Is Blizzard getting ready to delete survival in the next expansion?

[Deleted]

I see some in the comments wanna replace melee survival with a ranged spec. Melee survival is a spec of it's own right now, I get people who ask for a third ranged spec but why do you want to delete a melee spec SOME enjoy?

If people want to play meele, go pick a meele instead of destroying my class.

[Zelorra]

The new survival is such a shitty idea...OF COURSE IT'S NOT GOING AWAY!!

[Bepples]

In response to the thread title: there is no evidence yet determining Blizzard's future direction for Survival. It's far too early to tell whether or not they are leaving it as is for the rest of the expansion, and certainly too early to tell whether they have any major change in store for it.

That said, they absolutely should remove it and replace it with the old ranged iteration. This would simply be the most sensible option and would be the healthiest option for the class.

EDIT: I see some in the comments wanna replace melee survival with a ranged spec. Melee survival is a spec of it's own right now, I get people who ask for a third ranged spec but why do you want to delete a melee spec SOME enjoy? You don't lose anything if you don't play it

Uh, no. This is totally ignorant of Survival's previous iterations. Survival was a RANGED spec for the majority of its existence and a lot of people enjoyed it as such. It was changed to melee at the expense of those players. Therefore, you don't get to use this "don't take my spec away" excuse because that makes you a massive hypocrite and hugely selfish. You don't get to have someone's spec taken away and then call a truce afterwards saying "live and let live!".

I would be saying this even if Survival were a popular melee spec. Quite the opposite: it's one of the least played specs in the game despite having very good damage output and most of its own class despises it and won't touch it with a ten foot pole. So, the brutal truth is: making it ranged again won't exactly negatively affect very many people.

Funny fact. Survival was originally melee. Back in vanilla/bc. It became ranged i believe when cata came out (or a little before that.) Im sure you can find some old patch 1.x talent trees somewhere on the net to see that.

Revisionist history. Survival always had ranged capabilities before Legion. Before 1.7 it was a melee/ranged hybrid. You had melee talents in the tree but you still had both a melee and ranged weapon and you had several ranged abilities; the intent was that you weren't entirely useless in melee range like the other hunter specs but you were still meant to be ranged. That idea failed on account of the melee talents being complete garbage.

After 1.7, Survival was purely a ranged spec. It always had the occasional "Increase damage of x melee ability" talent but they were utterly worthless and never taken.

On that note, don't you think going back to one of WoW's biggest class design failures of Vanilla and doubling down on it just might be a bad idea?

[stevan021]

If people want to play meele, go pick a meele instead of destroying my class.

Some people started playing in Legion and to them it's a melee class if they main survival. Why don't you just ask for a fourth spec instead like the druids have? You don't lose anything if you don't play it so I don't get this "someone is enjoying this thing I don't like so lets delete it" mentality

Survival was a RANGED spec for the majority of its existence and a lot of people enjoyed it as such. It was changed to melee at the expense of those players. Therefore, you don't get to use this "don't take my spec away" excuse because that makes you a massive hypocrite and hugely selfish. You don't get to have someone's spec taken away and then call a truce afterwards saying "live and let live!".

Some people started playing in Legion and to them it's a melee class if they main survival. Why don't you just ask for a fourth spec instead like the druids have? You don't lose anything if you don't play it so I don't get this "someone is enjoying this thing I don't like so lets delete it" mentality.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I say, if you don't have enough ideas for a class, scrap it completely. It worked for demon hunters, and those that complained that two specs were too few have disappeared completely. I'd be fine with just BM and MM... and I main hunter.

[Puri]

I say, if you don't have enough ideas for a class, scrap it completely. It worked for demon hunters, and those that complained that two specs were too few have disappeared completely. I'd be fine with just BM and MM... and I main hunter.

I would agree to that, but the idea was already there. Old survival was a fine dot class, just like affliction was to destruction. There was no need to slaughter that spec into a melee one.

[Blackmist]

Fun fact: Since the launch of Vanilla, Blizzard has added no new ranged specs to the game, and removed one.

Stop trying to make melee happen. It's not going to happen.

If there was just one ranged spec left in the game, and it was called Shitflinger and did no damage, we would still play it.

[stevan021]

If there was just one ranged spec left in the game, and it was called Shitflinger...

