Survival Hunter Club [7.2 Spec Discussion]

[Nythiz]

Lets discuss the clusterfuckery of Survival's "spinning plates" design, the reason having so much ability/rotation bloat is a problem is how terribly it flows together.

This is what bothers me most about survival. I'm not against survival (I preferred it staying ranged, but what's done is done); I'm not against complex rotations or higher skill floors and ceilings. I love a spec with some depth.
But survival is complex through clunky design and that's something I don't like.

Stuff just doesn't synergize right and that irks me. There are two separate parts of your rotation; the part where you apply debuffs to the target and buffs to yourself and then the part consisting of mongoose fury window where you dump direct damage into the target.
These parts should flow well, they should synergize in some way; but they don't.

The DoTs don't interact in the burst window and they are so short they tend to fall off during the burst window; this leaves a somewhat unsatisfying feeling because they are so low on the priority list that you generally just disregard them. And that's where the clunky feeling sets in; the feeling of "I have to now disregard 90% of my entire toolkit as I'm now in a window where I have to spam 1-2 keys as much as possible for the next 15 seconds."

It can be better, look at shadow priests; they have something that is quite similar where they have a cycle where they apply debuffs and do more basic attacks and then a bursty window (void form), and that flows much much better for some reason.
Maybe because there is some synergy (e.g. Void Bolt in Void Form increases the duration of the DoTs applied by 3 seconds); maybe because the approach is much more simplistic and elegant without really sacrificing on the complexity much.

I think they need to take a better stance on what they actually want survival to be as a melee spec. It needs a little bit more of an identity; so that it's rotation and abilities can fit the spec a little bit better.

It's not about difficulty, or about damage, or about complexity. The spec feels clunky.
Even spec is hardly a thing. The only talent that really makes things a bit harder is Way of the Mok'Nathal; and that is purely because it's priority is so high that you have to weave that into your Mongoose Fury windows as well. I'm not a huge fan of it myself, I think it feels more "Punishing if you don't" rather than "Rewarding if you do".

I don't completely dislike the spec though. I think the DoTs we have are quite good in flavor. I think the Mongoose Bite idea is pretty unique as well; I might have preferred an approach that felt less spammy, but it's not bad.

[Gurg]

Well, hello Gurg
-snip-
Hope you enjoy spamming Stormstrike rng like MB stacks rng dude

You did completely miss a point to what i was aiming at. As i said, someone said "survival is in a good spot now" and I, as one of the people who plays it for past 8+ months, didnt think so and still dont think so. As i said, numbers wise "survival is in a good spot now" and that is true, but mechanically speaking its a mess of a spec that needs to be looked at. T19 2p bonus is insanely good up to the point that we (certainly) will carry it over to T20 for sure.

By reading your post i see that you have a success in managing everything that survival has, including Pets dash, and im really glad for you, other people, my self included, arent able to do so, no matter is it me in question, different boss strategy, people in raid it self or what. I dont even mind how you brushed off my every singe point with something that looks like "well I do manage that, so everything is fine" but i do mind when you take out of context most of my comments without even thinking it through. In all honesty, my post wasnt much of a productive too, it was more angry-frustrated-disappointed post of someone whos been happy to play survival since beta and who was, among rare survivals at that point, giving constructive feedback on what needs to be looked at and why.

I never questioned survival as a melee, but i did say that survival is in a niche spot simply because it has unique gameplay and, more important, its on a ranged spec, so you either enjoy it or you dont, theres no "second" option to it, you play melee survival or ranged hunter.

Krux pretty much covered all the issues with survival that i see too, i was just extremely lazy and on my work.
Following, survival with T19 2p currently suffers from same issue as enha shamans, in both specs anything BUT pressing a generator counts as DPS loss, no matter is it a Rockbiter/Boulderfist for more MS, or is it a Flanking Strike for more MB procs, who, as i said, has its own issues with pet and what not.

Shamans already have this addressed on PTR, theres still no word about countless feedback that we gave regarding Survival since .1.5 and EVEN THEN blizzard choose to retain status quo on survival by simply buffing its DPS spec wide. As i said, that was simply a ducktape fix which makes even more punishing mistakes, but also the same issue that we have now will be even more pronounced later on in expansion progression and gearing advancement.

As i said, i do see potential behind survival, as much as you, i do enjoy it too, but its simply tripping over its own feet and gets hindered down by its mechanic and some stuff that should have simply baked down into core (ex. Serpent Sting and WoMN into Raptor Strike, maybe even AI in Flanking strike), which would, atleast in my head, have more logic.
You either play faster paced DoT based priority which boosts it self with Raptor strike, or simply hard hitting Flanking Strike based gameplay.

