We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Survival Hunter in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Survival Hunter!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Blood DK
Havoc DH
Feral Druid
Guardian Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Windwalker Monk
Holy Paladin
Protection Paladin
Retribution Paladin
Discipline Priest
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Outlaw Rogue
Subtlety Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Enhancement Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Demonology Warlock
Destruction Warlock
Arms Warrior
Fury Warrior
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Hunter Tier Set
Why You Should Play Survival Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
Welcome home, good Hunters! A new season of Dragonflight is upon us! With the new season, we receive talent changes, new gear, a shifted gameplay loop, and more importantly, a brand new and powerful tier-set bonus. A new season also raises an important question…why should you play Survival Hunter?
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Survival Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2
Powerful and Gameplay Impacting Tier
Dragonflight Season 2 gameplay is moderately more different than Season 1. Once you have your tier-set bonus going, you’ll find yourself focused less on Mongoose Bite and paying more attention to your Wildfire Bomb. This is due to the brand new effect on Lunge that provides cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bomb as well as our tier set empowering your Wildfire Bomb and providing even more cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bomb. Other than that change, Survival is still the mobile and dynamic melee DPS you know and love.
Survial Hunter Damage for Dragonflight Season 2
One of the appealing reasons to consider Survival Hunter in 10.1 is the aforementioned powerful tier set which gives us access to a strong single-target profile as well as an even more powerful sustained AoE kit. Our damage is very much something to consider for both Raid and Mythic+ in Season 2 due to the single target and AoE damage it can pump out.
From a damage perspective alone, Survival is looking to be reasonably strong in a variety of content.
Strong M+ Utility Toolkit
Moving into a new season of Mythic +, your toolkit as a Hunter shines more in Mythic+ than Raid. You have a variety of crowd control options such as Freezing Trap or Binding Shot. With the new Incorporeal Affix, you can even find a use in Scare Beast to keep this Affix managed. You’ll continue to bring Tranquilizing Shot for harmful buffs or Enrages on your targets as well. Additionally, we will easily be able to deal with the new Entangling Affix to our natural mobility in melee with things like Harpoon or increased movement speed in Pathfinding and enhanced range with Lunge. Even if you get ensnared by this new Affix, you will be able to easily clear it with Posthaste.
Primal Rage and Aspect of the Turtle
Having access to both Aspect of the Turtle and Primal Rage can make you more appealing to a variety of group content. Primal Rage is especially useful because everyone appreciates a nice raid-wide Haste buff and this is even more important in things like M+ with smaller groups sizes so composition is more impactful.
Aspect of the Turtle is also a great tool to have as it grants you a limited state of invulnerability while retaining mobility, which can be very useful in dealing with certain mechanics in both Raid and M+. For example, Sporecaller Zancha in The Underrot spawns a lot of lethal mushrooms with Boundless Rot which can swiftly overwhelm your group if not dealt with properly. In emergencies, you can use Aspect of the Turtle and get rid of them all yourself and save your group!
Balanced Talent Tree
While we have the smallest and most expensive talent tree, there is a hidden benefit in such a…streamlined talent tree. Many of our talent options are very balanced very well in comparison to other options in our tree which opens up different build options for PvE content. In Dragonflight Patch 10.1, we have several competitive builds—many of which don’t even include a cooldown! This can be appealing for many players as our cooldowns can be quite awkward to optimize, so the opportunity to do competitive without these complex abilities can be appealing.
It’s Fun!
Survival Hunter is simply fun! The rotation and gameplay loop is fast paced.. You’re very much in control of your own damage as you do not heavily rely on procs or RNG to do what you need to do. Your abilities feel weighty, you have unique animations, you can tame pets, and of course, you have explosions!
What more could you need for your next main?
Why You Shouldn’t Play Survival Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2
It’s not all sunshine and roses, as there are still some important things to consider before playing Survival Hunter in Season 2. We lack specific and unique group utility, our talent tree is dated and restrictive, and our cooldown can be very awkward to get a handle on.
Lack of Unique Raid Utility
This is a long term problem of the Hunter class and especially apparent when comparing Survival to other Melee DPS. While other specs bring things such as Rallying Cry, Mystic Touch, or Retribution Aura/Devotion Aura to the group, Survival only brings Primal Rage which can be replicated by Mages, Shaman, or Evokers (which all three bring other unique and impactful utility on top of this raid wide Haste buff.) The utility we do have is mostly focused on things like crowd-control, which depending on the fight isn’t useful or even usable.
Technically we have access to Sentinel Owl and it’s accompanying upgrade talents, the benefit this “utility’ brings is infinitesimally niche and not worth the two talent points it takes to gain access to. In a very odd decision Roar of Sacrifice is being moved from the PvP talent area to the class-tree. This is odd because it is extremely rare to receive critical hits in PvE unless you sit down. It seems that this is just freeing up a talent choice for our PvP gamers out there but, as of now, this does not do anything in PvE.
Talent Tree Concerns
Among all melee DPS in the game, Survival has both the fewest amount of talent choices available and also the most expensive tree. This means we have less options (insofar as possible talent combinations and talents to pick from) than other specs while spending more points to gain access to these fewer options. Many view this as a bit dull—especially when many of our talent nodes are passive modifiers with no extra effects attached that you can directly see or feel doing things. Even though Quick Shot isn’t particularly strong, it is definitely more interesting than something like Sharp Edges despite both essentially boiling down to be a passive benefit.
This “expensive tree” and “passive modifiers” theme becomes even more obvious when you look at newer talent trees such as Retribution, where Adjudication is essentially a better Sharp Edges, costing only 1 talent point, and having a passive effect attached on top!
Many of our talents provide no observable impact on our gameplay outside of numbers and are expensive to boot, which can feel dejecting.
Awkward Cooldown
As mentioned above, the new season brings a new focus on Coordinated Assault as our go-to cooldown for all types of content. While this cooldown can be quite powerful when used properly, it’s inherently very awkward to use properly as it relies on your pet’s Basic Attack (Claw, for example). Assuming perfect conditions, you get 7 empowerments total to use during the cooldown and, from a damage perspective, it is (by far) optimal to use four of those on Kill Shot, which can be very hard to due without utilizing WeakAuras or a complicated series of macros. Without using said WeakAuras or macros, the odds of “sniping” an empowerment with Wildfire Bomb (especially with the new tier-set bonus and the new Lunge) if you pet’s Basic Attack is left on autocast.
About the Author
Hello! My name is Doolb and I am a huge fan of Survival. I’ve been playing WoW since 2006 and have been a huge fan of Survival ever since Legion’s pre-patch and we picked up the spear. You can always find me hanging around one of my favorite places on the internet: Trueshot Lodge—the best Hunter Discord server around. This guide is a collaborative effort between myself and Thyminde (aka Velratha) and will be frequently updated. Feel free to stop by TSL and ask anything you need!
For more information on playing Survival Hunter, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Survival Hunter Guide
