7.1 Survival hunter changes

[Gegecocu]

Well, up until last week (which was the last time I've been on ptr), lacerate was doing instant damage after being used (pretty small dmg though), unlike on live...
Maybe that counts as another (yet small) buff we will receive ? Has anyone noticed the same as well?

[Yarlian]

I can't wait for these changes but I still wish Dragonsfire and Explosive Trap be fused or merged in some way as ET is awkward to place on huge bosses.

[Kissthebaby]

these are all kinda meh.

[Deleted]

if sv isnt atleast top 6 dps spec after those buffs then i cant see it being picked when there are better melee options out there

[Kissthebaby]

if sv isnt atleast top 6 dps spec after those buffs then i cant see it being picked when there are better melee options out there

What buffs? Carve and butchery doing more damage and throwing axe being a tad bit better? The rest r tool tip fixes. Hardly a buff to anything except a little for aoe.

[Deleted]

What buffs? Carve and butchery doing more damage and throwing axe being a tad bit better? The rest r tool tip fixes. Hardly a buff to anything except a little for aoe.

Both buffs are welcome, although I'm not sure that even with buffs Carve will be competitive. It costs too much energy to use currently. You're oom after 3-4 casts and then you're waiting on energy and exp trap cooldown.

Both BM and MM have sustained AoE, SV doesn't. In fact you need to setup your long cooldown artifact ability with mongoose bites to just stay competitive with a MM hunter spamming SW/MS.

I think the single target dps problems are very fixable, but AoE remains very problematic.

I did a test on random heroic yesterday, I did half of it with MM and the other with SV. SV takes significantly more effort to pull the same numbers as MM. It's more engaging to play, but the disparity in the difficulty of both specs is mind boggling. Raiding is even worse with MM being leaps and bounds easier to play.

[GT4]

Both buffs are welcome, although I'm not sure that even with buffs Carve will be competitive. It costs too much energy to use currently. You're oom after 3-4 casts and then you're waiting on energy and exp trap cooldown.

Both BM and MM have sustained AoE, SV doesn't. In fact you need to setup your long cooldown artifact ability with mongoose bites to just stay competitive with a MM hunter spamming SW/MS.

I think the single target dps problems are very fixable, but AoE remains very problematic.

I did a test on random heroic yesterday, I did half of it with MM and the other with SV. SV takes significantly more effort to pull the same numbers as MM. It's more engaging to play, but the disparity in the difficulty of both specs is mind boggling. Raiding is even worse with MM being leaps and bounds easier to play.

SV would have to be significantly better in Mythic+ compared to MM just to have a chance of being viable in raids. In Mythic+, enemies will mostly be next to each other when cleaving which favors SV/BM. Compared to that, adds in raids are often not inside another at the boss which greatly favors MM.

[Deleted]

MM has sustained AoE but SV doesn't?

Nah. It's the other way around. At least if you play with SW.

You only have SW/MS/Barrage. All of them are tied to a 10++s CD.

SV has Trap, Ninja-shit, Dragonfire, Carve, FotE.

Sustained AoE is "meh" though. Even at higher M+ levels unless you are pushing something seriously high right now for the timer (11+).
Strong ST with additional AoE (MM says hello) is so much better.
Heroic Dungeons are also a bad spot to test sustained AoE or AoE in general, MM is probably king in there because everything dies after SW+MS+Barrage+SW+MS. Not many specs can get 3M burst AoE DPS - MM can.

[Deleted]

MM cleaves everything and can sustain that. SV has Dragonsfire Grenade on 40 sec cd, FotE on 45, Carve at 40 energy and Explosive Trap which doesn't hit that hard. FotE can't even be used properly until at least 4-5 stacks, because at 3 stacks it does shit damage. And good luck using both Dragonsfire and FotE on some nasty trash just before a boss and then have your entire opener gutted.

[Deleted]

MM cleaves everything and can sustain that. SV has Dragonsfire Grenade on 40 sec cd, FotE on 45, Carve at 40 energy and Explosive Trap which doesn't hit that hard. FotE can't even be used properly until at least 4-5 stacks, because at 3 stacks it does shit damage. And good luck using both Dragonsfire and FotE on some nasty trash just before a boss and then have your entire opener gutted.

So... are you talking about *sustained* AoE now or burst AoE?
You also forget Ninja-spikes which deal ~12k DPS per enemy, which is pretty good because it has 100% uptime.

2 AoE skills on a 20 and a ~10s cooldown is not what you can call "sustain". It's burst and it has downtime.
Sustained AoE doesn't have/or has only very little downtime.
MM AoE is, technically speaking, not even "on demand"... if you make a mistake, you might not even have any AoE ready for the next ~7-10 seconds or so.

And 40 focus is not much... MS costs 30 too and you can use it way less than carve - it hits harder, which makes it bursty, but it's not sustained AoE.
And using cooldowns before a boss is the most normal thing you can do in M+, in fact, you are highly encouraged to do so, because bosses are a joke compared to trash anyway, unless you get the +boss hp/dmg affix @ +10.
And ~30s CDs are not really stopping your opener - ever. You just don't use 40s CDs when mob HP is about to reach 0%, it's both stupid, ineffective and most likely even a DPS loss.

[Deleted]

So Fury Of The Eagle will no be more strong..now we will have problems with our focus so our dps still low ...

[Okacz]

Dang it, thought FotE is actually being buffed. Tho a 40% buff for this ability would be seriously excessive.

If something needs a buff imo, it's MB. In phases between FotE, without CDs and such, you might get the poverty version of 4 stacks of Mongoose Fury, in which MBs are very, very weak. And while the "perfect burst", with CDs, perfectly aligned FotE and a lot of luck, allowing you to spam away till Mongoose Fury is gone, is very good - it's still nothing exceptional. Fire Mage does it better, MM hunter does it better. Actually almost every class has burst on par or better.

