So, basically, your claim boils down to “it might be popular outside of any content that actually gets tracked” and this somehow leads to “there is more Melee Surv hunter than the other two”? Got it.
Hiding behind casual content doesn’t work. Every spec in the game will have casual players that don’t do raid content or much PvP. There is no inherent reason Survival should be so much more skewed in that direction, especially considering its ST damage. It is melee in a ranged class, but a) that doesn’t stop Feral and Enhancement and b) it is much less represented in M+ where melee is favoured over ranged. Its representation is also just as low in lower raid difficulties. The only area where it isn’t floundering is high-rated arena, which is primarily due to the sorry state of the other two specs and is a vastly less played area of the game than raiding and M+.
SV is absolutely amazing. The people saying “go play Druid it has melee and ranged” are the same people saying “I don’t want to roll a mage I want a ranged weapon”
So I say, I want to be a melee that has the ability to use a ranged weapon.
Of course it can? You just swap to BM or MM? Obviously I wasn’t talking about at the exact same time. And technically yes SV can do that for 45 seconds at a time.
And this is the basis for your statement that there are more MSV hunters out there compared to BM and/or MM hunters?
And yes, technically you said ‘‘in your personal experience’’ and ‘‘based on those you play with’’.
But when determining spec representation and popularity, those arguments do not hold up for anything.
Fair enough, it would ofc be optimal if we had a reliable way to track spec representation in all types of content and difficulties/brackets relative to the total number of level 120 players that are specced as for example Survival.
If we look at wowgraphs as an example, which shows players with mythic boss kills as well as those with a PvP team at 1800 rating or higher.
For PvE(mythic), we can see that roughly 0.5% of players are Survival.
For PvP(@rating), 2.3% of all players are Survival.
If you go below mythic in PvE, you’d expect to see a slight increase in the number of players playing as Survival. While for PvP, below said rating, you’d see an increase for BM and MM as well.
As for exact numbers…feel free to provide a reliable source.
Actually that’s not obvious given Hunters in the past have both melee and ranged weapons and many people this expansion have erroneously praised SV for being a hybrid between the two.
Plus, you know things are bad when one of your best praises for the melee spec is “you can play one of the ranged specs”.
In the end, neither side can be right or wrong due to the lack of real data.
At the same time if we take only the data from Wargraph… we cant even use it.
In PvP arena, Survival has some strong comps but very little choices, you get more options using the other two.
In Mythic raiding, you dont play the spec you like, you play the spec that is optimal. So if survival does 5k less dps than MM, raid lead will ask you to go MM or find a new raid.
So in both case we cant point out if the spec is fun or not, if its something hated by the majority or not.
All we have is… personal experiences… which varies a lot.
This is only true in some cases.
It’s not a blanket “requirement” to instantly pick everything which is most optimal as soon as you even think of the words Mythic Raiding…
Besides, here’s the comment we get regarding the different Hunter specs for raiding and ST damage, numbers-wise:
All of the specs are close to equal in this respect.
personally i like it a lot more then current BM/MM and a few friends who used to play hunter agree that BM/MM are lackluster, however they refuse to even spec into survival and try it as it “feels like a betrayal of my classes identity”.
so is it bad because people don’t like it, or is it bad because people don’t want to try new things?
Old RSV main here. Actually I completed all 3 mage towers on my hunter, including survival. Does it mean I like the spec, no, does it mean I like the changes, again no. Just cause someone isn’t playing a spec it doesnt mean afraid of trying new things. I made a hunter for simple reason, A - range non magical. Only class in entire game with that option. B - a pet, a class “fantasy” is hunter at range with pet by his side. Fast forward WoD, they introduced lone wolf which for first time opened class up to go petless, taking one of core fantasies away. Problem is this ability is so much more powerful then having a pet, actually became a dps loss to use one, even to this day. Aimed shot went the way of caster long cast, it lost it’s ability to be instant class spec. Which I was Sv anyways, however fast forward legion. I tried it for week, I tried the spec, even the revamp in bfa. No, it is not what i like it is not class i grew to love. So in just few expansions I lost 2 specs. Bm is there but its basically shoot snakes and barbed shots while doing angry bites. Class I mained for 12 years, and play in every mmo i play, it lost what made it special. So yes I want my rsv back, and I would be happy for it to be 4th spec i can live with it. But those telling ones that love rsv haha sucks to be you im happy, isnt a nice way to be. Sure some are happy but how do ones who lost what they loved feel, all i ask is to be more respectful, which i know is a long shot in this community but least try?
