Especially since they opened up all the artifact looks to all the specs this expansion .
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The whole commando theme is a good fit and I wouldn’t mind if Survival got an aesthetic makeover to more fit that fantasy à la Combat to Outlaw. That said, I think old survival was a commando in all but name mechanically. It could engage at a distance, had tools to face off against melee a bit better and to also escape, and then reengage at a distance. I think that goes for the current hit and run iteration of Survival as well. There are quite a few organizations in the game that hit on that theme (like John J Keeshan and Bravo Company), but not really in any of the classes and I think overall it’d be interesting. It’s a good suggestion.
What I want more than that though is closure to the whole RSV VS MSV discussion and that’s something Blizzard has to resolve. It isn’t going anywhere until they follow up on it. The community just isn’t going to let it go, and it’s not going to get resolved in this forum flame war format. I don’t mind MSV, but it’s yet another melee in a sea of melee. I have two of everything I have plenty of options if I need a melee fix that, frankly, are better at melee by a country mile. That’s not to say I hate MSV - I really don’t. But Blizzard hasn’t demonstrated the commitment MSV needs to be worth investing time into as a player.
For whatever reason, it doesnt seem to be as rare as these numbers suggest. I have no data to refute these numbers, but i see other SV hunters consistently in leveling BGs 51-60.
Someone on the warrior forums recently shared data that suggested only 4% of unique tanks running m+ were prot warriors. Granted that’s still much higher numbers than this SV data shows, but I dont think it has anything to do with the popularity of the themes or proof of concept in either case.
SV struggles as a spec that has done well on occasion, but consistently underperforms and fills an overly saturated role. It would be absurd to expect high numbers especially right now considering the meta favoring ranged as much as it does and our single target being as bad as it is.
Prot Warriors in m+ are struggling. Like a lot of tanks. Everyone knows DH is the only really viable option. But prot warriors dont have to compete with any other warriors for a tank spot and there arent nearly as many tank specs as there are melee dps. If Fury tanking was still a thing, and it was able to kite tank better than prot, everyone would switch their warrior to fury and it would look like prot should be changed to a healing spec or something ridiculous, because obviously nobody likes it.
Anecdote is not synonymous with evidence.
Melee Survival has had Legion, BFA, and now 3 months into Shadowlands and it still hasn’t gained traction, even after a major rework in BFA.
As far a popularity of the themes. We know it’s not melee that is hurting the spec specifically because people in wow like melee. Melee dps makes up currently, 2,184,582 of the 6,837,482 characters according to Statistics - wowranks.io. So roughly 1/3rd of characters are melee.
I mean… who is asking for high numbers? Survival just above half the numbers of the next 2 lowest played specs.
Survival currently has 33,762
Assassination currently has 59,095
Demonology has 61,768
Survival makes up 4.4% of the hunter population.
Assassination makes up 14.6% of the rogue population
Demonology makes up 14.2% of the warlock population.
Sure it’s absurd to ask for high numbers, but numbers comparable to the next two lowest played spec? I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I mean assassination is a melee spec with less group utility than survival hunters.
Let’s just all face it at this point very few people want to play survival or a melee spec that resides within the hunter class. MSV should remain because at this point I think it’s a bad idea to remove it, but to call it anything but an unpopular spec is being disingenuous.
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True
The evidence just doesnt tell us enough to determine this is true. How many gimmick chasers rolled prot paladins for the first time this season, or MM hunters before the nerf?
I think since we’re going on 5 years and SV has performed well a few times (which you yourself admitted above) in both PVP and PVE (Nightwell, Uldir, BFA arenas) but hasn’t ever gained and kept any traction we can safely assume the vast majority of players are seemingly uninterested in a melee hunter.
And that’s not really surprising considering a large part of hunter identity is tied to ranged weaponry. And I think Blizz tried to give the spec attention, it received back to back reworks and has had areas where it excelled at better than BM and MM depending on patch.
I think in this case, the obvious answer really is the accurate answer.
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I’m sorry but are you purposefully ignoring factual proof or what? I think there’s a psych term for this, is it cognitive bias?
