Bfa is at 8.2. How do we feel about surv hunter

[Dekkar-sisters-of-elune (Dekkar)]

nice name dude.

[Elorix-tichondrius]

I think survival is pretty cool, it’s a fun play style. I actually very much dislike how they’ve treated pet reliant specs the last couple of expansions. I find those to be extremely unsatisfying to play compared to how they were before. Both demonology and beast master.

Actually the more I think about it the more I realize those specs are the same…

[Bepples-barthilas]

@Sinelus-moonrunner

It’s a weird spec that only clicks with a few people. But the old survival was weird too, it didn’t have a “independent value”. It was this weird mix of archer and pet and…healing when you kill an enemy? No identity. New one is better and lets people live the fantasy of a spear-melee hunter with pet.

Old Survival had an identity. That identity was the utilitarian spec that augmented its shots with explosives and poisons. That’s an archetype very common to RPGs and Survival becoming melee means that’s a big part of ranged weapon themes is missing, just so we can have a 13th melee spec. You’re very clearly being reductionist and downplaying/overgeneralising the distinction which is pretty dishonest. There’s also no equivalency in terms of being a “weird spec that only clicks with a few people”; ranged Survival was an immensely popular and inclusive spec.

As for current Survival, its identity is a bit of a mess. It can’t decide whether it wants to be an Arms Warrior (Raptor Strike, Carve), a Beast Mastery Hunter (Kill Command, Coordinated Assault, Spirit Bond), or a utilitarian similar to ranged Survival (Serpent Sting, Wildfire Bomb) so it’s an odd mix of all three. Most worryingly, since a WoW Hunter is primarily defined by the ranged weapon first and the pet second, if a spec lacks a ranged weapon it depends heavily on the pet aspect. After all, if it lacked both things it would cease to be a Hunter at that point (coincidentally, this is something Kindwolf wants because he’s a Warrior reroll looking for a 3rd Warrior DPS spec). The result of this is we have a melee spec that inherently depends on borrowing from BM. This spec has BM’s existing signature (Kill Command), an old passive from BM (Spirit Bond), and a cooldown that’s barely distinguishable from BM’s Bestial Wrath (Coordinated Assault). You also act like there’s value in SV because it lets people live the fantasy of a spear-melee Hunter but it’s very clear that this archetype is just not appealing to many Hunters.

So, let’s recap: They made it melee to:

• help combat homogenisation
• solidify its theme
• make it distinct from other Hunter specs

As a result, they now have a spec that:

• contributes to homogenisation by removing one of the only ranged weapon specs in favour of a 13th melee weapon spec
• has the most directionless and unfocused theme SV has ever seen
• depends heavily on stealing BM’s mechanics

Oh, and let’s add something that wasn’t mentioned: It became the game’s highest-maintenance spec for Blizzard, having to be remade in 8.0 just one expansion after the 7.0 remake (most notably to make the spec more ranged), sinking valuable and scarce development attention from other specs to try to make something work that just isn’t working.

Hopefully now you can at least partially understand why some people might find the assertion that the “new one is better” just a little outrageous. After all, the spec did go from being one of the game’s most consistently popular and beloved specs to being, in your own words, “a weird spec that only clicks with a few people”.

@Shamajin-dalaran

It is one of the better melee classes in the game.

It really isn’t. Its PvP representation is on the lower end for melee specs and its PvE representation is borderline non-existent, and for good reason. It has little to offer beyond high single-target damage. Most of its utility is shared by the other Hunter specs, and they are ranged. From a PvE perspective, because I’m a PvE player: raids inherently have limited melee spots and Survival would occupy one of those scarce slots when it offers no significant utility advantage and could instead be ranged. That actually makes it one of the worst melee classes in the game.

Think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Fine. Why don’t you take it from actual SV mains who say the same thing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9pm46b/patch_81_hunter_community_feedback_megathread/e82ok5j/

@Maizou-proudmoore

It is not “extremely unpopular” - it is actually liked by a lot of people. You can pretty much walk through Boralus/Dazar’alor and find one in seconds.

… that’s your reference point? A vague anecdote? Oh boy, this is a doozy.

