Yeah, make it a ranged spec again!
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i think its more pve wise even if it does higher damage it has such a larger margin of error (edit: with its stacking mechanics) that its not worth the nerf of being melee. it need some utility to make up for that it lost with being ranged and there is none.
melee generally doesnt have as much to focus on but its a cluster bomb in there, also survival used to get targeted by ranged mechanics 
I have given survival a try. I played it in legion. I played it in BfA and got AoTC in that spec 2 of the tiers. I have a good bead on how it can play and what it does.
The problem with it is that it has been nothing but clunky since the change to melee. From making @target, and @feet keybinds to quickly drop caltrops and explosive trap. To spamming mongoose, then using the legendary ability, to squeeze out 2 or 3 more 5 stack bites at the end. To now, where you kinda have a burst CD, but the amount of haste you need to make mongoose bite work, isnt available till you get a MUCH higher ilvl.
Aesthetically we have this tiny crossbow that we shoot poison arrows, and Powerful Kill shots out of. We use our pet ability to gain focus. We throw grenades which change out ability priority. We have two abilities that we use our weapon for. BUT, we have a CD where we fling Spectral DPS eagles from a distance at the enemy.
The spec is all over the place. And the crappy thing, is that a lot of the abilities are really fun to use. But in order for survival to be viable, it has to bring a raid buff or utility to a group that another class/spec doesnt. Or do more DPS than the other two Hunter specs. And even if it does more DPS than the other 2 specs, Does it compete with the other melee specs, that bring Raid CD’s, or Buffs/Utility? Because if Survival did the same DPS as MM, and could do that BIG AoE Wild Spirits Burst… You would still bring MM, because for most situations, its more beneficial to bring a ranged.
Now onto WoD Survival. It lacked on demand burst, but holy hell, was it smooth to play. It was ultra mobile, sustained RDPS. Black Arrow/Lock and Load/Explosive shots were so much fun. The spec itself was a blast to play. And only needed one tweak to give it solid AE. “Hitting a Target affected by explosive trap, with explosive shot, will spread explosive shot to all targets affected by explosive trap”
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Nooo don’t change it yet! I’m just getting ready to make one myself. I wanna see it in its current iteration before y’all’s go changing it lol
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It’s so fun and unique that there are literally 13 melee dps specs.
Discount BM hunters.
How about just make ranged survival a 4th hunter spec and then double down on the melee survival?
So a discount Kill Command.
Because it is beastial wrath.
Funny thing is, in Legion it didn’t steal from BM. It was in BFA when they reworked it that they stole from BM. The irony being that they claim they made survival melee because it was “too similar to MM”.
How about no. Hunters don’t need a tank spec.
Because the current dev team hates hunters and loves melee, so they thought they could turn a hunter spec into something that wasn’t what a wow hunter is, and that people would like it and play it. Turns out, that nope, not only do most hunters not want to play survival now, basically no one wants to play survival.
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could make survival more interesting, like say… make it less discount bm and more traps and other things kinda hunter?
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I could be wrong, but I remember it as being a couple of specific bosses within certain raids (as opposed to entire raid tiers) where survival was ahead in the theory, which did result in seeing some decent logs for those bosses.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I remember it specifically doing well in nightwell, and I believe it was also ahead in Uldir (though admittedly I wasn’t raiding at the time and was getting ready to take an extended hiatus from the game until SL).
Though PVE isn’t the only thing, pretty much all of BFA it was the go to arena spec as well. Dilly swapped to SV back in Legion IIRC. I’m just not convinced its performance is why it receives so few players playing it and not the fact that it was forced into the traditional ranged weapon class at the cost of a popular spec.
To reiterate for others, I don’t think it should be removed at this point. My dream scenario is for it to actually get the dev attention it needs to succeed and also bring back an (updated) RSV as a 4th spec. They tried to shoe horn it into MM and that ultimately left RSV unhappy while hurting MM’s talent choices too during Legion.
The precedent they set with SV is bad for all involved regardless of whether it’s popular or not IMO, and it’s really unfair to the players who like it and unfair to the players who had their spec deleted.
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Maybe two specs really is the answer now. But they smooshed ranged SV into MM so much that they will have to partially redesign MM to surgically remove it. I suppose that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing though, if they are willing to put in the work to do it.
Actually no. MM plays closer to what it was at the end of BC since the end of BC. All they’d have to do as far as MM is concerned atp is remove the few remaining RSV talents.
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I can’t remember if MM used to have steady shot or not though. Wasn’t that originally a survival thing? (I just remember popping aspect of the fox and spamming steady shot on survival back in Cata) Then there is explosive shot. Oh yea, cobra shot was for sure. So BM will need a new ability too.
Maybe not the end of the world though.
