To preface this, I’m not a PvE player and play PvP almost exclusively.
The previous iteration of the class and Survival trees was so godawful that it made me want to quit playing my Hunter for Dragonflight. There was zero moments of hype in either tree. For the class tree, you got nothing actually new about it except for Explosive Shot which doesn’t even work well with how the spec is designed. Sure it’s just a decent damage ability and it’d almost always be a “must pick” for PvP since delayed damage = more burst, right?
But for Surv, you don’t have any amazing burst damage to pick together with it. The only spec that actually cared about Explosive Shot was Marksman, because you could stack up so much burst into that small window. Surv doesn’t have that, so our only actually nice pick in the class tree was a generic damage button on a 30s cooldown. Whee.
Outside of that we got the choice node of Scatter/Binding Shot, and while it’s great, we also lost the ability to have both a stun and Explosive Trap. So in essence, we swapped Explosive Trap for Scatter/Bind which is a pretty good trade but at the same time, changing one CC to another isn’t exactly hype. Especially when Surv already has a lot of roots so Binding isn’t even that good due to DRs. Scatter is great though.
On the spec tree though, there was nothing but a massive waste of points left and right. 5% damage to this, 8% damage to that. Big whoop. And obviously changes were much needed, and very welcomed.
So I’ve been eagerly waiting for the Survival tree changes and…this just ain’t it.
There’s so many things you DON’T want to take in a PvP setting. You don’t care about Carve/Butchery, but you almost have to take it because the only other way to path down to the right is via Mongoose Bite, and Mongoose Bite is bad in PvP since Survival doesn’t really want to be in melee all that much and you won’t ever have the time to stack up high Mongoose Bite stacks. So you’re essentially forced to picking an AoE skill that you’ll never use in a PvP setting, just so you don’t have to downgrade your power level by picking Mongoose Bite. That being said, picking Mongoose Bite would be kind of okay if not for the Tip of the Spear talent right at the start. You HAVE TO take this because you can’t play without Harpoon. Tip of the Spear actually gets weaker if you pick Mongoose Bite, because it has a lower base damage than Raptor Strike due to the stacking thing. So you’re once again incentivized to picking the AoE skill you don’t ever want to because picking Mongoose Bite just makes you weaker.
And because of all the things you NEED TO take in PvP from the starting point, you’re not going to have enough points to even pick Kill Command resets without spending too many points on the top part.
The middle part is fine outside of Mongoose Bite and Butchery completely cutting off the bottom right part. You can’t get Flanking without picking one of those, and that’s horrible for PvP because you really don’t want either of them. But there’s no real major complaints about the middle part outside of that. There’s very little choice going on in the passives you’d take PvP wise, but that’s fine because you might go for a different path PvE wise so there’s choice there in that regard.
But the real big issue with the bottom part of the tree is Kill Shot. Kill Shot is absolutely butchered for Survival.
Looking at the other two specs first, Kill Shot procs make perfect sense. 10% Chance to get a Kill Shot on Aimed Shot for MM and 10% Chance to get a Kill Shot on Kill Command for BM. These are both buttons you press all of the time because they’re core to your spec. For Survival though, Kill Command isn’t a button you want to press unless you have to. PvP wise, barring current situation with the tier set being what it is, Kill Command is almost never pressed. Once we lose the tier set bonus we will almost never press Kill Command. It’s low damage, generates resources that we can generate via dispels and Flanking Strike and whatnot. There’s just almost never a situation where you’d press Kill Command instead of other damage or utility because it’s just a bad ability.
Now, in the previous iteration it was 3 points for a 15% chance to get a Kill Shot proc when Kill Command resets its cooldown. That used to be another 3 points for a 25% chance to reset its cooldown, adding up to a total of 3.75% chance to proc a Kill Shot on an ability you don’t want to press. That was miserable, compared to the 10% chance on the main skill of BM and MM.
With the current iteration, it’s even worse. Since if we are to assume that Predator has a tooltip bug and is supposed to be at 25%, it’s going to be a 10% chance off of the 25% chance which is a 2.5% chance to proc Kill Shot on the ability you don’t want to use. And as I mentioned earlier, we don’t really even have room to take Predator to begin with.
Now, Spearhead tooltip says it gives 20% extra chance to reset Kill Command, but it’d still be only 4.5% chance to proc a Kill Shot during your cooldown window. Of course there’s Wildfire Infusion and you can get a 100% chance to reset Kill Command from that, but that’s a short duration debuff on the target and at that point you have an EQUAL proc chance to reset the cooldown, on an ability you still don’t want to use even if you throw the red bomb.
Realistically, Kill Shot stuff is dead for Survival in PvP. You seriously don’t even want to pick Improved Kill Shot on the class tree because you don’t ever get to press it. You might even honestly just see if you can save the point and skip Kill Shot entirely, because a completely unbuffed, single Kill Shot only during an execute window isn’t that impressive.
And now finally, why is that Kill Shot part such a big issue? Because it’s a huge portion of our damage in PvP right now due to Flayed Shot, and because after the reworked tree Blizzard put even more emphasis on Kill Shot for survival because of Ranger and Explosives Expert. We got two more talents that make using Kill Shot better and more important, but we still don’t actually get to use it because of how it’s designed.
PvE wise I feel like this might work fine. You can get Bloodseeker (which btw is a mandatory pick for pathing even for PvP when you don’t even want to ever press Kill Command) so you can spread some bleeds while you generate resources to keep spamming damage in M+ or raid or whatever. Kill Command sees a lot of use in PvE because you’re spending much more Focus there than you do in PvP. You can actually use Wildfire Infusion on the red bomb and actually spam Kill Command like 5 times in a row because you’d run out of Focus and it works. But for PvP, you don’t want to press Kill Command so you don’t ever realistically get Kill Shot procs for PvP.
On top of all of this, the bottom part has some real issues outside of just the Kill Shot focus. The three things at the very bottom for example. None of them actually matter in PvP. Ruthless Marauder can be nice if Fury of the Eagle is even worth pressing, but Birds of Prey is completely worthless because you don’t spam Raptor Strike like you do in PvE, and Coordinated Kill is trash because Kill Command is trash.
Looking at it right now, there’s only four passives I actually know I want to take in the bottom part. Wildfire Infusion and then Coordinated Assault and the two to upgrade it. Spearhead is probably nice but you also have to spend 2 points to increasing Kill Command damage, because of course you do, just to get it. Most of the bottom part of the tree is just worthless PvP wise.
There needs to be some serious reworking of the Survival tree and the Kill Shot reset mechanic needs to be tied to something else, like bombs, because right now there’s no way you’ll ever pick the talent to get Kill Shot resets in PvP which is a huge shame.