I thought you only played Beast Mastery because melee was too difficult for you
well if you REALLY wanna be nostalgic hunters used melee attacks since vanilla.
So melee was always on the table.
They were all awful. Lacerate was arguably one of the worst capstone abilities in the talent trees that shipped with the game. A fixed damage bleed that didn’t scale with anything and that wasn’t especially powerful even at the start of the game. Raptor Strike is functionally just a generic strike that any other class with such an ability would have made more interesting. Wing Clip was primarily to get back to ranged, rather than say, keep things in melee.
Design intention may have been to give hunters a melee option, but in practice it was never viable, and even now, with modern design applied to Survival as a melee spec, it still plays out as some weird hybrid, because the base hunter abilities all revolve around range, and have for a decent while now.
I’m guessing even with the current balance favoring Survival it’s still the least played spec of the three. How many other pure DPS classes have that kind of damage disparity between specs where people don’t play the one that does the most damage currently?
1 Like
Where am I? Is it 2017 still?
Based on my guilds pugging as of late, with almost every hunter thats a pug being survival…its actually dominating.
The fantasy of the melee hunter, fighting alongside his pet, is older than WoW. The Beastmaster archetype is a traditional one.
Now, you’re right that WoW didn’t need another melee spec, but it fits the class fantasy.
What Blizz should do is to add another physical ranged class (cof cof Tinker cof cof).
Tinker exists, its called engineer profession. Waste of resources to make it a full class.
Ah thanks for posting I had no idea.
Oh good, you kept going. You’ll note I said it should be a spec.
A spec is still a class. And it would take resources from existing classes, and kill engineering profession. Very unoriginal and boring sounding class.
1 Like
I’ve been stretching my skills a bit. I have a DK and now the melee spec here. My point with this is that I didn’t actually use either of my melee abilities (I suppose there are three with the autoattack). I stayed at ranged, nerfed my rotation, and still managed 25kdps during burst.
I have great respect for melee and healing players. I don’t now how they can see what they’re doing most of the time.
I have played a Prot Warrior before but I haven’t brought him out since 9.0 ended.
TIL Affliction=Warlock
I was not a fan of Tinkerer but every description I read of it would not kill Engineering, the Profession. Please itemize how that spec would kill the profession.
Tuning already makes one of those three classes’ specs regularly trash anyways. Nothing else needs to be done.
isn’t OP the one who was making “I’m a good christian, you’re going to hell” posts all day yesterday?
yep. yep they were.
dang, name calling. so christian
Robotic minions = warlock and mechanical hunter pets. Already done.
Robot suit = “2nd form” aka druids and Dh meta forms.
Traps = hunters
Engineering = basically all mechanical invention things, even a rez!
Basically. Assuming you are referring to outlaw…being a late comer I did not know what was lost. Till I got a true combat rogue in tbcc.
was rng roll the bones not enough fun for you? Okay…for reasons outlaw will be the only spec (out of all classes) that keeps aoe cap.
So what you are saying is roll sin or sub?
yes. Outlaw we have no clue how to not make it a leather wearing warrior. so we guide you to sin/sub.
How about…you just keep it like a leather warrior then. Or maybe this here ranged rogue idea.
Nah…
Very long post inc. Tons of entitled melee apologists in this thread. If I quoted you, find my reply to you in here. And stop defending bad class design.
No, it’s not fine. It creates a huge rift in the Hunter class, deprives us of a formerly widely enjoyed ranged spec, limits ranged weapon expression in the game (did we really need yet another melee spec let alone at the expense of one of the only ranged weapon specs?), and its theme is completely directionless. Perhaps the worst aspect is that, by Blizzard’s own admission, making Survival melee was an attempt to appeal at new players and rerolls at the expense of existing Hunter players. What other class has its specs reworked explicitly against the wishes of its own playerbase?
