I dont see many survival hunters around

[Appelgren]

Buffs like https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...77927265103872 ?
Not really sure what they want to do with survival tbh.

Sigh... Yeah :/ It will probably get alot worse before it gets better :/

[Mirishka]

Sims and damage meters were a mistake

/agreed.

Because of meters, a huge % of people flock to whatever's 'best' regardless of what they actually want to play, then whine that they're 'forced' to do so. I seriously wish Blizz would just disable Recount, Skada, etc.

[Deleted]

/agreed.

Because of meters, a huge % of people flock to whatever's 'best' regardless of what they actually want to play, then whine that they're 'forced' to do so. I seriously wish Blizz would just disable Recount, Skada, etc.

Agreed. I am very competitive myself in whatever I do, and I find myself caring more about my dps and min-maxing more then actually enjoying the game itself. Sure I enjoy min-maxing too, but I think it's too much of an addiction now .

[Bepples]

You mean when other specs were numerically superior? Because it was the raiding spec for classic, most of Wrath, Firelands, Highmaul, and you went MM in BRF if taking the priority targets approach.

Well, first of all, hunters in general had a very different model before Cataclysm: one that was much closer to that of a caster (remember hard-casting Steady Shot all the time with mana?).

I don't have numbers for Firelands, but Marksman was beaten by the other two specs pretty soundly in both Mythic Highmaul and Mythic Blackrock Foundry in terms of number of parses:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7

It had a much higher score than both of the others in Highmaul but it still was played less. This backs up the argument that people were forced to play Marksman in 6.2 due to bad spec balancing: here you have MM doing at least slightly better in 6.0 yet it was still less popular. It was only in 6.2 when the difference was too great to ignore (due to EXTREMELY careless "balancing") that everyone made the switch. It's pretty clear that MM's popularity issue from 2011 to 2015 was not just a numbers problem. It's almost as if people didn't play hunters to play a caster ripoff (and they certainly didn't play hunters to play melee either)

It's nice to see hunters using their brains for movement again, not bouncing around like spazzes spamming instant casts

It's always funny to see spin-doctoring on this forums to try to make mobility look like a bad thing.

Hunter's mobility is their signature and it differentiates them from casters. Legion is a direct attack on hunter's core identity despite all the talk about how 7.0 was meant to enhance it.

What's sad if if Sims came out tomorrow saying SV was top DPS spec (or a world first level guild killed a boss with 2 or more SV hunters), you'd see way more SV hunters overnight. Players seem to play the FotM rather than what they enjoy. Sims and damage meters were a mistake

Being able to measure raid performance (when raid performance is critical in the raid's ability to kill bosses) is a mistake. You heard it here first.

Blizzard's responsibility is to keep the specs at least reasonably balanced. If you have a 6.2 situation where you have specs like Marksman blowing the other two in their class out of the water so badly in performance that there is simply no viable option to play the other two specs, that's on Blizzard for fucking it up so badly despite all warning, not the players for exposing their mistakes.

Survival actually has better single-target than BM at this point in artifact traits (most people don't have the 26th trait as BM yet). That doesn't change the fact that it's the least popular hunter spec by a massive margin, and one of the least popular DPS specs in the game. You cannot pretend that Survival's issue right now is it's DPS. It's been peppered with buffs since 7.0 and received pretty much all of Blizzard's hunter attention throughout Alpha and Beta and it all means shit.

I always use this example whenever talking to someone who refuses to understand the concept of something being inherently flawed (think about what "inherently" means because I don't just use that word for dramatic effect): you wouldn't make a frying pan out of chocolate, and if you did no amount of polishing would make it any better at serving it's purpose. Survival is inherently flawed because it's a melee hunter spec and a tiny, tiny niche group of players (many of which did not play hunter to begin with as evidenced by most of the posts in this thread) were actually interested enough in the idea to play it.

