Does anyone miss old survival?

[Firebyrd]

People will be surprised and opposed to this stance, because as much as I disagree with Survival being melee, it does make the class more diverse. I just think the price of that diversity isn't worth it.

However, the game as a whole is less diverse and more homogenised as a result of SV going melee because now the balance is shifted more towards melee than it is ranged and a ranged weapon user spec is more unique than just another stock-standard 2-handed melee spec, which SV absolutely is despite the objection of people playing it.

Yes, this is exactly why I called it homogenization. There were only three specs that used physical ranged weapons. Now there are only two. Meanwhile, there are, what, eight melee specs that can use polearms (and that's not counting windwalker, which used to be able to)? The agi staves have been less used, but if sv hadn't been changed, there would be as many of those as ranged weapon users even after the removal of windwalker.

It's homogenization. There's nothing wrong or even against "class fantasy" for there to be features unifying all the specs in a class. Of course, that comes back to the issue that the "class fantasy" buzzphrase that Blizzard keeps using actually means "spec fantasy."

[Bitethe]

Both were good. I miss the old LnL procs which were definitely fun but the new class feels like a super-rogue which is great fun too.

Does feel a little GCD locked though but maybe i am just not prioritising right

[Lightbull]

Legion Survival is 100 times more fun to me than pre-Legion Survival. I was actually considering maining Survival in Legion after trying it on the beta, even though I was heavily invested in my Shaman. Rotation feels much less spammy but not too complicated, and the theme of a hunter that specialises in traps definitely appeals to me. I just wish it was more tanky on its own.

Survival in the past was fun to me for maybe 10 minutes, because it was literally just using shots on cooldown, and maintaining focus and Serpent Sting. Lock and Load was cool though.

Legion Survival also thematically makes more sense, since there are melee hunters in WoWs lore.

[Luko]

Survival in the past was fun to me for maybe 10 minutes, because it was literally just using shots on cooldown, and maintaining focus and Serpent Sting. Lock and Load was cool though.

This actually summarizes the spec perfectly. I think what many of the 'old survival' supporters mean when they say they loved it was that they loved putting out huge, consistent AoE without any real skill or prioritization. Push shit when its not on cooldown and watch your name crawl up the meters.

My favorite thing about the new Survival is its complexity. It's not "hard" or needlessly bloated, it just flows super well, like enhancement shaman used to. The CONSTANT mobility is a godsend as well for anyone that does anything outside of group content, or hell even in dungeons. Zipping around like spiderman on the last boss of Cathedral is a riot.

All in all it's just been a joy to play. Looking forward to playing it for years.

[Bepples]

This actually summarizes the spec perfectly. I think what many of the 'old survival' supporters mean when they say they loved it was that they loved putting out huge, consistent AoE without any real skill or prioritization. Push shit when its not on cooldown and watch your name crawl up the meters.

My favorite thing about the new Survival is its complexity. It's not "hard" or needlessly bloated, it just flows super well, like enhancement shaman used to. The CONSTANT mobility is a godsend as well for anyone that does anything outside of group content, or hell even in dungeons. Zipping around like spiderman on the last boss of Cathedral is a riot.

All in all it's just been a joy to play. Looking forward to playing it for years.

Drop your revisionist nonsense.

Yet again you are a) trying to speak for other players and b) assuming that SV's complexity REQUIRES it to be melee. So, pretty much word-for-word exactly the same as all your previous posts here. I'm not inclined to enact the labour of typing out detailed responses to what is essentially the same point copy pasted multiple times so I'm perfectly happy to copy paste my old responses in return until you man up and try to defend your positions (the fact that you don't do this shows to me that they are weak positions in the first place).

I liked old SV because it was mobile, versatile, fast-paced, mostly independent of pets, and had a fun theme. Could it have used more complexity? Yeah, probably. There was nothing stopping them from expanding on that. Hell, it already had Dotting capability so the path was obvious. Like I said, there was absolutely nothing stopping them from making it more complex and adding more to its skillset other than their total lack of creativity for ranged specs, which is not something you should be celebrating.

