Survival Hunter Revolution: New Talents and Changes in WoW The War Within!

CLASS TREE VIDEO: • WoW Hunter Class Tree ...
BM TREE VIDEO: • The War Within Hunter ...
MM TREE VIDEO: • Unleash the Sniper: Ma...
PATREON: / azortharion
STREAM: / azortharion
DISCORD: / discord
HUNTER COACHING: / discord
Thumbnail credit to Gabriel Lopez gabelopez.arts...
0:00 Intro
01:19 Reviewing Every Talent
01:54 NEW: Tip of the Spear Rework, core mechanic
3:00 SV no longer has long arms :(
3:25 Reviewing Every Talent
4:03 NEW: Crit also owns for Survival in The War Within
5:13 NEW: Colored Bombs are gone
6:03 Reviewing Every Talent
6:18 NEW: Automatic Explosive Shots!
6:40 Reviewing Every Talent
7:43 NEW: Survival can have 2 KC charges!
8:02 Reviewing Every Talent
9:07 NEW: Grenade Juggler - Explosive Shots are huge for SV.
9:44 Reviewing Every Talent
10:36 NEW: Mongoose Bite can now cleave!
11:26 Reviewing Every Talent
12:30 NEW: Kill Command can ALSO cleave now?
13:31 Reviewing Every Talent
13:45 NEW: So many cooldown resets
14:10 NEW: Built-In Serpent String Multidotting
14:48 More Crit Value
15:22 Reviewing Every Talent
15:47 The Weakest Talent in WoW?
16:34 Reviewing Every Talent
17:16 Coordinated Assault lives on
18:01 NEW Spearhead redesign
18:42 Reviewing Every Talent
19:15 NEW, STRONG choice nodes for Coordinated Assault
20:35 Explosive Shot Spammable?
21:44 Spearhead has thicc crits
22:37 Thoughts, Feedback, Thyminde's Discord Feedback
38:10 Outro

[@Azortharion]

What other videos/content would you like to see? Reply to this comment and upvote the ones you agree with.

[@markt88]

I think these changes overall positive and sounds like a fun gameplay loop. It reminds me of ww monk trying to weave different abilities between each other

[@alexanderhenderson2594]

Coordinated Assault as a Sentinel can come down to a 45sec CD making it even crazier.

[@maxw565]

Too crazy even... it just swarms our rotarion even more with bombs. Its too much man. We got a spear too, let us use it!

[@selwrynn6702]

@@maxw565 But "Explosions, more explosions!!"

[@ThatGuyOnFireKnownAsAndrew]

The Tip of the Spear weaving sounds like it will play similar to WW monk where you don’t want to hit the same ability twice and that sounds fun!

[@TheIndustrialfreak]

The volume of your voice on all these videos is significantly lower than most other youtube videos, you may want to check your levels.

[@Razeer2146]

This was an amazing video, you describe everything so well. Learned so much. New sub

[@DERG0se]

Thanks for these 4 videos. They are so detailed. And sv looks so cool. Réxxar is back to play sv in the next add on :)

[@jeCktHeReal]

too bad Rexxar wouldn't use a spear or a two-handed weapon yet they seem to market the spec as your character would play like him. He dual-wields axes. It's one of the worst things about survival imo - even though I get why it's good to have additional specs use agility polearms/staves but it's so anti-Rexxar it's sickening.

[@Airbag888]

​@@jeCktHeRealoutside of the sickening part which feels a bit much, I agree surv should be like wc3 rexxar. Mid range poker with temp pets, trap fillers and some melee abilities

[@jeCktHeReal]

@@Airbag888 I think if one has a good understanding and a love for warcraft lore it is appropriate to use the word, especially if that person also tried to play melee surv before and it just didn't click. The whole spec is a mess and still is pretty much, it's just getting better in terms of gameplay. The spec's a cross between Huln Highmountain, Rexxar, and an engineer. In other words the spec is dumb and it needs more of a rework in terms of spec identity. They need to make it more Rexxar-y and less Highmountain-y imo.

