I dont see many survival hunters around

[Nefarious Tea]

I really enjoyed Surv during the legion pre-patch, but it's not my main; Legion is, hilariously, both the best designed expansion in wow's history, but also the most alt-unfriendly. Even offspecs you're a damned fool if you try to keep them going. So survival falls to the wayside; it suffers the same problem as Priests - Why be Holy when it's on the same class as Disc, or vice versa? Why play melee when there's still a strong ranged spec on the same class?

[Demeia]

Because if we wanted to play melee we wouldn't have rolled Hunters in the first place.

I main a rogue, but surely this. Why on earth would you be melee in the age of Demonhunters?

[De Lupe]

Survival Hunter went from one of two ignored specs for my class to one of my top 5 favorite specs.

Doesn't sound like a failure to me. To hell with how many people are playing it, the spec is infinitely better than it was prior.

[Pipboi]

Personally I do enjoy the new Survival hunter but I absolutely think it should have been made a 4th spec instead of completely revamping the old Survival.
Ranged survival was one of my favorite specs in the game, and it's a shame they took the easy route of gutting an existing spec to make room for a new one.

[Laurix]

Willing to bet the Survival overhaul gets converted back to ranged next expension.

I'm fairly confident the percentage of Hunters playing SV is very low, and Blizz will definitely see that as a failure since majority of players who role Hunter did so to be ranged DPS. They should have just stuck with MM being more physical ranged damage, SV being more magical ranged damage, and BM being the "pet spec".

[bloodmoth13]

It has significantly less people playing it now that it's melee than when it was range, so yes it definitely is a failure. It doesn't matter how well you think it plays.

The spec is great, player perception needs to change, once players adapt it wont be such an issue imo, perhaps its also an issue that the ranged specs just offer more utility/are way easier/higher damage than survival and its outclassed, how well designed something is comes secondary to balance in this game

[Aldare]

Willing to bet the Survival overhaul gets converted back to ranged next expension.

I'm fairly confident the percentage of Hunters playing SV is very low, and Blizz will definitely see that as a failure since majority of players who role Hunter did so to be ranged DPS. They should have just stuck with MM being more physical ranged damage, SV being more magical ranged damage, and BM being the "pet spec".

I'd also be very surprised if Survival isn't changed back to a ranged spec next expansion.

[munkeyinorbit]

The spec is great, player perception needs to change, once players adapt it wont be such an issue imo, perhaps its also an issue that the ranged specs just offer more utility/are way easier/higher damage than survival and its outclassed, how well designed something is comes secondary to balance in this game

Survival smashes the real hunter specs in damage. They are superior when it comes to utility. No hunter ever said "You should gut one of the classes and make it melee. I totally would play that over a rogue".

Noone is playing it even though it is the top Hunter spec. Players dont need to change perception, designers do. The melee hunter came from nowhere and people say that it is well designed, but still, no one plays it. The spec has failed.

[Raakel]

Melee SV's combat is nice and playing mostly melee I enjoy it because of the variety of skills and traps. Howevr as stated 1000000000000 times it's lacking survivability!!!!

When I heared about a melee hunter for Legion I immediately pictured Rexxar in front of me dual wielding axes with a beast(!) by his side. I would have liked to kind of controle more of my pet abilties as melee hunter. Going into frenzy doing lots of bleeds and sucking it up to aid my survival, traps, ... and also having more dogde than others + camo baseline. A beast charge + intimidation and disengage, no harpoon. Ok, I'm dreaming.....

[bloodmoth13]

Personally I do enjoy the new Survival hunter but I absolutely think it should have been made a 4th spec instead of completely revamping the old Survival.
Ranged survival was one of my favorite specs in the game, and it's a shame they took the easy route of gutting an existing spec to make room for a new one.

I disagree, they should have done it the way they did, having 3 thematically identical specs diluted the class.

What i think they should have done though is give marksman all of survivals old tools in the form of talents. they sort of tried this, but they should have taken it further, honestly the difference between MM and survival was a subspecs worth of difference

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Survival smashes the real hunter specs in damage. They are superior when it comes to utility. No hunter ever said "You should gut one of the classes and make it melee. I totally would play that over a rogue".

Noone is playing it even though it is the top Hunter spec. Players dont need to change perception, designers do. The melee hunter came from nowhere and people say that it is well designed, but still, no one plays it. The spec has failed.

