Should I level a Surv Hunter?

[Wolfman31]

To provide some background of myself as a player, I'm a melee guy. I've been playing MMO's for going on 20 years now and I've always been a melee guy. I usually go for the warrior archetype. That is my main and I'm very happy with it. This isn't a "should I reroll?" thread. I'm just looking for another melee spec I can play on the side. A lot of the Surv tool kit looks appealing. From what my hunter friends have told me, it's one of the harder specs to play optimally in a raid environment, but I'm also not concerned with parsing super-high on an alt either. I'll settle for being just good enough for my guild's alt runs. I hear that Surv is also fun in PvP, which I only dabble in casually these days. And of course, Surv is probably strong out in the world because, well it's still a Hunter. So I guess I'll turn it over to you guys. Should I level a Surv Hunter for my casual alt activities or would I be better off going with another class?

[frogger237]

Do you care about pets at all? If you do you might as well try one out.

[Tyrilion]

Surv still being a fairly new hunter spec is quite unrefined in its current state, personally ive found it boring and clunky, but at the end of the day you should play what you enjoy, if you find while leveling you like the playstyle go for it. As a main melee player and tank player myself i cant see it being alot of fun for you.

[Wolfman31]

Do you care about pets at all? If you do you might as well try one out.

I don't know how much I care about pets, but I have played an Unholy Death Knight and I've often looked at Surv's Flanking Strike with a jealous eye. The functionality of that ability looks appealing.

Surv still being a fairly new hunter spec is quite unrefined in its current state, personally ive found it boring and clunky

Yeah I tried a lvl 100 boost preview thing for it and it felt like there's way more buttons than should be needed to get the job done. I don't know what happened during the redesigning of the spec, but it looks like there were too many chefs in the kitchen.

[Eapoe]

What level of content are your alt runs?
SV is okay damage wise, but it's lagging behind other easier melee specs. It also has less survivability than other melee, which is interesting with the specs name. It is also very confused about what it wants to be, slow build up, huge burst, high AoE potential, trap focused, dot dealer, st damage, it has all of these but it doesn't excel much at any of them and has issues flowing together. It is complex, and while not being aggravatingly so, it is more complex than most other class/specs.
That being said, it is fun to play and seems like if it gets some refinement will be well rounded and flow better. When you see you're doing well with it, it feels rewarding on a personal level, but can be a letdown when you see others above you with a much easier time doing dps. That being said, it's very easy to level up right now, and with Argus offering good catch-up gear, it's not a huge time waste to level one and see if you like it.
Personally, all that said, it's easiestly my favorite melee to play, just ahead of WW monk. I like fast playing specs where you constantly have something to press that doesn't become stale. Add on that the pet is a fun addition (always liked pet classes in most games I play) and also adds some extra customization thru which pet you use (added bonus if you're into that thing). Bottom line, give it a shot, at most you waste maybe a week or 2 playing the spec to determine if you want to stick with it or not.

[Nuvuk]

Lvl which ever one you like the most then try and play the other specs at max lvl.

[Wolfman31]

All very good points everyone. Thanks for the responses. I'm going to level one.

[Raakel]

Do it

I play....

- BM in Dungeons/M+ (because they've become so fast paced)
- MM in Raids and BG's
- SV occasionally in PVP and for WQ

AP and relics are no problem anymore so you can easly go to ilvl 900 and first concordance with all three and then decide what you prefer.

[Aldrahan]

Honestly SV hunter was the most fun i'd had in a long time and it's been improved since 7.0. It can be a little rng for getting those sweet, sweet mongoose procs, but overall i enjoyed it a lot. Though in WoD my favourite dps spec was glad warrior so my opinion on melee dps classes is a tad odd.

[gushDH]

If you are looking to play casually, you will have tons of fun with survival. It's weird and unique. But if you will try to minmax, it gets more and more boring, and you end up having to manage about 10-12 debuffs/buffs/cds at all times, which makes it tiring too. But for casual playing it's awesome, you with your pet charging around killing stuff.

[Nythiz]

Never hurts to level something. You won't know if/what you like until you try it really.

Survival has quite a bit of good parts (e.g: a pet, combination of DoT and DD; cool tools like traps and stealth; etc).
For leveling and general stuff it actually feels decent; but once you bite into it, you notice that it's very unoptimized.

For me the worst is the rotation of the spec on longer fights
On short fights you can do multiple things that all work, from applying dots and running to the next mob, to pure mongoose bite spam, to a combination.
But on longer fights you have these 2 cycles in your rotation; one where you spam mongoose bite (+ Fury of the Eagle) and another with mostly DoTs and some other abilities. And those 2 cycles don't feel like they interlock/synergize well. There is no flow in those two and they feel very disconnected from one another.

That is my major peev with survival, otherwise I would probably play it more. But flavor wise it's solid (I miss the old range spec a bit with explosive shot and serpent sting, but I can live with the melee spec); damage wise it's solid. It can be good fun in solo play, in dungeons it's decent as long as you're not using it to push high M+; in raids it's quite decent as well; in PvP it's a decent casual/bg spec and a solid arena spec.

It's a new class basically, so it obviously needs more iteration. I just wish blizzard wouldn't be so afraid to make a bit more sweeping changes during an expansion. This spec needed fixes to it's rotation flow quite a lot sooner. I hope 8.0 is going to bring flow to the spec, it could actually be quite fun then.
The only thing (other than the rotation part mentioned above) that I miss a bit is on demand burst, I feel like the spec lacks a bit of snappy burst; the only big hitters are 6 stack Mongoose Bites.

[minkage]

Its rotation is overly complex and presents you with too many buttons/dots/buffs to keep track of as well as having too targeted abilities too weave in there somehow.

Playing casually though its alot of fun and harpooning from mob to mob while WQing feels awsome!