I dont see many survival hunters around

[jinsu]

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 #...

you have to have your pet growl the add.

[Deleted]

The real reason for not seeing many survival hunters around is the artifact system. The AP you invest in a spec is currently "stuck" in that spec, so people had to choose their specs based on ... hunches, at best. "I guess this should be good at 110" (or watching beta videos)

People can't test and switch around. If they could, perhaps someone would come up with a good way to play survival and reasons to play it, situations where it is (apparently) OP and so on. Because people CAN'T do that, you're not seeing it and very few people can afford to experiment with AP at this point.

Give it 6 months (just enough for people to gather enough AP for their offspecs) and it MAY happen.

In other news, you're not seeing many HUNTERS around, never mind survival...

[thelightthatstrays]

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.

Yeah, ya know who those people were? People that didn't main hunters. There was a desire for a true raid capable pet tanking spec, but in general people that were maining a ranged class liked the ranged bit. The game was already full on melee and making a hunter melee was just plain stupid, hence it's bottom of the barrel status among those playing the class.

[Fuhok]

you have to have your pet growl the add.

That sounds like a lot of work!

But seriously, my problem with growl is the 8 sec CD and if it just used it, you have to wait a while to use it on something else.

I get what you're saying though.

[mistahwilshire]

The spec has a great design, its definitely not a failure. I was thinking of maining one but i dont really like the off specs and i prefer hybrid classes

Great design but it's a melee on a tri-DPS class with 2 ranged specs? It's literally a complete failure design-wise because of that, long before you even get to what the spec actually does.

Without totally exclusive INSANE raid cooldowns or just completely over the top DPS, there is no reason you would EVER want a SV Hunter. It's almost as bad of a design as legendary jewelry with no primary stats.

- - - Updated - - -

The real reason for not seeing many survival hunters around is the artifact system. The AP you invest in a spec is currently "stuck" in that spec, so people had to choose their specs based on ... hunches, at best. "I guess this should be good at 110" (or watching beta videos)

People can't test and switch around. If they could, perhaps someone would come up with a good way to play survival and reasons to play it, situations where it is (apparently) OP and so on. Because people CAN'T do that, you're not seeing it and very few people can afford to experiment with AP at this point.

Give it 6 months (just enough for people to gather enough AP for their offspecs) and it MAY happen.

In other news, you're not seeing many HUNTERS around, never mind survival...

Nope. It's because they're melee on a ranged class and don't bring broken DPS or cooldowns. Even if they were in the middle of the charts, a good guild still wouldn't ever bring one. AP has literally nothing to do with it.

[Kwaai]

My favorite part of WoD was going from BRF, where all the specs were very close, to HFC where they randomly decided to nerf SV into the ground.

One of my problem with SV (in addition to being melee) is that Fury of the Eagle takes so much ramp up. What other melee has to spend 3-6 GCDs ramping up their AoE burst? Why do we have Flanking Strike and Raptor Strike? Why isn't Explosive Trap targeted? Why doesn't SV have a stun? Why is Turtle so bad?

There are so many problems with the spec it would be sad that it exists if it wasn't so likely that they'd have butchered a ranged version like they did with BM.

[mistahwilshire]

Yeah, ya know who those people were? People that didn't main hunters. There was a desire for a true raid capable pet tanking spec, but in general people that were maining a ranged class liked the ranged bit. The game was already full on melee and making a hunter melee was just plain stupid, hence it's bottom of the barrel status among those playing the class.

Yep. It was idiots that wanted fantasy at the expense of an entire spec. It will forever be useless as long as its tied to two ranged specs in this specific MMO.

[Deleted]

Nope. It's because they're melee on a ranged class and don't bring broken DPS or cooldowns. Even if they were in the middle of the charts, a good guild still wouldn't ever bring one. AP has literally nothing to do with it.

I don't think you understand the problem.

BECAUSE people can't really play the spec, they can't really provide feedback, request fixes, features, improvements, nerfs, cooldowns etc...and people can't play the spec because the artifact/AP system won't allow them to take that chance at this point in time.

