Will Old Survival (WoD and earlier) ever come back?

Community General Discussion
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I just double checked to make sure I wasn’t misremembering. Mists was when Survival actually had it reliably, so I was wrong on that front. One expansion. It was added in Wrath, but it was a talent so far down the Survival tree and so weak that it was not suggested to be grabbed by any of the guides. (Yes, some people probably grabbed it, but those are probably the same people who probably used Lacerate in vanilla)

Only in WoD when they made Lock and Load proc from Black Arrow did it become worth using in your rotation on cooldown. In Mists it was really far down in priority that it could be delayed a LOT if you had a lot of Explosive Shot procs.

And again, it still wasn’t a core identity spell. When they redesigned Survival to ranged in Wrath, that was always Explosive Shot. But then again, Chimaera Shot was Marksman’s signature move from BC to WoD, and BM stole it, so…

And again, the Wrath-WoD survival was literally just Marksman with 3 different skills. That’s why they changed it back to its Vanilla-BC roots.

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I’m not disputing that. I’m only saying the spell was added far earlier than Warlords.

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As I said, I double checked. It was added in wrath, but wasn’t viable until Mists.

I don’t tend to remember things that aren’t viable cause if I didn’t use it, I’m not going to remember it, lol. I’ll mix up things within an expansion of each other, so Mists/WoD is easy to mix up. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Wrath of the Lich King talent tree:
https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#c
Lock and Load triggered off of traps and Black Arrow. Says so right in the tooltip.
Here’s a build and rotation guide:
http://www.gnarlyguides.com/class-guides/wow-3-3-5a-survival-hunter-pve/

Cataclysm Talent Tree:
https://rpgworld.altervista.org/talentcata/eng/?HU
Lock and Load still triggers off of traps and Black Arrow.
Here’s a build and rotation guide:
https://www.tauri-veins.tk/survival-hunter-wow-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities

Mists of Pandaria Tree:
http://wow.mmosite.com/tools/mop_talent_calculator/#Yb!
Lock and Load (now called T.N.T) still triggers off of Black Arrow and Traps.
MoP rotation guide:
http://www.mop-veins.tk/survival-hunter-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities

Here’s the SoO tier gear that made LnL/TnT spam a thing:
https://www.wowhead.com/item-set=1195/battlegear-of-the-unblinking-vigil

Warlords of Draenor initially imitated this with Multistrike causing extended chains of LnL before Blizzard nerfed that.
https://www.wowhead.com/guide=2291/warlords-of-draenor-hunter-changes

Clearly since you are wrong on all counts. Including taking talents to replicate Pre-Legion Survival as that doesn’t capture the feel at all as well as lacking the oomph of Pre-Legion Survival.

Also,

Just for a quick sampling of an available data point:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21 (Mythic)
Raiding Survival logs make up 1.9% of all Hunter logs. MM is 20%. BM is 78%.
Here’s another one:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21#difficulty=4 (Heroic, more than double the logs)
Survival is up to 3.8% of all Hunter logs. MM is 18%. BM is 78% again.

So I guess it depends on what you consider to be “a lot”.

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Not everyone that plays a given specs raids, or does M+ or even parses and uploads logs.

And then, for raiding and such, playing a type of ranged is generally less punishing than melee, so the ranged specs being used more on that front isn’t surprising.

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Also, a look at the hunter spec distribution over time based on raid boss kills,
Survival:
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/survival
Beast Mastery:
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/beastmastery
Marksmanship:
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes/hunter/marksmanship

Survival was either above BM or running close right up to the point where Blizzard nerfed it to below tank damage during Black Rock Foundry.

Marksmanship was dead last until that point (mobile Aimed Shots) and it surged ahead with the HFC broken 4 piece Aimed Shot spam and then rapidly declined again.

