So for those that are arguing back and forth using anecdotal data as evidence, why not actually source this “data”?
Do sources not exist anymore or is it just laziness because a person believes their memories of past events/data are a 1 for 1 comparison to the actual events/data?
I like the current iteration of Surv. It had a bad flow in Legion and they made it better in BFA. Still not perfect, I personally feels best when I speced into mongoose for the charges on your primary attack and primal for the charges on kill command. Bake those in and I would be cool. The grenades range cone is neat and I like how it works with cleave.
As I think about Aspect of the Hawk I do wonder if they couldn’t remove it and split the spec a bit. Make it a talent that lets you just use a ranged weapon for autos and Raptor strike could be Raptor shot? I personally like being a hunter with a big sword or spear on my back but there is only Raptor Strike and Wing Clip holding us to melee. Make it an option to go either way.
I’ve Love Surv Hunter, it’s amazing. I Top damage in runs of my guild mates of M+. I like the feeling and gameplay of that spec, but I fear, that now that blizz will be focus on working on classes rather that spec, they decide to kill melee hunters, I like to have options.
Sources are problematic in that they either aren’t complete or no longer exist.
I’m pretty sure sites like warcraftlogs don’t have snapshots of raid numbers during their peaks while current that you can access to see those participation levels at those specific times. Just like warcraftrealms doesn’t show activity trends going back past a year. Meanwhile worldofwargraphs only takes a snapshot of characters with Mythic kills.
For the latter, you can see and compare the trends in participation for all 3 Hunter specializations over time and with a little work can match that up with specific tiers/patches. Which, in the period it still covers, show that Marksmanship was the least played Hunter spec in their data models right up until Survival got crippled in WoD and Marksmanship got fully mobile super spammy Aimed Shots. Then MM dropped again with Vulnerable and BFA.
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/survival#
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/marksmanship
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/beastmastery
Of course, none of these sites go back all the way to Vanilla and the percentage distributions are all based on current numbers so there’s no real way to see “popularity” over the lifespan of WoW. Yet, from what limited data we have, it’s pretty clear to see that the change to melee for Survival and the continual move towards weird and often situational mechanics for MM have cemented Beast Mastery as the most solid Hunter specialization. I mean it is remains the most player mobile and instant attack based ranged shooter.
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Look, I get that people miss OG SV, and some people hate the fact that its just another melee, but it lets me play as an Orc with a giant axe and a wolf so f*ck you thats why its awesome.
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That’s always something that worries me when the devs decide to do massive shake-ups in design philosophies and when developers in general decide to engage in pendulum swinging (the latter of which happens far too often in the video game industry).
I don’t think melee Survival should be deleted in favor of bringing back ranged Survival. I think ranged Survival should be brought back in some form such as a fourth spec, which would simply avoid causing more complaints about deleted play styles in the first place.
Above thread is a pretty good example of how the ranged Survival gameplay should be brought back.
On a side note, I also do not want the devs to prune Pistol Shot and Between the Eyes, either. Glyphs that change the aesthetics of the abilities would be fine, they just shouldn’t be pruned simply because some players complain about Outlaw Rogues using guns.
Plenty of players now actually like Pistol Shot and Between the Eyes, while others would like to be able to change their visuals to thrown weapons through Glyphs.
Like many of the more recent replies show, we have several players who do like/love the current iteration of the Survival spec.
Which makes for my point really. As long as we keep arguing that: The spec has to be ranged again vs. NO, it has to be melee! As long as we continue with this, we won’t get anywhere.
If the devs keep it still focused on melee gameplay, then those of us who loved that old ranged DoT-spec, we will continue to petition for a playable version like that to come back. If they instead change it back to be a ranged spec, then those who currently like it as it is, in BfA, then they will feel neglected as well.
We are different, we all have our preferences on what playstyle we like.
Besides, it’s not like a 4th spec option cannot be done, it’s just a matter of changing the minds of the devs that there is justification for giving us one.
Idd.
My first thought when I saw that they were changing SV into a melee spec was: Okay, you want to bring in the focus on melee combat to the Hunter class, it’s essentially a completely new playstyle for the class, so why not give us a 4th spec from the start?
Yep, I’ve posted my share of replies in there as well.