Oh, and clearly it's not a joy to play for everyone. For one, a pitiful amount of people are playing the spec so the spec is failing to provide enjoyment majorly on the virtue of player count alone (less people playing it = less people deriving enjoyment from it). Secondly, you have Survival hunters in this very thread saying that it plays badly, and you laughably told them that they were wrong.

Legion Survival is 100 times more fun to me than pre-Legion Survival. I was actually considering maining Survival in Legion after trying it on the beta, even though I was heavily invested in my Shaman. Rotation feels much less spammy but not too complicated, and the theme of a hunter that specialises in traps definitely appeals to me. I just wish it was more tanky on its own.

Survival in the past was fun to me for maybe 10 minutes, because it was literally just using shots on cooldown, and maintaining focus and Serpent Sting. Lock and Load was cool though.

Legion Survival also thematically makes more sense, since there are melee hunters in WoWs lore.

THIS takes the cake, and pretty much sums up the problem with new SV and the people who... 'support it'. Someone who DOESN'T MAIN HUNTERS, not even Survival, talking about how SV is better as melee based on... trying it out for a bit on the Beta. My god.

Oh, and great: we finally have melee hunters represented. That improves things.

I mean, it was concept that demonstrably had minimal appeal to its own class and people are preferring to eat ~80k DPS losses on DPS check fights (check the DPS differences v.s. the parse count differences for SV and MM on that) than play it and it has a fraction of the playerbase it had as a ranged spec.

But hey, at least we have the strong THEME.

#WorthIt

[Fudal]

Yes, I really miss Old Survival. The original Melee hybrid hunter. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cVV00xZZcEbikhux



But, obviously we have at least one person on here complaining because to him Cata is the old version and that is what he likes, the version after they broke the original spec.

[Lightbull]

Oh, and clearly it's not a joy to play for everyone. For one, a pitiful amount of people are playing the spec so the spec is failing to provide enjoyment majorly on the virtue of player count alone (less people playing it = less people deriving enjoyment from it).

Because ranged Survival was doing any better. I've been playing Legion since launch, and I've seen maybe 5 threads total about people complaining over the loss of ranged Survival. Clearly it didn't matter to many people.

Fact of the matter is that you're in the minority. Adapt or quit, please don't become the next Shoegazer.

[Bepples]

Yes, I really miss Old Survival. The original Melee hybrid hunter. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cVV00xZZcEbikhux



But, obviously we have at least one person on here complaining because to him Cata is the old version and that is what he likes, the version after they broke the original spec.

Well there is a difference between melee hybrid and pure melee. Survival in Legion is the first time any hunter spec has been purely melee. So all the points still stand.

Also, Survival was not very well liked in Vanilla/BC times either. Survival really picked up in WotLK and it's hey-day was Cata/MoP (and that's not just personal preference; the spec had more people playing it then). That's yet another argument against melee Survival; they threw out something that was proven to be successful in favour of something which was largely unsuccesful. We already tried melee hunters. Sure, it had never been a pure melee spec, but the melee aspect of hunters were... clearly not held in as high regard as the ranged aspects to say the least. Why continue to try to force melee on hunters when hunters clearly aren't interested in general?

Because ranged Survival was doing any better.

Uh... yeah. It was.

http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-...unter/survival

That massive drop off in the middle? That's patch 6.2, which nerfed SV to unviability thus forcing SV players to switch out of it.

August 30th is when Legion launched and SV finally did competitive damage again. Still an extremely unpopular spec; melee did nothing to help it.

January 2017 is when 7.1.5 launched. Since then SV has been the top damage hunter spec, so you actually see change in SV's spec population but it's very inconsistent, and even at the best of times it fails to come anywhere close to ranged SV when ranged SV was competitive.

So...yeah. SV actually WAS doing much better as a ranged spec. Maybe you should go check next time before you try to make a sarcastic comment to prove a point and instead make a fool of yourself.

I've been playing Legion since launch, and I've seen maybe 5 threads total about people complaining over the loss of ranged Survival. Clearly it didn't matter to many people.

