if the spec is not in a constant state of survival, it cannot be called survival, thus it can never be correctly balanced
(MSV)The crappiest and least played spec in the game and one of the dumbest ideas in this game ever?
Blunt right?
6 Likes
By that argument MM also sucks since nearly 85% of hunter parses are for BM.
Or maybe it’s because hunter balance skews towards one spec being a lazy three-button spec that only does marginally less dps than the ones that require actual effort. BM only gets overshadowed in PVP where MM and SV rule the roost comparatively because being so dependent on pets is a liability.
Also feral druid and sub rogue are much, much worse melee specs atm.
SV was the bottom spec in Cata.
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Is MM anywhere near the bottom 3 or 4 lowest specs in the game?
last I’ve seen SV was least rep one (was a google DOC floating around showing the convents or something of the such and SV was dead last bottom by a lot).
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The common thread of melee specs sucking is not that having a melee ranger option is bad, it’s that melee is in a bad place.
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I think Rogue was the next highest and was still almost double.
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I’m sorry what?
Warcraft Logs - Combat Analysis for Warcraft
Warcraft Logs - Combat Analysis for Warcraft
Warcraft Logs - Combat Analysis for Warcraft
Only in normal does BM have more parses than MM and not by much.
But let’s look
This is always fun…
Hunter Population - Google Sheets
Survival doesn’t even make up 5% of the hunter player base all xpac and despite BM being worse than MM all xpac it’s been more than 1/3rd of hunters and is close to 45% currently.
The 2nd least played spec in the game has nearly double the players of survival.
11 Likes
Man, some serious debate in the hunter fandom
all I wanted was a buff lol
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Huh, thanks for the actual stats, the numbers I’d seen were off for BM
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Honestly all this survival talk for me motivated me to give it a go and I’m actually having alot of fun on my 48 DI dwarf hunter. Playing it melee and ranged in epic bgs!
I love the sapper play style. Waiting for an opening to jump in while throwing every trap and incendiary I can.
Gonna level engineering for more bombs!
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I just appreciate the directness.
I disagree with your evaluation, but the honesty is refreshing.
MSV will probably never be good unfortunately. Too many people would lose their minds at “having to play melee on a ranged class”. Population stays low due to a history of continued sucking. Population being low gives those same people ammo to ask for RSV back because no one plays MSV.
The best way to go about MSV would probably be to just put it on a new class like tinker or something where it can get actual tuning without people throwing a fit.
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I have a better idea.
- Put it back to what it was before it was made melee, so I can have the use of 3 specs rather than 2. I play a ranged class to play a ranged class, not a 2 spec ranged/1 spec melee sort of.
That’s it really.
7 Likes
The only solution is to change Survival back into a ranged spec and get all the melee wannabees out of the hunter class.
There’s too many hunters as is.
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I missed this in my previous reply. This is flatly untrue. Not only did Blizzard explicitly define Hunters as the class distinguished through its use of ranged weapons, but the aesthetic and combat style of Hunters is far more heavily dependent on being ranged than having a pet. To make a petless Hunter all they had to do was add an optional talent which had no playstyle effect for most situations. To make a Hunter without a ranged weapon they had to remake a spec from the ground up.
- Most Hunters wouldn’t tolerate melee DPS; what makes you think they would like to play a tank spec?
- Tanking does not fit the Hunter class identity
- Creating more tank specs does not create more tanks
This would be a disaster even bigger than melee Survival. If this is something you’ve been saying a lot, it’s time to stop saying it.
Ranged Survival never existed? This is new to me.
The underlying issue is the fact that Hunters were defined around using ranged weapons and the class design reflected it. This means people who like melee classes are generally attached to other classes already while Hunters are mostly ranged-preferring players. Making one of those specs melee is not only hugely disruptive but it’s inherently opposed to most Hunters’ interest so right out of the gate it has a low ceiling in terms of appeal. Of course, that doesn’t apply to new players, but you still have the problem where it’s trying to look appealing v.s. the only two ranged weapon users in the game (easy choice for most new Hunters) and the spec is essentially trying to be unique via a weakness compared to the base class. People don’t choose specs for their handicaps.
They should consider it, but even so this was a variant of an existing spec and not an entire spec to itself.