Rexxar is a beastmaster that dual-wields and fights closely alongside his pet. Survival Hunter as a spec is an incredibly poor representation of that. It can’t dual wield and most of the aesthetic and gameplay revolves around throwing grenades and shooting poison arrows. It does have pet aspects but they’re all lifted straight from Beast Mastery… you know… the original pet spec inspired from Rexxar (because, as it turns out, it’s the pets that are important and not the melee). This isn’t even mentioning the fact that class design chasing lore character archetypes which never fit neatly into the playable characters (I don’t see Priests using bows because Tyrande does it) is a bad idea. Rexxar has always been an exceptionally poor excuse for making SV melee.
Still having two ranged specs is also not an excuse. We used to have three. Those three were the only specs in the entire game that used ranged weapons. Meanwhile the game is overflowing with melee weapon users including the class you’re posting from. Losing one of three ranged specs to add a thirteenth melee spec (in the very same expansion that a vastly more interesting, anticipated, and thematically outstanding melee class was added, no less) was a spectacularly poorly thought out design decision that only WoW developers are capable of making and WoW players are capable of defending.
No, Marksmanship did not get everything from ranged Survival. It didn’t even get that much, and what it did get was so drastically changed that it’s unrecognisable. Explosive Shot is the go-to example for you people yet it’s a disappointing and mostly abandoned talent option with little resemblance to Survival’s Explosive Shot and zero mechanical interaction with anything else. Arguing that Marksmanship adequately represents ranged Survival is the tell-tale sign of someone being completely misinformed about the class and this particular issue. This is fitting for someone so chronically addicted to bad takes as you, Clark. Let’s not forget you spent a great deal of time shilling for Shadowlands AoE capping among plenty of other disasterous opinions on game design on this forum.
There is a hell of a lot more to Survival’s history than that and you know it.
First of all, Survival’s beginnings were as a PvP utility spec. It buffed the utility aspects of a Hunter to improve its survivability and versatility in PvP. Yes, that meant having talents that buffed melee attacks (although there was a grand total of 1 damage-buffing melee talent after the Classic class review, which is something you people often skip over) because at the time Hunters had a minimum range and other classes knew it so ideally you could hold up a little better when stuck in melee. It also had better trapping and tools to more easily escape melee. It always preferred to fight at range. That’s the important fact that often gets ignored. Savage Strikes, a single talent for an otherwise ranged weapon spec, is not precedent for a Hunter spec lacking a ranged weapon 12 years later.
After Vanilla its scope evolved to include special munitions attacks like Explosive Shot and it had a distinct identity in that space. No mention of that in your post, of course.
Ranged Survival was really a lot of fun to play. Why should it have been removed? A hell of a lot more people enjoyed ranged Survival than melee Survival. In fact the current Survival being melee has historically been a major barrier to people playing the spec; particularly Hunters (you know, the class to which it belongs).
If they took the current Survival and preserved the exact same gameplay flow, only it used a ranged weapon and its few remaining melee attacks were replaced with ranged attacks, would it suddenly be less fun? Or are you just defending it being melee out of a misplaced sense of pride?
Every iteration of every Hunter spec before Legion used a ranged weapon. The presence of melee abilities in the early stages of the game is not remotely a justification for a Hunter spec lacking a ranged weapon. Come up with a better defence.
What a ridiculous comment. Survival is by far the most directionless spec in the entire game. You have Wildfire Bomb and Kill Command in the same spec. What on earth is that identity? Did Rexxar throw bombs around? Why is the 2-hander wielding “berserker” spec randomly pulling out a crossbow to shoot stuff only to put it away?
In its ranged days it had a consistent identity as a utilitarian munitions expert. It was the opportunist, versatile Hunter that used specially-buffed shots and enhanced utility (namely trapping) to gain an edge. That made sense and sensibly built on the core Hunter identity. The current version is a complete dumpster fire in comparison.
Melee players can get lost in one of the plenty of already-existing melee specs. Making “mage but worse” just to appeal to entitled melee players would be a terrible idea for all the same reasons making SV melee was a bad idea.