[@Airbag888]

@@jeCktHeReal That's why I was enjoying melee hunter in SOD more... then AFAIK the spec/tier is still broken in S4 so I stopped playing it altogether to not have more sour memories.. Silver lining, at least they put an intern to work on the spec for TWW

[@Tyberes]

Absolutely goddamn THRILLED Survival is back to spamming out Explosive Shots. I was in high school raiding ICC spamming out explosive shots and it was a blast.

[@Felixxfb]

They should put an additional mechanic or talent on Wildfire Bomb that when we generate a charge and we are already capped, we immediately cast a bomb in a target in front of us or something like that. That way we get to keep pressing our rotation and reducing CDs and don't lose too much.

[@brianchristensen5266]

But then theres no point in pressin bomb, since the game would just do it for us :p

[@Shenoz1]

​@@brianchristensen5266I dont think so, because it should be on cooldown at all times probably

[@ionised6999]

Something akin to the current havoc tier set where pressing blade dance uses a charge of throw glaive, having a talent that sends a wildfire bomb into the target when pressing X ability (explosive shot would be my suggestion) could help with button bloat on aoe. Could also have that bomb consume a tip of the spear stack if we are swimming in that Edit Missed the last suggestion at the end of the video which is basically the same but reverse.

[@fknjacked3940]

Imagine this class design in BFA with full haste corruptions

[@TheJpgia]

I wouldn't mind some abilitys to becames passives, like FS be baked into every X amounts of KC's like MoC for BM.

[@c2dholla]

Nah the gap close for FS is to huge to be a a spam ability especially for pvp would be a huge huge nerf

[@TheJpgia]

​@@c2dholla It can still gap close, and for those who don't like the sudden jump, it could have a choice node like the monk tiger palm dash

[@EriclesMH]

i feel like as an SV hunter, trying to even do the mongoose fury windows is gonna be a dps loss

[@semi6544]

I just feel bad that it feels Mongoose Fury got left behind. How does Mongoose Fury exist in a world with so much CDR on abilities?

[@LodvarDude]

It looks kinda crazy. Hope it's not too button-heavy and that the resets causes the spec to get very messy and confusing. Survival needed more defensive CDs, the current iteration was fine with me. This also seems to lean a little too heavy into AOE, which the bomb-build already covered pretty well.

[@Klappe92]

Haven't played it yet due to no beta access but overall seems like a cool rework! My main issue with reading these talents is that it seems very likely that you overcap massively on focus which is very feelsbad... I'd hate it if we end up in a scenario where you press KC on full focus just to get tip charges or because it does more damage than our spenders.

[@pieterrossouw1833]

Question on Outland Venom. It says each damage over time effect but does not specify if it is your damage over time effect. Can it be that if you party with an aff lock that their DoT can contribute to the crit damage?

[@raechu_01210]

Doesn't Tip of the Spear give new players a guiding light to navigate the GCD bloat? Just always spend that on your best thing (bomb or bite depending on target count), then press all your big buttons on CD. Won't be perfect but they should do decent damage just with that.

[@Proverb.]

I kind of disagree with the button bloat. It feels more to me like, I have more interactions that enable me to hit my good buttons more often and never having dead gcds. You just keep a prio list in your head, like most other specs. I also think the idea of "needing" to always be under focus cap is outdated. There are a few other specs that have this happen as well. Focus is simply a resource that allows you to press certain abilities. If you have a lot of focus generation then this just means in modern wow, that you will never have to worry about it. Essentially turning this spec into a "CD Prio" class without a resource. If for example Wildfire Bomb is highest damaging skill, then you simply aquire Tip of the Spear and use it on Wildfire Bomb, and press every other ability to facilitate this, then use them in following prio. It's completely irrelevant if you remain over focus cap if you are continuosly able to hit your best damage

[@Rated_Gnar]

Idk if anyone has mentioned this already, but CA doesnt give KS AoE potential anymore... Now it's WB>KS in AoE and KS>WB in single target situations if stuck in that build for M+

[@TJR123]

Is it not as simple as a DMG prio list in AoE? The only thing different is that you always have the buttons that you actually want to press instead of the ones you feel obligated to press.

