Survival is easy now?

[andreasels]

I do disagree with others saying it’s easier than the other two hunter specs though. BM is piss easy as always and MM is probably equal in difficulty to SV.

BM is imo actually the "hardest" spec of the 3 rotationwise in BfA.

SV needs to use keep up serpent sting and keep all other spells on cd (based on priority) without focus capping. With talents, he can add in a Proc, Mongoose Bite and Wildfire Infusion, which add quite some complexity if you want to master them, but atm you only utilize the proc on ST.

MM needs to use everything on CD and prevent focus capping in addition to consuming precise shots. Needs to stand still only for Aimed Shot. Maybe add in Serpent Sting from talents.

BM needs to keep up a 3-stacked buff and has to deal with two reset mechanics (CS->KC, BS->BW) while trying to stay off focus cap and using everything on cooldown.

None of the specs is really that hard, but BM is the easiest to mess up imo (unless we talk about SV with Wildfire Infusion and Mongoose Bite, then they should be around equal)

[Emerald Archer]

BM needs to keep up a 3-stacked buff and has to deal with two reset mechanics (CS->KC, BS->BW) while trying to stay off focus cap and using everything on cooldown.

The thing with BM is that while you want to have as much uptime on 3 stack frenzy as you can, you can't keep it up always, and it's such a minor dps gain. The difference between perfect flawless barbed shot use and literally spamming it off CD, is only 2.5%.

The reset mechanics just give abilities essentially a lower cd. So BM still boils down to hit everything off CD, don't focus cap, and press barbed shot when your Weak Aura tells you do, or hey just spam it off CD cause there's next to no dps loss from doing so.

I will agree that currently BM would be the hardest, but that changes in BFA when we lose heaps of haste and the spec slows down a large amount.

Simply hitting things off cd and not capping, while also having the freedom of being a ranged dps, with no limitations to moving, makes BM extremely easy aswell. And even if you do make a mistake, you lost basically no damage.

[Karzakk]

Survival is now the king of brain dead specs, requires zero thinking to max out your skill of the spec. It is pretty incredible how blizzard went from one extreme to the other and changed an actual fun and engaging play style, albeit quite difficult to master, into this shell of its former self.

Last expac I had 8+ buttons in my rotation with a constantly changing priority, now we have 4 different buttons that you can slam with your forehead and not worry about priority. Truly sad to be honest but I guess the casual huntards got their wish. "Survival is too hard, ecksdee."

[Nythiz]

Survival is now the king of brain dead specs, requires zero thinking to max out your skill of the spec. It is pretty incredible how blizzard went from one extreme to the other and changed an actual fun and engaging play style, albeit quite difficult to master, into this shell of its former self.

Last expac I had 8+ buttons in my rotation with a constantly changing priority, now we have 4 different buttons that you can slam with your forehead and not worry about priority. Truly sad to be honest but I guess the casual huntards got their wish. "Survival is too hard, ecksdee."

Here is the prime example of someone who doesn't understand how skill levels work.
If you really think that # of buttons you press is the only factor to how much skill a class takes, you're ignorant as f.

Does surv require much less skill to get into? Yes.
Does it require no skill to max out? Hell no.

The thing with BM is that while you want to have as much uptime on 3 stack frenzy as you can, you can't keep it up always, and it's such a minor dps gain. The difference between perfect flawless barbed shot use and literally spamming it off CD, is only 2.5%.

The reset mechanics just give abilities essentially a lower cd. So BM still boils down to hit everything off CD, don't focus cap, and press barbed shot when your Weak Aura tells you do, or hey just spam it off CD cause there's next to no dps loss from doing so.

I will agree that currently BM would be the hardest, but that changes in BFA when we lose heaps of haste and the spec slows down a large amount.

Simply hitting things off cd and not capping, while also having the freedom of being a ranged dps, with no limitations to moving, makes BM extremely easy aswell. And even if you do make a mistake, you lost basically no damage.

The dps gain isn't huge (frankly it should be bigger). But it's there, so there are factors that distinguish an average BM player from a good one much more so than in Legion.
Sure the barbed shot gain isn't too large. But if you combine all the things: Barbed Shot stacks, KC resetting through Cobra Shot, BW resetting through Barbed Shot, proper beastcleave up time in AoE. Those things will all count up and lead to a 5-10% dps difference between good players and better players.

