I dont see many survival hunters around

[threads]

no interest in playing melee.

also, pre-wod survival was more fun than all 3 of the new specs.

[Bisso]

I will level and main as MM or BM, whichever ends up the strongest at first raid. After that. I will probably level my SV artifact for a os. My guildis casual enough to let us change roles. If SV pulls good numbers for melee I will play it because I loved the gameplay. I have a good history with my guild. They trust me to pull better than average numbers. I think they will be fine with my SV os

[Aggrophobic]

Why would you go melee if you can be ranged?
We usually have 4 melee in our raid, even less at times. The game or at least raiding is not designed with melee in mind.

I guess, if you have to play melee, go rogue as thoes little pricks can't cheese mechanics so well but other than that? No thanks.

[Rakaji]

I challenge you to find a single forum post from 2004-2015 that seriously asked for a melee hunter option.

And when you find that inevitable fringe-opinion post, we can then talk about finding several more so that you can back up such a ridiculous statement as "a lot of people asked for Blizzard to reconsider that playstyle".

No one played a Survival Hunter back in Vanilla for melee either, because it was shit and had no place in a spec with two (better) ranged specs. Just like then, Survival now will find no place in WoW, no matter how much they intentionally gut BM and MM in order to make SV look more appealing.

I'm not here to justify myself to you buddy, sorry. What I said is a fact, not opinionated or biased in any way. You can choose to be angry about it if you want to, that's not my problem.

[Deleted]

I think rotation isnt that complex after a while. I started to leveling one and that helped me a lot. That is rly a good way to learn new class because u dont start with all skills you just can build up and add a new skill every 5-8-10-15 levels.

I think the main problem is - its melee with not rly good aoe and IF (dont have beta) Legion isnt rly a melee friendly xpac it will be hard to find spot with all other melee specs around.

[Dejnar]

Honestly, the more I ready here the more I want to keep playing SV. Ive always found it intriguing to play the spec no one plays.

Sure, it may be a bit lackluster in some aspects, pun intended, but who cares, if its fun. And I find it great fun.

Im gonna max play Heroic raids anyways, and specs dont really matter at that level tbh.

Cya all in there! I'll be the guy under the disco priest on meters!

[Bepples]

What I said is a fact, not opinionated or biased in any way.

Actually, if you don't give any evidence, it is exactly that: opinion.

And you are here to justify a stance on this issue. If you are going to claim that a melee hunter is something that a large amount of people were asking for, you better be damned sure you have real instances of that to show.

[Bloodpetal]

I'm sorry but i'm going to have to agree with FpicEail. Before melee Hunters existed, people "chose" to play Hunter because they were RANGED. I doubt there was ever a time someone picked Hunter because they wanted to be melee? Which didn't exist? Even when they had some melee a long time ago, people still played them because they were RANGED. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, stfu. Thanks. - Hunter Player

[Thage]

They are missing their Artifact first ability and several traits that make them actually work properly.

This. I fully plan to go Survival, because it's fun as balls on beta, but right now in prepatch Marksman feels far more complete as a spec at 100.

[Khuzog]

I made an orc one for leveling but I doubt we'll see much competitive use of them in my guild, we're already super heavy on melee (we're mostly a PvP guild) so what few hunters we have trying to squish up front with the rest of them doesn't seem very likely.

[Kuhnta]

I was all for a melee specc melee, but thematically, I am confused. It is like Rexxar and Goblins.
I was also kind of upset that Marksmen wasn't able to talent specc its way to old range survival.

[Deleted]

I wish they would just put hunters where they was before wod. I was happy.

I'd say 99.9% of hunters, including myself aren't happy with survival being melee spec. If we wanted to play melee we would reroll.

Why not make BM a tank spec, just make us turn into a bear like druid tank. But that's stupid you say? Why another tank the same as a druid?

Well why another melee spec. Sorry I just wish they didn't destroy my main class

[Tokee]

To me, Survival is in the right place at the wrong time. If they had done this in WoD or even sooner, it would have been reciprocated better. It is simply being overshadowed by the Demon Hunter release and the sweeping game-wide class changes.

As for its toolkit, it has one of the most robust in the game. It has a plethora of physical and magical DoTs, hard-punching Mongoose Bite, nets, traps, Aspects, throwing axes, and a Charge that can break roots(if talented). No other class offers that much diversity in their toolkit. I do agree the animations do need work.

Why they should be included in groups: Their single target damage will be quite strong compared to other melee, especially in dungeons. Versatility and Crit are abundant on dungeon gear so Survival will get a head start optimizing their gear, ergo they will do more damage.

