Overall, was Survival a failure?

[Kirbypro]

I had some spare AP so I put some points in Surv. I tried out the rotation during an EN farm night.

The rotation feels really clunky with way too many buttons to press and every spell being not very impactful or interesting.

The recommended talent of going with Way of the Mok'nathal is an incredibly dull and tedious chore.

[Drekker17]

As someone who really enjoys playing Survival I have a question:

Doesn't hunter almost always have two specs everyone plays and one spec no one plays?

Yes always, and 90% of the time I've played Survival is that unplayed spec.

[Tenant]

Yes always, and 90% of the time I've played Survival is that unplayed spec.

Unless you also weren't playing Surv during its heyday, his point was that there's always that 'one' spec no one plays. It wasn't terribly long ago that that spec used to be Marks.

[Gurg]

I had some spare AP so I put some points in Surv. I tried out the rotation during an EN farm night.

The rotation feels really clunky with way too many buttons to press and every spell being not very impactful or interesting.

The recommended talent of going with Way of the Mok'nathal is an incredibly dull and tedious chore.

Im maining Survival. Yea.
Now.. after playing it for.. three months.. i see potential in it, but also theres a long way that class need to go to get there.
As people say, if you go with optimal build, you end up with far too much buttons to press which are on "short-er" cooldown with short term DoTs/Debuffs
I went the passive way. AI, Crows, Trailblaizer, Improved, Net, Butchery, Expert. This way rotation feels OKish, but not performing as it should.
Some of the artifacts traits, specially second golden tied to harpoon, needs rework or a huuugeee buff.

Overall.. its fun.. failure? no, but it needs really good look into it. As in most hunter's specs.

Someone said that pre legion survival was a spec where they just tossed those cool ideas that they had and in the end it just worked out of it self.
New survival is just opposite. They pushed so hard on it to try and give it spec identity that they ended up hurting gameplay it self.

Survival now.. bomb tossing, short dotting, mongoose biting, pet bugging, low survival, bursting, spear wielding spec.
Even on paper it looks funny, does it not?

[Deleted]

You say SV isn't a failure yet you make 2 HUGE points about why its wasn't well received. Your 3rd point is just trollish, but I copied it anyway. Hunters DID pick the class because we wanted to play an 'archer' type and the game DOES already have a lot of melee options. Those 2 things alone should conclude that the new SV spec is a failure. A melee mage or warlock spec would probably get the same reaction.

When I started playing at WoD, word came out about the new melee hunter spec. So I started a hunter and boosted him straight away. So when you say nobody started playing hunter for their melee spec, then you speak for no one but yourself here.

[Drekker17]

Unless you also weren't playing Surv during its heyday, his point was that there's always that 'one' spec no one plays. It wasn't terribly long ago that that spec used to be Marks.

I don't really see how my or his points contradict. I was just saying in my experience it was Survival that was the weak spec the most.

[vixien]

I don't recommend using Way of the Mok'nathal. Throw axes feels more fluid with rotation and gives you an extra ranged ability for when out of range for other skills. Its also nice for WQ tagging mobs.

[Dastreus]

No.
/10char

[Appelgren]

Well... im done with survival since they confirmed traps wont be unique to SV anymore. Thanks whiners. You ruined a really fun spec.

[Kwaai]

Well... im done with survival since they confirmed traps wont be unique to SV anymore. Thanks whiners. You ruined a really fun spec.

How does other specs getting a cool thing ruin something for you? Doesn't that strike you as at least a little bit childish?

[threads]

Well... im done with survival since they confirmed traps wont be unique to SV anymore. Thanks whiners. You ruined a really fun spec.

no the retarded blizz devs ruined a fun spec when they turned it into some useless melee shit spec

[Appelgren]

How does other specs getting a cool thing ruin something for you? Doesn't that strike you as at least a little bit childish?

