Would Legion Survival Hunter be better off as a Tank spec?

[Usagi Senshi]

Not sure if this is a pure troll post or if you're actually serious. That sounds horrible though.

Slightly joking about the survival hunter stuff (not that its finally a melee spec though, much needed change) but dead on serious about the boring WoW pures and their lack of serious spec diversity compared to other MMOs I've played in 15+ years.

You never played MMOs that actually have diverse subspecs? Keeps things interesting and you're not locked to a full ranged or melee class with your choice. Rift, SWtOR, and especially GW2 are the best at that.

Its also why I like FFXIV the most, my character is not locked to any class type at all. Only gear and time hold you back.

WoW mages, hunters, and rogues are probably the most boring versions of those classes in any MMO I've ever played because they are all almost alike save a couple ability or talent choices.

[Deleted]

No it is good as it is

[Dahkeus]

Survival needs buffs to its AOE and a lot of utility/defense improvements.

It is by far the worst hunter spec to do outdoor content in.
Your defenses are pathetic, you do not have misdirect, pet's taunt/flanking strike is not enough to compete with misdirection, you lose health fast.

My marksman/BM can misdirect/barrage half the quest area and AOE them down in seconds without any downtime.
My survival has to go one or two mobs at a time AND takes a ton of damage if the pet fails to hold aggro with taunt/flanking, due to the lack of misdirect.

^ This has been my biggest beef with the spec so far. I wish it was at least something that worked decently in open world so that it would be worthwhile to swap to it occasionally while questing as a nice way to change things up, but the handicap of playing SV for any quests is just massive.

And really with as bad as survival is at just surviving, I don't see how any tank spec could ever happen. This would be a huge overhaul of the spec and even if Blizz did decide to even humor this idea, there's no way it would happen until the release of another expansion in the most optimistic of outcomes.

Personally, I'd enjoy a tank spec on hunters, but it's just not going to happen.

[Aleksej89]

^ This has been my biggest beef with the spec so far. I wish it was at least something that worked decently in open world so that it would be worthwhile to swap to it occasionally while questing as a nice way to change things up, but the handicap of playing SV for any quests is just massive.

And really with as bad as survival is at just surviving, I don't see how any tank spec could ever happen. This would be a huge overhaul of the spec and even if Blizz did decide to even humor this idea, there's no way it would happen until the release of another expansion in the most optimistic of outcomes.
Personally, I'd enjoy a tank spec on hunters, but it's just not going to happen.

Indeed.
Even if the spec did good damage in all raid situations, it still sucks ass in PVP and outdoor questing.

I can understand that some numbers are a bit off in terms of balance and tuning.
But there is no way in hell blizzard actually tested questing or PVP as Survival in Legion.

No proper aggro/threat control (lacking Misdirect), the self defenses are pathetic and self healing is awful.
In PVP it is even worse...

[Kithelle]

I think we have plenty of tanks, especially considering every new class added to the game has a tanking spec and melee spec...game could use some more healing classes...maybe a new ranged class to spice things up.

[Sharaven]

Plenty of tanks yes maybe but mele dps ist worst than tank. As tank you can farm [Defiled Augment Rune] , insta inv etc..

[Deleted]

i care about raids only and love my enjoy playing hunter for ages. hence ild love becoming a hybrid to speed up queueing times for trivial content. especially as being a hunter doesnt feel like playing a pure dps class but a hybrid with only one viable specc anyways. although the specc might change from expansion to expansion or even content to content i cannot remember having any benefit from being pure dps. as say wls/mages/rogues can switch between ST/MT optimized speccs.

so.. hell ya!

[Deleted]

Yes i really like SV spec, but not playing it currently ( i stopped artifact at 21 lvl) and playing mm, which is not as boring as people say. From beginning i thought it would be good idea to make it tanking spec. Lets be honest as sv we are not desired in pve and pvp (mm is better for rated bgs for example, and bm is better for arenas). I would like to see it as tanking spec, seriously, high mobility, synergy with pet, traps. This spec is cool at it is, but theres no point to use outside to have fun and do few quests and maybe some random bgs.

[Kilraq]

I am a bit confused as to why so many people are saying they are having trouble with world questing. (I take no stand on PvP, it has its niche uses but it without a doubt terrible without pvp talents). I had no issue at all leveling up my Hunter or doing most content solo this expac and I have gone completely down the Survival route. I grab Verst stated gear where I can and have crafted what I can't. I think the big issue is a LOT of people don't realize Survival is much better off with a Tenacity pet atm due to Thunderstomp triggering a mastery chance every time it hits a different mob.

