Nah it’s here to stay. Melee survival is awesome. Cry is free
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In BFA when Survival was far and away the best Hunter spec in PvP most Hunters playing rated PvP were playing it (to be far most Hunters just opted to not do rated PvP). Yet now, when according to you when Survival is “the best 2v2 spec by far”, it has middle of the pack representation and is behind 12 other specs including BM? What gives? Seasoned PvP players are good at the game and don’t avoid SV just because it has a higher skill cap.
I’m sure Survival is great in 2v2. I don’t think it’s “the best 2v2 spec in the game by far”.
There’s a sub rogue with a higher rating and win rate, actually. In fact there are BM Hunters with higher win rates; they are just lower because they have far fewer games played. It looks like you’re pinning your entire judgement on SV’s relative power in PvP on one power user (Bicmex).
I think Covlol might have something to say about this:
If it’s so ranged in PvP, what’s the contention? Why would it be so much a problem to replace that one melee damage spell with a ranged spell and have it as a ranged spec again?
This is the problem when you go on a marketing spree about how great melee SV is on account of its ranged capability; it raises the obvious question of “why can’t it just be ranged, then?”
So now it’s a widely popular spec? Just before you said most Hunters stick to BM. Yet apparently Survival is both the most fun and performant spec with a lot of fans? How does that work out?
The whole reason for this thread and many like it even existing is that Survival doesn’t have a lot of fans.
It’s just a matter of replacing Explosive Shot and Lock and Load in MM with something else. BM didn’t get anything from ranged Survival and MM got a couple of heavily modified talents. It would be trivial to work around that.
What’s hard to understand? We had a popular ranged spec and it was replaced with a niche melee spec aimed mainly at people that don’t even play the class.
So you were so distraught with Hunters losing melee weapons in MoP that you quit the class, yet apparently losing the vastly more important and central ranged weapon is just fine?
Your priorities for Hunter class design are upside down. Stick to your melee classes, please.
This is reaching and you know it. They had all the resources and knowledge they needed to make a working melee Survival and, if the melee fanatics of this thread and others are to be believed, they produced something that flows well and has good performance throughout the game. We don’t need to try another 5 years and 2 reworks to know that this concept is a dud.
It’s actually wild that you see this class design direction as a bad thing TBH.
BM has had its entire worth and capability tied to pets since forever as part of the basic foundation of the spec. I don’t want to hear SV fans whining about how it’s holding them back. You’re simultaneously asking for SV to have Exotic Pets BTW so if SV is going to steal away all the unique capabilities of BM it can fully expect to inherit the weaknesses too.
No, because that class design philosophy was an unmitigated disaster.
What exactly do you think “specialisation” means?
You do this a lot: whenever you’re faced with opposition you just shut down and double down on what you already said with no actual rebuttal. I just explained why giving exotic pets to SV is unacceptable and you just mindlessly repeated that they should do it. Where do you expect the discussion to go from there?
I ignored your list of remarks because 100% of your Hunter class design takes are awful and would make the class worse. You really need to stick to melee classes. The Hunter class would be better off without meddling from people like you.
This is some concentrated copium.
To put 5 years in perspective: 5 years after WoW launched we were in Icecrown Citadel. Think of all the class evolution and iteration that occurred in that time. Incidentally, Survival went from being an overlooked and directionless PvP utility tree to the most popular Hunter spec with a fun, dynamic, unique gameplay approach and great performance across the board. In the same time frame, despite a major rework along the way, melee Survival has remained an object of ridicule and remains the most avoided and abandoned spec in the game. It’s going nowhere fast.
Because neither of those are remotely good fits for the Hunter class.
There would be zero point to using melee weapons in this scenario. The only good option for a melee Hunter is a talented melee stance within BM. Anything else is overstepping.
No, this is all a terrible idea. You run into one of these problems:
- The Hunter is doing most of the tanking, which is utterly alien to the identity of the class. Hunters are never about deliberately pulling attention and soaking damage in melee range. We kite and avoid.
- The pet is doing most of the tanking. Have fun with positioning bosses with pet controls…
There’s also the tiny problem that most of the class doesn’t want to tank, but I know what the Hunter playerbase wants is largely not a concern to melee SV fans.
Hunter tanking is a nonstarter. Its an unwelcome, unwanted idea that would only fail harder and more spectacularly than melee Survival.
