idk why people say this when dk, enhance, ret exists.
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Hunter forums would be a pretty dull place without Survival.
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The problem I see having one melee and two range specs is trying to come up with a good hunter talent tree that all three specs can use. That is why we have such a crappy one now.
Only two specs use range, only two specs use pets. All three can use traps, need heals and some form of protection. What else do they share?
I would love a group buff that we could all use.
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No because a melee Hunter spec is such a fundamentally flawed concept that any time spent entertaining it is time wasted.
In fact trashing melee SV is the most constructive thing one can do for the spec. Demoralising developers who think melee SV is a good idea is great. Ideally they would quit. At least one of them has.
Because itâs not a Warrior, Rogue, or Paladin spec.
Itâs a Hunter spec.
The class does not have the framework to support a melee spec, but rather ranged specs. A melee spec in the Hunter class is just a handicapped Hunter.
Theyâre defending it.
For the record, I disagree with this reasoning. Weâve rarely been in a state where weâve had 2 unviable ranged specs since Legion, and in the couple of arguable times we have been in that state e.g. early Nighthold it hasnât been for long (i.e. matter of weeks). Itâs very far down the list on why melee Survival is a bad idea.
Itâs the best response Survival deserves.
Too bad very few enjoy it.
Of course the people who play it enjoy it. Thatâs why theyâre playing it. If they didnât enjoy it, they wouldnât play it. Which, as it turns out, is what the overwhelming majority of players decide to do.
If youâre going to fish for sympathy for how people donât respect what you perceive as a unique playstyle, youâd best not start with declaring other playstyles to not be unique.
Again, you bemoan how people donât recognise the uniqueness of melee SV (the âhybridâ nature of which is scarce to begin with) yet you minimise and dismiss the appeal of ranged SV. The current Explosive Shot has absolutely nothing to do with the old Survival one beyond the name and icon and it has no interaction with any spec yet to you it should be enough for us to all shut up. This sort of snobbery is part of why SV Hunters get a bad reputation.
Just play BM and fight up close 
âwow itâd be cool to be a literal worse Hunterâ
Yes, also notable class design mistakes of history. Well done.
(N.B. The DK one is arguable as being out of necessity since having one spec both tanking and DPSing doesnât work out well. The Demo one though was absolutely a mistake)
Itâs not a terrible argument, though. When melee specs are already pretty well saturated, and a new hero class melee that can double jump and shoot lasers out its eyes is being added, that obviously puts to question the prospect of success in yet ANOTHER melee spec in the same expansion. Itâs notably less interesting than just about every other melee spec especially the new one; itâs a space where attention is already extremely divided and occupied. Not to mention itâs being put in a class thatâs otherwise been ranged since the start⊠at the expense of a spec thatâs already there. So, yes, the fact that there are already a lot of melee specs and they never added a ranged spec is extremely relevant.
I wonât pretend that there are more ranged concepts, especially ranged weapon concepts. However the idea that thereâs only enough space for 2 specs in this game that use ranged weapons (one of which hardly focuses on the weapon to be gin with) is lunacy.
If the standard of removing ranged Survival was that it was redundant with other ranged specs, then scrutiny is needed for the Rogue and Warrior specs. Yes, they have important differences, but ranged SV did too yet those were ignored.
âThere arenât literally 0 people playing it so you canât say nobody likes it!â.
Very Shapiro-esque argument.
Nothing played like ranged SV either. At least it only had to be unique v.s. 2 ranged weapon users instead of 12 melee weapon users.
The priority is not allowing ranged SV to be swept under the rug, which has been the goal of Blizzard and the melee fanatics since Legion.
Notice how most discussion about the spec starts off by pretending it didnât exist before Legion. Itâs always crap like âIâm an SV veteran who has been playing the spec since Legionâ. Anything before is treated like some dark age or age of ignorance and the narrative is that melee SV was Godâs gift to Hunter class design that saved us from the stagnant mediocrity of what we had before. The priority is not allowing that to go unchallenged.
