so, no ranged survival :(

[Eapoe]

Did he say he played MM because it was fun?

Think you’re missing the point. One post he states he plays MM out of necessity, but then the next he posts he played SV anyways because it was fun. So did he play MM out of necessity or did he stick to SV instead because it was fun?

[Kaver]

Think you’re missing the point.

Yes I did. You didn't mention SV in your former post so I assumed you were stil referring to MM. But it was just a misunderstanding. I understand now

- - - Updated - - -

So did he play MM out of necessity or did he stick to SV instead because it was fun?

Basically he is saying that when MM was OP people played it because they were forced to it. But when SV was OP people played it because it was fun. He has no way of knowing this.

He is twisting the data to fit his bias. He cannot see from the data that people in general didn't choose SV out of necessity when it was the best.

[todzilla85]

Pretty bummed that survival has had no major changes. I was hoping they would at least take bits and pieces from legion and ranged survival just to make it feel like a unique spec.

More so I'm even more bummed that none of the talent trees recieved any big changes. Bm Mark's and survival all have very stale trees right now with very little choice. There are clear winners in pretty much every row or if one of the talents is modified by anything it is pretty much guaranteed to be the clear winner in every scenario regardless.

One with the pack will always trump anything pretty much after the first tier.

Careful aim destroys every talent in that row and doesnt make any sense in that.

If mongoose bite is modified by anything it wins out over all the others. And even if it isnt, it scales to well so it eventually will win

Stuff like that not being changed is really annoying.

[F Rm]

Right, but he states he played MM out of necessity in one post but then says he plays it anyway because it was just fun. Doesn’t this contradict itself or am I missing context somewhere?

Basically he is saying that when MM was OP people played it because they were forced to it. But when SV was OP people played it because it was fun. He has no way of knowing this.

He is twisting the data to fit his bias. He cannot see from the data that people in general didn't choose SV out of necessity when it was the best.

You guys are aware that you are talking about different cases there, aren't you?

He said that he had to switch to MM for HFC out of necessity as, SV was not a viable option for anyone who even remotely wanted to aim for progression at the time.

He kept playing SV for a lot of BRF even though it wasn't the top spec as it, unlike in HFC, wasn't completely destroyed yet. He did this because it was fun to play.

You know what? All I hear is excuses. First you bring up logs to say that survival was so popular. Then I countered that by saying it lost 80% parses from HM to BrF then abandoned like a sunken ship. Now you say that's not important. It's just pathetic. You also forget that with Legion, Havoc Demon Hunter came into the mix, another melee. Think if Havoc DH came in WoD and was the top damage of em all in BrF, survival would have even less parses like the rest of em, just to counter that silly argument you now try to come with because you're out. It's just too easy. RSV savior was always the good damage it brought from WotLK to MoP. When they were not as good anymore, they lost 80%, yes, 80% parses in from one raid to another. And just to bring your sorry excuse of an argument, WCL was growing in popularity in WoD, so by your argument people used WCL more in BrF than in HM, so the number is more likely higher than 80%. So yeah, if I am going nonsense, you go fpiceailore as usual.

Ranged Survival was a so much of a fpic eailure that they changed it to melee. And I'm loving it.

You still fail to grasp the point he made about WCL as a tool during that period compared to how it's being used today. WCL was fairly new to the community back then and proportionally, very few made use of it.


In short...

If a spec had 1000 parses back then, that was proportionally A LOT more compared to a spec that has 1000 parses today. Simply because of the reason that there are nowadays a lot more players that use WCL.

So by that, when you said that "MSV was only 3000 parses behind RSV", the only thing this does is show that RSV managed to get 3000 parses more than MSV back in a time where very few actually reported on that site, when MSV achieved that number in more modern days when a lot more players are actually reporting logs/parses.

The point here is, the comparison you made there, does not hold up simply because of the major difference in the number of players "reporting in" during each period.

---

You say that RSV lost 80% parses during a specific period? Yeah, the fact that the remaining amount was still higher than the what the peaks of current MSV are at, this should tell you something.