Bicmex, a top rated SV Hunter in PvP, himself says that there are little to no circumstances where you would equip a ranged weapon as SV. You lose access to Kill Shot (yes, really) and your interrupt. You have to use the vastly weaker Arcane Shot instead of Raptor Strike (you still need a 2-handed weapon for that even during Eagle). Auto Shot has a -50% damage aura for SV specifically to discourage this. Swapping weapons during combat is a full unhasted GCD. It’s deliberately unviable. It’s not a substitute for ranged SV.
In any case, if the spec is so close to being a ranged spec… why not just bite the bullet and make it fully ranged as it used to be and as the rest of the class already is (including a specless Hunter at level 1, I might add)? Why cling to all the negatives and division brought on by having the spec use a melee weapon instead of a ranged weapon? It seems to me most of the defence of Survival remaining a melee spec comes out of a weird sense of “melee pride”.
Good point! Why don’t they focus on those aspects since they are actually unique and aesthetically prominent and phase out the ill-fitting generic melee aspects like Raptor Strike and Carve?
One funny observation: many melee SV mains have spent the better part of the last 4 years campaigning to have those abilities you mentioned removed specifically because they aren’t fitting of a melee spec. I agree with them that they don’t fit a melee spec; I just correctly identify being melee as the problem.
If it’s not truly melee then giving the spec a permanent ranged weapon should be fine.
Then there should be no problem in having it be a ranged spec focusing on those aspects. Why cling to the ill-fitting melee aspect?
This is honestly a more reasonable suggestion. But the problem here is this:
- You create a Hunter at level 1 as a ranged class
- You spec Survival at level 10 and become melee
- You pick some talent somewhere above level 10 and become ranged again.
That’s pretty nonsense class design. It would make a hell of a lot more sense if the spec were ranged by default and optionally specced into being melee. It would also make more sense for that spec to be BM given the whole “Rexxar” angle.
Is this an ironic post? You had to realise what a ridiculous argument this was when posting it. Mongoose bite back then was a sidelined situational ability on a spec that otherwise used a ranged weapon and preferred to stay at range as much as possible. In what universe is that precedent for a spec lacking a ranged weapon entirely?
Posted from a class with 3 cloth caster specs that all use fel magic and demons. Talk about having zero self awareness…
Ranged weapons were central to the Hunter class identity. Giving us “variety” by taking away ranged weapons from one of the specs is an idea of the same quality as taking Stealth away from a Rogue spec to enhance the variety of that class. It takes spectacular ignorance to not see the issue with that. All it accomplishes is making an option that’s inherently lesser and undesirable for the majority of that class’s playerbase.
Viewing SV becoming melee as an improvement requires a staggering level of melee favouritism.
We had Unholy Death Knight.
I already know the response to this: “But that’s a different kind of pet!”. Sure, but a melee pet-based Hunter is a specific and extremely niche concept… one that SV actually does a pretty poor job at representing. Not to mention the fact that Hunters already have a pet spec (BM) and we already had a popular and widely enjoyed ranged spec in SV. How does it make sense to replace that with a niche melee pet spec? Do you see how that comes across as exceptionally selfish?
If they wanted a melee pet-based style… why not just make a talented melee option in our already-existing pet spec?
As I said earlier in the (increasingly longer) post: Survival is intentionally designed and tuned to be unviable if a ranged weapon is equipped. You can’t use Kill Shot or Muzzle, you can’t get bomb CDR with Carve, you have to use a vastly weaker Arcane Shot, an entire talent tier is useless (Tip of the Spear/Mongoose Bite/Flanking Strike), and Auto-Shot does -50% damage for SV. It’s also missing every single popular and successful gameplay aspect of the former ranged Survival. People are kidding themselves if they think it’s a remotely sensible or working compromise.
“Live and let live” is such a spectacularly ignorant and dismissive angle to take given that an existing popular ranged weapon option was removed to make melee Survival happen. If that was your preferred main spec, as it was mine, your only options were to play melee or play a different spec.
SV has been more or less the least popular spec in the game since becoming melee until this very patch when they bribed everyone to play it with the most broken uncapped AoE damage in the game, so declaring that “the majority likes it” is incredibly dubious. In contrast, ranged SV was routinely a popular spec until they gutted the hell out of it to make room for melee SV at the end of WoD.
