Survival chance of it being a Melee/Ranged hybrid?

[Nurvus]

who the bloody hell want 3 mobile instant damage spam Ranged specs? It was plain retarded in the 1., 2. and 3. place...

I agree.

Having a Melee spec is fine. Some love it, some hate it, some don't care. As with everything else.
Survival had a very strong melee component in vanilla with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack.
So Hunters always had a melee spec. Blizzard took it away, and now brought it back.

But just for kicks, Blizzard should just rename the melee spec and bring back the old Ranged Survival so we can laugh at how much more boring and skillless it is by today's standards.

[threads]

how much more boring and skillless it is by today's standards.

lol what standards?

[Nurvus]

lol what standards?

Apart from the occasional 1 step forward and 2 steps back, every class/spec except Survival has gradually improved since WotLK.

As I said before.
Survival never had iconic gameplay - it always had iconic theme but equally iconic lack of gameplay.

Any skill Survival ever required was never in the rotation - it was about everything else (CC, Traps, etc), which pretty much only shines in PvP.

Blizzard is doing a pretty good job across the board with fun/unique/interesting gameplay for nearly every class/spec.
I welcome ranged survival if Blizzard brings it back, but I do not accept the bullshit instant spam Ranged Survival has always been.
Melee Survival at least has decent gameplay and room for improvement.
So I hope Blizzard just renames the melee spec as a 4th spec and gives us a proper Ranged Survival back so that everyone is happy.
The hate on melee is uncalled for.

[Gasparde]

Blizzard is doing a pretty good job across the board with fun/unique/interesting gameplay for nearly every class/spec.

I fail to see the fun, unique and interesting playstyle of pretty much every other spec when it's always just Keep 1 on CD, spam 2, use 3 at max resources and if you're lucky use 4 whenever it procs. Like, in a world where Unholy exists one can't consider Frost being anything but a shame - and there's about a dozen specs that are just as bland and basic as Frost while there's only a handful of truly unique and interesting specs like Feral or Windwalker.

[Nurvus]

I fail to see the fun, unique and interesting playstyle of pretty much every other spec when it's always just Keep 1 on CD, spam 2, use 3 at max resources and if you're lucky use 4 whenever it procs. Like, in a world where Unholy exists one can't consider Frost being anything but a shame - and there's about a dozen specs that are just as bland and basic as Frost while there's only a handful of truly unique and interesting specs like Feral or Windwalker.

Fun, busy and complex are 3 different things.
I think they got the gameplay matching the flavor while keeping a decent skill cap in most cases.

However, even though I think less can be more, I also think Blizzard trimmed too hard in order to add new systems (Traits, Legendaries and Honor Talents) that barely compensated.

[Gasparde]

While fun and need for complexity might be subjective, uniqueness most certainly isn't - and with all the pruning that went down with Legion, most specs certainly don't feel unique. Instead they feel like that other spec.... but here it's fire instead of frost, or this time I'm shooting with my pistol instead of my my lightning thing.

[Polybius]

I feel they messed up on which spec got melee. BM should've been melee with ranged utility (pet) while Survival stayed ranged.

It's a little late now, so hard to say what they plan for next xpac.

[Deleted]

Survival is fine numbers wise, it's just a bit meh to play.

If Mongoose Bite had 0.5s reduced GCD it would be soo much more enjoyable and viable.

I'd have to agree, I don't understand why the spec itself has a 1,5s GCD in the first place. There is no reason from a gameplay and gameplaystyle perspective.

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

I only recently started playing SV, but the thing that drew me to it most is that its complex. I find it far more engaging that 90% of all other specs in game. I do think they should tone it down just a tad, to be similar to UH DK in terms of how busy it is, cos right now SV has just a tiny tad too much going on... also give it something that would make it more worthwhile to bring it along on raids instead of other less complex melees.

[Blackspiral]

I don't mind Survival being a Melee spec at all. I've toyed with it a bit on my Hunter for poos and giggles but the two deterrents for me on using it seriously are spec bloat and some glaring issues with the spec.
Turtle keeps you from attacking at all. As a melee this will tank your DPS. All other Melee don't lose the ability to do any DPS if they pop a defensive cool down. So you survive and do nothing, or you take the hit, possibly die, and if lucky not die, and DPS.
Button Bloat. I don't mind more complex rotations, but Survival needs some fine tuning and a few less abilities to manage. Trying to do the best rotation in any kind of high movement fight is aggravating. Combine a few abilities together and cut one or two. Some abilities need a shorter cooldown as well, or be less of a 'must push' to get decent numbers.
Interested to see what they do with it in the next Expansion, as it certainly needs some work.