RSV savior was always the good damage it brought from WotLK to MoP. When they were not as good anymore, they lost 80%, yes, 80% parses in from one raid to another.

What do you mean by "good damage"?
If you mean "better than other specs" then you're wrong.

There were a lot of times where RSV did not bring the best damage compared to other specs. Not just going from Highmaul into BrF.
Still...it did not always tank in terms of representation.

so by your argument people used WCL more in BrF than in HM, so the number is more likely higher than [B]80%.

Yep, it was probably a few % higher.

Still not a valid argument for your comparison.

Ranged Survival was a so much of a fpic eailure that they changed it to melee. And I'm loving it.

Tell me again why people should take you seriously? When you post things like this…

[Hero2Zer0]

No, not for real. It's why the best survival Hunter in the world use both dots even on single target. And good luck using two buttons on cleave/aoe. You actually want to use the whole of 4 abilities in your main rotation, aka like 90% of all the dps specs in the game. The reason why people think it's two buttons is because how strong the burst phase is and the better you handle that one the more damage mongoose BITE will do in a fight.

A BM Hunter talking about easy specs. Hilarious. I play both specs and Survival has more skills required to do good damage than a BM Hunter ever had. Not saying Survival is hard, but point me to a dps spec in the game that is.

Agreed we make fun of our guild master every raid, she plays BM and likes to call people out who cant play there class, while playing a Pets Babysitter. Hardest spec would probably be feral, atleast until blizzard takes them out of alpha stage.

[Kaver]

He said that he had to switch to MM for HFC out of necessity as, SV was not a viable option for anyone who even remotely wanted to aim for progression at the time.

Yes, and what I'm saying is then, how can he know that other players weren't switching to SV out of necessity when SV was OP? How can he know that the other players didn't want to play MM more than SV when SV was OP and that they didn't choose SV only because they were forced to? How can he know that?

[F Rm]

Yes, and what I'm saying is then, how can he know that other players weren't switching to SV out of necessity when SV was OP? How can he know that the other players didn't want to play MM more than SV when SV was OP and that they didn't choose SV only because they were forced to? How can he know that?

You're still not getting it.

Yes, ofc MM was good during HFC It was very good. But the point he made was that players did not switch away from SV at the time simply because MM performed well. People were forced to switch to MM out of necessity as SV was performing so badly that it equated to tank-level of damage.

If a spec performs well enough to be decent for progress(or just higher difficulty raiding in general) then there's no necessity for anyone to switch specs.
This however wasn't what happened going into HFC.

It wasn't: "Oh, RSV's no longer beating MM on damage. I guess we're gonna have to switch now"
It was literally: "Wait, you want to progress HFC as RSV? Yeah sorry, we better not attempt this new boss at all then..."

[Bepples]

So your reply to me directly ignored the entire point of the post to make a point that has nothing to do with what I stated. Good job there. Usually your posts are pretty intelligent but that one missed the mark to come off as ignorant. Utility is not being held hostage, it just doesn’t have the same type as other melee bring. You also glanced over the damage difference of my post. Nice try to have a counter argument of picking 1 small part of the post to base your entire counterpoint off of though. I expect that from others.

I didn't put much mind to your post because frankly it's the same desperately-centrist, excuse-laden word salad you always post. I read enough to note that you implied Survival was at a disadvantage because it's melee and that to remedy that they should put crucial utility in Survival for the sake of a fair comparison.

If you want a fair comparison, look to Uldir. This was early on in the expansion so there wasn't so much gear baggage. Survival did notably more than both other specs in single target. It had the same shared class utility the other specs had. It even had the benefit of MM being totally nonfunctional in a PvE environment as the spec was flat-out not finished when 8.0 launch (just might have something to do with the sheer amount of time and effort poured into Survival in that testing process in yet another attempt to make melee Survival work). The result? It was still an unpopular spec. It was only slightly more popular than MM which, as I said, literally didn't work and was bottom-of-the-barrel for PvE damage.

So, yeah, struggling to compete against other melee and the ranged Hunter specs is one big reason for why the spec is unpopular. But that doesn't magically make being melee not the problem. After all, this issue is a direct result of being melee.