A quick search shows that this is a very frequent topic of discussion, both here and on the WoW forums. I mean, just going through my own post history I found these threads, all between Legion Launch and now:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ival-a-failure

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...c-for-Survival

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...s-WoD-survival

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...hunters-around

Oh, and this one was made in support of Survival but I just love how the thread itself turned out:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ival-die-Blizz

And that's just MMO-champion. This is commonly discussed on the official forums too. Here are just a few recent ones that come to mind:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...3825783?page=1 (note: 30 upvotes for saying one of the 5 worst things about Legion was melee SV... wow...)

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753206502

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753456054

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753606339

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753546586

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753406198

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753118820

It's also funny how people are shitting on Survival in the threads for the other specs too:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...ge=25#post-482

It's clearly still a very important issue for a number of hunters. Look at those threads above: again, I just combed through my post history and looked for threads about Survival. That's not even counting threads about class/hunter design in general where Survival was mentioned (besides the BM one of course) and I saw plenty of those too. Highly upvoted posts all around calling for ranged Survival to return in one way.

Fact of the matter is that you're in the minority. Adapt or quit, please don't become the next Shoegazer.

Minority? Bwahahaha. You know what's a minority? A spec that's played by something like 2% of its class.

I had to look up who Shoegazer was. Looks like it's a long-time Subtlety rogue who is upset with the direction of Subtlety. Good on him/her. Subtlety obviously has some major issues right now and Legion wasn't very kind to the spec grom what I've heard: I don't play rogues but I sympathise with any spec that felt the wrath of "class fantasy" this expansion. Subtlety is the only spec in the game that gives Survival a run for its money when it comes to abject unpopularity. We need more people like Shoegazer to call out Blizzard on their shit class design and not just throw their hands in the air and say "Oh well, I guess I can just ADAPT and get used to the shit!"

[Lightbull]

A quick search shows that this is a very frequent topic of discussion, both here and on the WoW forums. I mean, just going through my own post history I found these threads, all between Legion Launch and now:

4 threads? You actively tried to search MMO Champion for "bring back Survival" threads and you found 4 THREADS. I find more threads talking about BM/MM's problems just by lurking the forums. On top of that, most of the replies on those threads are in favor of melee Survival. Shows how many people care about old Survival that's for sure.

Also, 30 upvotes compared to millions of people playing means nothing. Come on now.

August 30th is when Legion launched and SV finally did competitive damage again. Still an extremely unpopular spec; melee did nothing to help it.

Survival was shit at the start of Legion. I haven't been paying attention to logs but I don't think anything has changed, MM is still the best raiding spec and BM is a great M+ spec. Survival is left in the dust.

There's still a hardcore group that likes melee Survival. In fact, according to the graph that you linked, that hardcore group is bigger than the hardcore players who liked old Survival after it was nerfed. So melee Survival is more popular after all. Who would've thunk it.

I had to look up who Shoegazer was. Looks like it's a long-time Subtlety rogue who is upset with the direction of Subtlety. Good on him/her. Subtlety obviously has some major issues right now and Legion wasn't very kind to the spec grom what I've heard: I don't play rogues but I sympathise with any spec that felt the wrath of "class fantasy" this expansion. Subtlety is the only spec in the game that gives Survival a run for its money when it comes to abject unpopularity. We need more people like Shoegazer to call out Blizzard on their shit class design and not just throw their hands in the air and say "Oh well, I guess I can just ADAPT and get used to the shit!"

The point is, Shoegazer is the only Subtlety Rogue I've seen say anything about old Subtlety since Legion released. I frequent forums, so I see a lot of shit. You could easily search and find forum posts that exist, but the fact that they don't show up often shows how little people care.

You have passion for old Survival, you could have a hatred for Blizzard, but the passion of just a few people isn't going to change an entire spec. There were a LOT more Hunters in the past asking Blizzard to make the Hunter specs more unique, and this was the result. Sorry to burst your bubble but it's not gonna happen. Adapt or quit, I have no compassion for your kind.

[Bepples]

4 threads? You actively tried to search MMO Champion for "bring back Survival" threads and you found 4 THREADS.