[Bepples]

Survival had the trap + explosive theme and that's it.
It did not have an iconic gameplay - it had an iconic theme and an equally iconic lack of gameplay.
Ranged Survival needs a revamp to meet today's standards of gameplay and "class fantasy", and I'm not saying it in a condescending or sarcasting way, nor am I suggesting it is the only spec that needs it.

Bullshit. Survival was the ranged opportunist and had unique mechanics such as Serpent Spread and Lock and Load. The gameplay of Survival was ahead of its time when it came into fruition as a unique spec for the first time in 3.0 and that's why it lasted for such a long time. It was very popular whenever it wasn't totally unviable (i.e. any time other than 6.2). That wouldn't have happened if it had a "lack of gameplay". Revisionism at its worst.

Every iteration of Ranged Survival, however, was simple with mobile frontloaded damage and no drawbacks.
Only in PvP did Survival ever have a reasonable skill cap, and it was only due to the Traps and other defensive/control abilities, never the rotation.

Again, bullshit. The drawback of the mobility is the damage. Survival has pretty much never been a top damage spec. The only time it really approached that point it was the most popular spec in the game and utterly dominated the Hunter scene. BM was just as mobile as well, and again has never really been a top damage spec. The competitiveness comes from sustaining damage through movement and mechanics.

Also, is this about skill cap now? Because there were several specs easier than ranged Survival. Hell, several of the current specs are simpler than ranged Survival so your "modern times" crap holds no water.

I agree.

Having a Melee spec is fine. Some love it, some hate it, some don't care. As with everything else.
Survival had a very strong melee component in vanilla with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack.
So Hunters always had a melee spec. Blizzard took it away, and now brought it back.

But just for kicks, Blizzard should just rename the melee spec and bring back the old Ranged Survival so we can laugh at how much more boring and skillless it is by today's standards.

You just don't give a flying fuck about historical accuracy, do you? You just post whatever comes to your mind as if it were undisputed fact.

No, Hunters never had a melee spec. No Hunter spec before Legion did not have a ranged weapon, and none of them preferred melee attacks to their ranged attacks when they had them (yes, not even early Survival: all the melee abilities were undertuned to worthlessness). The melee abilities were available to all specs and were merely a weak consolation prize for the crutch of not being able to shoot within 8 yards.

Having a melee spec is obviously not fine when a) it replaced a very popular ranged spec and b) most of the class despises it and will never play it.

Apart from the occasional 1 step forward and 2 steps back, every class/spec except Survival has gradually improved since WotLK.

As I said before.
Survival never had iconic gameplay - it always had iconic theme but equally iconic lack of gameplay.

Any skill Survival ever required was never in the rotation - it was about everything else (CC, Traps, etc), which pretty much only shines in PvP.

Blizzard is doing a pretty good job across the board with fun/unique/interesting gameplay for nearly every class/spec.
I welcome ranged survival if Blizzard brings it back, but I do not accept the bullshit instant spam Ranged Survival has always been.
Melee Survival at least has decent gameplay and room for improvement.
So I hope Blizzard just renames the melee spec as a 4th spec and gives us a proper Ranged Survival back so that everyone is happy.
The hate on melee is uncalled for.

Jesus fucking Christ you're on a roll. Survival had iterative improvements like every other spec. Black Arrow in 3.1, focus/Improved Serpent Sting/Serpent Spread in 4.0, mobile focus generators in 5.1. I struggle to call its 6.0 changes an "improvement" but it got attention there too. Stop rewriting history: you are fooling nobody but yourself. It's like you are assuming Survival never changed after patch 2.0. Before 3.0 you would have a point. But since then you had Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Lock and Load, Serpent Sting (+ all associated mechanics) which absolutely made for iconic gameplay.

As for Blizzard doing a "pretty good job across the board": this is fucking laughable. Only the most delusional of white-knights would make such a claim given the state of class design in this expansion. I haven't seen more resentment for class design since 2.0 times. Barebones specs with previously-baseline spells moved to talents, simplistic and dull rotations, key class fixes on legendaries/tier sets, tons of unique flavour and utility spells removed, etc. They tried to remake every spec at once and did a half-assed job on pretty much all of them. Class design is a shadow of what it was in 5.0.

If melee Survival had "decent gameplay" and melee hate is "uncalled for", more people would play Survival. But they don't, so you're wrong. The melee hate is absolutely called for. It's refreshing to see melee Survival to be generally regarded as the absolute joke that it is because the spec and it's players deserve nothing else.

