I don't really get all the hate for SV hunters

[Aliven]

My case was: Fix the specc, instead of remaking it and having the end-result be an entirely different play-style from the original version.

And BM would have the same result - it was still a ranged specc, with focus on Pets, that would have been transformed into a melee specc, with focus on pets.

I dont believe blizz want to make 4th spec for class. If they started doing this then they should give each class 4th spec. Too much work i believe.

[Darkeon]

I dont believe blizz want to make 4th spec for class. If they started doing this then they should give each class 4th spec. Too much work i believe.

Well, there is a correct way of doing things - and then there is a faster, half-assed way of doing things. The latter is usually faster and requires less work, indeed.

[Devilyaki]

Frost and fire are to similar one should go healing, discipline and holy are to similar one should got tank, all the rogue ones are the same one should be range.. if you think mm and survival were the same these should make sense to you..

[bloodmoth13]

what if a melee wanted to play a pet class that tames their pets? before hand there were no options.
Also i think there should be more archer specs, hunter does hunter but there are many other archetypes that havent been explored

- - - Updated - - -

Frost and fire are to similar one should go healing, discipline and holy are to similar one should got tank, all the rogue ones are the same one should be range.. if you think mm and survival were the same these should make sense to you..

Frost and fire have different mechanics and different fantasy, old survival and MM were both 'archer'. Disc and holy, granted, did have this problem, they decided to rework disc as a hybrid shadow/light balance spec. Id actually argue for the rogue one, i think it would be great for rogues to get a ranged spec, fits the fantasy very well and fast flowing energy could make a great resource for a ranged spec, could use melee 1h weapons as thrown weapons or bows/guns, assassination and subtlety both have the same distinction issues as MM and survival, they could easily merge them into 1 spec and develop a fresh new spec tbh

[Devilyaki]

Naw fire and frost both fire spells so they are the same, they are ‘mages’ just like mm and survival are ‘archers’ .. this line of thinking is so stupid, they were changed because they wanted to and gave bs reasons some people nodded their heads too. To real hunters though it was bs and still is.

[Rhaxus]

You people keep acting like there haven't been threads over and over since BC to give melee-hunters a build/spec choice to emulate Rexxar or to relive vanilla, the only weird thing is the choice of survival instead of bm, but i guess bm wouldn't have offered as different a playstyle as they wanted

[Darkeon]

You people keep acting like there haven't been threads over and over since BC to give melee-hunters a build/spec choice to emulate Rexxar or to relive vanilla, the only weird thing is the choice of survival instead of bm, but i guess bm wouldn't have offered as different a playstyle as they wanted

Mostly because the issue is not that there is a Melee-Specc, but of how it was introduced. I'm sure you people should have figured that out.

[Cyanu]

You just stated a totally normal distinction between 3 ranged weapon user themes and added "it's a joke" to the end to try to discredit it. We aren't seeing the joke here. We had 3 perfectly good ranged specs which absolutely had distinct and recognisable identities. There was zero reason to add a melee spec; especially that late into the game's life.

It is fucking ludicrous how you people pretend that having 13 melee weapon users is totally fine but 3 ranged weapon users was just too many. The melee favouritism is nauseating.



> Ranged Survival wasn't good because it was a slightly-different ranged weapon user
> Melee Survival should stay because it is a slightly-different melee weapon user



At it's core, Arms is similar to Fury. Assassination is similar to Subtlety. Affliction is similar to Destruction. Fire is similar to Frost.

If you generalise to the point where you ignore everything other than what weapon type/spells the class uses, you can start to say any two specs are redundant. Literally the best argument you people can come up with is that Survival and Marksmanship both used a ranged weapon. That's actually full of shit.

Yes, totally remaking ANY spec from the ground up specifically to alienate an existing audience to try to pull in a different one is always a bad idea.

expect that those '13 melee weapon users' are not even that focused on their melee weapons

does one really need to explain how a death knight (super heavyweight plated melee with necromantic abilities) is different from a rogue (stealthy,agile,controlling,cunning) or an enha shaman (mail wearing elementalist that mixes fire/frost/nature attacks with healing and melee) or a demon hunter(hyper mobile and hyper aggresive with a demonic form) or a retri paladin (classical knight with priestly abilities emphasis on buffs and support with reasonably strong heals along with melee)

to what? a guy that's an expert marksman with a crappy pet vs a guy that's a crappy marksman with a monstrous pet vs a guy that's an unremarkable marksman with an unremarkable pet and badass elemental infused arrows?

are you kidding? survival was a spec that almost felt forced into this game because 'we got to think of a 3rd hunter spec' it didn't even had an identity, mostly generic crap like agility increases...

a better parallel would be to force a 3rd DPS warrior spec into this game, that's what the old survival was

[HollyCarp]

I like Survival, at least somewhat. It's kind of fun.

