Yeah it’s a really fun spec, just a really hard one to get used to at the same time. Like it can be genuinley good, you just need to run face first into a wall constantly to learn your limits and when to take damage to waste someones cooldowns.
That’s just my opinion though.
Hmm… I mean on one hand yes. On the other hand, according to Bepples…
And according to Avakuro one of the top SV players in the world, Survival was gutted in WoD and had no major CD and was basically a dead spec. That leaves 3 expansions in the history of WoW wherein SV was liked according to some members of the community.
With all the suggestions that player gave to SV to improve on its play-style and all the attention that other classes were given to only buff some less used talents does not show that SV is perfect.
Should look at the fact that SV has been given even more range options now only leaving Raptor Strike and Carve as its only melee abilities. It far closer to its Vanilla form being ranged with a melee ability, but flipped that the melee attacks are stronger.
It feels more that Blizzard is more focused on specs that are more popular.
In regards to SV in Vanilla and BC, it wasn’t what people refer to as RSV back then.
Back then, it was solely about improving our survivability through added utility and defensives, and some passive damage boosts as well.
It wasn’t designed to provide us with a distinguished playstyle. That only came with WotLK, and this also happens to be the time where SV became much more popular overall. Once they added things like Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, and other effects interacting with those and more.
In short, when people refer to “RSV”, they aren’t talking about SV in Vanilla/BC.
It wasn’t gutted as much as it was unfinished in some regards, like with how it was missing a major CD. Something the devs said they would correct in an upcoming patch, but never did.
Why?
For most of WoD, the devs were working on the new MSV spec that they were going to add with Legion, so they did not bother dividing any resources into further developing RSV. As they had no intention of keeping it anyway.
As for “a dead spec”…it was/became a dead spec after the 6.2 nerfs. This is when they destroyed it, arguably so that they could remove it later on with as few players as possible still playing it at that point.
Survival lost it’s cool down during MoP becoming focused around steady damage instead of burst and still did pretty well.
Survival wasn’t “gutted” until midway through WoD when they removed the initial damage “tick” as a “bug” even though it had been stated on the tooltip for years. This was patch 6.2.0 which introduced HFC and the MM instant Aimed Shot 4 piece set bonus. The nerf left SV with tank levels of damage and the chains of instant nukes made MM the most popular spec for the tier.
Prior to 6.2.0 SV had been very competitive and popular in PvE and PvP and even after 6.2.0 it still remained strong in PvP. It was simply the combination of gutted damage plus fully mobile proc heavy MM that basically killed SV in raiding at that point.
Then with the pre-patch shifting it to melee Hunter numbers dropped from ~13% representation to ~9% and Survival became the least played spec ever.
I realize that. And while I really do sympathize and would be much more likely to play a wrath, cata, mop era RSV than any other ranged spec in the game, I cant help but feel like MSV opponents refer to a idealized RSV (not real RSV) when they suggest that MSV shouldn’t exist.
I also realize that you try very hard to be sympathetic to people who enjoy MSV and I wouldn’t necessarily lump you in with MSV opponents, more of an RSV proponent… which is saying something because those are typically inseparable.
Not entirely sure what you mean by this. I mean, I get what you mean by an “idealized version” of RSV, I just don’t get why you feel that this is where people generally are at, those who argue that MSV should not exist.
The people who do enjoy current SV, despite how I myself don’t care about it at all really, I have nothing against. We are different and we like/want different things from this game and the options that are available to us.
Sympathy/empathy for people who enjoy MSV, again, that’s not something I have to try to muster up.
What I find harder to agree with, are those players who argue in favor of MSV while simultaneously arguing against RSV. Those players who go out of their way to try to justify the removal of the spec. Those who could not be happier that we lost it.
I mean…sure, some of them do it because they are trying to defend the spec which they like. But when they bash on RSV and the playstyle it brought to those of us who loved it, again, those that use this type of offensive posting as a defense mechanism are literally bashing on the players who are already in a place where they themeselves are trying not to end up.
“MSV is the best thing/spec in the game” etc. etc. That is precisely what we thought of RSV.
This, right here, is exactly why I’m such a big advocate for the addition of a 4th spec for this class. This is why I’m so against the whole “ranged vs. melee”-debate.
From a mechanical perspective, there’s nothing that stops us from adding that 4th spec. It’s purely a case of mindsets not being on the same page.
[quote=“Gromgarr-azgalor, post:83, topic:690165”] The dislike of SV obviously has nothing to do with its strength, but is a conceptual dislike.
[/quote]
Its not obvious. In fact, this is non causa pro causa. From the information you’ve cited, you can determine nothing but that people didn’t play SV, in high end PvE, even when its damage was the better of the hunter specs. Nothing indicating a cause is contained in that information.
What also isn’t accounted for is that it doesn’t compete against ranged dps for melee dps spots. It doesn’t bring any spec exclusive utility to compete with the mandatory melee DPS specs which do. Additionally it fails to address community perception. That is to say, if I want to play SV, will my raid leader let me play SV?
This is the whole point I’ve been trying to make by citing the high representation in top level arena play. Its not just good. People want to play it. If being on top of DPS simming didn’t make them the main hunter spec in whatever tier they were on top, performance cant be the only thing that matters… as you implied, contrary to what Bepples seems to be arguing. And if performance can’t be the only thing that matters in PvE, then some people must be playing SV comps in PvP because they like the concept.
That is only the correct “i want to look smart”-word to use if you leave out all the rest of the information you have about MSV, which i dont. We have the insanely low numbers, through good and bad times and all the communitiy outcry when and after they released MSV. You can ofc stick your head and sand and say that this still doesnt scientifically prove anyhting, but its a whole load of evidence.
Enhancers and Ferals get played more often even when they have a ranged option, too.
