survival hunter in Shadowlands. This article does make me think longer on that. I didn't agree on many points, but I think he has a point that the spec is lacking some identity. And they also should really work in the rotation because being focus starved is not really fun, and the talents really don't seem to implement different viable playstyles, it's like some talents are just obviously better and the others are just fillers. By the way I don't like Mongoose Bite, I prefer it stays as a talent.I want them to keep survival as melee, but they need to do it right, make it a great and fun spec.By the way, complaining that hunter's mark can be a nerf to aoe is rather stupid and makes no sense.
Really wish they had just made Survival into a tank spec. Then it would have been unique. I think that would have been significantly more interesting than what Survival is now. A lot of abilities were already in game back in Legion to make it happen. They were just spread out over all 3 specs. Reduced damage taken by pet when you MD to your pet for one. Then Eyes of the Beast could be used for some really interactive game play as well. Missed opportunity imo.