I really enjoyed survival in TBC. Nobody understood why I played it, but it was a lot of fun. I liked laying traps and leading stuff into it, and when I could get a player into it, WHOOP!
I can see how survival would be good in very specific situations, but there aren’t many of those situations around outside of PvP, and even there I think it’s much more situational than other classes and specs. It’s just a weird spec to play.
Yea i’m a newer player… I’ve literally been playing since classic and have downed more content then you will ever dream of even being apart of.
Tar trap is a 50 percent slow on every mob… It is used constantly in high M+ with hunter group’s. And into double melee teams in Arena you literally even take a talent for it…
Harpoon makes a ton of sense in PVE. You know how DK’s always complain when they target swap or when they have to move away from a mechanic. Guess what, hunter can use this ability to counter that problem. Wow hard to figure out.
Think about this, boss does a mechanic that makes the melee move 30 yards away. When you get to go back to the boss you can harpoon to it. Where other specs have to physically run. Right there alone you just got a 5 second window of damage another spec cannot.
Boss Summons an ad that the DPS need to deal with before it blows up. You can just harpoon too it and get to damaging quickly.
Your corruption summons an ad walking toward you and you harpoon to another target to out range it. HOWWWWWWWWWWWW are you this bad? I can think of 3 ways in a matter of seconds where it’s super useful…
PvE can have variance. Are you slow? I guess you haven’t done enough keys to understand how affixes work or something. They alone completely vary the PvE content…
A lot of us like old SV… Ok so what? That has no relevance to anything here.
A lot of us would play it… Once again no relevance here.
Nobody said you were asking them to take it away here ever. Once again you spouting out false facts is my issue. I don’t need other people joining the hate the melee hunter bandwagon with you because you sit here and give it a false narrative. I have to deal with it constantly in the game enough. Without you sitting here badmouthing my spec into the ground.
lol No. Well maybe now, and the past 2 expansions since RSV was killed. But during RSV’s lifetime, RSV was almost always the most represented hunter spec(throughout all forms of content) and typically one of the most popular specs out of every class. Like I said, there are outliers here and there, but generally RSV has been much more represented than both BM and MM, even when it was subpar-fair in raid settings.
By all means. I want MSV to do well for those who enjoy it. But I will never stop advocating for the spec I played and loved for over a decade to make a return as a fourth spec.
Anywho, I’m done. Must resume running old raids to not get mounts. I do hope Bepples will show up, to spit out some hard numbers though. 
I think they shoved the pet with range into Beast only and that was a bad idea, it pigeon holed that play style. I personally dislike BM.
I play survival as offspec only because I like having a pet. Marks with a pet is just insanely boring. It would be great if talent trees where more diverse to allow real customization to adapt to a players style.
Agreed, daily reset in 15. Rustfeather is my nemesis.
Yeah, all five of you.
In your head perhaps.
But since neither BM nor MM plays even remotely like how RSV used to play, and since many players already playing those specs want them to remain focused on their current themes, the best solution would be to add RSV back in as a 4th spec(and thus, a 3rd ranged hunter spec).
Precisely.
This.
It still baffles me how people can go about saying “NO, don’t you dare advocate for the removal of my spec(MSV), but go ahead, change MM/BM all you want”.
And at the same time…it doesn’t.
For SL? I would say that’s a big no indeed. For 10.0? One can dream…
Anyone who wants to discuss current SV can do so anytime they want to. It doesn’t mean that we have to stop asking for RSV to come back.
Many of us are, simply because of how we no longer have access to the playstyle we liked so much.
Yes to that last part really. And to the very first sentence.
As for Explosive Shot within MM, like you said, there’s no place in MM for it(in the style of RSV that is). Not unless you change a whole lot more than that.
I agree. Luckily for us, RSV did not/would not play the same as either of the current specs we have. Different animations, different mechanics and interactions and altogether a different base damage model/setup.
Depends on who you ask.
Yep. Simply put, for a proper version of RSV to be able to exist within MM, we would essentially need MM to be as it is by it’s default core design and perhaps a select few talent choices. The rest would need to be reworked in order to fit the necessary elements pertaining to RSV in there.