I came into it fairly late though. Think my first reply came as number 431 or something. Yeah, this one: We need range Survival Hunters back - #457 by Ghorak-laughing-skull
I’m a EU player so, prior to the post in the link, I haven’t done any posts on the US forums. I went over here because I like the increased activity on these forums compared to EU. These forums show about 10 times the number of daily visitors and people engaging in discussions compared to that of EU forums.
Now, as far as changing the minds of the devs towards that 4th spec option, I have no idea if they(devs or other mods) even bother to engage in a thread with so many replies.
But, if I don’t post any replies containing my motivation behind my suggestions, or if I don’t post any suggestions at all, then they certainly won’t see them. This is just how I choose to look at it.
Which is why I create topics like this one as well: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/4th-spec-pre-legion-survival-spec-fantasy/47579
Warrior: Protection, Arms, Fury
Paladin: Protection, Retribution
Druid: Guardian, Feral
Shaman: Enhancement
Demon Hunter: Vengeance, Havoc
Monk: Brewmaster, Windwalker (sort of even Mistweaver)
Death Knight: Blood, Frost, Unholy (gets a pet too)
Rogue: Outlaw, Subtlety, Assassination
Those are all your options for melee fantasies.
Hunter: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship
Those are the only options for Ranged Shooter/Physical Damage dealer.
If you look at Beast Mastery logs for the top Hunter rankings you will see up to nearly 75% of damage being all pet based with 2/3 of that damage being melee white damage. Meanwhile the top PC attack is Auto Shot. This really doesn’t translate to feeling like a Ranged Shooter at all.
The player doesn’t have any high damage ability to fall back on for whatever reason. The closest you get are Kill Command and Chimaera Shot (if taken) and those aren’t particularly that strong.
If you compare that to your melee physical damage dealers you’ll see a lot more player activated attacks being the top damage dealing abilities which translates to having abilities that actually feel impactful to use, not just to look at on parses.
For Marksmanship, you at least get to have Aimed Shot that feels good to use as far as damage goes, until you start getting into the actual mechanics and interplay between abilities which turns players away from the specialization. Particularly in a Class known for high mobility and instant casts and short channels having your main and major damage ability being a long cast, immobile shot doesn’t help.
Ranged Survival at least had a blend of steady DoT damage, high damage proc based instant cast abilities, along with pet and trap utility and great mobility.
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No it doesn’t. And IMO, it shouldn’t either.
Beast Mastery - main focus on pet enhancement, either via your primary pet or by calling in additional beasts. Any attacks made by you as the hunter, should be done via a ranged weapon.
Marksmanship - the ranger spec. Should not promote gameplay based on pets in any way. You can play with a pet if you want, but nothing baseline nor any talents should focus on enhancing your pet. IMO.
Melee Survival - main focus should be…melee-combat(in the style of the hunter class). You can have some optional ways/talents that involve your pet.
(4th spec) Ranged Survival(new name maybe?) - main focus should be ranged combat, with you enhancing your ammunition(bullets/arrows), rather than focusing on perfect aim(archery). Like with Melee Survival, you should have optional ways/talents that lets you focus on enhancing your pet.
2 Likes
And I would disagree because historically we had a spec with a larger focus on player abilities, a single hard hitting pet attack, and more than a few passive interactions between PC and Pet that strengthened each other’s attacks either through extra focus, extra haste, or higher damage.
Which fit the theme of a Ranged Shooter (first) working in tandem with an animal companion that Blizzard describes as being kin and sharing a profound bond with the Hunter.
I don’t get that kinship feeling with Beast Mastery anymore. I get the feeling of a Lion Tamer cracking a whip or a Retriever trainer whistling and shouting directions (and Dire Beast using a whistle emote reinforced this).
Definitely not like having multiple different shots or ranged attacks including some particularly hard hitting talent options. Or having your own personal selection of pets to call out for a controlled burst of damage via following your target and also swapping targets with you as well as providing their own minor threat protection.
Now, if you still had a ranged Survival spec with it’s DoT steady damage and Explosive Shot impactful damage where there’s the utility aspect of the pet for positioning and threat management you would still feel more like that partnership that Hunter’s used to have.
Also, I balk at the term “enhancement”. Demonology being based on fel magic and summoning magical minions enhances it’s “pets” to do more damage. Beast Mastery effectively says “attack”, “attack harder”, and “attack faster”.
