Survival revamp inevitable?

[Deneios]

This, the last time I willingly played Survival post Legion revamp was for Arenas during 8.3. THAT was super fun, but to say niche would be an understatement.
I'm willing to bet, even though Survival currently outsims MM and BM by a hefty margin, it will still be less than say 15% of all hunter players in the raid and M+ for S2.

Depending if the simmed patchwerk is enough to compensate against sacrificing range. One would have to compare that dmg to other melee classes and that way consider is it viable. Especially when hunters greatest advantage has been either longest range in game or ranged dmg with all skills instant casts

[DazManianDevil]

Depending if the simmed patchwerk is enough to compensate against sacrificing range. One would have to compare that dmg to other melee classes and that way consider is it viable. Especially when hunters greatest advantage has been either longest range in game or ranged dmg with all skills instant casts

Correct, Bloodmallet has decent updated profiles. Surv sims around 9,700, which is middle of the pack for melee.
Obviously this is just one source, but it goes to show most Hunters will probably say "I can be ranged, or a middle of the pack melee."
*Slaps Ranged Privilege button*

[Doffen]

Survival Hunter is my main alt for 9.1. Feels really great with good synergy between abilities, though again, Flanking Strike should be baseline already.

And its good it is like it is, or I would abandon my 3 hunters completely because the other two specs plays like shit.

[mst3kfan]

My main alt is a Survival Hunter. I get trolled for it, but oh well.

Current Survival does fit within the Hunter paradigm. Look at any of the tabletop RPGs and there is a melee iteration of a hunter archetype. Hell look at Rexxar. Melee hunter all the way. I would have lobbied for a hunter tank, as memish as it might sound myself. I brought it up in another thread, but to fit a class fantasy there was an easy fit using the Wardens like Maiev. Instead of, here you go a new melee spec for hunters, you would have a whole background of lore that could be further explored.

[lazypeon100]

My main alt is a Survival Hunter. I get trolled for it, but oh well.

Current Survival does fit within the Hunter paradigm. Look at any of the tabletop RPGs and there is a melee iteration of a hunter archetype. Hell look at Rexxar. Melee hunter all the way. I would have lobbied for a hunter tank, as memish as it might sound myself. I brought it up in another thread, but to fit a class fantasy there was an easy fit using the Wardens like Maiev. Instead of, here you go a new melee spec for hunters, you would have a whole background of lore that could be further explored.

I would have loved a hunter tank once upon a time. In most games I play mostly support or tank characters. However, I have always mained my hunter and been drawn to it. If you want to add a fantasy / expand the class fantasy, you need to do it as a new spec entirely.

We learned with Legion (this isn't meant to hate on current SV), that most hunters don't find the current SV appealing for one reason or another. One of the major things is the complete change in direction the spec took in Legion.

I think it would have been a fine and possibly more accepted spec if it had been introduced as a 4th option. Deleting specs / wildly changing them into something unrecognizable for fans of the spec / class is not a good way to be well received.

I think the current spec should be improved upon and they should absolutely consider making a 4th spec to make a modern ranged survival. I think, the idea of a Hunter tank, died with Legion.

[Schizoide]

It's great that you guys like it, and it is a well-designed fun spec. If it was the third DH spec I would play it on that character.

Thing is indisputably, only 1 in 20 hunters choose to play Survival. Something is clearly wrong there. That number should be 1 in 3, or maybe as low as 1 in 10 if it was just a weak spec. It's not about performance OR how the spec plays in melee. Hunters overwhelmingly do not want to melee. There's no way to fix that.

So if you're Blizzard, what do you do? It's a tough problem. If they revert Survival to ranged, they'll seriously piss off 5% of the class and throw out a ton of work.

IMO, they should swap Survival to the third DH spec and offer everybody with a lvl 60 hunter over itemlvl 200 an equivalent premade DH. Ideally they'd restore ranged Survival but of course they won't do that, so Hunters would end up with 2 specs. And that would be an improvement, because DH players would actually play the new spec.

[Vaedan]

It's great that you guys like it, and it is a well-designed fun spec. If it was the third DH spec I would play it on that character.

Thing is indisputably, only 1 in 20 hunters choose to play Survival. Something is clearly wrong there. That number should be 1 in 3, or maybe as low as 1 in 10 if it was just a weak spec. It's not about performance OR how the spec plays in melee. Hunters overwhelmingly do not want to melee. There's no way to fix that.

So if you're Blizzard, what do you do? It's a tough problem. If they revert Survival to ranged, they'll seriously piss off 5% of the class and throw out a ton of work.

IMO, they should swap Survival to the third DH spec and offer everybody with a lvl 60 hunter over itemlvl 200 an equivalent premade DH. Ideally they'd restore ranged Survival but of course they won't do that, so Hunters would end up with 2 specs. And that would be an improvement, because DH players would actually play the new spec.

I actually believe swapping current SV into DH is a bad idea. There are way too many aspects of Hunter class tied into survival such as traps and pets which are completely absent in DH class toolkit so the spec would be unplayable. Also, havoc is about strong consistent preassure with great cleave, so is survival, so if there would like to see probably strong ST dps spec for DH instead.