And look at how the Hunter Class numbers tanked over the same period.
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/classes

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No but it provides a data set for one of the bigger activities in the game. The same trend can be observed in Mythic+.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/20

Only in Arena does Survival show strong, just ahead of BM, but only with a tiny tiny number of ranked players in 3x3.
https://www.arenamate.net/?region=&realm=&rating=0&ladder=3v3&faction=&class_filter=3

If your assertion is that there is a reasonably high enough % of Survival hunters doing WQ and Pet Battles, then I’m sorry I can’t sort out data for that but then again it doesn’t really matter when those people aren’t actually “playing” the specialization really.

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Survival is loved by people. People just can’t bring survival to most heroic+ raids because raids right now are VERY melee unfriendly. Even Blizzard has acknowledged this. (Hell, look at their hotfix notes they posted today, it even acknowledges it)

The only melee slots raids have often go to Havoc DHs because they have a debuff that raids need, and any extra slots often go to Windwalkers because if a raid doesnt have a brewmaster/mistweaver, they need the debuff the windwalker brings as well. If they have room for a THIRD melee somehow, they fill it often with a Fury Warrior or Outlaw Rogue for their insane Burst AoE.

Don’t even get me started on how horribly tuned m+ is for people who aren’t rogues, warlocks, etc. right now.

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But please, keep showing how you know nothing about how this game works by linking logs.

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But in no data that is available to players does Survival show “a lot” of players based on overall percentages. Since we can’t quantify how many players casually play Survival in general content. Just like we can’t state if that number is higher or lower than the number of players that quit Hunter completely with the Survival change or shifted to BM, even though the data we do have points to this being a fact and being a very large number.

It’s fine that you like it, but if you lack sympathy towards those that lost their favorite specialization (who most likely seriously outnumber you) don’t expect sympathy in return if it means you losing your spec and us getting ours back.

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… really? So WQs, an activity where you fight things for most of them, and actively press your damage buttons, doesn’t count as actually playing your spec? Well, TIL I’m not actually playing the game or my spec.

I don’t much care for the way you’re implying that players that don’t do high end stuff don’t count as players. Taking only parse logs as a sample is flawed because it doesn’t represent all the active players in the game. It also still doesn’t invalidate ranged specs being easier to raid with in raids that are generally melee unfriendly.

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That’s not what I was implying even though it does come across that way somewhat.

The point I was trying to get across is you can’t discount all the activities that players can track showing a fairly low population for a specific specialization and then claim there’s a large population doing only casual content that can’t be tracked that will be upset if that specialization gets changed again or reverted to a previous incarnation.

Legion Survival quite clearly didn’t have enough players to keep Blizzard from dramatically reworking the specialization for Battle for Azeroth. A rework that pointedly shifted the design back towards the previous ranged Survival specialization but in doing so abandoned much of what made Legion Survival unique.

You and Maizou are basically trying to say that there is a larger population of melee Survival followers than there ever was for ranged Survival with zero evidence to back that up but plenty of evidence supporting the opposite.

You are also skipping over where Survival fell in the Hunter class prior to Legion and that is the specialization in the middle of the fantasy and mechanics spread across the class: Beast Mastery heavily focused on pets with a very active and steady rotation versus Marksmanship with very little reliance on pets and the slowest paced rotation. Survival having a moderate reliance on the pet with a fast paced and reactive rotation.

For players that like the ranger/shooter fantasy you now have extreme pet reliance and overly simplistic rotation on one end or extreme shooter reliance with extremely “not fun” rotation on the other and no middle ground. So it’s no wonder basically everything we can track shows Beast Mastery to be the most played Hunter specialization and one of the most played in the game as well.

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I actually don’t mind survival in its current state, I used it to level through 120 and am sitting around 380 ilvl or so and do some decent damage. I don’t raid or pvp competitively but I am curious what the issue is for you?
Do you just dislike the mele aspect of it?

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Yes, it’s a necro, but I just wanted to highlight how outrageous it is that such a proudly incorrect and/or dishonest person is now representing Hunters in the community council.

For those that don’t know, Maizou is infamous for spreading misinformation, revising history, and inventing experiences/skills she doesn’t have. This is why she now hides her profile. If you needed any more proof that the community council is a farce here you have the fact that Maizou is in it. At least we have someone far more honest and knowledgable in it (Watermist) to balance it out.