That being said, I most often quest in BM spec (at least throughout Legion) because between Dire Beast, Hati, Rexxar and the occasional pets HE summons, I was leading an entire squadron into battle, and that was even more fun.

I find, however, that I was using Marksman sometimes during dungeons and raids because even if the pets didn't die, I felt they could get in the way as far as seeing PBAOE reticules for the tanks and melee. If that's a misconception on my part, then great, because my gun has far more AP invested than my bow.

Anyway to avoid derailing: I do like Survival and I will be reading the changes planned for it. I'd really hate for it to be a "blacklisted" spec.
And once in a while I do still play it for variety.

Not to mention I love the way the Highmountain Tauren all salute you when you're in Survival spec and carrying Talonclaw across your back.

[Donkeywing]

But that doesnt change the issue with SV and MM being too similar.

It's funny this argument lingers on despite it being such a weak one. I already partly answered this 1 - you only have to change one spec if you believe two specs are too similar. Legion mm and wod sv are nothing alike.
However you can counter this pathetic argument in like a thousand different ways if one tries hard enough.

First assumption you make is that it actually was an issue - but was it really? The class had immense popularity so its doubtful something as noticable as identical specs was an actual bothersome issue for most hunters. Besides, there weren't too many complaints about it anyway (and all specs had fair representation) untill blizzard themselves pushed that message. Kind of like the button bloat term - nobody mentioned it untill blizzard introduced pruning. It seems to be that in hindsight ppl are assuming all kinds of issues and problems that werent actual problems at all. There's actually nothing wrong if two specs are somewhat alike - theres a stunning 12 classes you can turn to.
Second assumption is saying you think they're too similar - when in reality it isnt all that clear. WOD mm & sv played nowhere near identical. Sure if you break it down into isolated abilities you could argue succesfully that they were somewhat alike, however the playstyle of the specs was different - primarly because mm had superior mechanics in almost every way and mm had to capitalize on those strenghts, making your priorities different and your playstyle.
Third implied assumption is that you can't overdo it. There might actually be an issue if specs are too distinct from each other. Thats a bit harder to argue over, but its wrong to assume that couldn't happen. I believe they did overdo it.

Another thing to note is that even if you still believe in your assumptions - and you completely disregard the fact you would only need to change 1 spec out of 2, why the fuck would your solution be to make it melee? There's plenty other ideas out there for hunters specs (think of dark hunter for example) that would be much more popular. As I've already stated; changing to melee was bound to cause problems, such as the division I mentioned.
And even if you do decide melee was the best solution anyway - you would seriously need to take a look at yourself and ask the question whether this change isn't actually causing more issues than its supposed to be solving.

[Aliven]

It's funny this argument lingers on despite it being such a weak one. I already partly answered this 1 - you only have to change one spec if you believe two specs are too similar. Legion mm and wod sv are nothing alike.
However you can counter this pathetic argument in like a thousand different ways if one tries hard enough.

First assumption you make is that it actually was an issue - but was it really? The class had immense popularity so its doubtful something as noticable as identical specs was an actual bothersome issue for most hunters. Besides, there weren't too many complaints about it anyway (and all specs had fair representation) untill blizzard themselves pushed that message. Kind of like the button bloat term - nobody mentioned it untill blizzard introduced pruning. It seems to be that in hindsight ppl are assuming all kinds of issues and problems that werent actual problems at all. There's actually nothing wrong if two specs are somewhat alike - theres a stunning 12 classes you can turn to.
Second assumption is saying you think they're too similar - when in reality it isnt all that clear. WOD mm & sv played nowhere near identical. Sure if you break it down into isolated abilities you could argue succesfully that they were somewhat alike, however the playstyle of the specs was different - primarly because mm had superior mechanics in almost every way and mm had to capitalize on those strenghts, making your priorities different and your playstyle.
Third implied assumption is that you can't overdo it. There might actually be an issue if specs are too distinct from each other. Thats a bit harder to argue over, but its wrong to assume that couldn't happen. I believe they did overdo it.