[@EdeasKnight]

Cap Tip stacks to 2 to reduce its overhead, perhaps

[@shaunybonny688]

Dude sv sounds badass, looking forward to playing it

[@alexanderhenderson2594]

Does Outland Venom only count for YOUR DoTs or ALL DoTs, because it doesn't specify.

[@Bernard77]

your dot ofc

[@lunchmeat9006]

@@Bernard77 only your DoTs

[@brianandersen8842]

If it counted ANY DoT, it would be gamebreakingly powerful.

[@selwrynn6702]

Yeah, only your dots, but it does need to be reworded a bit to something like "For each damage over time effect you have on the target the critical strike damage they recieve from you is increased by 2%"

[@Airbag888]

Bro lol... When was there ever a spell that counted all dots😂

[@mohammadjaber5990]

We’ve all of a sudden become a variation of outlaw/enhance/monk combo with the new tip and reset/procs with a priority set up. It’s a bit much, fun but a bit much. Apm through the roof

[@Saucemixer]

New TotS is kinda conflicting with Mongoose Fury imo. as you want to cram as many MB in it as you can. For RS there is no issue to cram in KC's. The new Survival reminds me of the Legion Version with too many Plates to Spin :D

[@avaqt3812]

This is not the case - you always still want to KC during fury windows as the focus is what keeps the dmg going as well as what ends up deciding how fast you can get back into a fury window

[@betahumanx]

Agreed. The new Tip of the Spear sucks

[@embraceembrayzie8188]

The main issue with SV is that it's still a melee spec.

[@willywunder0648]

But just for you and the other retro cry babies. Play marks. Survival melee = best reinvention of a spec in wow history

[@embraceembrayzie8188]

@@willywunder0648Pretty harsh response to my statement. Do you feel offended?

[@Ditronus.]

Not sure why Blizzard brought back skill trees when almost every node just feels mandatory. Blizzard exhibits some crazy arbitrariness in what they decide should be "baseline." Surely, tip of the spear is baseline material, right?

[@eliasnilsson597]

I’m very curious to see the damage profile of the testing you’ve done. Because a lot of what you talked about hasn’t been my own experience. From what I could tell the Tip of the Spear buff only applies per target in a spell, reducing it’s value in AoE scenarios. With the target capping and low damage of KC, I find it hard to believe it’s worth spamming it during the flanking strike window rather than weaving mongoose bite cleave and butchery. Of course I could be wrong since spamming KC wasn’t something I really thought about. I would love to compare my own results in testing with yours to actually see how much value you get out of KC in an AoE scenario with TotS. Might be i’ve underestimated it’s value. The GCD Bloat only becomes an issue with explosives expert which puts bombs on a much too short of a cd, I think playing without explosives expert makes the spec feel much better. More than anything else, I think that talent is the main issue with all the current CD-R for bombs. If they change that talent into something else, the class won’t really need anymore changes, in my opinion. I think the best change would probably be to make it a 1-point talent and cap it at 2 seconds. Like the idea about Coordinated Assault though. I don’t think Bombadier is an issue if you just spent your bombs before CA ends, then the explosive shot just grants you them back. But your option seems a lot more fun.

[@Azortharion]

Tip of the Spear is a player buff, not a target debuff. The problem with not running Explosives Expert is that it's objectively very powerful. But of course, it's not necessarily optimally fun, which is what the video talks about. Kill Command's raw damage is not superior to other abilities (though with KC-increasing talents, it's not that far off), but it provides 2sec of Bomb CDR per cast and generates Tip of the Spear stacks that you would much rather prioritize spending on Bombs (of which you are generating more with KC) than cleaving MB's. Which means optimal play entails spamming KC in spite of the Focus cap, which is the problem (or at least, that's me and others' opinion, it's fine if you disagree!).