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My main has been survival full-time since the patch dropped and loves it. Legion it was a bit clunky and unforgiving but besides dealing with a bit too many dots on top of mongoose and pet I enjoy survival.
With that said I worry about it’s future because it straddles the line between melee and ranged to the point that any balancing issues could result in disaster.
Besides a CD the player must be in melee range to raptor strike (the bulk of their damage) and carve but otherwise they can sting and bomb from 40 yards and KC from 50 yards. I played a frost mage since vanilla and still do, and I’ve seen countless times where PvP balance had turned the spec to crap. I just have that foreboding feeling with survival down the line when haste gets higher and higher.
I never said that this is what I think the current BM spec is like. I think that BM can be improved A LOT still.
I just said that, considering the general spec design today, I would like for my above statement to be accurate.
Agreed.
Idd.
Which is what I was aiming for when coming up with my spec proposition for that 4th spec option.
Reading time, includes replies as well(not only the OP).
Anything that further includes interacting with or relying on your pet, I’ve placed in via talent options because many today don’t want to rely on pets.
This way, for anyone who wants to, you can so choose to. But if you don’t want to, you can choose something else.
Survival is really in a good place and completely viable in EP (at least on normal). I didn’t have problems pugging the entire raid and getting into groups. Was consistently in top 5 dps at ilvl414. There are some haste mechanics (at least on the seventh boss in EP that makes spamming mongoose great) and really for azshara as well.
I really hope they don’t gut or change survival in 9.0
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personally i love it, great spec with a good kit, at least compared to alot of other specs.
That being said i know alot of old hunter mains hate it, my old raid groups hunter would not even try the spec out because she feared blizzard would take that as her liking it ![:confused:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=6" ":confused:")
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the data goes back into MoP, and what you can see is hunter faced much the same problem mages still do to this day. people would just jump ship and change to whatever spec was dealing most damage.
it’s why you saw those massive swings in spec on the charts.
(again you can see this same trend with the mage charts on wargraphs)
Suv hunters? They’re not surviving very well. Much like their toolkit.
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i don’t think you’ve seen their toolkit, it’s much more vast then your giving it credit
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I see the hunter green lettered icon and wonder why is he taking so much damage. Oh yeah, melee hunter.
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Blizzard has done a poor job over the years in balancing the specs of the pure dps classes so they each perform close to one another in any given content.
Inevitably, one significantly out-performs while another under-performs - and inevitably, Blizzard nerfs one and buffs another, and inevitably players switch specs.
Wrath was a classic example for hunters - in early Wrath, everyone was BM (readiness / beastial wrath) as it out-performed the other specs.
BM was then nerfed hard mid to late Naxx tier (with Ghostcrawler alluding to BM being too easy, even saying it could be played while eating a sandwich).
SV was then the top spec (trap dancing), with MM not too far behind, and MM generally surpassed SV by the end of expansion (mostly due to ar pen scaling).
Balancing is always hard. Perfect balance, is impossible to achieve in this game.
Having said that, one would wish that, especially lately, that raids did not favor classes/specs that can somehow multi-dot so much over those that can’t.
Or!
They should give Hunter’s a spec/playstyle that can more easily deal with that as well.
Hint…hint…Ranged SV 
#https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/4th-spec-pre-legion-survival-spec-fantasy/47579?u=briz-zenedar
Granted that the old SV spec wasn’t that much of a multi-dotter compared to specs like affliction or shadow priest but…your damage was largely based on DoTs.
Many do yes. Those that care less about the design and fantasy and more about performance will switch whenever they find something “stronger”.
What’s sad to me is that the mindset today is that no matter really what content or difficulty level you engage in, you have to do everything in the most optimal way.
If you look at for example, mythic raids. Most who engage in that, can play whatever spec they want. They can choose whatever talents they want. It doesn’t have to be the highest performers.
Most wipes are a result of someone/some messing up on a mechanic. They don’t happen because you pick a talent that performs 5% under another talent on the same row.
Or a spec for that matter.
If you play at a competitive level(in PvE or PvP). It’s a different story ofc. When it’s a matter of competing, you would want to focus on performance.
But since WoW is designed in a way where “perfect balance” is impossible to achieve. There will always be that one perfect build. Or that one spec that does better than others.
Yep, and for ICC, you wanted to switch to MM. Even SV performed well at that time. Sometimes even better than MM.
Exactly.