Recently yes 
In Legion and BFA, BM has been the most popular.
I don’t see how it’s much different than any class that has a melee vs ranged spec that have different primary stats and weapon specialties. Needing a different set of gear on top of a different rotation and being able to run around vs having to stand and cast is gonna feel different no matter what class.
No different from Enh/Ele or Boomy/Cat except Survival used to be a ranged spec at one point. Shame they killed it, I liked the Lock n Load explosive shot spam.
2 Likes
It’s different for a few reasons. One, like I said earlier, they took a spec that many people (myself included) enjoyed and fundamentally altered it to something completely different and arguably not fitting in with the class fantasy of a ranged class. And it’s something that practically no one was asking for. I don’t remember any great outcry like there is going on with priests now or like there was with shaman before.
To say there is precedent for it because of vanilla is also wrong. Those abilities and talents were mainly to help us immobilize or impair targets long enough to get back to shooting distance. You weren’t going to be effective with it outside of being a gimmick build for pvp.
Also, it makes no sense in that if they really wanted a ‘rexxar’ spec, the most obvious choice would be bm hunter. It’s a no brainer and they went and did the opposite instead and took a spec that should be about traps, dots, and cunning and made it into another face smash spec.
Then finally there is the redundancy issue. There is nothing a melee hunter does that already can’t be done better by other melee classes and adding another melee to the already glut of them is crazy. You are giving up your advantage of being highly mobile and ranged to be a sub par melee. No thanks. It’s not what a rolled a hunter for.
3 Likes
I love how one of the expansion’s selling points was the return to class over spec and unpruning of old favorite abilities, yet they kept Survival as a nearly dead melee spec that has almost no relation to the rest of the class. Instead of, you know, bringing back it’s vastly more popular version from WoD like they did for Enhancement Shamans…
2 Likes
Hunter class fantasy is ‘having a pet’.
Both BM and Survival fill that just fine. The only difference between them is melee vs ranged playstyle. Honestly the rotations for the two are even pretty similar.
If you want to talk about a drastic change between specs, marksman is the furthest you’ll get, as it encourages you to put the pet away and uses entirely different abilities than either BM or Survival.
Not to mention using a 2h pole arm goes 100% with hunting “fantasy”. Just not people’s LotR head cannon. And not an insignificant amount of people over the years asked for melee weapons to come back to hunters.
Anyone else remember how mad hunters used to get at warrs when we could equip ranged weapons?
2 of them are boring and braindead and 1 of them is fun but melee and people hate it for it.
i just wish they didn’t butcher my survival 
3 Likes
Imo they are still similar it’s the same as
Survival hunter is just a melee BM hunter…
If changing from melee to range is all it takes to feel like a different class then shaman and druid are the same. But imo there is still shadow and holy priest which I would say is considerable different same as, demo and affliction warlock, unholy and frost dk.
1 Like
In vanilla there were plenty of people who wanted/thought they were melee hunters. And to their defense, the early survival tree was an absolute mess and was geared towards a melee/ranged hybrid playstyle that didn’t work
It kind of works. In PvP you can’t stay at range at all times, and in PvE there are times when dancing between melee and ranged can be a DPS increase. It’s not very common, but a quick Raptor Strike with an Ashkandi can do a lot of damage while you wait for auto shot, Multi-Shot, and Aimed Shot to cool down.
But we always had a melee weapon, so it makes sense why they’d go for a full melee spec.
That’s rather simplistic and is directly contradicted by the current mm spec. Is the lock class fantasy also just, ‘having a pet?’
No.
Thinks range bm is braindead but melee bm is fun… 
Like I said, a couple of people tried a gimmick build in pvp around survival and melee. It didn’t work. It was never viable in pve. In my groups during the honor grind there were no melee hunters. In my MC and BWL days there were no melee hunters.
BM is boring survival is a lot of fun. Maybe you were making a funny. Ahahaha /eyeroll
If you think it’s funny that survival is bm with a spear instead of a bow/gun, then yes, I made a funny.
Survival is BM because they share one ability? Survival atleast has a skill ceiling higher than a gnomes knees. Really fun in PvP great in 1v1’s and 2’s and can do pretty good in 3’s. I love survival it’s the only spec I can stand playing on my hunter.
I’m glad you enjoy it, but I think numbers show that the previous (ranged) version of survival was far more popular than the current iteration.
2 Likes
That’s fine. They can just add explosive shot back and wyvern sting and black arrow. I already quit this game. I think retail is just a lot of low skill ceiling so no one feels left out. Ie DH. I loved old survival. I love MSV so much more. So fun and engaging.
Crazy I remember my realm party when this game hit 10mil. Now I’m going to be part of the 10mil that got off this train wreck. Feels weird.
Not really here nor there, but by coincidence I was just watching a video by a certain youtube person and he mentions this very subject. He said basically the same thing I was saying. The change to msv was something no one was asking for or really wanted and the spec as it currently stands needs a lot of work.
Old survival was the best spec, and it will always infuriate me that when I came back to the game it was gone. 
2 Likes