Patch 11.1 Updates
Patch 11.1 hit the ground running with an (often requested) extensive and complete rework to our hero talent tree Pack Leader, which you can read about here.
Survival Hunter itself is receiving some moderate changes as well in Blizzard’s continued effort to tighten up our AoE rotation and reduces the cognitive load of the spec. Additionally, our other hero talent tree Sentinel is receiving minor changes as well focusing entirely on Lunar Storm. All of these changes will definitely impact the specialization moving forward, so we wanted to give some early impressions of what you can expect in Patch 11.1.
Sentinel Changes
As mentioned above, the Sentinel attention this patch is all about Lunar Storm applying to both Marksmanship and Survival Hunters. The damage is increasing by 25%, both the radius of the storm and the duration are increasing 50% (both from 8 yards / 8 seconds to 12 yards /12 seconds respectively). Additionally, the storm now deals initial damage on top of periodic damage. One of the bigger changes however is that the “cooldown” of this spell is doubling to 30 seconds from 15 seconds. Conveniently, the game now has a buff on your buff tray to track the availability of Lunar Storm so you don’t need to use external tools to track this.
Finally, perhaps the biggest change, the Lunar Storm storm itself is no longer stationary. No longer does the ability summon a small owl fly overhead in circles, it instead summons a large blue field that slowly tracks your target. It’s important to note here that is is in fact SLOW and this is by design. You still need to somewhat think and plan around the storm (even more so no with the increased cooldown) you just aren’t immediately up the creek without a paddle if the tank decides to move slightly to the left, for example.
While these changes may seem simple, there’s a bit going on under the hood here that impacts your damage and hero talent consideration. Numerically, the result of this is a more burst-y, but very slightly weaker overall Lunar Storm. With the overall usage being cut in half, you’re also losing a lot of uptime on the vulnerability debuff from Lunar Storm. With optimal play prior to 11.0 you could realistically have 100% uptime on the 10% damage buff (Although, realistically you’d usually end up somewhere around 90% for most encounters). However, now in a best case scenario you’d only be capable of hitting ~66% uptime on that 10% increase. The moving Lunar Storm will be more convenient, but realistically it won’t make up for the less frequent usages from a strictly damage perspective. However, it will sure feel better positioning wise!
There are a bit more nuanced considerations for Mythic+ with the updated Sentinel. It is now dramatically easier to “waste” part your Lunar Storm on a dying pack, meaning you will not have it available for the next pack that would actually live its duration. It is very likely this is going to require you to actively play around its cooldown for optimal damage by holding your Wildfire Bomb.
Survival Itself
For Survival, there are a few more changes moving in to Patch 11.1. First and foremost, Flanking Strike is being moved from its own talent node to a choice node paired with Butchery. Blizzard’s stated goal with this change is to help reduce cognitive load with the specialization’s gameplay loop (especially in AoE, as there are a lot of buttons to press!) and open up more space for filler buttons such as Raptor Strike. Having access to both Butchery and Flanking Strike does fill up the rotation quite a bit and can make things—especially for those learning the spec—feel very busy and can over complicate things when wanting to generate and spend Tip of the Spear. Subsequently, Exposed Flank is being removed as a talent due to the new position of Flanking Strike. Truthfully, we won’t miss Exposed Flank as much as it’s a very narrow cleave and the secondary effect would fail to work a majority of the time.
Speaking of Flanking Strike (and in the same vein of many talents adjusted to work with the new Flanking Strike/Butchery choice node), Frenzy Strikes has been adjusted to include a very large attack speed buff for 8 seconds after Flanking Strike on top of extra damage of Flanking Strike. This attack speed buff will have you attacking extremely fast, especially with Bloodseeker which is a nice bit of synergy. Of course, all this attack speed ties into very well with Lunge. For example, early PTR testing with a Mythic geared 11.0 character had a 2-hand auto swing of 2.2 seconds, or even as low as 1.6 with Bloodseeker! Interestingly, Symphonic Arsenal (a Sentinel talent) does not currently work with Flanking Strike despite sharing the Butchery choice node.
