I miss playing on my hunter, the only specs I found tolerable were old survival and BM, now I can only play BM ![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
Will they ever add “old” survival back? Either in the form of a 4th spec called “tracker” or something, or reverting survival back to its earlier forms.
I sincerely doubt it. Outside of any new hero classes, I don’t think they’ll add extra specs to existing classes; too much to balance
I don’t think so as well, and I say that as someone who loved WOTLK Survival the most out of ranged specs, and now plays melee survival.
When you willingly and knowingly change a popular specialization in the most popular class in the game to something that pretty much no one chooses that class to play you are basically giving the middle finger to players. It means that they don’t care about the players (kind of like how they said “we’d rather you didn’t play Demo”) and what they like at all.
Which is a shame as per every metric players have access to, Legion Survival bombed hard and BFA Survival barely squeaks by Subtlety.
Not likely. They changed it because all three hunter specs felt the same and they wanted to add something more unique. So it became a melee spec. I can’t that see that ever reverting.
I actually really like the melee survival hunter, and played my dwarf hunter primarily melee in survival back in classic despite it not being good. I just loved the feel of fighting alongside my big burly bear rather than being a coward who uses my pet as a meat shield.
I miss old Survival. It was my favorite spec! It was so satisfying hitting people with explosive shot and hearing the repeated explosions. lol
I, too, wish it would make a return.
I use to play MM cause it was my style but they screwed that spec up. I only played old survival for PvP and that was really fun. Now I play BM which also has been gutted and is now not as fun as pre-BFA. Hunters are a mess right now and I don’t enjoy any of the specs. Bring back hunter spec fun please.
They said this, but the biggest thing the specs had in common was that they were all ranged. Otherwise, each spec felt and played differently.
The reality is that it was a bad idea/dev brain child that they wanted to push. If they were so concerned with “class fantasy,” BM would have been the melee spec. But BM had way more people playing it than SV and they didn’t want to start a riot, so SV got the chop.
Edit: on topic, no, don’t expect it to come back. Once Blizz commits to a bad idea, they rarely reverse course.
I really liked Legion Survival, and I’m running on a new hunter to kind of get my brain around the BfA changes. It’s fun! It actually is quite fun. It’s different than the other specs, and that feels good when before, your choice of hunter spec boiled down to “character that shoots things and has a pet that does a bit of damage,” “character that has a pet that does a lot of damage and shoots things some,” and “character that shoots things and has a pet that does a bit of damage, and also has some explosives.”
Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for explosions. And this is different from the Combat -> Outlaw changeover, as they basically took a two-fisted swashbuckler archetype and made it a little more buckleswashing and a little less “more lightly armored 1-handed Fury warrior with stealth.” Even though it plays markedly different from combat, the class fantasy is very similar. Not so with Survival. I really wish that they’d just added a fourth spec (since literally nobody uses ranged weapons anymore except hunters; warriors and rogues do not even have the button to shoot them in their spellbook anymore), so that everyone who dreamed of being a melee hunter could finally realize it in a meaningful way, instead of playing on an outdated pirate server and pulling subpar DPS in exchange for being able to main the class fantasy they hoped for.
It didn’t help that Legion survival was finicky and over-reliant on RNG procs to get the most out of its core rotation, but axing a spec (even if overall it was probably the least-played out of the three available) and completely reworking it was a misstep. People liked explodey-trappy Survival with the shots and DoTs and… other catchy things. And they should have been able to continue playing out that class fantasy, instead of choosing between, again, playing on an outdated pirated private server, or trading in their gun or bow for a sword even though that’s not necessarily what they wanted to do.
Will pre-Legion Survival return? I hope so, in some form. I’d rather they add it back in as an option, somehow, because there’s no reason not to (other than balancing concerns). The flavor of having explosive arrows is different than having a beefy pet that’s your stalwart adventuring companion or being a patient sniper waiting in the bushes. Hawkeye from Avengers (pre-Legion Survival) is different than Robin Hood (Marksman), and Robin Hood is different than Legolas stomping around next to Gimli in the thick of battle (Beastmaster, I guess, don’t tell any dwarves that I compared Gimli to an NPC “pet.”). And all of that is very different from Dar the Beastmaster running alongside an animal companion with a melee weapon.
But I don’t want them to take away melee hunters, either. Constantly removing things is why we are where we are in terms of class design woes, simplistic rotations, and lack of meaningful choice in character realization. I want everyone who plays Hunter to have access to all the class fantasies they want, including both exploding-arrow-guy and axe-alongside-gorilla-girl.
I like the new Survivial, but it should have been a fourth spec. Blizz really needs to stop completely changing specs. I mean, I get changes to a point. Like, warlock Demonology is pretty different than it ever used to be but it’s still a caster spec that focuses on using demons. Survival went from ranged to melee. To me, that’s pushing things too far. That’d be like going “Ret is now a caster spec, suck it up, ret players.” “Arcane is now a melee tank spec. Enjoy.” “Havoc is now heals.”
Basically, I like the new Survival, but I feel bad for the people who had their spec, like, fundamentally changed.
I feel bad for people that lost their favorite spec
But i love the new survival
Look and mop demo to wod demo… Then the huuuuuuuuuuuge middle finger to locks that was legion demo.
No way they revert it after all they have done to it. Kind of sad but some people like the new Survival form. Reverting it would upset other people just as changing it already upset some.
My favorite class was Hunter and my favorite spec was Survival. My first ever character and main character from WoLK was a Hunter. Legion ruined the class for me to the point that I permanently deleted my original account just so I didn’t have to look at my broken Hunters anymore.
Legion Survival, leveling, played well and looked good. Legion Survival at max was a confused pita of conflicting themes and mechanics.
BFA Survival may play better and be more fluid than Legion Survival but it looks terrible compared to pretty much every other melee spec in the game in terms of it’s animations and spell effects. And it still has an identity crisis.
Ion Watcher Hazzicostas admitted that Legion Survival wasn’t made to appeal to Hunter Class players who they knew chose the class to be Ranged Shooters. And yet they went ahead and created melee version #13 (not counting the 6 tanks) anyway. They also removed basically all the meaningful ranged abilities and damage from Beast Mastery and made the worst version of Marksmanship ever. BFA hasn’t really improved any of that.
Legion Survival was probably the least played spec ever created. BFA Survival has significantly more players, but still only a fraction of all Hunters, much less all the various melee specs. Hunter Class took a hit going from ~13% representation and #1 Class for years to a tie for 3rd literally overnight. That is a significant drop in popularity and potentially huge number of players that dropped the class compared to those that have taken up the mantle of melee hunter.
Don’t worry boys. We’ll be getting Dark Rangers innthe next xpac and they’ll provide all the ranged shenanigans your hearts desire.
If they give another melee spec to substitute it then it’s fine(Preferably without Pets, Ranger fantasy all that) I love the swordmaster Ranger fantasy Survival provides and I would be really sad if they went back to it.
No. The new survival is loved by a lot of people.
If you want to play the old survival, you’re more than capable with talent choices in Marksman. It’s not the optimal build by far, but if you want to play it, you’re capable.
Choose Serpent Sting in the first tier and explosive shot in the second tier.
Voila. You literally have the old survival. Just with Aimed Shot added. That was all it was. The only other thing they had was Black Arrow, which was only added in WoD, so it wasn’t even a core identity spell.
Which is the entire reason they changed Survival
It was essentially just Marksman with 3 different spells.
I used to main old surv and I continued maining melee surv and never looked back. I thought I would hate it, instead, I love it.
I preferred Legion Surv, though.
Black Arrow was added in Wrath.