A good chunk of the playerbase thinks SV has genuinely always been this bad, even in its ranged days. THAT canât stand.
This would have been an utterly insufficient solution.
Ranged SV and MM had very different focuses. Even if you think ranged SV never amounted to what it promised, it was not the same idea and fantasy as MM. Cramming ranged SV into MM would be the same as cramming Affliction into Destruction. You could maybe pull it off but no matter how you did it you would up with a watered down Affliction (or Survival) having to co-exist in the same space as a watered down Destruction (or Marksmanship) rather than having a fully fleshed out version of both specs capable of exploration and additional iteration.
Given that outcome whatever spec they came up with to make this âsolutionâ necessary better be amazing to make it worth the cost, and evidently in the case of melee SV it wasnât.
Truth. To be honest I never posted here often before Legion.
I usually donât put much stock into the whole âthe people who are happy with things arenât on the forums complainingâ argument fanboys often roll out but in my case it was true. We werenât on the forums talking about how great ranged SV was because we didnât feel like we needed to. There was no precedent or perceived existential threat of removing the spec before they went ahead and did it.
Also truth. Itâs painfully evident from the class tree that itâs designed for BM and MM, with SV as an afterthought.
I donât think the tree is mediocre because of Survival, but it highlights how despite all the bluster SV is still designed/thought of as a tacked-on side experiment rather than an integral specialisation of the class.
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If it was ranged, more people would care about it. It sucks for the people that like the spec though.
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Explosive shot is objectively better than it ever was before. I do not care if people recognize the uniqueness of MSV. The fact is that MSV IS unique from all other melee. I am currently playing RSV in woltk classic and its nothing special. Just as I remembered it. Did you ever think that there was a reason that blizz redesigned it? Nah, you donât seem like the type to think to deeply based on your arguments.
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It was ranged, and people didnât play it near the amount that others on this forum would lead you to believe.
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Explosive shot was integrated into the core gameplay of ranged SV with Lock and Load. Now itâs just âpress every 30 secs to do damageâ. Thereâs nothing particularly wrong with what it is now, but itâs absolutely NOT what it was before and not a substitute for ranged SV.
Youâre doubling down on defending MSVâs uniqueness while denying ranged SVâs uniqueness. You can do that put people will treat you like the hypocrite you are. Besides, ranged SV was one of 3 ranged weapon users while melee SV is one of 13 melee weapon users. You canât dodge around that fact.
Blizzard redesigned it because their class development team after Ghostcrawler left got staffed with melee-obsessed fools who had nothing more than a passing interest in Hunters so they redesigned SV to something closer to their comfort zone: a melee weapon user. Until DF every new DPS spec has been melee. Even now with Evoker they couldnât resist giving it a shorter range because they canât perceive of a spec being interesting without being melee.
Itâs literally one of the most represented specs in PvE in WotLK classic. Did you even check the numbers before posting this? Probably not because it seems your ignorance gives you confidence. Dunning Kreuger in action.
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Who is this âsurvivalâ? The spec, the designers of the spec, or its enthusiasts? To respond to any of them this way is silly and a couple of them would make you crazy.
Youâre too wrapped up in this emotionally.
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In raid, maybe. In M+ weâve been at the bottom end more often than not.
Hunter is currently the worst class in the game for M+, there are only 10 hunters in the world over 3200, the lowest of any class in the game.
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An utterly disgusting display.
To criticize Blizzard is one thing, but to make war on your fellow Hunter (regardless of specialization) is another. Youâre bullying players who genuinely love the game.
To think this depth of depravityâthisâŠfilth, laid dormant within you this entire time. Whatâs the point of communicating with you AT ALL if youâre functionally unable to accept differing viewpoints?
I attempted to reconcile with you Bepples, as I sympathized with the circumstances surrounding the RSV retcon. You, in addition to your RSV-extremist brethren are unworthy of such courtesy.
May you all join RSV in obsolescence.
Oh, and:
GET CRIT
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People who main survival arenât hunters. Hunter is a ranged class, end of story.