In other words, it would result in 2 very bland and uninteresting “half-specs” by today’s standards.
Incorrect. Just plain wrong.
Link:
https://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/gamescom-2017-world-warcraft-legion-patch-7-3-interview/2
In the interview with Ion, following a while after the changes, he said outright:
Representation doesn’t necessarily matter as much, I think. We knew with Survival Hunter that we were making a niche spec. It is a melee spec for a class that has traditionally being range. I think that a lot of existing hunters, they are all hunters because they want to be a range class, and so we don’t necessarily expect them or want them to feel like they should be changing; but for new players picking up that class, it is an intriguing option
What he failed to acknowledge was how, in turning SV into a melee spec, they literally forced EVERY hunter that does not like melee combat(as a hunter) to switch spec.
And with that, due to how specs were becoming so distinguished in their respective design/theme, more-so than before, they now also had completely removed a playstyle which played very different from both the other 2 ranged options within the class.
SoO is the first one that comes to mind.
Again, incorrect.
I guess you forgot about Highmaul?
Nope, BwD/BoT and TotFW along with Dragonsoul were all raids where RSV was right up there with other hunter specs on certain fights. Did it always outshine the other 2? No, but that’s another story.
Yes it has.
Only for HFC, and in Legion(although that’s beside the question here).
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/sv/pve-stats/classes/hunter
In fact, as you can see from that graph, if you take the median of the 3 hunter specs, SV beat the other two by miles right up until they tanked it for HFC(as by how the line drops to nothing from that point on).
That’s not the version of RSV which most people are asking for to come back.
People are here refering to what we got with WotLK, and even more so with Cata and forward up until they removed it, going into Legion.
I miss MoP surv
They would not be making a 3rd range spec they would be returning one and if they did a 4th spec they would have their 3 old range specs back and keep the new melee one
Nothing you just said makes any sense. I don’t think anybody is saying survival has ever been a melee spec, because it was not. It was intended to be over before vanilla released.
This doesn’t make any sense, like at all. When you play an arcane mage you don’t because arcane energy. When you play a destro lock you don’t become fel fire. Nobody but you are making these equivalencies
Also, before the talent overhaul there were still specs, you just didn’t choose a spec and have all your skills handed to you. Your spec depended on your talents, for which there were many builds.
I don’t know that you understand what i said whatsoever, and it seems like you’re just interested in arguing.
I almost think it should be a support role, perhaps more trap and mitigation spec for team play, we already have BM and Marksmanship that are similar in that they are ranged and dps oriented. If survival was more focused on traps, distraction, kiting and being a general nuisance it would be epic!
To be honest the ideal spec for Hunter tank and what should of been the melee spec is BM .
A hunter fighting in close with his pet like Rexxar ( who up until Legion was classified as a BM hunter)
OK. I suppose there is nothing wrong with campaigning for an implementation that would be at least two years out.
I would have hoped the community would rather focus on how to make the current three specs the best they can be as we have to live with them over the next two years.
Before I picked up my horde hunter I rolled a beast master hunter through legion and a separate beast master / survival hunter at the start of BfA on alliance. Yes, I did roll hunter. I’ve always rolled hunters. It’s sort of my thing since I started playing my first dwarf hunter too many years ago.
Just because you don’t like survival hunter as it is today , it doesn’t mean it’s any less a hunter.
You did just there…
And yes, a lot of players on these forums are saying just that.
Be over what?
Even if that was true, why the heck would that matter then if they never intended for players to actually access it once WoW went live?
You completely missed my point there.
My point was that, just because BM contained a lot of talents that somehow made our pets stronger, that did not mean that we wanted to abandon everything with the class that wasn’t the pet itself. We did not stop prioritizing ranged attack even though BM talents did little to make those attacks stronger.
Again, you missed my point here.
Yes, you are right in that we had a lot of ways we could go down in terms of what choices we made with talent picks. And technically, many called that “specs”.
But the difference between the design of our class back then, with what we see today, is how we now have Core Specializations which are specifically designed for us to play almost entirely different depending on which one we choose.