Now.. about my reroll.. As progression survival at the time being i was simply AoE machine, being able to have insane burst via Butchery/ET/Cal/FoF spam, but on bosses it was quite easy to see that we are simply lagging behind due to our mechanics, most (all) melees are able to switch the target with minimal impact on their DPS, while we are down to either being fukd if we need to switch during MF window, or delay that same MF window waiting for adds to spam, but again wasting possible MB procs that go up in the air.

I did not choose to reroll, i was simply said:"Look man, you are bursting in AoE and thats good, however you lag behind on boss fight which is where it matters, reroll or bench, up to you." And that what was said to me word-to-word. I simply choose enhance since its closest to survival. I do love RNG part of survival and thats something enhance is built around (although that insane RNG will somewhat be addressed in .2.5 patch according to bluepost), i liked the idea of chaining procs to the point that i beat melees that are ~20ilvls higher than me, and if my RNG fails ill just perform "on pair"

Lets discuss the clusterfuckery of Survival's "spinning plates" design, the reason having so much ability/rotation bloat is a problem is how terribly it flows together. I get your a fan of Survival @Trapstarz but defending shit design isn't good for anyone. Survival is fun but its very very rough and poorly designed, arguing that point is just pure ignorance and masochism.
--snip--
So maybe the Survival players can read this and understand how simple changes can make the spec so much more satisfying to play without breaking anything.

You actually hit all the spots that i was aiming at. Down to single one. Again, as i said, i dont think that survival is broken, it just has some issues that could easily be fixed, which would make our combat flow more fluent and, above all, be QoL.

As i said, im quite let down simply because most of the issues are "in the air" even since beta, going trough prepatch, Legion launch and two major patch cycles, despite all feedback given.. Blizzard does nothing, just ducktaped it with DPS aura and left it be.

[Karzakk]

Lets discuss the clusterfuckery of Survival's "spinning plates" design, the reason having so much ability/rotation bloat is a problem is how terribly it flows together. I get your a fan of Survival @Trapstarz but defending shit design isn't good for anyone. Survival is fun but its very very rough and poorly designed, arguing that point is just pure ignorance and masochism.

Disagree one hundred percent, everything meshes well and if you actually understand the spec you would not call it clusterfucky. There are clear burst phases and dot refresh phases in the rotation, it does not make it terribly flow just because there are a lot of buffs/debuffs to maintain and buttons to hit. The spec is fantastic and tons of fun although a little more complex than your average spec. I can see how you would say it is poorly designed if you lack the capability to perform well with the spec.

[Deleted]

It doesn't mesh well, like, at all.

The spec has priorities, but it's not like dots and buffs align themselves even remotely close together.
Buffs fall off in the middle of a damage window even if you apply them right before one, same thing with dots.
In addition to that, dots are refreshed whenever you run out of Mongooses too, which happens from time to time, even @ 20% mastery, even if you start with 3 stacks.

In addition to that, the fact that you can have too much mastery (to the point where it's value drops significantly) is showing that something is wrong with it.

The spec is godmode with BL and haste buffs and procs, but it's really painful to look at in comparison with low haste values.

[Karzakk]

It doesn't mesh well, like, at all.

The spec has priorities, but it's not like dots and buffs align themselves even remotely close together.

Yes the spec has priorities and you need to actually think about what the best button to hit next would be instead of having a set in stone rotation. It is more complex and has a high skill ceiling compared to other specs.

It is not feasible to say you will have all your buffs/debuffs and dots rolling at the same time throughout all the fights, but if you do manage that your dps will skyrocket because of it. The spec can be played exceptionally well or excruciatingly bad and anything in between the range is huge because it actually takes skill to play well, something that I enjoy very much compared to MM and BM.

[Cryocryp]

Survival is life. The most fun I have had with WoW in years. Survival is the spec ranged hunters cant play because it is "too hard". However, if mastered, can be the most fun and rewarding spec to play in WoW. Crypto-Turalyon

p.s.
survival 4life

[Ravenzedd]

Survival is life. The most fun I have had with WoW in years. Survival is the spec ranged hunters cant play because it is "too hard". However, if mastered, can be the most fun and rewarding spec to play in WoW. Crypto-Turalyon

p.s.
survival 4life

1/10 attempt at bait

[Baredgrylls]

Karzakk, there is no magical skill ceiling to survival. You can take half the abilities off your bar and still pull within 5% damage wise of someone hitting everything perfect. There is no reason to keep the dots up unless you have a spare GCD. It needs some sort of synergy.