Maybe people would feel better if Blizzard put -ist at the end of it? Since then it would be more of a representation of a survivalist in the wild using traps and other things found in nature (such as poisons on weapons) to bring down prey and live in the wilderness. That’s how I always thought of the name and never really bothered me.

Hmm, let me think: NO. Both Survival and Survivalist are far more vague and open-to-interpretation than the other spec names. For example, your description here doesn't actually specify whether the spec should use a melee or a ranged weapon. Someone like me would say it makes sense for it to be ranged, but others would say melee.

How do you know this?

How do you know that people didn't play Survival out of necessity (when it was the best) like you say they did with MM (when it was the best)?

Well, for one, I explicitly said people like me i.e. people who liked Survival.

Secondly, the advantage Survival had over MM in Highmaul was not even close to the same degree as the reverse in HFC. MM was still a perfectly acceptable spec in raiding in Highmaul; it was even better than Survival on some specific fights. In contrast, MM was leagues ahead of SV in HFC on Patchwerk single-target which was SV's very best scenario in 6.2; it was only worse as you looked at other areas namely priority add burst which just happened to be how almost every HFC fight was designed.

I'm sure some people felt pressured to play SV in Highmaul but there was plenty of BM/MM representation in Highmaul even as Survival dominated. In HFC you simply could not pick anything other than MM for the majority of fights in there; there were a couple where BM came close, but MM was far and away the ONLY valid option for most of the raid.

Maybe it was survival or no raid just like it was MM or no raid.

It wasn't. As it turns out, categorical similarities and differences aren't the only thing that matters. Extent matters too.

I’m not going back to look, but didn’t he also comment he swapped for raids when SV became bad?

I played BM for Blackrock Foundry simply because it was a good opportunity to try out the spec; the last time I had played BM before BRF was literally in classic WoW. I liked it quite a bit but not as much as Survival. Why didn't I stick to Survival, you might ask? Because there was no indication that BRF would be the last time SV was playable in raiding. If I could look into the future and knew that in just a few months we would learn that the spec would be unplayable for a year before being completely removed in the next expansion you'd better believe I would have played SV intead.

Like every other raiding Hunter I played MM in HFC. That was the only choice.

Right, but he states he played MM out of necessity in one post but then says he plays it anyway because it was just fun. Doesn’t this contradict itself or am I missing context somewhere?

Learn to read. I shouldn't have to hold your hand through this. What I said was MM was better for Brackenspore in particular but I played SV anyway because I found it to be more fun. The other Hunters in my raid group did the same. We didn't have that luxury in HFC. It was MM or bench.

You know what? All I hear is excuses. First you bring up logs to say that survival was so popular. Then I countered that by saying it lost 80% parses from HM to BrF then abandoned like a sunken ship. Now you say that's not important.

I didn't say it wasn't important. What you're consistently failing to take into account is the scale of the representation numbers you're looking at. Survival in Highmaul was a monster of a spec; at its peak it had 50% more fortnightly parses than the 2nd most played spec in the game and made up about 8-9% of all tracked players in mythic (p.s. that's really high. An 80% drop from such a huge number is still a pretty good representation level; it certainly wasn't the Hunter spec of choice in BRF but it was by no means abandoned.

It's just pathetic. You also forget that with Legion, Havoc Demon Hunter came into the mix, another melee.

Besides the point for a second: don't you think this is a good reason not to make a Hunter spec melee? You know, because all the people who were interested were obviously going to play the vastly more new and exciting melee spec instead?

Think if Havoc DH came in WoD and was the top damage of em all in BrF, survival would have even less parses like the rest of em, just to counter that silly argument you now try to come with because you're out.

And if the removal of the Serpent Sting initial tick and the addition of the legendary ring happened in BRF the spec would have been just as abandoned as it ended up being in 6.2. You know, just while we are on the topic of meaningless hypotheticals.

It's just too easy. RSV savior was always the good damage it brought from WotLK to MoP. When they were not as good anymore, they lost 80%, yes, 80% parses in from one raid to another.