It is, actually, extremely unpopular. It is not common to run into one out in the world, and, since anecdotes are so important to you: no, I cannot go around Dazar’alor and find one most of the time. Yes, really. There are usually none. There are also usually none in my battlegrounds, world bosses/rares, and M+. I’ve literally grouped with a Survival Hunter ONCE this expansion for M+ (and few things were more enjoyable and satisfying than denying him the 415 Galecaller’s Boon that dropped for me). I did an AV at some point and remarked at how 17 out of the 80 players were Hunters. Not a single one was Survival. A similar situation recently in Wintergrasp: 11 Hunters, 0 Survival.

Literally the only place its representation is any good is upper-end rated PvP, and that’s largely coasting off the fact that BM’s damage is heavily nerfed (yet it’s still gaining on SV in the past couple months) and MM is functionally worthless in arenas. Even then, its representation in arenas now is nothing compared to ranged Survival’s last hurrah. Admittedly, that’s because WoD Survival was a monster in PvP.

Let’s not forget that Blizzard directly admitted that Survival was a niche spec because it is melee in a class that wants to be ranged.

@Maizou-proudmoore

Every other class offers something significant to groups. We offer nothing that other melee don’t do better.

This is actually largely true, although SV does offer an immunity and has better ranged damage. The difference is you see this as a need to add token utility to Survival in order to bribe people into taking it to raids, whereas I see it as yet another reason SV shouldn’t be melee, i.e. there are 12 other melee specs and it’s apparently starting to necessitate homogenising raid utility to support that many.

Plus, let’s be honest: it’s not just because of utility. Feral doesn’t have great utility, and it shares a class with one of the strongest ranged DPS specs you can pick right now. Even SV has a utility while Feral doesn’t. Yet there are many more Feral parses than SV.

Now is the time to point out that Survival hasn’t participated in a world first kill since Blackhand (i.e. 4 years ago, when the spec was still ranged). How far SV has fallen…

@Maizou-proudmoore

It was literally marksman with Explosive Shot and Black Arrow instead of Aimed Shot and Chimaera Shot.

Oh dear. This one again.

It’s always a laugh seeing the “SV was just MM if you don’t count all the things that were different” argument.

Yes, they shared some abilities like Multi-Shot. Because they were both Hunters. Contrary to the post-Legion “class fantasy” mania (which, notably, is now admitted by Blizzard to be a mistake), specs are actually meant to share somethings on account of being part of the same class. The parts that are different do lead to different playstyles. Having Aimed Shot v.s. not having Aimed Shot is an enormous playstyle difference. It’s very clear that you have minimal knowledge of the class regardless of how much you pretend to have played it if you don’t understand that. Plus, it’s not just active ability differences. Careful Aim v.s. Lock and Load matters, too, as does Sniper Training v.s. Serpnt Sting.

Did you ever actually look at what SV and MM shared in WoD, in terms of rotational abilities and passives? It was literally just Multi-Shot. And even that worked differently for either spec (Bombardment v.s. Serpent Spread). Let’s add Cobra Shot too, since it basically did the same thing as Steady Shot. That’s it. The focus generator and the AoE filler. And those things that were different did make distinct playstyles. MM was more methodical and hard-casting while depending on bursts of dmaage, while SV was more versatile and run-and-gun with sustained damage/multidotting potential. Do you go ranting about Warlocks because Affliction and Destruction are too similar? Because they largely have the same distinction.

Your standards for spec distinction are absurd.

@Maizou-proudmoore

All 3 specs used poisons. All 3 specs used traps.

As of WoD, only SV used poisons. If you think using the most recent iteration of ranged SV is unfair, shall we base all our arguments on Vanilla/BC where all 3 specs literally did the same rotation with the same toolkit, with all the differences being passive?

SV had better traps. It does not need to have exclusive traps to have the distinction as the “trap spec”.

@Maizou-proudmoore

It was literally just Marksmanship with 2 different spells.

Your use of the word “literally” would be a great justification for a language equivalent of child protective services.

@Maizou-proudmoore

They removed Serpent Sting in WoD, and it was automatically applied.

Still an important, distinct mechanic.

@Maizou-proudmoore

you pretty much had the same rotation, except the substitutions I mentioned

“It was the same if you don’t count what was different”

@Maizou-proudmoore

There is a reason they revamped it, to give it its own identity, and thus brought it back to its vanilla melee roots.

