Overall, was Survival a failure?

[xZerocidex]

This is how I feel about every legion spec.

I think after xelnath? the warlock dev guy, they stopped having anyone do classes on their own. No idea why because now everything feels like they're trying to let everyone have a say, and it's not working. If they just had one head designer on each class, I'm sure they'd all get the attention and tuning they need to feel complete and good.

Survival feels like they tried to cram too many concepts into one spec. If they trimmed some of that off and focused on that one idea it'd feel a lot better. Not that I don't enjoy it currently.

It could be a MB and stacks focused spec, with no traps and grenades and gadgets to weave in for no reason, or it could be the opposite. No stacking effects but all focused on traps and grenades. It feels like I'm juggling 2-3 specs in one.

I only heard about him last week, I heard he used to do a good job with all three warlock specs until they fired him.

If what you say is true then that was a stupid move on Blizzard's part, most of the time I think they deserve to fail because their arrogance and ego are driving them to make dumb and terrible design choices.

Not to mention they made a spec that goes around throwing traps and grenades at ppl in front of them.

[Deleted]

I only heard about him last week, I heard he used to do a good job with all three warlock specs until they fired him.

Oh yeah, Xelnath did a really good job with Warlocks back in MoP. Built a super solid foundation which got a little worse in WoD, but still had that strong foundation. With Legion it was mostly demolished for something even worse in my opinion. Don't know if Hunters had their own designer though, Xelnath was just very vocal in general.

OT: So I'm basically leveling a Survival Hunter now simply because it's fulfilling some fantasies of going into the fray alongside your companion, a bit like Rexar and all. It's going to be hard to convince anyone to bring a Survival Hunter into any "competitive" content when I could've chosen Marksman or Beast Mastery which are both far better specs and not melee.

I wish there was a bit more emphasis on you working alongside your pet. As it stands, it feels like a mix between working with your pet, using traps and the spear itself. To be fair, I think traps should be baseline for all Hunter specs, but Survival could retain expert trapper. The spear is personally what I find the least impressive, mostly because I don't care that much about the spear itself. To me the most important aspects of the new Survival Hunter is that it's melee and jumping into the fray with your pet.

I 100% only speak of the feel of the spec thus far; I'm still not even level 110 and not even that invested into my hunter, but I love the concept and I think they could go a lot further with it.

[Bepples]

It's OK guys, Survival is saved. It finally got a parse in mythic Trial of Valor!

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12

Yes....a parse.

Sadly, it still hasn't passed 1,000 parses in EN.

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

It is the only spec not to do so. It is also the only spec not to pass 2,000 and 3,000. Yes, Survival has just under 25% of the second lowest DPS spec in the game in mythic EN. This is despite Survival being ahead of several specs on the sims, so the situation is NOT like that of 6.2.

I'm still not even level 110 and not even that invested into my hunter, but I love the concept and I think they could go a lot further with it.

Further proof that Survival was made for people who didn't play a hunter. Notice how most of the few people on this subforum defending Survival are people who play hunters casually or as an alt. You can argue many things about Survival but you cannot with a straight face argue that Blizzard made the rehaul for the sake of long-standing hunter mains.

[Deleted]

Further proof that Survival was made for people who didn't play a hunter. Notice how most of the few people on this subforum defending Survival are people who play hunters casually or as an alt. You can argue many things about Survival but you cannot with a straight face argue that Blizzard made the rehaul for the sake of long-standing hunter mains.

Chill out, I'm not even qualified to speak about the spec in any meaningful other than "class fantasy". I only raided competitively on my Warlock, but I think anyone worth their salt knows that Survival is shit in any competitive form. That doesn't speak to the gameplay of Survival, but moreso the tuning and possibly mechanics of it.

