None of this makes sense for a hunter (ranged do with a bow, what a mess bkizz has made indulging this)
What do you think the Hunter fantasy is based on? There are numerous examples of real world Hunters using both projectile and melee attacks when attacking their target. The element of surprise and traps are also things you could derive from examples of real world Hunters. I’m not arguing whether Survival is better as ranged or melee even though I thoroughly enjoy the melee version. I just don’t think that you have to exclusively use ranged weapons to fit within the Hunter class fantasy. I personally think it makes sense for all Hunters to be both ranged and melee when looking at real world examples.
I just went way off topic.
they should just go back to using melee and ranged at the same time. no more handicap hunter specs.
After they removed the hunter deadzone the specs we’re doing pretty well, minus some nerfs and dmg delivery(burst).
The want for cross bows and thrown weapons. I just can’t get behind it. I’m not a rogue
But I enjoyed old survival. I have always liked traps and nets. And I didn’t mind raptor strike(used to deal weapon dmg plus reduce the amount of dmg we took by 70 percent for 6 seconds) and wing clip (50 percent slow) but then we disengage right back into range. The physical dmg from the shots and then the dots, was just a fun playstyle.
After they removed all melee abilities, our mobility was amazing. Never needed to be in our out of melee. It was just playskill. Either PvP or PVE.
The changes that people are asking for melee survival. Props of you enjoy it, but now they are asking for more ranged abilities. Trying to smooth out the spec. Half the people hate the melee moves and want more ranged, the other half hate the ranged and want it more melee.
Melee survival has turned into an arms warrior with rogue abilities and a hunters name
I like the melee aspect but I also enjoy the ranged abilities. I think it would make sense for SV to have additional melee range (see acrobatic strikes for Outlaw Rogue) because of the use of spears and pole arms. I really wish I had a chance to play ranged Survival, but I’ve only been playing since WoD and was exclusively playing Combat Rogue.
What good is that when 99% of Hunters aren’t even playing Survival? (Hyperbole, but its raid representation is routinely under 5% of all Hunter representation).
You can keep pretending its a selling point but the amount of people who played the spec when it was fully ranged was far, far greater. Evidently, for Hunters, being ranged is just better.
Wanting a spec that can do an odd mixture of both is an extremely niche desire and hopefully you can understand why people might think that’s wasteful preferential treatment when it’s reserving 1/3 of the only class in the game that can use ranged weapons to exist.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than being a poor imitation of a Hunter instead of a real Hunter”. Sure, OK.
Clearly it’s NOT fantastic when they keep polishing the spec and giving it all sorts of numerical advantages only for the majority of the Hunter class to continue to entirely ignore it.
- Routinely one of the game’s most widely played and enjoyed specs when it was ranged, even achieving 1st place
- Literally never out of the bottom 5 when it’s melee
This is happening because Blizzard is leaning on talents to complete specs. They wanted each spec to have unique talents, which seems like a cool idea on the surface, but then they didn’t have enough ideas to fill out the tiers for each spec so they just stripped a bunch of things off the baseline and put them into talents and called it new choices. I saw this coming but most of the forums cheered it on. To be honest, it was a problem in Legion too, although it feels worse in BFA. I now have 0 talent choice as both BM and MM. As BM, it feels incomplete without Killer Instinct and Chimera Shot. As MM, it feels incomplete without Master Marksman and Careful Aim.
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Old SV was great, so is new version. I think Blizzard did a great job on it. I’d love to see a return of ranged SV too, but only in form of a 4th spec.
I was SV long before Legion. It’s great as it is now.
Bepples buddy SV was never great champ, always third string to BM and MM.
Ranged SV isn’t coming back. Let it die already.
To be clear: I do think it’s a waste that physical ranged weapons are reserved to a single class in the game and would like it to be spread to at least 1-2 other classes.
Maybe because that’s what Hunters always did? Like, people who rolled Hunter did it because either they loved the idea of bonding with a pet and having survival skills / traps and had to put up with the bow thing in the same pack, or they loved archery / bowmanship or guns and Hunter is (STILL) the only class to use those. People from the 1st group now can roll SV (me, for example) even though some might not like it, people from the 2nd group still lack options.
Sure, let’s just ignore the fact that hunting was a thing long before bows and guns were invented. And you don’t get to tell me what to enjoy; the animation on Aspect of the Eagle beats every other hunter animation by far.
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Survival already has the option to use a bow or gun. But as it should be for a spec with no cast times, you will not deal optimal damage by doing so.
BM needs its pet to stay in melee range and be in line of sight of the player, which comes with its own set of challenges, while MM needs time to stand and aim. These are intended weaknesses for two specs that are ranged but can’t be interrupted.
Survival also has an intended weakness, but that is to remain in melee range. The spec is still capable of dishing out a significant amount of damage from range and is capable of doing so on the move.
The player has a lot of choice in how much weight is placed on melee combat vs ranged combat, but being fully ranged while being fully mobile with no cast times to be interrupted all while dealing optimal damage is asking far too much of any spec. This is the point Hunters had reached after the removal of the dead zone and movement resetting auto-shot and it seems Blizzard realized it was too much.