Fuck, now I wanna play the Shitflinger.

[Trishell]

The new survival is pretty fun actually but it does suffer from button bloat/too many abilities that do the same thing. I think they should remove actively placing traps from there rotation because it just feels awkward. I think had blizzard unveiled survival as a meele spec 12 years ago it would have been accepted the MAJOR problem is that most of the hunter community absolutely adored the old survival and just wanted meele as something to meme with. I could totally see hunter becoming a 2 spec class as someone mentioned earlier because i think demon hunter is the new template for classes going forward.

[tru]

It shouldn't have been done. BM takes very little skill to master and has no movement penalty. Bake melee range hybrid shit into BM bring back pre wod destroying the spec sv and leave it alone. Bm always made more sense to go the melee route regardless of what skills sv used to have way back when. It was already a unpopular idea especially adding the dh melee who wants to play sv now. I hope since we loosing the weapons next X-Pac they change stuff again bring back 2h frost and smf fury.

[satimy]

They screwed up because they made survival the best dps and the other 2 hunter specs are not fun to play.

Hunters are bad and unfun.

[aikanaro]

So survival had me lay talents in it in vanilla sure, but I don't know anybody who actually spect a full 31 points into survival either. The highest anyone ever went was if you were raiding naxx you put five points into lightning reflexes for 15% increased agility because the scaling made it better than being full Marksmanship with some in the other talents. A similar thing happened at the end of BC before the pre wrath patch. Now for all of you who are saying that it was hybrid until cata, you are incorrect. Survival became a full range spec in the pre Wrath of the Lich King patch. I specifically remember being on the island of quel'danas killing Naga for daily quests right after they added explosive shot which was the 31-point talent. Anyway like I said before the problem is not that survival is a melee spec or that it exists at all. The problem is that the other two specs which are ranged are not fun to play.

[GokuGohan2]

In my opinion they should put survival as a tank. A Mail tank. Just make it a tank with pet, I'd play it no doubt about it.

[Nythiz]

I don't really hate the new survival, I quite like using it for world questing and easy mythic+ now and then; but there are some glaring issues with it:

1) They took away a ranged physical damage dealing spec and replaced it with a melee spec.
We already have a dozen melee specs; ranged physical damage dealers are quite rare now though. Beastmaster has seen so much of it's abilities and damage shift towards the pet that you might as well call it a pseudo-melee spec (as in it has most of the weaknesses of a melee spec). That leaves just Marksmanship as a ranged physical damage dealer.

Mechanically the difference between a ranged physical damage dealer and a caster might be negligible; but lore and gameplay wise they have strong separate roots. I don't want to see the Archer/Hunter archetype die like this.

2) A lot of people liked the old survival hunter style (me included) and currently it's really nowhere to be found anymore.
Marksmanship and Survival really were too much alike in WoD when it came to their abilities and general approach. But there were some key differences that made survival and MM a spec on their own.
The new Survival melee spec kept some of those unique flavors: Very DoT oriented, making use of traps, bleeds and toxins. But it also lost a few. I really liked the high mobility, "High sustained damage, lower burst damage"-approach that survival offered and it's somewhat missing now.

3) There is so much competition and flavors for melee already, yet quite a lot less for ranged.
Survival really doesn't offer something that is truly unique as a melee spec.
Sure it has some nice flavor in the traps and the DoT, but in a lot of ways it's very much like an assassination rogue / feral druid in that regard.

Very few people felt like the new survival spec filled a void; whereas the old survival did leave somewhat of a gap.
That's not to say the new survival isn't fun or doesn't tick the right checkboxes for some players; it's just that out of the currently 12(*) OTHER melee dps specs, survival being the 13th doesn't add anything that was missing IMO.
(* Assassination / Outlaw / Sub / Fury / Arms / Unholy / Frost / Feral / Windwalker / Havoc / Enhancement / Retribution)

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In the end I don't have survival. But I think there is a big void in the place where old survival used to be. I'd prefer it to be ranged again, or at the very least a sort of ranged/melee hybrid where you have the combination of ranged attacks with certain melee options. (Think Ullr from Smite if you know that game; or something a bit closer to vanilla hunter).