It's a bit of the opposite of Destruction Warlock; Shittiest gameplay to date, but it has the numbers and mechanics to actually be worthwhile bringing into raids due to our ability to cleave targets with little to no ramp up. I don't think they made the spec for long-standing hunter mains, because if that was the case they wouldn't have made it melee. The complaints I've heard throughout the years was that all 3 hunter specs played out basically the same, and I think on that premise alone they wanted to change it up. Not necessarily to make it more viable. My history with hunters is super short though, and anything I hear is basically from the mouth of my fellow raiders or w/e bullshit reddit comes up with.

[xZerocidex]

I agree FpicEail, I mean we all know the reason SV was bad during late WoD was because Blizzard stop showing support for the spec, now they all of a sudden wanna make it more appealing.

I'm not against the idea of a 4th spec so ppl can have the best of both worlds, but they should've made SV a munition spec that utilizes stings, DoTs, traps, and grenades.

[Deleted]

Legion Hunter as a whole feels like a failure tbh (not performance wise)

[Exhorder]

Legion Hunter as a whole feels like a failure tbh (not performance wise)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...dps&dataset=90

The performance is also horrible when you don't count meter padding on ilgynoth & such

[Bullettime]

I really don't think it plays that badly. The numbers just....aren't there.

I feel like Blizzard was too afraid of Surv doing good DPS and making BM/MM fans feel like they have to play a melee but they went a bit too far on the safety.

[Deleted]

It's OK guys, Survival is saved. It finally got a parse in mythic Trial of Valor!

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12

Yes....a parse.

Sadly, it still hasn't passed 1,000 parses in EN.

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

Are we looking at the same stats? I also see 0 frost death knights and 0 furies. Funny how my preferred dps specs are frost on DK and fury on warrior.... on topic though, did anyone try shoving these stats in Bliz's faces? Reactions?

Oh wait, there are somehow double entries for the two melees I mentioned.

[bingildak]

To be very short on Survival, I believe they had this idea of survival as melee hunter and let's be honest - it is a brave and awesome change to have.

BUT, they did not have the quality resources or time to execute this awesome idea into practical experience. It feels like whole idea came from whiteboard directly into game without time or effort put inside to make it real in game. A house with TERRIBLE infrastructure but very cool paint outside.

Sadly you can't have cool ideas and expect them to work without putting enough effort into them. Survival would require incredible amount of work to actually reach it's potential and it didn't even get what it would make it viable.

Either they didn't have the time or team working on it did a terrible job and needs to go. I can't see any other way around that.

[Deleted]

I leveled to 110 an hunter one days ago. I leveled up as BM and tried also Survival. I must say, for my little experience, Survival is much much more fun.
You go from a 3/4 buttons rotation (bm) to a 9+ with survival.
The only downside (for me) is the dps. I agree it's nice to have a challenge, but when the challenge does not bring result, and you can have a better one with a 4 button spec, you know something is going wrong.
And i play with the "noob" survival talent setup.
For the ranged vs melee problem, i agree with Gaivax: just look at shamans, if the ranged>all shuold apply, you wuold never see an enanchement shaman around. But we all know it's the exact opposite.

[inyu]

I've been playing SV all Legion.Tried MM and BM 1 day and switched again to SV. I have a lot of fun playing it compared to the other 2 specs, and my DPS is very competitive.

[Powell]

Guaranteed next expansion that introduces a new class, they're going to make Hunters a 2 spec class like Demon Hunters and convert survival as a tinker class with grenades and turrets instead of pets.

[Deleted]

The performance is also horrible when you don't count meter padding on ilgynoth & such

Hunter still is a competetive class, no reason to act like we're the worst class in the game. My problem with Hunter is that I personally feel like we are terribly bad designed in Legion and not a single specc feels fun or rewarding in the long run.

I often thought about rerolling, but then I remembered the AP farming and quickly forgot about that. Only thing I really enjoy doing as Hunter is spamming M+.

