I dont see many survival hunters around

[Deleted]

People don't realize its "hit and run" spec. You can kill every melee by kiting it, melee abilities have 5 yard range for something i guess. You can keep Caltrops 100% of time, if you go full melee vs warrior, for example, you will lose tbh. You have to weaken enemy (trap, grenedes, axes, caltrops, hit and run, pet) then finish him off, perfect fantasy spec for me. Its not full melee spec, you have to kite around, its like hybrid melee/range spec, of course not in pve, but for sure in pvp. On other hand you stick like glue to every range spec.
And one thing: aspect of turtle our only def cds. Its no true. People writing it are ignorants. Theres also ability called Roar of Sacrifice.

[Noocta]

Honestly the spec would be perfect in PvP if we had a little stun somewhere. We're literally the only melee without one currently. Makes fighting tanky casters ( warlocks, SPs, Boomkin ) a pain in the ass.

Also, not sure why they gave us a PvP talent for a mortal strike effect on raptor strike, when we still have the carrion bird unique skill to apply it..

[TheFuse]

SV is a trash spec designed to appease the idiots on the forums crying about a lack of melee spec. Give Blizzard a few years and shaman will be tanking again.
It has no redeeming values. It is entirely RNG dependent, there's too many melee as it is, and raiding will never favor melee.

So far Legion has been nothing but pandering. Illidan's return, Karazhan getting pulled off the shelf, Turalyion and Alleria, Demon Hunters, Ashbringer.
"Fuck making a good game, just give the players literally everything they've asked for." ~Blizzard CEO

[Feel The Power]

Hopefully next expansion mages get a melee spec, one that doesn't use magic and just double fists glaives. It's what we've been asking for!

[Deleted]

Hopefully next expansion mages get a melee spec, one that doesn't use magic and just double fists glaives. It's what we've been asking for!

Jaina will go rogue this expansion. When hiding and meditating she will learn new ways of magecraft: battle mage. Enchant your staff with powerfull magic to crush skulls of your enemies...

[Tulune]

Yet more proof that Legion's hunter changes as a whole, including changing Survival to melee, were made for the sake of people who didn't play hunters.

my main is a hunter I've had since Wrath, and I love the new SV hunter!

[lmaoboat]

I wouldn't mind the melee spec if A, if there wasn't already a crapload of melee specs in the game as it is, and B, if the two remaining ranged specs hadn't been competely half-assed. Blizzard's hyped up this class fantasy idea, and done nothing with it but paint a better picture of how little there is.

[Bepples]

The problem with SV has always been that they had no idea what to do with it and it changed too much every patch.
That's because there was nothing to really make it any different from MM.
You had expose weakness and later became a mana battery, but that's it.
Later you had explosive arrow/lock and load and even black arrow, things that could have easily been (and eventually became) talents for MM.

This argument again?

Survival and Marksmanship were very different. Marksmanship was slower-paced and focused on fewer, bigger hits. Survival focused on higher actions per minute with multidotting and full mobility. Marksmanship used abilities like Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot, Survival used abilities like Explosive Shot and Black Arrow. Marksman had more burst, Survival was sustained damage.

In WoD, literally the only things both specs had in common was a casted focus generator, and Multi-shot (and even then, Marksman never used it).

After ten years I am finally really happy with how the class turned out to be, each spec really feels different.

Apparently this is the only thing that matters to Blizzard and their acolytes these days. I mean, fuck functionality, balance, and enjoyability, right? Fuck the people who liked pre-7.0 survival: here's a melee spec made to appeal to a tiny, tiny minority of hunters and a whole lot of people who don't play the class and probably won't switch anyway because Survival has jack shit to distinguish itself from other melee.

No, combating "homogenisation" is not the absolute end-goal of class design and should not be the highest priority. Dealing with specs that are kind-of similar (if you don't count all the differences, of course) is much easier than dealing with specs that play like pure dog-shit (BM/MM) or having specs flat out removed in favour of something totally welcome (SV).

If you guys were so intent of hunters having a useless fucking melee spec, it should have been a 4th spec with the original 3 still there.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

It's hard to call myself survival hunter when I can't eat freshly caught and roasted game every hour.

[Deleted]

Unlike what Blizzard thinks melee are not good choices if you plan to raid or do dungeons. Why would any hunter go melee when they got 2 considerably better specs? MM and BM share stat priorities aswell. They are ranged and they bring mobility and utility. Why should they go into melee range and gimp themselves?

Blizzard has to understand that the problem isn't in the community. The community plays the game they make.
For survival and for that matter every melee spec to be important to groups, things have to change in how they design the pve content.

