Is survival good for raiding now after the buffs?

[mmowin]

Tonight is raid night and i'm thinking of testing out SV. Anyone know how its performing after the buffs? Or is it still a joke spec?

[Hiricine]

In order for SV to be anything worth playing, itd have to be better than at least half the melee specs and better than both the ranged specs, or have some sort of utility (like a fight where your raid needs more melee than ranged). Currently its basically worthless by any of those definitions.

[Baneador]

Survival is good in everything outside raids and some dungeons, sadly.

[Deleted]

In order for SV to be anything worth playing, itd have to be better than at least half the melee specs and better than both the ranged specs, or have some sort of utility (like a fight where your raid needs more melee than ranged). Currently its basically worthless by any of those definitions.

I don't understand why survival would have to topple all the other melee specs in the game. There is no reason for that. Utility wise, you can't say arms warriors or feral druids are giving the raids they are in insane utility yet you see them everywhere too.

We got to the point in which one should just play what they want. All specs are able to perform adequately in a mythic raiding environment. Are you in a mythic raiding guild that aims for top whatever? If the answer is no, why bother to abandon a spec you like to play in favor of one that is less enjoyable if they both perform good enough? After all, the raid ain't gonna wipe because you dealt a bit less dps than you would with the most optimal spec.

[Sliske]

I don't understand why survival would have to topple all the other melee specs in the game. There is no reason for that.

He said half.

Melee in WoW in a serious raiding guild is always a tough spot to survive in. You have to be able to self sustain yourself through the various bullshit thrown at you in melee to make you as easy to heal, or even easier to heal than a range. You have to do more dmg than most other melee specs, or one of those will replace you. You DEFINITELY have to do more dmg than your classes' range spec.

Look at the best melee specs in the past (don't necessarily reflect right now)

- Rogues - Perma damage reduction, cheat death, insane damage typically, high mobility, can ignore mechanics and have smokebomb
- DKs - aoe grip, nice burst and sustain
- Warriors - Insane damage, good raid utility (banners, shouts)
- Enh shaman with their flame shock spreading
- WW monks and their ridiculous cleave

Each melee spec that has 'made it' in the role of a melee dps raider has been either insanely broken dps wise, or insanely important utility wise. Entire strats often are built around having that one DK aoe grip, or that one rogue ignore a mechanic.

Now with the information above, ask yourself what niche survival fills

Does it have a few of the following, or at least one of them?:

- Do insane burst damage
- Great sustain
- Great aoe
- Great utility
- Ability to ignore mechanics
- Good survivability


The answer right now, as far as I can tell, is no.

I might be wrong on this as i havent raided seriously since 6.2. But as a former high end raider, this information is what you're basing your pick of melee dps on.

Now don't get me wrong - your rank 200+ guild won't really care. And at rank 400+ they won't care at all. Its only at >200 world rank or so that people start taking this into consideration. And even still, this is about progress. No one really cares on farm unless the strat is built around you being in that specific spec.

This is why, for example, fury warriors taking 30% extra damage during enrage was such a contentious issue. Every single decent raider understood immediately that no fury warrior will be in any top 200 or so guild until that is gone. The offset needed for that would be the ability to do 10-20% more damage than another melee.

So yeah, TL;DR - ask yourself what survival does that no other spec does. And also ask yourself what survival does better than any other spec. If you can't find an answer to either question, you have your answer to "is survival good for raiding?"

[threads]

SV is literally the worst melee and worst hunter spec

[Hiricine]

I don't understand why survival would have to topple all the other melee specs in the game. There is no reason for that. Utility wise, you can't say arms warriors or feral druids are giving the raids they are in insane utility yet you see them everywhere too.

We got to the point in which one should just play what they want. All specs are able to perform adequately in a mythic raiding environment. Are you in a mythic raiding guild that aims for top whatever? If the answer is no, why bother to abandon a spec you like to play in favor of one that is less enjoyable if they both perform good enough? After all, the raid ain't gonna wipe because you dealt a bit less dps than you would with the most optimal spec.