I still beleive developers made the right move, i have always wanted a melee hunter spec and i have always thought there was practically no difference between the hunter specs, they have improved spec identity alot this expansion. It could also be that survival is quite a complex spec and many hunters are used to more simple rotations

[Bepples]

The spec is great, player perception needs to change

This deflection of blame to the players from all of the Blizzard developers and their rabid fans can fuck right off. If most of the players don't like something in the game, clearly that thing is the problem. Not the opinion of the majority of the players. Good developers don't design whatever the fuck and demand that the customers have to accept it, they design according to customer expectations.

I disagree, they should have done it the way they did, having 3 thematically identical specs diluted the class.

What i think they should have done though is give marksman all of survivals old tools in the form of talents. they sort of tried this, but they should have taken it further, honestly the difference between MM and survival was a subspecs worth of difference

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I still beleive developers made the right move, i have always wanted a melee hunter spec and i have always thought there was practically no difference between the hunter specs, they have improved spec identity alot this expansion. It could also be that survival is quite a complex spec and many hunters are used to more simple rotations

This is the same bullshit talking point repeated a thousand times over by Celestalon and his apologists. The hunter specs were not identical before 7.0 and making them as different as possible should not take precedence over improving on their prior strengths and making them appealing to both existing and new hunters. 7.0 hunter changes were a giant middle finger to existing hunters; BM and MM got pruned to shit in the name of making the specs unique and SV was made melee to appeal to a group of players who largely don't play hunters and don't plan to switch to them.

As a BM hunter, I sure as fuck would take traps any day over being more "unique" by having them restricted to one spec.

And since you apparently think personally liking a spec constitutes a justification, my favourite spec ever was Survival from MoP up to 6.2 (if only they didn't actively break it in that patch) and now I will absolutely never be able to play that again, so I think survival going melee is absolutely the worst thing to ever happen to the hunter class. I don't harp on about that every post because, unlike you, I understand that what REALLY constitutes an argument is actual data: far, far more people played Survival when it was ranged than when it was melee: as I said on the previous page, Survival absolutely crushed MM in popularity for years. It was Blizzard's massive nerfs in 6.2 and switching to melee in 7.0 which killed the spec. And I mean killed: fucking no one plays it now.

But hey, at least it's more unique this way, I guess. What a fucking joke.

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Survival Hunter went from one of two ignored specs for my class to one of my top 5 favorite specs.

Doesn't sound like a failure to me. To hell with how many people are playing it, the spec is infinitely better than it was prior.

Hey look, another person who thinks personal opinion counts as an argument. Let me try at that:

Survival Hunter went from being my favourite spec in the game to one I will absolutely never play. Sounds like a failure to me.

[ManiaCCC]

As long as we don't have statistics, it is hard to say how much people are playing this spec. However, calling it failure is just pure BS. Even if this spec is not played by many, however performs well and it is fun, it is just great spec not played by many.

However, what I know for sure is inevitable (if survival hunter wont be changed back to ranged - which I would hate), player base around survival hunter will grow...period. In year by now, everyone who will be rolling hunter will have melee aspect of hunter in mind and fact, that he can switch between ranged and melee is same benefit as switching between caster ranged DPS and melee DPS (shaman for example).

I understand many ex-survival players are not happy about this transition, but in the long run, game is well designed and will be played. It just need new generation of hunter players. That's all.

[Arrowstormen]

I quite enjoy playing Survival, and having a melee ranger-type character is absolutely the right move. I do hope for a bit of tuning love, directly or indirectly.

[Fenixhart]

The only issue I have with Survival is that it really doesn't seem to have much good flow to it.

It has a bunch of independant moves you just use on cooldown outside of the Aspect of the Eagel-->3 monggoose strikes--->Serpent hunter----> 3 more mongoose strikes-->Artifact ability synergy.

And lol @ everyone saying no one wanted a hunter melee spec. Hunter had melee abilities up to Cataclysm, the fuck y'all talking about?

[caervek]

I guess Survival hunters can celebrate that they went from being the least-played DPS spec in 7.0 HFC to the 3rd least-played DPS spec according to warcraftlogs:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10

They can also celebrate that unlike the 5th least played spec in HFC they weren't removed from the game in Legion lol.