The only reason we see these sorts of suggestions all the time is because melee Survival was the bat signal for every forum warrior and his dog to dump their putrid suggestions on the Hunter class. In reality Survival is the cautionary tale as to why those people should never be listened to.
IDK maybe it’s because it replaced a vastly more popular ranged spec ¯\(ツ)/¯
OK Death Knight
It’s objective that melee SV has been much more controversial and unpopular than ranged SV. It’s also been higher maintenance; it’s arguably required more reworking and tweaking in just Legion and BFA alone than all of Survival before Legion combined. So it’s taken much more work and attention for a much less satisfactory result.
Look to Terranox demanding exotic pets for SV. This sort of thing is very common.
What’s with melee SV stans believing that the spec’s performance is a justification for remaining SV? Is performance tied to being melee in your mind? There were plenty of tiers where ranged SV was “strong AF”, and it didn’t need a ludicrously tuned tier set that was also bugged to give +280% bomb damage instead of +80% (yes, it really is bugged like that; look it up). Not to mention the upcoming tier set is buffing Wildfire Bomb, a ranged ability that hardly fits the “primal beast companion” melee Survival anyway.
SV Hunters demand all sorts of special attention from Blizzard all the time. They solicit favourable damage tuning as well as unique utilities for BM and MM in order to bribe their way into raids. I even see SV Hunters ask for traps to be unique to SV again. Handing them someone else’s spec on a platter created an entitlement complex like no other.
It could do with being ranged. Anything else is a waste of time, and lord knows they wasted more than enough time on this crap in Legion and BFA.
This. It was clear in Legion and BFA that most of the developer attention was wasted on Survival. ESPECIALLY in BFA. BM released with one of the worst, most poorly tuned and unimaginative set of talents in the game, and MM wasn’t even a remotely functional spec on launch. They spent most of the beta reworking and tweaking Survival, which got an entirely new set of talents. They even made new talents for SV only to throw them away and replace them with entirely new talents on top of that (e.g. they made Arctic Bola and then removed it in favour of Wildfire Infusion). And for what? So the 2-5% of Hunters that played it in that expansion could have more fun while BM and MM faceplanted?
Shadowlands was a step in the right direction in that they didn’t waste any more time on SV than absolutely necessary. And that’s ideal for the class: either spend the time to make SV ranged again or don’t waste time on it at all. It’s drained too much time and too many resources and it hasn’t earned its keep. Here’s a reminder that ranged SV did not need constant stream of reworking and tweaking to be a valuable and widely-enjoyed Hunter spec.
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I have it on good authority that one of the people responsible for the SV change to melee considers the change to be one of his biggest regrets.
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It should become a ranged spearthrower spec. Just keep it like it is now but make the few remaining melee abilities into ranged abilities.
Mongoose bite becomes mongoose throw, raptor strike becomes raptor throw, carve/butchery tosses 3 spears out in a cone, and muzzle and wing clip become ranged too. Aspect of the Eagle would need to be changed and given a new function, maybe something like it turns your attacks into nature magic damage that ignores armor and leaves a Serpent Sting behind (since the little green eagle that shoots out from it now looks like magic). Finally, harpoon would gain a targeting circle since you wouldn’t be in melee anymore.
The best part is, it wouldn’t require any changes to Legion content to make it work either. The artifact spear would just become a throwing weapon.
Really, it could either way… Having melee surv stick around from legion to shadowlands is no real indication of the future.
The ranged(imo the better version) surv playstyle was pretty cemented in starting in wotlk and went all the way through WoD. And it still got redesigned.
I would love to see the return of the old ranged surv playstyle, even if as a fourth spec. It was by far my favorite of the hunter specs. We’ve seen it done with feral druids, where there was 2 completely different specs in 1 talent tree. Well, Surv also had elements of 2 completely different specs in 1 talent tree.
I think they could pretty easily just move the old ranged surv into a new spec and change the name to something more thematic to the DoT playstyle of the old ranged surv. That way they don’t have to remove melee surv for those that do enjoy that.
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Make survival hunters choose BM or MM.
All that jumping around is over.
They could also give it to tinkers in a way. Perhaps they took it away from hunters so thry can do a tinker gun/mech spec. With the same themes.
They tend to do this alot for new classes. Demonhunters changed how demo warlocks played for example.
