Survival Hunter - The good, the bad and the ugly
Today, I'm gonna talk about Survival Hunter and the current state of the spec on the Alpha of World of Warcraft: Legion.
This won't be neither a cry or a hyped post, I'll go step by step talking about everything, going from skills, artifact, builds, talents, feelings and gameplay.
First of all, I'm gonna resume everything about the class and after that, I'll explain everything in
detail. Be prepared, this is gonna be a long post.
THE GOOD
1) The spec is fun. No, really. The spec is really fun. You don't have downtime at all, and the toolkit has a nice variety of skills, from spear attacks to traps, pet, bombs...
2) At the moment, the damage output is not bad at all. Of course this must not be taken as if it were something final since we are still in alpha state and number tuning is still yet to be done.
3) The change from ranged to melee comes with the feelings of the old school Vanilla Hunter, where we had a minimum ranged range and had to use our melee spells to keep doing damage. Those feelings, where you really felt a real hunter, are back.
4) Talents are, mostly, pretty well designed, balanced and in the end, good idea that fit the feelings and lore of melee hunters with a deep bond with nature and the wild.
5) Harpoon. A 40yd range root + charge in a 20s cooldown (the CD resets if you kill an enemy with artifact talents) that applies a DoT (through Artifact Major Trait) is just incredible. And yeah, I know that Demon Hunters are flying all around, that Warriors can charge and jump non stop and monks are rollin' all day long. But I'm only interested and speaking about Survival Hunter. We must not see what the others have and ask for it too since that will only take us to the same state we are actually on, where every class and spec is just the same with different skills. Thinking only about Survival hunter, and a PvE environment, Harpoon it's going to be amazing for mechanics where we must get away from the boss and re-engage as soon as possible.
6) Traps. Yay! Traps everywhere! And what's even better, We are the only hunters that uses them! We have a lot of traps, and what's even better, we can customize them a lot through talents. Most of them are pretty good (some need number tuning as almost everything in the alpha), which is really nice since we have a lot to choose from.
7) Order Hall. It. Is. AWESOME. Oh, come on. We have a hunter refugee in the mountains, snow, our pets, eagles...it's so cool. Even if it doesn't has the..showmanship from other order halls, it has a feeling of hunter everywhere and it really feels like it's connected to our lore and origins.
THE BAD
1) Some talents are nearly useless or won't be picked ever because other on the same row are far better. Examples of this are Caltrops, Farstrider or Aspect of the Beast. Is not that they are really bad, is just that they are not tuned accordingly with the rest of the talents on that row. We'll talk more about this on the talents section.
2) Artifact Major Traits are so independent that you don't feel like you are creating strong interactions between your skills and your rotation. As said before, we'll get more in detail later on.
THE UGLY
1) Aspect of the Cheetah. Even tho the idea of the spell is good, and I really like it, the cooldown is absurdly long. 3 minutes cooldown for a 3 seconds sprint and 9 seconds mini sprint is just absurd. That said, Harpoon can be talented to give speed for a few seconds, but wasting our re-engage to move faster is not a good idea.
Ok, we have a general idea about what can offer us the spec, now, let's have a look at it closely.
SKILLS
- Flanking Strike: Our focus spender priority. The damage output is the highest between the three spenders, and what's more important, it gives us a chance to get a Mongoose Bite stack. Important note: If our pet is dead or is not in range we won't be able to use it, so always have an eye on the pet since sometimes will die for mysterious reasons or won't be in range.
- Lacerate: Our second spender priority. The dot will be aproximately the 10% of our damage. It's important to use it on cooldown. The cost is not high but the reapply window is somewhat strict.
- Raptor Strike: Our filler and last priority. If you choose the Serpent Sting talent it's important to keep up the dot at all times, even if it does not hit as hard as Lacerate, it still is a good amoun of damage, and it's really easy to keep it up.
- Carve: Our focus spender AoE. It has no cooldown and 40 focus cost. It does not hit bad at all, but it requires to be facing the enemies in a line to be as effective as possible. Once you learn to position yourself for that moment, it's a really good AoE.
- Hatchet Toss: Pretty useless. If you are gonna find yourself in the need of having to damage from a distance for a short periods of time, then you'll choose the Throwin Axes talent instead. This skill should get a little buff so we can use it as a filler for those times we need to get to the boss again and we have Harpoon on cooldown.
- Muzzle: Our silence. Nothing more since it's the usual one.