Well, no I didn't, actually. Like I said, I went through my post history and picked out threads specifically criticising new Survival simply because those are the ones I'm familiar with. Obviously it's not a conclusive list. Two of those threads are also 30 pages long and you are not meant to make multiple threads on the same topic. There was a thread just now specifically meant to be a long-term discussion about the Survival spec in 7.2 and it squeaked by to 3 pages before becoming inactive and falling off the front page... meaning that this very thread, which is talking about OLD SURVIVAL, is currently the most active thread concerning Survival on MMO champion. I chuckled at that fact.

I find more threads talking about BM/MM's problems just by lurking the forums.

Well, yeah, because issues with the specs we are currently playing are obviously more pressing than issues concerning a spec we USED to play. You also find far more threads about BM/MM than threads about Survival, which should really tell you something. Like I said, currently this is the ONLY thread specifically about Survival on the front page, while there are several specifically about BM and MM. It's almost like a negligible amount of hunters are playing SV.

On top of that, most of the replies on those threads are in favor of melee Survival. Shows how many people care about old Survival that's for sure.

Yet another spurious, on-the-spot fabricated claim. This is starting to become a pattern with you; you make 'facts' up and throw them out there with zero verification or backing. An extremely dishonest tactic.

I'm not inclined to actually go through hundreds of replies and actually count them myself, but since apparently we're making baseless assumptions and presenting them as fact here, I'm going to go ahead and say that most of the people supporting melee SV have it as an alt spec and do not main it/play it regularly, on account of the fact that most of the replies I see are of the flavour "I play a Paladin main and I tried out SV a bit on the test realms and I must say it was very fun, so I'm fully in support of it being melee".

Oh, and one of those threads was actually a poll "The Best expac for Survival". Legion SV got 30/140, which is 21%. SV hunters in the thread were cheering for being the 2nd most popular option, but that's a hollow victory considering the top spot (MoP) had 50% more voters and over-all ranged survival had the rest of the 79% of the vote. Hilarious. The desperation from that community is palpable.

Also, 30 upvotes compared to millions of people playing means nothing. Come on now.

Oh, ok. I'll go find a thread with a million upvotes.

What a stupid comment. Obviously a minority of the players visit the forums, even moreso the class-specific forums. 30 upvotes on a post in a class forums is actually relatively high. In my experience I don't see many posts going beyond 10 upvotes. The fact is that in those threads I linked the voting is clearly in favour of ranged Survival.

At the end of the day, what is happening here is that you are claiming that this is an issue that no one talks about when that's spurious at best and demonstrably false at worse.

Survival was shit at the start of Legion. I haven't been paying attention to logs but I don't think anything has changed, MM is still the best raiding spec and BM is a great M+ spec. Survival is left in the dust.

Are you even trying? Go look at the logs before posting shit like this. BM is better than MM now and SV is the best of the three from a pure performance standpoint, which makes it even more hilarious that people are still opting to play lower-damage specs like MM.

There's still a hardcore group that likes melee Survival. In fact, according to the graph that you linked, that hardcore group is bigger than the hardcore players who liked old Survival after it was nerfed. So melee Survival is more popular after all. Who would've thunk it.

Delusional. Survival in HFC was something like 20% DPS behind MM in the very best of circumstances. There was absolutely NO option in that tier: it was MM or you weren't raiding. Survival was weak at the start of Legion but not nearly to that degree; it's damage was more in line with BM but BM had something like 20x the activity in raiding anyway.

The fact is that when ranged Survival was current and people had an actual choice to use it, it was VASTLY more popular than Melee SV... even though it was rarely the best spec out of the 3 (for most of the time you see on that graph it was 2nd or 3rd place...the only time it has been 1st place for an extended period of time is NOW yet STILL no one plays it!).

The point is, Shoegazer is the only Subtlety Rogue I've seen say anything about old Subtlety since Legion released. I frequent forums, so I see a lot of shit. You could easily search and find forum posts that exist, but the fact that they don't show up often shows how little people care.

Lol? I don't even play a rogue or frequent their forums but this is absurd. I see Subtlety threads on the Class Development forums all the time. Shoegazer gets upvoted on the forums too for talking about Subtlety. Specs like Subtlety and Survival don't get population issues like that from nothing; when a spec is one of 3 in its class but has a representation that is more like 1 and 20, that usually means something is seriously wrong with the spec. You continue to evade this because you have no good counter argument. Forum activity doesn't change that fact either.