[unbound]

Blizz tends to be very stubborn with their decisions. They still won't acknowledge that Survival is the least preferred spec, by far, in PvE content, and not even particularly favored in PvP content (in the lower half overall compared to all specs, and barely more popular than BM Hunter which is in a bad spot this expansion for PvP). It is far more likely that they will simply tweak the powers and keep them strictly melee.

[threads]

I only recently started playing SV, but the thing that drew me to it most is that its complex. I find it far more engaging that 90% of all other specs in game. I do think they should tone it down just a tad, to be similar to UH DK in terms of how busy it is, cos right now SV has just a tiny tad too much going on... also give it something that would make it more worthwhile to bring it along on raids instead of other less complex melees.

SV has the illusion of being complex but in reality it's just a unfinished mess.

[Gurg]

This is hilariously wishful thinking. What makes you think that a class full of people who chose the class specifically to play a ranged DPS will flock to a melee spec? What makes you think Survival has ANY unique selling point for other melee classes? Remember, in an expansion that introduced a double-jumping melee class, Survival came to the table with... basically Charge with a different animation. Being too complex is the least of Survival's issues; there are other complex specs in the game like Feral which, while not doing very well, didn't do nearly as badly as Survival. Even if Survival were simple, it still has the issue of a) being exactly the thing most Hunters rolled the class to avoid, and b) having no selling point to most melee players from other classes.

c) its button bloated mess of a spec which can be outperformed by most of the melees with far less effort.
d) its a melee spec with two ranged. In the case it falls behind you have no other option but to switch to ranged, exactly the reason why most of melee players are keeping away from it.

Survival is fine numbers wise, it's just a bit meh to play.

If Mongoose Bite had 0.5s reduced GCD it would be soo much more enjoyable and viable.

1. Make Fury of the Eagle off GCD - the way it was at launch.
2. Bake NH 4P set bonus into class. 2P too IF Flanking Strike is staying in its current form.
3. Bake all Passive Talents like Mortal Wounds, Guerrilla Tactics, Expert Trapper and maybe even Aspect of the Beast into class passive and make new/interesting talents to pick from. Thats one of survivals weaknesses too, fun core spec with uninteresting talents.
4. Reduce cost and damage of Flanking strike to Raptor Strike values and get rid of Raptor Strike.
5. Reduce MF stacks to 5 or even 4.

That would leave you with Mongoose Bite as primary attack, Flanking Strike as generator/energy dump, Lacerate for DoT and your Traps as fillers.

If they are up to "preserving spec fantasy" Raptor Strike could be reworked to be a disarm/slow (not interrupt), we have Muzzle as interrupt.

Second, its not fine number wise, it is IF you are using top build and you are experienced player, if you are into 60-75 percentile (mid ranged player) it falls behind numbers wise due to its mechanic, being outperformed by most of melee with less effort. Remember Combat rogue/Frost DK/Fury warrior have 3-4 buttons rotation. 3-4 buttons. rotation. nuff said.

SV has the illusion of being complex but in reality it's just a unfinished mess.

As one of "those people" who was looking forward to Survival, provided quite a lot of feedback during beta and actively defending spec when it was stomped on by hunter community - sadly i couldnt agree more.
I remember my arguments with @EpicFail, they tended to go on for some time, now, sadly, even so we dont agree on some stuff, i understand his point of view and i can say that his right more than "survival" people tend to admit.

In first batch of .5 patches i saw that survival will not be changed much, and probably wont be at all (im seriously hoping that im wrong) i jumped to Feral/ShadowP and keeping Survival as main alt which is on pair with my main.


How i see it.. blizzard is well aware that survival was a miss for several reasons, most of them are mentioned here in one way or another, they will not pour more resources into in and when legion ends they will just give a gun back to survival and say - "well, you can go back to pew pew now once your artifact is lost due to... lore plot."

For a spec that is advertised as "share a bond and hunt with your pet" it has waaaay little to do with a pet.

And Lastly, for tank spec:

My idea was simply to have a survivals version of "Lone Wolf" talent.

Taken all above that i wrote (about some spec changes) When you are not speced into Lone Wolf, your dont have Raptor Strike, your Flanking Strike would do its mechanic it it doing now on live, hard hitting attack with aggro on your pet.
Lacerates would be frontal cone DoT spell, much like Carve and it could increase Pets haste per application per enemy in 8y range, hence pets dodge.
Mongoose Bite would reduce Pets damage taken per stack, culminating with complete mitigation of an attack when Fury of the eagle is used. This would provide quite nice options and prep time for hard hitting attacks from bosses.