Well thats something I used to agree with but I don't really think I take that seriously anymore. If the game is going to be fun, its really MORE fun if your performance means something. Its nice being in the top 10 percentile or higher on logs for your spec, but if that has a much lesser translation into success than other dps specs it should be just about that much less fun.

So yeah, TL;DR - ask yourself what survival does that no other spec does. And also ask yourself what survival does better than any other spec. If you can't find an answer to either question, you have your answer to "is survival good for raiding?"

The last time a melee spec existed like surv hunters it was WW monks at the end of TOT. They had rune of re origination and could only do good dps basically when it procced, and then blew the other specs out of the water. It was balanced because there was absolutely no utility to a dps that couldn't even predictably know when it was going to do damage.

I'm pretty convinced SV could get a blanket 30% damage buff and it still would barely be playable in raids.

[Deleted]

Let's bring this back on track. The question that is even posted in the title of this post is "Is survival good for raiding now after the buffs?" to which my response is, yes. We both seem to agree on that.

If you were to ask, "Is survival good for a spot in a high end raiding guild" I would have to answer with I do not know. Legion is a alt unfriendly expansion. I don't spend time with other classes so I only know what my monk, shaman or warrior is capable of at level 100.

But I can answer a few of your questions you stated here.

Does it insane burst damage? No, the damage of a survival hunter ramps up and isn't unleashed right from the get go thus of burst can not be talked of.

Has it good sustained damage (you just said great sustain so I take it that is what you meant). The answer is yes. Many dots constantly are ticking and survival has a handful of abilities that have decent range so being targeted by negative effects like Rot is no great loss.

Does it have good AoE? Most certainly. Speaking from my mythic+ experience there are two types of AoE that can be provided. Either very bursty aoe provided by Butchery and Fury of the Eagle at low charges or long ticking dots (dfg or serpent sting) + sustained AoE damage provided by carve. In addition to that, the more stuff there is to hit, the more damage each individual mob gets because of a artifact trait. I haven't done mythic+15 yet but in the lower end of things +11 - 13 I ended up shining more often than not.

Does it have good utility? Broadly asked question. It can decently switch targets using harpoon and disengage. Harpoons cd resets upon death of a mob you tagged, so jumping from one add onto another in the xavius fight or helya/odyn is working out well. Though you have to ramp up your damage again which is a non issue if you manage to directly get to the next add. It has tons of slows, can AoE snare and single target snare. I found it particularly useful in the odyn fight. When one trash mob didn't receive enough damage I could harpoon to it within an instant and deal the needed damage onto it. Or what I sometimes did too, switch from one add to another and essentially make a full circle thus almost restoring the entire cooldown of exhilaration.

Does it have abilities to ignore mechanics? Aspect of the Turtle.

Has it good survivability? Dunno. Exhileration heals 30% of your health and gets it cooldown reduced by 15 second whenever something dies that you have tagged. Constant leech is applied by raptor strike which heals around 50k. But it is used constantly when played with ways of the mok'nathal (current best talent). Having disengage allows one to move quickly out of stuff. Harpoon only works on stuff you can target. Then of course, there is Aspect of the turtle.

Feel free to tell me whether or not that is good enough for a place in a high end mythic raiding guild because like I said, I don't know how other specs do in those departments. You seem more knowledgeable in that regard.

[Kirbypro]

If your raid has a free melee spot...sure.

Its not good in any sense. It doesn't do anything niche. Turtle is on a 3min CD, which during a boss fight is basically an eternity. Rogues can use Cloak way more often. You have garbage traps and slows but other classes do the same thing. You basically have nothing else, you just whack the boss.

[Schattenlied]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#dataset=90

Literally the worst spec in the game.

[Nefarious Tea]

- Rogues - Perma damage reduction, cheat death, insane damage typically, high mobility, can ignore mechanics and have smokebomb
- DKs - aoe grip, nice burst and sustain
- Warriors - Insane damage, good raid utility (banners, shouts)
- Enh shaman with their flame shock spreading
- WW monks and their ridiculous cleave[/B]

Almost everything you listed doesn't actually exist anymore.

