I actually like the Beast Master fantasy, so I can’t say I’m emotionally invested either way, but…
I think Survival should bring something other than being able to stack on other melee, if they remain a melee spec. Right now, Survival, Enhance, and Feral are hurt by the fact that they COULD be ranged, but opted not to be. Maybe “Flanking Strike” should be flanking like in D&D or Pathfinder - synergy with other melee characters that exists outside of boss mechanics, affixes, or AoE healing that rewards stacking.
With Survival it’s time to stop thinking about bandaid fixes we can apply to compensate for it being melee and start thinking about whether it should be melee in the first place.
It definitely should be, I see absolutely no reason for a class to have 3 ranged specs when a melee spec is suitable for it lore-wise.
There have been plenty of melee hunters in the lore - troll shadowhunters and rexxar just to name a few. Making survival another ranged spec just makes it blend in even more with marksman and beast mastery. At least those two are actually distinct at the moment, with one not using pets and the other going all in on pets. Survival as a ranged spec offers nothing that marksman or BM couldnt already offer.
What Survival needs, IMO (and this goes for a LOT of current specs, not just hunter/survival), is the ability to pick their weapon type. Why limit it to 2h staffs/polearms when hunters used to be able to dual wield just fine? This is the same issue with frost DKs being dual wield only now, and enhancement shamans no longer have 2h, and fury warriors forced into dual 2handers. These pigeonholed weapon layouts that blizzard has given us no choice on really dull the game down.
Without further changes lone wolf couldnt really work for survival, since kill command is their primary resource generator and a huge part of damage for the spec.
You’d have to replace kill command with another attack that functions similarly on top of adding lone wolf.
It’s funny how I’m reading this when I see everyone saying that Survival overlapped too much with MM.
It’s also funny how you pretend it’s more distinct from BM now when in BFA it has to steal several iconic abilities from BM. Ranged SV didn’t use Kill Command, for example, but melee SV does.
It’s ridiculous how you’re still here posting these lies about ranged SV.
I know your modus operandi is declaring nonsense about ranged SV and leaving the thread, ignoring all explanations why you’re wrong, so there’s no chance at all any of this gets to you. But this is for the sake of everyone else reading.
It absolutely had an identity as the utilitarian Hunter spec that dealt damage via augmenting its shots with poisons and explosives. That’s a strong, flavourful identity and people liked it. You pretending that it was just “MM but different” is just as baseless as pretending Affliction is just “Destruction but different”.
It had a better focus on poisons and traps and that’s what made it the spec that focused on those. Plus, in its last expansion it was actually the only spec with Serpent Sting. Saying its bonuses doesn’t count because some Survival stuff was available in other specs is doubling down on that “specs must be different classes with nothing in common” attitude that is now admitted by Blizzard to be a bad idea.
Current Survival is the one that has no identity. Two of its abilities are bland melee filler that could easily fit in the Warrior class (Raptor Strike, Carve). Two of its abilities are just stolen straight from BM (Kill Command, Coordinated Assault). The final 2 abilities are actually kind of nice because they fit that “utilitarian” side of ranged SV, too bad they don’t fit a melee spec at all (Serpent Sting, Wildfire Bomb). It’s three separate identities competing for prominence, and the only one of those that has any uniqueness/merit is the one that doesn’t fit for a melee spec at all. Calling out ranged SV for having “no identity” when this is the state of melee SV is extreme projection.
What a misinformed, biased comment. You are clearly speaking from a position of proud ignorance.
Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, and Lock and Load contributed towards creating a very interesting and fun spec. If you want to see “tacked-on”, look to the current melee spec which has 3 incongruous identities competing for prominence. Is it a melee skirmisher? A beast master? A utilitarian like ranged SV? All three, apparently.
But what would a Rogue know, anyway?
This is revisionism. Ranged SV had only diverged in its identity and playstyle in later expansions. It played the important role of representing the aspect of Hunters that included buffing its ranged attacks with special effects. This side of the class is now severely lacking because of SV going melee.
Why should you people be afforded a level of respect and security in the knowledge that your spec will remain that you didn’t offer to us?
Or, get this, we should stop shoving “variety” down people’s throats and essentially deleting people’s favourite playstyles to replace them with something else just because it’s “different”?
Variety is not automatically a good thing. They could have made SV a healing spec. That would be far more variety in the class, but I don’t think I need to explain why that would be a horrible idea.
You already have 13 melee weapon user specs in this game. There are 11 ranged classes, and of those 9 are casters. That leaves 2 specs in the game that use ranged weapons. And you think one more is too much? You’re hilariously biased.
Legion SV was the worst iteration of any Hunter spec ever. It utterly failed to represent the class identity and was a haphazard blend of random, tenuously-related abilities. As such, it was the least popular spec in the game by a huge margin for its entire existence.
Lol. 1.7.0 vastly improved the class and especially Survival. Hunters were very happy with the update. Absolutely no one cared about Survival before 1.7.0, and even before then Survival still had and used a ranged weapon.