[@eliasnilsson597]

@@AzortharionThanks for the response! It does make sense to think of KCs value more in terms of the CDR and TotE rather than raw damage. Even more so if I was mistaken about TotS. I can imagine that it’s very difficult to play the class in an intuitive way if KC has that much more value and it becomes a bigger priority than our spenders even when focused capped. Agree with the change to make flanking strike hit harder rather than give focus. I do like the idea of KC cleaving if they make Vicious Bite from PL cleave together with it.

[@AKImeru]

I dunno man sounds straightforward enough? Use the bombs, do the mongoose bite thing, never overcap 2 bombs as you use kill command and flanking strike to regenerate focus to do as many bites you can fully buffed, and in coord assault your most important button is now killshot. We also get a new button on explosive shot at the end of coord assault. If anything, the spec logic is the same, except now we will be regenerating bombs like crazy, actual have an aoe presence, got a new button to spam (that helps with focus management) and two hero talents that help us choose if we want to have even more coord assaults or just be passively better.

[@Airbag888]

So basically we're getting into hammer your head on keyboard territory

[@Azortharion]

Well it matters quite a lot what your head is hitting.

[@Airbag888]

@@Azortharion haha I'm guessing grouping kill command, MB, FS and ES together you could get to 70% efficiency 🤣

[@arsenicuma5200]

As long as nothing gives hunters 50 percent haste, turning them into enhance shamans, I don't mind having to decide what to press

[@claeslundin5865]

The only thing i dont like about survival hunter is that we are using Bombs/explotions to do our damage while being a melee spec. Like that does not seem like a good idea to do in melee range

[@belphegory]

does the butchery making MB aoe talent with the serpent sting aoe talent spread it on 9 targets than ?

[@pieterrossouw1833]

Was wondering the same, also with flanking strike and kill command you can have bleeds on 3 targets quite fast and in turn feed into the outland venom and other DoT talents.

[@Perways]

Can’t find carve in spellbook like mentioned in the video am I blind? ^^

[@Azortharion]

That's a mistake on my part - Carve isn't baseline, it's simply removed. Apologies.

[@clouds233]

SV is so much more fun now with all the explosive shots and bombs. Bombardier is prob the most fun i've had with the spec since shadowlands s3

[@nervio2701]

Shadowlands s3 was horrible gameplay, super powerful but i didnt like the playstyle at all. Just spamming kc and bombs is boring af

[@theinz89]

is it just me or does the mid section for surv look super bloated? i feel like we could remove all the +% damage talents and maybe give us mongoose bite baseline and wed have a lot more options

[@andrewshandle]

They need to ditch Mongoose Bite, it's such a dumb ability. You need to cast 5 MBs in the 14 second window to do more damage than Raptor Strike, and early in the expansion with low haste, casting that many MBs in 14 seconds is probably not what you want to do. WFB, Kill Shot, Explosive Shot, Death Chakrum, Flanking Strike and Kill Command will all have higher priority than Mongoose, so taking MB willl always be a DPS loss. It's been a dumb talent since it was introduced, and what makes it worse now is you get Raptor at level 12 and replace it at 16. Just make it a passive buff on Raptor that doesn't start with a lower AP modifier and scales up at 8% instead 15%. No ability in the game is like MB in that it's actually almost always worse to take than not take.

[@snivels]

Damn, I was looking forward to more bombs, not studying for a PHD

[@Azortharion]

Well, you are getting a ton of bombs as well, to be fair.

[@snivels]

@@Azortharion Do you think mid-level players would be able to do OK with it? I'm not a complete idiot, but I'm definitely not a mythic raider. My main has been feral for a long while

[@Azortharion]

@@snivels If they are willing to read a guide and study a bit, I see no reason why not!

[@rickfairfax9631]

On the plus side - complicated, unintuitive spec = more demand for content creators!

[@belphegory]

wait isnt base gcd 0.5s with hase so its more than 4 ES

[@Azortharion]

Base gcd is 1.5s. With no haste you can do 3. With 13% haste you can do 4. You would need 50% haste to get 5.

[@stagnacja1]

From a classic wow player all this talents and systems looks overcomplicated .