- Wing Clip: 50% slow for 10s without cooldown. And what's even more important, it'll give us a 10% damage reduction for 6s after we use it, so it will be really usefull to reduce damage during fights.
- Harpoon: I've already talked about it. It's an amazing skill and to be honest, it has no bad side. The minimum 5 yards to be used it's logical and fits the idea of the skill.
- Exhilaration: Our active selfheal. 30% of our max health and 100% for our pet. 2 minutes cooldown, so we gotta think carefully before we use it.
- Aspect of the Eagle: 10% critical chance for us and our pet and a 100% chance on getting new stacks of Mongoose Bite. A pretty good cooldown that we must use after we use the first charge of Mongoose Bite.
TRAPS
- Explosive Trap: Our damage trap. And it's really good at that. The initial damage is perfect, and the dot it leaves on the enemies also is. It is part of our rotation, more indeed if you choose Improved Traps and Expert Trapper as talents since it will have only 15s cooldown and the dot will deal a 100% increased damage for a total of 1500% AP damage between initial damage and dot.
- Tar Trap: Slow trap. Nothing new, just visual and name changed. 30s cooldown for 50% slow on the whole area.
- Freezing Trap: Nothing new again. Just as cool as ever.
PASSIVES AND MASTERY
- Survivalist: Each time we kill a target, we heal ourselves and our pet for 15% of our health over 10s. For leveling it's perfect, but that's it. We won't use it almost never in a raid environment unless it's an adds phase, and even then, it won't be of any help probably.
- Mastery (Hunting Companion): It gives us a base 2% chance that our pet autoattacks will give us a Mongoose Bite stack.
Ok, we need to talk about our mastery in more detail. Unlike other masteries, ours has probably the worst scaling ever seen in World of Warcraft. An 8% of Mastery is equal to a 2% chance of an additional proc. That means that having 21% Mastery gives us a 5,5% chance to get an additional proc. That. Is. Bullshit. No really. Don't even try to reach a good % chance of additional procs, it will affect on your dps so much you can't even imagine.
From my testing, I've reached the conclussion that we need to try to reach the 40% mastery so we have a 10% chance of getting procs. This way our Flanking Strike will have a 20% chance to give us another proc. That is enough, more indeed taking into account artifact talents that increase our pet haste (which will be our main stat for the time being as far as my testing has proved).
TALENTS
Level 15 Row
- Animal Instincts: A nice talent even when one of the three buffs is absolutely useless. Both the mastery and haste buff are really good. The 10% haste will reduce our Mongoose Bite and Flanking Strike cooldowns, and the 10% mastery buff will give us another 2% chance on additional procs.
- Throwing Axes: Our go-to talent for fights where we know for sure that we'll have to spend time at ranged or we'll have to reach the boss more than once every 20s.
- Way of the Mok'Nathal: Pretty good talent, even tho it puts a lot of stress into the rotation since you need to spend a lot of focus on Raptor Strike to keep the buff up, what will make it difficult to keep Lacerate up at all times and use Flanking Strike on cooldown. In addition, when using Mongoose Bite spam for burst damage, we'll probably lose the stacks of Mok'Nathal. Anyway, is a good talent and throwing 6 Mongoose Bites when having Mok full stacks is incredible. It just modifies a little the way to play the spec.
Level 30 Row
- Caltrops: We reduce 15s the cooldown on Tar Trap (15s cooldown in the end), we increase the slow from 50% to 70% and add a bit of damage to the trap. It's a pretty good talent where we only improve one of our traps. For bosses where we need to slow and kite enemies non stop, it will be hard to choose between these and the next one, but, anyway, a good talent overall.
- Improved Traps: Reduce the cooldown on Freezing Trap a 15% (51 seconds final cooldown) and we also reduce the cooldown on Tar Trap and Explosive Trap a 50% (15 seconds in the end). This will probably our go-to talent since it reduces the cooldown of Explosive Trap a lot making it be part of our rotation.
- Steel Trap: Even if it sounds cool because of those 1500% AP on the dot, sadly, it won't proc on bosses or mobs inmune to stun, so we will only pick the talent for PvP or for bosses where there are adds that can/must be stunned. We reduce the duration of the stun from 1 minute to 30s but the damage is really good.
Level 45 Row
- Posthaste: One of the talents I mentioned before. After we use Harpoon we'll remove all movement impairing effects and will increase our movement by a 60% for 8 seconds. It's good, but it has two downsides. The first one, is having to use our re-engage only to get that movement increase. The other one is that Harpoon has a 5 yards minimum range, so we won't be able to use it if we are at melee range, we would have to go back a little and then use it, what would leave us again at the feet of the boss.
