I really tried Survival!!!

[Deleted]

can you link your char if possible, please?
also, more info about ur opener, and how u keep up with lets say, u just opened up mongoose, and traps/gernade came out of cd + lecerade did, how do you deal with that? u just continue with endless mongoosing and only refresh when it ends?
it seems awful to me, to let them just sit.
u also dont use flanking strike unless u need to, during mongoose, right?

I know the question wasn't posed to me but I'll still chip in...

I'm mostly playing mine in M+ with the occasional PuG raids.

Talent-wise I've got a raid and a 5-an setup.
Raid uses 3-1-2-1-2-3-2
5-man uses 1-1-2-1-2-1-2

Generally, talents at the 15 and 90 tier are all viable options but if you're choosing Way of the Mok'Nathal then Serpent Sting becomes the best choice in 90.

For single-target I'm generally opening with Explosive Trap, A Murder of Crows, Lacerate, Caltrops (not sure about this after today's 10% nerf to Caltrops) then starting the Mongoose Bite Spam, popping AotE when I hit 1 stack of MB. If it's a raid and I'm using Way of the Mok'Nathal then I'm starting to build my Mok'Nathal Tactics stacks and refreshing DoTs after this initial burst. Not sure if that is the best way to open but it is working ok for me.

I agree with previous posters that it feels wrong letting DoTs drop off during the MB spam but it is the right thing to do. I wasn't 100% certain about letting the Mok'Nathal tactics buff drop off too.

For AoE in 5-mans* I'm generally dropping the 2 AoE traps then popping AotE then 3x Butchery. After that I build my stacks up on one target with MB before doing a 3-4 Mongoose Fury FotE. If the mobs are low HP or aren't going to stay in 1 spot for long I'll skip the traps and go straight to AotE & 3x butchery.

*Warning: Do not try this with Skittish! For Skittish, make sure to weave a Feign Death in between your first or 2nd (depending on how good your tank's threat is) Butchery, then, if you have aggro, use AotT and drop traps (you can drop traps under Turtle). Use the slow effect of Caltrops to get away from the nasties that want to kill you!

The spec has a few issues. Lvl 100 talents are pathetic, 2 of the 3 artifact "golden" traits are pathetic. The spec scales poorly (any dps spec with versatility as it's best secondary stat will scale poorly). Mastery is very poor and doesn't directly offer increased DPS, haste does Mastery's job better since it buffs other things. It's complicated and Way of the Mok'Nathal makes it more complicated/unwieldy to manage. I'm hopeful that the buffs incoming (tomorrow for me, EU).

[Improtaight]

... I think Blizz should give us a small helping hand, like each bite&FoF extending the duration of DOTs on the target by 2 seconds or so. This would make it much easier to have an uninterrupted windows of Bite spam and this would also make Ways of MN much more usable (and they clearly want us to use this talent).

This is actually a great idea, i would like to add something like "on the 6th stack of mongoose bite, you will deal all of the dots dmg as instant dmg, sounds cool :P

[Vitinariy]

*Warning: Do not try this with Skittish! For Skittish, make sure to weave a Feign Death in between your first or 2nd (depending on how good your tank's threat is) Butchery, then, if you have aggro, use AotT and drop traps (you can drop traps under Turtle). Use the slow effect of Caltrops to get away from the nasties that want to kill you!

I still have bad memories from my first Skittish week. Melee class with basically 0 dodge, no stun, NO MISDIRECT (I still really don't get the reason for this outrage), very poor self heal and a very good burst on top of all that. Back then we didn't even have disengage. It was like - overagro -> FD -> overagro -> dead.

[Adramalech]

I realize for many Hunters this is complete heresy, but I have enjoyed Survival quite a bit. I do feel like it has too much going for it, especially since Mongoose Bite is so important that you will often ignore your entire spellbook in favor of spamming it until you can't anymore. But I feel that the spec is still fun and with some reworking (which likely won't come until a major patch or, more realistically, until the next expansion), could become a much more popular choice for Hunters everywhere. At the start of the expansion it was definitely in a bad spot, but it has improved massively.