Every hunter spec at the moment is fairly easy to get into (which is a good thing!) and enjoy.
But every spec also has little things that allow you stand out as a better player; you could argue that they have too little impact, and I would be inclined to agree. But they're definitely there, and there are very few players and very few instances where they are all played perfectly.

[Karzakk]

Here is the prime example of someone who doesn't understand how skill levels work.
If you really think that # of buttons you press is the only factor to how much skill a class takes, you're ignorant as f.

Does surv require much less skill to get into? Yes.
Does it require no skill to max out? Hell no.

Here is the prime example of somebody that can't read, rotation priority is more important than number of skills and having 8+ skills as opposed to 4 dramatically increases the amount of skill required to get optimum DPS through having a perfect rotation.

Priority barely even matters at all with new survival, like I said face to keyboard and you can get slightly less than optimal dps. New survival priority is don't focus cap, kill command off CD and viper sting when it procs GG you got max DPS boyo.

Old survival was harpoon, explosive trap, lacerate, dragonsfire grenade, steel trap or caltrops, raptor strikex3 , mongoose bitex2, raptor strike, aspect of the eagle, mongoose bitex3, snake hunter, mongoose bite until out, fury of the eagle. That's the opening rotation and then you repeat through the fight while maintaining stacks of mok'nathal, keeping lacerate up and using flanking strike as well, little bit of a skill difference.

[Ashrynn]

To be honest I prefer the new changes, but I've yet to really delve into SV and hopefully can spend tomorrow working things out. I disliked the more clunky nature of SV in Legion with Mongoose Bite and I'm kind of glad it isn't necessary to play with. So far I get the basic rotation, but I really like the Wildfire Infusion talent and want to get a WA set up so that I know what to do depending on the next Shrapnel Bomb. However... I sort of feel like if you're doing the basic rotation you'll only occasionally slip up/PB seems like the most important one to be ready for.

SV is very basic at it's core, but the talents offer up so much more diversity in your play-style than most specs, definitely more than BM/MM. I think taking MB really does up the difficulty, but it also isn't really a necessary talent to pick up either which is awesome if you dislike that playstyle or if you prefer it. At least that's my opinion on it.

BM has a more difficult core rotation to it because you're trying to maximize the CD-reduction of Barbed Shot while also maximizing on 3 Frenzy stacks. This does seem like it will get a bit easier though as the CD is 10 sec, duration is 8 sec and with certain Azerite traits you can get it down to a 9 sec CD. Throw in Wild Call procs and it's mostly making sure you always have 3 stacks during BW. IMO - It feels a bit more like you're making competent decisions as opposed to spamming buttons and you'll hardly ever hit 3 Frenzy stacks if you spam whatever is off CD and will always be focus starved.

MM... It just isn't fun. It's not a basic or overly complex rotation and the AoE isn't anything overly complex. Hard casting AiS just is not fun at all to be doing. You hard cast AiS to proc Percise and use SS to proc Lethal for bigger AiS and then back to using AS. I know there's a bit more with AMoC and SrS, but hardcasting is a large portion of MM and it just feels AWFUL to be doing it so often. RF is fun, but also doesn't feel very MM. I have some ideas for MM, but not sure Blizz really wants folks to even play this spec in BfA with how much they've put into SV/BM.

[Cytraz]

All 3 specs have quite an easy rotation at baseline. However, I actually don't think BM is to be considered the most faceroll spec out there, not even compared to other classes and their specs. I have tried loads of different classes in 8.0, and I can mention a few specs that I consider easier to execute rotation wise than BM.

[Maxilian]

the only problem survival will face is probably people expect you to be ranged if you want to do content harder than LFR

And our OEA damage is pretty lacking if you doing have certain talents.

[Chaosweaver]

SV is probably the easiest melee and possibly easiest hunter spec now. takes probably 2 min to realize you hit things on cd and use your focus dump. even BM is harder now with frenzy managing.

That's not even remotely close to the truth actually. Marksman is by far the most straight forward and easy spec at the moment.