You have passion for old Survival, you could have a hatred for Blizzard, but the passion of just a few people isn't going to change an entire spec.

There were almost no people asking for Melee SV but here we are.

There were a LOT more Hunters in the past asking Blizzard to make the Hunter specs more unique, and this was the result.

More baseless conjecture. Again, add this to the emerging pattern from your posts.

Sorry to burst your bubble but it's not gonna happen. Adapt or quit, I have no compassion for your kind.

Again, adapting to a shitty change doesn't make it any less shitty. That's fanboy talk for when they don't want to admit Blizzard is at fault.

You don't even fucking play SV or hunters in Legion in general at any significant capacity. I have 0 compassion for people like you who think they can lord over other classes purely because they enjoy the idea of certain specs/directions that they themselves will never take part in. You are literally the perfect example for the SV playerbase on this forum like I mentioned earlier: people who have nothing invested in the class but still think their opinion should matter just as much, if not MORE, than veterans/long-term players of the class. Pathetic.

[Lightbull]

I'm losing my patience with this crap. You're going to fanboy over old Survival to the end of the world so this argument isn't going to go anywhere.

Oh, ok. I'll go find a thread with a million upvotes.

What a stupid comment. Obviously a minority of the players visit the forums, even moreso the class-specific forums. 30 upvotes on a post in a class forums is actually relatively high. In my experience I don't see many posts going beyond 10 upvotes. The fact is that in those threads I linked the voting is clearly in favour of ranged Survival.

My point was that only a small fraction of players use the forums. The rest of the players are playing the game and having fun. But of course, you're going to say it's a "fabricated claim" even though it's bleeding obvious to anyone who's been on the forums for an extended period of time. I didn't start this war. You're the one coming in here saying that "old Survival was better because of X facts", which aren't facts at all, it's just you jumping to conclusions over 5 minutes of research. Don't try to antagonise me over this.

The above statement, along with the FACT that Survival and Subtlety have significantly less posts on the forums than other specs that are actually doing well, means that a vast majority of people DO NOT CARE about old Survival coming back. They might have enjoyed it in the past, but now it's gone. Life isn't fucking fair. They have accepted Survival for what it is now and have put up with it.

I loved World PvP in the past, but in Legion it's shit, I don't like it, but I've adapted and moved on to other things. I'm writing a post addressing my problems with it, and I'm going to post my feedback in hopes that Blizzard change something. But even if my post doesn't gain traction or Blizzard doesn't agree with my points, then I don't care. I'm just going to find other things that I have fun with.

Welcome to the brutal truth of online games. Adapt or quit.

Good day sir.

[Kissthebaby]

I agree just quit. The hunter you used to love is dead, settle for the garbage of a class it is now. Blizzard sure as fuck doesn't care what any of the players think, so either except disappointment and keep playing pissed off or quit. It's not blizzards fault they fucked up and are too stubborn to admit it, it's everyone else's fault for not accepting change. Blizzard whiffed on hunters just have to wait and see if anything changes next expansion. Don't hold your breath though. Melee survival is cool because of nostalgia and 29 people play it. Mm is sick because vulnerable is a neat new mechanic never before seen in wow before. That's why everyone adores mm. BM's design is top notch I mean there's an ability that has a chance to reduce the cd of another ability that then has a chance to reduce the cd of your dps cooldown so you do more damage. Random uncontroable cd reduction seems to be all the rage now a days. I'd probably just quit or play a different class, I hear fury warriors are nifty.

[Luko]

Snip.

Is this your job?

[threads]

This actually summarizes the spec perfectly. I think what many of the 'old survival' supporters mean when they say they loved it was that they loved putting out huge, consistent AoE without any real skill or prioritization. Push shit when its not on cooldown and watch your name crawl up the meters.

My favorite thing about the new Survival is its complexity. It's not "hard" or needlessly bloated, it just flows super well, like enhancement shaman used to. The CONSTANT mobility is a godsend as well for anyone that does anything outside of group content, or hell even in dungeons. Zipping around like spiderman on the last boss of Cathedral is a riot.

