I have always played a hunter as main and have been all three specs (or talent tree analog) at some point in time… I did not play from 2010-2018… came back in Legion.
I had left as a Survival powerhouse at the end of Lich King.
Upon returning, when I realized that Survival was now a melee spec… I was struck with the purest sense of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Why? Why would a hunter be a melee fighter?
It’s so gob-smackingly stupid that I still get a whiff of that Whiskey Tango Foxtrot reaction almost three years later.
It’s annoying trying to put together a balanced team comp, you see a hunter colored name with a phat ilvl, invite them thinking you are getting some much needed range, and then it’s a survival.
I’ll take my meme spec any day of the week. It makes it so much sweeter when I’m supposed to be bad and I curb stomp some meta roller that has no clue how to do damage. Nearly broke 8k overall last night memeing in a mist. Couldn’t beat a good boomie on single target (which no survival ever should) but I cleaned up in the overall at 7.7k.
Having all melee in your group on the worst melee weeks is also not a problem unless you’re a bad healer or incapable of working in small spaces with others.
It’s a skill issue.
Ideally the other specs of hunter should beat survival most of the time. The issue is, most of the people meta rolling those things don’t know how to properly do damage so they’re just mediocre on a better spec and it averages them out to just alright. Then you have to factor in if you bring a hunter for hero the marksman rarely wants to pull out a pet and gut their dps. Survival has no issues having a pet out for hero so there’s no crying involved when you’re asked to do your job.
Because its the nature of m+ to do only what is known to work and none of the sweaty meta slaves want to take a gamble on a survival hunter because it’s different.
They are viable into the lower 20 range. Not entirely sure how much more you want out of a neglected spec. If you’re not the best in the world (which nobody in this forum is) then it’s completely irrelevant if they’re optimal as you won’t actually hit the threshold where it matters.
This just isn’t true. Bringing the right tools for the job always matters. Anything you can do to make the run go a little smoother is what you should be doing. So yeah, I don’t see any reason why people wouldn’t skip out on survival hunters.
Survival brings plenty of utility in traps, soothes, hard cc’s and snares along with the ability to hero without gutting our dps unlike our MM counterparts. Our bomb cleave is uncapped which makes our aoe extremely potent during spirits and our st is where we fall short but it’s hardly that big of a fall off.
They bring just as much to the table and more than most other melee specs in terms of group utility. The reason they are looked down on is because people who are slaves to the top and cannot think for themselves are basing their decisions on the views of the very top that literally passed the threshold of where the spec in question is viable. You, me or anyone else that isn’t the top will never experience that issue and having a survival hunter in your low keys doesn’t change how smooth the run will be unless the person controlling it is bad.
I’ve had plenty of meta specs die to every type of cleave or stupid mechanic imaginable. Bringing what is supposedly the most smooth specs isn’t gonna be optimal unless you’re playing at the very top where the players are actually good. Just because they rolled meta doesn’t mean they will be good. The players ability matters the most compared to comp in the lower key ranges like what we run. After 20 it’s a safe bet your skill and spec then matters.
I’ll take an off meta skilled player 100% of the time over some reroller that did it because some article told them to.
It vastly increased the chances of things being optimal. You don’t need to be a top level player. That is just some ridiculous thing you are making up. If a class does more raw damage, or has an ability that is more useful, then that person is going to be better to bring assuming both specs have the same skill-level of player. Obviously I cant know their skill level, but its the safer bet to make. That’s just facts.
I’m not a top level player, I don’t push high keys. But I can still tell the difference and I still take optimal builds because I have seen countless people bring really bad comps to raids and keys because “Oh, it’s just fives,” or “Oh, it’s just normal,” and then the run is hell because they didn’t make the team to the best of the current knowledge. You can’t pretend like it doesn’t matter just because it makes you feel better about your spec.
I don’t get what’s hard to understand. If I am making a nath run, and two melees apply and one is a fury warrior and the other is a survival hunter with the same ilvl. What is my safest bet? Do you think I should just wear a blindfold and pretend like I havent seen the stats and pick randomly?
Everything in this list is shared by the ranged specs minus the stun for MM and even then it’s just a single target stun which is way inferior to an AoE stun like Leg Sweep that WW brings. You get the exact same stun by bringing a BM Hunter anyway while getting the ranged benefit.
Nothing Survival brings is strong enough on that spec to justify taking it over an equally geared and skilled ranged Hunter or a different melee spec, trust me, I know this pain well, I’ve mained Arcane Mage for 6 and a half years and also play Holy Priest and Feral Druid, 3 specs that don’t bring anything strong enough over their class counterparts.
It’s sad but at the same time the BfA iteration of Survival is a disgusting shallow disgrace to the masterpiece they created in Legion so I’d rather them completely start over from the base up with Survival.