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P.S. Just to keep the post on topic for a discussion 3 years ago yet still relevant today, and keeping this in a separate post for when the first one is inevitably reported and removed, here’s the top result for “wow wotlk survival guide” in Google:

Would you look at that: there’s a guide with a talent tree right at the top with Black Arrow selected plus a rotation section saying it must be kept up on the target at all times. In fact if you go to any WotLK Survival guide you’ll find the same, along with the countless video PoVs of SV Hunters at the time (because contrary to popular belief Survival was not always an unpopular spec but rather only since becoming melee).

As for the laughable implication that SV was melee until WotLK, here are guide links from Classic and BC showing just how the spec was played (note: ranged attacks):

An honest person is not afraid to come to the conclusion that they don’t have enough information on hand and they need to go and seek out more before continuing a discussion. A dishonest person refuses to ever admit when they don’t know something and bluffs about having the information on hand without doing any research at all. Given how easy it was to find information contrary to what was posted in this thread, it’s clear what we’re dealing with here.

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Jokes on you, Watermist and I get along.

Second, please get some reading comprehension. The post you quote I literally say it was used, but it wasn’t a core identity spell. Which it wasn’t. Explosive Shot was and was until Survival’s rework, the core identity spell for Survival. Black Arrow was an afterthought.

I also love how you conveniently ignore in the links you did that the core spell for Survival in Wrath was Aimed Shot. A Marksmanship skill. Yea. And you can see the comments on those pages of hunters complaining that their main spell is a marksman skill.

Third, what I said is easily backed up by a reliable site, Icy-Veins.

In MoP, which is what I was talking about, Black Arrow was below not just Explosive Shot in priority, but also Serpent Sting and Kill Shot. And due to how Cobra Shot worked, Cobra Shot was increased priority if Serpent Sting was about to fall off.

Due to how those spells worked in MoP, it was very common to cast Explosive Shot and Kill Shot almost exclusively for long periods of time.

This is also true of Cataclysm, which you can easily find by googling the cata guides.

And as I stated, in WoD, due to how Lock and Load worked, Black Arrow became highest priority, but it still didn’t make it the Core identity spell. It was literally just used to get Explosive Shot procs. You know, the core spell I keep talking about.

And my statement that Wrath-WoD Survival was just Marksman with different skill names is accurate. You can disagree, and that’s your choice, but it’s not something you’ll change my mind one. I’ve mained Hunter for 17 years. I know my class.

You’re going on ignore, and I’m reporting your post. Good day. :slight_smile:

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I should have guessed the ridiculous necro would be the one person who spent longer whining about MSV in the hunter forum than RSV even existed

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Imagine digging up a three year old thread of a user with thousands of posts just to insult them. Yeesh buddy.

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Yes, I am now posting on a different character because you need to understand, Maizou, that you can’t just sweep it under the rug every time you’re confronted for your dishonesty. Hiding your post history doesn’t help either. If I were you I would be so ashamed I would step down from the community council.

You literally in your post said that most people didn’t even take Black Arrow in WotLK. So not only did you initially bluff about your knowledge and research but now you’re lying about the specific claims. Is being this dishonest just a force of habit for you at this point?

Explosive Shot was added in 3.0 and Black Arrow was added in 3.1 as a way to get Lock and Load procs without requiring traps. This is the easily-verifiable truth. Unlike you I care about what’s true and correct.

Aimed Shot was an MM talent that was high enough in the tree for all Hunters (even BM) to take it. How is that as “core” to SV (let alone moreso) than Black Arrow, Survival’s second-last talent so far down the tree as to be exclusive to that spec?

Hardly anyone cared about Aimed Shot being so basic to Hunters back then because the standards of spec differentiation were far lower. People didn’t go insane over specs sharing parts of the base class because there was an understanding that this was a totally normal and healthy part of class design. Distinction was achieved iteratively and constructively. They didn’t go around abruptly mutilating specs and stripping them of core class components to chase “uniqueness” at the expense of everything else. This is a big part of why WotLK and MoP are so fondly remembered.

