According to ArenaMate, the breakdown of specs in RBGs in ArenaMate is 139 BM, 120 SV, and 43 MM. So while it’s true that SV is more played at higher ratings, it’s also true that BM is more played than SV over all.
P.S. The default on ArenaMate is 0+, meaning you saw the numbers I just posted and upped the rating to a sufficient level to justify your narrative of me being a liar. Pretty deceitful and sad if you ask me.
P.P.S. It says a lot that the number of Hunters we’re talking about is 300. Survival Hunters derive so much validation from the fact that the spec is more represented in a corner of the game that sees a number of participating Hunters in the low hundreds. Meanwhile M+, for example, sees hundreds of thousands of Hunters. There are about 465,000 Hunters doing M+ tracked by raider io, 36.5k of which are Survival or about 8%. And this is in an area of content that’s both more accessible than rated PvP and also actively favours melee DPS.
Your argument is basically more people play BM, which is a “no sh#$ sherlock” at best. SV is by far and away better at pvp than BM. It’s also cute watching you use mythic + numbers considering the MDI is running 2-3 BMs in every group. BM being overtuned couldn’t have anything to do with that…
There’s no argument that SV is better in closely-matched PvP situations like what you see in arenas, but in BGs the gap is at least a lot smaller and the ranged specs are absolutely preferred by Hunters in most BG content outside the upper echelons of rated BGs.
SV has always been unpopular in M+ so BM’s current high scaling doesn’t explain that away. It get’s real interesting when you note that MM, a spec that very much isn’t overtuned, has more players in M+.
If your entire point is that SV isn’t as popular overall, fairly certain no one but you is arguing this. Blizz is apparently more than fine with not having as many people play hunter and/or SV, so hunters preferring ranged is irrelevant as long as there are those playing the current iteration. I and others enjoy melee SV, and will do so as long as Blizz keeps it, which is at a minimum through SL now, and I don’t see it changing.
p.s. and if some point SV suddenly got overtuned like rogues and dh’s were in early BFA, that mythic + representation would shoot up. There are more than a few players who hop to FOTM toons constantly.
1800 isn’t a higher rating, it’s what you get when you can coherently press buttons and understand what a cooldown trade is.
Just because the lower, unsuccessful brackets are flooded with god awful BM hunters doesn’t mean it’s a better spec. You said survival is the worst option for BG’s, and then mixed in the other qualifier of quantity played.
Survival is, hands down, the best PvP spec for hunters. Random BG’s, RBG’s, and arena. It’s harder to use and do well with so you have a lot of mouth breathers stay glued to BM because they don’t want to switch. Also why farm an entirely different set and a melee weapon when you can just breeze through with your PvE gear on in BM for easy conquest? Doesn’t change the fact they BM is worse than Survival in PvP.
You added the qualifier; not me. There are still more BM Hunters in rated BG period.
I simply disagree that Survival is better for random BGs. That isn’t an environment where you have tailor-made comps and group strategies. The fact that it is harder to use and do well with and also depends heavily on composition means it isn’t a good fit for random BGs and not only do you rarely see it there but they usually do not hold up well when they are present. I can count on one hand the number of SV Hunters I’ve seen in the top 5 on damage or killing blows this entire expansion. Then, of course, there are epic BGs where Survival is for all intents and purposes a dead option. Melee are simply not as good as ranged in those. Compare this all with ranged Survival which was a great option at all levels of PvP content the last time it existed.
You might wonder why I’m focusing on casual content here. This is because if you follow where the discussion actually started instead of the direction in which you derailed it Azagorod genuinely believes Survival is only unpopular in competitive PvE content because people are biased against it (not because it sucks there, of course) and that there are bountiful Survival Hunters frolicking through the meadows in casual content that are just invisible to us because we can’t track them by participation.
P.S. As much as Survival Hunters love to believe they are on a higher plane of knowledge v.s. everyone else, it does you no favours to dismiss everyone who plays the ranged specs as mouth breathers. Doing well with BM in arenas takes just as much skill and effort as SV; particularly given it doesn’t have the overpowered PvP talents that carry SV to prominence in competitive PvP. Survival is not owed players/attention and Hunters not wanting anything to do with a melee spec doesn’t make them stupid.
Even in the 1800+ statistics for RBGs it’s close: 46 SV Hunters to 32 BM Hunters. Clearly SV’s advantage falls off steeply when you expand the scope of the PvP encounter. That makes sense; melee is a dangerous place to be in a group fight.
