Survival hunter atm

[huerohueroxxx]

So.. i'm crazy if i want to play it for m+ and raids guys? any tips or guides?

[gushDH]

It's not horrible, you can do dps. You might have some people declining you just for that, but it will work.

Tips and guides just google it and search for video guides too. No reason to give you specifics, just watch them all. Do NOT read noxxic though. Horrible website.

[Deleted]

Your only crazy for playing a spec that is clearly boring and unfun.

So they make a melee spec for hunters. This has the potential to have lots of fun animations and abilities. Maybe even a ability that uses your pet in some sort of way to make you more powerful.

NOPE none of the abilities are visually interesting and the rotation is botched up.

Its like they were on to something with the traps, but now everyone gets traps. They have zero identity and their attacks just feel so boring compared to death knights, warriors, and pallys.

Honestly if you wanted to play a melee character why would anyone choose survival over so many better visually better and more fun play styles?

It's the least played spec in legion for a reason.

[Garkanh]

Your only crazy for playing a spec that is clearly boring and unfun.

So they make a melee spec for hunters. This has the potential to have lots of fun animations and abilities. Maybe even a ability that uses your pet in some sort of way to make you more powerful.

NOPE none of the abilities are visually interesting and the rotation is botched up.

Its like they were on to something with the traps, but now everyone gets traps. They have zero identity and their attacks just feel so boring compared to death knights, warriors, and pallys.

Honestly if you wanted to play a melee character why would anyone choose survival over so many better visually better and more fun play styles?

It's the least played spec in legion for a reason.

i find survival to be one of the most fun melee specs atm. so much mobility, high burst, decent sustained damage and good aoe. i hate the whole traps and explosives things though, and wish they didn't make explosive trap a part of single target and cleave rotation, but made it entirely an aoe spell.

[Nythiz]

So.. i'm crazy if i want to play it for m+ and raids guys? any tips or guides?

It's a game. Whatever makes you have the most fun should be the thing you should go after.
Survival is fine in M+ and raids. It's not as good as MM for M+ but it'll do just fine to push +10's if that's what you're after.

As for guides. Best way to get some info is to check the hunter discord and read the icy-veins guide which is generally on point (Azoth doesn't play survival much, if at all, but his guide is generally up to date and on point.
The rest is mostly just getting a good feel for the spec and mastering the "quasi" Eb and Flow mechanic with Mongoose Fury.

[Deleted]

i find survival to be one of the most fun melee specs atm. so much mobility, high burst, decent sustained damage and good aoe. i hate the whole traps and explosives things though, and wish they didn't make explosive trap a part of single target and cleave rotation, but made it entirely an aoe spell.

mobility, high burst, decent damage, good aoe

People don't play X class because of these reasons. People play a class because it is "cool" to them. If even yourself that enjoys surv hunter in these ways can't even enjoy the class identity there is a big problem.

Simply put the class is boring and has zero identity. I have a 110 hunter also, Surv spec does not even have concordance on it. I really could care less for the class. BM and MM are way cooler and have a nice identity.

[Nythiz]

mobility, high burst, decent damage, good aoe

People don't play X class because of these reasons. People play a class because it is "cool" to them. If even yourself that enjoys surv hunter in these ways can't even enjoy the class identity there is a big problem.

Simply put the class is boring and has zero identity. I have a 110 hunter also, Surv spec does not even have concordance on it. I really could care less for the class. BM and MM are way cooler and have a nice identity.

People play classes for tons of reasons. People play X class because of tiny reasons, and drop them for just as tiny other things.
Survival has identity, it has the whole trapper, debuffer thing going for it. They just didn't play into that too well, or took the wrong approach.

My issue, and that for a lot of others I know of, is that the rotation just doesn't flow well; mostly because of Mongoose Fury being to dominant and total lack of inter-skill synergy other than in flanking strike. (Plus: I would have preferred survival to be able to use dual wield, IMO it fits the class fantasy more than just spears)

I completed the survival mage tower the other day and I thought it was some of the most fun I had with hunter in a while. It might just be the scenario, but I felt like I learned new aspects of survival that I didn't know before. I loved the mirror image phase where you can chain from target to target because the cooldown of harpoon resets on kill.
The mad scaling of Butchery when combined with the Hellcarver talent. E.g. I have 5 points in that trait (+15% per additional target hit); which makes the scaling go fast. 1 target hit is 100% damage, 3 targets hit is 390% damage (instead of 300%), 10 targets hit is 2350% damage (instead of 1000%), 20 targets hit is 7700% damage (instead of 2000%), etc.
They just need to deal with the dull rotation (both mongoose bite spam is dull and the other skills don't DO anything, which is dull too), tweak some abilities a bit and remove some of the bloat (e.g. remove carve, make butchery baseline; remove raptor strike it's pointless out of WotMN; etc)

MoP Survival was one of my favorite hunter specs, maybe even one of my favorite overal specs that I have played. (And I've been playing since patch 1.4 or something); but being bitter and nostalgic about it doesn't really help much. I think blizzard knows the standpoint of most people. Either they change it back and hopefully make survival fun as it used to be, if so awesome. If not I hope they smooth out the spec so that it can be a fun melee spec.