[aikanaro]

I don't really hate the new survival, I quite like using it for world questing and easy mythic+ now and then; but there are some glaring issues with it:

1) They took away a ranged physical damage dealing spec and replaced it with a melee spec.
We already have a dozen melee specs; ranged physical damage dealers are quite rare now though. Beastmaster has seen so much of it's abilities and damage shift towards the pet that you might as well call it a pseudo-melee spec (as in it has most of the weaknesses of a melee spec). That leaves just Marksmanship as a ranged physical damage dealer.

Mechanically the difference between a ranged physical damage dealer and a caster might be negligible; but lore and gameplay wise they have strong separate roots. I don't want to see the Archer/Hunter archetype die like this.

2) A lot of people liked the old survival hunter style (me included) and currently it's really nowhere to be found anymore.
Marksmanship and Survival really were too much alike in WoD when it came to their abilities and general approach. But there were some key differences that made survival and MM a spec on their own.
The new Survival melee spec kept some of those unique flavors: Very DoT oriented, making use of traps, bleeds and toxins. But it also lost a few. I really liked the high mobility, "High sustained damage, lower burst damage"-approach that survival offered and it's somewhat missing now.

3) There is so much competition and flavors for melee already, yet quite a lot less for ranged.
Survival really doesn't offer something that is truly unique as a melee spec.
Sure it has some nice flavor in the traps and the DoT, but in a lot of ways it's very much like an assassination rogue / feral druid in that regard.

Very few people felt like the new survival spec filled a void; whereas the old survival did leave somewhat of a gap.
That's not to say the new survival isn't fun or doesn't tick the right checkboxes for some players; it's just that out of the currently 12(*) OTHER melee dps specs, survival being the 13th doesn't add anything that was missing IMO.
(* Assassination / Outlaw / Sub / Fury / Arms / Unholy / Frost / Feral / Windwalker / Havoc / Enhancement / Retribution)

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In the end I don't have survival. But I think there is a big void in the place where old survival used to be. I'd prefer it to be ranged again, or at the very least a sort of ranged/melee hybrid where you have the combination of ranged attacks with certain melee options. (Think Ullr from Smite if you know that game; or something a bit closer to vanilla hunter).

Was ranged magic damage not physical. Fire shadow and nature.

[Trapstarz]

^ Was about to say the same thing

[Deleted]

The problem was never the new survival but that they replaced the old one with it. I will also never understand why they didn't make Beastmastery the meleespec. All you have to do is replace Kobrashot with Kobrastrike. Heck, you could even take the same Weapon and just give it an animation for a change, like "breaking" a Bow in two for some swords, or using a gun as a Staff/Lance.

[Tharkkun]

EDIT: I see some in the comments wanna replace melee survival with a ranged spec. Melee survival is a spec of it's own right now, I get people who ask for a third ranged spec but why do you want to delete a melee spec SOME enjoy? You don't lose anything if you don't play it


Original post:

Based on this post about patch 7.2.5:




They don't seem to wanna really allot any more development time to the spec and make any substantial changes. And if you think being on this list means a spec is getting something drastic like a complete rework, check the patch notes- most of these specs have received changes but nothing incredible aside from maybe sub rogues who had a ton of stuff changed.

I get that a lot of people like this spec the way it is but surely some quality of life changes are in order, not just a simple numbers tuning.

Survival has seen tons of changes and reworking since Legion launch. They aren't going to dedicate those resources every single patch especially when numbers wise Survival is in a good place right now.

[Nythiz]

Was ranged magic damage not physical. Fire shadow and nature.

Granted, but the whole archer archetype is still a ranged physical damage dealer. As in a non-mage ranged fighter.

Explosive shots are explosives tied to an arrow. Serpent sting comes from arrows coated in poison. Black arrow is a "cursed arrow".
I realize that survival was mostly elemental damage from a mechanical point of view, but I'm also talking gameplay wise and it was first and foremost a ranged physical damage dealer, as in an archer. Survival didn't conjure fire out of thin air, or be granted nature damage through spirits; it's very much physical interaction from a roleplay point of view.

I use the term: Ranged physical damage dealer instead of "archer" as the term can generally be approached to include a wider range of archetypes.

[SL1200]

Bring back old survival hunter and the game becomes more interesting. They're not supporting the hunter with pet playstyle that used to be called survival, and that's the kind of hunter I want to play.