As a raider, I can't afford to waste 20-30-40-100k AP to test that spec...at this time. In a few months, when the next point in my main artifact will cost over 1M AP, I might decide it's worth wasting 100k points to test survival. Right now, I can't do that - not while we've just started a fresh raid.

[mistahwilshire]

I don't think you understand the problem.

BECAUSE people can't really play the spec, they can't really provide feedback, request fixes, features, improvements, nerfs, cooldowns etc...and people can't play the spec because the artifact/AP system won't allow them to take that chance at this point in time.

As a raider, I can't afford to waste 20-30-40-100k AP to test that spec...at this time. In a few months, when the next point in my main artifact will cost over 1M AP, I might decide it's worth wasting 100k points to test survival. Right now, I can't do that - not while we've just started a fresh raid.

And the fact that it's a melee spec on a ranged class comes before fucking all of that. It IS the problem. None of the shit you just said matters because of the initial problem.

[Monkeymoo]

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

I get so sick of seeing this shit. Hunters had melee moves until MoP because if you were within 3yards of us or something we could do 0 ranged attacks! They existed purely because the dead zone existed. Stop using this as an excuse for any sort of melee hunter spec. You just sound foolish to anybody who actually has played the class before MoP.

[Fullmetal89]

I suspect many of the people on here claiming that melee hunters where always wanted and "LOL we always had melee abilities till cata ayy lmao" don't actually main a hunter. I've been playing this class as my main since the first week of vanilla. Never have I once wanted a melee spec. Apart from people meming about melee hunters as a thing nobody I know personally has actually begged for melee hunters. Most people that main Hunters picked the class because they wanted to play ranged not melee. Some of us find melee incredibly boring and unappealing. I unfortunately fall in that category. Therefore I see no merit in Survival. I tried it out, albeit I only invested about 10k AP into the weapon. I can't find myself ever playing it, not even if I was bored of MM or BM. After 7.0.3 Hunters only have 2 specs as far as I'm concerned. I'm already suspecting Blizzard will deal with the lack of players interested in their new spec by gutting MM & BM respectively to push some people to reroll Surv. If that happens, I'm rolling over to my Mage or Warlock. As much as it pains me to bench my Hunter. I refuse to be pushed into playing a spec I don't like. Not to mention it didn't sit well with me how they decided to completely fuck over Survival and Demonology in WoD in order to push people away from the spec to get them ready for the revamp. Felt like a big 'fuck you' to all the people that enjoyed that spec.

[Garkanh]

i personaly liked the idea of survival being melee, but it just feels too clunky. i dislike the idea of using traps and bombs in my rotation. in my opinion, it doesn't fit. i wanted a light armored warrior with a pet, somewhat like rexxar, not this 1/4 rexxar, 1/4 rogue 1/2 tinkere thing.. if they gave me a propper melee spec, i would enjoy playing it.

[threads]

at this point, not playing survival is a matter of principle.

they continued to fuck up survival from mop->hfc and then made it melee. i didn't want this spec so i'm not going to touch it.

[Pipboi]

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.

I think BM should have been revamped into the Melee spec, it just makes more sense fighting side by side with your pet. And what's ironic is that Survival actually feels more like a beast master with a close bond with his pet than BM does. Flanking Strike is the definition of fighting in unison with your pet. Survival could have been made into the pure magic damage range spec, using poisons, traps and enchanted ammunition, with less emphasis on the pet, while MM could have been the lone ranger utilizing heavy single target physical damage. There's just so much that they got wrong when they had the chance to do something really really great. They blew it big time.

[bloodmoth13]

Great design but it's a melee on a tri-DPS class with 2 ranged specs? It's literally a complete failure design-wise because of that, long before you even get to what the spec actually does.

Without totally exclusive INSANE raid cooldowns or just completely over the top DPS, there is no reason you would EVER want a SV Hunter. It's almost as bad of a design as legendary jewelry with no primary stats.

