Speaking for myself, there was a need after seeing the Frostwolf and Thunderlord orcs in WoD. I remember seeing them and thinking “it’d be really cool to be a melee guy with an animal companion”. I got my wish, even if SV needs tweaks and improvements that should have built on the excellent starting point (Legion SV) instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
Visually, SV didn’t stand out from MM until Explosive Shot entered the picture in Wrath. It was honestly the only way I could tell SV from MM because not even Black Arrow had anything that stood out to me in a raid, whereas it was almost impossible to miss the repeated explosions between the actual shot and the reset procs for more explosions.
This smells like the “no true scotsman” fallacy.
This sort of gets me because the logical thing to do is figure out why new people with no prior knowledge of the past of SV aren’t going to the spec. Is it something in the mechanics (Mongoose Fury is a decent starting point but needs a bit of iteration)? Is it a result of the conflict between the baseline hunter tree and the survival spec? Is it because the SV at times looks like it’s at conflict with itself? Is it the way the hunter class as a whole is presented?
I skipped all of Shadowlands so I have no frame of reference for what it was like then, but I can say that being OP/meta isn’t all there is to player retention. If there’s issues within the design itself, those need to be identified and addressed so that it can be made more appealing.
It is not a large number by an relative terms. It is the least played spec in the game on the most played class in the game. Prior to the overtuning in SL it had never broken 5% of Hunters since going melee (usually hovers between 2-4%) and has since dropped back into irrelevance. If we were talking about a Monk spec (lowest played class overall) and it also had the lowest represented spec you could kinda go “yeah, that makes sense”.
That’s not the case.
The fact is only a tiny minority of hunters and and even tinier minority of players enjoy it. Far more people enjoyed rSV before it was changed. There is no valid argument for keeping this dumpster-fire of a spec they way it is. Especially considering Blizz has shown they have absolutely no idea how to balance it and can only force people to play it when it’s a meme spec.
its funny because its still a trap class that uses ranged explosives lol.
the worst part is they didn’t even try to go all the way with the melee spec. its been going in 3 diff directions since legion. they even slapped rexxar in the talent tree artwork even though he’s a dual wielding beast master from wc3, and calls animals and throws axes in heroes of the storm.
What do you think the sentiment is outside the forums i.e. in game?
You won’t get Legion SV back either yet you’re still here begging for it.
RSV did not need to be game-breaking meta to be popular. Look to WotLK. It’s far from the best spec there but it’s one of the most played.
There are more melee specs than ranged specs; especially when you’re talking about specs that use a ranged weapon. What’s so unique about yet another melee spec? In fact ranged weapon users are more unique.
“many” lol
This is an absolutely terrible way of giving each spec identity because it makes SV’s identity incoherent and it dilutes the identity of the whole class. We don’t need “melee BM” and “ranged BM” as separate specs. The way the Hunter identity was set up before Legion was far better.
We’ve been hearing this non-stop since Legion. A whole lot of people acting enthusiastic about playing the spec, yet they never materialise.
The ranged Hunter specs can fight in melee so what ever is the point of a melee Hunter spec?
Call me crazy but we shouldn’t be designing Hunter specs to appease DH mains.
That “ranged trash spec” used to be routinely very popular while hardly anyone plays the melee spec so evidently your perspective is upside down.
Marcelian on Youtube is a huge SV fanboy and even he thinks it’s clunky. SV fans can delude themselves all they want but the design is extremely bad.
You literally have to run out and harpoon back in on CD as part of your DPS rotation. Easily the most pathetic spec design in the game.
Bruh top players don’t have a problem with hard-to-play specs. And let’s not pretend SV is even particularly hard to play. Yet they still don’t bring SV. Obviously there’s a deeper problem you’re refusing to admit.
You were perfectly happy when they destroyed the class for ranged SV players so why should people care about your preferences?
Of course “the people who play SV enjoy it”. If they didn’t enjoy SV they wouldn’t play it. Funnily enough, very few people play it.
You say you’ve mained a Hunter all this time? I hope you’re not talking about the character you’re posting from, because it’s evident from your achievement history and the fact that it’s still level 45 that it’s at best a parked alt you hardly ever play.
Pretty much, yes.
The premise of most pro melee SV arguments rests on a certain small group of players having much more importance than a larger group of players. Notice the way melee SV fans, especially the ones that come from other classes, talk about Hunters. To them Hunters are expendable and taking their specs away is fine.
Hey look: yet another dime-a-dozen DH player ardently defending melee SV
This is a useless definition of “many”. Most people will understand it in a relative sense. In that case, there aren’t that many SV Hunters.
There are currently 20,083 SV Hunters participating in M+ according to raider IO. Sure, 20k is a big number. However it’s not big compared to 178,658 MM Hunters and 170,463 BM Hunters.
Ranged SV typically had a much bigger following. Over half the Hunter playerbase was playing it in tiers like Siege of Orgrimmar. Right now on WotLK classic it’s actually over 80% (to be fair, there’s not much reason to play the other specs right now in WotLK). So when you swear up and down that it would be unfair to the “many” Survival players to make it ranged, it’s in fact a lot worse for a lot more players to keep it melee. So don’t act like you’re championing the will of the people here.
The only time you ever play like this is when you’re fighting a much stronger melee.