[@Perways]

Everything is well done in the video besides the size of your cursor… I can barely see it on my mobile phone

[@Azortharion]

I will increase the mouse cursor size for future videos like this. I hope that the video is still watchable with the tooltips popping up where I mouseover.

[@Perways]

@@Azortharion its fine, u did a great job ^^ just sometimes hard to follow the cursor on my phone ^^

[@jeCktHeReal]

They have to do something like restrict monks to two handed agi staves/polearms only and just take surv's ability to wield those - ditch this idea of fighting with "the spear". Especially with good ol Rexxar as a poster child of the spec which is just ridiculous. Dual-wielding axes and other 1h weps baby that's what it should have been since the beginning

[@Felixxfb]

I say leave the monks alone but give us the ability to dual-wield too. lol

[@Airbag888]

100% dw axes and abilities that let you throw them out and pull them back

[@jinks_hates_things]

just tell me how I can play Survival fully ranged now

[@willywunder0648]

You choose marks.

[@PatrickBrophy]

I hope this is strong. It seems super fun with all the cooldown reductions and possibly cracked with high gear levels when the haste and crit values soar.

[@lunchmeat9006]

[@Simeonlol]

First (You late Doolb even on SV video smh) Nice video Azor 👍

[@Dumbmelee]

🐐

[@Ditronus.]

This spec is a mess lol. They just keep trying to band-aid it every expansion instead of giving it the animations and time it needs to cook. I can't believe they never gave fist of fur--i mean fury of the eagle a dedicated animation ever since they shoe-horned it in during Legion.

[@ourovermelho23]

Hate survival but love hunter thank you for covering the changes hopefully blizzard listens to your feedback and make more changes especially to the hero talents they are so lackluster

[@L_dini]

I was expecting with this rework to finally fix the awkwardness of having to macro your pet attack to buff what you want (during Coordinated Assault), kinda disappointed on that one. Also expected the choice between 2h and 1h weapons and maybe making Mongoose Bite consume 2 stacks of Tip of the spear when using 2H weapons and Wildfire bomb consume 2 stacks when using 1H weapons. I don't know, just an idea to make Rexxar in the background proud of us for once I guess...

[@tiredguy2753]

I think blizz really hit it out of the park with SV as a whole, especially tying in explosive shot as a core ability- kudos blizzard.

[@madsboandersen5316]

The amount of wildfire wombs you can blast now is so high, and does so much damage, you can almost entirely omnit ever having to use raptor strike, which is strange, since it just leaves you overcapped on focus nonstop. The 'new' master is also boring, since it is just versatility 2.0. It is excessively overtuned atm, being like twice the value of vers.

[@palfotta]

I literally have no idea about Survi, I play hunter since Cata but never tried survi since It is a meele spec. For me It just looks "stupid"', why would I play with the most squishy wannabe meele, if I have acces good meeles too... I wish WoD survi back (it was a blast) but still appreciate your work man, keep the hunter dream alive!

[@warshadow3346]

“I’ve never played it so its dumb” what a searing hot take… maybe if you tried survival you would also find it a blast.

[@palfotta]

@@warshadow3346 I had no intention to hurt anyone's feelings, but I generally think meele hunter is a bad design idea and the old survi hunter was very good (for pvp atleast). The data shows most of the playerbase think kinda similarry, the spec is only played when it is super broken like in shadowlands s3-4 (even than there was a lot of MM hunter) otherwise next to nobody plays with it. If Blizz would delete it tomorrow 99-99,9% of the playerbase wouldnt care at all.

[@warshadow3346]

@@palfotta No feelings are hurt here, but the same can be said about a lot of specs in the game that are not tuned highly at the time. Hunter in general doesn’t really bring anything and its more about the fact another melee on top of that brings them down. If surv was the old way, it’d only get played if it was the highest dmg profile for specific encounters out of the three specs, and only then if it does that same thing better than any other ranged dps.

