There aren’t even “quite a few” players in rated PvP in general. Do you realise how stupid it is to pretend a spec being popular in rated PvP balances out the spec being unpopular everywhere else? You’re typically looking at low hundreds for each class for 1800+. Arenamate tracks 225 Survival Hunters in 3v3 putting it at 15th place and it’s similar for 2v2. It doesn’t even make it into the top 15 in 2v2, and in RBGs it’s actually below BM. Meanwhile, literally thousands of Hunters have killed Mythic N’zoth, the hardest PvE bosss. The amount of people participating in end-game PvE v.s. PvP is not in the same league.
Plus, if you’re looking to rated PvP, Survival was much, much more represented there the last time it was ranged.
Uh, no. It requires that we assume Blizzard didn’t intend the Hunter melee tookit to be as strong as the ranged toolkit which is a very safe assumption given everything they said and did about the class back then.
If you’re just going to dismiss classic now how come you brought it up in the first place? Remember, you’re the one who first talked about Hunters having melee in classic as some sort of precedent for a Hunter spec lacking a ranged weapon entirely.
Yes, it has changed. And that change was a giant mistake and should be reverted.
Threat was a big issue for Paladins back then because most of their threat came from holy damage abilities and most of their holy damage sources were either a) not on-demand (i.e. procs on melee attacks) or b) only worked against undead. They relied heavily on Consecration which was not in the Protection tree meaning it was costly to spec into it and at one point Blizzard actually made it even harder for Protection paladins to reach Consecration.
And even that gets replaced by Concussive Shot at level 13 for the ranged specs.
I think even Blizzard has given up on trying to make melee a mainstay in the core Hunter class and is rather going for the “compromise” approach where all of the class is ranged except for a token part of Survival’s toolkit that keeps it in melee range most of the time.
I know it’s probably hard to understand given your (evidently from your armory page) minimal investment in the class, but classes are meant to have a central identity for the specs to build on. If you start broadening what classes can be you can easily come to ridiculous conclusions like representing all of the Warlock fantasy via the Mage class or Paladins via the Priest class. Classes do actually need to be specific in what they do and what you’re trying to do is broaden Hunters to the most vague and abstract point that something like Headhunter, which pretty much lacks everything represented by this class, can be counted.
This also ignores the role Hunters had in having the class identity of the ranged attacker; all of the game’s ranged weapon representation was in the Hunter class. When you take away ranged specs to replace them with melee, while you might think you’re “evolving” the class to encompass “more of what a hunter actually is” (a completely ill-defined and subjective concept in the first place) you are sabotaging the game’s ability to explore ranged weapon archetypes.
And for what? Look at the audience of the current Survival spec v.s. what it used to be. Can you honestly argue that screwing so many players over was worth it? Oh, wait. I don’t know why I ask given the routine selfishness of Survival mains we see around here.
What Mage spec should be put on the chopping block to make it happen?
It would be a resourceful opportunist that makes creative use of tools to gain an advantage in combat, i.e. what Survival was in every single ranged iteration including the first. Enhanced projectiles are part of that.
No, I didn’t complain about this. What I did say was that Black Arrow was the least-fitting element of the toolkit and should have been rebranded into something that had the same mechanics but aesthetically fit better.
I’m not going to pretend having explosives and poisons in the same spec is something that doesn’t work. Not only was it like that for every iteration of Survival before ranged but it’s true of the current Survival too. If you want to take the “aesthetically incoherent” angle, feel free to explain to me how Serpent Sting and Wildfire Bomb fit in with a spec that’s also the melee skirmisher that fights alongside its pet.
You people have been saying this since Legion. Remember all the talk about the great “influx” of players when Method had an SV Hunter on their first Gul’dan kill? You can still go to that video and see the comments saying things like that. We hear it every time SV is buffed or ends up doing decent damage. It never holds up.
How do you even quantify “I’ve been seeing an increase!”. We are relying on your anecdote being true and accurate. I still routinely go into BGs and see multiple Hunters, up to 15 sometimes, with 0 Survival Hunters. Their representation in raids is as bad as ever and their rated PvP representation has actually gotten worse. But hey, I’m sure Azagorod will come soon to tell us that there are plenty of Survival Hunters out there hiding out in the world quests and Goldshire RP, right?
The problem is it wasn’t even laziness. Differentiating MM and SV as ranged specs would have been the “lazy” solution. It would have been the one that took much less effort and was much less of a risk. It would have also been more effective. I think it’s less laziness or even maliciousness and more an inherent preference of the developers for melee fantasies over ranged ones which meant they had trouble giving any thought or care to development of ranged specs in the Hunter class.
So basically an earlier, worse Hunter? Got it. I’d also love to learn about the part where we hunted mammoths with grenades.
Plus, this mostly misses the point of hunting in general. Spears? They were usually thrown. Being ranged was pretty much always preferable. It doesn’t make sense for Survival to be arbitrarily sticking to melee. It depends on a confusion on how hunting is usually done and what Survival’s identity was in the first place. Survival is meant to be an opportunist and an escape artist. I’d actually argue it only makes slightly more sense for Survival to be melee than Marksmanship.
No surprise Survival appeals to the Warrior types. Let’s be honest: that’s the purpose of melee Survival in the first place: a welcome mat for Warriors in the Hunter class.
It did more damage than BM for much of Uldir. It barely made a difference.
It really is because most Hunters don’t like melee. Even Blizzard agrees to this.