Prejudice against survival hunter

Community General Discussion
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…

Okay, I’ll bite.

Here’s the deal: I’m an old school player, too. Started in 2005. Rolled this toon (Watermist), specced MM, and never looked back.

Not once have I ever called the old SV a melee spec. Not once have any of my guildies called the old SV a melee spec.

I don’t know where you’re pulling this out of.

And blaming the Cata babies? C’mon. The old SV was primarily ranged with two DEFENSIVE melee abilities in Vanilla. And guess what, in BC old SV moved even more towards ranged utility, and then WotLK gave us the first really big Hunter revamp in which the old SV was completely, totally cemented as a solidly ranged spec.

Uh huh, sure thing, Jan.

Vanilla SV’s melee abilities: Raptor Strike (base ability that BM and MM had), Wing Clip (base ability that BM and MM had), and Counterattack (which only worked after you dodged).

MSV’s abilities from Legion to SL: a whole heap of brand-new stuff that have never existed in the Hunter class before like Wildfire bomb, caltrops, butchery (I hate this particular name. It’s much more of a warrior name), carve, harpoon… the list goes on!

(Oh, I forgot that Mongoose Bite existed. But it did such terrible DPS back in vanilla.)

The melee Hunter meme, you mean.

I’m sorry if that comment seemed mean. For the folks who enjoy MSV now, well, more power to them! But there is NO historical basis for a melee SV spec prior to Legion.

You had like 6 posters proving you wrong over and over in this thread. I know you’re either a troll or too stubborn to budge your position. This will be my only post in this thread.

But I’m hoping other people would read what I had to say and stop to consider that the claim of Vanilla SV as a melee Hunter was a MYTH.

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This isn’t a small, ignorable difference. This is a major difference in the identity, theme, and playstyle. So no, it can’t be compared to vanilla Survival.

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Playing classic as I type this, nope not a melee (can melee things yes, do I want to be in the position when fighting anything that matters NOPE!) Oh and I started playing one month right after launch (would have been day one but was Still playing EQ)… So no Cata starter here.

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Really LOL.

While you were trying to figure out how to use your class during vanilla, people were doing stuff like this already in game. I know because I saw it and I played against people like this in WPVP, BG.

I don’t care that you and your guild didn’t call the spec the melee hunter spec but everyone else I know did.

PVE Melee Hunter
World First Survival Hunter Tanking Onyxia - YouTube
BG PVP
Vanilla Thunderfury Melee Hunter PvP 1.12 - Aliasfarmer - YouTube
World PVP melee hunter
Melee survival hunter world pvp - Classic WoW - YouTube

WOW Classic Melee Survival Hunter PVP - YouTube

Go play Classic if you don’t WANT to believe LOL, SMH.

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Everyone else did not lol. But to quickly go over your posted videos;

This is impressive, however it’s not a great argument that SV was intended to be melee back then. The video description itself even states they tried doing it initially due to memes about their dodge rating and decided to try it out seriously. I’m by no means meaning to make light of their achievement because it is certainly cool and impressive. But I also don’t believe it’s a great argument.

For instance, I’ve also tanked bosses on this character while doing it at range with my pet. Legitimately, hunters have a strong enough toolkit to solo a ton of stuff, let alone tank something with a dedicated team helping you.

Ah, yes. Clip videos. These are significantly less impressive than the first video you listed. Most of the players in these videos are straight up keyboard turning / backpedaling. They also focus on the clips where they are successful, rather than. You know, showing you the times where they are not where ranged likely would make a difference.

To be clear, I don’t believe I ever made the argument you can’t make it work or that people didn’t back then. I am however saying it was never treated seriously by the vast majority of players and very much was treated like a meme. That’s in part because these players are / were specifically using a playstyle that intentionally reduced their overall performance due to preference.

But really, it’s hard to take you seriously because of stuff like

This. You consistently rely on insulting others rather than relying on any sort of consistent argument to make your point. When you are proven wrong you end up ignoring the posts or continue to bash regardless.

What’s more, I’m not convinced you even play that hunter frequently. You still lack a full covenant set and have since you entered the thread ages ago. The timeline on your achievements also show you haven’t raided consistently on that character in ages. You don’t have any sort of meaningful PVP under your belt (your highest being 1500 in RBGs).

You keep making what appear to be bad faith arguments while simply calling others who disagree with you bad when you yourself don’t have anything impressive to show for it.

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WOW man, just WOW.

I present you evidence and you dig deeper into the ground like stubborn old fools.

