Survival chance of it being a Melee/Ranged hybrid?

[Hangnail]

I don't know if blizzard would ever be open to the idea of a Ranged/Melee hybrid due to balancing issues but it seems like the survival spec would be great to change it to next expansion with harpoon and disengage already in out toolkit.

Here is how I think the spec could play. You would harpoon to get in melee and have a few abilities that you would fire of in melee (i.e. a few bleeds maybe stick an explosive to the mob that would leave a dot or have a delayed explosion) then you disengage out and have a few abilities you would fire off at range (i.e. an explosive shot, serpent sting). At some point your bleeds you applied melee would be wearing off so you would have to harpoon back in to reapply. Then its back to range to do more ranged stuff. Giving the spec a very active play style with a lot of mobility built into the kit.

That is the basic idea that there could be a ton to build off of. I personally think a playstyle like this could be very fun and active and the talents could be built around having a more melee heavy build or a more range heavy build. It also seems to fit the survival theme.

[Graharam]

Even though i miss halving a polearm in my secondary weaponslot for stats "Ranseur of Hatred" my answer is no.
Survival is fine as it is I guess..

[ozusteapot]

Would be interesting I suppose. Certainly tenfold better than the state the spec is in currently.

[Hctaz]

I think they need to start fixing the spec by removing some of what makes it hard to play. Right now there are just too many things that make it really annoying to play. I really like the idea of a melee hunter spec but I don't like the way they made it work this expansion. I really hope they don't just revert it next expansion though. Would be lame.
People aren't playing the spec because it has too many buttons to press not because it's a bad idea.

[Deleted]

Even though i miss halving a polearm in my secondary weaponslot for stats "Ranseur of Hatred" my answer is no.
Survival is fine as it is I guess..

It is not fine however. It is the least played spec in legion. And that is REALLY bad considering how popular hunter is as a class. Next time go to the hunter orderhall. Count how many how many surv. hunters you find compared to all the BM and marksman.

Blizzard gave up at this point. They know no one likes the play style and it will most likely get changing for next expansion. Right now they are just going to tweak numbers and try not to anger the few people that are playing it.

Surv. hunters is sadly one of legions failures. Everyone was at first super excited pre legion patch only to find the harsh reality very soon.

To resound to OP's post. No going melee to ranged over and over sounds like a horrible idea lol. It should either be melee or ranged. And in this case melee. One of the biggest issues is that surv. has zero identity or anything visually stunning to witness when playing. For example compare a Ret pally rotation to a surv. hunter. Why in gods name will anyone want to play as surv. after looking at how awesome a ret pally is.

[MisterBigglez]

Going into melee to apply dots to then go back to range to shoot would just be a pain in the arse. You madaswell just stay in melee and shoot them point blank in the face.

Look at Red Mage in FFXIV. That is a hybrid of melee and range which works well. You build up two bars with your spells. Certain spells build up one side while others build another. You need to keep them balanced. Once you hit max or near max, you unleash that power into powerful melee strikes. Once that power has been expended, you retreat back to range and repeat.

[Nairesha]

If it would be a bit like in D&D / Pathfinder, "Battle Mage" or "Ranger / Mage" - it would be highly dependant on "CDs" IMO.
See Shootywooty - that's a good example.

Build up (aka enchant), then use.

[Deleted]

Not possible. Ranged have certain mechanics to do. If we take nighthold mythic for example, spellblade, gul'dan, ... would be straight up impossible to do with such a melee / ranged hybrid thing. Even if people were to like it, you'd have to bench them or force them to respec for many bosses.

[Pigglix]

Pretty sure if Surv had a simple rotation like havoc dh and pulled sub rogue/arms war numbers, the spec would be way more popular, even more than mm or bm i guess

[TheCount]

One of the things that turned me off to surv as melee was the pet.
I know Unholy dks get a pet but for some reason with a melee hunter it just seemed really weird
I would have liked to see them get a Lone Wolf talent or something similar.

[jlee24219]

That's the exact reason I love survival, it's so cool to me fighting side by side with my pet.

[Bepples]

Pretty sure if Surv had a simple rotation like havoc dh and pulled sub rogue/arms war numbers, the spec would be way more popular, even more than mm or bm i guess

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.

[Shelly]

I'd prefer it be made into a tanking spec actually.

All it really needs is an active mitigation ability where your pet would absorb X% of the next attack and you'd try and keep mend pet up.