Go look at the advantages of SV in PvP and note how many of them are actually baseline to the class. Then realise just how much Survival’s advantage depends on its PvP talents, namely Mending Bandage and Tracker’s Net. Oh, and the sheer amount of nerfing directed at BM at the start of this expansion.
Actually, back before MSV, there was a vocal group of idiots in the hunter forum that were always calling for a melee spec. As I recall, most of them were assuming it would be BM. Weren’t they surprised?
As I said much earlier in the thread, I have no particular animosity to melee SV, despite the fact that I was a big RSV fan back in the day, but the fact is that there is virtually nothing about MSV that makes it attractive to play vs. BM or MM right now. I can only think of one, single advantage to the spec.: more frequent interrupts. That’s hardly enough to justify an entire spec. Meanwhile there are numerous drawbacks – more complicated, limited AoE rotation than BM, no pet AoE threat generation, more limited pet special abilities than BM (due to no exotics), lack of option to forego the pet, like MM.
Just make melee SV in some way attractive. It doesn’t shine in any respect over other hunter specs or other melee specs.
It’s going to get a lot less love as SL would be the DK’s second expansion. Even if SV was a good melee spec, that’s nothing compared to the always-gucci DK specs.
i could not have said it better, i really miss the ranged surv spec and i know alot of hunters feel the same way, i just wish blizz fix the current surv spec not remove it because now that it’s there, some people are using it and enjoying it and i would not want to make the spec disappear like the dev did in legion for us RSV lovers, but i would rather see a 4th spec (let’s say ranger spec for example) like they did for the druid.
My baby Hunter only dinged 120 a few weeks ago, so I haven’t spent much time on the Hunter class forums. I’m a little surprised by the animosity I’m seeing over here. Survival Hunters didn’t delete your favorite spec. Blizzard did. Why take it out on us?
For my part, I agree with the OP. I play Survival because I enjoy the “rotation” (though I agree with criticism that it’s not very thematically cohesive). There’s a lot of decision making and variables to consider. I really wanted to like MM, but found it only slightly less boring than BM. I fail to see how playing the existing class in the way we find most enjoyable (and you can be sure that anyone playing Survival is playing it because they like it, not because it’s “the best” =P) makes us a target for contempt.
You make yourself the target of contempt when you assume that because people don’t like MSV they automatically don’t like you because you play it. Most of the pro-RSV people don’t care that you like MSV and will actively tell you to play what you enjoy.
Your enjoyment of it does not make you a target, nor will it make the majority of hunters who were hunters prior to legion accept MSV. Most of the pro-RSV people at this point don’t even care that MSV exists, and are happy to let it continue existing if RSV is brought back as a 4th spec.
So… tl;dr enjoying survival doesn’t make you a target of contempt, you do that to yourself by assuming people are talking about you.
While I haven’t seen any such statements from the devs in regards to full mobility being a reason as to why they removed RSV, even if they have said this, it would be just as false as pretty much everything else they’ve said on the matter trying to justify what they did to SV.
RSV was a ranged spec with full mobility and with less negatives coming from the reliance of pets compared to BM, sure. But RSV was also designed for concistency and sustained damage rather than heavy burst and large hits. For a playstyle like that, the full mobility wasn’t such a massive advantage as many like to think/argue.
Perhaps, although I would argue that it’s even more likely that they just really wanted to get that melee spec in there.
The two specs played perfectly fine and had enough distinction between one another, for what was expected at the time.
Going forward, if one wanted to focus on the identity and fantasy of each spec, that wouldn’t really have been such a challenge.
The groundwork for each fantasy was already there. All they had to do was continue with it and add more that suited the respective themes.
Pre-legion SV was a spec designed for ranged combat relying on ranged abilities using a ranged weapon.
What we got in Legion was something entirely different. Something that had nothing to do with what the prev spec was based upon.
The only thing that was left, was the actual name.
Meaning the amount of specs/choices aren’t the actual issue. The issue is what you just said here.
The “entire” playerbase? Nope.
Some perhaps, sure.
And?
It’s not about how many specs a particular class has. It’s about making sure that classes have their options covered.
If something makes sense, if something’s missing from a class in regards to a certain theme/fantasy unlike any of the already existing ones, then it has nothing to do with whether a class already has 2 or 3 specs.
And how would those be vastly different/unique compared to what said classes already have?
SP without voidform? Okay, give SP a talent that does this.
Locks with Meta? Okay add it back to the prev spec.