Can Survival also get some spec-specific Torghast anima powers?
Layer 8 is hell on survival. Almost every hunter anima power revolves around kiting enemies. Survival can’t kite.
We need Survival-only spells that increase our pets health and damage, and buff our Raptor Strike/Wildfire Bomb in some way.
It’s very much not restricted to melee compared to Legion where it was absolutely pure melee; is it more meta as melee, sure but its skill set is fully hybrid.
Restricting it to fully range is far less accurate to OG survival as a skill tree than that.
Also whether WoD gutted SV during Hellfire’s lifecycle it still remains that the supposedly iconic ranged SV spec everyone is qqing for only lasted for two expansions, and mostly as a result of them not knowing how to balance MM when they decided to turn it into a petless turret spec (seriously “SV is so good” was mostly a reaction to MM feeling like total garbage after its initial Warlords revamp afaic).
Take all of the gimmicky “ranged” interactions/cooldowns out of Survival, make it a true melee spec, make it viable, and let it suffer like all the other melees in a sea of obscurity compared to ranged kingdom.
No, Affliction is the one with the dots.
I used to call Destruction the fourth mage spec though, because it didn’t really care about demons or have anything about it that seemed distinctively warlock-ish.
Distinguishing DPS specs from each other has been a problem for a long time, and was the specific motivation behind several Legion spec reworks including SV (even though you clearly think that was misguided/unnecessary). Current SV is pretty high on distinctiveness - the only other melee with a pet is Unholy, and that’s not using actual animals as pets.
I’d ask if you would still hate SV as much if it was on a different class, except – it really CAN’T be on a different class, because taming is even more central to the Hunter class identity than shooting things.
This sentence would be even more true if you delete “Survival being”, though. Melee specs in general are in a bad spot when the most common type of mechanic in fights is “don’t stand here, or here, or here, or here either” and every group leader looks at that and says “better stack ranged”, but that doesn’t mean they should ALL be deleted, so what’s different about SV? Belonging to a class that also has RDPS options? Nope, you’re not suggesting deleting Feral and Enhancement. It’s just the history.
The problem with being melee can only be fixed by fight redesign, not by spec redesign. It needs to be OK for DPS to be melee, there are just too many MDPS in the other 11 classes for it to be acceptable for “melee = bad” to be a thing, regardless of what happens to SV in future expansions.
And even if Blizzard does consider re-re-reworking SV, there’s no way they would do it before 10.0 at the soonest, so it’s irrelevant to whether SV should get buffs in 9.1 or 9.2 or 9.3.
Hunter: “OH my gosh! Stop dropping your totems on my dress! Do you know how much this cost!”
Shaman: “Hey, your bird just pooped on my tux! This thing was a rental!”
Both: “Ugh! This is the worst prom ever!”
Sorry, but the idea made me giggle.
To the OP: I would love for Survival to get more love - it is such a fun spec. It just needs a few tweaks and buffs to make it sing.
That’s my opinion too. They have so much of the “sapper” core fantasy present but it’s mixed in with melee/ranged and having a pet.
I wish it could have a lone wolf talent and maybe a buckler and one hander.
I’m going to playing around with it as I level another hunter through SL.
It’s so weird and sad. Ranged survival was popular, they gave it a massive polarizing revamp in Legion, then kind of forgot about/neglected it ever since. Like a toddler finding a toy, breaking it, and walking away.
Survival should be dual wield, not 2H.
That is all I have to input.
You are correct
It should be both imo. Spears and staves absolutely fit and there are a couple greatswords that used to be agi weapons before stats got normalized to fit every spec that can use a piece of gear.
Plus rhok’delar’s companion melee weapon was a staff.
you know what, good point.
well then it wouldn’t be survival, it would just be content
The core idea of a melee pet spec attracts me though. I don’t want it to be an off brand Warrior.
This would be a talent in a row. Not an end to your pet.
TBF until they added pet passives, fixed pet utility, and made it a spec passive for MM, it was 100% the only talent worth taking in its own row.
If you want to be competitive in PvE you have to stick to melee range. Survival is under a penalty whenever it’s at range (even with Eagle because you still can’t auto-attack).
“Restricted to range” is an oxymoron because ranged specs can fight in melee range at full effectiveness.
The original Hunter class couldn’t fight in melee at full effectiveness and had to use a weak melee toolkit when up close. Survival was just a little less weaker in melee. It still had a ranged weapon and preferred to fight at range, so any vision for it that lacks a ranged weapon is inaccurate to OG Survival.
Another poorly researched argument (typical from you). I already told you it was 4 expansions, not 2. WotLK, Cata, MoP, WoD. Survival was popular from the start of WotLK all the way to 6.2 in WoD. MM was also popular at times so this wasn’t just a reaction to people not liking MM in WoD.
That… is not the feeling I get when I look at Destruction. It absolutely looks like a Warlock spec that makes use of demonic elements and dark magic.
It really isn’t much of a problem, actually, because specs within a class are meant to share some things for the simple fact that they’re part of the same class. SV is actually less distinguished in the broader game now because there are way more specs using melee weapons than ranged weapons. It’s only more distinguished within the Hunter class – and that distinction comes from a weakness.
Precisely; melee are crowded, generally at a disadvantage, and it’s difficult to keep them all relevant. Knowing this, why turn a ranged spec into a melee spec? Nonsense.
They shouldn’t delete existing options, but they also shouldn’t continually pour gasoline on the fire by continuing to add melee specs.
One thing that can help is alleviating the melee bloat. It’s bad enough that every single DPS spec added to the game post launch has been melee. Turning a ranged spec to melee when these issues were already apparent was lunacy. They should undo it. Simple as that.
People want long-term maintenance about Survival and melee Survival just shouldn’t be long-term.
This is a talking point on the forums in every patch. “X.0 is way off and it makes no sense to talk about it now”. Yet the moment X.0 is announced it becomes “everything’s set in stone now so there’s no point talking about it”. It’s a convenient way to dismiss any and all class feedback.
Survival is not just “a few tweaks and buffs” away from being fine. There are core, underlying problems keeping people from playing the spec.
what does this even mean?
I have said it before but survival should be a tank spec. It would be the first mail tank, and create more tank possibilities, and the way I see it - there is a huge demand for tanks.
The potted plant in charge of survival hunter’s balance thinks they’re fine as is.
I mean they don’t think a lot but hey it’s a potted plant, be patient.
Such as the unrealistic and unrelenting nostalgia for a Ranged Survival that never was?
I mean, I miss Frostfire Bolt spec from Wrath on my Mage and “there’s no other spec that plays like it!”, but it ain’t coming back.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I think you and the RSV crowd are so caught up with what you imagine once was that you can’t appreciate what MSV is. Not to mention the viciousness with which the RSV crowd attacks anyone who loves MSV.
That said, I would be quite happy if they gave Hunters a 4th spec that played closer to what RSV used to be if they would give MSV the love it deserves.