7.1 Survival hunter changes

[Alixie]

I sincerely hope they revert Survival back to a ranged spec, and label Legion's version as a failed experiment. Bring it back, let me shoot explosions, traps, and poisons again, rename it Engineer, whatever. They can buff the damage to Huln Highmountain levels of OP and I still woudlnt play this broke ass, boring, meme spec. Now Im going to rant about adding more melee after every new class has been melee only now.

[Deleted]

I wish they changed stat prio to value crit/haste highly so it speeds up the spec

That's what I don't get from the community. The spec is quite underplayed right now and it seems everyone is just accepting what icyvein has to say about stat priority and then talk trash about the spec.

Why priority should be versatility ? What is the reasonning behind this ? By which margin ? When was it established at such (which beta build) ? Looking at how the toolkit and class mechanic is working for me it seems quite obvious that haste should be the priority. Everything in the artifact traits, spec skills, class ressource, pet synergy, spec history (first spec to introduce cd reset in BC as the last talent, always had cd reduction on traps), everything scream : Haste. Even with the new Animal Instinct we can see this trend. So why ?

To be fair, I don't have the experience yet as Im still starting to play this alt, currently quite low ilevel, not even 3rd relic slots yet, so I might be completly wrong about it. But with 22% haste the spec is very dynamic and almost full time on keeping mangoose bite buff up (to minimum 5 stacks each time - no down-time to wait 3 charges again, mangoose used on cooldown -), I can only imagine how it would be with higher haste.

[Yhcti]

I sincerely hope they revert Survival back to a ranged spec, and label Legion's version as a failed experiment. Bring it back, let me shoot explosions, traps, and poisons again, rename it Engineer, whatever. They can buff the damage to Huln Highmountain levels of OP and I still woudlnt play this broke ass, boring, meme spec. Now Im going to rant about adding more melee after every new class has been melee only now.

I like it being Melee however I do miss explosive shot A LOT... they should have it back for survival but perhaps Explosive Axe/Strike, ranged/melee that deals the burning dot.

[Deleted]

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.

The only way they can change stat Prio is to change some of the fundamentals of how the class works.

E.g. They could make DoT crits have a chance to give a charge of MB and thus crit becomes more valuable.
Or they could make Pet auto-attacks (rather than special attacks) trigger MB charges, thus making haste more valuable.

The only stat they have direct control over without altering the core class mechanics is Mastery. While they could (and should) increase the % chance we get from our mastery it is ultimately still RNG based and doesn't directly affect our DPS. In fact, if you were able to endlessly spam Mongoose Bite, your DPS wouldn't be significantly better (or perhaps not better at all?) than the current rotations. Perhaps if Mastery also buffed the damage of Mongoose Bite then that would be the case (but would actually make SV a true 1-button spec once you had enough Mastery and this would be boring AF).

The net issue is that Versatility benefits every dps spec the same (i.e. +1% Vers = +1% damage) so if Versatility is your best stat, that is because you are getting less than this from the other stats where other specs are getting more. Most specs seems to have Versatility as their 3rd or 4th stat. Arms warrior is one exception where it is their 2nd behind Mastery which is massively valuable to them (more than Str).

It seems logical that versatility should be the baseline for dps specs in terms of how much they beneft from secondary stats and each dps spec should have at least two stats that outperform it.

To me, the solution is a mix of all of these.
Pet auto-attacks rather than special attacks triggering MB charges increases scaling of Haste and Mastery slightly.
Mastery needs a static damage boosting component alongside the RNG of granting MB charges e.g. all DoT effects have their damage increased by x%.
Crit needs some interaction with another ability e.g. DoT crits reduce the remaining cooldown of Aspect of the Eagle by 1s

Aside from that, I'd like to see Eagle's Bite be able to Crit, Explosive Trap to detonate on bosses with fixed positions e.g. Helya, & Talon Strike to have something more than a pitifully low chance to proc.

That's what I don't get from the community. The spec is quite underplayed right now and it seems everyone is just accepting what icyvein has to say about stat priority and then talk trash about the spec.

