Overall, was Survival a failure?

[Usagi Senshi]

I still like Survival and might be my second 110 toon. It's in the running for that slot.

It'll be my third and it definitely feels good to play IMO (very satisfying to use Throwing Axes on CD, thwack, thwack, thwack!). Only thing I was having issue with was Lacerate and that is getting changed soon it seems.

[Asasyn]

the new legendary that affects butchery is sick as fuck - they are already nerfing it on ptr, bcs its basically aoe chaos bolt... mark my words, if you ever manage to grab your hands on this baby you will tear meters apart...just a shame surv aoe is so much gated behind one single item, but i guess its still better than pre 7.1.5...
oh and they removed cd on lacerate...about time

[Bepples]

Do you even play Survival, or are you just theorycrafting?

Trailblazer is not removed when pet attacks or DoTs affect target. It'll autoactivate every time you don't attack for 3 seconds, without costing any global CD or effort from the player. Considering Survival is melee, this means you reduce downtime due to movement if, for some reason, you are away from any target for some time. Trailblazer is lackluster for the ranged specs, yes, but it helps Survival, since harpoon won't be available all the time (and sometimes fails to work).

Also, Posthaste is pretty lackluster for Survival, since it activates off Harpoon. Most often, the speed buff is useless since you just dragged yourself to your target anyway. Unless there's a situation where the target is midway the point you want to reach, you won't benefit from the speed boost at all.

For current tier, Trailblazer is helpful in Elerethe (running to another platform), Cenarius (after killing adds, if Harpoon is on CD) and Ilgy'noth (running around between adds, and going for the heart), for instance.

So, both Trailblazer and Posthaste are more or less equal in utility (again, because Survival is melee. For the ranged specs Posthaste is way better than Trailblazer).

A Disengage with built-in Posthaste bonus would be the best option by far, but I think we will only get the baseline Disengage (will test within one hour, when I'm home). So, the row will be more or less balanced, with none of the talents standing above the rest.

Pure, unfiltered nonsense. You are vastly underestimating how long 3 seconds is. It's RARE to have downtime that long, and in the few situations where you do have that much downtime it will likely not last long enough for the 25% damage boost to take effect. The only real time it could be useful is Renferal, and even then you could harpoon a spider along the way for +50% run speed for 5 seconds which will probably be a lot more helpful.

Icy Veins survival guide also has Posthaste as the recommended talent, calling Trailblazer highly situational at best.

Make you feel good being an asshole on some game forums? Because thats what you're painting yourself as. I don't care if you think what I said was dumb, it was my opinion as to why I personally think survival is having problems, nor can you tell me I am wrong because its my opinion. That's like me telling you you're wrong for feeling the way you do about Hunters or Paladins or any other class. That doesn't mean you need to be a fuckin asshole about it. Grow up kid, not liking something that someone says doesn't mean be an asshole about it. That's not how the world works and how conversations are had in a civil manner.


Good day. I am done "talking" to you since trying to have any meaningful and productive conversation with you is pointless.

You're the one who cried about it then left, so it's you who needs to grow up. And I don't give a damn about what's opinion and what's not. Opinions can be shitty too. Case in point: yours. They are not automatically deserving of unconditional respect.

[Trapstarz]

Pure, unfiltered nonsense. You are vastly underestimating how long 3 seconds is. It's RARE to have downtime that long, and in the few situations where you do have that much downtime it will likely not last long enough for the 25% damage boost to take effect. The only real time it could be useful is Renferal, and even then you could harpoon a spider along the way for +50% run speed for 5 seconds which will probably be a lot more helpful.

Icy Veins survival guide also has Posthaste as the recommended talent, calling Trailblazer highly situational at best.



You're the one who cried about it then left, so it's you who needs to grow up. And I don't give a damn about what's opinion and what's not. Opinions can be shitty too. Case in point: yours. They are not automatically deserving of unconditional respect.

You should

[Gurg]

the new legendary that affects butchery is sick as fuck - they are already nerfing it on ptr, bcs its basically aoe chaos bolt... mark my words, if you ever manage to grab your hands on this baby you will tear meters apart...just a shame surv aoe is so much gated behind one single item, but i guess its still better than pre 7.1.5...
oh and they removed cd on lacerate...about time

Yes, its a shame, that thing could instead be our passive instead of layway. Would fix a bunch of our problems to be like.