Who am I kidding, this spec sucks because the secondary stats are terrible and no one at Blizzard gives a fuck.

[Deleted]

Dang it, thought FotE is actually being buffed. Tho a 40% buff for this ability would be seriously excessive.

If something needs a buff imo, it's MB. In phases between FotE, without CDs and such, you might get the poverty version of 4 stacks of Mongoose Fury, in which MBs are very, very weak. And while the "perfect burst", with CDs, perfectly aligned FotE and a lot of luck, allowing you to spam away till Mongoose Fury is gone, is very good - it's still nothing exceptional. Fire Mage does it better, MM hunter does it better. Actually almost every class has burst on par or better.

Who am I kidding, this spec sucks because the secondary stats are terrible and no one at Blizzard gives a fuck.

So specc will not really be buffed in 7.1?

[Okacz]

So specc will not really be buffed in 7.1?

Slightly. Carve buff is a decent one, on larger packs it already can do substancial damage, with the buff it's gonna make our AoE good outside of FotE - great improvement. That's also going to make our 6th row a bit more interesting, maybe making Serpent String and Butchery better in AoE and DG better at ST. Plus we will get Throwing Axes buffed, and other talents in that row slightly revised, so ST is going to be slightly better as well.

But still, our problems lie elsewhere, in the fact that 50% of SV stats are completly worthless, and the rest in just decent, while MM can just stack Mastery and win WoW. I haven't ran any tests on that, but that probably means that with ilvl growth SV will start being way more behind than it is right now.

[Deleted]

i agree with this..spec has disapointed me..is the most beautiful spec from hunters and blizzard destroyed it..

[Typhod]

I've been playing SV exclusively since Legion pre-patch. I love the spec, my guild lets me raid with it (just cleared heroic EN so I'm happy with that) and I'm having a great time in the raid content with it aswell as a fun questing experience. I don't really mind the clunkyness, the lack of talent choices nor that our damage isn't the best.

BUT what I'm really disappointed in Blizzard is that they don't do anything to adress our stat priority. At the start of EN N I was doing great DPS compared to our other DPSers who were mostly the same ilvl as me, being top 5 on every fight in the raid. Now when we've been progressing EN HC I'm still at the same ilvl as my DPS comrads but now I'm in the bottom of the meters on every fight. My DPS have only changed slightly with almost 13 avg ilvl upgrade (and yes I've been following the stat prios and trinkets closely) and it makes me so sad. I can't scale with the gear as other specs do and that makes me next to worthless for the raid.

SV has always been classed as a lackluster spec in the expansion in comparision with other specs, but I really don't to be a burden for my raidteam when progressing. Even tho they let me play the spec because I love it I still don't want to be the one at the bottom of the meters with equal ilvl as everyone else.

I don't care for any of the buffs, sure it helps, but the real problem is still there; the stat priority and our way of scaling with gear.

[Deleted]

I'm wondering if Blizzard even read this ...

[Deleted]

Surv stat prio is upside down the stat prio of MM/BM. Its not an easy switch, you basically have to replace most your gear lol

Not hard for me
I have alot of gear for SVV who is highter than my current MM gear
But like Typhod says SVV just did not scale well with the gear

[Deleted]

I've been playing SV exclusively since Legion pre-patch. I love the spec, my guild lets me raid with it (just cleared heroic EN so I'm happy with that) and I'm having a great time in the raid content with it aswell as a fun questing experience. I don't really mind the clunkyness, the lack of talent choices nor that our damage isn't the best.

BUT what I'm really disappointed in Blizzard is that they don't do anything to adress our stat priority. At the start of EN N I was doing great DPS compared to our other DPSers who were mostly the same ilvl as me, being top 5 on every fight in the raid. Now when we've been progressing EN HC I'm still at the same ilvl as my DPS comrads but now I'm in the bottom of the meters on every fight. My DPS have only changed slightly with almost 13 avg ilvl upgrade (and yes I've been following the stat prios and trinkets closely) and it makes me so sad. I can't scale with the gear as other specs do and that makes me next to worthless for the raid.

SV has always been classed as a lackluster spec in the expansion in comparision with other specs, but I really don't to be a burden for my raidteam when progressing. Even tho they let me play the spec because I love it I still don't want to be the one at the bottom of the meters with equal ilvl as everyone else.

I don't care for any of the buffs, sure it helps, but the real problem is still there; the stat priority and our way of scaling with gear.

Preach brother!

I haven't got a single upgrade for SV in almost 2 weeks. The WQ RNG has not given me a single Vers piece in god knows how long, I get all kinds of crit/haste, crit/mastery gear. I'm still using a haste/mastery cloak!

I just don't understand why all our secondary stats are soo bad. I mean what does mastery give me? Fuck all! What does haste give me? Fuck all! I even got the legendary ring, that spreads Lacerate. It has haste/mastery. Hilarious...

I just don't know how I am supposed to compete with my 850 ilevel vs people 870+. I'm never getting there, unless I get the RNG of my life.

At the moment it's gotten to the point where I'm switching to MM for PvE to get easier invites and fish for crit/vers items.

MM gets me almost insta invite for pugs, even though it's sub 860, pug leaders don't even hesitate. I'm not even good at it, I have a basic grasp on the rotation...

[Alvarie]

I wish they changed stat prio to value crit/haste highly so it speeds up the spec a bit and 99% of the gear i get wont be useless.

I still enjoy Surv in 5 mans and world content, but as far as raids go it doesn't touch anywhere close to my MM damage.