Another thing to note is that even if you still believe in your assumptions - and you completely disregard the fact you would only need to change 1 spec out of 2, why the fuck would your solution be to make it melee? There's plenty other ideas out there for hunters specs (think of dark hunter for example) that would be much more popular. As I've already stated; changing to melee was bound to cause problems, such as the division I mentioned.
And even if you do decide melee was the best solution anyway - you would seriously need to take a look at yourself and ask the question whether this change isn't actually causing more issues than its supposed to be solving.

As for somebody who want to point assumptions you make a whole lot yourself.

I noticed button bloat in Cata when lock got something like 17 buttons in main rotation. It was an issue. Same with SV and MM being similar, remember watching guides about hunter overall and this was something which was common opinion.

Can you provide data that it had immense popularity?

They were similar because core abilities were nearly the same.

Solution to make it melee was probably because certain players wanted melee hunter. I remember reading about it from time to time in every single expansion since BC.

[Bepples]

what if a melee wanted to play a pet class that tames their pets? before hand there were no options.
Also i think there should be more archer specs, hunter does hunter but there are many other archetypes that havent been explored

What if I want a ranged weapon user that can multidot with poisoned munitions? We now have no options for that.

Frost and fire have different mechanics and different fantasy, old survival and MM were both 'archer'.

All I'm hearing here is "Specs that share a foundational archetype can be made different by their mechanics and fantasy unless it's a ranged weapon. If you generalise to just "ranged weapon" for all the Hunter specs, you must apply that same standard to every other class. Then you will find that several of them can be made to seem like 2 or 3 redundant specs. Mages are just 3 casters. Rogues are just 3 one-handed weapon users. Arms and Fury are just two rage-using weapon users.

You people are pushing a double standard. You have no problem writing off all the differences between the Hunter specs and saying they were the same thing because of the ranged weapon but you swear up and down that it doesn't apply to any other similar situation. It's dishonest and pathetic.

You people keep acting like there haven't been threads over and over since BC to give melee-hunters a build/spec choice to emulate Rexxar or to relive vanilla, the only weird thing is the choice of survival instead of bm, but i guess bm wouldn't have offered as different a playstyle as they wanted

I've also seen threads asking for a Hunter healer spec. Multiple threads.

By your logic, people have been asking over and over for that.

In fact, what really matters is the extent. Not a lot of people were asking for a melee spec. Threads asking for a melee spec were either ignored or had negative response towards the OP. I've actually checked on a lot of old threads using Google searching with custom time ranges and this is the pattern in all of them.

does one really need to explain how a death knight (super heavyweight plated melee with necromantic abilities) is different from a rogue (stealthy,agile,controlling,cunning) or an enha shaman (mail wearing elementalist that mixes fire/frost/nature attacks with healing and melee) or a demon hunter(hyper mobile and hyper aggresive with a demonic form) or a retri paladin (classical knight with priestly abilities emphasis on buffs and support with reasonably strong heals along with melee)

You are contrasting differences between classes with differences between specs. Yes, a Warrior is different to a Death Knight. But an Arms Warrior is not as different to a Fury Warrior. They're still different, but not as much. And I find it hypocritical to say Survival and Arms are the same thing due to their use of ranged weapons but Fury/Arms or Assassination/Subtlety aren't. Once again, I'm not denying those specs have distinctions, but I am denying that Survival and Marksman didn't.

to what? a guy that's an expert marksman with a crappy pet vs a guy that's a crappy marksman with a monstrous pet vs a guy that's an unremarkable marksman with an unremarkable pet and badass elemental infused arrows?

Yes, that's a quick and dirty but reasonably accurate description of the differences. And, yes, those things are substantially different enough to warrant their own specs.

are you kidding? survival was a spec that almost felt forced into this game because 'we got to think of a 3rd hunter spec' it didn't even had an identity, mostly generic crap like agility increases...

That's just your shit opinion and clearly most Hunters disagreed. It had a unique and recognisable identity that actually managed to stay coherent for several expansions, unlike melee Survival which tries and faIls to be several different things at once. Melee Survival is the one that was forced into this game because "we got to think of a Hunter melee spec". This is projection and deflection.