[Polybius]

I think quite a few asked for a rexxar like hunter spec, don't know why the artifact is a polearm instead of the axes but I think that's where the current spec comes from.

The weirdest thing for me was that they turned survival into the melee spec instead of bm.

^This

Especially considering that Beastlord Darmac mimics pet abilities, as does survival hunter. Survival should've been a different flavor of Marksmanship, one that casts on the go (mobile).

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I enjoy SV, but my hunter doesn't have much to do between now and August 30. I've been goofing around on my DH.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly, my one issue with SV probably isn't even on the radar for most players. Even in a fantasy game, I like for my abilities to make some kind of sense, and a couple of the SV abilities don't. Harpoon is a fun talent, but are we really supposed to be impaling our targets, pulling ourselves to them faster than we can run, all without doing any damage to them? If we're not sticking the harpoon in them, why can't we use it without a target? Also, it's one thing to throw explosions into a crowd and only the bad guys take damage, but now SV is a melee that throws grenades at their own feet! Like a suicide bomber that somehow doesn't blow up.

What I like about SV is the fun & fast playstyle, the burst ST dps, and the idea of being a troll hunter with a glaive. If I imagine my character in a fantasy novel, however, I'm not sure some of his abilities would make much sense to most readers.

[Deleted]

I enjoy SV, but my hunter doesn't have much to do between now and August 30. I've been goofing around on my DH.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly, my one issue with SV probably isn't even on the radar for most players. Even in a fantasy game, I like for my abilities to make some kind of sense, and a couple of the SV abilities don't. Harpoon is a fun talent, but are we really supposed to be impaling our targets, pulling ourselves to them faster than we can run, all without doing any damage to them? If we're not sticking the harpoon in them, why can't we use it without a target? Also, it's one thing to throw explosions into a crowd and only the bad guys take damage, but now SV is a melee that throws grenades at their own feet! Like a suicide bomber that somehow doesn't blow up.

What I like about SV is the fun & fast playstyle, the burst ST dps, and the idea of being a troll hunter with a glaive. If I imagine my character in a fantasy novel, however, I'm not sure some of his abilities would make much sense to most readers.

> Fury warrios slashing around like beyblades
> (fire) mages using actuall bomb-spells on their enemies.
> New outlaw rogue talent is a Barrage of cannon balls.
> Talking about Barrage..

And you brign up survival stuff while other classes are just ''as bad'' in that perspective youve brought up?
..What? o_0

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

> Fury warrios slashing around like beyblades
> (fire) mages using actuall bomb-spells on their enemies.
> New outlaw rogue talent is a Barrage of cannon balls.
> Talking about Barrage..

And you brign up survival stuff while other classes are just ''as bad'' in that perspective youve brought up?
..What? o_0

lol ~ I didn't say SV hunters were the only ones with silly talents. Outlaw rogue is kind of a silly fun pirate spec anyway. I use it sometimes for my alt, but I take it about as seriously as the whole Pirates of the Caribbean series (which I love). A lot of those talents can be spec'd around without even gimping your toon.

All I'm saying is I prefer character abilities which make some kind of sense. Like if you were writing a fantasy novel, you could make a plausible story with them. Poisoned blades for Serpent Sting make sense. Using Dragon Fire Grenades in melee doesn't.

[gnarles]

thousands of surv hunters leveling, sure
and they all give up around 50
only seen one at cap
it was a troll, in bg
and he was awful
keyturning
all of that
just real shit

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

SV is a trash spec designed to appease the idiots on the forums crying about a lack of melee spec. Give Blizzard a few years and shaman will be tanking again.
It has no redeeming values. It is entirely RNG dependent, there's too many melee as it is, and raiding will never favor melee.

So far Legion has been nothing but pandering. Illidan's return, Karazhan getting pulled off the shelf, Turalyion and Alleria, Demon Hunters, Ashbringer.
"Fuck making a good game, just give the players literally everything they've asked for." ~Blizzard CEO

Who you calling an idiot? And you're complaining because Blizz gives players what they want?

I agree there's a glut of melee specs, especially with DHs added, but disagree about SV being RNG dependent. I can reliably stack 6-7 Mongoose Bites for a boss fight, on top of Lacerate, Explosive Trap, and whatever other talents I spec. We may not excel at AoE, but our single-target burst is excellent.

[gnarles]

Who you calling an idiot? And you're complaining because Blizz gives players what they want?

I agree there's a glut of melee specs, especially with DHs added, but disagree about SV being RNG dependent. I can reliably stack 6-7 Mongoose Bites for a boss fight, on top of Lacerate, Explosive Trap, and whatever other talents I spec. We may not excel at AoE, but our single-target burst is excellent.

blizz doesnt care
this is because kalgan shouted across the cubicle wall
honestly, expect holy paladin to become a melee hybrid spec in 7.2

[feellucky]

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.