All in all it's just been a joy to play. Looking forward to playing it for years.

it's super bloated actually. it's probably the most retarded spec i've ever seen in the game. i played sub rogue in cata and feral in wrath and neither felt as shitty and slapped together as new survival. it flows as well as constipation.

SV in MoP and SoO tier specifically was prime hunter gameplay. you had procs that were actually enjoyable, dots, stings, kill shot, mobility, etc.

this new bullshit spec that 10 people play on mythic guldan is a failure.

[Bepples]

I'm losing my patience with this crap. You're going to fanboy over old Survival to the end of the world so this argument isn't going to go anywhere.



My point was that only a small fraction of players use the forums. The rest of the players are playing the game and having fun. But of course, you're going to say it's a "fabricated claim" even though it's bleeding obvious to anyone who's been on the forums for an extended period of time. I didn't start this war. You're the one coming in here saying that "old Survival was better because of X facts", which aren't facts at all, it's just you jumping to conclusions over 5 minutes of research. Don't try to antagonise me over this.

The above statement, along with the FACT that Survival and Subtlety have significantly less posts on the forums than other specs that are actually doing well, means that a vast majority of people DO NOT CARE about old Survival coming back. They might have enjoyed it in the past, but now it's gone. Life isn't fucking fair. They have accepted Survival for what it is now and have put up with it.

I loved World PvP in the past, but in Legion it's shit, I don't like it, but I've adapted and moved on to other things. I'm writing a post addressing my problems with it, and I'm going to post my feedback in hopes that Blizzard change something. But even if my post doesn't gain traction or Blizzard doesn't agree with my points, then I don't care. I'm just going to find other things that I have fun with.

Welcome to the brutal truth of online games. Adapt or quit.

Good day sir.

Just bumping this to remind you that the current most active thread about Survival on the forums here on MMO-Champion is "Is Blizzard getting ready to delete survival in the next expansion?". The most active thread on the official forums about Survival is "Why all the Survival hate?". Perhaps you should read a bit of both to get a good feel for how the hunter community feels about Survival at the moment. Oh, and Survival also can't maintain an active spec discussion thread on the Class Discussion forums: both BM and MM have several hundred posts in theirs and are highly active.

You're delusional if you think that no one cares about this issue. This shit is on the forums all the time at this point. Survival still can't decisively beat any spec in the game in terms of popularity, just barely trailing/tying with Subtlety despite all of THAT spec's issues and having every other advantage in the world. It appears the only thing Blizzard can do to get people to play melee Survival is buff it to ludicrously OP levels. So... bribing players with high numbers. When you have to do that; effectively BEG people to play a spec... it's a dead spec.

Contrary to fanboy belief, putting up with shit decisions doesn't make them any less shit, nor does it make the people making the decisions any less incompetent and hopeless. I'm actually not obligated to "just stop complaining". Maybe you should adapt to the fact that people are not happy with the state of Survival or quit discussions on the subject. You clearly do not main a hunter based on your post history so as far as I'm concerned you do not have a stake in this argument.

[reimmi2016]

From what i've seen only people who didn't main hunter before legion enjoy the new survival
most of the hunter mains (including me) hate what they've done to the class, both mm and bm are shells of their former selfs and i didnt roll hunter to play melee. Melee options were nice, before mop, but full on melee, hell no.

[callipygoustp]

Loved pvp-ing as a survival hunter during BC and Wrath. Great times. Many kills.

[Lens Hunter]

Until this expansion I mained SV since BC. I miss it dearly.

[Chu]

I miss it, and I mained SV since Vanilla. Survival now feels as if Blizzard was trying to copy the 'ranger' class from a different game. As alot of you have posted before me.... I totally agree.... hunter is just not what it used to be.....

[Brav5115]

From what i've seen only people who didn't main hunter before legion enjoy the new survival
most of the hunter mains (including me) hate what they've done to the class, both mm and bm are shells of their former selfs and i didnt roll hunter to play melee. Melee options were nice, before mop, but full on melee, hell no.

Shhhhh. Didn't you know that a handful of people on the MMO champion forums represent the vast majority of hunter players? That's some dangerous thinking. For those of us that have been playing hunter for 12+ years, it is essentially a two spec class.