And, even after losing 80% of its fortnightly parses it was still pulling in thousands of parses each week from Hunters preferring to play it over the best option. The current has trouble pulling in thousands of parses per tier.

P.S. You have absolutely no standing to ague that SV had a significant tuning advatage for FOUR YEARS as you are claiming here. Present some data or GTFO. Your argument that people secretly hated Survival and only played it for the damage is patently absurd; it can be disproven by simply asking people who played at the time or, better yet, looking at what they were saying during the time. I linked to you a review of WoD Survival which called it, and I quote, the saving grace of the Hunter class. This was BEFORE any sort of tuning (Survival was in fact UNDERTUNED at the time) and was a comment purely made on playstyle. People genuinely liked it and can back it up far more than you can with your disgusting, manipulative revisionism.

And just to bring your sorry excuse of an argument, WCL was growing in popularity in WoD, so by your argument people used WCL more in BrF than in HM, so the number is more likely higher than 80%. So yeah, if I am going nonsense, you go fpiceailore as usual.

Stupid deflection, as per usual. You made a ridiculous comparison between Survival's parse counts of today with that of BRF. That doesn't work for the reason I described. End of story.

[Kaver]

Well, for one, I explicitly said people like me i.e. people who liked Survival.

Yes I did notice you said "like me". But what about the rest of the hunters? You say that the data proves that Survival was the most popular spec. But it doesn't. It showed that a lot of people played survival but it doesn't show why. A lot of them maybe only played it simply because it was the best. Even if was only slightly ahead. We cant tell that from the data.

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Secondly, the advantage Survival had over MM in Highmaul was not even close to the same degree as the reverse in HFC. MM was still a perfectly acceptable spec in raiding in Highmaul; it was even better than Survival on some specific fights. In contrast, MM was leagues ahead of SV in HFC on Patchwerk single-target which was SV's very best scenario in 6.2; it was only worse as you looked at other areas namely priority add burst which just happened to be how almost every HFC fight was designed.

I'm sure some people felt pressured to play SV in Highmaul but there was plenty of BM/MM representation in Highmaul even as Survival dominated. In HFC you simply could not pick anything other than MM for the majority of fights in there; there were a couple where BM came close, but MM was far and away the ONLY valid option for most of the raid.

I agree with what you are saying here.

But the point was that, you cannot say from the data that Survival was a more popular spec than BM or MM because it was more fun. We don't know that from the data.

- - - Updated - - -

It wasn't. As it turns out, categorical similarities and differences aren't the only thing that matters. Extent matters too.

This you don't know. You don't know if some players was forced to play survival even if it was only 3-5 % better. Some Guilds will always demand people to play the best spec even though the other specs are only slightly worse.

For some people it could be Survival or no raid. You don't know that it wasn't.

[Orby]

I always feel like Survival was supposed to be what it currently was the whole time. I remember back in vanilla there were literally people trying out melee hunters with survival back then, survival was even portrayed as having a bit more trap based, close range, and having more defence style to it. If anything I am surprised it took them to long to get right. In WoD they basically became a hybrid of both MM and BM so it already felt redundant.

Now with the talent trees no longer a thing any limitations holding them back from that vision are all gone so now they can abandon all those limitations and just go with it. Old school survival was only ever good when the old talent trees were attached to give hunts more of a random edge. Without the talents they just became a third wheel with nothing unique and anything it did have that was unique was better with MM or BM anyway.

Personally a part of me is sad that old Survival is gone, but it had its time and over that time it did became pointless.

[naeblis495]

Hunter is the only pure dps that have the choice to go distance or melee . I like it .

[Doffen]

Tell me again why people should take you seriously? When you post things like this…

Why don't you tell that to fpiceail instead whos actually always starting with the insults and stuff? You noticed I only write to him that way? Why don't you ask him the same question? For reasons I guess.

Quit the fucking bias and see stuff for what it is before you try to partake in the discussion. I just answer with the same coin.

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Agreed we make fun of our guild master every raid, she plays BM and likes to call people out who cant play there class, while playing a Pets Babysitter. Hardest spec would probably be feral, atleast until blizzard takes them out of alpha stage.