I preferred it when we could use multiple weapons. The homogenization of turning it into a pure ranged was more boring imo. The class lost flavor, in favor of a simpler playstyle. More boring pure ranged combat, instead of mixed gameplay which I enjoy in this and other games. Felt like it was lowering the skill cieling of the class (it did). Much easier to play but at the cost of class favor of using any weapon you have on you to survive.
Many games have you use whatever weapon you find. Which is why I think hunters should be able to use 2-3 weapons again. I found that fun.
I quite enjoy it, it could use some work, like many sepcs. That receive qol changes each expansion. SV was a revived thing to get hunters back into some melee. This expansion they gave them more ranged mixed abilities, with you still using a two handed weapon. I think it would be nice to just let us have duel-wielding stance and let us use a ranged weapon again. And have abilities for both. Staying primarily melee at least for sv. Tons of shooter games have gunswitching or characters that use different weapon types as a thing, and melee weapons in them like destiny or overwatch. We are already lobbing bombs and throwing traps, and have an animal companion. It isn’t a big leap to use and switch between a bow and maybe duel-wielding swords/daggers like blood elf rangers tend to have.
I preferred legion’s spec specific designs. Why I need kill command to generate focus as SV? It feels clunky if your pet dies. But it’s part of the expansion design, especially with torgast using class abilities mostly for its anima powers. Kill command is used in torgast thus a design decision to have all specs use a form of it.
I used to play the mixed combat as bm in cata. That was nice. But they decided to can survival, lorewise BM would have seen more logical with Rexxar.
But what is done is done. SV should use exotics to as purely a fun thing. BM has to worry about pet management and pet related abilities, SV has fewer pet things to worry about, mostly just keeping it alive for focus regen via kill command. Letting me use a gorm on my NF SV HMT wouldn’t be anything bad. It would be cool class wise. Most of the exotics are cool looking, and tying that soley to the ranged spec that isn’t really fun to play? I would like to use the exotics I collected on the fun melee spec! BM is more then its exotics, its using multiple pets, doing damage and buffing your pet, and summoning more beasts to help aid you.
We disagree, I think it is acceptable? These are opinions. I am expressing my desires for someone who wants to play sv more, but I feel like bm is the only way to use exotics. I enjoy the sv playstyle so it’s making melee sv a more interesting option. I kept many of my hunters bm just to be able to use the exotics, not that I enjoyed the playstyle. For example on my trolls I would like to use the SV hunter spec with devilsaurs… Them fighting alongside a devilsaur with a cool sword or spear is a cool idea.
And I play both melee and ranged classes btw. I would say I play more melee, but that’s cause there are more melee classes.
I am enjoying it now. I would say SV in mythic plus is one of the most fun specs. And it provides good utility, lust, soothe, snares, good aoe, decent single target, self heals, mobility, aspect of eagle (cd ranged), cool transmogs with pets, the ability for hunters to actually mog there weapons with enchants, and is a cool two hander spec for many races. Being able to use lightsabers on hunters is cool for scifi themes like mechagnomes/goblins. The wide range of pets to choose from is nice, again would be nice to use the exotics. Like the stone gargons would be nice on sv venthyrs. corehounds would be a nice option for dark iron sv hunters too.
A tank class? I think yea, we already have tools to help tanking and pet tanking. Stuff like spirit bond, pets helping you tank bosses. If wow devs wanted to I could easily see them adding a tank spec at least. Healing probably not, but they could add pets that heal, and I am confident there are people to find a way to make it work if it is desired.
I played all sorts of specs and classes. Got the magetower skins on all specs. I actually dislike playing the pure classes because I have no option of switching to heals/tank. I played all sorts of tanks in the past. I think a hunter tank would be nice. I can see a sort of avatar of nature take on hunter tanking. With animals helping you in certain ways. And nature magics helping you mitigate damage. Something with wild god blessings and stuff. I doubt it will ever happen. But multiclassing is something I would like to see in the future. A way to heal and gear offspecs, or opt into a faster queue by playing another role. You may not be interested in tanking but you don’t necesarrily have to play all the specs. A fourth damage spec when you heavily dislike sv? What if you dislike the 4th damage spec?
I do certainly respect your view for making a hunter tank, but I am would not like it. Not saying that it can’t be done, blizzard doesn’t have the creativity etc… but your suggestions sound more druidish tank ideas than for a hunter tank.