Nope, steady shot was introduced for all hunters back in BC. It was the basis for the 1 button BM macro in BC.
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Ah, gotcha. Probably just because I only played SV back then and that’s all I remember lol.
Yeah, it was basically added to give hunters something to do during the aimed/arcane CD besides multishot.
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Just checked the DPS stats, they are rated at the very bottom and Marks at the very top. I think it is skewed however, Marks is forced to be more stationary-like less so than Mages and Warlocks.
Like I said, I agree with your assessment, and I was playing Survival 50% of the time during BfA. However, one of the things that Blizzard said that they would do is bring back the Class and less of the Spec - which is dumb considering Survival is Melee.
Personally I am tired of having multiple sets of gear for different specs, so I dumped Survival entirely on my Hunter. I think a lot of players want the style and feel of the Ranged Survival Hunter and a feeble attempt was made.
I still believe that a melee with pet class should be a Demon Hunter’s 3rd spec.
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They could just revamp the talents in MM to give you that range survival feel by changing explosive shot into the hard hitting dot it used to be while it replaces aim shot, and changing lock and load talent into a black arrow style dot that has a chance to reset the cd of explosive shot/ Aim shot, also by just casting explosive shot in this new style, it would also grant you the increase arcane shot damage bonus, they could also just give you a 4th spec.
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Why should MM be forced to carry 2 different playstyles in 1 class? We’re not talking about slightly different playstyles either. We’re talking about playstyles as different from each other as Destro and Affliction locks.
Either way, this proposal waters down MM to make room for RSV.
- MM players don’t want to be watered down to make room for RSV.
- RSV players don’t want to be forced into set of talent choices just to have the playstyle they want.
The best solution for everyone is to make RSV a 4th spec. Then MM doesn’t have to carry RSV. RSV gets to exist. MSV also gets to continue to exist without having to worry about potentially being reverted back to RSV in the future.
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I think there’s enough room within the class to support it thematically as its own standalone thing. I think forcing it into MM confuses MM’s own identity of being a hard hitting sniper. A focus on DoTs and the fast paced reactionary gameplay RSV brought does not fit that well at all IMO.
I also think, simply going back to what we had before isn’t the solution. The gameplay can be updated to still pay homage to the spec but be modernized so it fits in with the rest of the game.
I think there’s honestly several ways to go about it, with themes either focus on being a munitions expert or an arcane archer, infusing your shots with magic to take down foes afar by rending them apart.
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Survival is a half baked class idea forced into a range class as a terrible spec, let survival die.
It’s insane that somehow hunter is still only bow using class, if you love archers, rangers, etc in fantasy you’re stuck going into 1 class which now has even less options for ranged. Pet or no pet. Pathetic coming from a fantasy game.
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For most Hunters it is less fun and unique as melee. After all, there are 12 other specs in this game that use a melee weapon; ranged weapons are far more unique in this game and most Hunters picked the class specifically for them.
No, they didn’t. The baseline MM has nothing from ranged SV. The only things from ranged SV are the talents Explosive Shot and Lock and Load and they both work very differently to the original SV versions. It would take relatively minor talent updates.
There’s also the Serpent Sting talent, but given Serpent Sting is still a part of SV that MM can access via talent/legendary that’s evidently not a problem.
Tanking is an even worse idea for Hunters than melee, and that’s saying a lot.
Nothing wrong with that. It’s an issue I care about a lot.
To confirm your suspicions: yes, I do regularly search for threads talking about Survival. I’ll be damned if melee lovers get to frame the discussions when I’m not around.
I don’t care for making Survival into something Death Knights find enjoyable. It should be focused on being enjoyable to Hunters.
Even on bosses where SV was good it saw less play. Mythic Gul’Dan was probably its best competitive showing ever (SV was actually in a pretty good place tuning-wise in Nighthold as a whole) yet there were more BM and MM Hunters. You underestimate how attached Hunters are to ranged combat.
This has never been a good approach because it would mean you would have to clumsily recreate the ranged SV playstyle via various talent choices. That means if you want that specific playstyle and identity you would have to take all those talents and nothing else. Many of those talents would have to replace baseline stuff that doesn’t fit ranged SV like Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. It’s a really bad attempt to force two separate playstyles and identities into one spec.
4th spec would be ideal provided they could adequately maintain all 4 specs, but the fact of the matter is there is literally no chance at all Blizzard is going to put 4 separate DPS specs into one class. I would honestly rate it a lower chance than just removing SV entirely and have Hunters be a 2 spec class.
It’s clear to me that Blizzard developers have a lot of trouble getting enthusiastic and creative about ranged weapons. Once you view it from that perspective all their Hunter class decisions for the last 5 years or so make sense.
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