[@palfotta]

@@warshadow3346True. Also agreed the 2nd part of your comment, but for me that sounds way better than the current situation. It is also true all dps spec in the game. I mean locks and mages have 3 ranged dps spec 1 of them almost always good so they can always play the same spot/role. Somehow they dont miss a cloth wearing meele spec....

[@nervio2701]

Survival is not squishy, there have been very very few times when i said damn i just couldnt live anymore as surv, i can tell you i feel a looooot more squishy on my enhancement shaman then i feel on anything else

[@maxw565]

I think the general idea of this "soft rework" is nice. The talent tree for one isn't atrociously designed anymore and the new tip of the spear mechanic is a really cool idea. But i do fear that with all this insane gcd bload and focus on bombs botg in st and aoe, we are loosing our identity as a melee spec. Mongoose bite is our signature spell. The way our talents are set up now in this first beta draft, it's so unimportant we're not even picking up a talent that makes it cleave and spread ss in aoe. That would just be extremely sad. It dont wanna just be spamming bombs and es...

[@madcappx]

that's your opinion. to me mongoose bite is extremely boring. id rather be bomb focused then focused on a melee skill that looks like an auto attack

[@jaded-harper]

@@madcappx true. being a hybrid melee/range is what makes surv cool. mongoose bite is easily the most boring ability in our kit lol. like u said, it looks like an auto attack and feels pathetic to press imo

[@maxw565]

@@madcappx why the fuck would you play survival if you think mongoose bite is boring? It's been the central part of our kit eversince legion

[@maxw565]

@jaded-harper you guys are actually fucking insane.

[@faustwulf3535]

​@@maxw565 brain dead regards

[@betahumanx]

I think this all could be solved by a) removing Kill Command and/or Tip of the Spear or b) removing Tip of the Spear and making Kill Command a more powerful ability with long CD. If Mongoose/Raptor strike should be the filler why do we have Kill Command as a filler too then?

[@maxw565]

Mongoose bite is our big focus spender! It should NEVER be our filler

[@betahumanx]

@@maxw565 Yes but look at it. It will have the lowest priority

[@maxw565]

@betahumanx I wish people stopped thinking in this way of "look its tuned this shit way in beta so that's what it is" No! No i say! This is the tome to tell deva what we like and dislike. MB should hit like a spender ffs. What is not what ought to be

[@betahumanx]

@@maxw565 It does not though lol what is so hard to understand on that

[@maxw565]

@@betahumanx that it should?! Is the concept of feedback so hard to grasp?

[@user-vm8tz8lr4n]

survival was wayyy better before the rework jst made it comlicated for no reason gg blizz ruined my favourite spec

[@NovembersDooom]

Sweeping spear talent is bugged dude lol. Come on man, youre smart enough to realize that.

[@Azortharion]

Super possible! But I've seen crazier things be 100% intended. :)

[@trinkeslato9598]

@@Azortharion They probaly did the same mistake they did with elemental weapons on enhancement shaman during a PTR, they fucked up the decimal So instead of 5/10% We're looking at 0.5/1%

[@emrahkahraman3495]

So rude of you, it still doesn't mean it is not a place holder there, it might very well be

[@gampie13]

SV will stay unplayd by any one except for a highly nech small group, and be hated by the rest as a meme, as long as it stays melee It's impact of how it has decimated the class design overall warrants it's removal as an abomination. It "could" probably have worked, if they kept the old ranged survival, and introduced it as a 4th spec, or a sub-path of ranged survival. But that require WAY better and smarter developers to pull off

[@Saucemixer]

Bepples is it you ?

[@Renno1997]

Bro is dooming on one of the most promising reworks we have ever seen in WoW. I probably never played a class this fun than Surv on Beta right now and I've been playing Fury/Surv since Legion launched. You can stay mad, I have no idea why, but the design is top notch, the design is nice and we have build diversity now too. Year of the Spear baby. Dont be mad, be happy for us few.

[@gampie13]

@@Renno1997 i'm just stating reality.

[@Renno1997]

@@gampie13 You dont bro. Probably havent even read and understood my comment. Play it yourself and change your mind on your own.

[@gampie13]

@@Saucemixer who is bepples?