I guess you missed the part of his reply that said 5.4, not 6.2(and beyond).
By all means, you tell us why they decided to take away the SrS component. It’s not like it was a needed change, in any way whatsoever. It certainly wasn’t justified based on damage numbers.
And?
You seem awfully sure of that. You know something everyone else doesn’t? No one expected there to be a complete rework of SV to a melee spec, come Legion. And look what happened…
Again, context matters.
The SV rework has caused SV to now be abandoned by most of the hunter community. Only a fraction of hunters play current SV, regardless of “which one parses higher”.
So again, yeah, it was a bad decision.
Survival as a melee weapon spec, focusing on dps, now fits into the same category as 12 other specs, 1 less if you don’t count Feral.
Survival when it was a ranged weapon spec, fit into the same category as 2 other specs, BM and MM.
Which category has the least options to pick from again? People that prefer ranged weapon combat now have 1 less unique option to pick.
You keep dismissing the variations in playstyles that there was between MM and RSV. Nothing new ofc, you tend to be dismissive towards anything even remotely positive regarding RSV. Either way, you’re still as wrong as before.
Yeah this is the primary reason why I supported the change, despite loving SV back in Wrath.
It’s another option, it’s unique and even if it’s less popular than the other Hunter specs it’s great to know at any point I can swap over to SV for some melee action.
I actually play all 3 specs in Shadowlands and that wouldn’t be the case if SV wasn’t melee.
Since when is “There are no current plans to…” the same as “…will never happen…” ?
Still not an argument in favor of it, objectively, being a good decision.
I’ve never actually called the melee specs similar, as a genuine opinion(or observation). I’ve only written those things based on the logic of what you guys are saying. Based on how you “judge” ranged weapon specs. I just applied the same logic to other classes/specs.
In short, I don’t actually think that the melee specs are similar/too similar. I honestly thought this part was obvious…
As have been demonstrated through historical data and statistics, RSV was vastly more popular(had a far greater representation throughout all types of content where such is relevant, and can be meassured) than current MSV, as a mean/average.
As a ranged weapon, DoT-centric, spec, when compared to the other hunter specs, it was also a unique option for all hunters that prefer ranged weapon-combat. Now, for any and all such players/hunters, that 3rd spec option is no longer there to pick.
In short, the rework, gave another option to a select few, but took one away from so many more. Tell me again how it was, objectively, a good decision to go through with it?
There is nothing unique about being melee. It’s just a handicap. You can fight in melee as BM and MM too, and there are 12 other melee weapon user specs in the game v.s. just 2 ranged weapon users. There’s also no dichotomy between “ranged and not unique” and “melee and unique”; a ranged spec can be (and was) unique, and melee is nothing but a tokenistic difference.
When you start droning on about how unique and fun SV is and how it’s valuable despite being the game’s most reviled and avoided spec it comes across as a coping mechanism.
Actually Sv was changed to move player from playing it in the last raid of WoD. Where to begin? Survival was nerfed. Its single target damage was about 10-15% below the other specs. Its AoE and cleave damage was also suffered considerably because of the Serpent Sting nerf. AoE performance was even below Marksmanship until you have tons of targets. I wish I was joking on that final point.
Despite all this doom and gloom, Survival was still a totally playable spec outside of progression raiding. It was just hard to recommend it over the alternatives if you’re trying to help your guild down a new boss.
Remember the recent WoW Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas where he famously remarked that it was Demonology’s turn to be the worst Warlock spec? Well I guess that was Survival’s fate in patch 6.2 as well. You can assume that Blizzard just was not happy with the spec and how it plays, and their interim solution was to nerf it so fewer people will play it. The other possibility is they purposely killed it that way it be easier to justify what was to come in Legion.
This graph shows how far it was behind both BM and MM in tier 17:
The switch from melee to range and the hard nerfs that SV received before Legion line up to well to just be a remarkable concurrence of events. Blizzard had their own plans and needed player to move away from SV in-order to make the switch more justified.
“Marksmanship is still the best simply because of how it works. HFC is all about priority target DPS. It also wins out on simulated DPS too, if that matters to you.”
HFC DPS lived and died on two things: priority add burst and 2 minute CD burst. BM was also largely abandoned in HFC because it lacked these things. Those graphs in those article show that not only was SV behind, it was behind in simulated environments which are sustained single-target situations over a few minutes on a boss. That’s what SV was meant to be good at; it was the ideal situation for SV, yet it still came up significantly short of MM which also had all the priority add burst.
This wasn’t a small deal. This was legitimately the difference between killing bosses and not killing them. Take Gorefiend, for example. I was the main Marksmanship Hunter in my raid. If I wasn’t there that day they didn’t even attempt the boss. That’s how significant MM’s priority add burst was. If I played Survival instead we would have simply never killed that boss unless I got carried by another MM Hunter.
Everything about SV’s “development” in WoD screams “managed decline”. The most significant changes to the spec were the removal of Rapid Fire, the removal of Kill Shot, the removal of Lock and Load’s trap interaction, and the removal of Serpent Sting’s initial tick. Removal, removal, removal, removal. All our mechanical suggestions were outright ignored. I think once that idiot Chad Nervig (Celestalon) was in charge way back in early 2014 ranged SV was finished. Now he’s been shuffled off to Hearthstone but the damage is done.
P.S. The one bright spot was PvP. Survival actually didn’t depend as much on Serpent Sting’s initial tick in PvP so it remained a great choice. It was like BM right now; a ton of consistent pressure and difficult to shut down. It was one of the most played PvP specs throughout WoD. In fact its PvP representation in WoD was higher than that of any iteration of melee SV.
The developers had plan on the change to SV at some point in the development of Legion, which was somewhere in WoD. That being they would have wanted to make the transition smoother and if the range design of SV was not going to be carried over to the next expansion then it was not needed to put any more work in balancing it.
They just did not care about it anymore and let it die slowly before Legion. Everyone moves over to MM and BM, those that still stick with SV become a small minority. I think if someone had asked same question about Demo locks to Ion Hazzikostas he would have gave a similar answer that “We have plans to pretty significantly overhaul Survival Hunters as a spec going forward, that’s not happening in the 6.2 scope, because we don’t wanna make that massive type of change in a patch.” So, they just let it die slowly so anyone who still played SV would be a small minority.
This is how 6.2 poulation size looked:
Position
Spec and Class
Population Size
Change from Previous Week
1
Balance Druid
42035
0
2
Affliction Warlock
34147
0
3
Windwalker Monk
15238
0
4
Fire Mage
42113
0
5
Shadow Priest
20905
0
6
Marksmanship Hunter
55453
↑1
7
Unholy Death Knight
31691
↑2
8
Elemental Shaman
9968
↑4
9
Destruction Warlock
3054
↓1
10
Feral Druid
3101
↑5
11
Fury Warrior
11310
↑3
12
Outlaw Rogue
13510
↓2
13
Retribution Paladin
11737
0
14
Demonology Warlock
813
↓8
15
Arcane Mage
797
↑4
16
Havoc Demon Hunter
14519
0
17
Enhancement Shaman
4645
↑1
18
Frost Death Knight
1775
↓1
19
Arms Warrior
11666
↑1
20
Frost Mage
3536
↓9
21
Beast Mastery Hunter
4315
0
22
Survival Hunter
234
↑1
23
Assassination Rogue
846
↓1
24
Subtlety Rogue
5736
0
Survival is all the way down at the bottom after the nerfs.