Yeah, it's quite obvious that most here, or most hunters doesn't even try survival if we are to see how people talk about it here. Sure its an easy spec, but what spec isnt in 2020

[F Rm]

Why don't you tell that to fpiceail instead whos actually always starting with the insults and stuff? You noticed I only write to him that way? Why don't you ask him the same question? For reasons I guess.

Quit the fucking bias and see stuff for what it is before you try to partake in the discussion. I just answer with the same coin.

"Always" huh?

Anyway, I have already commented on it in the past, that I don't agree with the way in which he formulates himself sometimes.

---

Also…

I just answer with the same coin.

Why? What would be the point of doing so(in context)?

[Saltysquidoon]

Hey, guys remember when every hunter spec was functionally identical except for when they got to press their one special 'spec' button? Yeah those were the days, let's go back to that.

[Bepples]

Yes I did notice you said "like me". But what about the rest of the hunters?

Who the fuck knows? I was not talking about the rest of Hunters. I was explicitly talking about people like me; people who liked Survival. Stop trying to build this absolutely ridiculous strawman. It isn't working, just like the rest of your inane arguments on this forum.

You say that the data proves that Survival was the most popular spec. But it doesn't. It showed that a lot of people played survival but it doesn't show why. A lot of them maybe only played it simply because it was the best. Even if was only slightly ahead. We cant tell that from the data.

We can tell because there were many tiers before T17 where SV Hunter was a very popular spec even when it was only slightly ahead of the specs at best and usually wasn't even the best option.

But the point was that, you cannot say from the data that Survival was a more popular spec than BM or MM because it was more fun. We don't know that from the data.

I'm not going to claim, and have never claimed, that SV was more fun than the other specs for everyone. That's obviously a subjective matter. I am going to claim that a lot of people found SV fun because a lot of people played it when they could. I CAN tell that from the data. End of story.

This you don't know. You don't know if some players was forced to play survival even if it was only 3-5 % better. Some Guilds will always demand people to play the best spec even though the other specs are only slightly worse.

For some people it could be Survival or no raid. You don't know that it wasn't.

I mean, we kind of do. Of course there were probably some guilds out there obsessed with making everyone play the best option but it's absurd to argue they were any significant percentage of the total, especially when the hotfixes that made SV the best spec came after the cutting-edge early Highmaul progression. Plus, like I said many times arleady, Survival wasn't even the best spec for every boss in there. And we had a tier right before Highmaul in the previous expansion where Survival was notably lower than the best spec (BM) but still saw more play.

So your blithering nonsense about "you don't know! you don't know" really doesn't work. Like I said to Buffoon over there, you can look to what people were saying about Survival at the time. Many people found it fun, period. There's no twisting of history that makes it a badly designed spec that people only begrudgingly played.

I always feel like Survival was supposed to be what it currently was the whole time. I remember back in vanilla there were literally people trying out melee hunters with survival back then, survival was even portrayed as having a bit more trap based, close range, and having more defence style to it.

Your memory is heavily distorted, then, because Survival was decisively a ranged DPS even in Classic. Melee Hunter was entirely a meme and people discussed it/tried it as a joke. It was never intended nor possible to use it as a valid playstyle. Survival's melee enhancements were few and limited, and the most significant one of them was high up in the tree so it could be accessed by other specs; they existed solely for situational PvP purposes where you would get stuck in melee for some time. The intent was always to get back to ranged.

P.S. why even bring up trapping? Yes, Survival originally had a trapping focus. Survival now does not. It has no baseline improvement to trapping over the other specs. I know what you're trying to do in this post; you're trying to draw links between modern Survival and classic Survival in a feeble attempt to give it some historical validity. That's not going to work. Survival right now is the worst representation of its historical identity out of the three specs.

If anything I am surprised it took them to long to get right.

"Get it right" lmao. It has no coherent identity at all and pretty much none of the aspects that made it appealing before Legion. It's meant to be the opportunist, utilitarian spec. Nothing says that less than arbitrarily not using the ranged weapon. In every single iteration before Legion it used a ranged weapon. Stop trying to pretend that wasn't the case. Nobody likes a revisionist.