In any case, Blizzard did make Aimed Shot strictly Marksmanship-only in the very next expansion, Cataclysm, so this point is moot with respect to whether Survival should have been made melee several expansions later.

What a hilarious misunderstanding of what that website is conveying. It literally tells you that Black Arrow is to be cast on cooldown i.e. whenever you can. It’s not even an ordered list of priorities: it’s just a dot point explanation of what to do as a Survival Hunter. Keeping Black Arrow uptime as a maximum was one of the most important things to do as it gave Lock and Load procs (something you also denied as you claimed this was added in WoD) which meant more of the all-important Explosive Shot.

Uh, what? No, it wasn’t. Explosive Shot had a 6 second cooldown. Kill Shot had a 10 sec cooldown and was only available below 20%. Black Arrow was to be kept up all the time as described in that post. Stop assuming you know what you’re talking about because you clearly don’t.

In case you’re thinking of the SoO tier bonus that allowed long chains of Explosive Shot, it’s true that it would mean less Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, and Serpent Sting, but keeping Black Arrow up was still important for the Lock and Load procs.

Nope, it just isn’t. Explosive Shot still had a 6 second cooldown and Black Arrow was to be kept up at all times. There were some situations where you may have used Immolation Trap instead but this didn’t last through all of Cataclysm.

The fact is you’re trying to salvage the nonsense points that you made in your post but you can’t. The truth is that Black Arrow was a crucial ability for Survival from its inception until the end.

They didn’t change anything fundamental about the Explosive Shot - Lock and Load - Black Arrow interaction in WoD. The only thing they tweaked was adding bad luck protection to Black Arrow to make Lock and Load procs much more consistent.

Stop inventing history. People see right through it.

No, it isn’t, because contrary to simplistic and uninformed belief, there’s more to a spec than the weapon it uses and two specs aren’t the same thing just because they use the same weapon type. We don’t call all the Rogue specs interchangeable, or the Warlock specs, or Arms and Fury. We can make ridiculous generalisations and reductionisms to pretend they’re all expendable and similar to one another but that’s not honest.

Survival focused on exotic munitions and resourcefulness. Marksmanship focused on sniping and careful sharpshooting. Those are separate identities more than worthy of being separate specs and they provided two valuable and distinct thematic and gameplay styles for Hunters. After all, Survival was consistently a popular spec before it was melee yet now, while it enjoys some of the best tuning it has ever seen, it still struggles to be anywhere close to the popularity of the other Hunter specs or what it was before Legion.

In any case, even if it were too similar to Marksmanship (and it was very different by the time of MoP and especially WoD), making it melee is one of the worst ways of addressing it aside from something more outlandish like making it a tank. You like to maintain this false dichotomy of being unique v.s. being ranged but what you either fail to realise or pretend isn’t an option is being ranged and unique. There was nothing stopping them from developing more unique mechanics for MM (like they would do in Legion anyway) and SV without stripping SV of the most core and iconic strength of the class in a naive attempt to give it tokenistic uniqueness via handicap.

Oh, please. Don’t throw your played time at me like it means anything You clearly don’t know a damn thing, and while you hide your profile here you can’t hide all methods of seeing exactly how much you actually invest in your hunter. You do no M+, no raiding, or even any competitive PvP. I’m not one to attack people for playing casually, but if you’re going to pretend you’re more knowledgeable and experienced in this game than you actually are I’ll call you out on it every time.

Yes, I expected that, because if there’s anything more typical of you than dishonesty it’s running away from confrontation.

I should have guessed someone who just got called out for being manipulative and dishonest would be sticking up for someone else so manipulative and dishonest.

Imagine sticking up for someone so profoundly dishonest.

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P.S. Just so you know, this is my WoW TBC character. I play as Survival which is irrefutably RANGED in TBC despite your attempts to pretend otherwise.