With new talent tree all melee classes have got a lot of “cool” skill points(which are really nice!) stuff in terms of survivability & passive sustain
Survival seems to have not gotten much in terms of passive sustain(leech, HP regeneration). It cannot compete with hybrid melee classes(as it should not be able to) but it cannot compete with others melee as well which is totally fine position for how it is designed but gap could be lowered.
Proposing!
Passive shield
5% ± max HP + how much mastery heals every 5 secs(example 2%) 5 + 2 = 7% | - Mastery would get slight value as well with this
5% ± of damage recharge the shield.
or something like warrior “Pain and Gain” - When you take damage heal for 2% of max HP | Cd 5 sec - or both abilities mentioned above (numbers can be adjusted)
These changes would not change survival position in terms of sustainability compared to other melee class but would offer some break room to sustained damage and as melee would make them slightly more tanky compared to BM and MM as a hunter choice.
Other suggestion would be increase current and max HP by 10-15% for 6-8 seconds after casting FD for all hunters for various reasons.
(One of the reasons would be that hunters are not known to live long in many different damage scenarios )
Consider adding “Wailing arrow” to Survival hunter as well, it can be in lighter form, just an Aoe interrupt, not having 3 secs silence, no reason to have 1 group utility less for playing melee or add something with similar effect. Flashbang grenade for Aoe disorient would do the job as well.
Am i insane for thinking we got quite good passive sustain?
Just the 10% leech from a ferocity pet alone is low-key better than what some specs have, our mastery also heals us maybe not alot but over a longer raid fight it actually stacks up over time.
That said we will get +8% hp for “free” in 10.0.7. Which will help.
But agreed about the utility. We got no unique utility that the ranged hunter specs don’t have so unless survival preforms much better than them theres no “reason” to take a survival hunter instead. And to be honest no hunter spec got that much utility either compared to other classes (no mandatory buff or raid cooldown).
8% hp is very nice and needed buff for sure.
10% leech is ok but its worth less(adding 40% increased HP as well) than in Shadowlands if you compare what other classes got with new trees for example and how many abilities for self sustain did hunters get. Hunters did get 1 active (6 secs )
Warriors got 5% leech + Pain and Gain + deep wounds leech(arms) + Hot Steel Cold Blood(Fury) - (although not sure about this one if it was already base in Shadowlands)
you can pick easily Impending Victory(as active but on short cd).
All DKs can take permafrost + blood scent 3% leech(with 20% HP bonus) + many ways to return HP & mitigate damage
On side note Warriors and DKs should have more options defensively and they do(than hunters), but you could compare it to rogues.
All rogues now have access to leeching poison( it is 5%+ and not 10% as it was but you can take it freely now, its not on Cheat Death row anymore) + Recuperator + Iron Stomach + Soothing Darkness, if you combine Crimson Vial vs Exhilaration with all other active&passive and rogues self sustain(beside defensives) is better than hunters now. Maybe that is the intend.
DH - I don’t know enough about havoc but whenever I look at healing meter it heals more than survival which is how it should be.
Hybrid classes can heal more with choice of sacrificing some damage.
I like that all these classes got their passive and many new active abilities, I like playing and testing most classes and it feels really fun to try new skills, my opinion is that hunters could get an option as well to get bonus to its sustain to be more in line with what other melee classes got.
Additional 5% bonus leech for survival hunter might be too much as bonus that is why shield might be better option(it prevents damage up to a certain point) or something like DKs permafrost would do the job as well.
the mastery could be buffed for more passive regen
we could have a passive like priest focused will (taking less dmg is the best sustain) => the life in nature, against the raging wild & weather has make you skin quite thick (5-10% less dmg taken)
for bleed/dots/etc., Craven Stratagem should return (mb instead of survival tactics if it’s pvp only) or add to mending bandage that it fully cleanses you
Exhilaration could go from 2 min to 1 min 30
Natural mending could go from Every 25/12 Focus you spend reduces the remaining cooldown on Exhilaration by 1.0 sec. to 20/10 Focus … by 1.0/1.5 sec
Survival of the fittest should go down to 1min30 to be more in line with other melee classes or at least have better cd reduction by talent like born to be wild
Aspect of the turtle should be usable while stunned/no gcd (pal can do whatever they want during divine shield, mage go the heal during iceblock, we can rez pet …)
Maybe a talent could be added/replaced/swapped with a mean to reset by a few sec aspect of the turtle too
Now about the pet which is a big part of our kit, lot of spells depends on pet being alive and in range, they could be buffed to have either same hp as hunt (instead of 75%) and/or more resist to damage (they are quite weak to cleave, because cleave is not aoe, so 80% dmg reduction from pet avoidance is not applied)
Also => Only survival should have camouflage => that could open a talent slot for a talent to help ranged spec
In terms of utility, and lore wise, we could have something like : ‘Your knowledge of hunting allows you to identify your target’s weak points. Inflicting enough damage make them more visible to other players’ in action => after inflicting a number of crit with raptor/mongoose, open a windows of x sec that gives +2-3% crit on target (not much but not bad, synergize with everybody, require you to have some crit, the number of crit could be adjust to have an acceptable uptime)
There are so much things they could try step by step, but they have so much to fix before on some broken melee classes …
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