Call it what you want. I chose survival because of the pros and cons. Giving one of the pros to the other specs makes survival a spec with more cons than pros. If thats so hard to understand i feel sorry for you

[Deleted]

Call it what you want. I chose survival because of the pros and cons. Giving one of the pros to the other specs makes survival a spec with more cons than pros. If thats so hard to understand i feel sorry for you

Why trying when nobody wants to discuss the spec since it's melee? 95% of the posts in this thread are like "uhhh great range spec got melee, so fail". Just think how blizzard devs must feel when they try to optimize the spec

[Appelgren]

Why trying when nobody wants to discuss the spec since it's melee? 95% of the posts in this thread are like "uhhh great range spec got melee, so fail". Just think how blizzard devs must feel when they try to optimize the spec

Ungrateful bastards

[Kwaai]

Call it what you want. I chose survival because of the pros and cons. Giving one of the pros to the other specs makes survival a spec with more cons than pros. If thats so hard to understand i feel sorry for you

They literally said that because they wanted to keep SV as trap masters they were looking at ways to make traps more appeals. An example thrown out was if Explosive trap isn't triggered for a few seconds it does massively increased damage. Much like you take a monk to a group for insane AoE burst, they want you to take SV to groups because of traps.

If you're going to act like a child about other specs getting buffs you should at least educate yourself about what their plans are.

Ungrateful bastards

Yeah, those people who liked old SV sure are ungrateful bastards.

[bloodmoth13]

That's partially true. Each of the 3 specs had it's moment in the limelight in WoD with some overlap. Some of that was due to scaling, some to do with buffs/nerfs/"fixes" and also tier set bonuses had a big impact.

In HFC MM was King in most fights, BM was very strong in 1, maybe 2 depending on your raid setup. Most of the reason for this was that the fights played to MM's strengths (single-target burst).

SV was competitive until it was broken by 6.2 (Multistrike affecting Serpent Sting & Serpent Sting losing the initial big tick with a Multi-Shot), clearly to move people away from playing it to pave the way for Melee SV, a rather cynical approach to the issue but I can understand why they did it, doesn't mean it was right though.

What a lot of these threads about Melee SV boil down to is that many people liked the old SV and are sad to see it gone. They also clearly feel that the new MM and BM don't fill the niche that they have lost in SV (fully mobile, DoT-based, pet-user but not pet-reliant). I hope I'm not mis-representing their views here (since these views are not my own), I'm just attempting to paraphrase the views I have seen.

I also believe I am right in saying that if MM (the marginally closer of BM & MM to 6.1 SV) could achieve a similar playstyle via talent selection (and not be sub-par as a result of these choices) then the need would be met since (I hope) it is not simply the name of the spec that matters but they playstyle.

This appears to have been somewhat the design intent in Legion, with Black Arrow, Lock 'n' Load & Explosive Shot (albeit with a lot of re-design) all part of MM talents now. Sidewinders also has a distinctly 6.X SV feel to it's design too. What all of this tells me is not that SV has been a failure but that MM & BM have been.

BM is widely derided (rightly imo) as un-engaging, lacking in complexity & with acres of boring downtime. It might meet some of the designer's intentions regarding class fantasy but fails spectacularly from a playstyle perspective.

MM, if I am right about design intent, was meant to play like old MM or old SV depending on talent selection but talent choice is simply not a thing in MM at the moment and even if it was, they haven't done a good job of capturing either but especially not with regards to 6.X SV.

To summarise, I think the design intentions were;
1. Keep BM mostly as it is
2. Make MM play somewhat like old MM or old SV based on talent choices
3. Create new Melee SV

Essentially 4 specs in 3. It didn't work for Feral hence Guardian. It didn't work for Gladiator Prot warrior (well, it did before nerfbat).

It feels like part 3 is the only bit they got right albeit with a lot of bugs & new-spec teething problems.

this is my sentiment, your right here.

Survival Isnt the problem, they did an amazing job, the spec is great. The real problem is marksman and BM.