In WoD they basically became a hybrid of both MM and BM so it already felt redundant.

Uh, no. This is a totally nonsensical talking point. It might sound catchy to you but that's because you're minimally informed and have zero capacity to remember the actual state and identity of the specs before Legion. SV did not have any more pet focus than MM did so it couldn't be a hybrid of MM and BM. At most you can argue it was redundant v.s. MM, which is also a lie because it was quite a different approach to ranged combat than SV both thematically and mehcnanically. You might as well be trying to convince Warriors that Arms and Fury are redundant, or Warlocks that Affliction and Destruction are redundant. You won't be doing that, though, because you have a double standard specifically for Hunters.

Now with the talent trees no longer a thing any limitations holding them back from that vision are all gone so now they can abandon all those limitations and just go with it. Old school survival was only ever good when the old talent trees were attached to give hunts more of a random edge. Without the talents they just became a third wheel with nothing unique and anything it did have that was unique was better with MM or BM anyway.

What are you smoking? There was no dependence on talent trees and ranged SV had two expansions without them, including MoP which many consider to be its very best iteration (it was also the most popular). The elements of the talent trees that made Survival unique were all built into the baseline. Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Lock and Load, Trap Mastery, Entrapment, Improved Serpent Sting, etc. all became baseline for Survival when we lost talent trees. It focused on sustained damage through DoTs and crowd control v.s. the other specs and it did those things very well. For that reason it was a popular spec all the way until Blizzard deliberately nerfed the ever-loving shit out of it to stop people from playing it.

If you want to see a spec that's mostly useless look to the current melee SV. It's basically "BM but melee". Or, in other words, "BM but worse".

Stop basing your arguments off your own faulty memory. Look this shit up before spewing crap all over the forums. I shouldn't have to waste my time explaining this to you.

Personally a part of me is sad that old Survival is gone, but it had its time and over that time it did became pointless.

No, it wasn't pointless. That's just your god-awful recollection speaking. It had a good place in the Hunter class before, unlike now.

Hey, guys remember when every hunter spec was functionally identical except for when they got to press their one special 'spec' button? Yeah those were the days, let's go back to that.

Nope because that's not what happened. Even if it were true, it would be better than having SV be functionally useless like it is now with its "BM but melee" identity.

[Saltysquidoon]

Nope because that's not what happened. Even if it were true, it would be better than having SV be functionally useless like it is now with its "BM but melee" identity.

You're quite right my mistake I was thinking of MoP where each spec got two whole special spec buttons and merely the entire rest of the kit was identical. How silly of me.
(But Mumma Tom said survival and BM had to share cobra shot, not MM though he gets chimaera shot because he's a special boy)

[Kaver]

Who the fuck knows? I was not talking about the rest of Hunters.

But you often do. In many of your posts you're talking for other hunters. If you always just gave your own opinion then it would be fine, but you often try to speak for others.

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I am going to claim that a lot of people found SV fun because a lot of people played it when they could. I CAN tell that from the data. End of story.

How can you tell from the data that they played it because they found it more fun? You have also often claimed that SV was more popular than BM and MM in general because it was more fun. How can you tell that from the data? How do you know that people didn't play the spec because it was just better? Can you show me the data that specifically shows what you claim?

- - - Updated - - -

Get a clue about the data before you make such stupid statements. Survival was literally the most popular spec in the game in Highmaul.



Green is SV, orange is MM, blue is BM.

source: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...&spec=Survival

It was pretty popular for previous tiers before then.

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

Hellfire Citadel is the only tier where ranged Survival was abandoned, and that was out of necessity. No guild would let you raid as SV, and for good reason.

With this graph for example you insinuated that Survival was more popular because it was more fun than MM. But how do you know that? It might as well been more popular because it was simply better in performance.

You are twisting the data to fit your agenda and nobody is going to take you seriously if you do that.

[Doffen]

How can you tell from the data that they played it because they found it more fun? You have also often claimed that SV was more popular than BM and MM in general because it was more fun. How can you tell that from the data? How do you know that people didn't play the spec because it was just better? Can you show me the data that specifically shows what you claim?