[Deleted]

Almost everything you listed doesn't actually exist anymore.

I noticed that too though I choose not to comment on it since it was meant as a example I believe.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#dataset=90

Literally the worst spec in the game.

Well, shoutout to those 3 guys who actually cleared mythic tov. I am sure they gave it their all and absolutely represent the best of what is capable with the survival hunter spec.

Now without sarcasm. The amount of parses is so low that there is no point in even looking at it now.

[Hiricine]

Let's bring this back on track. The question that is even posted in the title of this post is "Is survival good for raiding now after the buffs?" to which my response is, yes. We both seem to agree on that.

Ok thats not even remotely true. If something is "good" then something else has to be "bad". Its better than it used to be, but we're not really talking about how things WERE. Its not like BC hunter doing a few k dps is a decent comparison to current SV.

SV is melee, which is worse than ranged all other things being the same, does DOT dps as well as "buff contingent" dps, which is basically the worst way of doing dps compared to instant or steady or reliable burst dps, and doesn't do as much damage as basically any other class, which even assuming its utility was equal makes it worse than any other dps class.

I mean, its hypothetically playable in pve, but so is a player that afk auto shots. And actually, I suspect the more casual guilds are MORE sensitive to low outlier specs like this, since a less skilled player of another class can do more damage than SV to cover that gap.

[Drekker17]

Yesterday I was doing just lfr and dungeons and felt the dps was really bad compared to others. Today, after playing around trying to find the best rotation and talents (since no guide is really good right now) I found my dps was on par or better than others at my ilvl, especially other hunters. I've seen only one mm and they sucked, most Hunters I've seen are BM and while they were better than me with aoe (beating out most classes), their single target dps was really bad compared to everyone.

I've seen the Warcraft logs, and I do wonder if survival scales bad at higher ilvls or is maybe they just weren't doing the best rotation and talents.

[Okacz]

Did some content yesterday with my SV, gotta say DPS jumped quite a bit. I really felt competitive, maybe it's not enough to be the go-to spec in Mythic, but it's certainly in a better spot damage wise. Still, two complains:

1) SV was already pretty complex, micromanaging a lot of stuff. Now, the optimal talent combination also involves Way of the Mok'Nathal with Serpent Sting and Caltrops, and the spec feels almost impossible to play to the full extent - not enough global cooldowns to make sure everything stays up AND you use Mongoose Bite to the fullest. Testing Spitting Cobra for focus regen (yeah, in this build focus management is a thing), seems pretty damn good as well.

2) Screw the bracers nerf. I know many SVs didn't have those, but it made things simpler, without bracers you had Aspect every second Fury of the Eagle, with them you had them synchronized perfectly. Now, with the nerf to 35%, it feels like a damn mess. Two major cooldowns do not align AT ALL.

"Guarm LFR test" yielded almost 70k more DPS, so that's something.

[Sliske]

Almost everything you listed doesn't actually exist anymore.

Great job

proud of you

[Deleted]

Let's bring this back on track. The question that is even posted in the title of this post is "Is survival good for raiding now after the buffs?" to which my response is, yes. We both seem to agree on that.

If you were to ask, "Is survival good for a spot in a high end raiding guild" I would have to answer with I do not know. Legion is a alt unfriendly expansion. I don't spend time with other classes so I only know what my monk, shaman or warrior is capable of at level 100.

But I can answer a few of your questions you stated here.

Does it insane burst damage? No, the damage of a survival hunter ramps up and isn't unleashed right from the get go thus of burst can not be talked of.

Has it good sustained damage (you just said great sustain so I take it that is what you meant). The answer is yes. Many dots constantly are ticking and survival has a handful of abilities that have decent range so being targeted by negative effects like Rot is no great loss.