Why priority should be versatility ? What is the reasonning behind this ? By which margin ? When was it established at such (which beta build) ? Looking at how the toolkit and class mechanic is working for me it seems quite obvious that haste should be the priority. Everything in the artifact traits, spec skills, class ressource, pet synergy, spec history (first spec to introduce cd reset in BC as the last talent, always had cd reduction on traps), everything scream : Haste. Even with the new Animal Instinct we can see this trend. So why ?

Simple answer, Priority is Versatility because it is... it has been mathematically calculated via sims & verified in-game. You are of course welcome to do the math yourself and come to your own conclusions but simply wanting other stats to be stronger doesn't make them so.

[Deleted]

Simple answer, Priority is Versatility because it is... it has been mathematically calculated via sims & verified in-game. You are of course welcome to do the math yourself and come to your own conclusions but simply wanting other stats to be stronger doesn't make them so.

Since you seem to know more than most (including me) about this spec im going to ask you. First off, it's clear that mastery shouldnt be any priority whatsoever but according to icy veins you should have your pet set as tenacity to be able to get a mastery proc out of thunderstomp. But since you arent supposed to stack mastery is there a significant difference in having your pet set as tenacity over ferocity?
Also, with the upcoming t19 set could you see mastery becoming a lesser priority so that you can proc that 4 piece buff? (50% increased dmg for 6s as you get 6 stacks of mongoose bite)

I also liked your idea for crit proc on lacerate sounded really interesting, would love to see something similar in game in the future.

[Deleted]

Regarding the point about Tenacity pets & mastery, yes Mastery is a large pile of turd right now but you should still maximise the little you get out of it and tenacity pets have more abilities that can proc it. There is a small but not insignificant difference between Tenacity vs Ferocity pets, can't find a number for you right now. The difference is a lot bigger when Thunderstomp hits multiple targets.
Even without stacking Mastery, we're given a baseline amount so that even at 0 Mastery we have 16% which is 4.6% chance to proc I think.

The T19 set will increase Mastery's value though probably not enough to make it worthwhile gearing for (I might be wrong here, haven't done any number-crunching on this myself). It will definitely cement Snake Hunter even more as the talent of choice in 2nd tier talents. With that 4pc our burst will go through the roof with a 6-stack FotE*

I'm really enjoying SV and it is already a very good spec but mechanically it is easy to see how it can be even better. Too many talents are currently right/wrong choices.

I've got lots of ideas for how to improve them, would love to get the ear of a developer for 5 mins (at which point I'd talk it off!)

Edit: * On 2nd thoughts, it might not be quite so awesome if the +50% is additive to the mongoose bite stacks rather than multiplicative.

[Deleted]

Since you seem to know more than most (including me) about this spec im going to ask you. First off, it's clear that mastery shouldnt be any priority whatsoever but according to icy veins you should have your pet set as tenacity to be able to get a mastery proc out of thunderstomp. But since you arent supposed to stack mastery is there a significant difference in having your pet set as tenacity over ferocity?
Also, with the upcoming t19 set could you see mastery becoming a lesser priority so that you can proc that 4 piece buff? (50% increased dmg for 6s as you get 6 stacks of mongoose bite)

I also liked your idea for crit proc on lacerate sounded really interesting, would love to see something similar in game in the future.

We want Versatility and Crit, because both directly increase our whole output. Mastery affects a single skill, but because it procs only from pets skills and the gain is rather insignificant, we gain almost nothing from it. Haste is another problematic stat. Why? Well over half our rotation doesn't require energy, our main burst window doesn't require energy. You're either using energy for filler(Flanking Strike) or when spamming Carve. So would you rather have versatility which gives you not only damage, but also survivability or haste? Or would you rather have critical strike, which you dearly need so that your burst windows really are bursting, or haste?

All simple questions with simple answers. There isn't some secret way of playing SV at the moment. It is what it is.

[Deleted]

We want Versatility and Crit, because both directly increase our whole output. Mastery affects a single skill, but because it procs only from pets skills and the gain is rather insignificant, we gain almost nothing from it. Haste is another problematic stat. Why? Well over half our rotation doesn't require energy, our main burst window doesn't require energy. You're either using energy for filler(Flanking Strike) or when spamming Carve. So would you rather have versatility which gives you not only damage, but also survivability or haste? Or would you rather have critical strike, which you dearly need so that your burst windows really are bursting, or haste?