He can tell that from the data, but when BM had 80% of the hunter parses in BrF or when MM had the same in HfC then we can't tell from the data that those specs were fun. Survival wasn't even that bad compared to BM in BrF(very close actually) but still Survival lost 80% of the parses going from HM while from the looks of it, people preferred BM when they actually started to be closer in performance. And he said it himself, that's because BM was fun to play then. So if both Survival and BM was so fun and so close in performance, why did 80% play BM then or why did Survival lose 80% of all the parses from HM if Survival was "that fun". It's fucking opinions and he cherry pics "facts" to prove him right, when they in reality shows differently.

If anything, what we can take from those logs is more likely that people thought BM was more fun than Survival. Again, he has written that himself a few pages back. His arguments just backfires and he's shooting himself in the foot. It's just bitterness. Good grief.

[Orby]

Your memory is heavily distorted, then, because Survival was decisively a ranged DPS even in Classic. Melee Hunter was entirely a meme and people discussed it/tried it as a joke. It was never intended nor possible to use it as a valid playstyle. Survival's melee enhancements were few and limited, and the most significant one of them was high up in the tree so it could be accessed by other specs; they existed solely for situational PvP purposes where you would get stuck in melee for some time. The intent was always to get back to ranged.

I am well aware the spec was a meme the point being that I feel the intention from Blizzard was to make that spec a more melee based spec from the get go, but due to hunter being one of the last classes to have their spec finished I feel Blizzard rushed it out the door before release, let's be honest vanilla WoW was very unfinished at launch and that's not distorted memory. Although it might be more speculation. But since it was such a weird mish-mash of abilities it was hard to find it a real reason to go full survival in the early days.

You said it yourself Survival was mainly for PVP where you would get stuck in melee for some time, hence, melee spec. Or more importantly 'surviving melee' spec

P.S. why even bring up trapping? Yes, Survival originally had a trapping focus. Survival now does not. It has no baseline improvement to trapping over the other specs. I know what you're trying to do in this post; you're trying to draw links between modern Survival and classic Survival in a feeble attempt to give it some historical validity. That's not going to work. Survival right now is the worst representation of its historical identity out of the three specs.

In later days before the move to melee, survival became more of a utility spec still keeping with enhancing traps up until Cataclysm, with added crowd control but now with with more emphasis on DoT's when serpent sting was taken away from MM and given to Survival, I remember talents like toxicology and Serpent Spread that built on this. Once again Survival looking for identity by taking away from other specs and trying to make it's own. But keeping with survival traps were still a prominent thing for survival during Cataclysm with talents like Lock and Load and T.N.T and Resourcefulness. My memory of WoD is a bit hazy though as I kind of stopped plying my hunter alt during this time as a I didn't like the state of Hunters in WoD. So I cannot express any facts there.

"Get it right" lmao. It has no coherent identity at all and pretty much none of the aspects that made it appealing before Legion. It's meant to be the opportunist, utilitarian spec. Nothing says that less than arbitrarily not using the ranged weapon. In every single iteration before Legion it used a ranged weapon. Stop trying to pretend that wasn't the case. Nobody likes a revisionist.

Wait, you saying that Survival has no identity? Compared to the other specs its the most identifiable one. And more identifiable than the old survival spec was compared to BM and MM back them, right now its the biggest stand out of all the hunter specs because its the only one that doesn't use a ranged weapon.

Uh, no. This is a totally nonsensical talking point. It might sound catchy to you but that's because you're minimally informed and have zero capacity to remember the actual state and identity of the specs before Legion. SV did not have any more pet focus than MM did so it couldn't be a hybrid of MM and BM. At most you can argue it was redundant v.s. MM, which is also a lie because it was quite a different approach to ranged combat than SV both thematically and mehcnanically. You might as well be trying to convince Warriors that Arms and Fury are redundant, or Warlocks that Affliction and Destruction are redundant. You won't be doing that, though, because you have a double standard specifically for Hunters.

