I dont see many survival hunters around

[Deleted]

I've been playing it as my main spec and enjoying it a lot. Skill cap is high and I'm making more than a few mistakes but I'm improving and I'm competitive with other dps of similar ilvl for the moment, I do worry about scalability however.

Any class' scalability comes primarily from how well it uses seconday stats. SV hunter gains very little from them.
Haste doesn't affect DoTs, only GCD & ability cooldowns.
Crit doesn't have any interaction beyond it's basic mechanic. Eagle's Bite can't crit either.
Mastery was doubled and is still weak.

Essentially, when a DPS class is favouring versatility (where much of the value of the stat is defensive), something is wrong.

Also, oddly the spec currently favours Tenacity pets because Mastery only procs extra Mongoose Bites off pet Special Attacks, not auto-attacks, and Tenacity pets have more Special Attacks. Even pet taunt can proc this which is more than a little bit silly!

The spec needs some tweaks to give it greater benefit from at least one, preferably two of these secondaries.

I'd suggest that Mastery instead procs off pet auto attacks (and perhaps also from Lacerate ticks) and haste increases DoT tick speed. Crit can be the "bad" stat but should still be able to crit on the ticks from Eagle's Bite.

An alternative might be for Crit to have some cooldown reduction interaction e.g. Critting with a Mongoose Bite reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Eagle by 2-3s.

[marzix]

I think our Artifact ability should consume whatever Mongoose Bite stacks we have, so we only need to get to 3, then pop the instant stack of 3, then Artifact ability to have 6 stacks and a little more duration to pop off more Mongoose Bites. Also, I would like Mongoose Bite getting locked out for like half a second after the buff wears off. So many times spamming the button hoping that I'll get 1 last Mongoose in but it ends up being the 1st stack of a new buff.

[Silver77s]

Dats pretty simple, hunters were ranged for quite few years now. People choose ranged classes because they don't want to stick their nose in gigantic boss butt. Hunter was a bit different than other standard casters. Also pets are not so fun to play with. Now blizzard thought it will be brilliant idea to combine 2 terrible things into one for someone who liked ranged class:

Being a melee
Having a pet

I imagine when Blizzard makes a change to the game they have part of their attention devoted to the past and maintaining consistency, but the majority of their focus goes towards how they feel things should be. If I recall correctly, they said survival had the weakest spec identity previously and they wanted to do something to make it feel unique amid the hunter's other specs. I can respect that. I may not like it, but I understand where they're coming from. In their eyes they couldn't make another ranged spec and keep it feeling different enough from other hunter specs. So, they went melee. Maybe you played ranged survival and it was your favorite. That sucks. It seems like most people play FotM for their class, and while survival has had its moments it often lagged behind marksmanship, causing most people to default to marksmanship for progression. Personally, I'm actually glad Hunter's have a melee spec right now. I'm not happy that no new ranged classes have been added to the game since vanilla, but I'm thrilled that if I want to 'go a little crazy' and hang up my bow for a spear I can do that now instead of having to roll up an entirely different class. I don't think survival is perfect right now, but I have hope for it.

By the way, if you picked hunter because you enjoy playing ranged petless classes I'm afraid you picked the wrong class. Historically, hunters were one of the two pet classes that launched with WoW, and they've been defined in no small part by their pets for most of their life. It wasn't until WoD that Lone Wolf even became a thing (some 10 years into the class's existence). Switching to Warlock out of frustration probably isn't a good call, either. Because of the pets. And also they suck.

[Deleted]

Love playing SV just sayng

[Amsden]

Melee just isn't my thing. I love having it as an option though, in case I ever get bored and want to mix things up.

[Sylv_]

SV = garbage not real hunter.

[Sarevokcz]

I imagine when Blizzard makes a change to the game they have part of their attention devoted to the past and maintaining consistency, but the majority of their focus goes towards how they feel things should be. If I recall correctly, they said survival had the weakest spec identity previously and they wanted to do something to make it feel unique amid the hunter's other specs. I can respect that. I may not like it, but I understand where they're coming from. In their eyes they couldn't make another ranged spec and keep it feeling different enough from other hunter specs. So, they went melee. Maybe you played ranged survival and it was your favorite. That sucks. It seems like most people play FotM for their class, and while survival has had its moments it often lagged behind marksmanship, causing most people to default to marksmanship for progression. Personally, I'm actually glad Hunter's have a melee spec right now. I'm not happy that no new ranged classes have been added to the game since vanilla, but I'm thrilled that if I want to 'go a little crazy' and hang up my bow for a spear I can do that now instead of having to roll up an entirely different class. I don't think survival is perfect right now, but I have hope for it.