"MB increases damage of your next Carve/Butchery by 100%/75%, stacking 2/3 times."
You could always have 2MBs to dump without issues so it feels a bit of logical. Im maybe mistaken, thats just something like morning napkin math.

Yes, they need.

Personally, I never liked having to use Explosive Trap in the rotation. However, it was one of our main assets in multitarget, so they really need to improve somewhere else. (They also made Explosive Trap be targetable over an area, instead of dropping it in front of us, so it's clunkier to use it now mid-rotation).

So far, they improved Serpent Sting and Butchery, and apparently removed CD from Lacerate so we can multidot with it (however, multidoting Lacerate plus weaving Carve/Butchery will cost too much focus). I don't think this is enough to compensate the changes in Explosive Trap.

(Also, the Snake Hunter nerf will indirectly impact our AoE as well)

i tested it a bit on PTR last night. You can do [@cursor] macro and any of traps will be cast under your cursor. So that makes life a bit easier and skips whole "green circle aiming thingy."

Still, buffs to SS and Butchery is not even close enough to fix the loss of IT in our AoE. Lacerate just costs too much in resources and GCDs so.. would say its usable on cleave to get extra procs of MB via Mortal Wounds, but even then MW simply underperforms the rest of the tier. It needs a buff. Desperately.

---snip---

Mate, you put too much salt in your food.
Ease up a bit, it could lead to high blood pressure and hypertension.

[Bepples]

It needs a buff. Desperately.

"More buffs guys, that will fix everything!"

[last1214]

It would have to be buffed to current shadow priest status for me to consider trying survival out. Total dumpster spec imho.

[Gurg]

"More buffs guys, that will fix everything!"

Actually no, it wont, thats you, pulling my partial statement out of context.
Its obvious that none big gameplay changes will happen in 7.1.5. specially taking blizzards pace so far.
Even so they did say that they will address class/spec issues in every x.x.5 patch they are doing lazy job so far. Why? I Wont get into are they afraid of doing significant changes so far into expansion with new raid tier incoming or their meaning of "addressing" differs from ours, but they are slow and lazy about it.
Theres a ZILION issues with survival, thats true, at none point i didnt said survival is fine, but despite all that sadly (or not?) it still makes Survival one of most "fun" melee specs to play.

Now.. as i said, lets be honest here.. One of biggest issues with Survival is that complete melee revamp is done to a ranged spec. Its two way street. Melee only players if they decided to pick up survival, as i did, are limited to survival only. I dont care much about MM/BM and Hunter, for me has one spec, survival. As opposite, Blizzard took from ranged guys really fun spec and made it a melee. Its not quite like cutting your arm off, but.. you know.. you lost a spec.

Theres a lot of people, including my self, that during alpha/beta openly voiced that making survival melee only is WRONG thing to do cause of mentality of the community. As i said few times, they could easily do a "gladiator Stance" thingy and give survival gunblade or some shite that would allow you to switch from between ranged and melee on will.

Actually...Theres a lot of things that could have been done (or none at all) with survival cause Survival at no point in lore had a meaningful representative, opposite to examples like Paladins Ashbringer, but they took the way that they wanted. Its there. And i can openly say that this round of class revamps is one of the worst ever done, excluding Enhancement shaman ofc. Enhancement plays as never before, but that doesnt change the fact that survival is changed. It added another melee spec to already big pool of melees and rob ranged of one of most fun specs to play and made it a melee.

Saying that its bad simply because its a melee is kinda narrowminded, seeing it from perspective of ranged community i do understand why do people react like that, but those changes did happen and will stay like they are till 8.0 or some other expansion hits the fan. Going around, being salty and hating everything just... because.. wont do much. As i said, survival is in a bad spot, it has a lot of issues and shite going around it just by switching from ranged to melee, i dont think spec is a good spot, actually i see a lot of issues with it but in its base its "most fun" melee to play. Atleast for me. And thats whats important to me.

It would have to be buffed to current shadow priest status for me to consider trying survival out. Total dumpster spec imho.

