Survival in BFA

Survival got a huge change in Legion, transforming a spec that, maybe in vanilla, had had some melee capabilities, but which had been a dedicated ranged spec since around Wrath into a true melee spec.

The result was a little jumbled. The Legion Survival spec has several things going on that don't necessarily interact with each other - your biggest source of damage doesn't even cost or generate Focus!

In BFA Survival is getting pared down in a way that I actually think is very effective. So let's break it down:

Interestingly, nearly all your abilities are actually ranged, though your autoattacks and your biggest source of damage, Raptor Strike, are limited to melee. Aspect of the Hawk now makes your Raptor Strike temporarily ranged, meaning that Survival can do nearly all their damage at range for brief bursts of time.

You will be maintaining a DoT in Serpent Sting, which now has you pulling out a little hand crossbow, similar to an Outlaw Rogues' pistol, and hits the target with a somewhat short-duration poison effect.

Wildfire Bomb is your baseline AOE ability, working a bit like the current Dragonfire Grenade, hitting the target and exploding to hit everything nearby.

You then generate focus via Kill Command. KC works like it always did, but of course unlike Flanking Strike you don't have to be in melee range. Additionally, the big proc for Survival is that Kill Command has a chance to reset its cooldown on use, allowing you to generate more focus.

And of course, once Serpent Sting is up and Wildfire Bomb is on cooldown, you'll be spending your Focus on Raptor Strike, a rather straightforward melee attack.

Naturally, talents add new abilities, like Murder of Crows, or replace/alter existing abilities. As an example, if you loved Mongoose Bite, it's now a talent that replaces Raptor Strike.

I'm intending to check out Nazmir on a Survival Hunter, and I've done a few intro quests. So far I think it feels much more coherent than the Legion version.