[Blackspiral]

Survival is a mixed bag. It is more then capable of holding it's own, but there are three things that will be glaring issues if you play it even casually.

Bloat. A LOT of abilities to do and if you don't do them right you tank your DPS hard. Compared to the more simple rotations of BM and MM, this deters many folks from even trying it out.

Survivability - Turtle still keeps you from attacking like other Hunter Specs, as a Melee, this hurts you more then helps. You also don't take hits well and Harpoon's cooldown makes getting around rough, even more so in PVP when Cheetah has such a long cooldown.

Stigma. This is the biggest one here. Between many of the Hunter Community not wanting it to be a Melee spec, and many who don't want more Melee in an already Melee heavy game, you may see yourself ignored or pushed aside for other options.

i have messed around with it on my Hunter for farming old content before, but the spec needs some love, it is a little rough around the edges.

[ryklin]

I have a mostly heroic geared SV alt that I suck at and the damage is great, I can do 1.3-1.4M on dummy and 1.1-1.3M on most actual fights I bring into despite fucking up a lot
I honestly don't know why people say it's bloated though, there's basically 6 abilities, but then again I played wrath enhance for 2 years and mop healing specs for 2 years as well so my pov may be screwed
the rotation and gameplay flow are great other than feeling a bit energy starved when aoe goes on too long (since you aren't casting flanking, you lose mongoose bites, and end up having big spaces in rotation)
also despite being in melee I generally still get into M+ pugs up to 17 (the highest I bother pugging, especially since alt with no prydaz) since you have a b-rezz, stealth, and lust, and manual pet taunting, which is actually really helpful in high M+, also it's so hipster that people admit to just inviting me because they've never actually seen a sv hunter before

the bigger issues with it are:
the spec plays terribly with bad gear your dots and buffs and cd's, which you effortlessy keep up on most classes are just disappearing constantly and you actually do not have the focus gen to keep them all up, but as you get your haste and mastery up, it becomes incredibly fluid
t20 2p should just be baseline, it makes the spec incredibly more friendly to both experienced and new players
survival does WAYYY better at long-out-long-in (of melee range of the boss) phases than other melee, but short-in-short out tend to greatly harm your damage, this is really noticeable in ToS where that's every fight that matters where you struggle with dropping way on every rupture, chaos, and armageddon
being a melee that isn't a rogue with rogue-tier defensives or a warrior with execute and commanding shout in legion
SV's version of posthaste quite possibly having been designed by an actual retard
butchery/hellcarver as fun as they are, require your tank to massively outgear you or have great dps leggos to prevent you from pulling aggro and dying, which is incredibly depressing when your other 2 specs have misdirect
on a similar note, lacking binding shot while you bring useless ass sticky grenade is depressing too, the other specs have much stronger utility
caltrops making feign death not work 90% of the time...
your best dps legendary also being one of your best defensive by reducing the cd of your dps cd and immunity and dash... (after that you basically have your choice of sephuz, prydaz, or roots, maybe the cape or soul or boots)
class fantasy- there isn't much dragoon or anything popular in fantasy going into it as a spearman, also if you're making a hunter, it was probably because you wanted to be an archer or gunner or were interested in pets and even then it's just 1 spec, so yeah, a bit of an issue, at least outlaw as shit as it is has the pirate and crazy roll the bones things going for it
honestly I don't think blizz could fix its low popularity without just going full retard and doing something crazy like giving them feint or aspect of the fox back


also are you trolling kronos?
have you pressed butchery, explosive trap, fury, or mongoose bite?
if you have, also try turning up your graphics, because butchery is possibly the coolest looking skill in game right now

[chezwickcheese]

The big overhaul of Survival was a missed opportunity. Thematically a melee hunter with a pet, traps and a giant spear is cool. They could have gone in so many directions with the spec but it was clearly rushed and poorly implemented. I would be very surprised if they didn't overhaul the spec for BFA. That being said they have stated that no big overhauls are planned. This boggles my mind.

[Deleted]

I played the spec for a few months, and it can do good damage (though it never was the top hunter DPS spec) but the gameplay just got boring after a while. It also feels like Blizzard is not giving the spec the attention it needs (or needed...) even though it was completely overhauled for this expansion and instead opt for lame +% buffs to abilities.

Most of the toolkit feels like a disjointed mess wth some baseline abilities being useless without specific talents, traps not having any real interaction with other abilities and in general Mongoose bite/Butchery doing the majority of your damage depending on content while all other skills feel like fillers that only tickle your enemies.

They also really should add Misdirection for Survival too to give tanks crazy threat with Butchery. I tried doing the HoV wolf pet challenge as Survival when it came out but fuck that first boss without MD. They probably forgot that Survival also uses pets when they designed that shit.

[threads]

it's a dumb garbage meme spec. most people hate them because they deleted a fun spec for some melee thing nobody wanted.

[Deleted]

I play survival and i'm fine doing heroic raiding and mithyc + dungeons, but, in mythic, my guild doesn't allow me to go for some reason...maybe in Antorus ^^

[Hekaete]

Bring back the survival hunter from the begining