This was not the case at any point in Vanilla. My point, was that you could pick as many talents as you wanted that focused in some way on melee, whether it was utility, more crit for RS or MB etc. etc.
NOTHING you picked back then, resulted in you, by design, wanting to opt out of being a ranged fighter(one who opted to use the ranged weapon whenever possible, while only utilizing melee in cases where the alternative was not an option).
Again, no, contrary to what you said earlier, SV was not the melee spec back then. Not even early on in it’s original form. Even that version had only partial focus on elements that involved melee for us, and still, nothing from it changed/took priority over our default and primary mechanics - those being ranged.
Again, this is literally what you said. If you want people to take something different from it, other than what can actually be read, you will have to further elaborate on what you intend when saying that “survival was a melee spec”.
Not at all.
I actually want the arguing to stop. I want people to change their mindset towards a solution that would benefit everyone and not just one side.
Specifically, I want RSV to return as a 4th spec for the class. Again, like I suggested below/or something like it(link):
We can do both. Those campaigns aren’t mutually exclusive.
I think the argument is more that the changes made weren’t intended for then-current hunters as it was more to attract others to the class. Ion himself said this in an interview.
Here is the quote again:
Ion: Representation doesn’t necessarily matter as much, I think. We knew with Survival Hunter that we were making a niche spec. It is a melee spec for a class that has traditionally being range. I think that a lot of existing hunters, they are all hunters because they want to be a range class, and so we don’t necessarily expect them or want them to feel like they should be changing; but for new players picking up that class, it is an intriguing option
This is exactly what Illidette argued in your quote.
Does this mean that the idea of a hunter, fighting mostly in melee range, that this does not fit the game? Ofc it fits the game. But that still does not make their decision to remove an existing spec which a lot of players enjoyed, in favor of something that most of those players weren’t asking for, any better.
Do you know what a game in “alpha” means? It’s before the release, and before the larger beta. My point was that blizzard started with a melee Hunter spec, which became the old survival talents.
This doesn’t mean anything for after the game was released, other than the fact that melee survival isn’t a “new idea” for blizzard, it was actually the first idea. I personally like that they made it happen as survival feels different than the other two Hunter specs now.
Anyway, have a good day, I’m done looking at this thread.
You are a Death Knight silly. You will never be ranged
Yes, I do. Nice try though.
They started with a talent category which contained certain talents that somehow focused on melee. Along with some talents that focused on defensives, some on utility, and more.
Again, something that is entirely different from what we see today. A talent-design that did NOT in any way shape or form promote the idea that we should intentionally stop using ranged attacks as hunters, in favor of heading into melee range.
Today, Survival is specifically designed for us to not use ranged weapons at all.
This is why the argument that “SV was a melee spec back then” does not hold up.
You have one as well mate.
I think Survival needs some work to make it viable. It feels like it’d be better as part of a different class than working with Hunter. It doesn’t feel like there’s any synergy with your pet (much like how Marksmanship Hunters often forego having a pet for better dps).
I’m talking post-spec era when 3 specs became a thing in cataclysm. Survival turned into an awkward “ranged pet archer with a 20% heal after every enemy death and some traps” which had…0 identity. It sucked. Melee survival>>>>ranged survival.
I honestly hate any playstyle that requires me to set a trap down in the heat of battle ever 12 seconds. Click-point-click. Somehow Explosive Trap had made it into Ranged Survivals rotation a few times and it was the only thing I hated about the spec.
But, the thing I enjoyed most about SV was it was all dots and felt like the energizer bunny. It was everything I wanted out of BM but could never get, which was a fluid rotation, mobility, and the damage was coming from the hunter rather than the pet. I could instantly swap targets without the lag of my slow pet worrying me. I had burst with lock and load props. Survival felt better to play than the other two specs (but just barely above MM).
I honestly believe it was a mistake to add the SV abilities to the MM tree and they should have been added to BM tree. Explosive Shot should have replaced Kill Command when chosen, and caused your mastery to increase the potency of your magical abilities. Black Arrow should have been a separate talent on the tree and Serpent Sting should have been baseline for all specs.