The issue most of us have is that it feels like 2-3 specs glued together.

Caltrops, DFG and Explosive trap all do the same thing. Serpent sting turns Raptor strike into lacerate. Murder of Crows, Steel Trap and Spitting Cobra do the same thing.

Our talents are where the fault lies. Why do so many of our talents give us an additional spell that does something similar, as opposed to just modifying the original spell? Why doesn't serpent sting modify lacerate? Why don't they delete Raptor Strike and put WotM onto flanking strike? Make DFG modify Explosive trap? Make traps have a toggle to allow them to be thrown at your target (trap launcher).

[Eapoe]

I'm not going to say it doesn't feel clunky, but most of the issue comes from the issue that it feels like filler abilities are mandatory to be up 100%. Outside of the opener or for AOE, ET is minimal to keep up compared to other abilities or debuffs (thru talents). Much like SV of old, you would only use ET for AOE or an opener.
Part of the clunky feel is that players feel like these things need to be maintained 100%, which is not the case with current gear.
I feel like Blizzard took what players did in the past and merged it, and with low ilvl/no tier we, as players, were required to follow thru with all the dots we could. Now, at higher ilvls and with tier, ET is almost moved back to how it was in previous xpacs.
I do feel some abilities would help to be removed. RS being erased and putting its functionality to FS would be a great start. Give FS the heal portion and make SS (thru talent of course) with FS, and WotMN talented into Lacerate.
Lower ET damage a slight bit to get players to focus on the AoE aspect of it and make it less meaningful on ST.
Reduce Caltrops damage and focus it purely on AoE, or redesign it to be a better slow than tar trap (maybe 60-80%) with a shorter duration since it replaces a Utility with a damage/utility ability.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue is that ANY good changes players, and even developers, can think of won't probably happen until next xpac. Unless something is outright broken, there has been little history of Blizzqrd changing a spec or talent completely (mainly removal of abilities or complete change in functionality and what it does) after launch. There have been a few instances of changes, but usually nothing with a 100% change.

[Cryocryp]

1/10 attempt at bait

No bait. I just believe that Survival hunter is better than MM and BM. If i wanted to play dull specs, i'd go back to 2001 and play runescape.

[Eapoe]

Just saw the changes to SV t20. Waiting to see what 2p becomes, but that 4p seems crazy strong. I feel a nerf incoming for it.
The hardest part will be maintains Lacerate, which is not hard at all, we will probably just miss out on 1 MB during the spam.

[WolfRider]

Back in Vanilla time, when hunters had mana and melee techniques I loved to play that class, then came expansions making hunters exclusively a range class.

And Legion came and Survival spec became fully melee and I LOVE THAT!
I don't really like range dps gameplay, I (mostly) always played melee (Warrior/Death Knight) and this change made me level up my hunter, and it's pretty awesome.
Awesome Lore hunters are Melee Survival : Rexxar, Vol'Jin, but we couldn't make the link between them and the spec.
Now it's possible and thanks to melee you feel more connected with your pet (more than Beast Master aka spam 2 buttons and your pet is doing all the job).

I like the Survival gameplay, it's a really good start and opens good things for evolutions.

[Khrux]

Disagree one hundred percent, everything meshes well and if you actually understand the spec you would not call it clusterfucky.

As I said: Survival is fun but its very very rough and poorly designed, arguing that point is just pure ignorance and masochism.

And I stand by this, you enjoying the spec because its difficult to play optimally doesn't mean it meshes well and has clear phases at all. Its unanimously accepted that the spec has poor flow, has terrible secondary stat scaling, is suffering from an over abundance of mastery and thus Mongoose charges. There is zero synergy between its dots and flank/mongo. It has 2 ground targetted abilities in its main rotation and even with mouseover macros this is awkward to utilise and feels out of place compared to any other spec.

At the end of the day, I enjoy playing it and I don't mind the relative difficulty increase over over specs in the game but I will never accept that the current Survival iteration is well designed and plays well. You sir are the pariah here, the minority, your willing to accept mediocrity hidden behind complexity. Open your eyes, nobody is trying to turn Survival into a Sin rogue or Fury Warrior. (read: Faceroll)

[iddqd]

Important to mention: additionally to a real clunky spec, SV suffers from having the most ugly tier sets AND artifact weapon, so the optics are the worst

[Deleted]

The survival spear looks awesome. Especially the one you get from defeating Gul'dan (or whatever you had to do) and our BC/wotlk sets are fine.
Blizzard stopped making good sets after BC/WotLK for *every* class, not just ours.