P.S. Before anyone gets pedantic: yes, that’s hyperbole: I’m sure you can find a handful of people who cared about pre-1.7 Survival, but it was a largely pointless spec that the overwhelming majority of Hunters never bothered with.
… because we were here first?
Cool. I like to play a HUNTER as my main, and I’ll be damned if they continue to cater to people of a different class in case they make a Hunter alt some day.
Stick to your own class. I don’t go around demanding Arms gets made into a ranged weapon user.
Just like Rooikat: I don’t care about your Hunter alt. Many Hunter mains were screwed over by making Survival melee.
Three non-Hunters in a row demanding the class caters to them instead of actual Hunters
The game already has 12 other melee weapon specs. Why do we need to force a melee spec into the only class that uses ranged weapons?
The class was explicitly defined around ranged weapons. If they wanted a melee option, it should be an optional subspec of BM via a talent. There is simply not enough audience in this class or even outside of it to justify a melee-only Hunter spec, it clashes with the class identity, and it caused the removal of an existing ranged spec. It was the absolute worst way they could have possibly handled it.
Gunning (ironic) for a purely melee Survival spec has been tried and failed in Legion. Ranged weapons have been core to the class identity since the beginning. It doesn’t make sense to have a spec that just totally ignores that essential part of our identity and tries to be a slightly-different Warrior instead.
So enjoyable next to no one plays it.
Obviously Survival is the problem spec here. It’s the one that’s always deeply unpopular and getting remade every expansion now. Trying to deflect criticism to BM and MM is not going to work.
So, in your mind, there is only room in this game for 1 spec that properly utilises a ranged weapon?
That’s atrocious. Look at how many different varieties of “swing a stick” they can come up with. 13 different melee specs and you are seriously telling me there is not enough room for 3 ranged specs?
MM and ranged SV do not do the same thing. One is themed around sharpshooting while one is themed around augmented projectiles. If you think they are not distinct enough, feel free to explain to me what sort of standards for spec differentiation you came up with that somehow excuses Arms and Fury, or Destruction and Affliction, or Discipline and Holy, but apparently says Survival and MM aren’t different enough.
Do you get a kick out of posting misinformed nonsense about Hunters all the time?
Oh, good. So, in a class defined around ranged weapons and pets, we can have a spec that has neither.
Are you people going to continue pretending that you give a damn about the Hunter class identity or have you given up on that?
Maybe we should be asking why hunters are the only class that uses ranged weapons, instead?
it’s long past time that outlaw rogues go full on gunslinger with pistols and hand crossbows becoming actual weapon types.
You’ve gone on and on with attacking everyone else in this thread because they arent bending over backwards for the way YOU want to play, while giving nobody else the kind of respect or consideration you’re demanding here.
You say hunter class identity when you ignore that there are plenty of lore hunters and archtypes that used melee weapons. Not to mention that Survival was the OG melee tree for the Hunter class in WoW.
What real benefit is there for ‘yet another’ ranged spec on a class like the hunter? Atleast with a class like a mage, you can justify having three ranged specs by having each spec cover a different elements with different unique effects… not just ‘burst vs dot’ damage which was Marksmanship vs Survival pre-legion… and yes, I did play survival as a ranged spec as well as the melee versions (both Vanilla+BC and Legion and beyond).
-edits to add-
Also, I am not saying get rid of pets… just give the option for survival to be able to play without them in the same way Marksman Hunters can. It is about flexibility.
Power to both the return of hunters having melee and tge survival that was sacrificed for it. Let both specs rise back up, allow WoW to give freedom to choice and let no predetermined class identity limit one from choosing what they find fun based on another’s imagination or lazy developer not wanting to balance.
In the words of the man hunter class hails from “Let the hunt begin!”
Is it your goal to be the biggest douchebag in this thread? I’ll gladly take a vacation to tell you that it certainly looks that way.
Sick to death of morons that insist you post on a toon that is of the same class that’s being discussed just to show that you’re “invested” or something. At this point in the game, if you don’t have (or had) multiple mains/alts of multiple classes after playing for 15 years , then I don’t even know what to say. I have a horde and alliance version of every class and then some. I suspect most players that have been around that long do.
In short, melee SV is fun. It feels more distinct from the other two specs and I like it. I’m entitled to feel that way. So you can get bent.
While I thought survival’s mechanics/rotation/design were all pretty craptastic when I last tried the spec out, I do like the idea of a melee hunter spec overall.
Change back to ranged? Please no. Make the mechanics less lame? By all means!
They could pull a gladiator warrior deal and have a talent change survival to ranged so both communities would be happy if they don’t want to do a 4th spec.
All survival needs is a reason to EVER bring it over any of the ranged specs. It brings zero extra utility so unless it is pulling like 10%+ ahead of both the other hunter specs it will never see play at a competitive level. You are restricted to like 6-ish melee spots in mythic raiding and have monk/dh/warrior locked in for buffs if they aren’t tanking. I don’t think anyone would honestly say they would rather have a SV Hunter in one of the last spots over something like a Rogue/Paladin/DK who offer way more utility (Cloak, BoP/LoH, Grips).
Again this is under the assumption their numbers aren’t so absurdly far ahead to make up for it.