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You, in addition to your RSV-extremist brethren are unworthy of such courtesy.
May you all join RSV in obsolescence.
Oh, and:
GET CRIT
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Melee != worse. Also, White Lions from Warhammer say hi.
Yes, it is. The argument comes from the idea that if thereâs X number of melee, then there has to be Y number of ranged to match because otherwise itâs not âfairâ, which isnât how these things work. Thereâs only so much you can draw from a well, and the melee well happens to run deeper than the ranged well.
All Iâm saying is that if you want to argue for ranged classes, use a different argument than âthereâs too much meleeâ.
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Itâs not ranged anymore in retail.
Yeah. Surv was good during parts of MoP, and early Wrath, but other than that it wasnât used as much as the other specs.
And MoP was a longgg time ago.
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Yet now we actually hold it from time to time in order to get n times the effective hits/value over the pull. Old Explosive Shot was short-CD Devouring Plague (6s DoT) but without any synergies onto anything else nor any bankability. It also has the complexity of having other high priority attacks it may compete with, especially if not preemptively made room for.
Thereâs considerably more thought that goes into ES now, despite its longer CD, than when it was our top-priority short-CD 6s single-target DoT.
MMâs current Explosive Shot is objectively more significant, more in keeping with what one would expect a literal explosive to do, more exploitable, and more nuanced if only by nature of now being an AoE.
- Having time to place its buffer immediately after instead of only before and estimating TTK to account for this adds a bit, but its just being AoE is the bulk.
Pot, kettle.
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Not just then. Before and after those expansions, too. It was the dominant spec for a majority of WotLK, including Ulduar and even early ICC before MM could gather enough ARP to push it out, and it was plenty taken in Highmaul in WoD.
Overall, RSV was quite popular. That hasnât been one of its issues.
Tuning and identity constraints itâd gradually placed on itself and the other specs by association, including an inflexible niche that could only shine when others failed (only when the fights were too spread, too unvaried, too vast, too empty of desirable contextual uses of burst, etc., for anyone elseâs kit to feel fitting or rewarded, on the other hand⊠yeah, those were arguably pretty big issues.
And an RSV narrowly centered on that run-and-gun, static-priority, no-burst, can AoE just once per 18s for a bulk of its AoE potential identity of back then would be equally problematic today.
If that goal were broadened, though, to simply a munitions-based guerilla warfare spec, on the other hand, where those DoTs were less automated or CD-constrained and the spec had actual burst and decently leverageable complexity? Could be really great.
Itâd just have to do a ton to replace even the contextual complexity of MSV, just as an ST CD attack would have to do far more to offer the contextual complexity of an AoE.
- Being melee, much like having cast times, makes supporting mobility tools that much more significant and requires that much more engagement with the fight through foresight, so long as there are relevant dangers to be thus avoided. An AoE CD, meanwhile, is going to frequently have more to it than just the ST CDâs matter of âdesync competing GCDs from the moment its CD refreshes,â so long as there are any add phases to be exploited.
- Thatâs the part I think gets lost from the equation/discussions of how much RSV could rotationally/mechanically do: MSV of course has greater cognitive load than RSV ever had even against a striking dummy by which to keep it engaging; in practice, though, it has still far more. If RSV were to replace MSV âdespite that just repeating old mistakes anyways (while a 4th spec would not)â it ought to reach levels of depth/engagement similar to what MSV does in practice.
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If theyâre not actively going out of their way to shut down constructive discussion across threads that would otherwise lead to improvements to the spec (regardless of whether that be on the stretched idea that any improvements to MSV would be a detriment to the ghost/resurrection of RSV), thatâs hardly worth any title of âextremistâ.
This just isnât true. Survival was the most popular hunter spec in the game at the time that Blizzard decided to delete multistrike, and effectively the spec along with it.
Throughout Hellfire Citadel the spec was literally unplayable, and MM was made deliberately OP so that there would be less of an outcry when they removed the spec at the end of WOD.
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