Right on and welcome to the melee Hunter team.
Its an unbelievably fun spec and I wish I had all day to play my favorite class and spec but I got school, kids and work to take care of 
I take it youâre not a keyboard turner? Most pro-range players are and probably why this small group of Hunters hate it to be honest.
PVP is great with the changes theyâve made 
Now I want to play but I canât. Iâm at my school getting ready for class 
Hurry up weekend.
or, even he isnât exactly range, let him tank with a ranged weapon on melee, or something like that
We all know for a FACT that itâs the opposite, actually:
What youâre doing right now is deflection. You know melee SV is very unpopular and you canât deny it so youâre deflecting to ranged SV and saying that it was also unpopular. But of course that isnât true. Stop being dishonest.
This is not fact but rather uninformed opinion. Itâs especially nonsense given that the specs were notably and demonstrably more different from one another each expansion. They werenât coming closer together but moving further apart. All 3 specs were more or less the same with only passive differences in Classic, whereas come WoD they had entirely different primary toolkits and identities.
Even if they were too similar, making one spec melee is a totally moronic way to try to make them more different. Thatâs making it different via handicap, and the logical result of that is most Hunters avoiding the spec entirely which is exactly whatâs happened. I always compare it to coming to the Rogue class, seeing that all the specs are a bit samey, and taking away Stealth from one of them. You donât make specs more unique by removing baseline class capabilities from them. Legion taught us that itâs a bad idea.
If Survival had the exact same gameplay as it does now but instead had a ranged weapon and Raptor Strike and Carve were ranged attacks, would it suddenly be too similar to the other Hunter specs?
No one ever denied this.
This is a half-truth. No one denied that Survival had melee buffs. What we deny is that Survival was fully oriented around those melee buffs and intended to be played primarily in melee.
This is in fact what we deny because itâs 100% false. The original Survival had a ranged weapon and was intended to be played at range as much as possible. Yes, even when Lacerate was still a thing before the 1.7 review less than a year into WoW. Ranged weapons were considered the iconic, central element of the Hunter class and they designed and tuned the class in a way that made that the case. For example, Agility gave 2 attack power for every 1 melee attack power. The melee buffs of Survival were limited in such a way that sticking to melee was never preferable and in fact the spec was equipped with means like Improved Wing Clip and Counterattack specifically to escape melee range.
100% of melee Hunter PoVs from the era focus on non-competitive contexts with a massive skill and gear gap. They specifically made those videos for the novelty. It was known to be a suboptimal and unintended way of playing a Hunter, so being able to handicap oneself by sticking primarily to melee in PvP and still beating some clueless keyboard turners was seen as a humorous challenge. Itâs just like the countless videos of Rogues going around and beating rank 14 players while wearing starter gear.
What; the one with Wyvern Sting as the final talent? The one that gave +15% agility which, again, gave 2 ranged attack power for every 1 melee attack power?
Here is a guide for Survival gameplay in classic. Does it sound like a spec thatâs sticking to melee range?
It doesnât have access to things like Multi-Shot which it had in Vanilla. Back then SV Hunters would even spec into Aimed Shot and use that too. So actually the current SV is a far cry from what it was in Vanilla because, of course, that version had and used a ranged weapon.
The final iteration of ranged SV was a better representation of Vanilla SV than the current one. Because it had a ranged weapon and preferred to kite and stick to ranged at all times just like Vanilla SV. Back then even if you played SV in PvP when you got caught in melee the play was to pop a Raptor Strike for some burst, use Wing Clip + Counterattack if you got a lucky parry, and get back to ranged ASAP. Meanwhile current SV must be in melee range for its full damage potential and totally lacks a ranged weapon which is utterly antithetical to what SV was back then.
(Yes, Iâm aware that current SV kites melee around a lot in PvP, but the point still stands that you must be in melee range for the full 100% of your damage potential which is at odds with what SV used to be).
You can argue all you want that the change to melee was a good thing. Youâd be wrong, but you can at least play it off as your personal preference. What you canât argue in good faith is that melee Survival is representative of Vanilla SV. Because Vanilla SV was a ranged spec.
To be blunt, judging by your post count and your armory page, it doesnât look like you play Hunter at all. In fact Iâd wager a guess that youâre a melee main posting on a hastily-levelled Hunter alt for more credibility.
I know SV Hunters get off on the snobbery, but maybe you should consider this is part of the reason why the spec gets a bad reputation.
Is Preach Gaming also a clueless keyboard turner? What about Gingi?
Peak melee brain is posting from a melee character about your minimal experience with the class and then asking for Blizzard to keep Survival melee forever.
No and itâs never going to be. I canât stand people wanting to get rid of a fun gameplay spec feature for hunters that people who donât want to use ranged weapons like.
