Please don't let Survival die Blizz...

[Marrilaife]

there's way too many melee dps specs already.

Yeah this, 2 specs of dk, monk, demon hunter and survival hunter, why wasn't there a single ranged dps class / spec added to the game? Isn't it enough that raids run with 3 mages but some melee classes are hardly ever represented? Are they only added to the game for pvp or what?

[Ogdenir]

So what was SV niche before the revamp? DoTs and nature damage. What made it different from the other two hunter specs? Yes we hear all your die hard SV fans you want your old spec back, but blizzard should just kill off the new SV cause it's melee?

[Feyranna]

So what was SV niche before the revamp? DoTs and nature damage. What made it different from the other two hunter specs? Yes we hear all your die hard SV fans you want your old spec back, but blizzard should just kill off the new SV cause it's melee?

Strong sustained damage (weakness in several tiers: weak burst) and strong sustained aoe.

What made it different? WE ATTACHED FREAKING DYNAMITE TO OUR FREAKING ARROWS! And venom, and whatever the heck else came to mind. It was the ultimate drunk redneck "here hold my beer" spec in the game. Now you blow up your own toes..grats on the darwin award.

And no blizz shouldn't change it back because it's melee, they should change it back because it sucks and nobody is playing it. If they'll change a spec TO melee after over a decade as ranged they shouldn't have any qualms about changing it back.

[Derian]

Strong sustained damage (weakness in several tiers: weak burst) and strong sustained aoe.

What made it different? WE ATTACHED FREAKING DYNAMITE TO OUR FREAKING ARROWS! And venom, and whatever the heck else came to mind. It was the ultimate drunk redneck "here hold my beer" spec in the game. Now you blow up your own toes..grats on the darwin award.

And no blizz shouldn't change it back because it's melee, they should change it back because it sucks and nobody is playing it. If they'll change a spec TO melee after over a decade as ranged they shouldn't have any qualms about changing it back.

Except sustained damage/low burst and sustained aoe are almost never needed. On top of that, survival was at best a halfassed dot spec, with none of the cleaving capabilities of any other dot spec (aff, shadow, boomkin). You couldn't multidot without one specific item from HFC (even then it wasn't worth doing), and there was no thought to your dots. One was applied passively, the other two (or three counting explosive trap) had cooldowns longer than the duration, and were just used whenever they were available.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the spec (always have) but it's nice to have actual flavor beyond my arrows being different colors.

[Shuken]

I hope it dies in a horrible grease fire.
It's a spec a tiny portion of the community might have found interesting and asked for, but FAR MORE long time hunters never wanted it, and would gladly trade it in for the original ranged elemental/nature/trap damage version.
Overall, hunters have been over-pruned and feel clunky. BM is brain-dead easy, MM lost virtually all of it's mobility, SV (eww).

I find it very telling that Ion Hazzikostas said, "Elemental Shaman concerns are on the radar. Single target can use a bump, increased Lava Burst damage..." and yet even Elemental Shaman's do more single target dps than ANY hunter spec: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#boss=1841

I hope they don't waste time trying to "fix" SV, and instead work on making Hunters the enjoyable RANGED DPS spec they've been up until Legion.
/end rant

I could not possibly have said it any better. Amen.

EDIT:

It's a shame too because I think this is the best expansion to date. What they have done to the hunter class as a whole is terribly misguided however.

[Reiziger]

They should've made survival a half ranged/half melee hybrid, kinda like how hunters were back in the days. Either given them some kind of artifact Dual wield where the mainhand is the ranged wep and the offhand is the melee (just like hunters had melee weps to go with their ranged weps back in the day), or have an artifact weapon that could simply switch between ranged and melee (monster hunter games have weapons that 'switch' like this I believe).

Could've done a lot of really bad-ass stuff with that theme, and giving it a very distinct but still huntery theme compared to its brothers.

[Shuken]

Except sustained damage/low burst and sustained aoe are almost never needed. On top of that, survival was at best a halfassed dot spec, with none of the cleaving capabilities of any other dot spec (aff, shadow, boomkin). You couldn't multidot without one specific item from HFC (even then it wasn't worth doing), and there was no thought to your dots. One was applied passively, the other two (or three counting explosive trap) had cooldowns longer than the duration, and were just used whenever they were available.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the spec (always have) but it's nice to have actual flavor beyond my arrows being different colors.

Multishot literally applied serpent sting to all targets it hit....

Besides, the concept of multi-dotting is completely irrelevant.

[Derian]

Multishot literally applied serpent sting to all targets it hit....

Besides, the concept of multi-dotting is completely irrelevant.

Was talking black arrow or when enemies are more than 6 yards apart, but yeah multishot let you spread one of your three main dots.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

How can survival die if the whole point of the spec is to survive?

[MatadorMedia]

The rotation is just really convoluted no matter the talents. They need to clean it up.

[Huntaer]

I'm with OP, i love how survival plays right now!
I don't think they'll throw away a hunter's melee spec anymore. At best they'll add a 4th spec but not sure what that should be.

[Nocturnalypso]

I also agree with the OP, and hope that melee hunter sticks around. I'm having a blast playing and it leveled a new character 1-110 as survival just to play survival. I would be pretty bummed if it went back to ranged and I had to reroll to another class.

[Deleted]

I pretty much enjoy it and at the same time topping the meters on any content I do (be it pve or pvp). You just need to play and practice the spec, not just follow as a godhand written truth guides from wowhead or icy-vein.

They should've made survival a half ranged/half melee hybrid, kinda like how hunters were back in the days.

Well it is, sort of. If you ever tried it, you would have realized that survival have baked in increased range on all melee attacks and skills, just as a druid/rogue taking the appropriate talent to increase their range. It allows for some sweet gameplay where any standard melee would be out of range to continue DPS.

Looking back at what was survival, they kept the flavour with improved traps, multi dots (I think the spec have even more dots than an afflication warlock when taking all dot related talents), and burst window of mangoose replacing TnT/LnL procs.

The only thing they have to fix atm are aspects, they rely too much on the epic bracers cooldown reduction to make the class pogression-content viable. Otherwise, they need to find a way to give a mobility tool that is not only a one-way-in and an additional defensive tool.

[Halfsharkalligatorhalfman]

Survival should have been a dual wield pistol spec, or designed as a grenade combo spec like the saboteurs in Rift. Melee was the lazy way out blizzard.

[Tharkkun]

What? Honestly...same game bro!?

They changed Survival at the end of BRF by fixing what Blizzard called a serpent sting bug. If you used it in HFC you were doing less dps than a tank. The only place it worked was in PVP where it was the dominant spec. But for PVE the spec hasn't been viable for end game progression since BRF.

[Deleted]

The entire Hunter class in general is pretty meh.

[Caolela]

It's been dead since BRF in WoD. Making it melee just turned it into a gimmick spec. It fills no niche, has no utility. It might as well not even exist. Being melee makes it even less desirable.

It seems to be good as a niche PvP spec. Especially in lower brackets SV is OP right now.

[Arrowstormen]

Survival is fun and I don't mind hunters having the ability to be melee. It just has problems with certain fights just not allowing them to have their crazy-high setup time to dish out a bunch of damage properly.

[Deleted]

Seems like blizz tries their hardest to let the whole hunter class die in 7.1.5.

[PewPewArrowz]

Let SV crash and burn, let it be forgotten as Hunters wielding Glaives from Illidan, just let it die already. Are any veteran hunters actually enjoying SV? Or just some bandwagon melees (Like the OP Warrior that posted)?