Clearly you did not play vanilla, survival was the best spec for dps once you hit like 400+ agi and the melee talents were great for pvp to finish off people when they got close. As a hunter this was my favorite iteration, when we had a bit of both ranged and melee. There were even quite a few full time melee hunters in serious raids thanks to nightfall procs. In vanilla BM was the least played for raiding and pvp.

[Bepples]

Yup.
And the argument will be there because that's how Survival was. A fucking useless spec that nobody cared about except for that one mandatory buff it used to give.
I am deeply sorry for you and the three other people that played Survival, but this is a good change.
But luckily you had WoD, where hunters had BM, MM and MM2.0

Considering Expose Weakness hasn't existed for several years, you're dead wrong. We aren't talking about Survival and MM in the context of the BC era where hunters didn't have many abilities in general and therefore not much differentiation was possible. We are talking about Survival and MM in the context of MoP and WoD, where they had entirely different skillsets. Also, Survival was decently popular until 6.2 utterly broke it. It was VERY popular in late MoP.

If they were so similar, why did you have some people very much preferring one and some preferring the other? It wouldn't have mattered to anyone if Survival were the same thing.

Meanwhile, Survival right now is literally the least represented spec in raid logs.

While Survival wasn't played at all last tier due to the 6.2 Survivapocalypse (>25% ST damage nerf and even more on Aoe due to a "bug fix", plus being a sustained-damage spec in a patch that stupidly overvalues burst damage due the ring), it was popular before then. WarcraftLogs doesn't still keep those logs around, but here is a thread that saved them for T17:

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/16543665059

SV beats MM handily. It gets beaten by BM because BM had an overpowered 4-set that tier which made it the clear choice for T17 mythic.

According to this data from 5.4, Survival was the most popular Hunter spec in 5.4 by a huge margin, and was the 2nd most popular spec in the patches before that (losing to BM). SV and BM alternated at

SV consistently beat Marksman all throughout MoP:



SV also crushed both specs in late Cataclysm.

So what you had was a very popular spec with positive growth, getting overshadowed by BM in T17 due to BM's overpowered 4 set, then getting CRUSHED by the atrocious 6.2 changes (+ boss design and ring). After that, Blizzard brainfarts and they and their fanboys decide making it melee will revitalise it because "now it's so different to Markman!". Except you still have the vast majority of people not even bothering with it because a) it's not a particularly good melee spec and b) even though it received VASTLY more attention from Blizzard (and hence has a more complete and coherent set of abilities), there's no point playing it when it shares a class with two vastly better ranged classes.

As I said before, Survival is the least popular spec in mythic raiding right now. You could say that's because it's new and most people were MM anyway, but most Mages were arcane and pretty much all of them have already switched to Fire. And sure, MM is still the clear winner in DPS this patch. Then why does BM also handily beat SV (admittedly by a much smaller margin, but still significant)? People here have faith that SV will suddenly get the huge surplus of players come August 30th, but why? If you had a significant amount of people going to main survival in the next patch, now is the time they would be switching. And they are. In VERY small numbers. Because Survival appeals to a tiny, tiny minority niche of players now. There is zero purpose for this spec now. Where's our mobile archer spec that can multidot and doesn't rely on a pet? No longer exists.

So yeah, please give me more shitty, snarky one-liners about how no one played SV and SV is just a shitty MM rip-off. SV was the clear favourite over MM all the way up until recently when Blizzard's drunk-driving approach to Class design screwed it over forever.

You know what really revitalised SV? The 3.0 changes that gave it Explosive Shot and Lock and Load, followed by 3.1 which gave it Black Arrow. Adding cool, new abilities to a forgotten spec that didn't have much purpose before-hand led people to play it. Just as better tuning and more interesting, unique skills would have saved it from 6.2. Instead, they went drunk-driving with class design again and decided that the 2 or so requests per year they got beforehand for a melee survival were worth listening to (see, I can do shitty one-liners as well, and I can actually support it with real data).

Oh, and one more thing (that I've said before): Why didn't all you people supporting melee hunters (which I'm sure about 1% of you truly did before Blizzard themselves took that route) instead ask for a 4th spec? Why take an existing hunter spec away? The Blizzard zealot I'm replying to claims that there was too much homogenisation but it's far too easy to show how that's not true. Hell, I was arguing with someone here a few weeks ago who claimed that BM and SV were the clones and MM was the one that was different. Which is it?

[Deleted]

When I heard of surv going melee spec, I farmed a lot of polearms. I switched in a heartbeat. Melee Orc hunter is what I always wanted. Now I become Wolfpack!