Why should any Hunter spec be catered to people who donât like ranged weapons? Thatâs the entire point of the class. I donât like melee weapons but I donât go to Warriors and Rogues and demand any of those specs get remade just because I might want to play those classes one day without being melee. Itâs especially egregious when just looking at the numbers you can see that there really arenât that many people who both want to play Hunter and want to be melee.
Melee mains have 12 other specs in the game to enjoy including every single DPS spec added to the game post launch. Hunters are the only class that use ranged weapons.
+1 for Earth Shaman tanks. 4 elements (water, fire, earth, air) for 4 specs just makes way too much sense. I love playing tank so havenât played my Shan of 15 years. I would make it my main for this.
The Hunter class was modeled after Rexxar and Mesha. Rexxar is a Survival Hunter, he doesnât use range weapons. Before you say it wasnât, it is because that is why Orcs get a bonus to pet damage and why hunters get a pet O.o
You also know that the Hunter class is the equivalent to a Ranger in any fantasy setting. Rangers are known for melee combat in D&D, LOTR, Dragonlance and I can go on and on.
So why should any spec be catered to people who donât like the broad range of weapons a Hunter/Ranger uses?
Go play a Mage, Priest or a Warlock for an exclusive boring range class and leave the AWESOME options the Hunter class has alone. 
I guess that could work. Nothing says you canât shoot an arrow at point blank range.
WoW classes arenât modelled after any particular lore character. They pick and choose and mix aspects from a range of them. From Rexxar we get pets which are actually the primary identifying aspect of that character, not the melee combat.
Besides; even if you consider Rexxar to be the archetypical Survival Hunter it doesnât match up. Rexxar doesnât use a spear, he doesnât use bombs, and he certainly doesnât use a sidearm crossbow. He was only labelled as Survival after Legion launched. Before that he was correctly labelled as âBeast Masterâ and all his abilities were pet-themed. Adhering to Rexxar was always a terrible excuse for a melee Hunter spec, just like all the other excuses.
This is the original outline of the Hunter class from 2004. Itâs very clear that ranged weapons are the central element and the distinguishing difference v.s. all the other classes.
You keep trying to market the melee weapon as a bonus. You can deny it all you want but a) Survival being melee is nothing but a handicap and b) the overwhelming majority of Hunters do not want to be melee and as such Survival continually remains the least played spec in the game. No amount of delusion and denial will change that.
Literally the first result that pops up when you search D&D Ranger. Bow in hand, sword on back, not the other way around. Theyâre known for being ranged fighters first and foremost.
Blizzards first attempt at hunters was closer to d&d rangers than anything we have now.
But who says blizzard has to adhere to what you think the class should be? Their version of a necromancer wears plate armor and weilds a two handed weapon.
Youâre not even good at what you are trying to do.
They should change it back to ranged like it was before. People hate it when they invite a hunter only to find out they are going to melee and not range.
bet they also get just as mad when inviting boomy/ele and getting a feral/enh. ITâs their own god damn fault
And they get literally free feats for dual wielding just for picking that class.
It was when he announced that he was leaving the team. Basically, he mentioned that if anyone wanted to ask anything or just talk games, they could do so.
That is what I did. I sent him an email, not really expecting much, but I did receive a reply only a day later.
If you look at the timeline, basically, when he started to move away from his primary role as a class designer, thatâs when we started to see things go all over the place. At least when it came to the Hunter class(canât speak for other classes).
So sad to see what happened, he truly had a vision for what made the hunter class, what differentiated each aspect of the design and fantasy, while staying true to that one core fantasy.
Drizzt DoâUrden, Aragorn, Rexxar, Tanis Half-Elven, even Sylvanas dueled with blades and many more out there.
None of you are even good at this, SMH 
Addressing the WoW-specific characters in your reply because the others are irrelevant; Rexxar is a Beast Master and has nothing to do with Survival besides the recent forced melee changes, and Sylvanas uses a bow primarily just like Lunkel said.
Bow in hand, sword in back, not the other way around. If people so desperately want MSV (they donât) it shouldâve been offered in the form of minor utility like it was in vanilla, not as the core focus of a spec.
In Legion he is labelled Survival under companion info. This change stressed the importance that Rexxar is foremost and always a melee Hunter regardless of what title they give him.
Mic drop, SMH
Frankly, the labelling is incorrect. Blizzard labelled him as Survival merely to reinforce their already terrible decision to change survival into melee.
Rexxar has clearly been a Beast Master throughout all existing lore that involves him, up until Legion. His weapons arenât axes (and by the way MSV canât dual-wield properly anyways) his weapons are his pets. As a bodyguard in Legion he even summons three different pets and has zero melee abilities besides auto-attacking.
Bahahaha now look who is grasping at straws, SMH.
A duel axe wielding Orc since WC3. It doesnât matter what label theyâve given him in the past he is a melee Hunter and they cleared that up in Legion.
I donât understand why anyone would care or want it removed. If you dont play it who cares?
Please donât remove survival spec.
I love it!