Most of us here are arguing for a 4th spec. But that would make sense most of those people are BM / MM. Why would you play a spec you don’t enjoy, especially one that removed a really popular version of the spec?
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A lot of us used to be SV but then it was a change in a way to explicitly appeal to people other than us. That’s why we are BM/MM. Implying that we should have less say in what happens to SV because we don’t actively play the new version is asinine.
Sticking to melee is the exact opposite of what Survival should be doing. It should not have a melee dependence, period. It’s not enough for it to have some stopgap ranged capability. It should be fully capable at ranged. Otherwise MM and BM better fit the historical archetype of Survival than Survival does in that they make full use of every available advantage while Survival deliberately throws the main one away.
Yes it is amazing that it manages to be so useless and unpopular for so long.
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Wouldn’t be surprised to find that most current survival players used to play rouge or some form of melee. Bring back RSV for those who loved it. You can keep your melee.
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Again same people last time argued over ranged survival complain even now when someone mentioned that is good. They will never add 4th spec to survival , it was changed to melee to bring balance in terms of ranged and melee.
Majority is happy it’s melee , only issue is damage output pve, in pvp surv is amazing, not to mention in world pvp.
So argue as much as you want and rage as much as you want SV will never be ranged again, neither will 4th spec be added to hunters.
For you buddy only https://youtu.be/DksSPZTZES0
P.S survival was good in WoD because it had tier sets in pvp and pve. That is missing. Note, ranged broken tier set made SV back in WoD insane kiting machine with burst damage, while you’re hiding behind a Pilar like a real huntard
You know the spec is wildly unpopular, right? As in, it’s by far the least played spec in the entire game unpopular.
It was gutted in WoD though. They purposefully kneecapped its damage during that expansion while preparing for its transition to melee to get people to stop playing it.
Same was said for classic. Same was said about having a melee spec at all for hunters. If there’s enough people who want a 4th spec, it’ll happen eventually.
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Nope they where just trying to find class identity trough expansions. That’s why survival was never viable spec. It was always combination of MM and BM.
Now it’s in state where is played by few but is rewarding. In PVP will always outplay MM and BM. It doesn’t have to be class for those 0.1% player base but it’s widely favored by world pvp’ers , arena pvp and so on.
People keep claiming it was more popular but even back in WoD and MoP oh boy try to get a group as SV hunter for anything serious. I know I know you guys where as survival in world first especially that pippy goblin , or whatever is his name.
People like this are worried and rightfully so. They know that the fourth spec option will only serve to further undermine the disaster that is MSV. Nobody plays it. It will get worse and worse as time goes on. When RSV is brought back it will get to the point blizzard will have a hard time justifying MSV’s existence. They already do. So sure pal. Keep spewing your non-sense. It will not change MSV from being the bottom feeding pile of dong it is. It’s been reworked made the top spec and still melee players stay away. Hunter players stay away. But hey a few niche loving people play it so it must be good!
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I distinctly remember that being untrue though. During 3.1 - 3.2 it was definitely viable. 3.3 MM took off due to armor pen. Cataclysm was mostly balanced between the three specs being roughly equal, representation varied during the various patches though I remember SV being the top dog for Dragon Soul (4.3).
It was also apparently really popular during SoO (I wasn’t playing at the time admittedly).
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/survival-must-be-melee/854408/17
Just going to direct you to that post. What you’re stating is factually untrue. It’s not popular in any meaning of the word.
I was never making such a claim? I don’t even want to take away from you or anyone else! I simply want to play as an arcane archer which was an option I used to have. I want a fourth spec because not only does it avoid repeating the same mistake that happened going into Legion and alienating players like yourself (I actively want you and everyone else who enjoy SV to have fun and play it) but it will give back what many players really do want.
Not to mention it would be good for the long term health of the game. Think about this for a moment, the current precedent right now is a spec can and will be deleted if Blizz decides they should do it, regardless of whether they think it will be popular or not (by Ion’s own admission, SV is a niche spec). Current SV can absolutely suffer the same fate that the old SV faced if Blizz decides it should get that treatment.
