Proof Survival should be a tank spec in Dragonflight

[Chain Chungus]

The name alone justifies it being a tank. Tanks are about survival, dps is not. Pets will never be viable tanks, so the only way hunters will get a tank spec is if it is melee. And I doubt they will add a second melee spec to hunters, so it should be survival.

[gd8]

And I loved Old SV, where was my justification for them removing/completely changing it

Dude it's been like 6 years move on already, nobody can ever even mention the word survival in this game without someone like you popping up

[Amnaught]

Wouldnt Subtlety tanking accomplish this same balance?

[huth]

Wouldnt Subtlety tanking accomplish this same balance?

As would any other DPS spec. This would, at best, be an argument why we should have one more tank spec, but that also falls flat since there's no actual benefit to balancing the number of specs.

[Gumble]

Personally I would have done

A) Added all the pet stuff back to BM, make it a melee spec with the pet that combines the pet stuff of current Surv with the BM spec.
B) Added a 4th spec to hunter called Sentinel that has Explosive shot, alot of stings and dots themed around the Sunrunners. Ranged but has a pet.
C) Changed Survival into a spec built around bombs, lazers, traps, nets, mech suits, rockets, explosions, and renamed it Tinker.

[Bakis]

Pet dps class goes tank. Yea great idea.
Then "Every weapon is a hunter weapon" will become 110% true!

[cuafpr]

nah but BM should be the melee spec, fighting toe-to-toe with your beast beside you, marksman - ranged no pet spec, survival - ranged pet/trap spect.

[Eosia]

Every Class added to the game since before Dragonflight has had a Tank spec. Death Knights, Monks, Demon Hunters.

Conversely there has only been 1 Healer spec added, Mistweaver Monk, since Burning Crusade. DKs have 1 Tanking and 2 Melee DPS specs. DHs have Tanking and a Melee DPS spec. Monks have all three specs but Windwalker is melee DPS.

There has been absolutely 0 ranged classes added.

So no, we don't need a 4th tanking class added to the game.

Survival is also a HUNTER spec already. It brought back the Hunter melee abilities lost in Mists of Pandaria. Blizzard redid it in Legion so that Hunters, like Shaman and Druids, can be either a Melee or Ranged DPS. This is advantageous since Blizzard can, and does, design boss mechanics around having a certain number of players be ranged and melee.

And, as someone else pointed out, Dracthyr having a tank spec doesn't mean more people will choose tanking. Especially given the community's overall toxicity towards people new to tanking.

[Infinity Cubed]

The actual way that you get more tanks in random groups is by eliminating the a-holes in the community who scream "GO GO GO!" and all the other related toxic people literally everyone but themselves loathe. Carried healers probably being even worse than the "I'm just going to do and pull whatever I want" DPSers.

Hell, that's how you get more random groups in general.

[threads]

survival should become a healing spec. help your group out with all of your survivalist skills like building a campfire for aoe heal and making people food and bandages. your big raid cd will be building a hut for everyone to take cover. make it happen blizz!!

[sunxsera]

This will change nothing.

You just need to invest a lot more time to tank and most people don't want to do that - which is undestandable.
There would be a lot more tanks if they didn't have to route through dungeons, basically knowing every pack and doing ~70% of the work.

[Atrea]

This is where we are in Shadowlands:

• Current tank specs: 6
• Current healer specs: 6
• Current melee specs: 13
• Current ranged specs: 11

Dragonflight adds 1 healer class and 1 ranged class.

Dragonflight with Evoker:

• Current tank specs: 6
• Current healer specs: 7
• Current melee specs: 13
• Current ranged specs: 12

This is nearly balanced, but not quite. Survival can help re-balance it. If you consider the community response to Survival since it's melee change - most of current Survival players are only playing it because of it's damage output, not because the spec itself is good. Then things could look like this.

Dragonflight if Survival turns into a tank spec:

• Current tank specs: 7
• Current healer specs: 7
• Current melee specs: 12
• Current ranged specs: 12

This incidentally makes Tank and Healer specs be 18.4% of the available specs, close enough to the 20% they should be to have a healthy population to enable Dungeons.

So this is the statistical case to make Survival into a tank spec. Blizzard I believe in your come back, you can do it!

This is silly though, because the most tanks any raid of any size can use in an encounter is 2 - which is what the encounters are designed around - whereas there are anywhere from 2 to 6 healer spots in a raid.