And you're going back to the era of Lightning Reflexes to try to prove a point, as if Survival never got it's own active abilities and class design since Burning Crusade doesn't matter? How contrived and desparate.

a better parallel would be to force a 3rd DPS warrior spec into this game, that's what the old survival was

Actually, the better parallel is the other pure DPS classes which are apparently fine having 3 ranged DPS or 3 melee DPS but Hunter somehow isn't.

I noticed button bloat in Cata when lock got something like 17 buttons in main rotation. It was an issue. Same with SV and MM being similar, remember watching guides about hunter overall and this was something which was common opinion.

But Cata SV and WoD SV are not the same thing. WoD SV was far more divergent from Marksmanship and that was our status before the melee change. SV and MM were, at a time, very similar. But they were becoming less and less similar each expansion, just like literally any other pair of DPS specs of the same class in the game.

Can you provide data that it had immense popularity?

Yes, actually. You can too if you had the initiative to perform a simple Google search.

https://cynwise.wordpress.com/2014/0...r-patch-5-4-2/

https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve...classes/hunter

They were similar because core abilities were nearly the same.

The core abilities like the focus generator were the same because they were both Hunter specs and you expect specs of the same class to share abilities. This was true for most classes. Don't buy into this post-Legion nonsense where every spec apparently needs to be its own spearate class.

It's signature, spenders, and passives were all different.

Solution to make it melee was probably because certain players wanted melee hunter. I remember reading about it from time to time in every single expansion since BC.

The "solution" to make it melee (not a real solution because there was no real problem) stems from Blizzard's unquenchable melee favouritism. The class designers that came in during WoD development simply found melee specs to be more exciting than ranged specs. They wanted to "innovate" for the Hunter class with no real investment in the class or regard for the people playing it and they got over-excited at the prospect of a melee Hunter to the point where everything else was disregarded. I think they expected the playerbase to be enamored by melee specs as much as they were and the unpopularity of Survival in Legion shocked them, hence this major concession towards ranged in 8.0 Survival.

[Deleted]

I'm enjoying the new SV a lot tbh =)

[Nefarious Tea]

As for somebody who want to point assumptions you make a whole lot yourself.

I noticed button bloat in Cata when lock got something like 17 buttons in main rotation. It was an issue. Same with SV and MM being similar, remember watching guides about hunter overall and this was something which was common opinion.

Can you provide data that it had immense popularity?

They were similar because core abilities were nearly the same.

Solution to make it melee was probably because certain players wanted melee hunter. I remember reading about it from time to time in every single expansion since BC.

There literally is data showing Survival was played much more than Marks during Mists and WoD. But, much like the Trump administration, what the data means versus what it's being used it to say aren't the same thing.

Everyone played ranged Survival because it was the superior DPS option to Marks, not because it was intrinsically more fun. The same thing is seen now; Marks is much higher DPS than BM. However, Marks is not as easy as BM - but then again, because BM is so obnoxiously braindead (mash two buttons on CD, then mash the filler when the other two are on CD), most people play it.

[bloodmoth13]

What if I want a ranged weapon user that can multidot with poisoned munitions? We now have no options for that.

There is literally no reason that cant be added as talent options for BM or MM, adding melee as a talent on the other hand isnt an option, so nice try. Dot is a game mechanic, no reason it couldnt be applied to literally any spec, specs should instead be molded around identity/fantasy. In most cases when looking at an ability for OLD survival there wouldnt be ANY situation where you would say that that particular ability wouldnt also suit either MM or BM, thats a BIG teller that the specs should probably just be merged, try that with frost and fire: "Hmmmmmm would Flamestrike make sense on a frost mage?" yeahnonicetrybutyoufailed.

All I'm hearing here is "Specs that share a foundational archetype can be made different by their mechanics and fantasy unless it's a ranged weapon. If you generalise to just "ranged weapon" for all the Hunter specs, you must apply that same standard to every other class. Then you will find that several of them can be made to seem like 2 or 3 redundant specs. Mages are just 3 casters. Rogues are just 3 one-handed weapon users. Arms and Fury are just two rage-using weapon users.