Speaking of which, do we still have to use Scorpids and such because of their active, or have they done something about it in 7.1.5?

[Vitinariy]

I believe it's Scorpids, River beasts and carrion birds. Maybe it's no longer the case, but I got used to a bird a tamed in Terrokar. They are really big and look great.

As for liking the spec, I don't think there's any heresy in it. Survival is a decent idea, but at the moment it lacks polishing. There's a lack of interaction between Mongoose/FotE and everything else in your kit. When one ability is so good, that you're almost ready to drop everything else, it's not a good design. There are multiple ways to fit it, but I guess we just have to wait and see.

[Bepples]

I think that beast mastery should have been the melee spec.

Survival could have gotten the gun.

None of the hunter specs should have been melee.

[Vitinariy]

Except survival had melee elements from the very beginning of WoW. In addition, I always disliked ranged incarnation of survival spec, because it was a weird mail/bow edition of affliction warlock. It's all a matter of personal preference, like people asking for a ranged DH spec or for a tank shaman.

[Deleted]

None of the hunter specs should have been melee.

Honestly I don't mind BM being melee from an aesthetic point of view. However, the issue is that WoW desperately needs a new ranged class because the melee/ranged ratio is now out of control in term of numbers and diversity.

[Draugnakh]

No problem with Mongoose before 7.1.5. I always had between 7 and 9% of mastery. Since 7.1.5 and haste priority we need less mastery (which grows up with weapon ilvl btw). More haste, more procs.

That's not really an RNG spec...

[Bepples]

Honestly I don't mind BM being melee from an aesthetic point of view. However, the issue is that WoW desperately needs a new ranged class because the melee/ranged ratio is now out of control in term of numbers and diversity.

Making ANY of the specs melee would be a mockery of the people who were previously playing it when it was ranged. They are literally deleting their spec by doing so. Survival was the unfortunate victim here.

That alone trumps any "aesthetic" point of view.

[Draugnakh]

Speaking of which, do we still have to use Scorpids and such because of their active, or have they done something about it in 7.1.5?

Since October 28th... "Survival Hunters' Mastery will correctly be activated by pet auto-attacks." Feel free to use better pets like one which gives blood lust or battle rez, good in mm+ or raids.

[Penguintamer]

i must be 1 of the really low % that LOVE survival, i do fair damage in mythic + and love how they work in BG. just mass annoy players with the mass slow and so on it's far better than BM and MM and i normally dislike playing melee

Well yeah, Survival is the best PVP spec for our class now, so everyone loves it there. But the PvE rotation is garbage and overbloated with crap and poor functionality.

[Drekker17]

Mongoose bite can seem annoying, but it isn't the be all ability. I start: Lacerate, Serpent, Explosive, caltrops, Murder of Crows, Aspect of Eagle, Flanking Strike, Mongoose 3x, Flanking Strike, Mongoose until 6 (raptor strike filler) (or Flanking strike again if Blood Lust), then Fury of Eagles. After that just make sure all dots are on, Lacerate, Explosive, Serpent Sting (if talented), Caltrops...raptor strike till 4 mok'nathal and keep it up...flanking strike, mongoose if nothing else to do. Mongoose greatly loses priority until fury of eagle or aspect of eagle are ready to use again.

[satimy]

If i end up doing the artifact quest before the expansion is over i will be surprised

[Paulosio]

It has too many pointless abilities in the rotation that wouldn't be missed if they just didn't exist. It has double the number of core dps spells/abilities compared to many classes. To me it just feels like they ran out of time to finish designing the spec half way through and just put out all the random ideas they had for it in 1 big incoherent mess.

Lacerate is pointless. The chance to proc mongoose could just be made a passive or baked into some other ability.

Raptor strike is pointless. The only reason I think it's still in game is because "it's an iconic ability" but it's basically just a filler/focus dumper and there are so many abilities ahead of it in priority that you almost never need to use it and if you didn't even put it on your bars your dps wouldn't noticably suffer for it. It's also used to help with the Way of the Mok'nathal talent but that talent is terrible and needs replacing or completely redesigning so you'd be mad to take it anyway.