By the way, if you picked hunter because you enjoy playing ranged petless classes I'm afraid you picked the wrong class. Historically, hunters were one of the two pet classes that launched with WoW, and they've been defined in no small part by their pets for most of their life. It wasn't until WoD that Lone Wolf even became a thing (some 10 years into the class's existence). Switching to Warlock out of frustration probably isn't a good call, either. Because of the pets. And also they suck.

meh, if they really wanted, they could make SV ranged different enough, but someone high up thought it would be cool to bring back nostalgia of raptor and mongoose back from vanilla. aside from flanking strike, which sounds more like something BM would have, their entire toolkit is something, that could easily work with ranged.

And yes, Im still salty, because I liked SV ever since they gave hunters focus in Cata and only reason MM was almost always better spec is because Blizzard never listened to SV feedback, not because it hasnt had its own identity... Grats, now survival be even less played than before, experiment over, can i get my bow back now pls?

[Deleted]

I'm primarily a melee player, have been since vanilla.
If i play a hybrid and a choice is given I'm always gonna go for the melee spec, e.g. as a Druid I'll choose Feral over Balance, Shaman Enhance over Ele. etc.
I've had a hunter alt since forever but other than leveling it and getting a basic set of gear every expansion I've never played it much.
This time i might give it a fair shot, seems like a fairly high skill cap spec, and i enjoy a challenge.

[Bepples]

It seems like most people play FotM for their class, and while survival has had its moments it often lagged behind marksmanship, causing most people to default to marksmanship for progression.

Beep beep, bullshit alert.

Survival absolutely shat all over MM in terms of usage in high-end raiding for at least 5 tiers (Dragon Soul - Blackrock Foundry inclusive):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets..._d4/edit#gid=5

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/16543665059

The best part about Blackrock Foundry is that even when BM was by FAR the most dominant spec in that tier, you still had 4 times as many Survival hunters as you had MM hunters. This is actually a similar situation we have right now but with the positions changed: it goes something like MM >>>>>>>> BM >>> SV. Even with BM having a fraction of the amount of players as MM, SV has a fraction of what BM has.

So 6.2 is probably the first time Marksman was the most played since Wrath (I don't have numbers right now from before Dragon Soul).

Survival's "moments" seem to actually be pretty consistent: it was consistently either the most popular hunter spec (and at some points one of the most popular specs in the game period), or the second most popular hunter spec behind BM. MM hardly ever even came close (again, with 6.2 being the exception, but it's hard to see how that can be used as an argument in your favour when Blizzard all but deliberately gutted SV in that patch).

I've said this earlier and I'll say it again: what Blizzard managed to do in 6.2 and 7.0 is take one of the most popular ranged specs in the game and turn it into something that only appeals to a tiny, niche group of players. I don't want to hear another fucking excuse about how this is somehow a good thing because "it's more unique now": they could also make the spec "more unique" by turning it into a worthless support role spec that does 25% of the damage of the 2nd worst spec and focuses entirely on utility instead. That's also an idea that appeals to like a dozen players and it's even more unique than Survival now. They don't do it because, like I said, like 12 people will play it. Just like they shouldn't have made Survival melee because the vast majority of players, especially hunters, will not play it. So no, they did not somehow make the spec better by making it more unique and no amount of desperate fanboy mental gymnastics will change that, no matter how well they regurgitate Celestalon's "class fantasy" forum ramblings. They took a popular spec and made it into an unpopular spec, and that's that.

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I'm primarily a melee player, have been since vanilla.
If i play a hybrid and a choice is given I'm always gonna go for the melee spec, e.g. as a Druid I'll choose Feral over Balance, Shaman Enhance over Ele. etc.
I've had a hunter alt since forever but other than leveling it and getting a basic set of gear every expansion I've never played it much.
This time i might give it a fair shot, seems like a fairly high skill cap spec, and i enjoy a challenge.

Hey look, even MORE proof that the Legion hunter changes were made for people who weren't hunters. What a fucking surprise. Like there aren't a billion other examples of this exact thing in this thread alone.

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SV = garbage not real hunter.

SV is a meme spec and always will be a meme spec.

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meh, if they really wanted, they could make SV ranged different enough, but someone high up thought it would be cool to bring back nostalgia of raptor and mongoose back from vanilla. aside from flanking strike, which sounds more like something BM would have, their entire toolkit is something, that could easily work with ranged.

And yes, Im still salty, because I liked SV ever since they gave hunters focus in Cata and only reason MM was almost always better spec is because Blizzard never listened to SV feedback, not because it hasnt had its own identity... Grats, now survival be even less played than before, experiment over, can i get my bow back now pls?