It doesn't have to make sense to your OCD. Creating 7 specs for a role that only has 2 slots, max, in any content, is poor design.
Hell, having 6 is.

[huth]

This is silly though, because the most tanks any raid of any size can use in an encounter is 2 - which is what the encounters are designed around - whereas there are anywhere from 2 to 6 healer spots in a raid.

It doesn't have to make sense to your OCD. Creating 7 specs for a role that only has 2 slots, max, in any content, is poor design.
Hell, having 6 is.

Your logic is no better. Tying the number of specs to the number of available spots is nonsensical in general, especially since the number of specs has nothing to do with the number of players using them.

[Snufflupagus]

This is the silliest thread I’ve seen in some time. You’ve assumed a) that adding tank specs means more people play tank, b) that there is any reason why the absolute number of specs able to fulfil a role should be “balanced” and c) that survival players are happy to sacrifice their spec. None of these assumptions have any justification or can be sustained. No, this is rubbish, dismissed.

[Speedlance]

If you want more tanks, people need to behave better towards new players.

[Temp name]

Making more tank classes wouldn't make more people tank.
In order to get more tanks, you need to make tanking more fun, and less punishing.

Let's look at a m+ dungeon for instance, and say I have no idea whatsoever what happens in the dungeon:
If I join as a dps, I just follow the group. I might ninja pull something, and do 0 damage, but the dungeon will get completed, albeit slower than if I knew what to do
If I join as a healer, I just follow the group. People might die more often than if I knew what to do, but the dungeon will be completed, unless the dps and tank are also idiots.
If I join as a tank, I have to lead the group. I have no idea where to go, which pulls are okay and which ones aren't, I will make the DPS suffer by pulling too small, or too big at the wrong time. I will make the healer suffer by having no idea how to use defensives. The dungeon might not get completed. Add to this that if I ask where to go, people will get incredibly offended and might even leave.

Or in a leveling dungeon, if I sign up as a tank, and pull one pack at a time, I'm going to get kicked, maybe without anyone saying anything to me.

How exactly do you expect new people to pick up a tank when this kind of shit happens? And why would an old player swap to tank when they know it'll happen? Maybe they'll do it if their friends need a tank, but probably not for pugs.
"Just read up on guides" yeah, that will work, but most people don't want to do that, even then, you still need to learn how to actually play in order to get away with some of the pulls you want to do.

Or in raids. After progress what do you do? Well as a dps you try for good logs. It's literally part of your "job" in the raid to kill the boss faster, so you just do that. As a healer, you convince the raid leader to drop one or 2 healers so you still have a challenge.
As a tank? Uhh.. You do the same shit you've done the last 300 pulls on progress. Can you try for good dps logs? Sure, but it doesn't matter, your "job" as a tank is to keep the boss in one spot and taunt on 2 stacks, you're not doing that any better by also doing 12k dps instead of 6k, and if it's needed that you do more dps, literally rerolling to another class is a better way of doing it anyway, but again, you don't have to. I've done raid tanking. It takes at most 10 pulls to learn unless you're severely undergeared, and then the rest of progress you're just running on auto pilot because it doesn't matter. The only times a tank has wiped a raid is when the tank is clueless (start of progress) or decided to try something else (to stave off boredom).

[Kiria]

Dude it's been like 6 years move on already, nobody can ever even mention the word survival in this game without someone like you popping up

So you're saying if you had a favourite spec in game and it got completely changed you'd be fine with it?

Also if someone like me pops up every time SV is mentioned shouldnt that tell you that Blizz fucked up big time and upset alot of Hunters with their asnine move?

[melzas]

That play a single class for 10+ years and never change to a tank class if they wanted to play tank?

Yeah they exist I'm sure, just like the Javan Rhinoceros also exist.

People sticking to one main throughout the years isn't anything rare, so whatever conclusion you are trying to draw here falls flat. Sure I play tank alts, but if I had the opportunity to play tank on my main I would fill that role a lot more often.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah pass, Hunter having a Melee Spec was the only thing that finally got me to enjoy playing a Hunter. When I want to play a Tank, I'll go play one of my Tank Classes.

[Loveliest]

Ummm literally every person I know who plays survival does not care about the dmg it does and prefer the playstyle.

All SV hunters I know play it because it's fotm of the month in M+ Meta. Maybe you don't play with ppl who care much about M+?