- Farstrider: Is one of the two go-to options. A 10% chance on critical strikes on abilites to reset the cooldown on Harpoon. Good to increment the number of times we can re-engage. The only bad side is the RnG, but a good talent.
- Dash: Another good talent. Since Aspect of the Cheetah has such a long cooldown, being able to extend the duration of the ability is a good choice. In addition, it increases both the duration of the sprint and the minisprint, so it will be a 6 seconds sprint and 12 seconds mini sprint.
Level 60 Row
- A Murder of Crows: We all know this talent. The damage is really good for it's cooldown. The problem at the moment, is that except on strong adds fights (like Cenarius, Tichondrius, Skorpiron), the focus cost will complicate the rotation a lot making it really hard to keep up every dot and the priority rotation. For those adds fights, it will be a must and the go-to talent.
- Dragonsfire Grenade: In my personal opinion and from my experience, the go-to talent for medium-long fights. The damage is not bad at all, it's not a placed trap but it's used directly on the target, and if the fight has small adds that will be tanked along the boss, the damage will spread. A really good talent. It's just perfect as it is at the moment.
- Snake Hunter: This will probably be the go-to talent for short fights where we'll want to burst as long as possible. Every 1,5 minutes, we have a strong burst window where we'll easily spam 6-stack Mongoose Bite.
Level 75 Row
- Sticky Bomb: 30s cooldown for a free to use knockback with a little bit of damage. It's something we won't really use in our rotation but in add fights will be usefull.
- Ranger's Net: This is just amazing, fun and infuriating in PvP. 30 focus and 1 second cooldown for a 3 seconds snare and 50% slow for 15 seconds. People just HATE Survival Hunters on PvP because of this. Apart from that, go-to talent for fights were we'll ve kitting an add for a long time.
- Camouflage: Our old camouflage. It won't have any use in 9 of 10 cases on a PvE environment. The heal, even if it's not bad, forces us to stay in stealth to get the healing.
Level 90 Row
- Butchery: We change not having cooldown for 3 charges on a 15 seconds cooldown, triple the damage and instead of being a frontal cone it's an aoe around us. For strong add fights, it will be a really good talent, however, in my opinion, the last one will be better.
- Mortal Wonds: Lacerate damage will have a 2% chance to give us a Mongoose Bite proc. It's not bad. No, believe me, a 2% seems a joke, but it's really good. Since we'll have probably around 90-100% uptime, that's a lot of chances to get Mongoose Bite stacks, what will increase our burst damage and damage output in general. However, if it were to be a bit higher, it would be much better and, probably, unbalanced.
- Serpent Sting: We infect all enemies hit by Raptor Strike and Carve with a 15s duration. This is the talent I've been using mostly since it's really easy to keep it up and the damage is not bad at all. Also, in add fights, since we'll be spamming Carve anyway, everything will be doted, plus our Explosive Trap and Dragonsfire Trap, it will give us an incredible aoe damage output.
Level 100 Row
- Spitting Cobra: Let's face it, we won't pick this for the damage, which is absolutely garbage. If we choose this talent is for the additional focus we'll get every second. The uptime will be 50% so we'll have a +3 focus/second, something that we'll help us if we decide to go for A Murder of Crows and other focus talents.
- Expert Trapper: Another really good talent. Improves our traps making Freezing Trap also slow in area after the effect ends, Tar Trap has a chance to root enemies moving throught the trap, Steel Trap will deal 500% AP damage instantly when triggered, and, the most important, it increases the dot of Explosive Trap a 100%, so it will be 500% AP initial damage and 1000% AP damage dot.
- Aspect of the Beast: And sadly, here we have a bad idea. Yes, if we use Flanking Strike we can keep the pet dot up for all the fight, but even if we do, the damage is garbage. A 90% AP dot for 6 seconds does not cut it. It may be usefull in PvP with a Cunning pet, but in that case, this should be a PvP talent. I used it for test, the damage output was really bad and never used it again. Of course, it will be the go-to talent for soloing purposes when our pet will have a 10% damage reduction almost all the time, but soloing is not something that should be used to design talents.
ARTIFACT
Our artifact, Talonclaw, Spear of the Wild Gods, like every other spec and class in the game, has an active ability, 3 major traits and a lot of small talents that will increase pasively damage or utility of our skills.
I'll talk about the active ability, the three major traits and the small talents that will have an impact in our gameplay.