Refer to the above links. SV was consistently more popular than MM and was actually usually a more powerful spec, with 6.2 being the exception for obvious reasons. Otherwise I agree with you.

[ItachiZaku]

My SV would be higher, if I didn't have to quest and worry about dumb ass rep at 110 to do WQs. Legion is a fail expansion for someone like me.

[kaminaris]

By the way, if you picked hunter because you enjoy playing ranged petless

Never said i hate pets. I love them when soloing, doing quests and other stuff. But on raids they are petty meh (switching targets over long distance), its a bit annoying.
But being a melee and having a pet is just hell for me

[renatompassos]

I was skeptical of survival at first, especially since I loved old survival, but now melee survival is my favorite spec. I wish they implemented old survival better in BM or mm. BM is ok for questing, boring for long fights, mm is annoying to me I don't know how anyone can enjoy that. I think another reason you see so few survival hunters is because it was immediately said to be the worst spec.

How can anyone enjoy that? Sniping everything from miles away, sending a rain of arrows (not barrage, the 2nd golden trait) when it procs, not bothering about pet positioning (or even if it's alive...) AND besides all that topping the meters?

Frankly I don't get how can anyone NOT love that.

[Appelgren]

Survival is really fun and ill probably stick with it and wait for buffs....

[Bepples]

How can anyone enjoy that? Sniping everything from miles away, sending a rain of arrows (not barrage, the 2nd golden trait) when it procs, not bothering about pet positioning (or even if it's alive...) AND besides all that topping the meters?

Frankly I don't get how can anyone NOT love that.

As usual, people distract the discussion with starry-eyed class fantasy nonsense.

Marksmanship has gimped mobility due to Aimed Shot and high RNG dependence. It's a caster clone. And historically people have opted to not play Survival (until 6.2 it was by far the least popular hunter spec, usually with no more than 25% of the players of the second-place spec). So why has Blizzard been forcing people into the caster-style spec for the past year and a half? You tell me, but it probably has similar reasoning behind it to removing a significant amount of utility for BM and Marksman and then going on to pretend that it's a good thing for those specs.... somehow (it probably has something to do with "class fantasy" again).

[Fenixhart]

As usual, people distract the discussion with starry-eyed class fantasy nonsense.
.

Things that may or may not affect what draws people to a class is a distraction of why people aren't playing a class?

[Deleted]

Survival is really fun and ill probably stick with it and wait for buffs....

Buffs like https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...77927265103872 ?
Not really sure what they want to do with survival tbh.

[Wardley]

So, I've actually got 3 hunters on the Broken Isles and so I've decided to levelling them all up as a different spec. So far, I've got my BM hunter to 110 and he's raiding and my Surv is 106 (MM is still stuck at 100).

I think the problem with Survival is that they've just made it too 'complicated' (and I know there's going to be some people who strongly disagree) with the Mongoose Bite/Fury resource. Stacks up to 6 times, lasts 14 seconds, subsequent stacks doesn't reset the time left so if you're luckily you might get the final 6th Mongoose bite out before it resets. Or if you just miss it, you've then got 1 stack, and a 10 second cooldown so that's a waste of DPS.

Personally - I would rather they changed it so that it was something similar to Arcane Mages. Mongoose Bite gives you a charge of Mongoose Fury. Fury buffs Flanking Strike by X% but increases cost by Y focus per charge. Charges stack up to 4 (maybe 6 with talent option?).

That would give a bit more of interaction between the different abilities rather than just waiting until you have 3 charges of Mongoose Bite ready and then button mashing that and hoping for procs.

[Feanoro]

And historically people have opted to not play Marksman (until 6.2 it was by far the least popular hunter spec, usually with no more than 25% of the players of the second-place spec).

You mean when other specs were numerically superior? Because it was the raiding spec for classic, most of Wrath, Firelands, Highmaul, and you went MM in BRF if taking the priority targets approach.

It's nice to see hunters using their brains for movement again, not bouncing around like spazzes spamming instant casts.

[Spl4sh3r]

I am not allowed to play Survival in heroic raids because we are too many Melee. So I play it when I can but still focus mainly on the Survival Artifact. Also since I don't have the hidden appearance on it yet I am still questing in another spec, because of the requirement for color unlocks on Hidden Appearance (200 WQ, 1000 kills and 100 dungeons)

[Fang7986]

What's sad if if Sims came out tomorrow saying SV was top DPS spec (or a world first level guild killed a boss with 2 or more SV hunters), you'd see way more SV hunters overnight. Players seem to play the FotM rather than what they enjoy. Sims and damage meters were a mistake