[Shaile]

you all seem to forget the many polls that were made here and on other forums that showed a crushing majority FOR the inclusion of melee hunters at the time it was announced. 70-80% of the people thought it was a good idea/looked forward to it.
a large albeit silent majority. the few loud trolls that claim otherwise are extreme minority. personally i havent played surv more than once or twice since vanilla since its a carbon copy of mm just worse the entire time. now, i main surv. people HAS been asking for more diversity for hunters since vanilla. claiming otherwise makes you look like a fool.

there was NO diversity between mm and sv before legion. and now, suddenly surv is the funniest specc with the most dynamic and complex rotation of all speccs. yes it got issues,
yes the carpal tunnel syndrome inducing mongoose spam needs to go. hitting the same button more than 2 times in a row is not good mechanics nor fun. the dots needs rework, are we a dotclass? make our dots do dmg then. or remove 3-4 dots. raptor strike needs a 200% dmg boost and added functionality. now its a filler not worth spending filling in your rotation with.

how about a mechanic where using a different ability consecutively adds mongoose buffs to you, then mongoose bite spend them? lower the max to 3-4 buffs so it wont be so slow. would make so lacerate, flanking strike raptor strike and youre at max then a mongoose bite, then you need to replace lacerate with either skill until its up again. would make it abit more less.... spammy.

our mobility is also utter pathetic. its worse than dks. its worse than warlocks. our hook is inferior to rogues TALENT hook.... we need firsta of all the retarded 3 min CD on our 3 sec sprint reduced to 45 sec (and traits and talents scaled down accordingly). 3 min is so fucking retarded long for a 3 sec sprint i dont think blizzard really thought it through properly. then we need disengage back too. that should be enough, but id like us to move faster passivly too. like 115% like many other melee. slugging along at 100% speed with no boosts at all makes us the slowest class in teh game.

mastery needs a fix and our pet proccing mastery from spells instead of autoattack. even if they do fix skills for all the pet species that atm lack one (which is like 80%) it still makes it so tank pet is the best dps pet and ferocity is pointless.

artifact skill is like a really bad version of monks fof. it hit for SHIT dmg when compared to other classes skill. and if you wanna boost it it first take a 10-15 sec ramp up for even do ok dmg. its CD is too long for it too, you can only use it every other pack, and then they are anyway dead when we are at 6 stacks (which made us do 0 aoe dmg during the entire mob packs life) and can use it. hello blizzard? did you try this shit out? make it do same dmg as it does with 6 stacks but right away. make the 3-4 max debuff instead lower its CD or extend its duration instead. its an aoe skill you will NEVER use for aoe that rely on ST attacks to do proper dmg. /facepalm

[De Lupe]

Hey look, another person who thinks personal opinion counts as an argument. Let me try at that:

Survival Hunter went from being my favourite spec in the game to one I will absolutely never play. Sounds like a failure to me.

See? Aren't opinions great? The ultimate authority on subjective material.

[Deleted]

The only issue I have with Survival is that it really doesn't seem to have much good flow to it.

It has a bunch of independant moves you just use on cooldown outside of the Aspect of the Eagel-->3 monggoose strikes--->Serpent hunter----> 3 more mongoose strikes-->Artifact ability synergy.

And lol @ everyone saying no one wanted a hunter melee spec. Hunter had melee abilities up to Cataclysm, the fuck y'all talking about?

This. They have the right idea, it's just not executed well. I leveled as mainly survival and did some absolute work with it. Sadly it feels REALLY clunky and slow paced. It's also pretty disjointed with a feeling like something is missing or needs to be changed... Either way I enjoy it but MM has always been my favorite regardless so I'll stick to that for now

[Zamochy]

I really think they need to create proper filler spells for Survival rather than using several spells to kill time for Mongoose Bite. I think mastery should either let your pets auto attacks generate bites so haste could be useful, or Raptor Strike crits can give mongoose bites while benefitting from fury.

They also need to replace a current artifact trait with one that increases mongoose fury duration.

Also, they need to introduce more mobility. Perhaps introduce a leap similar to the final trash in BRH that uses Raven Dive (just call it Eagle Dive).

[Fuhok]

I've main'd a Hunter for quite some time. I was always survival spec since Wrath. When it was announced that Survival was going melee, I was thrilled! I love Melee but I liked the solo ability of the Hunter (this part is important later on).

I don't play Survival anymore and it's for a couple of reasons.

1) No misdirect - I find that our pet has an extremely difficult time holding threat. And if I get an add and cast Mend Pet, it's almost a guarantee that I'll pull threat which leads to point #...

2) No healing. We have to kill something to get Survival Instincts. My problem with this is that while we're actually fighting, we have no way to heal other than our 2 min CD ability.

3) Being in melee compounds these issues. Being ranged, we might be able to avoid more damage than melee, but I would dare say that we have some of the worst self healing of any class, yet we're in the mix with a lot of classes that have more reliable self healing.

This is just my opinion, of course, and I largely just like to solo stuff and do quests. Maybe the odd 5 man here and there, so I understand that my opinion is based on those activities only.