Thoughts on Survival Hunter Changes

[Bepples]

So yeah, the smallest change is enough for people to abandon something. The hardcore spec-driven playerbase that "wait until it gets better again" - or are even remotely invested in a spec - is probably much lower than you think and pretty insignificant. (@ Hellfire Citadel roughly 80-90% played MM).

Yes: it is known that every single player of a spec is part of the hivemind and has exactly the same preferences, investment to the spec, and tolerance for class changes before they decide to quit. All of them.

What a joke. No, you don't get a mass exodus every single time any change happens. Extent of change absolutely does matter. Hellfire Citadel is a very unique example where both other Hunter specs were extremely weak while MM was one of the strongest in the game due to the stars aligning in favour of the spec's damage profile in terms of set bonus, legendary effect, itemisation, and fight design. The sheer fuckery of spec tuning across the board in that patch was enough to be considered a major class design shift, quite frankly.

They are also specs that are poorly implemented.
Pretty sure players expected more of both specs. Just like it's the case with Melee-SV.
You can repeat this as much as you want, but as long as a significant amount of the melee-SV defenders complain more than just a bit about it's current design... there is simply no telling in how the theme and idea is being percieved.

Yes they are, and I'm noticing a trend: more remade specs are doing worse off. Survival, Outlaw, and Demonology are the most underplayed specs this expansion in that order, and they are also the most changed specs; again, in that order (maybe? Outlaw v.s. Demonology is debatable, but SV is certainly the most changed). If the class design team is now making a track record of fucking up specs the more attention they give to the spec, they shouldn't be remaking specs.

Nevertheless, even with the failures of Outlaw and Demonology, Survival still has a fraction of the playerbase of either of those specs, and let's be quite honest: when you see stated reasons for why people don't play Survival, how often is it due to it being melee? Most of the damn time. Yes, it's anecdotal, but we don't have any opinion survey or anything. Plus, Hazzikostas came out and said that he thinks Hunters aren't playing it because most of them want to play ranged, so it's pretty far fetched to deny being melee is a major factor in its unpopularity.

And you don't need to post and misinterpret several warcraftlogs, just like you did last time (as if saying: "it's performing well, look at the top logs") because they are by no means relevant. If that other spec is 100x easier to play, with nearly the same/better results, with more QoL features and the same amount of useful PvE-related-utility and even better responsiveness to mechanics. You are already losing the significant majority of the playerbase to the other spec

Feral mirrored Survival in nearly every way before 7.3. It had a complex and convoluted playstyle for underwhelming damage and it was a melee spec sharing a class with a ranged spec. It was one of the game's more underrepresented specs, but not nearly to the degree of Survival. The key difference was Feral still had an audience it could rely on from previous expansions. Survival does not. Survival relies almost entirely on getting new players from other classes or fresh subscriptions, and let's be honest: the spec is far too uninteresting to have any hope of succeeding in that area. You could argue that this could change, but it's very difficult to come up something fresh, exciting, and unique for just another physical melee weapon user in a game full of them. So Survival's audience is people who really want a melee weapon user with a pet that isn't undead (because Unholy also has a pet)... which is very specific and niche, hence the low representation.

And it's hard to understand why it's in that state... is DH-DPS just as horrible? (I really don't know, never played it) I'd guess not, so it's not like they can't come up with a melee spec when needed.

Because Blizzard got hyped up on the idea and 'fantasy' and right now they think they can have all of class design focus on theme entirely while eschewing everything else and still have it work out. Although that doesn't explain anything because Survival doesn't even have a strong theme. I seriously think it's a mixture of that and melee favouritism; they just find melee specs cooler and more interesting and so they want to shift their focus towards those.

DH is an interesting example. From what I've heard, the spec does have significant issues. Its playstyle is overly simplistic and RNG-based, and it has a lot of mandatory talent choices (it's scary how many specs in Legion can be described accurately by that last sentence). It IS the most popular spec; probably because of its simplicity and competitiveness combined with the fact that it's the cool new thing and starts at level 98. A large part of their advertising for this expansion includes Demon Hunters, so it's obviously going to be very popular. It also doesn't have a previous iteration so people can't reminisce about older, better times for the spec.

[Deleted]

Feral mirrored Survival in nearly every way before 7.3. It had a complex and convoluted playstyle for underwhelming damage and it was a melee spec sharing a class with a ranged spec. It was one of the game's more underrepresented specs, but not nearly to the degree of Survival. The key difference was Feral still had an audience it could rely on from previous expansions. Survival does not. Survival relies almost entirely on getting new players from other classes or fresh subscriptions, and let's be honest: the spec is far too uninteresting to have any hope of succeeding in that area. You could argue that this could change, but it's very difficult to come up something fresh, exciting, and unique for just another physical melee weapon user in a game full of them. So Survival's audience is people who really want a melee weapon user with a pet that isn't undead (because Unholy also has a pet)... which is very specific and niche, hence the low representation.

I really don't think it's hard to come up with a theme for survival. Traps, tracking, animal spirits, dots, bleeds and bombs.
Survival should be very tool heavy, it not really lacking the theme, but lacking the gameplay that can utilize this theme.
The Survival artifact weapon is also extremely bland. There is pretty much nothing noteworthy about it. It's not enhancing your basic skill set in any way whatsoever with anything other than stats.

No extra skills (other than the artifact ability itself which does add nothing but an extra spell to click to your rotation), no extra mechanics, no tools, nothing - it's a stat stick. It's not even like Windburst which adds a new way to add vulnerable, adds movementspeed, slows enemies and starts doing AoE dmg at some point. Or BM's Titan's Thunder/SotS or even the 2nd pet in general, which is very thematic by itself.



How is melee-Survival's specific but range SV isn't btw?
If that would be anything to go by, range SV would be underrepresented too..
Nah, that doesn't cut it. You could insert about every single spec in the game in that argument.

They rushed the shit out of melee-survival or something, I don't know. During a time where something as swift and new as DPS-DH exist, which is a completely new playstyle that involves movement and mobility, I expected more.

[Ineluki]

I still dont see how Blizz thought it would be a great idea to completely remove a spec from the game when there are people who have been playing it for years.

[Jaransan]

I still dont see how Blizz thought it would be a great idea to completely remove a spec from the game when there are people who have been playing it for years.

I dont think it would have been so bad except that when they moved survivals abilities to the marksmanship tree they also completely changed them.

[Ineluki]

I dont think it would have been so bad except that when they moved survivals abilities to the marksmanship tree they also completely changed them.

Agreed, If I could select certain talents as MM and get a similar play style to the old Survival it wouldnt bother me so much. As it is though there is nothing left of the old survival.