The bones of a good spec are there but it's completely unrefined at the moment.

[threads]

failure of a spec.

no hunter in the last 10 yrs rolled to be melee.

abilities are just leftover ideas from other specs, random gadgets, animal talents fit for BM, etc.

it's a jumbled mess that hopefully dies after Legion and goes back to being ranged.

[Gurg]

Hi,
A few pointers on what I saw as obvious reasons, no matter how silly it may be to other people:

• RNG - The class is based all around RNG, meaning, you can do your best but u can still suck, if you dont get the procs of mongoose. --> agree to a certain extent. The spec is fun because you have to plan when to use your abilities. It's a constant decision making what's best in the current situation of a fight
• Rotation/Priorty - is there any? --> Yes, something like using Flanking Strike on cd, if possible. It is one of the hardest hitting attacks. Plus keeping up your dots of course. I recommend playing without mok'nathal. Axes do good damage when you're not in melee range and you're more flexible.
• The artifact, fury of the eagle, is based on your mongoose, and its best to use it at full 6 stacks, so again, RNG, and you have to delay the use of it, in order to really get the best out of it, its a long CD as it is. --> i like it, because you have to plan when to used it and not just press a button mindlessly. Plus you could use it as soon as you have 3 stacks of mongoose bites. It's not that much of a dps loss plus it gives you more flexibility to refresh Lacerate or spend Focus (Flanking Strike)
• Fury of the eagle is channeled - why? --> do you know that you can move while channeling it?
• Explosive trap and caltraps are both click and position, i just hate that, dont know if you'll agree --> agree but just don't use caltrops, use Guerilla Tactics
• Animations SUCK, especially the artifact one, Fury of the eagle, looks like a broken monk fists of fury to me. --> i find the animations ok
• Some talents really suck/useless, but i guess that's a thing with WoW in general --> agree

• RNG - The class is based all around RNG, meaning, you can do your best but u can still suck, if you dont get the procs of mongoose. --> Agree to a certain point too, spec if fun because its based on decision making and planning when to use your hard hitting attacks. Worth noting that T19 set bonus minimizes this RNG as i was unable to get rid of MB procs, sometimes completely ignoring Flanking Strike.
• Rotation/Priorty - is there any? you put ur dots up, but when u start mongoosing, you cant stop for anything, u need to fit as much as you can, so you end up not using other abilities in order to use as many mon as possible, that's how it worked out for me at least --> Theres no actually a rotation priority, but there is a priority list. Open with Etrap, Lacerate up, dump 1 MB, use Flanking, dump rest of MB, use Flanking on CD if not at 3 stacks of MB, AotE around 4-5s into MF window so you can have AotE damage buff during FotE, FotE at ~2s left in MF and squeeze one more MB in MF miniwindow.
  Refresh Lacerate before every MF windows.
• The artifact, fury of the eagle, is based on your mongoose, and its best to use it at full 6 stacks, so again, RNG, and you have to delay the use of it, in order to really get the best out of it, its a long CD as it is. --> Agree to a degree. Survival is ONLY spec that needs to wait for AT LEAST 6GCDs to make its Artifact Spell most effective. But on other hand that allows you to preplan your tactics, not just mindlessly spam it. On top of that full 6stacks of MF paired with AotE and FotE just feels extremely meaty and satisfying and numbers are HUGE, so as much its a gimp its that much positive. Also, do note that t19 pushes this even further giving us a % damage bonus on 6 stacks of MF.
• Fury of the eagle is channled - why? --> You can move and interrupt it with another spell cast. I see it as commodity compared to warriors Rampage for instance, if my target dies ill just tab during the cast and interrupt channel attacking new target. Warriors Rampage, if im not mistaken, doesnt work like that, if target dies during the cast, its time wasted.
• Explosive trap and caltraps are both click and position, i just hate that, dont know if you'll agree -->you can use [@cursor] macro mod for, for instance
  #showtooltip
  /castsequence reset=combat/target/25 [@curstor] [nomod] Harpoon, Explosive Trap
  /castsequence [mod:shift] Butchery
  i personally use [@player] since i harpoon in and the use my Traps, also, you dont always keep track of your cursor so trap might end up flying in a direction you dont want to.
• Animations SUCK, especially the artifact one, Fury of the eagle, looks like a broken monk fists of fury to me. --> Actually i love them! Animations are clean and slick, FotF did look like FoF but now has that spin-jump-stab animation that i find so appealing. Too much particles and flashy animations are one of the reason my im staying away from Enhance/Combat/Retri/DKs and DH specially. I guess this is personal based opinion.
• Some talents really suck/useless, but i guess that's a thing with WoW in general --> Yea. agree on this one.