It was not always at the bottom. It was usually a decent and popular option. The only time it wasn’t was in the last patch of WoD where they gutted it. Seeing as how people like you assume that was the default state of ranged SV, evidently that trick worked…
I’m glad Death Knight mains are happy with it.
Notice how the majority of people shilling for melee SV in this thread are posting from Paladins, Warriors, DK, etc…
And you even want SV to have Lone Wolf. So you come to the class defined around ranged weapons and pets and you want to have an option without both of those things. Maybe you should go play a Warrior or Rogue instead?
Trust Maizou to intervene with the worst takes imaginable.
WotLK SV was one of the most popular specs in the game for that entire expansion even when it wasn’t our best option. In contrast melee SV is only “popular” in a patch where it gets handed the most broken AoE in the game. “Sans tier bonuses” it was routinely the least played spec.
Maizou won’t ever see this because she can’t handle confrontation of her serially awful takes.
I like how you think your post backs up the decision to make SV melee when it in fact proves why it was a terrible decision: it was specifically made to appeal to people other than Hunters. I bet if we went to your favourite class and started mutilating one or more of its specs to appeal to someone else you wouldn’t be too happy, but you’re certainly happy to see that done to Hunters.
The only parts of melee SV that aren’t bad and generic are a) lifted from BM, b) lifted from ranged SV, or c) better fitting for ranged SV (WFB).
Get better takes.
You’ve been directly proven wrong on this in other threads, and every time you get called out on it you quietly stop posting and wait for the next SV thread. You have a knack for dishonesty.
https://stormforgelogs.pt/allstars/mistblade/throne-of-thunder/10-hc/all/hunter
Those are the Hunter logs for a currently-operating MoP server. Almost every log is Survival. Please tell me more about how it was overshadowed by BM and MM.
In raiding it’s still the least played of the three and it’s still relatively unpopular in casual content.
It’s the most played of the three in M+, but evidently it’s due to an enormous amount of FotM rerolls due to the spectacularly overtuned set bonus making it a more-or-less mandatory pick. In case you haven’t noticed, Survival and Destro have been tuned to be over 30% above every other spec, not to mention both have uncapped AoE while almost everyone else is capped. Believing that this situation is representative of melee SV being successful is delusional, particularly since in every other patch it’s been one of the least popular choices.
In fact, its representation right now is surprisingly low given its damage. When ranged SV had this sort of damage, such as in Dragon Soul, it was unquestionably the most popular spec in the game. Look at those MoP logs I linked; that’s in a patch where SV isn’t even that far ahead of BM. Granted those logs are more skewed towards SV than actual MoP particularly since people specifically play older versions of the game to play things that are no longer available, but even at the time SV saw a lot of play given its damage.
Mage and Warlock are sufficiently distinct with 3 ranged specs. As was Hunter before Legion. What’s the problem?
You are losing out on a ton of DPS by sticking to ranged. What you described is absolutely NOT how to play Survival. Yes, Wildfire Bomb is most of the damage, but one thing you obviously haven’t noticed is that to get more frequent WFB you have to use Carve for its cooldown reduction and you cannot use carve at range even with Aspect of the Eagle.
You seem to be wowed by its performance… what exactly is so surprising? It has an uncapped ranged AoE with zero focus cost built into its rotation with a short cooldown and a tier set bonus that gives it frequent resets and a +80% damage buff.
If it’s so ranged already, why not give it a ranged weapon and call it a day? Why cling to the melee weapon?
This was indeed their argument, but it was a stupid argument. Mage and Warlock have 3 ranged specs. Rogues have 3 melee specs. You don’t get pressure to reform those specs into different roles. It’s perfectly doable to have a pure DPS class have 3 specs that are all ranged or all melee, and in fact that’s preferable to mixing them as history has proven mixing melee and ranged in the same class is generally a bad idea.