They remade it because the class developers of Legion had a dangerous combination of melee favouritism and lack of experience with the Hunter class (very evident from Celestalon’s BM/MM comments during WoD and Legion betas), and this is why the class is so poorly received nowadays.

Thinking that SV post-Legion was more similar to SV in Vanilla is revisionist/delusional. SV NEVER lacked a ranged weapon before Legion, nor did it ever deliberately stick to melee range. Legion SV was the first ever SV iteration that lacked a ranged weapon with Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, and Serpent Sting, and enhanced traps, which made it the SV iteration that had the least in common with Vanilla WoW. BFA SV fixes at least some of it by having Serpent Sting back, but it’s still far more separated from Vanilla SV than any of the ranged iterations which all preserved the ranged utilitarian nature up until the bitter end.

Also, this attitude is fallacious because it’s actually making two assertions:

• SV was too similar to MM
• The only way to make it distinct was to make it melee

Even if you accept the first one (which is false) making it melee is completely nonsensical. It’s contradictory to the established class identity and the interests of most people playing it, and as such it ended predictably: taking a bunch of effort to make a spec that needed an immediate second revamp and is played by hardly any Hunters. They actively took the path of most resistance and poor results, and now they are expressing regrets in trying to turn specs into micro-classes. Well wouldn’t it have been nice if they realised that before they dug themselves into the hole?

The point is: why was further development of ranged SV/MM ruled out? Current MM certainly plays nothing like ranged SV did. And there were so many mechanical possibilities with ranged SV. For example, SV’s Archimonde trinket made Black Arrow reset often which allowed you to multidot with it. That was awesome. It meant you could have Black Arrow rolling on several targets which would give you a stream of Lock and Load procs, therefore more Explosive Shots, therefore more single-target damage. It’s certainly a mechanic nothing like any Hunter spec has seen before or since. Tie in a Serpent Sting interaction and you have yourself a fully capable multidotting Hunter spec. THAT would be brought to raids and PvP, it would fit the class well, it would bring in a lot of players, it would be fully distinct from MM, and it would have taken far, far less effort to create.

@Maizou-proudmoore

But please, keep telling me how I don’t know the class I’ve played for almost 15 years.

Sure. Easy.

You don’t know the Hunter class

And I doubt you’ve been playing for 15 years. You consistently fail to understand the distinction between MM and ranged SV by making the same nonsense generalisations that people who don’t play Hunters make, and you make revisionist statements like the Vanilla one above. You are evidently speaking from a position of ignorance about Hunters, whether or not you’ve played it since Vanilla. If you really did you clearly weren’t paying attention.

@Maizou-proudmoore

Raptor/Mongoose and Carve are the only attacks that have to be done in melee range.

And we have Aspect of the Eagle that makes Raptor/Mongoose Ranged for 15 seconds, lol.

You should take a few moments to think about why they ended up compromising so much towards ranged gameplay in melee SV.

@Kindwolf-emerald-dream

I’d love Lonewolf for SV, although it would be ridiculously problematic to have, lol.

Kindwolf is slowly coming to realise that turning another class’s spec into the 3rd Warrior DPS spec might be problematic. We are making progress!

@Kindwolf-emerald-dream

O and I see a ton of SV hunters, not sure I believe their representation is low.

According to Kindwolf, the plural of “anecdote” is indeed “data”.

[Wewewewewewe-tichondrius]

so…many…words…don’t care enough to read… ^

[Dreta-stormrage]

Were closing in on another expansion with melee hunter being extremely unpopular.

While i absolutely love it, I dont main hunter so my opinion means little.

How do you guys think it should be moving forward? Personally i want it to have more melee attacks and cc

I will never play it.

They deleted a ranged spec to add even more melee.

Never.

[Kindwolf-emerald-dream]

Tldr
You’re right Lonewolf for MSV is as likely as RSV coming back. Do I think it would be cool? Sure, am I hoping for it? Nah why dwell on something highly unlikely.

Lol Bepples, that name. RSV was as unique as a wet fart. MSV has more character than RSV ever had.

Funny thing all the posters here stating how much they enjoy MSV.
You’re deluded, and your third tier spec isn’t coming back.

[Bepples-barthilas]

Lol Bepples, that name.

Few things are more ironic than a Worgen who actually put “wolf” in his name calling out other people for their character names.

Can’t stopples the epples.