That is terrible regardless of how anyone feels about current or old SV. A 4th spec not only acknowledges that how the current SV was implemented was a mistake, but it helps set a new precedent of not deleting specs going forward.
I honestly disagree. I think it’ll help those who enjoy the spec avoid the potential fate old SV faced, as well as get it to stop living in its shadow. I think overall, it’ll do the opposite and help the spec. I sincerely doubt the majority of the crowd that enjoys MSV are the same that enjoyed old SV.
I don’t disagree with you. I just get tired of the hateful rhetoric it seems few MSV players use. Basically trash talking anyone who loved RSV. I will never be in favor of removing specs. Because I know what it feels like to lose something you really like. But to continue to listen to some of these guys yikes.
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If you’re arguing they were balancing the ranged and melee options, that’s not true. Before Legion we had 12 ranged options and 11 melee options. Legion added Havoc Demon Hunter and then converted Survival to ranged, making it 11 ranged and 13 melee. If Survival remained ranged it would be balanced at 12 ranged, 12 melee.
If you’re arguing about the overall competitive balance of ranged and melee, then it makes no sense. You would still have overpowered ranged specs and underpowered melee specs before and after the change because this change only affects one spec.
If you’re arguing about balancing Survival in particular… well, yeah, making it melee made it a lot less effective in PvP in general, but you’re just admitting in that case that it was a deliberate attempt to make Survival worse.
In any case, you’re wrong. They gave reasoning for making it melee, and that reasoning was that they thought it was too similar to Marksmanship and needed a fundamental distinguishing feature. The problem is this depends on a double standard for Hunters v.s. other classes in terms of warrior, it caused way more damage than it could have possibly fixed, and making the distinguishing feature of a spec a weakness compared to the base class is a terrible idea.
The majority is happy to avoid Survival like the plague, so this is a pretty egregious statement.
MM is better in PvP for the most part. SV could be better in 1v1… if your pet survived. Otherwise the MM opener burst out of stealth plus the baseline Binding Shot give it a big edge. SV is in fact one of the least represented specs in rated PvP right now, so calling it “amazing” is just more hopeless fantasy from SV Hunters.
SV was good in WoD because it had high reliable sustained damage and good utility. Its WoD tier sets were actually fairly mediocre. So this was a pretty silly and immature attack.
You just said Survival was good in WoD, so try to keep up with your own arguments. Survival was obviously viable for much of the time it had Explosive Shot. Last time I argued with you I linked a video of me raiding with it in mythic.
Calling it a combination of BM and MM is something that sounds good in the heads of the melee fanatics but it doesn’t work. It didn’t borrow any major elements from the other specs in the way Survival steals Kill Command right now in Shadowlands and it had no greater pet focus than MM; it was even able to spec into Lone Wolf in WoD.
Evidently it will not always outplay the other specs because MM is far more represented in rated PvP.
In any case, “this isn’t for everyone” is what crappy music artists say to justify why no one likes their crappy music. If a spec used to be popular then a major change happened and it’s now unpopular, that’s indicative that the change was a failure. It drove people away from the spec. It made it worse. Saying “oh it’s just not for everyone now” is a huge cop out and an unconvincing excuse.
P.S. Most Hunters in arena and world PvP are in fact playing MM. This isn’t BFA (although even in that expansion most Hunters outside of rated arenas weren’t Survival). Maybe if you kept up on the state of the class you could do better than mythic +5 and 1200 arena rating.
Like I said, I raided mythic with SV in early WoD. And, yes, the Method Hunters were Survival for their world first Blackhand kill which was in fact the last time Survival was ever included on a world first.
For the early part of that expansion it was actually the most popular spec in the game. It became unviable in 6.2 due to the awfully designed legendary ring which made many specs unviable as well as the major nerf to Serpent Sting where they arbitrarily just removed a core part of what made the spec work.
If you want to see an environment where Survival has trouble getting groups just look to melee Survival for the past 5 years. Isn’t it funny how melee Survival lovers constantly project the failures of their spec into the past?
