Overall, was Survival a failure?

[scorpious1109]

Should have been a tank spec, might have actually been useful then.

[Fullmetal89]

It is pretty obvious what the main issue with survival is, they made it another melee spec. In an effort to make the class more appealing and 'fix it' they actually managed to push away even more people from playing it. There is a fundamental problem with making the spec melee. The majority of people that picked a Hunter picked the class because they wanted to play ranged. From Blizzard's standpoint I can understand why they would want to make it another melee class, it is much easier to balance. They are using the excuse that a very small but very vocal minority wanted to bring back the vanilla melee hunter. As a cover for taking the easy way out and balancing the class as melee. Unless they give Surv a Destro 5.1 treatment and make it extremely easy to play and OP; it wont attract people to the spec. I mean, not only is it melee which there is too many of but it is a chore to play. Reminds me of the ridiculous bloat Enhancement Shaman use to have. I've been playing Hunter since the release of vanilla and while Surv has only ever been my main spec for Wrath I never once wanted it to go melee. I picked up the hunter precisely because it was the only ranged non-magic user in the game (except for those years they had mana which was weird).

TL;DR It is no surprise to me that Surv is so unpopular when it is yet another melee spec in a game over saturated with melee for a class that specializes in range.

[Radaney]

It is pretty obvious what the main issue with survival is, they made it another melee spec. In an effort to make the class more appealing and 'fix it' they actually managed to push away even more people from playing it. There is a fundamental problem with making the spec melee. The majority of people that picked a Hunter picked the class because they wanted to play ranged. From Blizzard's standpoint I can understand why they would want to make it another melee class, it is much easier to balance. They are using the excuse that a very small but very vocal minority wanted to bring back the vanilla melee hunter. As a cover for taking the easy way out and balancing the class as melee. Unless they give Surv a Destro 5.1 treatment and make it extremely easy to play and OP; it wont attract people to the spec. I mean, not only is it melee which there is too many of but it is a chore to play. Reminds me of the ridiculous bloat Enhancement Shaman use to have. I've been playing Hunter since the release of vanilla and while Surv has only ever been my main spec for Wrath I never once wanted it to go melee. I picked up the hunter precisely because it was the only ranged non-magic user in the game (except for those years they had mana which was weird).

TL;DR It is no surprise to me that Surv is so unpopular when it is yet another melee spec in a game over saturated with melee for a class that specializes in range.

It is pretty obvious what the main issue with survival is. It consistently is a spec that does the worst damage in the game.

When it does good damage people will play it.

[Deleted]

Why don't they give us back MoP suvival? It was perfect in my opinion.

nearly all classes were perfect in mop, sadly people didn't seem to like snapshotting and many abilities.

[lazypeon100]

It is pretty obvious what the main issue with survival is. It consistently is a spec that does the worst damage in the game.

When it does good damage people will play it.

It was performing fairly well in SV and was still incredibly unpopular though.

[ydraw]

It is pretty obvious what the main issue with survival is. It consistently is a spec that does the worst damage in the game.

When it does good damage people will play it.

I wouldn't play it even if it was the number 1 spec in the game.

I rolled a hunter because my guild needs ranged DPS. How much damage the melee spec does is completely irrelevant.

[Nurvus]

I think introducing melee Hunter was a success.

However, I also think they tried to mix 2 strong concepts into 1 spec.

On one hand, you have the concept of Survival - poisons, explpsives, traps.
On the other hand, you have melee hunter - animal inspired attacks, aspects, etc.

Mongoose Fury and everything related to it is pretty fun.
However, everything else in the Spec feels out of place.
None of it seems to work "together", instead working "despite" everything else.

If they were mixing Traps with Melee, I would expect there to be some sort of interaction, like your Bleeds and/or Attacks dealing additional Fire damage against targets affected by your Explosive Trap, etc.

Lots of Talents seem to be there because they couldn't come up with anything else that fits the spec - A Murder of Crows, Mortal Wounds, Dragonsfire Grenade, Spitting Cobra.
Most abilities are non-interactive and have nearly NO scaling - Traps, Bleeds and Poisons ignore 2 of your Stats (Haste & Mastery).

They did a great job with Mongoose Fury gameplay.
But they could've done WAY better with the Survival theme overall.
Instead they salvaged Survival for parts that were distributed as shadows (in some cases mockeries) of their former selves between the new Survival and Marksmanship.

[MisterBigglez]

I would say so, there are many problems with the spec which have already been covered in this thread, mainly to do with the fact that the range specs just perform better and that SV is flooded with an underwhelming amount of spells.

I played SV for a little bit and I had mixed feelings with it. The AoE was great and felt really strong especially with more targets and Butchery but the normal rotation was not anything special or fun in that matter.

I think next expansion we will see it return as a range spec, the majority of players do not want to play the spec as it is and parses prove that and blizz will always cater towards the majority because thats the smart thing to do.

[Nurvus]

the majority of players do not want to play the spec as it

I think you're really talking out of your ass here.
Lots of people love the gameplay behind Survival, even if parses say it isn't competitive.

That's like saying Blizzard would remove Frost Mage or Shadow Priest because it was not competitive during a certain expansion.

Ranged Survival will likely never return.
Blizzard has decided to make Marksmanship incorporate whatever Ranged elements existed in Survival.
I just hope they do it better next time, because they failed this time around.

[Kissthebaby]

I think you're really talking out of your ass here.
Lots of people love the gameplay behind Survival, even if parses say it isn't competitive.

That's like saying Blizzard would remove Frost Mage or Shadow Priest because it was not competitive during a certain expansion.

Ranged Survival will likely never return.
Blizzard has decided to make Marksmanship incorporate whatever Ranged elements existed in Survival.
I just hope they do it better next time, because they failed this time around.