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It seemed pretty great in Highmaul when literally 75% of all raiding Hunters were playing it. Will you ever acknowledge that fact?
Ranged SV is dead because it is no longer in the game. Melee SV, on the other hand, is dead because almost no one likes it. Maybe you’re the one who should stop trying to revive a dead spec, that spec being SV.
Reminds me of a random BG I did recently. Of the 80 people in the battleground, 17 were Hunters. Not a single one was Survival. In WoD there would be a decent chance of every Hunter in the BG being Survival. Now they are rare. 
Whether or not that’s the case:
- They didn’t add any more ranged weapon specs
- Hunters were defined as the ranged weapon specialists
- Remaking specs left and right to try to spread out the ranged weapon usage would require disruptive and harmful changes e.g. changing SV to melee.
Not an excuse.
Hunters have ALWAYS been centered around the ranged weapons, and therefore people who preferred melee tended to play other classes. The class of person who prefers melee and only plays Hunters for the pets is a fringe minority, as evidenced by the fact that Survival is such a deeply unpopular spec. Blizzard has acknowledged that Survival is unpopular because most Hunters want ranged gameplay. Melee Hunters are simply too niche to warrant an entire Hunter spec, period. They can make a subspec, sure. A whole spec? Bad idea, and melee Survival has forever proven it. You keep trying to act like it’s a 50/50 divide when it just isn’t.
Let’s just ignore the fact that magic was NEVER a thing in real life yet most classes involve some form of magic. Turns out judging WoW classes by real life standards is a bad idea.
I don’t get to tell you what to enjoy, but I do get to tell you that your enjoyment is niche and doesn’t deserve an entire spec.
By that “logic” every spec in the game has the option to be unarmed and punch the enemy to death.
You people keep trying to pretend that full mobility was a problem but SV was fully mobile for years and it wasn’t an issue. It was a very popular spec, true, but it was very popular before it was fully mobile too.
Full mobility can be balanced in other ways. For example, SV generally did less raw damage than the hardcasting specs and it had less self-healing too. Full mobility also means the Hunter is more often given responsibility of certain boss mechanics. I would argue it should also have a more complex rotation to justify being fully mobile.
The mobility of SV was never stated as a reason for making the spec melee so you’re just making stuff up now.
SV should be a fully-mobile ranged spec because there are very few of those (well, there’s only ONE) in the game and mobility is one of the staple niches of the Hunter as stated by Blizzard.
In FFXIV the Bard class is a fully-mobile archer. As a trade-off, it does less damage, is squishier, and is more complex. It actually has design elements very reminiscent of ranged SV. People did complain about it. You had people like you crying that it was OP, and people from Black Mages mad that they didn’t do as much damage when playing Bard v.s. Black Mage. So Squeenix made the spec a standstill “bowmage” in Heavensward. People swore up and down that it was amazing and would be a new and bright future for the class, and they ardently defended it from the naysayers on the forums. It bombed, hard. Everyone abandoned the class quickly.
Sound familiar?
The key difference: Squeenix realised their mistake, listened to the feedback, and the spec went back to being a fully-mobile utilitarian in the next expansion and the class, as well as the game as a whole, was better off because of it. Blizzard, on the other hand, doubles down on bad ideas and mistakes and insists the players are wrong.
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Melee Hunter or bust.
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Ranged SV was always a bottom tier spec.
Ranged SV has had its moments, and a couple of times it was OP. Its problem was stagnation. It needed to change, much like BM does now.
What do you mean, “You people…”?
This is a problem in and of itself. Similar to the current situation with Rogues in Mythic+, when it becomes a particular class or spec’s job to handle mechanics, it encroaches on other class/spec’s ability to be accepted to groups and hinders raids when they aren’t able to find someone they believe to be necessary for success.
It’s not a reason for the spec going melee. But it is a reason that regardless of how it changed, it was no longer going to be fully mobile, just like how Marksman is no longer fully mobile and BM was adjusted to require LoS of its pet as an additional condition of success.
I’m not sure what part about this is difficult for you to comprehend, but you can’t expect to enjoy the benefits of both range and melee without having to concern yourself with the weaknesses of either. The changes to address this speak for themselves.
Yeah, remember that thing hunters do that it’s impossible to do in real life? Yeah, me neither.
I didn’t imply that in any manner.
It’s like you didn’t even read what you replied to, tbh.
That decision lies with the dev team, no need to be this arrogant about it.
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Reviving dead pets? Freezing targets solid? Shooting 10 arrows in under 3 seconds? Leaping ~20 yards backwards in a single bound? Converting a hostile animal into a faithful companion in ~5 seconds?
You must live in a really weird part of the world.
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All of those are as far away from reality as shooting huge fire balls or twisting time to your will, sure.
Oh, I’m sorry, the fact that they aren’t shooting fireballs makes them perfectly realistic, then, ya?
Your assertion was that there was nothing hunters in WoW can do that hunters in real life cannot. I present a number of examples, and now you’ve moved the goalposts to those aren’t unrealistic enough. Your original assertion has been disproved.
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