Melee survival was dead on arrival in Legion, and has had a very small pocket of players in BFA, and I’m assuming the trend continues to be even worse in SL.
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5 years performing well 2 times in PvE, in a half a decade where it really had a lot to prove is exactly my point. Doing well briefly twice is not enough to overcome the stigma. That is at least one reason besides failure of concept that SV hunter pop is abysmally low.
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PVE being only one aspect of the game. And it has been viable during other patches too, those were the most notable however because it happened to be the best spec at the time for raiding.
But Raiding really is only one part of the equation. You have M+ and PVP as well, and we know it did much better throughout most of BFA in that regard than MM or BM.
If your assertion were true, I believe we’d see more FOTM players flock to it. Or heck, just more hunters try it out since it would have very little investment needed to actually try it out.
But… that’s not what really has happened. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe the spec needs dire attention from Blizz. But that stigma is there for a reason, and it isn’t there because of performance reasons. It has a stigma because they removed a spec in a traditionally ranged weapon focused class and stuck melee in its place.
Edit: I think one of the biggest things we can point to besides the numbers as well, is the fact that Ion also admitted they thought it would be a niche spec. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that on its own, but I also don’t want to deny the reality of the situation. Not to mention you know, how it was implemented.
The stigma, or as it is also referred public perception is another reason outside of being an unpopular concept.
And maybe it is an unpopular concept. That doesn’t change the fact that the argument is a non causa. The data showing few level 60 SV hunters proves nothing except that right now, SV is incredibly unpopular. Probably the least popular it has ever been. The fact that it has been more popular than it is right now actually proves that at the very least, the concept isnt the only thing keeping players away. Something has pushed players away who would otherwise play the spec.
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I like the idea bro, make shadowhunters the new troll commando surivial hunter.
Bombs and trinkets as well as glaives and a bit of shadow magic and it would be the only class I play.
I do want to remind everyone that in vanilla hunters started with an axe, no pet, and had aspect of the monkey when you made a new character.
Draw your own conclusions on what a hunter was supposed to be from there.
Hunters started with a melee- and a ranged weapon.
The intent of the design of the class was for us to focus on fighting with ranged weapons as much as possible. If we were ever forced to use our melee-weapon(due to the range restrictions put on ranged weapons) the intent was for us to use it and the rest of our toolkit to get some distance to the target asap, to go back to fighting using said ranged weapon.
The class was based or ranged combat. The only reason we would ever want to use our melee-weapon, was when we were forced to do so.
There’s nothing else to it than that.
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You also started with a bow 
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Yeah, but if we leave that out we can mislead the uninformed about classic. Despite still being able to, you know, log into classic and make a level 1 hunter to prove they also started with a bow.
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Blizz never should’ve removed melee weapons in the first place. Could’ve just as easily removed all melee abilities, but give melee animations to all the ranged ones when enemy came in close.
After that they could’ve differenciated the play style to more melee focused on one spec and range, pet focused on others
You lost me, I don’t bother reading after this point but let me follow with 3 paragraphs of stuff 
they should just make sv hunter work like a 5e dnd ranger
give it favored terrain (buffs for being indoors/outdoors), favored enemy (use hunter’s mark to give you a buff against a particular enemy type), let you choose from 2h/dw.
sv would benefit also from a lot of baselining. it still suffers from BFAitis where you need talents for your spec to function, rather than having talents that enhance your spec. almost every row has something that could be baselined.
viper’s venom, guerilla tactics, camoflauge, steel trap, posthaste, mongoose bite, wildfire infusion/chakrams
a lot of this would do well to provide a bit stronger sense of identity as well as lift it out of the dumpster
The issue with current SV is, what’s is it’s identity? What is it trying to be? Why does it only have 1 single target melee attack, why does it fling magic eagles out of it’s spear? Why does it have a hand crossbow if it only uses it for like 1 attack?
The current iteration feels like a Frankenstein spec with no clear theme or identity.
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that’s just the thing, the lack of identity comes from the lack of spec cohesion and needing talents to need/be functional
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