We need it to be returned to how it worked in Wotlk, everything else just seems somewhat stupid at this point. It's a useless spec for anything besides PvP where it isn't even that special from what I know.
As soon as I learned to love survival hunter in legion, BFA came along and ruined it all over again for me... I played some ptr pre-patch and the ONLY thing that feels different is the focus bar running out faster than I expected but I use Elvui in retail so maybe it's just the looks and not the numbers.
Lets be honest though, Survival has been dead since Cataclysm. That was the last time I enjoyed playing Survival. Or maybe was it WotLK? Not sure exactly, but what I know for sure is that its a dead spec for the better part of a decade... Damn, Im getting old -.-'
I really wish Survival would get more changes for Shadowlands. I quite like it, and in the current state of the game with azerite it's good. I'm worried that it will feel very boring going into the next expansion. Mongoose defintely needs to be BASELINE to allow more variety in the talents. Alternatively, make Wildfire Infusion baseline, it's a very unique talent that most players seem to like. Please Blizz. Help Survival like you did with Spriest.
STOP mentioning pre BFA Survival.....Blizzard is not going back to that....and that's from someone who played Survival then....
I love the gaggle of crowing idiots who instantly go to "Go back to Ranged Survival because melee has no niche"Newsflash: Survival as a ranged spec had no niche. It was "Apply one more CD dot than BM, but press Explosive Shot instead of Kill Command"It did almost the exact, if not the exact same niche as BM, which was mobile Ranged DPS and was either benched or mandatory depending on how better it was compared to them.Survival as a melee spec at least does not suffer the issue of basically being the same as other specs in the class.What Survival does lack however, is two things.A) Unique playstyleB) Unique toolsetA can be solved rather easily by giving us mongoose bite as baseline. Not only is this a unique playstyle to other melee specs, it has entire utility and talent options around it. You can have talents and conduits that play on the amount of stacks, giving stuff like haste, crit or hell % Damage reduction based on stacks. You can have talents that "Save" stacks when a Mongoose rush ends, you can have ones that increase or decrease the stacks needed, the playstyle is literally begging for added depth.B can be solved by Blizzard actually going full ham on the Utility per class role: Personally I'd give survival something it had during WotLK: Resource generation. Give Survival an Aura that provides a buff to Energy, focus, Rage and Mana regen.
Make survival a tank spec.Spirit Bond mastery - pet takes X amount of damage you would take.Aspect of the Monkey returns - adds 8% chance to dodge for 15 seconds.Aspect of the Bear new - increases max health by 20% for 12 seconds.Agility increases dodge and parry.Survival of the Fittest - baseline not bound to pet choice.Ferocious Howl new - your pet taunts all mobs in 6 yards for 5 seconds, reducing all damage the pet takes by 50% for the duration and heals the hunter for 25% of max health.Boom. No more melee DPS Hunter. We get a new tank that’s mail. Keep all abilities the same.
One thing I don't want to see is ranged Survival
I'll be honest - The tone of the ability section makes it sound like the guide writer doesn't want Eye of the Beast and Scare Beast back.Yes, Scare Beast has a hefty focus cost as well as a cast time - But if you need beast-type CC in any situation along with having to CC another target, Scare Beast is.. exactly what you need. And these situations come up not only in PvP but also PvE, even occaisonally as a key mechanic in a raid boss fight.And yes, getting practical use of Eye of the Beast requires a great amount of imagination (At best, you can probably skip some trash packs using this and play dead with a highly tanky pet), but as an RP ability for this mmo-RPG, it's excellent.As for the rest - It's basically the same thing we've now experienced with the past two expansions. Blizzard's tied most of each specs preformance into an expansion-specific power progression, and until you get it maxed out (And in some cases until blizz applies band-aid fixes later in X.2 or whatever) they feel like absolute crap to play - Especially now that players will be moving, once again, from huge stat amounts down to tiny stat amounts.
So Survival worked in Legion and got broken in BfA. The story of the expansion. Doesn't sound like it's improving in SL either.Shame. I like Survival. It's like being a trickier, more solo-friendly Warrior. Traps for CC, pet for threat management games, melee positioning and flying around via hookshot. Worked for me.I think of Survival like I do the Arms Warrior: the whole kit is the thing. You get more tricks and more flexibility. BM is dull -whee, rotation 5 evar. MM can cash out it's pet altogether and while I like this -Archer/Rifleman should be a clear and playable archetype- it's also not particularly flexible. And that's fine. That's raid function: you are dps, you are a bot who can make mistakes.Survival is different. Survival should get more pay off for being cunning. Hell, between bombs and traps and cleaves Survival should be the best for multi-target. Survival needs ability synergies. Igniting tar traps is going the right direction, but shouldn't be a Legendary.Yeah, I don't know. BfA's ambition was to make everything worse and mostly succeeded. Shadowlands has a lot of fixing to do but I guess "roll Survival back to Legion" is asking too much.
Prolly the first Wowhead article that is all negative.... but it does sum up all the issues SV has. Blizz clearly do not know what to do with the spec at all.