… the fact that we start with a ranged weapon from level 1, our class icon is a ranged weapon, and we have a large amount of baseline/shared utility themed around ranged weapons even if you pick Survival. It’s as central to the Hunter identity as Stealth is to the Rogue identity. Taking it away from one spec just to chase uniqueness is like taking Stealth away from a Rogue spec. It’s a handicap. It’s tokenism. It’s bad class design.
We are far too late into this to be blaming player perception.
In classic and BC, Survival was a a largely overlooked spec that had a few specific use cases but otherwise lagged behind MM in Classic and BM in BC for most areas of the game. No one really cared about it. Then it got Explosive Shot in 3.0 and it was immediately a very popular spec, and in fact would be the most popular Hunter spec for most of that expansion. Six years afterwards we were in MoP and SV was more or less at its peak popularity and it had remainmed a popualar spec that entire time.
We aren’t in the early days of melee SV any more and we can’t keep calling this “growing pains”. It’s evidently in a much worse state than it was when it was ranged.
That’s a Survival Hunter included on one of the first kills of Gul’Dan. We heard all the time back then about how now that Survival had been demonstrated to be a capable spec people would start flocking to it. The word “influx” was thrown around a lot. You can even see that chatter in the comments of the video.
That was five years ago and it amounted to nothing. SV did not become a popular spec. It didn’t become popular when it was reworked again in BFA despite WoW content creators tripping over themselves to praise it, or when it was one of the best DPS specs in the game in Uldir, or when it was the only option for rated PvP throughout BFA, or when it had some of the strongest uncapped AoE in Shadowlands. It’s time to accept that this spec will never be widely accepted. The playerbase might be slow to react to meta changes and player perception can have a lot of influence, but it’s nowhere near enough to explain away year after year of SV being the redheaded stepchild of WoW class design.
…yes, that’s the point. SV depends on being in melee range to deal its full damage potential. BM and MM do not.
Huh? You know I linked the thread and everyone here can check for themselves, right? The top reply was from someone else and it’s actually a very fair and level-headed take on the spec. He even likes the thematic approach aside from the melee aspect and he ultimately preferred ranged Survival.
Yes, I netted a bunch of votes too with a snarky comment but it was a very relevant point to make. Someone was talking about how great it is that SV can do 80% of its damage at range (which is in contrast to what you just said about SV being a pure melee spec BTW yet I don’t see you in that thread “correcting” them). I find it funny when people brag about that because BM and MM, as well as ranged SV, could do 100% of their damage at ranged. Somehow being ranged is a great thing for SV and a major selling point at 70, 80, 90% of the damage profile, yet suggesting 100% is suddenly unreasonable and “trolling”. I like exposing “Emperor’s new clothes” situations like this because it exposes how SV being melee is empty tokenism.
I’m looking at the thread and it’s only a handful of people on either side. There are certainly more than just me and two others on the side of ranged Survival in any case. You can keep pretending the thread was mostly in favour of melee SV but I did link it and people can check for themselves. It’s a reach at best for that particular thread and it’s certainly wrong for the broader Hunter forums. This argument has been going on for years which is why I asked you if your angle here was that everyone loved melee SV except for some minority on the forums. You ignored that question and went straight into nitpicking and handwaving about that particular thread. That sort of evasion might work for you personally but I’ll remind you that other people read our posts and they can see what’s really going on.
If you’re so interested in what’s going on over at the Hunter forums, here is a thread asking for ranged SV to return with 130 upvotes and 1.2k replies. In fact, if you sort by replies, most of the most replied-to threads are concerning SV and usually posts in favour of ranged SV get much better reception than those in favour of melee SV.
Yes: I liked Survival a lot and I wanted to see it do well. They turned it into something that does terribly. They turned one of the game’s more popular and widely-enjoyed specs into the biggest laughing stock of class design. As I said in my last post: some of us actually want SV to succeed and that’s why we say SV should be ranged. Because it once was ranged and it was very successful in that time.
So boldy stated, as if Blizzard doesn’t routinely axe popular designs in favour of unpopular designs. SV was not the only victim.
We don’t have to guess about SV’s past popularity based on what Blizzard did. You can find representation data from the past, for example:
- Worldofwargraphs (2013-2019)
- Warcraftlogs (Highmaul)
- Cynwise Blog (2011-2014)
- Armory Datamining (2010)
You can also find commentary from the time as well as plentiful boss PoVs and even activity from active WotLK/MoP private servers. All signs point to SV being a routinely popular spec before 6.2 and then Legion.
It’s time for Blizzard to move on from their failed melee Hunter experiment. It’s their fault for messing it up; it’s not my fault for pointing out how they messed it up. Like I said, the ranged SV advocates are giving the most constructive criticism you can possibly give for SV.