I play survival as main since beta, honestly thats the only reason why i play hunter at all. So far im really enjoying it and after 7.1.5 and its buffs survival keeps looking better and better. Yea, theres a ton of mechanical issues with it, but also with some other classes too. As i keep saying its a new spec and it will take time for it to fully mature (monks took 2 expansions). The thing is.. im melee only player. period. melee only.
I have tried other classes too ofc and closest to being even remotely fun as survival is fury warrior. I liked enhance too, but its too flashy for my taste.
I keep away from Hunters forums as community here is a bit toxic, i do understand why and i agree, numbers wise hunters now look OK-ish, but mechanically wise they are complete mess. All 3 specs. Putting on side Survival as new spec, hunters are ended up with worst version of mechanical gameplay since old days. Surival.. ranged Surival.. i hope that they will bring it back and make melee version as 4th spec "Tracker" or something like that. Blizzard ended up with hand too deep in pickle jar, they took a ranged spec from a ranged class and made it a melee, worst thing - most fun of all melees to play. In meantime old survivals and hunters overall community is on up-rise while new survival fan base grows by a little from time to time. Even now were headbashing eachother new vs old, this will just continue to grow until blizzard brings back old survival and introduce this one as 4th spec.

[Trapstarz]

• RNG - The class is based all around RNG, meaning, you can do your best but u can still suck, if you dont get the procs of mongoose. --> Agree to a certain point too, spec if fun because its based on decision making and planning when to use your hard hitting attacks. Worth noting that T19 set bonus minimizes this RNG as i was unable to get rid of MB procs, sometimes completely ignoring Flanking Strike.
• Rotation/Priorty - is there any? you put ur dots up, but when u start mongoosing, you cant stop for anything, u need to fit as much as you can, so you end up not using other abilities in order to use as many mon as possible, that's how it worked out for me at least --> Theres no actually a rotation priority, but there is a priority list. Open with Etrap, Lacerate up, dump 1 MB, use Flanking, dump rest of MB, use Flanking on CD if not at 3 stacks of MB, AotE around 4-5s into MF window so you can have AotE damage buff during FotE, FotE at ~2s left in MF and squeeze one more MB in MF miniwindow.
  Refresh Lacerate before every MF windows.
• The artifact, fury of the eagle, is based on your mongoose, and its best to use it at full 6 stacks, so again, RNG, and you have to delay the use of it, in order to really get the best out of it, its a long CD as it is. --> Agree to a degree. Survival is ONLY spec that needs to wait for AT LEAST 6GCDs to make its Artifact Spell most effective. But on other hand that allows you to preplan your tactics, not just mindlessly spam it. On top of that full 6stacks of MF paired with AotE and FotE just feels extremely meaty and satisfying and numbers are HUGE, so as much its a gimp its that much positive. Also, do note that t19 pushes this even further giving us a % damage bonus on 6 stacks of MF.
• Fury of the eagle is channled - why? --> You can move and interrupt it with another spell cast. I see it as commodity compared to warriors Rampage for instance, if my target dies ill just tab during the cast and interrupt channel attacking new target. Warriors Rampage, if im not mistaken, doesnt work like that, if target dies during the cast, its time wasted.
• Explosive trap and caltraps are both click and position, i just hate that, dont know if you'll agree -->you can use [@cursor] macro mod for, for instance
  #showtooltip
  /castsequence reset=combat/target/25 [@curstor] [nomod] Harpoon, Explosive Trap
  /castsequence [mod:shift] Butchery
  i personally use [@player] since i harpoon in and the use my Traps, also, you dont always keep track of your cursor so trap might end up flying in a direction you dont want to.
• Animations SUCK, especially the artifact one, Fury of the eagle, looks like a broken monk fists of fury to me. --> Actually i love them! Animations are clean and slick, FotF did look like FoF but now has that spin-jump-stab animation that i find so appealing. Too much particles and flashy animations are one of the reason my im staying away from Enhance/Combat/Retri/DKs and DH specially. I guess this is personal based opinion.
• Some talents really suck/useless, but i guess that's a thing with WoW in general --> Yea. agree on this one.