Right now one of the biggest things I would want for SV is another melee attack. I like that you can kind of do range/melee but melee needs I think at least one more button to press, aside from raptor strike/mongoose bite. And yes there are a lot of other changes/updates I would like to see done to SV- I’ll save that for the usually lull between expansions- post them on the forums (because I never get into beta) and watch when all/most class suggestions changes are ignored/not seen by blizzard.
Any elaboration on this?
My thoughts are like Someone like Udyr from league of legends. Saw some tanky brawler builds with him.
Although I think League has good mixed heroes like Kayle and Jayce.
Considering all the debates and the controversy, this wouldn’t surprise me all that much.
But, like Bepples said, can you elaborate?
I had a similar thought that would be a compromise between adding a 4th spec and reverting sv.
Just make the skills and abilities available to you as survival change depending on whether you have a melee weapon or ranged weapon equipped. If you have a melee weapon equipped, you have your raptor strike, mongoose bite, flanking strike, etc. It becomes a full melee class.
If you have a ranged weapon equipped, those become your different shots. I’d like explosive arrow back but they gave it to MM, so they would have to come up with a few new ones.
I enjoy Melee Survival, it’s a fun spec. However the manner in which it was implemented was atrocious. Robbing players who loved Ranged Survival was a rotten thing to do.
Melee Survival should have been added as a fourth spec to Hunter or possibly Warrior.
If a major spec change isn’t worth being implemented as a new spec then don’t do it at all. 
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I didn’t beg plead and claw for them to just remove it again. I just miss being able to dual wield as a prefer that over the staff/polearms. But I remember not long ago all hunter specs felt very samey. They finally seem mostly unique now. I’m assuming the people who hate on it are a minority. Especially when it provides MORE options not less. As MM and old survival played almost identically.
Not even close.
You got it backwards. It’s the least played spec by far. Most hunters will never touch it no matter how good a person says it does in 2v2 or how much aoe damage another person says it does in M+. We picked the class to play ranged.
“BuT yOu hAvE TwO oThEr RaNgE SpEcS”
Funny how no one ever says this about other classes.
Arcane mage is now melee
Affliction lock is now melee
Subtlety rogue is now range
Fury warrior is now range
Frost dk is now range
And so on … everyone needs a “unique” spec, right?
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They aren’t. In fact, only about 5% of all hunters are playing as Survival. This has been the case ever since they implemented this new melee spec in Legion, no matter the relative strength/throughput potential.
Since, even when SV does perform well, about 95% of all hunters continue to avoid it, this means that for the vast majority of the hunter playerbase, the change that made SV a melee spec, did not give us more options. It gave us fewer options.
Please do explain how they played “almost identically”…
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I think a while back there was blue post (I think it was from Ion Hazzikostas about why SV went melee. More or less the thought of the dev was “SV played a lot like MM so we made SV melee”- yes there is a bit more to it than that but that was the general gist of it.
Now whether the words of someone who works at blizzard, who actually has some kind of say in class design has more worth than random forum posters, I don’t know, I will leave that up to you as to whose insight is more valuable.
That being said from what I remember I think RSV and MM felt pretty different. Certainly I am glad MSV exists. However whenever I played RSV it felt unique enough on its own from MM.
With this stupid wall of text you only proved you are clueless and cannot even read data in the ladder. Literally every Hunter in 2v2 top 100 EU is Survival for a reason. You are talking about 1 Rogue. Yes this Rogue is AWC level Akro who is one of the best players in the world. Bicmex or Satana while being great players are not even close. They have 3/4 alts in top 100 but this isn’t proof for you that Survival isn’t the best spec in 2s. Also keep in mind that BM and Surv have the same stats so you only need to swap weapon to play one or another. Before you will give BM argument check what spec did this guy play on Xunamate before you make yourself look like a clown.
Survival is the most complex and Entertaining spec of all Hunters just some of them like you can’t handle them. BM can be played by ape and MM while more complex and having good damage has a lot of downsides to make it top tier spec.
Survival can use most of it’s spells from Range and only if he needs to burst (if no Aspect of the Hawk availavle) he goes into meele range. As it was said it’s not meele spec it ranged/meele hybrid with more focus on ranged.
Also in fact this essey writter named Bepples wants to rework 2 specs both MM and Surv. Because old surv mechanics are built in MM.
The RSV mechanics that are currently in MM are in the form of 2 talents, at least the alternated versions, Explosive Shot and Lock&Load. Replacing those 2 with other talents, more fitting of the MM theme, is rather trivial. Definitely not on the level of a rework.
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