Is this post after you actually tried survival or just based on the things that you read/see?
Because.. yes.. Survival is dumpster fire at its best but its still hell of a fun to play.. cause.. fire was always been most fun to play with, did it not?
Im actually doing quite good with it, and from all melees that i usually play survival ended up as "most fun" to play and i decided to stick with it as.. its something that ill play for next.. year and a half, maybe two? Im not top end raider but i do HC raids and yeeeaaa its clunky and you need to put extended effort in it to be even remotely competitive with other melees, but its FUN.
And.. as i sad.. since were stuck with current expansion for another year, maybe a year and a half im going with whats "fun" for me, not "top performing."

[DeicideUH]

Pure, unfiltered nonsense. You are vastly underestimating how long 3 seconds is. It's RARE to have downtime that long, and in the few situations where you do have that much downtime it will likely not last long enough for the 25% damage boost to take effect. The only real time it could be useful is Renferal, and even then you could harpoon a spider along the way for +50% run speed for 5 seconds which will probably be a lot more helpful.

Icy Veins survival guide also has Posthaste as the recommended talent, calling Trailblazer highly situational at best.

Again, have you actually played Survival? Because it's clear you don't know what you are talking about.

Posthaste for Survival has extremely limited situations in which the speed buff actually matters. Most often, you'll harpoon yourself to something, stick to the target and won't be able to harpoon again for 20 seconds. It's also useful if you need to break roots (such as those from Nightmare Dragons or Cenarius), but that's even more limited situations.

Trailblazer is just as limited, but I do see the buff matter more often during the fights. Also, you can still harpoon every 20 seconds.

And about Icy Veins recommending something... Well, I do respect their simulations and suggestions, but in this regards I think they are overestimating how useful Posthaste is. Survival's Posthaste is as situational as Trailblazer.

[ItachiZaku]

It'll be my third and it definitely feels good to play IMO (very satisfying to use Throwing Axes on CD, thwack, thwack, thwack!). Only thing I was having issue with was Lacerate and that is getting changed soon it seems.

I have a BM (free 90) and a MM (free 80), they are what they are, so I wouldn't just spec change them to test it. I wanted to try it and learn it from the beginning, and I went 1-100 really quickly. PVPing, dungeons, raids. To me, it was a completely new class and I wasn't "rolling a hunter to be ranged and oh fuck, now I have a melee spec" like a lot of people are complaining about, so in that mentality, I really, really like it. If I had an old school SV, I'm sure i'd be annoyed.

[Deleted]

Again, have you actually played Survival? Because it's clear you don't know what you are talking about.

Posthaste for Survival has extremely limited situations in which the speed buff actually matters. Most often, you'll harpoon yourself to something, stick to the target and won't be able to harpoon again for 20 seconds. It's also useful if you need to break roots (such as those from Nightmare Dragons or Cenarius), but that's even more limited situations.

Trailblazer is just as limited, but I do see the buff matter more often during the fights. Also, you can still harpoon every 20 seconds.

And about Icy Veins recommending something... Well, I do respect their simulations and suggestions, but in this regards I think they are overestimating how useful Posthaste is. Survival's Posthaste is as situational as Trailblazer.

Trailblazer is a mostly useless talent inside a raid since 3 seconds without attacking anything maybe happens once every raid, arguing that other talents are shit also doesn't make said talent good.

@OP, imho there are different perspectives to judge SV.



1. Is it useful to take it over another Melee?
It doesn't bring anything another spec cant, it doesn't have more survivability, outstanding dmg on ST, Cleave, Aoe, utility that allows for negating certain mechanics or mobility than the other specs. It can root stuff without a CD, big whoop.

2. Raid roster & Wow spec distribution, newly introduced classes?
Most raids and often dungeons are designed in such a way that the setup should be rather ranged heavy than melee heavy. There are already more classes and specs that can go melee. None of the new specs introduced ever was ranged Dk, Monk, DH. That said Hunter still has 2 ranged specs and it doesnt really hurt the Hunter as a class much if a 3rd spec is melee.