False what the man said is completely accurate. The vast majority of players don't like the spec as is. Shit he didnt even say don't want to play the spec because it's melee simply just "how it is". Which is accurate. The vast majority of hunters would also rather survival be some sort of range spec too. Yeah I'm aware of those 13 players that love that survival is melee and think the spec is rad, but most people would rather have survival be a 3rd ranged option. And I speak for the majority of hunters since they elected me their leader.

[Dossou]

False what the man said is completely accurate. The vast majority of players don't like the spec as is. Shit he didnt even say don't want to play the spec because it's melee simply just "how it is". Which is accurate. The vast majority of hunters would also rather survival be some sort of range spec too. Yeah I'm aware of those 13 players that love that survival is melee and think the spec is rad, but most people would rather have survival be a 3rd ranged option. And I speak for the majority of hunters since they elected me their leader.

As a current member of the #1 US raiding guild Limit I can confirm that Kissthebaby is indeed the leader of all hunters
and he was also way better than me when he actually raided
and yes he did play survival
and yes Survival is a complete failure of a spec

[Deleted]

i would like survival way more if they were giving me a choise in weapons.. i mean.... look at rexxar.... thats a hunter i would care to play...(but i guess they are scared to take away too much from BM) and not that spear fending thing we got now..

or why not make the current survival with the speer a ranged specc that is THROWING spears? i would like those 2 options way more than the current survival.

make survival not a melee spec.. but a spec which is not using a bow or a gun. as i said rexxars dualwield axe thrwoing style (+ maybe daggers? other/new weapons that a throwable.) spears.

and give them the option in the talenttree to go full melee so that the 13 people who like survival right now are happy too.

but i guess thats to much work for revamping just a spec for a class.. maybe we get a new class someday that has something like that.
or their excuse is that "throwing away axes and spears and trough some mysterious ways they appear again in your hand" is breaking "immersion" XD its not like you could give us something like DKs runeforging that the hunters enchant the weapon with some kind of spell that they return to the user. or just give them "a bag" full of spears or axes or whatever (like the quilver for bows on the back) and make it like "oh look at this fine axe im going to make copies of it because im a chinese craftsmen and i know how to copy things to throw them at my foes."

[Moshots]

easy answer is yes.....

After looking at druids for the past 4-5 years.... how did they not see the trend that even having 1 ranged 1 dps spec.. the ranged spec was 3-4x more played.....

Now with a class with 2 ranged specs and 1 melee spec.. You have to not only be better than both other ranged specs by a wide margin you have to then be better than other melee specs too... And that is something that is hard.. Unless survival is a top 3 dps spec it will be underplayed and pretty well a failure.

[madokbro]

No. Harpooning Tauren breaking yo jaw with a giant-ass spear and dropping grenades down your neck says otherwise.

[Eapoe]

As a current member of the #1 US raiding guild Limit I can confirm that Kissthebaby is indeed the leader of all hunters
and he was also way better than me when he actually raided
and yes he did play survival
and yes Survival is a complete failure of a spec

Oh shit guys, we have leaders now!!!

[apelsinjuice]

why would u play a melee hunter when you can play range

[Deleted]

I think the fantasy and spell effects are fun and good. Also the melee hunter fantasy is great. Remember Frostfire Ridge quest chain? All these Gronn orc hunters, that was cool and exciting.
If the numbers were better yo think ppl wouldn't play it? Lol.
And you say "why play melee if u can play ranged?" Well, if you want to play ranged go for it. Wanna play melee surv hunter - go for it, whats the problem.
Tho playing MM hunter is a cancer, can't believe I am saying this but bm is so much more appealing, lol.


Now, hate me.

[Eapoe]

SV's not a failure, but it needs some attention fast. It does feel clunky and lacks synergy at times; however, with the right haste amount as well as having t19, it feels much more fluid. Now, with t20 there is the risk of the clunkiness coming back, as well as just last week it was better to keep running t19 in ToS and not even getting t20, which means that there will be less SV hunters thru ToS.
Blizzard just added 3% damage to all abilities, but as almost everyone who has tried the spec knows, there are large windows where are other abilities don't get used. They need to just address the elephant in the room and work on the playstyle. Reduce the amount of abilities the spec has by either just getting rid of them completely or baking them into another ability. Just a for instance, get rid of Raptor Strike and bake its heal effect into Flanking Strike, along with making the talents of Serpent Sting and WotMN applied to FS. Change Explosive Trap to have virtually no damage on anything used under 3 targets, but increase its radius slightly and give it a huge damage proc when it affects 3+ targets, thereby eliminating its mandatory usage on ST but giving it functionality as a AoE ability. Same could also be applied to Caltrops.
Also, change our Mastery. Either give Hunting Companion a flat chance to proc MB and make our Mastery a flat damage increase to MB and/or Lacerate. Or, keep it how it is, but instead of giving us the extra MB to use, have it automatically trigger the free MB off the GCD and have it benefit from current stacks and add to the stacks. SV is the only (maybe 1 of 2) spec that doesn't receive a direct damage in reads from Mastery.

[Bepples]

If the numbers were better yo think ppl wouldn't play it?

It's numbers were better in NH and people still didn't play it.

Therefore, the spec is absolutely a failure.

[Dadwen]

False what the man said is completely accurate. The vast majority of players don't like the spec as is. Shit he didnt even say don't want to play the spec because it's melee simply just "how it is". Which is accurate. The vast majority of hunters would also rather survival be some sort of range spec too. Yeah I'm aware of those 13 players that love that survival is melee and think the spec is rad, but most people would rather have survival be a 3rd ranged option. And I speak for the majority of hunters since they elected me their leader.

got my vote as a ex hunter and wow player. (because of the SV change).