It sounds like he’s talking about PvP where Survival remained a great option until the very end. While the Serpent Sting nerf was a huge blow, the biggest problem for Survival was the fact that it had no cooldowns in a tier where the legendary ring existed and massively favoured 2 minute cooldown burst. That ring didn’t work in rated PvP, so Survival was still on par there.
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If you let MM use Burst on you out of stealth don’t play arena or pvp at all.
SV kept same strength in pvp due more kiting and mobility option. I know dozen of players who changed to SV especially in BfA to PVP.
Only thing that needs to be fixed is to remove camouflage from MM and BM hunters. They didn’t need it
There it is… No one wants to play my spec… So lets remove what gives them an edge with the other hunter specs. Like BFA!!! I mean the only reason why survival saw arena play in BFA is because it was the only spec that was remotely viable. They gutted BM pet damage because people complained. Before that when hunters actually saw representation in the high brackets it was because of BM. And this becomes the crux of the entire MSV argument. Give us something other hunters can’t have that makes us mandatory in content so people will have to play our spec.
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Your take away from others being upset that something they enjoyed was removed is to… remove more stuff?
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Dozens… lol
Anecdote is not synonymous with evidence.
These numbers are from about 12 hours ago.
There are 705,340 Hunters
407,757 MM
270,646 BM
26,937 SV
125,139 Kyrian
82,960 MM
35,633 BM
6,546 SV
32,670 Necrolord
12,126 MM
15,798 BM
4,746 SV
514,125 Night Fae
298,726 MM
202,201 BM
13,198 SV
33,406 Venthyr
13,945 MM
17,014 BM
2,447 SV
MM makes up 57.81% of the hunter population
BM makes up 38.37% of the hunter population
SV makes up 3.82% of the hunter population
Sooo… no. Survival is not popular. It’s barely even played. BM, which is arguably the worst spec in the entire game right now has basically 10 times more players than survival does right now. This should tell you something.
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I gotta be honest, they say they know of dozens changing to SV for BFA. But I’d be surprised if they actually knew of a dozen SV hunters.
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I don’t play it much, but evidently even I play it more than you do. MM can dish out high burst damage while safely at ranged. BM and SV don’t do as much burst plus it is easy to shut them down by killing the pet. MM is the best Hunter PvP spec, end of story.
This isn’t BFA. MM does comparatively more now than it did in BFA due to changes to PvP damage scaling. MM has Binding Shot baseline giving it much needed CC. MM is not dependent on pets in the way SV is, and pets are easier to kill with a higher revive time. SV also doesn’t have azerite traits it was pretty dependent on.
2v2:
https://i.imgur.com/xb1UqsE.png
3v3:
https://i.imgur.com/hBBkdOI.png
RBG:
https://i.imgur.com/WGPWBhs.png
All 1800+. From Arenamate.
Nonsense. Camouflage has always been classwide and should remain classwide. If you feel like SV needs these exclusive boosts to make it good (see also: making traps exclusive to SV like they did in early Legion) that’s just you subconsciously admitting SV is handicapped and needs help in the form of special treatment including handicapping the other specs. WoD SV didn’t need exclusive Camouflage to be the best Hunter PvP spec.
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It’s simple people play what they see on icy veins or online guides. They look dos rankings and start from there.
Marksman and BM are way easier to play then SV. Even that adds to point where people drop SV. Even as ranged SV it was avoided because it was for experienced players.
I am a hunter but I don’t get why I come on huntard forum to argue with forum hunters. Sometimes I wish they would move this play style to other class.
Your argument immediately falls apart in the first sentence. If that were true, why are more than a third of hunters playing BM which is currently the worst performing spec in the whole game?
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Are… are you for real? Your argument for my point about BM hunters, the worst dps spec in the game currently is that people play the meta spec? If that was true, why are 90% of hunters not MM right now?
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Do you need explanation for that? My kid started to play he is 7 , and BM is only spec he can play properly that is not difficult for him. My guild has few over 50 year people and they prefer BM because play style it’s not stressful.