This change has the side effect of opening up some talent point options in various build we run, which is appreciated as we’re also getting two new talents: Cull the Herd and Born to Kill. Both of these talents focus on Kill Shot and a bleed-based playstyle many Survival players enjoyed from the old Pack Leader tree which Blizzard recognized, but there is a concern with these new talents which you can read about below.
Bleed Build
Merciless Blow is receiving its now regular tuning adjustment, with the Butchery bleed from the talent being nerfed by a whopping ~45%. Honestly, we saw this coming as the old Bleed dealt such a tremendous amount of damage we were using the AoE intended ability Butchery in single target. Moving into 11.1, there are quite frankly a lot of interactions we have lost with the rework of Pack Leader that brought the damage to this level in the first place, so we are definitely concerned that Bleed builds are being hit and nerfed too hard.
We can already see this happen on the live servers where the damage difference between Pack Leader and Sentinel’s Merciless Blow is heavily in favour for Pack Leader thanks to the supporting hero talents, which we are (sort of) losing as a consequence of the we are Pack Leader rework. The massive bleeds were what gave the satisfying feel of the so called (Blizzard’s term here!)Bleed build in the first place, but as it stands Merciless Blow is struggling to reach much beyond 9% / 6% (AoE/ST respectively) of your damage contribution even with fully committed Bleed build.
Merciless Blow was the primary component that was built around to make the Pack Leader Bleed build feel the way it did, and while we get our Howl of the Pack Leader-bear-buddy in return helping us out spreading its own bleeds, the combined output doesn’t quite reach the same levels, This is partially due to some issues regarding some of the support talents we have received new replacements for: Cull the Herd and Born to Kill, which are meant to replace the old Cull the Herd. Ursine Fury to some extent mimics what Scattered Prey used to do.
The most important piece of feedback we have about these new talents is a simple one. The duration of Born to Kill’s enhancement to Kill Shot is frankly entirely too tight to be factored in at all. With a cooldown of 10 seconds, Kill Shot realistically won’t be able to buff itself as the debuff is only 8 seconds (click for PTR log). you’ll find that the majority of the time you are unable to buff your Kill Shots and feel that the talent isn’t really doing anything.
Sure, we have Deathblow (and the proc here can be raised to 20% with Sic ‘Em) but even then outside of Coordinated Assault or an execute phase you realistically won’t see this talent buffing Kill Shot too often, which can feel like the talent isn’t doing much. On top of this it also simply functions differently compared to the Cull the Herd it took inspiration from, which used to simply deal 60% of Kill Shot’s damage as a bleed over 6 seconds which in turn interacted with Bloodseeker on its own.
This issue becomes greatly exaggerated in AoE, where you have very little control over the secondary Sic ‘Em projectiles, meaning you might not even hit the same target in the small 8 second Born to Kill window to begin with. Not to mention this set of talents is weaker, less practical, and now comes at the cost of 2 costly Survival talent tree points.
Simply put, taking these talents will make us weaker elsewhere, which previously was not really a consideration as you’d simply reap the bleed build specific benefits directly from the Pack Leader talent tree.
While some of this is a simple tuning matter, part of the Bleed playstyle that we’re missing with the new talents in 11.1 was the hard hitting bleed attached to Kill Shot from the old Cull the Herd. Perhaps Born to Kill’s damage component could be re-tooled to that—this would provide a satisfying payoff to the Kill Shot package of talents while promoting the Bleed playstyle Blizzard directly referenced, and with the help of our Howl of the Pack Leader-bear-buddy we can get the bleed damage ratio back to where it was, just spread over different sources without an overtuned Merciless Blow.
Butchery vs Flanking Strike
As mentioned, Butchery and Flanking Strike are being merged into a single choice node. Blizzard commented on this change as such: We’re making access to Butchery and Flanking Strike mutually exclusive. Both spells have their own strengths and nuances, but having access to both at all times creates a crowded rotation that is absent of filler spells like Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite.
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