[Scrotch]

I'm also hoping that they transition survival into a full on tank spec in the next expansion. Having a tanking option would be way more interesting than having a melee spec when there are already so many melee specs in the game. The pet could easily be used in a similar way to monk's stagger, having the player spend some attention on keeping the pet healed as it takes some percentage of your damage.

[Deleted]

I can already assure you, survival won't become a tank spec because there are tons of problems in the way for making it work.

First and foremost, you can't really tank bosses with your pet because pets are annoying af to move around. So if your pet had to tank, it would need to stick to you like glue no matter what rendering the whole idea of a pet obsolete to begin with. It would also make positioning more of a hassle. In addition to that, if pets were actually capable of taking debuffs and what not, they'd just cheese through every mechanic there is. That is also why growl doesn't work on raid bosses.

You'd need to do the actual tanking. If it were to remain a pet class, you'd need to be able to share your health pool with your pet. Sort of like a permanent link. But then again, that makes 0 sense class fantasy wise.

[Deleted]

Survival Main here.

It already IS a melee/range hybrid. Atleast in PvP where you go throwing axes, grenade, explosive trap, range stings etc. But I would VERY much welcome more range damage to their toolkit while keeping their melee bulk damage as mongoose bites. I would also welcome a more shadow hunter feel to survival come 8.0 but we'll see I guess. I'm always drawn to hybrids like this and unholy, enhancement but survival was the most enjoyable for me this expansion. Maybe in PvE you are melee all the time which is true but in PvP they are definately hybrids.

[Pandragon]

This is what survival used to be, it used to have melee attacks for when someone got close enough.

Honestly, this is what Worgen should have been. A melee/ranged class. Start in normal form, cast ranged attacks until you build up a bar, then gap close wolf transform and unleash melee attacks until the bar is depleted, then disengage back into normal form. It's ridiculous that Worgen is a race "I've got razor sharp fangs and claws now.....hand me my sword".

[Deleted]

SV is fine, with pace of all the fans "i liked when i only pressed ES until my brain collapse", real problems show when you try to play it in PVE where there are already enough melee that bring "more" or deal more dmg.

- - - Updated - - -

This is what survival used to be, it used to have melee attacks for when someone got close enough.

Honestly, this is what Worgen should have been. A melee/ranged class. Start in normal form, cast ranged attacks until you build up a bar, then gap close wolf transform and unleash melee attacks until the bar is depleted, then disengage back into normal form. It's ridiculous that Worgen is a race "I've got razor sharp fangs and claws now.....hand me my sword".

Yep, the old "ZG Fist Weapon" procs could have been a better SV artifact than the polearm, you would have fight still melee with your pet BUT with a twist to actually going "beast mode" and had some DPS spike like Pala Wing/DH Meta with all the traps/dot that we know.

[Archermit]

I think they tried something new with the hunter and I don't think it's worked out like they hoped, I am not sure if enough people wanted a melee hunter enough to warrent keeping it and I wouldn't be surprised to see the spec removed in 8.0 and the hunter going to 2 specs like a DH

[the boar]

survival as melee is a good idea, it just needs a lot of work. i am a little surprised it hasn't received any big overhauls yet .. but at the same time, maybe not. it needs so much work done, they are probably still working on it, and i wouldn't be surprised if it was still not even ready for testing when 7.3.5 is on the ptr. but we'll see.

it is a fun spec with cool stuff, but a lot of the abilities feel very disconnected. hopefully it is getting a lot of love and attention to fix it up behind the scenes. given all the other specs getting overhauled, it doesn't surprise me that they can only fix so many at a time. as pointed out, they possibly are working from most played to least played. but who knows.

as for melee/ranged hybrid.. nah. it's already annoying when our holy paladin is in melee bashing the boss or whatever and they get a ranged mechanic put on their head, and their slow ass can't get out of the way in time and we all die, or even more annoying, a big void zone spawns there or whatever.

in tbc survival was the spec you brought to buff the melee group. in wotlk explosive shot kinda gave it its own character.. but as time went on from there, all three specs started to look really similar. the legion shake up is a nice idea. given how many melee hunter npcs there are, a melee spec only makes sense. and survival definitely makes the most sense out of all of them to be melee. people will piss and moan about it to the end of time, but survival as melee is a nice change in my book. hopefully it gets that love it needs.