3. Is it useful to spec it over MM/BM?
See 1 & 2, meaning most of the time its not. Ranged classes are in more demand and except a shorter interrupt CD SV doesnt offer a single advantage.
In pretty much none of the raids or encounters I have experienced so far in a long time as a Hunter there would have been a situation where it would have been preferable for me to switch to a melee hunter spec given theoreticly the same dmg output. Either melee roles perform just as well encounter mechanics wise or cause a problem due to melees needing to stack in one spot and some aoe effects and debuffs.

4. but in Vanilla there was Melee SV class fantasy and people have been asking for it back
Yes there were some people who dreamt about and asked for the melee elements back. The thing is Sv back then had Melee supplements and wasn't a full melee spec. If SV was now a combo spec that usually was ranged but could/needed to go melee at times for debuffing, trap purposes this "desire" would still be fulfilled.

5. Is it fun to play
This is purely subjective and I would say sort off, it offers more dmg abilities on CD to watch out for than most specs than many other specs which I kinda like because so much got overly pruned and here at times you still have a choice which abilities you prioritise instead of mostly pressing whatever is there. The Mongoose bite mechanic is kind of new and though it can be a little "vulnerable to disruptions" but generally its good. Imho as said in 4 to me its to melee heavy and should have more ranged options if not even be mainly ranged spec.

6. Whats up with people who like SV like it was E.g. in Legion.
Since SV was characteristicly a highly mobile ranged spec with Explosive Shots and some dot mechanics and no gap in the rotation ever, imho fans of the old spec are left out. Serpent sting mechanic wasn't something i liked or which imho was challenging at all as it was but generally a hunter range spec that utilises some "special arrows" like explosives and dots + traps was a nice idea. With removal of Sv these could/should have been included as viable options for the remaining ranged specs. Yes explosive shot is in there for MM but undertuned and without ever really being useful and the spec always staying centered around stationary aimed shot spam.

To me the spec itself could be ok if the tuning was stronger it just doesn't have a place or purpose inside a raid and blizzard should rather have invested into making more diferenciated ranged specs and or talent options for the other hunter specs to offset the removal of the previous SV hunter. Imho the only thing they didn't screw up here is the abilities and rotation of SV.

[DeicideUH]

Trailblazer is a mostly useless talent inside a raid since 3 seconds without attacking anything maybe happens once every raid, arguing that other talents are shit also doesn't make said talent good.

I'm comparing it to the other options in the same row. After all, you have to take an option there. I'm just pointing out thaty Posthaste is overestimated, since its bonuses will rarely matter, while Trailblazer do offer its (very small) bonus more often.

And BTW, if any of you actually tried it instead of just theorycrafting, you'd notice that Trailblazer does not take 3 seconds to activate, despite what its tooltip says. I've seen it activate as soon as a mob dies, or before two seconds pass after I got away from my target. I don't know what logic it's using to activate, but it's often faster than those 3 seconds in the tooltip.

What I see in the comments about Trailblazer is often what I myself thought before using it. I expect the talent to be near useless, but then changed from Posthaste to it and it surprised me how little I missed Posthaste. Posthaste's speed bonus is rarely useful, and its main use is to break roots and movement penalties, which is also a rare event in PvE.

[Maxie]

How you can think the movement speed part of posthaste is rarely useful is beyond me.

Besides, breaking roots does have a use in pve. First boss cos? You don't have to jump three times, posthaste disengage removes it. Vault of the wardens trash root + loadsofdamage? Posthaste disengage removes it. Dragons root in EN. And there are many more.

[DeicideUH]

How you can think the movement speed part of posthaste is rarely useful is beyond me.

Because it's activated by Harpoon. If you just harpooned your target, you'll already be next to it. Your target needs to die in 5 seconds for it to be useful. Or you need to go somewhere and there's an available target in the way. It'll be useful sometimes, but not that often.

I believe most people here are thinking about BM/MM. Yes, for them, Posthaste is way more valuable and useful than Trailblazer. Disengage + Posthaste is way better than Harpoon + Posthaste: you don't need a target, you don't have minimum range, the speed boost comes when you just repositioned yourself. So, taking Posthaste is the obvious choice.