Im not pushing a double standard, i agree that rogues need better distinction and i stated before that i think assassin and sub could easily be merged and split through talents, so no there isnt a double standard. I think fury and arms fulfill different fantasies, but i dont think they are executed upon well enough to warrant a separate spec so i could see some further work for them too, you are being dishonest about mages though, fire and frost are literally opposites, stop comparing them it makes you look stupid. And honestly, ranged weapons could go in many directions, only that a hunter shouldnt be following many of them.

You people are pushing a double standard. You have no problem writing off all the differences between the Hunter specs and saying they were the same thing because of the ranged weapon but you swear up and down that it doesn't apply to any other similar situation. It's dishonest and pathetic.

And again, NO I DONT. Many specs have strong distinction, druids fight in different forms, shaman have range and melee, death knights have frost and unholy, Current hunter has Pet, Archer and Melee with pet etc, and i agree that rogues need shaking up and perhaps even warriors, it wouldnt be hard to make one war dps spec that splits between 2h and dual wield, hell that could be the first talent tier, wouldnt even be shocked, but at the very least they actually use different weapon loadouts unlike old survival which was the exact same loadout as mm and bm...

In fact, what really matters is the extent. Not a lot of people were asking for a melee spec. Threads asking for a melee spec were either ignored or had negative response towards the OP. I've actually checked on a lot of old threads using Google searching with custom time ranges and this is the pattern in all of them.

Yeah alot of hunters are religiously opposed to melee hunters to the point their brains shut down and they cant even argue, fact is there were solid arguments for it and blizz eventually agreed pro-melee had the better arguments.

Yes, that's a quick and dirty but reasonably accurate description of the differences. And, yes, those things are substantially different enough to warrant their own specs.

No its not. Survival wasnt even that anyway, it was just a mess thematically, it honestly existed to soak up all the abilities rejected by the other specs. It would be more thematic for beast master to be using poisons, and marksman potentially to use special munitions. the name survival doesnt even imply special munitions, perhaps if the spec was called specialist i could agree, that would probably make sense, but that could easily just be a subset of marksmans niche, no reason it couldnt be. The thing is, there needs to be variation within a spec, and there was more distinction within certain specs than there was between marksman and survival, 2 WHOLE SPECS.

[bigbleach]

- Took away a fun spec
- No one asked for it
- Shit design
- Shit to play
- Literally every other melee spec is better designed and more fun

people asked for melee hunters since they killed it., fyi. like naga and the tinker class

[Big Mama]

I don't agree with the opinion that the spec is bad. The new gameplay of this spec actually fits the fantasy behind it a lot more than the old version.

I wanted to try the survival hunter myself to see if it is really so bad or not. I gave it a shot and actually found out that playing the spec is different but fun. I enjoyed it almost as much as playing my other hunter (specced as MM for quite some time now). However I am a weird person and I would not enjoy playing the survival spec on my Night elf huntress. Although I do not RP in WoW, I do have to feel that my character fits the class (and also the spec in this case) or I will eventually stop playing it.

So my surv hunter is actually an orc female huntress, fighting alongside her hyena companion (thank god for the upcoming BfA model update) and it works great for me.

[tkioz]

Speaking as someone who doesn't have a problem with the spec itself, it's decent in the open world, but a bit clunky and need of some tuning, what I dislike is inviting a hunter to mythic+ and discovering that they are melee when I really wanted a ranged player to even out the team.

[Gaaz]

Hunters had melee abilities mainly because of PvP and inability to shoot at close range. That was the primary niche of survival, along with the trap theme. Ordinarily, outside of PvP, no one was expected to use these abilities. Though at one time there was a period when it was a microscopic DPS gain to weave a certain melee strike into the rotation by going in and out of the dead zone. But that tactic was available to all 3 specs, not just survival (it was a base ability for all specs).
So no, melee hunters were never a thing in the first place.
Another point bordering on idiocy I constantly see in similar threads is that BM should have been made melee instead of Survival. Like really? Lets not butcher this spec, lets butcher another. Imagine police killing one of the 3 hostages by mistake in an assault. And when asked how did this happen and what would they have done differently, they would answer that if they could replay the situation they would have killed another hostage and let this one live. This is madness (not Sparta!).

[ydraw]

Ranged survival was the most popular hunter spec for most of Cata and half of WoD.

Melee survival is the least popular spec of any class in the 14 year history of the game.