I play survival as main since beta, honestly thats the only reason why i play hunter at all. So far im really enjoying it and after 7.1.5 and its buffs survival keeps looking better and better. Yea, theres a ton of mechanical issues with it, but also with some other classes too. As i keep saying its a new spec and it will take time for it to fully mature (monks took 2 expansions). The thing is.. im melee only player. period. melee only.
I have tried other classes too ofc and closest to being even remotely fun as survival is fury warrior. I liked enhance too, but its too flashy for my taste.
I keep away from Hunters forums as community here is a bit toxic, i do understand why and i agree, numbers wise hunters now look OK-ish, but mechanically wise they are complete mess. All 3 specs. Putting on side Survival as new spec, hunters are ended up with worst version of mechanical gameplay since old days. Surival.. ranged Surival.. i hope that they will bring it back and make melee version as 4th spec "Tracker" or something like that. Blizzard ended up with hand too deep in pickle jar, they took a ranged spec from a ranged class and made it a melee, worst thing - most fun of all melees to play. In meantime old survivals and hunters overall community is on up-rise while new survival fan base grows by a little from time to time. Even now were headbashing eachother new vs old, this will just continue to grow until blizzard brings back old survival and introduce this one as 4th spec.

^ Exactly how I feel smh

[Deleted]

I have tried other classes too ofc and closest to being even remotely fun as survival is fury warrior. I liked enhance too, but its too flashy for my taste.

In term of gameplay fun, I do agree, even more now that we have disengage. But Playing it when I compare to other classes, I see where the failure is coming from and it has nothing to do with performance or being melee. Mostly related to artifact weapon flavor, which is quite underwhelming at first glance.

- artifact spell lacks visual impact, it is a fist of fury without the cool animation (that gets even better with the weapon trait on Monk), with no change whatsoever after fully leveling the weapon
- artifact spell requires a setup difficult to get it to work at low level gear or while leveling (either mobs are dead or stacks do not reach a high enough level), it should have been setup the other way around so that each attack of fury would provide one stack of mongoose and become an opener for huge burst instead of a finisher
- artifact spell lacks effectiveness in world PVP as survival does not have any kind of stun/root (unlike Monk)
- artifact hidden spell can remain unnoticed by new player for a while, as it works only in outside world when you reach 40% HP (not a lot of situation will really trigger it when you have a pet tanking), what if fury also called down the eagle for its duration (thus having a stun too) ? or what if the eagle appeared when you jump from more than 40 yards to save you (could have a 1min cooldown) ?
- artifact hidden flavor is also pretty cool but not something you are introduced too, unless you die in outside world, again (what if you were able to call your eagle for 1 min every 15min to freely fly on broken island? that would have been a major selling point when no other classes could fly, does not matter if it becomes irrelevant later down the line as it would have been a selling point of the spec at release)
- harpoon also interfere with one of the mechanic of the survival which is the increase range, if you don't read your tooltip you can never notice you can hit things way farther than any other melee as harpoon pull you right into the mobs hitbox

At the end the first impression of the spec is pretty negative, I can understand why people do not like it and do not want to try it seriously.

[Vitinariy]

[LIST]they took a ranged spec from a ranged class and made it a melee, worst thing - most fun of all melees to play.

Why is everyone forgetting that survival had melee abilities from the very start of the spec? Like - these ones: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cZxqohxZcbVfRhut. So essentially, it was a semi-melee spec, then it was made into a ranged one and then it was made melee. Many people seem to think that melee survival is coming out of nowhere and that is simply NOT true.