I have been playing a hunter (as an alt mainly) since 2006, I have seen a whirlwind of changes to this class and trust me I have my issues with hunter right now, and survival surprisingly isn't one of them, could it better, hell yes! I don't think survival is perfect, there's room for growth, but I haven't had this much fun playing a hunter spec since Cataclysm. Hunters have been dead to me since MoP, thats personal opinion.

What are you smoking? There was no dependence on talent trees and ranged SV had two expansions without them, including MoP which many consider to be its very best iteration (it was also the most popular). The elements of the talent trees that made Survival unique were all built into the baseline. Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Lock and Load, Trap Mastery, Entrapment, Improved Serpent Sting, etc. all became baseline for Survival when we lost talent trees. It focused on sustained damage through DoTs and crowd control v.s. the other specs and it did those things very well. For that reason it was a popular spec all the way until Blizzard deliberately nerfed the ever-loving shit out of it to stop people from playing it.

If you want to see a spec that's mostly useless look to the current melee SV. It's basically "BM but melee". Or, in other words, "BM but worse".

Stop basing your arguments off your own faulty memory. Look this shit up before spewing crap all over the forums. I shouldn't have to waste my time explaining this to you.

Funnily enough before spewing my 'faulty memory' which is a fair point to make to anyone else, I did actually go back and research, because my 14 years old hunter memories can get a bit blurry and while most said is opinion on my part, especially about feeling early survival (vanilla) was intended to be more melee focused (hence 'survival') anything I said factual was that.

I mentioned that later hunters struggled to find identity, that's an opinion not faulty memory, or maybe a bit of both. I played survival for most part of cata, probably the last time I even played survival too until BfA. MoP I played survival but moved away later on. If in WoD they miraculously found a balance and made hunters unique I obviously didn't see it because I hated Hunters a whole in WoD. But be free to let me know

And if you loved Survival and felt different that was great, but as an OPINION, I thought pre-Legion, Survival hunters lacked depth. Hell Survival hunters right now still feel like they lack depth, but at least they have their own identity now.

Also 'Orby whats with the Bold highlights'. Yes, while I love to have my opinions challenged and to be proven wrong, (playing a hunter 14 years isn't easy to remember every little thing) what I don't like is to be bombarded with insults and snide remarks in that discussion. I appreciate you took the the time to run through my post but please try and be more cordial in doing so, you would be pleased to know that anything I said that was factual was factual, but most of it is my opinion and not fact. Thanks

[Kaver]

He can tell that from the data, but when BM had 80% of the hunter parses in BrF or when MM had the same in HfC then we can't tell from the data that those specs were fun. Survival wasn't even that bad compared to BM in BrF(very close actually) but still Survival lost 80% of the parses going from HM while from the looks of it, people preferred BM when they actually started to be closer in performance. And he said it himself, that's because BM was fun to play then. So if both Survival and BM was so fun and so close in performance, why did 80% play BM then or why did Survival lose 80% of all the parses from HM if Survival was "that fun". It's fucking opinions and he cherry pics "facts" to prove him right, when they in reality shows differently.

If anything, what we can take from those logs is more likely that people thought BM was more fun than Survival. Again, he has written that himself a few pages back. His arguments just backfires and he's shooting himself in the foot. It's just bitterness. Good grief.

He should just be straight up about and say "hi, I really liked ranged survival and I personally would like to see it back" instead of trying to twist the data to fit some weird story about Survival being the most popular in WoD because it was more fun than MM and BM. Because the data just shows that most hunters were playing Survival in a period where survival was the best spec in performance.. and that has nothing to do with survival being the most fun spec as he tries to proclaim.

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If you want to see a spec that's mostly useless look to the current melee SV. It's basically "BM but melee". Or, in other words, "BM but worse".

Even if it were true, it would be better than having SV be functionally useless like it is now with its "BM but melee" identity.

I dont understand how you can call the current Survival "BM but melee" and at the same time you often argue that there was a huge difference between MM and Survival and WoD.

The current difference between Survival and BM is much greater that the difference between Survival and MM in WoD. Survival and MM used to play much more similar in WoD than Survival and BM do now.