Aye they are close, I guess I didn’t mention fact that being melee gets you less chance to be in. Every Mythic seems to be looking for ranged dps mostly. Overflown with melee.
@Tajio
A fair reply. I did like old SV more than the other two for sure, but I love the melee version just as much.
Some folks wanted the melee survival back, they saw MM and SV being “too” similar… so Blizzard did a change. Half lost something they loved and other half gaining something.
It’s a bad idea exactly due to what your friends describe: it’s antithetical to the class identity. Add to this the fact that it necessarily depends on pet aspects which infringes on BM’s identity, it has no coherent identity of its own, it’s so high-maintenance that it sucks up the majority of the developer attention to the class, it’s explicitly catered to people who aren’t long-time Hunters, and so on.
It’s not about aversion to new things. Explosive Shot and Black Arrow were once new things but people liked those a lot and it made Hunters excited to play the spec, really for the first time ever. New things aren’t automatically good things. They have to stand as good ideas on their own merits, and making SV melee just doesn’t. It makes Hunters avoid the spec. Plus, Hunter specs aren’t the place to try out inherently non-Hunter things.
yeah but that could be said for many a spec. Sub and Sin being a prime example.
again if they were so exciting why did people stop playing Survival entirely? I mean they broke 3 specs and yet Survival stuck out like a sore thumb in that no one was playing it at all (.03% i believe). (personally i still play Vengence despite it not being competive, why wasn’t Survival the same way ?)
That fits the class identity, though. The original manual is pretty clear about how priests go the light route for healing/buffs and the dark route for offensive abilities. The same manual is also pretty clear about Hunters using ranged weapons.
Yes – and those specs are also highly problematic and at least one of them is already confirmed to be undergoing a major rework next expansion (Sub). Other specs having a bad state of identity doesn’t excuse Survival. It just further highlights what a farce Legion and BFA’s class design philosophy as been.
I’ve already explained in the other thread why going SV was so far beyond being a valid choice for any level of PvE content in 6.2.
Ranged Survival was routinely a popular spec before 6.2 even when it wasn’t that strong. It took being the weakest spec in the game by a massive margin to make it unpopular. Melee Survival? That’s just Tuesday.
While i agree on the option to do either, i dont think hunter was the correct choice for this. What about being a “hunter” suggests melee? What they should have done was made outlaw rogues a ranged spec instead of just another flavor of the same old same old. its already using pistols, why not rifles?
Hey I got an idea, since we are having fun with specs.
Rogues are too similar they all use DW Daggers and they don’t have the hybrid ability of switching roles. So I say let’s move Marksman over to rogues, I mean it’s an assassin right? And then we can make a whole new hunter spec based on riding your pet and being a tank.
If you like that suggestion I have tons more I could pull from my bum. I’m sure once they make the change there will be players that like it. Don’t worry Those players will ignore representation, popularity, history, and a host of other metrics to try and not lose their special new spec on their 12th alt of choice.
No one before they made surv melee said “ you know what I want to play a great melee class” and ever thought hunter. Everyone played hunter to be ranged since the start of wow. Straight trash what they did to surv
Realistically though, these arguments are futile. Trying to convince people to remove something they like in a video game for virtually any reason is not going to work. Further, I don’t think blizzard cares, blizzard will do what blizzard wants.