Does it have good AoE? Most certainly. Speaking from my mythic+ experience there are two types of AoE that can be provided. Either very bursty aoe provided by Butchery and Fury of the Eagle at low charges or long ticking dots (dfg or serpent sting) + sustained AoE damage provided by carve. In addition to that, the more stuff there is to hit, the more damage each individual mob gets because of a artifact trait. I haven't done mythic+15 yet but in the lower end of things +11 - 13 I ended up shining more often than not.

Does it have good utility? Broadly asked question. It can decently switch targets using harpoon and disengage. Harpoons cd resets upon death of a mob you tagged, so jumping from one add onto another in the xavius fight or helya/odyn is working out well. Though you have to ramp up your damage again which is a non issue if you manage to directly get to the next add. It has tons of slows, can AoE snare and single target snare. I found it particularly useful in the odyn fight. When one trash mob didn't receive enough damage I could harpoon to it within an instant and deal the needed damage onto it. Or what I sometimes did too, switch from one add to another and essentially make a full circle thus almost restoring the entire cooldown of exhilaration.

Does it have abilities to ignore mechanics? Aspect of the Turtle.

Has it good survivability? Dunno. Exhileration heals 30% of your health and gets it cooldown reduced by 15 second whenever something dies that you have tagged. Constant leech is applied by raptor strike which heals around 50k. But it is used constantly when played with ways of the mok'nathal (current best talent). Having disengage allows one to move quickly out of stuff. Harpoon only works on stuff you can target. Then of course, there is Aspect of the turtle.

Feel free to tell me whether or not that is good enough for a place in a high end mythic raiding guild because like I said, I don't know how other specs do in those departments. You seem more knowledgeable in that regard.

This is a very intelligent post, thank you very much. Many hunters players have not a clue what a SV can or cannot do in raids because like someone said, Legion is not Alt-friendly. Still saying that Turtle is 3 min cooldown as SV shows how dumbs these players can be.

I've run EN Mythic yesterday and I never ended up last DPS on Skada. Not top 3, but between 5 and 8. Am I part of a casual guild? I'm currently at 7/7 and 2/3 Mythic. Do my guildmates suck? If they did, how could we've gone so far?

And I've made tons of mistakes. So much that I ended up switching back to Animal Instincts/Axes mid-raid 'cause I've not trained enough with WotM. I might try Spitting Cobra for focus, it might help me manage this new crazy rotation.

[Alvito]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#dataset=90

Literally the worst spec in the game.

3 whole parses there. You also ignored the 2 specs that had 0. The only parses are from Odyn while other specs are being loaded up with numbers from 2 much higher dmg fights. We are 2 whole days into the patch too, not the best sample size.

[Cronovey]

I don't understand why survival would have to topple all the other melee specs in the game. There is no reason for that. Utility wise, you can't say arms warriors or feral druids are giving the raids they are in insane utility yet you see them everywhere too.

I think the main reason this is pointed out is because (in general) it is much easier to have a ranged heavy group over a melee heavy group when there are mechanics that punish melee for being close together. Things like Rot on Nythendra punish you for being melee heavy by having more frequent splashes and more raid damage going out because of it, so if your melee spec isn't severely outperforming other melee, why would a raid want you in melee spec instead of a ranged spec where you can be much more spread out from the group?

It's not that it needs spectacular utility or DPS just to be viable, it's that it needs those things to justify playing the melee spec over the two options that are ranged. Survival's numbers have jumped up, but you still won't see them clearing top end content generally because there are just too many benefits to having less melee and more ranged players. This has almost always been the case in the game, and probably always will be because of the limited space around bosses for AoE splash damage and void zone type abilities.

[Deleted]

And yet, as squary said, SV don' suffer so much to be far from melee from time to time as we have DoTs ticking 100% (Serpent Sting / Lacerate but also Exp Trap/DFG/AmoC), ranged attacks (Caltrps, Epl trap and axes if specced), our pet still hitting and ways to get in and out of range quite rapidly ( Harpoon / Disengage ). Its undeniable the damage output is still not satisfactory compared to other melee classes but the potential is real.