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

[Swalload]

old survival best survival

Exactly this. Old survival was the most fun hunter spec really, no stupid long cast time or being forced to take roots in the ground, no getting carried by AI, just shooting and blowing shit up, it was awesome.

I actually enjoy the new survival as well, I think it makes for a quite different melee spec compared to others, but I would gladly go back to old survival.

[lazypeon100]

Before Cata =/= Vanilla. The final talent VERY early on was Lacerate, after that the spec was a hybrid between melee and range for the rest of pre-BC.

And yet, back then you were far more effective st ranged than melee. In classic, you would fight at ranged and when the enemy was in melee range you went toe to toe with them unlike the other two specs because SV could actually kind of melee. It wasn't exactly strong though and you were better at ranged anyway.

In BC they tried to keep up with that idea but it was still far better and ranged and was still never played outside of maybe one really geared hunter who would bring expose weakness for their raid.

Come wrath, it became far more popular once they removed the hybrid / melee focus. It eventually became our most popular spec and stayed that way until the end of WoD where blizz already had melee SV in the works and gutted old SV in that patch.

I don't think this current iteration should go away. I think it was wrong for them to remove the old SV, but for the same reason I think it would be wrong to remove current SV. Old SV should be brought back in some fashion, whether it be through MM talents that actually give you that old or similar playstyle (current talents don't do this) or make a 4th spec. I think a 4th spec would be the best way of solving the issue entirely and it would avoid watering down MM talents. Doubt that will ever happen for a pure dps class though.

[Gaaz]

They will not delete it, but the spec needs a complete overhaul. The idea of making a melee damage dealer out of a ranged spec was idiotic in itself, but actual implementation was even worse. I hope they make a tank spec out of it. At least then I will have some use for it in the "for the lols" content.

[ozusteapot]

I have to say I do enjoy BM, having rerolled from MM for this current patch. Nighthold's 4set makes BM very fun to play, especially in m+, and the fact that BM is far less legendary reliant to dish out good dps combined with the fact that my best mm legendary has been bugged for the past few months made me not regret rerolling that much at all.
That having been said, I don't enjoy how much bm relies on its pet to dish out dps, especially when you need to switch targets, so I really would love to have the old sv brought back as a hunter spec that uses a pet on which it isnt reliant, has a fast paced rotation and overall good mobility. Looking at the amount of parses current sv has, I would assume quite a few people feel the same way.
Just add old sv as a 4th spec.

[Lochton]

I'm actually loving the melee survival specc..

[Hipnos14]

They should have made Beast Master the melee spec, and survival the "tinker" spec, right now the hunter is a mess in terms of class fantasy, I think the only one that makes sense right now is Marksman with the Farstrider/Dark Ranger theme.

[Deleted]

On pure dps point of view, SV is more than fine, it beats a majority of the melee specs, however the problem is that it brings no utility.

The same thing goes for WW monk, Enh Shaman and Feral Druids. They can all be competitive dps, but a Retribution, Warrior, Frost/Unh DK, Rogue will do superior dps to all of them whilst providing good utility towards the raid. If they wanna make those 3 specs and SV hunters to be more viable melee (and I mean not being second pick melee classes) then they need to give them some or better utility to compete with others. It's either that or go back the logical road where utility classes provide less dps to the raid but make up in utility, however not with the same 40% gap. A 5-10% dps gap is more than enough.

[Qman]

Apart of Raptor Strike critical chance increase after 1.7 all of the Survival tree talents were giving some kind of instruments to _escape_ melee range or survive melee better - like parry chance, root after Wing Clip, root after Counterattack, Deterrence, decrease of slow duration, rooting traps, sleeping sting, more health, etc. It was not really melee/ranged hybrid, more like really... survivalist .

[Restors]

Dude we've only seen 2 sets of patch notes calm down lmao. There's still 2-3 months more to this ptr bare minimum.

People like you will never learn. I heared it before , "its only alpha, its only closed beta, its only PTR". And still no changes. (Talking in general).

If I were a person with concerns regarding something in the game, no matter what state the testing is on, or how long the testing will continue, I would sure as hell make my voice heared no matter what. We've seen it before where people raised their concerns a long time ahead, and still got implemented with bullshit.

[Arenis]

This iteration of survival is kinda unpopular, apart from being a slow-spam-bot in pvp. I hope they return it to its former glory.

[Banard]

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

.

I lost my fav spec because of this beeping abomination. So yes i lost something. WoW did not need another melee.....the minority that wanted this can bugger off. Delete it and bring back the old surv spec.

[stevan021]

You could just ask for a 4th spec you know? Wanting to delete things others enjoy doesn't actually make me sympathize with you for that time when blizzard deleted something you enjoyed : D

[Bepples]

You could just ask for a 4th spec you know? Wanting to delete things others enjoy doesn't actually make me sympathize with you for that time when blizzard deleted something you enjoyed : D

Yes, and most of us are perfectly willing to entertain that option. However, all signs point to Blizzard not being on board. They made Demon Hunters with 2 specs and said they preferred designing classes with 2 specs; they want fewer specs, not more. If Hunters are limited to 3 specs, which seems to be the case for all future WoW development, then it should be 3 ranged specs that are faithful to their prior iterations and the people who enjoyed those.

[Zyky]

People like you will never learn. I heared it before , "its only alpha, its only closed beta, its only PTR". And still no changes. (Talking in general).

If I were a person with concerns regarding something in the game, no matter what state the testing is on, or how long the testing will continue, I would sure as hell make my voice heared no matter what. We've seen it before where people raised their concerns a long time ahead, and still got implemented with bullshit.