- Fury of the Eagle (Active): We have a frontal cone attack on a 45s cooldown. The damage is increased the more stacks of Mongoose Bite we have. The damage is good, for aoe burst damage is amazing and we can cast it while moving.
- Aspect of the Skylord (Major): Our offensive cooldown (Aspect of the Eagle) becomes even better since it will also increase all our damage a 30%. Nothing more to say, it's the best major trait we have and the one we shall pursue first.
- Talon Strike (Major): Our basic attacks have a chance to proc two additional attacks on the target. Nothing fancy or with relation to anything in our toolkit. More white damage.
- Eagle's Bite (Major): Harpoon leaves a small dot for 15 seconds (50% of Spell Power), but the good part is that the duration is refreshed with autoattacks, so we'll probably won't have to bother about it at all and it will just add another little damage in our toolkit.
- Hunter's Guile (Minor): Reduce the cooldowns on our traps by 20%. Such an amazing talent that improves a lot our gameplay. We can have Explosive Traps on a 12s cooldown and Dragonsfire on a 24s cooldown. Just incredible. Best part? It's the last talent before Aspect of the Skylord, so we'll have it really soon.
- Clipped Wings (Minor): Wing Clip also reduces damage taken by a 10% for 6 seconds. Already talked about it before, but this is incredible. For phases where we know we'll take damage, using Wing Clip will help us and the healers.
PERSONAL OPINION AND PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS
Ok, so, what do I think?
I really love the new Survival Hunter. It has a unique identity, it's really fun to play, it's fast-paced and it fits the philosophy and idea of a Hunter fighting along his companion, using traps and in the end, being a real hunter.
However, at the moment there are a few things in the spec that don't feel fine and somewhat darken the gameplay.
The first one is, in my honest opinion, a bug, so hopefully, it will be fixed.
That is Fury of the Eagle, our artifact active ability consuming all of our stacks of Mongoose Bite when used. What this does, is destroying our dps. If we stack 2-3 Mongoose Bite and then use Fury of the Eagle, for the time Fury ends, we should still have the buff active and another 1 or 2 charges of Mongoose Bite, so we could keep doing high damage. However, at the moment, since it's removing our buff, we have to try and stack as much Mongoose Bite as possible since we know we are losing the buff the moment we use Fury.
This, I'll say it again, is a buff in my honest opinion.
Apart from that, the spec is ok, and only lack on some talents that I have already told.
Is the spec finished and perfect? No, not at all, but it's in a good shape and in the good way, and with small changes could be one of the must fun specs to play at melee.
And here is when I'll say what I would do:
1) Fury of the Eagle: Leave it like it is right now, fix the buff remove bug, and make it refresh the duration of Mongoose Bite buff. Fury of the Eagle is supposed to be deeply related with Mongoose Bite, however, at the moment does not feel that way and you only stack Mongoose to use an overpowered Fury. However, by making it also refresh the duration of the buff, you would make it incredible fun to use and hard to master. We would have to track our stacks of Mongoose Bite, our cooldowns on Flanking Strike, the mechanics of the boss, so we can refresh our buff and release another wave of Mongoose Bites.
It is a small change, but it would definetly make the spec feel more stable and related between all it's abilites.
2) Remove the speed buff on Animal Instincts and instead put a new buff that gives Mongoose Bite a 10% chance to apply 2 stacks of Mongoose Bite buff instead of one. That way we can generate more focus and reduce faster the cooldown on Flanking Strike, have a better chance to win a Mongoose Bite charge or a chance to get two stacks of Mongoose when using the ability.
3) Remove Aspect of the Beast or make it so it's more appealing. At the moment is undertuned and the other two talents are fare better and offer more to the gameplay. An example would be increasing the damage on the Ferocity spec or just change it and make Aspect of the Beast reduce the cooldown on Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Turtle 2 minutes or 1,5 minutes, and making Aspect of the Eagle give another 10 or 20% critical chance. That way you would have to choose between a faster gameplay with Spitting Cobra, a more trap-focused spec or a "wild" spec where you are able to use sooner your cooldowns.
4) Add the option (through a talent would be perfect) to use traps on target-cast instead of having to throw it as it make us lose some precious time. Having all traps be like Dragonsfire Trap would be amazing for PvE purposes.
With those three changes, the spec would feel a lot better.
And that's all for Survival Hunter!
If you read all this, I can just thank you for being so patient, and I hope you liked it. Feel free to ask anything on the comments section and I'll answer them as soon as I can.
I'll see you in the next post!