I can’t appreciate what MSV is because it’s rancid class design. They made a spec less capable than the rest of the class purely as a tokenistic difference and in doing so they removed a very good and fun spec with so much more potential.
I’m sorry (not really) to be blunt, but I think the MSV crowd is mostly roleplayers and people who like to be seen as “quirky” and the “underdog”, and it’s such a staggering waste of time and effort to satisfy such a niche crowd.
Other way around, but even still:
- 15% of a class playerbase is still a lot more than melee SV has ever had
- Covenant statistics indicate that BM is at least broadly popular outside of competitive content while SV is still extremely unpopular (less than 5% of all Hunters who have chosen a covenant)
- Both BM and MM have had their turns being popular specs since Legion, while SV has always been unpopular
The skill difference between the Hunter specs in PvE is very minor. Once again an uninformed take.
While you are right that pets are often a drawback, BM is currently our best PvP spec.
Not only are those specs much better established with existing playerbases, and they have both shown that they can be popular specs, but currently they both have a lot more players than Survival. So actually Survival is worse.
Damn, Paragon sure must have been brave to bring such a bad spec to so much of their cutting edge raiding in Cataclysm!
Actually, SV was an extremely powerful and popular spec in Cataclysm and was even the most popular spec in the game by the end of the expansion according to archived worldofwargraphs data.
Pro-tip: you seriously need to stop trying to make factual claims about the state of class balance and representation because you’re embarrassingly wrong almost every time. If I could pick one word to describe all your arguments it’s “uninformed”.
Are you sure you’re not describing Legion Survival?
Yes exactly. It’s too contentious for the class and if it became good it would invalidate ranged weapon gameplay in this game entirely. Hunters would rightly be outraged. It’s just a poorly-thought-out and infeasible idea. They should have considered this before implementing it.
The Hunter population really wouldn’t be affected much if they made SV ranged. Very few people play it to begin with and of those people only some fraction would actually leave the class over it. I actually suspect a big part of Survival’s playerbase likes it for reasons unrelated/not depending on melee, having seen the reasons people give for playing it.
4 Likes
That’s what I mean, it won’t hurt anything to get rid of those melee hunters.
Also you have WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to much time on your hands buddy.
So to summarize your objections:
- Survival is melee, which adds all the inherent difficulties melee DPS have to deal with.
I guess we need to delete 12 other specs (including and entire class) in the game since melee DPS represent “rancid class design”.
- Hunters are designed as the sole ranged weapon specialist class, so we need to maximize the number of ranged specs of Hunter.
There are only 3 specs in the game that use Shields. This comparative rarity does not mean we need more specs to use shields. The comparative rarity of ranged weapon users, in the same way, does not mean that all Hunters have to specialize in ranged weapons.
- Survival was once a ranged spec, therefore it must be made one again.
Just because something used to be in the game doesn’t mean it must return. As a counter-example, consider the Shadow Priest changes that eliminated the old Voidform: the mechanic itself was deeply cannibalistic, requiring spec-wide buffs at the start of expansions, followed by spec-wide nerfs once gear scaling kicked in; it forced all of our baseline spells to be absolute garbage outside Voidform and it forced a single cookie-cutter talent spec far beyond the norm.
So, what part of MSV is so unbalance-able and cannibalistic that the spec needs to be destroyed?
I think if you step aside from your nostalgia and honestly evaluate the spec, you have to concede that it is quite functional and as easy to balance as any other melee DPS in the game. Do you have an argument on why MSV is uniquely negative that isn’t shared by every other melee DPS?
I like MSV because it’s genuinely a blast to play and is by wide margins more fun than either other Hunter specs. You don’t have to agree with my opinion, but unless you have an argument beyond “I remember back in my day…” you really ought to stop dumping on anyone who likes the spec and wants to see it thrive.
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Yeah sure, delete it. It shouldn’t exist. Why is there a MELEE HUNTER SPEC? Melee is already oversaturated, and they’re literally the only class in the entire game that uses bows/crossbows/guns and one of their specs doesn’t even use it. We can buff it by reversing the stupid decision that turned them into Melee.
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uhh, Unholy DK.
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I’ve been playing this Survival hunter a lot recently, and it really is awsome in M+. Single target sucks for raids, but otherwise I find it to be very balanced.
I’d say my biggest issue is needing a lower gcd for spreading serpent stings around.
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