For example I have a slime pet (the one from Northrend whistle quest before the hotfixed it) and I have had it as a Tenacity pet since before I can remember due to how the snapback talent used to work. It still works fairly well even now due to the slowdown giving me good escape windows. I can actively control when I want my pet to thunderstomp (aka, not at the start of the fight) so I can spam Mongoose Bite at a later point. A good macro is to tie its use to Flanking Strike for me in solo work. Then it is just a quick use of our aoe cleave and keeping Dragonsfire and Explosive shot up. It has worked very well for me and I am very surprised people are having issues staying alive. I mostly only die from lagspikes now.
@kalomina and others. I have to agree I don't see what is the point of stay a "pure dps" class. It hasn't really allowed us any great benefits over the years.

That said I am a bit sadden some of you only want to tank due to insta-ques. Part of the reason I love my Tankadin alt is the challenge and the stress that being a Tank gives. It is a lot of control and a lot of mechanic learning. I learn a completely different side of the game when I play my tank as opposed to the outside perspective I get of fights from being a Hunter. It has lead to a very good internal knowledge base of the game as a whole for the content I play. I would hope the reason people want to play a Tanking spec would be for those reasons, not for materialistic benefit.

[Daerron]

Tanking is fun, sure, but 5 ppl tanks/healers is what market demands

[Gurg]

Havent read much trough the comments, work time so ill go trough them in downtime.

Personally, Survival, as it is, is slowly coming out of identity crisis and finding its shape as a spec, still not there, but on a good way to be.
And i love it! Lucky enough im in a guild that allows me to raid as survival too.

Survival - would leave it as melee DPS class.
Beast Mastery - 4 button spec - completely reformed to tanking spec. Even the name kinda sounds about right.
Marksmanship - would add guns to the game and two stances:

• Gunmen Stance - Going Solo, without pet. Increase movement speed and minor buff to attack speed. Design should be about fast, poking attacks that would chip away enemys health. Probably more of a AoE spec.
• Marksman Stance - Going Solo or with pet. Current Marksman with fixed issues that it has. Design would be about less mobility and slow casts/channels that would hit as a truck. More of a ST spec.

[Cyero]

Absolutely! It would make more sense

[Kithelle]

I came here to post this.

Making Survival melee was a demonstrably bad decision. I'm not sure why people keep trying to figure out different bastardisations of Survival in response. The best path would be to give us the fully-mobile dot/utiliy-focues spec we had before, which proved to be very popular.

And before people come here giving me sob stories about how that will upset the 15 or so people who both really wanted a melee hunter and actually played a hunter to begin with; far more people got screwed over in 6.2 when they purposefully broke Survival and then proceeded to effectively delete the spec a year later. How come it was fine to screw over all those people before in favour of the tiny amount of people who prefer Survival now?

Yeah...because Mage and Warlock are so fun having 3 ranged specs and 1 or more of those specs are considered weak or unplayable...like in the past where everyone was playing Survival for PvE and BM was the PvP spec...and MM was in the crapper.

But yeah...forget the game evolving because some people just care about getting their precious spec back...they don't care that in the end the homogenization makes the class weaker over all...no just "giv meh ma spec back!"

[Bepples]

Yeah...because Mage and Warlock are so fun having 3 ranged specs and 1 or more of those specs are considered weak or unplayable...like in the past where everyone was playing Survival for PvE and BM was the PvP spec...and MM was in the crapper.

Yes, actually. There's a big audience for classes with 3 major variations of the same basic foundational archetype. It is perfectly possible to have three populated specs with none of them being totally abandoned and we've had this situation in the past for the pure classes. What so often bars this from happening is the detachment of Blizzard's developers from the state of class balance, their distrust of the playerbase and real scientific data on spec performance, their inability to address core issues that lead to class imbalance, and their unwillingness to perform regular tuning on the classes to preserve class balance. Basically, shit lazy developers who aren't doing their jobs.

But yeah...forget the game evolving because some people just care about getting their precious spec back...they don't care that in the end the homogenization makes the class weaker over all...no just "giv meh ma spec back!"

You don't get to throw any half-assed change out there and call it "evolution". It needs to be a demonstrable improvement, which melee Survival is not. "Innovation for the sake of innovation" is a design anti-pattern that generally leads to failure, disappointment, and wastage of resources, which melee Survival did.

