Survival was really good in 8.3 and virtually nobody played it. I remember looking at logs at one point and there was something like 200,000 BM logs compared to 7000 Survival.
Survival’s biggest issue has always been that all of the utility they provide can also be done by the other specs while not being hindered by being a melee spec. The only way to remedy that is by giving Survival its own unique utility that isnt available to BM or MM to offset the obvious downgrade of being melee. I dont think that it would require a new expansion to give them something else but unfortunately with how far behind Blozzard seems to be on game development right now we’ll probably have to wait until the next expansion before we get anything like that.
Enhancement Shamans have the same problem but they actually bring unique utility (Windfury totem) while Surv has none.
I would advise any people who may not enjoy Hunter but like playing melee to give Survival a shot because it’s a lot of fun to play and the damage it can put out in M+ environments is very competitive.
2 Likes
While you do have a point (and I agree somewhat), history has shown us that this won’t fly well with Hunters.
Blizzard tried this in Legion. It blew up in their faces due to the following combination:
- MSV was the only Hunter spec with traps. MM and BM literally had no traps from 7.0.5 to 7.1.5 — after having had traps since 2004!
- MSV was the top-performing spec in Nighthold, but the historic Hunter players (as in, the old crowd — not the new MSV hunters that rolled in Legion) rolled Hunters to play range, not melee.
- Blizzard took away a lot of things from the long-time Hunter players, leaving a bitter taste in their mouths.
The Hunters made a huge fuss (and they certainly had solid reasons) in Legion, so Blizzard returned the historic utility to the ranged specs and have been extremely careful about not letting the melee spec vastly outperform the ranged specs.
If you really want MSV to have unique utility, it’s gonna be a very fine line to tread. The unique utility cannot be head-and-shoulders above MM and BM; there’s gonna be blood in the streets if that happens.
5 Likes
Agreed.
They need to change the Mastery and give Spirit Bond to all the Hunter specs.