Besides, breaking roots does have a use in pve. First boss cos? You don't have to jump three times, posthaste disengage removes it. Vault of the wardens trash root + loadsofdamage? Posthaste disengage removes it. Dragons root in EN. And there are many more.

Dragons don't root melee, I think. At least, I never had that problem as survival, while playing MM would often need to Disengage to escape the roots.

Another thing to remember about the Survival version of posthaste: you need to Harpoon a target, and Harpoon has a minimum range. If you are in melee and you are rooted, Posthaste is useless.

Notice that I'm not saying it's not useful. Of course it will be useful now and then. I'm saying that its value is often overestimated.

(And yes, Trailblazer is also only useful now and then. It's not the best skill ever. I'm just saying that it's being slightly underestimated when compared to Posthaste)

[Deleted]

Overall, yes a giant failure.. Bring back the old Surv. incl. Explosive shot and black arrow with LnL as it was before !

[bloodmoth13]

I really don't think it plays that badly. The numbers just....aren't there.

I feel like Blizzard was too afraid of Surv doing good DPS and making BM/MM fans feel like they have to play a melee but they went a bit too far on the safety.

that is a good point, as the only 2 archer specs in the game it would feel horrible if you couldnt play an archer in a fantasy game and were pressured into melee, i can appreciate that.

I still believe that they should have turned either assassination or subtlety into a ranged assassin spec to counterbalance the fact that one archer spec would be turned into melee, rogues would suit it well and energy could be a great resource for a rapid fire type archer.

I feel like people are picking on survival for reasons that are not survivals fault, its a great spec thats interesting, thematically rich and fun to play, but it did replace a spec many players like and it is melee on a class that everyone took for granted as ranged, so there is some unfair backlash against it due to that. In a vacuum i imagine there wouldnt be so much hatred for it.

[Gurg]

Overall, yes a giant failure.. Bring back the old Surv. incl. Explosive shot and black arrow with LnL as it was before !

Just to be clear.. to which "OLD Surv." are you referring to?

"OLD-OLD Surv." Vanilla/BC survival - melee/ranged hybrid.
"NEW-OLD Surv." LK/Cata/MoP/Wod survival - ranged spec.

As someone whos Vanilla player - well they did bring OLD Surv. back.

On side note i would also like to see that they bring back DW blood tanking, DW Unholy tanking, Old Combat Rogues, Old warrior stances... and much more..

But "bring back the old" is not gonna happen as Blizz has its own vision of classes that differ from ours, right?

Pure example of what i was talking about so many times. Marking survival as "failed" solely because it went melee.
To be clear.. Im not judging you in any way, i call it more as Blizzards mistake and ignorance ignoring ALL feedback that we gave during beta, mainly pointing out that its epic mistake taking a ranged spec and making it melee. Druid have 4 specs, why cant hunter have it too? "Ranger?" or "Tracker?"
Yet, they ignored all of our feedback and how it end up? As we said.. majority of hunter community will have negative opinion on it for just being a melee spec and refuse to play it because they rolled hunter to be ranged, not a melee.

[ydraw]

Survival was never a melee/ranged hybrid. It had a few abilities you can use in melee so you could do some damage when you got gap closed in PvP. These spells were never used in PVE.

here's a vid of the TBC Survival Hunter rotation. No melee abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gss2EPPsDZc

[Gurg]

Survival was never a melee/ranged hybrid. It had a few abilities you can use in melee so you could do some damage when you got gap closed in PvP. These spells were never used in PVE.

here's a vid of the TBC Survival Hunter rotation. No melee abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gss2EPPsDZc

Heck.. if it means that ill use AA and two extra buttons im better off with NEW survival than with OLD survival from that video.
Yet... its a video of a hunter shooting at dummy. Yep. every Hostile NPC and Enemy Player will stand there and wait for you to AA them to death.

Thats great video, BUT.. IF youre trying to make a point, include all facts, not just "rotation" of TBC surival hunter and post a video thats been recorded 6 months ago of a hunter shooting a dummy. That would NEVER happen in "real" virtual world.

