Without our Memory of Lucid Dream and stacked up haste, the spec will go back to non-functional. Blizzard really needs to just give them an increased focus regeneration passive, what works for two ranged specs isn't cutting it for the one melee.
I will continue to never forgive Blizzard for taking away my favorite spec/class in any MMO ever. Survival in all expansions before Legion.They should've just made this current "survival" into a new spec, druids already have 4 specs and it should've been fine it it were a 4th spec instead of killing the original survival.
I have one fix to Survival, make it ranged. Make Survival Great Again.
With apologies for the long post. I currently main a survival hunter and I LOVE it. I find myself playing my hunter most of the time just because I enjoy the gameplay of SV. In my honest opinion, it is not as bad as people make it seem. I have played hunter on and off since 2006, but never focused on survival until 8.3. I also missed out on Legion in its entirety, so while I have little historical experience with the (melee) spec to compare it to, I do have the unique ability to look at the spec as it is without being biased by what it used to be.From my perspective, survival is characterized by being a melee spec with an ability to be viable at range for short periods of times (serpent sting, wildfire bombs, aspect of the eagle). The “fantasy” of the class revolves around a hunter poisoning his enemies and blowing them to pieces with bombs, while also smacking them in the face with a spear (and your pet does things to). Based on the comments I have read this is probably an unpopular opinion, but the concept of a survival hunter sounds pretty unique to me. Of course, the spec has its flaws. I do not have a workable solution for everything, but the following things could be considered to improve the spec. The most obvious flaw, as everyone here seems to agree on, is not having mongoose bite baselined. This I think needs to happen. It can be replaced in the talent row with, for example, a Blur of Talons azerite trait kind of buff. Tip of the Spear could still work in the same way, increasing the damage of mongoose bite per kill command up to 3 stacks.I do have an issue with the way mongoose bite works. Unless you reach 5 stacks at full focus, your serpent sting just refreshed and a wildfire bomb dot active on the target, mongoose bite becomes frustrating (assuming you are supposed to keep serpent sting and the bomb dot up for maximum effect). Focus regeneration outside of the pheromone bomb window (with wildfire infusion talent) is rather slow. If you are low on focus, you cannot get those high hitting strikes in; if your serpent sting or wildfire bomb dots expire, you have to sacrifice GCDs to re-apply them (and thus sacrificing mongoose bite hits, if focus would permit those anyway at that point). Similar to BM hunter being able to keep the razor shot haste buff up, so should SV hunter be able to keep their 5 stacks of mongoose bite up. Resetting the timer on each subsequent mongoose bite would be quite a boring solution. It could be considered, however, to make wildfire bombs reset the mongoose bite stack timer. This way, wildfire bombs become an important part of the rotation and it would probably feel good to be able to keep your Mongoose Bite at 5 stacks for a long time. The foregoing would kind of make guerilla tactics a mandatory talent, so I would suggest to baseline this as well (with or without the 100% dmg increase, as long as bombs have 2 charges). It could be replaced by making wildfire cluster Azerite trait or something along those lines a talent. This fits in with that talent row being AoE oriented.In addition, baseline wildfire infusion. The infused bombs are a lot more fun to play with than the regular ones and if you don’t want to deal with the extra stuff it does, you can always just ignore it. The RNG on the bomb types is somewhat frustrating however, so it could be considered to make the bombs come in a set order to be able to plan ahead and not be stuck at 0 focus for 3 days because RNG decides not to give you a Pheromone Bomb.Regarding the Shadowlands changes, I have the following thoughts.Hunters Mark. I agree with the author that it is just frustrating to have to refresh your hunter mark on the target every time you switch targets. Hunter’s mark has the potential of just being ignored at some point, as targets could die before you have applied the mark and waited for the GCD (especially if you keep switching targets during (m+) trash pulls). Although it adds a bit of gameplay / identity, it will probably not feel good to use except on single target raid bosses. Less interactive, but more satisfying, would be to bring back some aspects, with for example Aspect of the Hawk giving the 5% damage increase hunter’s mark now gives you (and aspect of the monkey could decrease your damage by 5%, idk). It is still adds flavor to the class / spec, but is less annoying than having to apply a single dot every.single.time.you.change.target. Since this is unlikely to happen, I would just suggest to take Hunter’s Mark of the GCD so it is at least a bit less frustrating.Kill shot and tranq shot. No comments, other than that it would suit the name better if it was fired from the same crossbow used to apply serpent sting, rather than applied with a melee weapon.Arcane shot and steady shot. Weird that this is supposed to be “spec wide” but not usable by SV hunters as it does not work with melee weapons. Regardless of these being useful to SV or not, they should also just be fired from the serpent sting crossbow thingy instead to actually make them "spec wide."Revive pet cd increase. Frustrating, but ok (I personally use a WA to notify me on low pet hp to assist in healing; beasty rarely dies).Shadowlands specific stuff (covenants etc.). No experience with these so not going to comment.
terms of engagement should be caked into survival and a new talent needs to be made.... also theres the raw fact it just doesn't work compared to most other specs in pve.
Nobody wanted a melee spec. Bring back the ranged explosive and black arrow SV. It was the most fun spec hunter's ever had.
Ah yes, giving us ranged abilities while the spec is mainly melee, how tf are you gonna pull this out of your ass. You should have a second slot or third slot for a use of the bow or melee weapon at this point.
Don’t hate me but I still like the idea of Hunter’s Mark. I played hunter starting in 2005 and Hunters Mark was always on the GCD. I can even still hear the sound of it in my head. Back then no one thought about the implications to other targets in an AoE situation. I love the Mark because it helps me guide others to attack a specific target. It provides a bit more coordination that other classes don’t have. It is unique to the hunter and I am pleased it is coming back. I am a bit tired of the articles purely from the WF Meta perspective. I know we all end up trying to be like the big boys but seriously who plays 18 hours a day for 3 weeks straight? Ill watch and appreciate what they do while I spend GCDs on hunters mark ;).
This is the most commented thread among the spec reviews its time to give this voice on the forum. One thing sure survival needs a rework.
i like melee hunter btw. we can talk all day and blizzard will do nothing. they changed pretty much nothing to the spec, some numbers and thats it.
Agreed with a lot of people here about making Mangoose bite baseline.Also, I'm not sure if the fact that some skills requiring a ranged weapon is intended (I'd think not? I doubt blizz intentionnally forcing players to swap weapons mid fight), but why not letting survival hunters equip a ranged and a melee weapon at the same time , like in the good old times. That way, there would virtually be no conflict between melee abilities and things like tranq. shot/arcane shot etc., we could continue do some dps at range with arc. shots and bow auto attacks and aspect of the eagle would then let us shoot raptor/mangoose strikes with our bow, which I think would be moor fitting that shooting magical eagles from our melee weapon :)Also, can we please get the option to dual wield too ? Like warriors did ?Also, and that goes for all specs : please make Hunters Mark more interesting or simply get rid of it. An ability that is "hit once and forget" adds NOTHING to the class, and it will be frustrating in aoe situations. Maybe it should be applied automatically when you use your main ability on the target ? Example: it is applied automatically on the target the first time you use an Aimed shot on it (or kill command for BM and Surv)?Survival has really the potential to be a super interesting and enjoyable spec, but the devs really need to put a bit of effort into it, which is clearly not the case right now...