MSV has more character than RSV ever had.

Too bad it has less characters playing it.

Funny thing all the posters here stating how much they enjoy MSV.

Along with many people, including the most upvoted post in the thread, saying how much they have MSV.

[Kindwolf-emerald-dream]

Ok Bep, sure sure.
Not sure what character has to do with it’s representation…You’re the one always whining about how unique RSV was.

Yea, there will always be haters, me I never liked RSV, to bland and not enough pop. Doesn’t change the fact that MSV is here and RSV is dust.

[Bepples-barthilas]

to bland and not enough pop

Are you really still pretending that ranged SV had a low amount of players? You have been repeatedly and unequivocally proven wrong on this, multiple times, with hard data.

You are “to” dismissive of other people’s points.

[Kindwolf-emerald-dream]

Compared to MM and BM RSV always had the lowest representation, outside of what 1 to 1 1/2 expansions.

Not a controversial statement champ.

[Dreta-stormrage]

I don’t CARE if ranged SV had low representation. Melee SV is even worse. At least I enjoyed ranged SV and was still a hunter, with a bow and arrow.

[Irosk-bronzebeard]

world of meleecraft, im sure they’re working on a way to make mages perform a melee role as we speak.

[Hamstar-draktharon (Hamstar)]

I like it but every thing I start trying to play it I always think to myself “why am I playing a melee hunter instead of just playing my ret paladin?”. I am never able to give myself a satisfactory answer.

[Dreta-stormrage]

world of meleecraft, im sure they’re working on a way to make mages perform a melee role as we speak.

Battlemages would be satisfying as a fourth spec, not overwriting the third.

[Ghorak-laughing-skull]

On topic:

IMO, current Survival should focus more on actual melee combat with syncronized attacks from hunter+pet.
I know some like the hybrid playstyle, but it also alienates many that either want more ranged focus, as well as those that want more focus on melee.
(Hint, multiple weapon styles allowed(1h weapons), remove Kill Command, replace it with Raptor Strike as a builder and bring in either Mongoose Bite or Flanking Strike(version of it) as the main spender).

---

@Sinelus-moonrunner

But the old survival was weird too, it didn’t have a “independent value”. It was this weird mix of archer and pet and…healing when you kill an enemy? No identity.

This very much depends on who you ask ofc. But compared to the theme/design of specs today, yes it wasn’t as defined as they are now. No specs were.

Though, any arguments that it was to similar to MM(statement by the lead devs in an interview at the time), or that it lacked a clear theme/identity. I don’t agree with.

These statements became invalid anyway the moment they decided to rework every spec in the game. They could’ve just done the same with ranged Survival as they did with the others. Give it a fantasy overhaul, a focus on spec identity with a core of it’s own.

If you ask me, it DID have that core. It had Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Serpent Sting along with several other nuances that spoke to it’s fantasy.

If we look at what the spec could be today, design-wise, what comes to mind for me, is this(link): We need range Survival Hunters back - #457 by Ghorak-laughing-skull

These suggestions of mine for a 4th spec option for the class, they speak to the past core fantasy of the class where you’re a hunter, fighting with a ranged weapon while being aided by a loyal companion.
And it brings back that beloved playstyle that was ranged Survival. And IMO, builds on the theme, even more so.

@Shamajin-dalaran

They just want to get on the outrage train. It is one of the better melee classes in the game.

Which is why the best option to get the spec many of us liked in the past, get it back as a 4th option rather than arguing for it to replace anything already in existence.

IMO.

@Signey-wildhammer

But they should have added melee hunter as a 4th spec and kept ranged sv.

Yep, they should’ve.

@Razaria-moonrunner

Smh when people say old Surv didn’t have a theme… because it did. It was the poisoned/utility arrows/trapping spec in contrast to MM’s more straightforward archery.

I’m still salty my spec is gone.

I feel your pain!(I agree in full).

@Maizou-proudmoore

It was literally marksman with Explosive Shot and Black Arrow instead of Aimed Shot and Chimaera Shot.

Your claim is false. All 3 specs used poisons. All 3 specs used traps.