I’ve said enough and I know what I saw and like others on here have pointed out time and again to you nay sayers, you still don’t want to admit you’re wrong, LOL.

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I specifically addressed the evidence you posted. I actually took the time to watch most of those videos (the thunderfury one was a bit longer than the others so I stopped part way through to give the others a watch for you).

I mean, we agree there.

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But yet people have shown the opposite and yet you keep digging deeper into the ground like a stubborn old fool and don’t want to admit you’re wrong .

Am I doing it right ? If I’m going to troll a troll I want to make sure I am doing it properly.

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You might as well link to me a bunch of videos of Shadowlands ranged Survival. People stuck to melee as a challenge mode; this wasn’t an optimal or even particularly effective way of PvPing. This is why 100% of the things you just linked are non-competitive content. Look at those PvP videos you linked; for any of the opponents doing anything better than keyboard turning and/or trying to run away instead of fighting, they are depending heavily on ranged combat. And these are the cherrypicked examples.

If you go to any PvP guide they will tell you the goal is to stay at range as much as possible. That’s because the class is intended and tuned to be played at range and it’s much safer for the Hunter to do so. The fact that a melee approach is novel enough to put it in the title should tell you that this isn’t a regular thing and is instead a personal challenge.

As for the PvE example: he’s massively overgearing the instance, stacked with world buffs, having all healers focus on him, and having all DPS do mostly auto attacks and other light damage only. This is an incredibly bad example of a melee-focused PvE build. It’s obviously a novelty challenge. If you look to classic WoW’s competitive raiding most Hunters aren’t bothering with any melee attacks at all; not even a melee weaving approach.

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My favourite part of those videos is how every time he’s going up against someone who does fight back and has a skill level beyond endless keyboard to try to face a target jumping around them, he’s out to ranged and kiting immediately. In a video about being a melee Hunter, whenever there’s a remotely difficult fight he’s out to ranged again. Most people should get the hint that melee is a deliberately handicapped mode.

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SV will never be good as melee. Not when the game director says things like “we dont want hunters to feel forced to play SV”. That’s basically saying they will never be the top dps hunter spec. Sv will be unwanted until it goes back to being ranged like most people want.

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No, that clearly cannot be. After all, everyone knows we’re supposed to be type casting our spells! Only noobs do not. I’ll even provide evidence for it!

All hunters were playing this way back then, if you disagree you clearly are just being a stubborn fool ;>. You can’t even say he’s bad at PVP, he’s a merciless gladiator!

(Obvious sarcasm here gang)

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Copy paste from reddit by user named Shelassa

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/hol82b/we_want_to_keep_melee_as_part_of_survival_ion/
Ion Hazzikostas participated in an [interview] where he said the following:

Question: The Hunter community is still split on the issue of the melee spec even two expansions after its introduction. With your new stance of “class over spec” and more ranged abilities returning to the class, what does it mean for Survival in the long term?

Ion Hazzikostas:

That’s a good question. I think part of what led Survival to a melee space to begin with was trying to differentiate Survival from Marksmanship.

The rotations over the years had become very very similar

— OK you might have a couple more magical-seeming shots in the Survival space. Beast Mastery was very clearly its own thing with its clear niche as the pet-based spec. But then you had these two ranged specs that basically did a lot of ranged shots in their rotation.

Some of that is actually fallout from the shift that we did in Cataclysm going into Mists.

We moved from the old-school talent trees

that could probably better support types of play styles and utility without having to build a whole spec around them. Having a tree like Survival that was about traps and utility and a little bit of melee stuff in there — that worked when it was something that you could put points into as a broader class initiative. But then turning it into its own spec ultimately led us down a path of duplicating a lot of Mark’s abilities.

We want to keep melee as part of the unique identity of Survival

but in Shadowlands and beyond, as we start to think about what classes should look like in future expansions, it’s important that there will be this sort of universal base of what defines a Hunter. All Hunters should have access to ranged attacks and Survival Hunters can be ones that specialize in melee but not necessarily at the expense of the universal skillset that everyone had as a level 5 or level 10 Hunter because that’s what being the class means

I’m okay with that

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He also said it was mostly for new players picking up the class not existing hunters.
# mesCom 2017 World of Warcraft: Legion Patch 7.3 Interview

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

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Well, if you look at this thread, Ion is clearly right that there are some hunter players that are very hostile to the idea of even 1/3 of hunter specs being melee. And it’s no secret that most fight design is hostile to melee right now and a lot of group/raid leaders want to stack ranged because of that.