Remember, you guys hedged all your bets on Survival becoming a popular spec when we got our artifacts, yet here we are with Survival being absolutely shat all over in all difficulty levels in terms of number of parses. Now you're musing over whether more people would play it if they buffed it to high-heaven (which seems to be their plan given SV's changes since 7.0)? How many more failed bets until you admit that you're wrong?

/agreed.

Because of meters, a huge % of people flock to whatever's 'best' regardless of what they actually want to play, then whine that they're 'forced' to do so. I seriously wish Blizz would just disable Recount, Skada, etc.

Most of the reasons behind why what you said about meters was bullshit was detailed above. If one spec in a class significantly outperforms the others (as MM did in 6.2, combined with SV being literally the worst DPS spec in the game at the time), you do not have a choice in the spec you pick unless you don't raid or PVP at all. This is especially true with artifacts.

So I'll leave you with this: your signature is a blatant lie because you absolutely are a defender of Blizzard and often at the cost of making stupid posts. Every time you get in one of these discussions all you do is make the case that Blizzard is innocent and deflect all blame for their mistakes to the players. It really is quite pathetic.

Agreed. I am very competitive myself in whatever I do, and I find myself caring more about my dps and min-maxing more then actually enjoying the game itself. Sure I enjoy min-maxing too, but I think it's too much of an addiction now .

It certainly wasn't fun being barred from my favourite spec for a whole year (Survival), then having that spec deleted from the game. But if you think it's the player's fault for paying too much attention to meters, you are out of your god-damned mind. If I played Survival in 6.2, we would have had significantly more difficulty killing any boss and I am confident that there were certain bosses that we flat-out could not defeat unless they replaced me. I was in charge of bursting down ghosts on Gorefiend: please explain to me how I could have done that as Survival which had literally no burst capability and about 75% of the general single-target damage that MM had. Or how about Xhul'horac: I was in charge of bursting down voidfiends with the other MM hunter in the raid. What if we were both SV? Are you going to argue that SV was capable at all of doing that efficiently?

The answer to that is "No" for obvious reasons. So that begs the question: how the fuck is it my fault for taking the measured performance of those specs seriously? You are denying reality at this point if you think it's not Blizzard's fault when we get massive spec imbalance.

[Deleted]

Lol, chill dude. All I said was that I think sims and dpsmeters hurt the game generally in my opinion. No way I was asking you to tell those stories anyway.

[Sorrior]

Of course they ruin the Poster Boy Beast Mastery Hunter by making him survival, while continuing to dual wield axes in Legion... Rexxar was always my favorite lore character above all the others, loved doing the attunement quests with him for I think it was Ony back in Vanilla hoping I could get 2 cool axes and be like him.

I picked Hunter at the start because I played Everquest as a Monk main (who had Feign Death) and wished I could play a Beastlord (a melee dual wielder with a pet). Hunter fit that, even though I didn't like range, not like I wouldn't be able to stand next to my pet anyways (boy was I wrong).

Honestly I do wish it was BM that was made melee and maybe we got Rexxars axes to use.

[eScar95]

One of the my two guild leaders plays SV. He does pretty well and pulls ahead of our MM Hunter. I don't think it's bad, it's a complicated spec and it's melee, so that's is probably what puts people off.

[shamjar]

I play as a BM hunter, but after trying out survival and MM, i noticed that survival is so much more fun than MM. I usually pug dungeons with survival, as i can't raid with it ( too many melee allready). So yea, started up leveling survival artifact too.

[Desh]

half-assed melee spec.

come back to me when they aren't a gutted warrior with a frost trap.

[Donkeywing]

I'm 100% serious when I say I havent seen a single SV hunter yet apart from the order hall. Probably because not a lot of people wanna feel like a total idiot.

[Deleted]

I play Survival Hunter. I enjoy the spec and actually pull good number with it. Am I top DPS? Nope. Do I find it to be a fun spec? Yep.

[Kelthos]

I main survival and I've done fairly well in Emerald Nightmare. We have just been on Normal so far because we aren't really a raiding guild, but the only time I felt frustrated and like I wasn't contributing much was on Cenarius, but I have heard from other melee that they are frustrated with that fight as well.