There are still a lot of melees that come who dont bring anything unique. Even a second DH is not uncommon.
They let you play Feral and Enhancer, soo…
Now its you using one data point and ignoring the rest.
Hunter is one of the most played classes in WoW but if those players want to do competitive PvP on their Hunter character they pretty much have to play MSV and its been that way for 2 expansions. IF you are really top tier AND you have the perfect group comp with your team mates then you can play BM or MM and do okay.
For better or worse Shadowlands will probably kill this particular PvP meta as right now on Beta pets die way too easily and cripple both BM and SV as its also easy to block the pet res. MM meanwhile is so bursty with its stealth opener that it is definitely going to get a huge nerf. Thus leaving all three specs broken in PvP.
can you stop saying pvp. Please say arena since that’s what you are obviously referring to.
One data point?
If people want to argue that the performance doesn’t matter, people just don’t like MSV, they don’t get to argue that performance is the only reason people play it in PvP. This is the only argument I’m making.
Simply put, when people don’t play it because they dont like it, they must like it when they do play it. If its not that simple when its positive, then its not that simple when its negative.
The point many are making with this, is that even when MSV performs well, it still does not see a major increase in representation in most types of content in the game.
Ok… so I know that people are pointing this out, and they are making the argument that this is evidence that no one likes SV, and therefore MSV should be reverted, or should never have been changed. None of these things are logically connected. To illustrate this point, I have pointed out that Arena representation is high for MSV. So either performance doesnt matter or performance does matter, either way representation cannot determine if the spec is liked.
In response, people keep repeating their non-causa pro causa, ad nauseum. The problem is that some say it sucks and shouldn’t exist and its bull that its so good in PvP forcing people who hate it to play it. Others say its good but everyone hates it, which is why it shouldn’t exist. Both of these conflicting positions are supported only by the echo chamber of SV hate threads and poor PvE representation. Ad populum fallacy and non causa pro causa. When the argument is based on logical fallacy, it doesn’t matter what the person making the argument is trying to say. They need to take a different tack, or abandon the argument. Repeating it ad nauseum is just more fallacy.
I agree, sort of. Mostly because the devs have outright said that SV was not changed because of popularity reasons. Whether I specifically believe all their excuses for how they justify adding MSV, is a completely different story ofc.
But either way, any argument that SV should now be reverted because of how unpopular it is in general, is kind of moot. This however is solely based on what the devs have said in regards to SV.
If they suddenly change their minds and go by the logic that “oh, SV is incredibly low on representation, and generally players just don’t like it, so we must overhaul it”, unless this suddenly becomes their new way of looking at it, using representation(current numbers) as an argument for why it should be changed is basically a waste of time. Will it always be that? Maybe not…
I would say, depending on the circumstances, it’s not as black or white.
In a case like this, we can based on performance, deduce that MSV might not be the most popular spec in the game. Because, despite how it has several times been the top performing hunter spec(numbers-wise), it has never been the most represented hunter spec, in most types of e.g. content in the game. Does that mean that performance/numbers alone can be used to determine exactly how popular/unpopular the spec is? Not necessarily.
But based on history, specs that do perform well, are most of the time the ones with the highest representation. And when you then see one spec which doesn’t follow this logic, it does support the assumption that it isn’t as popular(it’s design and gameplay) as other specs.
However! The Hunter class does not exist within a vacuum. Nor can it be judged solely by itself in terms of e.g. content. As, e.g. content is group-based and most of the time, it’s not just about raw numbers. Here, performance is about more than just throughput/numbers. Here, performance also has to do with what you can bring to the group. What you can provide in addition to solid numbers.
But sadly, again, this does not speak in favor of current SV as, the change to melee certainly did not make it more desirable from a group-based perspective.
Performance does matter but only to some extent.
When theres the option to play other specs other than sv people will usually play the other specs.
In 8.0 after bm got their first big nerf people were mainly still playing bm even though sv was just as good as them. But once they got the second nerf which iirc was a 20% dps nerf to their pet both mm and bm became unplayable in pvp so u had to play sv or not pvp at all.
The same thing is currently happening in pvp where both mm and sv are playable yet theres way more mm hunters running around than sv.
If survival in pve would suddenly be dealing 50% more dps than everyone else ofc people would be playing it although not necessarily because they enjoy it.
Since PvP and PvE are vastly different contents, the impact they have can vary. If you play a subpar spec in PvE, you do everything a bit slower, a bit less save, however you can still do the vast majority of the content. In PvP however, you just lose the fights if you play the weak spec. Since BM and MM are so very weak in BFA-Arena, you are forced to play SV, if you want to pvp at all. The power difference in PvE is a lot lower, therefore people are able to play weak specs to much bigger succes than in PvP. There are specs who are weaker in PvE who are still played a lot more.
So, the higher representation of SV in PvP is not evidence for people liking it, the extremly low representation in PvE however, is.
I already explained why non causa pro causa doesnt fit here and Ad populum is even worse. It is about the majority of the players not liking the melee variant, so ofc the opinion of the masses is legitimate evidence here. You cant just throw around words without using them properly.
You didn’t. Also…
This is textbook non causa pro causa. Two completely unrelated statements presented as though one is evidence of the other. Not because you downplayed the importance of “strength” because I agree, but because you assumed a wholesale rejection of the concept as explanation for low representation. There are numerous factors that contribute to low representation.
Now when I refer to the
I thought it was very clear that I was only referring to the citation of SV hate posts as argumentum ad populum and only the citation of poor representation as non causa pro causa. I think these are pretty cut and dry observations. If your argument is that everyone on the forums makes posts saying that they hate SV so it must be bad, then that is an argumentum ad populum.
As opposed to 0 expansions where melee SV was liked.
Lol, touché