But your personal dislike for a spec is not a good argument for deleting it. And if you want a ranged spec with Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot and Lock and Load, you know where to find it. (No, it’s not exactly the same, but few specs are exactly the same 5 expansions later.)

Hunter is WoW’s premier pet class and the only one to use actual animals as pets. (I am not arguing to delete Lone Wolf for this reason though!) If you want to get your hands dirty and fight side by side with a pet, the only other spec that does that is Unholy, which is aesthetically and mechanically VERY different. So a Rexxar spec makes sense as one of several options for hunters.

No one should feel forced into it, but that’s the opposite of what is happening now, people feeling forced away from it, which is also bad.

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Not exactly the same, it’s not even in the same galaxy?!?

My personal Dislike of the spec comes from the fact it exist because it deleted my favorite Spec in the game and even after trying MM it was not even a little close (why I’m not even bothered with retail anymore and waiting for WotLK classic hopefully). And as long as Range exist Melee is going to have to be handicapped to the point where ranged players do not feel forced to play it (or you will see some really really upset people that makes all this look pleasant)

which is also bad.

after seeing how many of those Melee SV people are opposed to the 4th spec idea it makes it a lot harder for me to really care on that last part. (ones that are open to it I do feel some sympathy for.)

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if a Rexxar spec makes sense where is my sylvanas spec or my Plate wearing Shaman Thrall spec? (basing the classes off the heroes is just major silliness at this point).

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No you can’t. You really can’t.

Survival in vanilla was basically a pvp-only spec designed so that you could survive melee better to get back to range due to the deadzone. And literally nobody went past 30 points in survival in vanilla, because the 31 point talent for survival was the worst ability in the entire game - not just the worst hunter ability, but the worst ability, factually speaking.

No, it’s really not. I played a 31/20 MM/Surv build in classic, and then once survival didn’t suck I went survival and stayed survival through the expose weakness/wyvern sting days in BC into the lock and load era and until the survival spec that I’d grown to love over ten years literally disappeared.

There was never a time when melee hunter wasn’t a literal joke before Legion. The only thing any hunter ever wanted to go into melee for was to put a trap at your feet before trap launcher was added.

Once survival had stabilized in focus, it stayed largely the same for many years. It was a spec focused around using elemental arrows, being mobile, and managing resources and dots around procs. It offered a very agile, quick, and reactive playstyle that forced me to constantly be aware of my resources, my buff bar, and my dots so that I didn’t waste damage. It was a unique playstyle unlike anything offered by almost any other class… and when it disappeared, I literally lost all motivation to play the character I’d been with since day 1 of burning crusade(I rerolled Draenei in BC after being a NE Hunter for Vanilla). I managed to level that character through Legion and BFA but never really enjoyed it and didn’t play much. And I can’t even bring myself to log into it now… as you can see, this character is still 50.

The ‘Survival is a melee spec’ joke existed because its 31 pt talent was Lacerate - a melee bleed that did 133 damage over 21 seconds and didn’t scale with anything. And… well, it was the worst ability in the game. Nothing else boasted that low damage. So, naturally Lacerate went away a few patches into Vanilla when they did the first hunter rework.

This is what frustrates me the most. I played both survival and MM. I tried MM frequently because it was almost always parsing at slightly better numbers. But it was such a different playstyle. MM was a stationary turret feel. You stood still, used a lot of slower abilities that individually did more damage. While Survival was all about quick, agile abilities. You rarely used cast time abilities and rarely had to stand still… but none of your stuff hit particularly hard upfront.

Saying they’re similar is like saying Affliction and Destruction are similar because ‘they both cast spells and are warlocks’.

The ONLY people who thought they were similar were MM hunters who had never really learned how to maximize survival. Anyone who was ACTUALLY a survival hunter knew how different they were because that was why they were survival despite survival typically parsing slightly lower.

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(because I hate when people try to hide behind alts… Eleshakai is my former hunter main - I switched to that character to show her unleveled state.)

People are hostile to the idea because in order for 1 of 3 hunter specs to be melee… one group of hunters had to literally lose their spec.

NOBODY would be hostile to the idea of 1 of 4 hunter specs being melee, because that would’ve just been ‘hey look there’s a new playstyle to play’.

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Hunter is WoW’s premier archer class and the only one to use actual bows as weapons. If you want to get your hands dirty and fight side by side with a bow, the only other spec that does that is MM, which is aesthetically and mechanically VERY different. So a archer spec makes sense as one of several options for hunters.

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