In all other PvP situations, and in all PvE situations barring momentary mechanics, you’re sticking to melee as much as possible.
It’s a melee spec.
If you find yourself saying “it’s a good thing Blizzard doesn’t listen to player feedback”, you’re probably on the wrong side of things.
We already have a spec about pet companionship, though. We didn’t need a melee BM ripoff. They could have just made a melee option within BM.
Plus, were those Frostwolf and Thunderlord orcs throwing grenades around? Because that’s most of the aesthetic prominence of melee SV.
Well it’s a good thing they got it right so early then, huh. That means SV stood out from MM for several expansions as a ranged spec
Blizzard was asked about this back in Legion and they identified that the reason SV doesn’t see much play is because most Hunters don’t want to play a melee spec. So it’s actually pretty simple.
If it’s performance is so decent yet it’s still deeply underplayed, then evidently there is a deeper problem.
Funnily enough it’s no longer the trap spec. SV, for the first time in its history including its very first iteration in Classic, has NO spec-exclusive trap benefits. Well done preserving its identity, Blizzard
And as with the other poster we’ll have to agree to disagree, as we have another case of ‘I hate this spec so it shouldn’t exist’ from the ranged survival crowd.
I agree, as has been said many times there is this thing called 4th spec, like druids, that doesn’t screw anyone over like ranged survival was, novel concept eh?
Lovely how the ‘I hate melee survival so it must not exist’ crowd keep trying to do to those that enjoy melee survival what was done to their spec, when they know how it felt when it was done to them, and studiously ignore and comment around the option that does not screw someone while still getting what they want.
Nope. You are Incorrect. It cannot do its full damage rotation at range. It has abilities to use from range and from mid range, but it is a melee spec. It has a CD that allows its single target melee ability to be used at ranged, but it does not affect auto attack. Call it a melee/ranged hybrid if you want, but it is, in fact a melee spec.
No. The correct way to play it is to stay in melee as long as possible utilizing mongoose bite spam, and carve/butchery to get more grenades out.
They have shown they have no ability to make it work over the 3 previous and now a 4 expansions. No amount of changes short of a complete rebuild from the ground up is going to make any difference, and even then I’m doubtful.
It is a failed experiment. It was a failed experiment from the beginning and no one played it in Legion. It was a failed experiment and no one played it in BfA. It was a failed experiment and the only time people played it in SL was when it was grossly overtuned. It is a failed experiment and no one plays it now in DF. There is no reason to keep trying to cram a square peg in a round hole over and over expecting it to magically work this time.
I’m not begging for anything. I played SV hunter I still play SV hunter and as long wow has hunters I will play it. I’m not a bandwagon fan.
Yes it is. As soon MM took over people changed to SV. BM is complete garbage spec trough entire wotlk expansion. So basically you have 2 choices. And in Wotlk classic it’s played more because of “nostalgia”, or by people like you.
In cataclysm it had good AOE in expansion where burst damage and AOE was required trough whole expansion. And still was mid tier trough whole expansion while BM was completely garbage.
So again it’s played only when it’s meta or there is no other choice.
Check SV topics on hunter forums. There isn’t a single post where he didn’t brought his wall of posts with same comments.
People say that ranged SV was good and was played when it outperforms other two specs , he will say NO and then post links from rankings when SV hunter was outperforming other two spec or was behind like 1%
He is like that dude Shapiro from debates where even when he is wrong he will try to make it right with wall of posts that you can simplify to “SV was played when it was meta or performed within 1% difference”
Not sure what you mean by “work”. Mechanics-wise it has an arguably good foundation (build Mongoose Fury stacks, have abilities that interact with Mongoose Fury, focus management). Design issues didn’t really begin creeping up until Blizzard decided to move away from Legion’s spec-focused design to BFA’s class-focused design. And Legion’s version of the spec remains the best iteration of that design. Add that post-Legion the devs tried to placate the people who complained about ranged SV by trying to make melee SV a hybrid ranged/melee spec, which became a case of “try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one”.
As I see it, the issues can be addressed within the current framework of the spec. SV’s entire rotation being “spam Mongoose Bite 90% of the time” isn’t a good thing and should allow for skills that interact with Mongoose Fury (like Fury of the Eagle did in Legion). The Mongoose Fury window itself is restrictive and clashes with how Kill Command has to be weaved in to regain focus (can be alleviated by allowing Kill Command and Flanking Strike to extend the duration by 1 second when used). You have talents like Tip of the Spear that look like they were designed specifically for Raptor Strike, redundant abilities (Carve/Butchery) and some strange design choices (Coordinated Assault’s secondary effect, the fact that Mongoose Bite/Fury isn’t the baseline mechanic for SV and instead has to be specced into).
It’s not a hopeless situation, but will require putting in the time to fix the above.
Survival is a blast and by far the most fun spec of the 3 and I been a main hunter since Wrath. My problem with it is that it’s squishy. Yes you can kite but also why? You’re melee when I’m doing all this kiting I’m not able to attack with the main damage dealing attack. Cooldowns might be off and dots are on, much down time then during the offensive. No other melee class has to kite. The problem is they didn’t commit to a full melee. They still have it play like a ranger. Not just turtle but something that helps or does reactive damage mitigation.