All simple questions with simple answers. There isn't some secret way of playing SV at the moment. It is what it is.

At the moment, I'm simming Vers > Haste=Crit >>> Mastery

Here is my Pawn string, yours may differ slightly but I'd expect you to see something vaguely similar.

( Pawn: v1: "AereSV": Agility=10.06, Ap=9.61, CritRating=5.58, HasteRating=5.71, MasteryRating=4.82, Versatility=6.20, Dps=10.27 )

[Deleted]

At the moment, I'm simming Vers > Haste=Crit >>> Mastery

Here is my Pawn string, yours may differ slightly but I'd expect you to see something vaguely similar.

The problem with haste vs crit is this, even at 6 stacks of mongoose fury our mongoose bites normal hits, hit for less than Aimed Shots with Vulnerable. Sometimes you don't even proc and you have to use Flanking Strike and hope to get 1-2 charges before mongoose fury runs out. There is no passive crit chance for FotE or Mongoose Bite on our artifact talents. So would you rather have 35-40% crit chance and potentially blast some good criticals when it counts, or would you rather have haste and sit there hitting 300k mongoose bites. That just feels like garbage.

[DeicideUH]

We want Versatility and Crit, because both directly increase our whole output. Mastery affects a single skill, but because it procs only from pets skills and the gain is rather insignificant, we gain almost nothing from it. Haste is another problematic stat. Why? Well over half our rotation doesn't require energy, our main burst window doesn't require energy. You're either using energy for filler(Flanking Strike) or when spamming Carve. So would you rather have versatility which gives you not only damage, but also survivability or haste? Or would you rather have critical strike, which you dearly need so that your burst windows really are bursting, or haste?

All simple questions with simple answers. There isn't some secret way of playing SV at the moment. It is what it is.

Honest question: but wouldn't haste also factor in our burst window, since it reduces Mongoose Bite's (and Flanking Strike's) CD, thus allowing us more bites per MF duration? Or is the benefit so small it doesn't matter?

[Deleted]

Honest question: but wouldn't haste also factor in our burst window, since it reduces Mongoose Bite's (and Flanking Strike's) CD, thus allowing us more bites per MF duration? Or is the benefit so small it doesn't matter?

I'm finding that I'm very rarely coming to the end of the MB window with spare charges to spend. Haste wouldn't help me in these situations.

Really, the devs need to make our mastery proc from pet auto attacks. This would make Haste and Mastery slightly better and remove this odd need for tenacity pets, particularly birds!

[Gurg]

Survival Hunter here. Found something strange after 7.1 patch so im trying to wrap my head around it.

Reworked Animal Instincts talent provides CD reduction of few of our spells.
BUT apparently that CD reduction IS LESS with more haste.
From the top of my head this looks like a trap talent since it kinda devalues the value of a haste if used.
Less haste, a bit less of a focus and FS casts, but higher CD reduction on AI,
more haste, more focus, more FS, but lower CD reduction on AI.

So.. can anyone explain me am i wrong? and whats the logic behind it?

[supersnap]

Survival Hunter here. Found something strange after 7.1 patch so im trying to wrap my head around it.

Reworked Animal Instincts talent provides CD reduction of few of our spells.
BUT apparently that CD reduction IS LESS with more haste.
From the top of my head this looks like a trap talent since it kinda devalues the value of a haste if used.
Less haste, a bit less of a focus and FS casts, but higher CD reduction on AI,
more haste, more focus, more FS, but lower CD reduction on AI.

So.. can anyone explain me am i wrong? and whats the logic behind it?

I think it has something to with them not allowing Flanking Strike to go below 1.5sec cd

[Deleted]

This sounds more like a bug to me, there's no sense in a stat having a directly negative effect on something, especially on a class already behind on how much it benefits from secondary stats.

[Deleted]

Haste reduces the cd reduction gain from animal instincts because they want that u always have the same benifit from it, if u use it on cd without haste u can cast 10 Flanking Strike in one minute, if u got 20% haste u have a 5 sec cd on FS and u get 2.5 sec cd reducting from every FS and u can use 12 in one minute that way u always get 30 sec cdr mixed on all the skills the talent contains in 1 minute

[Deleted]

Doesn't that just mean that it's a % reduction and not a flat "X seconds" reduction?