Are you telling me that Survival "evolved" from being a popular ranged spec to an abandoned melee spec? How is it unreasonable for people to want a previously successful and beloved spec to return to the game after its abrupt removal? How the fuck does it make a class stronger to have a spec being intentionally designed to be totally antithetical to that class and thus abandoned and ignored by the playerbase of that class? How can you pretend that this somehow makes the game better?

The delusion of Blizzard's forum white knights knows no bounds.

[Kithelle]

Yes, actually. There's a big audience for classes with 3 major variations of the same basic foundational archetype. It is perfectly possible to have three populated specs with none of them being totally abandoned and we've had this situation in the past for the pure classes. What so often bars this from happening is the detachment of Blizzard's developers from the state of class balance, their distrust of the playerbase and real scientific data on spec performance, their inability to address core issues that lead to class imbalance, and their unwillingness to perform regular tuning on the classes to preserve class balance. Basically, shit lazy developers who aren't doing their jobs.



You don't get to throw any half-assed change out there and call it "evolution". It needs to be a demonstrable improvement, which melee Survival is not. "Innovation for the sake of innovation" is a design anti-pattern that generally leads to failure, disappointment, and wastage of resources, which melee Survival did.

Are you telling me that Survival "evolved" from being a popular ranged spec to an abandoned melee spec? How is it unreasonable for people to want a previously successful and beloved spec to return to the game after its abrupt removal? How the fuck does it make a class stronger to have a spec being intentionally designed to be totally antithetical to that class and thus abandoned and ignored by the playerbase of that class? How can you pretend that this somehow makes the game better?

The delusion of Blizzard's forum white knights knows no bounds.

In a perfect world anything is possible, but this isn't a perfect world is it? Time and time again a spec is often abandoned...Warlock is a prime example...Affliction is the best, Destruction is meh, and Demo is in such horrible shape they told people not to play it...

Blizz can hardly even do two specs in some points...BM is so weak and boring all in the name of *mobility*. Why do you think they got rid of 2H Frost or 1H Fury...they can't handle making things unique and functional. In the process of trying to make Outlaw unique they ended up making a horrible buff that was RNG based. There is obviously one Mage spec above the others...

At this point Survival looks like it is performing better than BM is when it comes to damage.

The Delusion of a selfish person who thinks the world revolves around themselves...

P.S. you could ask for Marksman to be more like the old Survival...but instead all you selfishly ask for is homogenization which in the end will leave a spec neglected and useless with nothing setting it apart from the other two.

But go on...be selfish and call me a white knight because I like something you don't, shows how thoughtless you are that you can't even come up with anthing better than calling me a white knight because you're to fucking self involved to think of a better insult.

[Devilyaki]

Think legion survival hunters would of been better as range dps. Hunters have always been one of the pure dps classes in the game, tank would not fit that. And until the butchering they did this expansion they’d been range for that role, and don’t for a second give me the “but in vanilla” bullshit.

[Bepples]

In a perfect world anything is possible, but this isn't a perfect world is it? Time and time again a spec is often abandoned...Warlock is a prime example...Affliction is the best, Destruction is meh, and Demo is in such horrible shape they told people not to play it...

Blizz can hardly even do two specs in some points...BM is so weak and boring all in the name of *mobility*. Why do you think they got rid of 2H Frost or 1H Fury...they can't handle making things unique and functional. In the process of trying to make Outlaw unique they ended up making a horrible buff that was RNG based. There is obviously one Mage spec above the others...

At this point Survival looks like it is performing better than BM is when it comes to damage.

The Delusion of a selfish person who thinks the world revolves around themselves...

P.S. you could ask for Marksman to be more like the old Survival...but instead all you selfishly ask for is homogenization which in the end will leave a spec neglected and useless with nothing setting it apart from the other two.

But go on...be selfish and call me a white knight because I like something you don't, shows how thoughtless you are that you can't even come up with anthing better than calling me a white knight because you're to fucking self involved to think of a better insult.

I was going to post a lengthy reply to this drivel as I usually do on this subforum, but I see now that there's no point to that since the poster is banned. I would just like to highlight the sheer hypocrisy here to other readers. Apparently, melee players demanding the Hunter class to be partitioned off to them at the expense of Hunters themselves is not at all selfish; it's the Hunter players who have the sheer gall to oppose a spec being taken away from them. This is how entitled melee Survivl players have become. By handing out the spec to them in the manner Blizzard did, Blizzard sent the message that melee players are the most important players and they deserve everything handed to them; they are the only ones that matter and ranged players are just obstacles in the way of their rightful playstyles. That's their philosophy when approaching these discussions, and that's what you see posted by Sorotia here.