Traps - Tar Trap and Ice Trap, in my experience, are quite handy in avoiding unnecessary tank damage and save healers. Snares and Stuns are incredibly strong in Legion, and Survival offers 2.

What Survival needs help with: Surviving. Whether its in PvE or PvP, Survival cannot take hits well without Turtle Aspect. A passive boost to HP, or better, Versatility would be greatly appreciated (especially since Mastery is so bad, more on that later) and thematic to fit within "class fantasy".

Pet survivability and pet AI is also an issue. Pets die incredibly fast, more so than I've ever experienced. They are also extremely retarded and frustrating to micro manage. A QoL fix for pets would be generous to all Hunters.

Survival AoE damage is abysmal. Even with the designated AoE talents, its bad. It's so bad, taking AoE talents would just make your single-target suffer without any compensation.

Survival Mastery is incredibly bad. It looks quite possible to avoid Mastery on 95% of gear in Legion pre-tier sets, and that should be your aim as a Survival Hunter. Mastery was originally created to actively boost a really cool, dynamic passive. Adding a very small (5-6%) chance to refresh a Mongoose Bite charge is neither cool nor dynamic.

Survival has all the bases covered to being a fantastic, engaging Specialization. It just needs TLC and devs that are interested in fixing it, not ignoring it for an entire expansion.

[Deleted]

Like what? Damage?

what?????????????

[MasterOfNone]

Fully agree.

+1
How many ranged classes have been added? Next three classes will probably be melee/tanks also. Kinda ridiculous at this point.

[Bumbac]

Well I guess they didn't survive.

Ba-dum tssssss

[Lucetia]

They are missing their Artifact first ability and several traits that make them actually work properly.

It's not even that. A lot of the players simply don't want a melee hunter spec. Maybe an ability or two to use while in melee range, but not full on melee. Those who liked that style are probably playing Unholy Death Knights since it's the same. They gutted a lot from Survival and many just don't like that.

The artifact itself isn't going to save it. Every artifact talent is either a damage boost or damage reduction. The exceptions are the initial point which is a new move and the final move (Eagle's Bite) that puts a dot. There is literally nothing there that will help make it work properly. It is expected to have low damage/survivability until we gear/level up.

Why they should be included in groups: Their single target damage will be quite strong compared to other melee, especially in dungeons. Versatility and Crit are abundant on dungeon gear so Survival will get a head start optimizing their gear, ergo they will do more damage.

Except this is overshadowed by the fact that every expansion has taught us if you are going to do the harder dungeons (Especially Mythic+, works same in Beta) that you will only want 1 melee. People aren't going to pick a Survival hunter when they can pick someone else will do more damage, be able to reduce theirs or others damage more, other classes that can self heal / heal others.

[Stangerlift]

What I find the most ridiculous part of the whole Survival design is that they said something along the lines of, "Player feedback told us to implement abilities like Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite" and they completely ignored giving Survival decent survivability. It should have had a bunch of defensive abilities and some built in leech mechanic. Like a blood DK or Veng DH of dps. It doesn't have to be a tank, but it should be able to self heal.

[Lyraat]

I challenge you to find a single forum post from 2004-2015 that seriously asked for a melee hunter option.

And when you find that inevitable fringe-opinion post, we can then talk about finding several more so that you can back up such a ridiculous statement as "a lot of people asked for Blizzard to reconsider that playstyle".

No one played a Survival Hunter back in Vanilla for melee either, because it was shit and had no place in a spec with two (better) ranged specs. Just like then, Survival now will find no place in WoW, no matter how much they intentionally gut BM and MM in order to make SV look more appealing.

Well said.

I predict that we will see an overall decrease in hunters at end game. BM is mindless, MM's RNG-based rotation can DIAF, and melee-lovers will play another class after dabbling with SV. Far more people will quit hunters than pick them up due to melee SV.

[Katchii]

I'm excited to try it, but my Hunter has been BM for a long time, and I'm not that keen to learn a completely different playstyle when I already have one I enjoy on Hunter and have other melee classes that I also enjoy playing and apparently do melee better than SV Hunters.

Also, in leveling and seeing them in dungeons...they're performance is abysmal compared to other specs. I know leveling is hardly the way to see how they are balanced, but when I can literally do 10x more damage without even trying on a Warrior or DK than a SV hunter desperately trying to get a shot off before things die, it just doesn't seem that fun. I shouldn't have to try THAT much harder to do less damage, especially while leveling. Affliction Warlock have this problem while leveling too, which is because of the horrible ramp time on their DoTs which is understandable, SV isn't an almost entirely DoT spec though so to have equally as bad a performance in dungeons IMO speaks volumes to the specs balancing problems.