When you are speced into Lone Wolf, your Flanking Strike becomes Raptor Strike and your pet is gone.

.snip.
It needs a much more destinct theme be it shadow hunter, sentinel, farstrider or dark ranger
It should also dual wield

Honestly YES! Reduce GCD to 1s as all agi spec have and give us Dual Wield.
Or atleast survival's specific weapon, as tri-glaives like NE Sentinels have since vanilla,
something like Sentinels Glaive

[Deleted]

Honestly Beaster Master should've been the melee spec.

I think survival should rely less on gimmicks and gadgets.

Grenades, explosive traps, pocket throwing axes. They need to go. That would also remove some of the button bloat

It needs a much more destinct theme be it shadow hunter, sentinel, farstrider or dark ranger

It should also dual wield

[Bepples]

I feel they messed up on which spec got melee. BM should've been melee with ranged utility (pet) while Survival stayed ranged.

Honestly Beaster Master should've been the melee spec.

No Hunter specs should have been melee.

[Deleted]

No Hunter specs should have been melee.

Disagree.

/10

[Deleted]

No Hunter specs should have been melee.

Agreed.

/10

[Dangg]

This is hilariously wishful thinking. What makes you think that a class full of people who chose the class specifically to play a ranged DPS will flock to a melee spec?

There is a massive amount of player who just main whatever is good.

That said it's still a terrible decision by Blizzard to even create this spec.

[Nurvus]

Jesus fucking Christ you're on a roll. Survival had iterative improvements like every other spec.

Okay...

Black Arrow in 3.1,

You call that an improvement? I call that cashing in on nostalgia. The ability never belonged. It still doesn't belong.

focus/Improved Serpent Sting/Serpent Spread in 4.0, mobile focus generators in 5.1.

I guess taking away downsides is an improvement. Any gameplay changes, though?

I struggle to call its 6.0 changes an "improvement" but it got attention there too. Stop rewriting history: you are fooling nobody but yourself. It's like you are assuming Survival never changed after patch 2.0. Before 3.0 you would have a point. But since then you had Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Lock and Load, Serpent Sting (+ all associated mechanics) which absolutely made for iconic gameplay.

Serpent Sting was class wide.
They gave Survival the AoE bake in, and Marksmanship the refresh with Chimera Shot.
Black Arrow isn't iconic. It's a whatever ability added because Blizzard didn't think of anything else. Just a powerful dot on a cooldown that was given a chance to trigger Lock n Load on every tick.

Again, Survival has a strong theme.
It never had an iconic gameplay.
Instant spam, mobile generator and free RNG spam window is not what I call iconic.
The only downside/counterplay Survival ever had was ocasionally being undertuned.

As for Blizzard doing a "pretty good job across the board": this is fucking laughable. Only the most delusional of white-knights would make such a claim given the state of class design in this expansion. I haven't seen more resentment for class design since 2.0 times. Barebones specs with previously-baseline spells moved to talents, simplistic and dull rotations, key class fixes on legendaries/tier sets, tons of unique flavour and utility spells removed, etc. They tried to remake every spec at once and did a half-assed job on pretty much all of them. Class design is a shadow of what it was in 5.0.

I agree that Blizzard pruned too much stuff just to make room for Traits/Legendary/Set.

But when I say they did a pretty good job, I meant most concepts are pretty good. Plenty are unfinished - but worth improving.

Beastmastery is one of the better examples - it's too simple, needs lots of improvement, but I think the concept is the best yet.

If melee Survival had "decent gameplay" and melee hate is "uncalled for", more people would play Survival. But they don't, so you're wrong. The melee hate is absolutely called for. It's refreshing to see melee Survival to be generally regarded as the absolute joke that it is because the spec and it's players deserve nothing else.

More people don't play Survival because despite Mongoose Fury being pretty cool, everything else feels like a rushed filler.
To make it worse, the scaling suffers because of how everything outside Mongoose Fury does NOT scale with Haste or Mastery.
As a result, at low gear you have great frontloaded damage due to high base, but the low scaling starts hurting you as your iLevel increases and Survival falls behind in most areas.

Ranged Survival, though, was always just as unfinished, but at least it was so easy to play and efficient in every situation that anyone would do well with it.

Again, I'd like to see BOTH Melee Survival (renamed) and Ranged Survival available.
But I want them both done properly. Properly.