Youre literally pulling my words out of context by interpreting "hybrid" as it means now. During TBC a "hybrid" were specs like Enhance, Shockadin, Feral and at some point Hunters too, mainly Survival with its wider melee defensive kit, BM could simply Pet you down and MM was dead as soon as you enter "dead zone" zone between 8-10y which was a zone between melee and ranged. Experienced melee players knew how to keep them self in that zone. Yet survival was able to defend its self with its melee abilities. The rest two specs not much.

Survival was never hybrid spec by "modern" meaning of that word, but back in 2006 Survival was ONLY spec that combined Ranged offence and melee defense with few gimplacking melee attacks. Enhance was opposite type of hybrid, Melee with few ranged abilities.
TBC also gave birth to builds like Shockadin paladins, Stunlock Sub rogues, Enhance 2h one shooters too, most of which will NEVER happen again.

EDIT: I would skip your post because.. its a video of a hunter shooting a dummy. BUT after your edit and adding "No melee abilities" i had to reply to it.

Guys.. please.. I know that you are pissed for losing most fun ranged spec that you had by switching it to melee, but deeming it as "FAILED" simply because of that is something.. OLD and we knew since beta that THIS version of survival WONT STICK with hunter community, this is the topic about NEW Survival and talk about it, not OLD one.
Saying "bring back OLD Surv." or "FAILED cause of melee" wont help much, its flaming up topic thats already being made for flaming in the first place and its not constructive in any way, some blue maybe spends some time here too.

IF you dont play Survival - cool. If you want to post in this topic - cool again. But please atleast try to be a little constructive.
Saying SURVIVAL FAILED CAUSE OF MELEE and not giving any constructive feedback past that sentence is so narrowminded that i have no words for it.

As someone whos actually playing survival as MAIN i can count atleast 10 GOOD reasons why is Survival under-performing in higher end game therefor why survival doesnt have any (or small number of) Mythic logs resulting it in being a "failed" spec.
Switching from ranged to melee is not one, its a decision that was not made by community and all our feedback of possible issues of taking ranged survival and making it a melee were ignored. They could just add 4th spec and that would be it.

[Sarevokcz]

Heck.. if it means that ill use AA and two extra buttons im better off with NEW survival than with OLD survival from that video.
Yet... its a video of a hunter shooting at dummy. Yep. every Hostile NPC and Enemy Player will stand there and wait for you to AA them to death.

Thats great video, BUT.. IF youre trying to make a point, include all facts, not just "rotation" of TBC surival hunter and post a video thats been recorded 6 months ago of a hunter shooting a dummy. That would NEVER happen in "real" virtual world.

Youre literally pulling my words out of context by interpreting "hybrid" as it means now. During TBC a "hybrid" were specs like Enhance, Shockadin, Feral and at some point Hunters too, mainly Survival with its wider melee defensive kit, BM could simply Pet you down and MM was dead as soon as you enter "dead zone" zone between 8-10y which was a zone between melee and ranged. Experienced melee players knew how to keep them self in that zone. Yet survival was able to defend its self with its melee abilities. The rest two specs not much.

Survival was never hybrid spec by "modern" meaning of that word, but back in 2006 Survival was ONLY spec that combined Ranged offence and melee defense with few gimplacking melee attacks. Enhance was opposite type of hybrid, Melee with few ranged abilities.
TBC also gave birth to builds like Shockadin paladins, Stunlock Sub rogues, Enhance 2h one shooters too, most of which will NEVER happen again.

EDIT: I would skip your post because.. its a video of a hunter shooting a dummy. BUT after your edit and adding "No melee abilities" i had to reply to it.

survival was never melee hybrid, the dead zone was 5-8 yards, where you couldnt shoot from bow, but couldnt melee either and that was same for all hunters, SV had extra defensive CD and mongoose bite at that was it, the only reason hunters had melee abilities was precisely because they didnt have their abilities at 8 yards or closer otherwise, thats why they removed most of that useless crap, when they scrapped deadzone, wingclip was a relic of the past, when you could just concussive at melee..

and back then plenty of rangeds got melee tools. was elemental melee just because he had rockbiter and windfury, str, agi totems? boomkin because he could go cat/bear? mage because he got blast wave (the old one, PBAoE) as a talent? heck, mages to this day have melee defensive abilities like dragons breath and frost nova, its literally no different from old SV having an extra melee defensive tool...