Just saw the changes to SV t20. Waiting to see what 2p becomes, but that 4p seems crazy strong. I feel a nerf incoming for it.
The hardest part will be maintains Lacerate, which is not hard at all, we will probably just miss out on 1 MB during the spam.

2p turned into "increase Lacerate duration by 6s"
Well, I can't really believe that it'll stay that way either, because on it's own, it's probably not even a 1% dmg increase, but it'll work fine for the 4p then.

[Blackspiral]

I've messed around with Survival a bit on my Hunter, and don't mind it being Melee at all seeing as I have had a Melee main since BC.
I ignore the stigma of LOLMELEEHUNTAR and do find the spec a fun thing to mess around on.
That said, there are a couple things keeping me from making it a main spec.

Survivability. Survival needs something, BAD. Our Self Heal is a 2 minute cooldown and Turtle makes you unable to attack. Which for a Melee will tank you faster then Arthas going on a Blind Date with Sylvanas.
Compared to my Ret Pally and Sub Rogue, who have more options to deal with Damage and better Self healing, both on much shorter cooldowns, makes me hesitant to go to current content with Survival when I don't have ways to deal with unpreventable damage as well as other Melee specs.

Ability and Rotation. It's Clunky, and if you are trying for the Top DPS, requires a hectic tracking of Dots and Mongoose moves. Yes you get good numbers, and being more complex is not bad per se, but things just seem awkward when I'm flailing around like a Magikarp using Splash to get the most out of my moves as I can.

Giving Survival some better mitigation, or making it so you can still DPS with Turtle up, would help A LOT. And maybe streamlining some talents or combining them to make it feel like you don't have some bloat. Right now, I like it as a mess around in spec. But some pushes with what I mentioned would make me lunge to it as a main spec over other specs.
*Edit - TYPOS! WOO!*

[Krazzorx]

I think the best way I'd put it is this: for most classes with dots, the dots do SOMETHING. Eg, flame shock for Ele shaman can proc instant lava burst.

You can run 4 dots as survival but they don't do anything but add damage. I'd like to see for instance, animal instinct applied to lacerated instead or lacerated giving mongoose charges be baseline instead of a talent.

I think explosive trap would be interesting as a cd of sorts with some added effect. Thematically I'd like to see it used less to feel more impactful.

Personally, I like the mechanics of mongoose bite though.

Also, anyone else want to be able to use explosive trap like junk rat in Overwatch and launch yourself a far distance with it as an additional option?

[gushDH]

Fury of the Eagle is used at the end of your mongoose windows, meaning when you have reached 6 stacks of mongoose fury and have spammed as much mongoose as possible while at 6 stacks, you then use Fury of the Eagle right before the mongoose fury buff expires.

Mongoose fury lasts 14 secs which starts from the first mongoose strike you use. So basically when mongoose fury has 1-2secs left on its duration you cast Fury of the Eagle. The reason this isn't listed in the openers is because the amount of mongoose strikes you can fit in the opener before FotE is based on your haste/mastery/procs from pet attacks etc.

Its worth noting however, that with the Snake Hunter talent you can reach 6 stacks quickly and reliably then using Aspect at 6stacks already helps you spam high powered mongoose strikes at 6 stacks while gaining the benefits of the Aspect(+10%crit and +30% dmg from golden trait).

Lastly, by timing it correctly you can actually clip your Fury of the Eagle into the end of Aspect of the Eagle. Mongoose Fury is a 14sec buff, Fury of the Eagle is a 4 sec channel and Aspect lasts 10secs, so you can see where this all lines up nicely. By using Aspect a bit late in your opener you can avail of 6secs worth of Aspect spamming your mongoose strikes and the last 4 seconds of Aspect during Fury of the Eagle(again with +10% crit and +30% dmg).

Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure its actually more dps to just spam the hell out of mongoose strikes at 6 strikes for the full duration of Aspect than it is to clip your Fury of the Eagle into the end of Aspect. For AoE/cleave that may change, but its worth calling out the option to clip Aspect/Fury if or when you want to.

Actually, casting fury of the eagle while mongoose fury is up will increase the mongoose fury buff by exactly the duration of fury of the eagle. So it really doesn't matter when you can your artifact ability in the mongoose fury window.

[Deleted]

Played FDK.. havoc dh and enhance shaman (as melee).
mains are BM/havoc DH..

All 3 specs flow much better.. do stuff better and with far less bloat.. I just dont understand if u were going melee why you would go survival.. its probably the last spec i would choose for melee

[Halobob87]

All those casuls that come here saying that survival is shitty should go back to their CoD's sniper and dogsitter cosplays, cus they're just not worthy to play, or even talk about the manly rambo spec that only true mans can play.