Ok I’m going to start this off by saying this won’t be a popular opinion, but put simply having more tanks into the game and making pure dps classes at the very least have the option to tank would be an amazing addition to the game.
This has been talked about previously but I wanted to throw some ideas at the hunter community to see what their take on having a 4th specc giving us the option to tank. Leaving SV as it is maybe with a new name like Tacticianer instead with an emphasis on damage, this 4th spec could take the SV name in its place. So this is my go at trying to see whether a SV hunter can tank with the best of them.
All the spells and abilities are already in the game SV hunter back in classic had an array of spells and abilities that made them masters of surviving.
Defensive Stance = Aspect of the Monkey: Heightened dodge with built in deflection old school parry talent gives great mitigation. Could have a short on use activation which could increase dodge and parry chance.
Active mitigation = Deterrence: Heightened parry with old school glyph that gives spell deflection and spell reflection.
New Mastery design = Spirit Bond: Does ticking percent health healing to the pet and hunter, (more than it was previously 2% every 10s) also the Hunter gains a third of all healing the pet receives making the hunters mend pet ability a hunter self heal. Also, damage the hunter takes is split evenly to the pet similar to warlocks soul link.
Taunt = Distracting Shot: This is already a old-school taunt ability, seems a pretty easy taunt option.
Defensives:
Survival of the fittest: Damage reduction on two charges but increased for the tank specc.
Aspect of the Turtle: Big paladin style bubble for fatal hit mitigation.
Exiliration: Two charges of this self heal with increased potency and increased rate of re-aquiring through spending focus.
Counterattack: Procs from dodges and parries which would be a hard hitting ability off the GCD, this could either disarm or reduce incoming damage after using it.
Wyvern Sting: This could be redesigned to be a big CD which reduces the dmg you take, it could also have a leech lifestyle component to it which could further be spread by dropping down a Snake trap that could have a chance to spread this Wyvern Sting to multiple targets giving you big sustain as well as mitigation.
Emphasis on traps to kite/peel/reduce incoming dmg. Similar to Brewmaster’s breath of fire each target within your traps deals greatly reduced dmg to you.
This is just a first draft, a preliminary sketch of what a survival hunter could look like with a new specc or with a couple tweeks and changes to what I think already exists. If what we’ve seen Season of Discovery, WoW has potential to re-imagine pure dps classes and give them the option to do other roles. Mages could be given a 4th specc to heal, Warlocks could be given a Tank specc. But most of all and more importantly Hunters would be able to Tank. It’s not so far-fetched or such a stretch to think what is possible and Blizzard are fully capable of implementing it and are open to the idea. It probably boils down to whether the community is open to suggesting that other pure dps speccs can do more than just DPS.