I love survival…its got a lot of nuance to it and an interesting rotation. To play it well means managing wildfire Infusion bombs (shrapnel bombs on max focus…max those bleeds, pheromone when low focus, and don’t let serpent sting drop off any mobs for volatile),spreading kill command to max bloodseeker haste buff, manage mongoose window . And I didn’t even touch on Azerite traits.
U also have a stealth, interrupt, stun, snare, incapacitate, an intercept, disengage, heal, lust, threat redirect, the ability to to go range for short bursts, etc
The only thing I don’t like is how BM is a bit OP…especially when their skill cap is lower.
I’m just curious why they are represented more? I hope blizzard doesn’t see this as a sign to revamp them in Shadowlands.
SV isn’t represented more because most Hunters aren’t interested in playing melee.
From a practical perspective it’s hard to justify being melee over being ranged while having mostly the same utility and similar or worse damage. Melee is typically only more useful in M+ due to shorter interrupt cooldowns but this alone doesn’t make SV more desirable in M+ over BM or even MM. In raids having more ranged is almost always preferable since it means more damage uptime on the boss and less congestion in melee range.
From a subjective appeal standpoint all Hunter specs were ranged before Legion so the class’s playerbase doesn’t exactly have a lot of melee-preferring people in it to begin with, meaning it depends a lot on new players and rerolls from other classes. Some of those will come to Survival, but it has fierce competition. You have Demon Hunters being added in the same expac as melee Survival and they had a lot more hype surrounding them. Aside from that there are many other melee DPS specs to compete with, as well as the fact that it shares a class with the only specs in the game that use a ranged weapon. The point is: even when ignoring the competitive side of things Survival has a really hard time winning players over v.s. other specs.
blizz can’t give something they don’t have. ie love. it’s not just surv being ignored. there hasn’t been a single hunter change this alpha. and no, that doesn’t include the innate changes of alpha releasing.
Because besides Marksmanship and Beast Mastery having everything Survival does with none of the disadvantages of being melee, most people that want to play melee specs aren’t playing Hunter since the class historically has been about ranged weapons, so Survival doesn’t really have much of an audience.
I’m not playing SV simply because I have no interest in playing melee as a hunter. The biggest intrigue for this class when I started playing it over 10 yrs ago was because it was a ranged based class.
Two things brought me to hunter in bc, being ranged, and having a pet. Till sv goes back how it was or mm lone wolf isnt dps loss to have pet, i play only original hunter spec left, bm.
You answered your own question. It’s easier to play, and doesn’t have any of the problems of melee mob cleave or hard caster turret gameplay.
It isn’t the first option on people’s minds, and you hardly ever see one in groups who lots of people probably don’t even think of it.
The other melee options are either more numerous (e.g. DHs) or more iconic, either in or out of the WoW universe (warriors, rogues, paladins).
And then there are choices that have tank and/or heal options (shaman, paladin, dk, dh, monk, war - I suppose druid, too - basically everything but rogue.)
Survival does good damage and has some nice tools right now, but it is still something of a niche spec. You’re also forced to manage a pet, something the other melee options don’t have to deal with.
Survival is probably the weirdest spec in the game right now.
Because other melees do the whole “melee” thing better than Survival. The only melee abilities it has are are fairly uninspired, being a resource dump, frontal cleave, interrupt and slow.
It’s also got an incredibly odd fantasy, being a melee tinker with mostly ranged abilities fighting alongside a pet.
I find I out dps mm on my sv that’s similar gear score to me. Dunno about BM. Mind you I also need to ramp up my gear score and Azeroth traits to see how I would do at high end. I am however confidant I can compete. I do miss vanilla and BC SV I always played it like a skirmish hunter moving shooting melee when in range, get back to distance rinse repeat. I wish the current spec had a better reason to jump out and in to combat. Sorta like a red mage from ffxiv. That would be a lot of fun.
Set it up so as you spend focus you would build up another bar and when it’s maxed it unlocks a backflip and a bunch of range attacks then you harpoon back to melee. Make disengage do damage and harpoon Do damage so you don’t loose out on dps.
To be more correct, there hasn’t been a single baseline Hunter change since the initial alpha builds. There were a number of baseline changes to all specs, as well as some talent adjustments, but those haven’t been updated since the first public builds.
Anima powers have been added and tweaked in many builds since, but those only affect a very small portion of the game.
And there have been general Hunter design changes on the alpha. Kill Shot is a thing, Hunter’s Mark is baseline for all specs, Steady Shot and Arcane Shot are back for both BM and SV, MM and BM both had some talent adjustments, and SV got some damage boosts that are almost completely irrelevant given we are nowhere near final tuning. Eyes of the Beast is coming back too at some point (still NYI).
Like I said, they haven’t done anything to the class since that first round of changes went live, but that’s not the same as carrying forward the BfA specs as-is with no changes.
those all came when alpha was released. nothing has changed since then. that is my point. blizzard said they were listening to feedback this time and nothing has changed from feedback.
i’ll admit, the way i said it makes it seem like absolutely nothing changed and i will edit my post to reflect that but i also feel like anyone that knows not to take everything literally would know what i meant.