Like I said above, specs back then weren’t as defined as they are today. But the core of the old ranged Survival spec, felt nothing like that of MM. The only similarity was that of you, using a ranged weapon to attack with.
Talents back then weren’t meant to differentiate the feel/design of specs like they are now. Only the core mechanics of each spec was different.
And yes, Survival was different from that of MM. MM focused on bursty gameplay with strong hitters while Survival had nearly no burst at all, it instead was a very consistant, steady playstyle. That focused on DoTs.

@Razaria-moonrunner

So, when did you play Surv, exactly? WotLK?

It was actually in WotLK that they first gave us the playstyle of Explosive Shot combined with Black Arrow. In Cata, they reworked it to be more of a core identity rather than being fully optional.
In MoP and WoD, they iterated on it, trying to see what they could do to improve it even more.

@Maizou-proudmoore

They removed Serpent Sting in WoD, and it was automatically applied.

Not the best choice they’ve made no.

@Maizou-proudmoore

you pretty much had the same rotation, except the substitutions I mentioned.

If you compare the thematic design of Explosive Shot to Aimed Shot along with Comparing Black Arrow to Chimera Shot, no, they were not the same. Go deep enough into mechanical functions and everything looks the same no matter the spec really.

@Maizou-proudmoore

brought it back to its vanilla melee roots.

I would urge you to recheck the design of the vanilla hunter class. No matter how you specced into talents, you would never become a ‘‘melee hunter’’. Sure, survival had options that focused a bit on giving you strengths in melee range. But you still wanted to fight from afar with a ranged weapon.

If you look at the general design of the specs in vanilla, mostly, they just enhanced certain aspects of your base toolkit, stuff you already had access to.

Beast Mastery talents, improved on the pet aspects.

Marksmanship talents enhanced your ranged gameplay.

Survival talents built on your theme as a tracker along with proving your…survivability, both through ranged options as well as melee.

@Niixi-moon-guard

and hope in the future maybe they can add a 4th

Yes please.

@Niixi-moon-guard

or work it’s way into MM talents

Could work, though this might not be the best option considering those that like the current MM playstyle with a focus on strong hitters.

@Bepples-barthilas

There’s also no equivalency in terms of being a “weird spec that only clicks with a few people”; ranged Survival was an immensely popular and inclusive spec.

Idd!

@Bepples-barthilas

Oh dear. This one again.

@Kindwolf-emerald-dream

MSV has more character than RSV ever had.

No matter about subjective viewpoints, you cannot compare a spec designed by old philosophies, with a spec that is in the game today. There is no point in comparing them in that way.
The design philosophy of today is that each spec should have it’s own, very clear, very unique theme. Some would argue that in despite of this, the current MSV does not live up to the new philosophy.

[Kindwolf-emerald-dream]

They could argue it, but like King Bepples, they’d be wrong.

[Rhulos-durotan (Rhulos)]

Were closing in on another expansion with melee hunter being extremely unpopular.

While i absolutely love it, I dont main hunter so my opinion means little.

How do you guys think it should be moving forward? Personally i want it to have more melee attacks and cc

It’s gotten a lot better since Legion, but still needs a lot of work. The rotation feels really weak without help from azerite armor. The new Memory of Lucid Dreams essence helps smooth out focus generation as well.

Survival should never have been the melee spec; Beast Mastery was the obvious choice if Blizzard was hell-bent on making a melee hunter.

Ranged Survival was a fun hunter spec and the replacement had to absolutely blow it out of the water for people to feel like they got something worthwhile in exchange. Obviously that did not happen and Legion felt like the designers legitimately had no idea what they wanted the spec to be.

Too late to go back now, but that mistake has been biting them in the backside since day 1 of melee Survival.

[Razaria-moonrunner (Razaria)]

To me it speaks volumes that a lot of “ultra-pro-MSV” types here are viciously trying to shut people down instead of… like, saying anything relevant?

Like, no, you’re not going to convince me that my DoT spec was “the same” as an ultraburst spec by complaining that hunters shared some of the same moves in their rotation. Protip: flanderized “spec identity” is a meme of modern WoW that was used to strip basic utility from everyone. Every spec having to have all/mostly different spells as a requirement was actually one of the worst gameplay decisions they’ve made. That’s why so many of them have iffy filler abilities that don’t work quite right.

[Worldwardrow-area-52]

Theres a ton in pvp. Open world so so, raiding im not sure but mythics none.

[Villano-khaz-modan]

Survival and Fury are the Best of BFA.