Marksman and old survival were similar enough to be merged, and the new talent system had the potential to bring back both play styles, hunters didnt need to lose anything, potentially they could have very easily been in the state where they only gained from this. Players hating on new survival arent really being fair, if you want old survival back you could easily get it without removing new survival, the better solution is giving those abilities to marksman, whether baseline or through talents.

They did say they are planning on bringing some old abilities back, so you may get your wish if they give MM some more of survivals old toolkit. Chances are that even if survival didnt get cut, it wouldnt look anything like it did anyway.

Melee hunter spec is awesome, old survival can be represented as a subspec of marksman very easily if done correct, and BM needs some serious work.

Personally i think survival wasnt successful per se, but its probably the best designed hunter spec atm, they failed however with BM and MM, the funny thing here though is that players play the more poorly designed specs because they are more unique, IE they are the only 2 specs in the game that you can go to if you want to play an archer style character. Survival was introduced into a melee heavy environment with the new kid on the block with all the coolest tools.

[Dastreus]

Been playing with a Surv hunter who often tops DPS or in the top 3.

No, it's fine.

[Appelgren]

They literally said that because they wanted to keep SV as trap masters they were looking at ways to make traps more appeals. An example thrown out was if Explosive trap isn't triggered for a few seconds it does massively increased damage. Much like you take a monk to a group for insane AoE burst, they want you to take SV to groups because of traps.

If you're going to act like a child about other specs getting buffs you should at least educate yourself about what their plans are.



Yeah, those people who liked old SV sure are ungrateful bastards.

Keep the bully lingo to trade chat. Calling people kid and childish is just that.

[Halyon]

A failure? No. Botched, yes.

It's fun to play rotation-wise. Not difficult, but it's enjoyable, not boring, not demanding, it's good. But that's were it ends. Thematically it's just disjointed...it could've been so much better had they just improved traps for them, keeping traps for all specs, and improved on the cooporation with your pet, so it was more like Rexxar, instead of trying to shove Rexxar into the tiny box named survival.

I really liked the artifact quest actually, and I was like "Oh I wish this had been the BM one" because it just entirely catered to my feel of what a hunter should be, be it ranged or melee, this was perfection for me. But as a spec, that has to measure up to all the other melee specs, it just...fell behind, so very hard. Single-target damage could be good, but it's melee, with low mobility (harpoon isn't that reliable), woeful aoe (and most fights require aoe...most content full stop does). It brings nothing that another melee spec or class can't bring. Yes, frost DK's suffer, but they have unholy, which is great, and they can tank, additionally to that. Hunters cannot. And MM is MM, and I despiiissseee it. And even at that, hunters aren't ridiculously high on the list, and we got gutted on utility.

Speaking of; yeah the traps got a tiny bit better, but really not that much, and nothing to celebrate either. Buffs got removed from pets, aside from a few...'mere abilites' that are really not relevant, maybe except the nether...manta rays have if it's needed, which it really mostly isn't. And BL/hero is BM only, so not gonna bother mentioning.

So yeah...no, it wasn't a failure alltogether...

[Fiftyonred]

HUGE FAILURE. Hardly anyone plays Survival because people who play hunter play it to play a ranged class. What didnt blizzard understand about this? The last THREE CLASSES added to the game have all been melee. Why did we need more melee? Is Blizzard so delusional about "Class Fantasy" that they cant see past their own nose? And in whose fantasy was a hunter ever a pure melee spec?? Hunter was fun with melee abilities as a ranged class and being able to wield multiples weapon types. This is NOT what survival is and NOT what hunters in general want to play.

If Blizzard made Survival a Ranged spec with melee abilities or a spec that uses both ranged and melee in general, then it would fit hunters a lot better imo. Hunter being pure melee is a pure waste of space in a game filled with melee to the top already...

I play a hunter and i want to play melee. Same goes for many people I know, so who the fuck are you to be talking about people "in general" ??