Enhance shaman and feral druids exist? why is i ok for them to have melee specs with ranged specs but not hunters? the design there really isnt a problem.
Most players who picked hunter picked it because they wanted a ranged dps class, but there were other players who wanted a melee pet class, the options for the developers was to either make one of the 3 seemingly homogenous hunter specs into melee, or give another class pets. the choice in that instance is clear, turn one of the 3 ranged specs into melee.
I wouldnt have a problem with ranged survival coming back, but if it is, then give all its tools and mechanics to marksman and allow players to build a playstyle that is either marksman, survival or something in between.

I will concede that melee are not as in demand as ranged, that is another issue though. If there were some fundamental gameplay changes that favoured melee (without invalidating ranged dps) where having 2-1 melee to ranged ratio was desirable, then that wouldnt be an issue.

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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.

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.


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.

Survival hunter was ranged archer with pet, the exact same identity as marksman, there was little they could do without inventing something new for the class to distinguish them, it made a hell of a lot of sense to merge those 2 specs and add a new one than to try create a new niche for it.
There is still hope for old survival to come back as a sub spec of marksman, they have enough thematic overlap that it shouldnt be an issue to make old survivals gameplay talent options for marksman, if they did that then those crying over old survival going away can have comfort in their spec being preserved. If bliz hasnt gone far enough to preserve the gameplay of old survival, then ask them to make better survival talents for marksmen, dont waste your time asking them to delete a great spec just so you can get that old spec you wanted back.

can you prove that most players dont like new survival? there are plenty of reasons why survival may be underplayed atm beyond you personally not liking it.

What was so great about traps for BM? was it the thematics of traps or the gameplay?

I dont think personally liking something is a reason for it to exist, i just think your argument is bullshit that since you dont like something it shouldnt exist. your saying nobody likes it so it should be reverted, im saying thats false because i like it. i didnt like old survival so by that logic it should be deleted too. The reasons for removing old survival are sound, the spec had little thematic flavor and spec flavour is a huge part of this expansion, they created a new spec thats oozing flavor, they didnt fail there, players have just failed to try it out, and there are a thousand reasons for that beyond that its not something players wanted, even if there was a huge slab of hunter players who were, for whatever reason, directly opposed to the notion of a melee hunter spec in the first place.

Lol, you cant spew your opinion as an argument over and over then insult someone else for using their opinion as an argument, dont be a hypocrite.

[Kwaai]

but there were other players who wanted a melee pet class

This has existed for almost 10 years, and unlike Survival it actually interacts with it's pet and the pet has meaningful abilities.

[AmberBelle]

Survival was a dot class. Just like how affliction is different from destro. Or subtlety is different from assassination. That's how you differentiated them.

[Morgromir]

I think the biggest problem is that people who rolled hunter did so because they wanted to be a ranged dps class. Most of those players dont want to play melee dps.

[bloodmoth13]

This has existed for almost 10 years, and unlike Survival it actually interacts with it's pet and the pet has meaningful abilities.

what? unholy DKs? I meant melee tamable pet class, its a thematically strong identity that many players wanted where there werent any available options, if you want to play ranged archer with pet there are 2 other options.

[Kwaai]

what? unholy DKs? I meant melee tamable pet class, its a thematically strong identity that many players wanted where there werent any available options, if you want to play ranged archer with pet there are 2 other options.

And given the state of Survival do you think they succeeded? What does the pet do? SV rotation would be completely unchanged if pets didn't exist. Mastery, our pet interaction" is a terrible stat, and if it read "your auto attacks" rather than "pet attacks" would anyone notice? I suppose Flanking Strike is a thing, but that's only because Raptor Strike might as well not exist, and if our pets were removed and it's damage buffed nothing we do would be different.

Compare SV pets (and hunter pets in general) to Water Elementals and Ghouls and it's laughable that we're the "pet" class. Where are the buttons that make them do things? What's the point in having a melee tamable pet class when the pet is there for nothing but appearances? Like, if pet damage was reduced to 0 and hunter damaged increased by whatever %, what would the difference be other than we're better on target swaps and less susceptible to kiting/roots?