FeelsBadMan

[Ninjeff]

Hunter was never melee. In whose "Class fantasy" was Hunter ever a pure melee? Hunters used melee abilities to lock people down and get back into ranged or let your pet chew off their face. I have nothing against Survival, but we dont need more melee in the game, and Hunter class got ripped apart to make this melee spec work. Fix the hunter class as a whole and I wouldnt care about survival being taking away from people who want to play ranged Hunter like it ALWAYS has been. They should have made Survival a Hybrid spec and not just melee because that is what old school Survival was.

Yes some people will like it and defend it, but obviously by the amount of people playing Survival Hunter, it is a Failure.

[DeicideUH]

To say Survival was a failure, you would first need to say what makes the other two specs a big success.

From my PoV, all hunter specs are pretty bad right now. Survival at least is fun.

[Ninjeff]

To say Survival was a failure, you would first need to say what makes the other two specs a big success.

From my PoV, all hunter specs are pretty bad right now. Survival at least is fun.

You dont need to compare it to the other Hunter specs at all. Just need to look at it for what it is, the amount of play the spec gets, and the interest in the spec being melee. If youre going to compare it to anything, you would compare it to what Survival was and how it changed for the worse or better.

[Bepples]

To be very short on Survival, I believe they had this idea of survival as melee hunter and let's be honest - it is a brave and awesome change to have.

Do you think it was awesome and brave for people who's favourite spec was the ranged Survival from 3.0-6.2?

For the ranged vs melee problem, i agree with Gaivax: just look at shamans, if the ranged>all shuold apply, you wuold never see an enanchement shaman around. But we all know it's the exact opposite.

This just reeks of ignorance of the real issue. Enhancement has been melee since the beginning, so people come to the shaman class with the expectation that there's a ranged and a melee spec. Hunters have never been melee (unless you count the early melee/ranged survival in vanilla that no one cared about), so everyone who came to the class came to play a ranged class. That means Survival has no audience besides a tiny niche of players who thought it would be a mildly interesting idea to have a melee hunter.

[Deleted]

Do you think it was awesome and brave for people who's favourite spec was the ranged Survival from 3.0-6.2?



This just reeks of ignorance of the real issue. Enhancement has been melee since the beginning, so people come to the shaman class with the expectation that there's a ranged and a melee spec. Hunters have never been melee (unless you count the early melee/ranged survival in vanilla that no one cared about), so everyone who came to the class came to play a ranged class. That means Survival has no audience besides a tiny niche of players who thought it would be a mildly interesting idea to have a melee hunter.

I understand your point of view. Back a few years ago, i used to play hunter, and to be honest, i always liked survival more then MM, i mean explosive shot was cool, black arrow and so on!
But sadly, MM was the 80% of time superior to survival in terms of dps. And sadly we know that majority of people tend to switch to the most dps spec. In the end, ranged survival was surely different from MM, but overall had less audience, and often even less then BM.
Now i understand what Blizzard did with survival (now i will use random numbers):"We have a spec used by 10% of hunter players. It's almost impossible to balance 3 ranged spec. We have a 8% of player audience that wuold like to try a melee hunter. Let's switch survival to a melee spec. If we are lucky, this will bring that 8% and maybe some more, if we are unlucky, survival just lost a 2% audience, and they can still choose between MM and BM".
Now i agree with you that this move was a failure, at least number wise (but i still think that if Survival was topping the charts, the population wuold rise a lot).

[Serissa]

This just reeks of ignorance of the real issue. Enhancement has been melee since the beginning, so people come to the shaman class with the expectation that there's a ranged and a melee spec. Hunters have never been melee (unless you count the early melee/ranged survival in vanilla that no one cared about), so everyone who came to the class came to play a ranged class. That means Survival has no audience besides a tiny niche of players who thought it would be a mildly interesting idea to have a melee hunter.

If you (not you personally maybe but hunter community) don't want to play melee hunter then don't beg Blizzard for Rexxar spec. Personally I saw "Wahhh I wanna play Rexxar QQQQ Blizzz do something QQQQ" threads since early wotlk. And these treads were popular. You got what you asked. Now you QQ that you don't like melee spec? Seriously?