Its literally 2 weeks into the ptr. You can't judge shit off of that especially when they're saying on multiple outlets that all the class changes haven't been released yet. It has nothing to do with "people will never learn" go look at my post history I'm no Blizzard supporter by any means, but making a crying post not even 2 full weeks into ptr is absurd.

[Nythiz]

You could just ask for a 4th spec you know? Wanting to delete things others enjoy doesn't actually make me sympathize with you for that time when blizzard deleted something you enjoyed : D

Let's be realistic here. There is no way there is going to be a 4th spec. There is more chance of them simply going back to old survival (and even that is highly unlikely with how prideful/stubborn blizzard has shown itself to be lately).
A 4th spec just brings too many issues (balance, lorewise, etc) the only reason that druid got 4 specs is because they basically always had the 4 specs, only it was sort of hidden in the feral talents. Splitting feral into feral and guardian just made things easier for blizzard; splitting survival into a ranged spec does the opposite of making things easier.

As I said before: I don't think melee survival is really bad by design. But I think we lost more (both gameplay and identity/RP wise) than we gained when they swapped survival to melee.

There seems to be a lot of misconception about what Survival used to be back in vanilla though.
Survlval was never a melee spec; it was a survival spec. The talent tree focused on increasing your defensive and improving the ways for you to get out of melee/deadzone range; which was done by improving things like Wingclip and Traps.
There wasn't really anyone going too deep into survival, most people went full in BM or full in MM and then took a few points in survival for increased survivability (mostly for PvP purposes) or went MM/BM or BM/MM for full on damage (sometimes with 3 points in survival because it contained a +damage vs beasts/dragonkin/humanoid talent or something).

The only reason to go deep into survival back in the day, was because it contained Lightning Reflexes (5 talent point; +3% agility per point) and Killer Instinct (3 talent points; +1% crit per pointvery deep in the tree). The 31 pointer (Wyvern sting) was often skipped in favor of a 21 pointer in another tree. But those builds were somewhat experimental / non-cookie cutter.

[last1214]

I don't think bliz is going to add a 4th spec for hunters. Druids were a special case. Would blizzard revert this spec back to a ranged spec? God I hope so. I absolutely hate what it is now. I wouldnt half mind seeing a sylvanas style spec with a similar play style to the old run and gun survival spec. You could have the thematic focus be on dark magic/poison dot shots. Would be cool as fuck, more than 5% of the hunter player base would play it, and therefore not be a terrible waste of developers time and money.

[Gaaz]

Its literally 2 weeks into the ptr. You can't judge shit off of that especially when they're saying on multiple outlets that all the class changes haven't been released yet. It has nothing to do with "people will never learn" go look at my post history I'm no Blizzard supporter by any means, but making a crying post not even 2 full weeks into ptr is absurd.

He had a valid point. People were complaining about Wild Call mechanics since beta of the Legion, when first details started to show up. And we were being fed with "it is only an alpha / beta / PTR / prepatch" stuff, along with remarks that developers do not need to play a class at all in order to design it properly. After A YEAR of complaints, they add shoulders that corrects the reset mechanics problem. And what do you know, the class actually started to feel much better to practically 100% of those who were lucky enough to get it.
It might be possible that if a mage has a problem (since many blizzard employees are known to main one in the past, and probably the picture has not changed much) in the first iteration of a PTR, it might be corrected. At least chances for that are well above zero. But for hunters, in all likelyhood, whatever gets churned in the first round - stays there. Especially when it comes to the least popular spec in the game.
Not trying to be overly negative here, but it is what it is. SV is dead in the water until next expansion at the very least. And even then, knowing that blizzard hate accepting their mistakes and rolling things back, I would not bet that SV will become a ranged spec ever again. Hopefully I am wrong, even though I never held any particular love for survival in the past.

[ydraw]

They're not gonna turn it back into a ranged spec. At most, it will receive major changes like Demo locks at start of Legion.

I'd rate the chances of them turning it back into a ranged spec higher than anyone rated the chances of it becoming a melee spec before 6.2 hit

[Zyky]

He had a valid point. People were complaining about Wild Call mechanics since beta of the Legion, when first details started to show up. And we were being fed with "it is only an alpha / beta / PTR / prepatch" stuff, along with remarks that developers do not need to play a class at all in order to design it properly. After A YEAR of complaints, they add shoulders that corrects the reset mechanics problem. And what do you know, the class actually started to feel much better to practically 100% of those who were lucky enough to get it.
It might be possible that if a mage has a problem (since many blizzard employees are known to main one in the past, and probably the picture has not changed much) in the first iteration of a PTR, it might be corrected. At least chances for that are well above zero. But for hunters, in all likelyhood, whatever gets churned in the first round - stays there. Especially when it comes to the least popular spec in the game.
Not trying to be overly negative here, but it is what it is. SV is dead in the water until next expansion at the very least. And even then, knowing that blizzard hate accepting their mistakes and rolling things back, I would not bet that SV will become a ranged spec ever again. Hopefully I am wrong, even though I never held any particular love for survival in the past.

There hasn't been anything for hunters yet, that's why I'm saying chill and wait and see. If nothing happens in a couple more patches that's when it's time to go crazy. I was an Ele Shaman from BC-WoD I know way better than any Hunter the mistreatment by Blizzard. But freaking out before any changes have even had a chance to get onto ptr is absolute madness.

[Bisque]

Honestly I think the OP is "reaching " quite a bit. Nothing from the blue post really seems to confirm that melee survival is on the chopping block. I think this is more of a case of seeing what you want to see, than seeing what is actually there.

As for melee survival, I think blizz will give it one more expansion to see if they can clean it up a bit, make it more fun etc... then go from there. But the chances of the next expansion going back to old survival- honestly Id say we have a better chance of the Protoss becoming a canon race in the WoW Universe.