As it turns out, there’s more to a spec than just being melee or ranged. SV had a distinct ranged identity and removing it to chase uniqueness was a huge mistake. You say it didn’t make sense to have 3 specs “do the same thing” (ignoring the differences on top of just “being ranged”, of course). Does it make sense to instead deliberately handicap one of those specs just so we can turn around and say it’s now distinct? Should we also remove Stealth from one of the Rogue specs to make it more different?
Sure, but that just begs the question: why not just make it fully ranged?
Melee SV fans simultaneously argue that the spec is mostly ranged and the melee doesn’t matter, yet the melee is apparently a crucial aspect to the spec’s uniqueness and identity. It can’t be both.
Very few Hunters ever asked for this. It was a very niche request in general and most of the people pushing it were from other classes. Note how most of the people in this thread defending melee SV are posting from melee classes.
Lacking a ranged weapon as a Hunter is just as bad as lacking spells as a Mage. Seriously.
Marksmanship and Survival absolutely had clear and distinct themes. People who argue otherwise generally have minimal knowledge/experience with the class. Yes that includes the developers. Besides; even if MM and SV weren’t distinct enough, it would have been far easier and far more effective to just further iterate on either spec and make them more distinct as ranged specs while keeping them as ranged. MM, after all, also got mostly remade going into Legion, so they could have done literally nothing to Survival from WoD and it would still be even more distinct.
Notice how everyone who dredges up this “MM and SV were too similar” angle assumes that making SV was automatically the only valid solution. We spend a lot of time arguing the merits of that initial argument of distinction yet few people point out how even if it were true, that still makes melee SV an incredibly bad “solution”.
Those extra “melee tools” were extremely limited and purely a matter of classification. Arguing that it’s precedent for the spec lacking a ranged weapon entirely in Legion is a farce. Every iteration of SV prior to Legion used a ranged weapon and preferred to fight at range as much as possible.
SV could literally spec out of having a pet with Lone Wolf yet you’re here arguing that they were the same spec 
Yes there were gameplay similarities but that was just part of being a Hunter… just as there were gameplay similarities between the three specs of Warlock, the class you’re posting from. Yet they didn’t make a Warlock spec.
As I said above, there are actually two arguments here. We can argue about whether the specs were distinct enough, but even assuming that’s true you also have to argue whether making melee SV was a good solution and if the spec is in a better place now. After all, since Legion the spec has had a whole lot of more bigger and pressing issues than “it’s a little too similar to BM :(”.
Ranged SV was vastly more popular.
Now Survival just literally has Kill Command in the toolkit. What a clown take.
Far more people enjoyed ranged Survival.
Yet most Hunters avoid SV as much as possible, whereas as a ranged spec it was routinely very popular 
You picked a class with that as its description to play as melee?
(X) Doubt
All iterations of all Hunter specs before Legion had a ranged weapon and preferred to use it as much as possible.
Appealing to the past to defend the current version of SV which lacks a ranged weapon has always been fallacious.
The Hunter class fantasy in WoW is pretty heavily built around ranged weapons.
Plus we already have a pet spec in Beast Mastery. If they wanted to represent a melee version of that, just make a talented melee option within that spec. Making SV melee was just about the worst way they could have done it short of making MM melee.
7 Likes
The Survival update was excellent.
I’m glad that old Surv is dead and buried.
3 Likes
Under level 20 as survival there is little reason to actually use a melee weapon given the amount of downtime you have. I don’t actually play my surv alts as melee until around 30.
Below that they’re still using guns because the autoattacks and keeping distance matters before we get harpoon and traps.
Then there shouldn’t be much issue in just making it ranged again.
ICYMI Survival auto-attack is nerfed by -50%. It’s not shown explicitly on the tooltip but it really does work like that. They go out of their way to discourage you from using ranged weapons.
Does it make sense to pick a spec and suddenly be half as good at something you were doing before picking that spec?
Doable via talent reworks without otherwise altering the spec.
You want to alter the spec because you have sour grapes and actively want harm to come to something others enjoy because you feel as if they are responsible for the thing you enjoyed being harmed half a decade ago.
Does it make sense for me to care how someone who doesn’t play my spec anymore feels about its design?
I’ll let you figure it out by the radio silence below.