I think all-in-all making survival a complicated spec was a mistake. That, coupled with the huge change of making it melee, turned many people away from the get go. If they had made it a bit simpler and more accessible without having to pour a lot of time into understanding it then we might have seen more survival hunters than we have currently.

[Deleted]

Well with 7.1 changes it cloud be better, also hunters right now having 3 rly different specs, bm is kinda easy, mm is a bit more difficult and surv is one of the hardest specs in the game.

[renatompassos]

As usual, people distract the discussion with starry-eyed class fantasy nonsense.

Marksmanship has gimped mobility due to Aimed Shot and high RNG dependence. It's a caster clone. And historically people have opted to not play Marksman (until 6.2 it was by far the least popular hunter spec, usually with no more than 25% of the players of the second-place spec). So why has Blizzard been forcing people into the caster-style spec for the past year and a half? You tell me, but it probably has similar reasoning behind it to removing a significant amount of utility for BM and Marksman and then going on to pretend that it's a good thing for those specs.... somehow (it probably has something to do with "class fantasy" again).

"Class fantasy nonsense"? Are you aware of the nonsense in that statement? Sorry that you see the game as a job, I still see it as a game and playing as a marksman appeals to me. BTW never played a caster so... Try better.

Anyway, to not distract from the discussion, it's obvious Surv ain't popular due to that same "nonsense". Melee is not What people play a hunter for. If you only want Numbers there are tons of better options.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Folks can shit on me all they want but it has way too many buttons if you pick the talents which are almost mandatory.

[Deleted]

Folks can shit on me all they want but it has way too many buttons if you pick the talents which are almost mandatory.

I think this is the reason for pushing FS on PTR, if the new AI is better than the axes and wotm you will have 1 less key to press - no more axes and no reason to click raptor strike.

[sponge5307]

Most people who play a hunter before pick it because it is range. I mean if I want to play melee with a SV hunter style I would pick Rouge already.

I try SV in dungeon and seems to be doing more dps than in BM. But here is the thing AS A SV hunter I have to get out of a lot of AoE, the rotation is very complicated and if I misee my burst window with any buttons but dps will suck. Is a very challenge spec and if you get it wrong your dps is very bad. With a BM spec sure I am not the top dps but I have a lot of mobility, I can move of out stuff boss throws at me, I don't even have to worry about boss AoE, I have decent burst window and is a really easy sepc you can't really go wrong. I can literally text my gf while playing in dungeons and still comes out 1st or 2nd dps during boss fight. Is that easy!

MM is nice but most dungeons I ran with that have a MM hunter my dps beats them by miles. I am not sure if their rotation is bad or they aren't sure what talents to use but they are usally dead last even below some healers.

To me BM is a good start spec easy to follow does well in questing and dungeons and if you aren't in a serious raiding guild I don't think they care much.

[Nazrark]

Survival is actually a lot of fun to play. I grasped the mechanics of it pretty quickly and I am pulling a constant 230k dps at 830. It comes down to knowing when to use Eagle strike in a fight. Pooling mongoose strike for then as well.

I picked it because I always loved survival. It still has a lot of buttons to use for rotation.

- - - Updated - - -

That being said, I don't think I've ever come across another hunter being survival. It is nice being the underplayed spec and being good at it.

[Marrilaife]

They should definitely have NOT added a melee spec in exactly the same expansion where they added melee dps demon hunters.

There's already a lot of melee dps specs to choose from, and demon hunters steal the spotlight from anything else, because they're new, cool and a lot of people hoped for them & waited years to play one.

Also SV hunter is complicated, rng-ridden and has trouble with aoe while a lot of other melees have superb on demand cleave.

[Nazrark]

Man you've been spoiled by easy rotations for a long time. Survival is complicated? Its by far one of the more fluid specs. Compared to what BM is. Essentially mash buttons until the end of the fight. I haven't touched MM since wrath. So I can't comment on it.