If there will be any rework of Survival, I'd actually prefer seeing it reworked into thrown style ranged dps with melee throwbacks to early hunter iterrations.

Make the class work with melee weapons, possibly with Polearms specificaly. Change it's mastery to allow your basic attacks be ranged while Polearm equiped with the animations of spear throws.

Raptor Strike -> renamed to Spear Throw and it's range increased.
Harpoon -> Replaced with baseline Tracker's Net. As ranged spec, you no longer need to have gap closer ability.
Serpent Sting -> Replaced with Poisoned Spear ability and new animation.
Kill Shot -> New animation of throwing Spear instead of shooting from a one hand crossbow
Carve/Butchery removed. Chakrams becoming baseline. Reducing CD of Wildfire Bombs for each target hit.
- Puncturing Throw: a throw that pierces all enemies in line, dealing damage and applying bleed damage.
- Camouflage baseline. Mending Bandage PvP talent moved to regular talents instead.
- Counterstrike: activate to parry incoming attacks and reflect them back to the attacker

New talent ideas:
- Headhunter's Mark: Hunter's mark makes you ignore target's armor.
- Guillotine: launch a massive axe into the air that drops on the targeted area, dealing huge damage plus bonus damage the lower his Health is.
- Acrobat's Razor: Disengage drops a random trap from where you leap from, and where you land (already Torghast anima power)

New PvP talent ideas:
- Slippery Tar: Enemies in your Tar Trap have chance to slip, knocking them down of 1 sec.
- Pinning Throw: a ranged attack that deal damage and roots target in place for 2 seconds. After breaking root, the target is slowed by 90% for 3 secs, the amount of slow decreasing by 30% each second
- Flanking Strike: You leap with your pet to your target, stuning it for 3 secs and performing flurry of attacks on it during the duration and generating focus.

I believe this would capture the feel MSV brought to the game while turning it to ranged. Also, you would not need to change Legion's content (artifact weapon) and creating new artifact weapon for hunters for T-mogs or leveling in Legion content. Surely, this is just very vague concept, but I think it could work.

[Saltysquidoon]

Whatever the reason, WoW players don't want to play Survival. Overwhelmingly so.

Everyone knows the reason.
No one is bringing a melee spec to organised group content when you have two ranged options.

[Dorthonion1]

Everyone knows the reason.
No one is bringing a melee spec to organised group content when you have two ranged options.

I picked up survival in early BFA because the theme of a melee hunter felt really cool to me. I like the hectic playstyle and I like the mongoose bite animation, as well as the bombs. If they forced me to go ranged I wouldn't play it. If you still want your ranged spec back from years ago sure have it as a 4th spec.

The whole 'melee is bad' argument is really dumb. To some extent WoW is a role playing game and to some extent it's competitive. To a degree, everyone makes decisions for role playing reasons, but the more casual you are the more likely you are to prioritise aesthetics over performance. Sure, you can argue that melee hunters can just change spec - but if they can change their spec, why not just reroll a different class/race that's more FoTM? It's not hard to level alts especially if you are competitive minded. The idea that it's so much harder to change class than it is to change spec is a holdover from early WoW when levelling took a long time.

At the end of the day, I play survival hunter because I want to experience content as a survival hunter - because that's the game I choose to play. I could do content as BM hunter, and I would still be a 'hunter', so near enough in terms of RP - but if I can do that, why not reroll mage? Where do you draw the line?

Honestly I suspect you are just biased because you are salty about losing your ranged SV. SV being bad has nothing to do with it being melee, since there are other melee specs in the game that perform well. We could do with some unique utility but that is fixable without breaking the spec.

I also think people are suspicious about SV hunters because we are a pretty uncommon spec, so people assume we must be bad.

- - - Updated - - -

It's great that you guys like it, and it is a well-designed fun spec. If it was the third DH spec I would play it on that character.

Hunters overwhelmingly do not want to melee. There's no way to fix that.

What is a hunter? I am a player who plays a few classes, one of them being hunter. Am 'I' then a hunter? What you mean is, people who play hunter don't choose survival often.

Remember also that BM is probably overrepresented because it's an extremely popular spec for low level content, levelling, collectionists who farm pets etc, many of whom will never reach max level.

As for your argument that we should get fused onto DHs, GTFO. That is just insulting.

[TOM_RUS]

Just revert it back to ranged and problem solved.

[Saltysquidoon]

The whole 'melee is bad' argument is really dumb. To some extent WoW is a role playing game and to some extent it's competitive. To a degree, everyone makes decisions for role playing reasons, but the more casual you are the more likely you are to prioritise aesthetics over performance. Sure, you can argue that melee hunters can just change spec - but if they can change their spec, why not just reroll a different class/race that's more FoTM? It's not hard to level alts especially if you are competitive minded. The idea that it's so much harder to change class than it is to change spec is a holdover from early WoW when levelling took a long time.

I actually quite like survival, it has some issues with thematic cohesion and the very legion problem of essentially not being a spec without talents (as opposed to talents enhancing the spec).

However, I'm also not foolish enough to pretend adding a melee spec to a pure dps class with two ranged options was ever going to work at end game.
No one brings survival to raids (and before you go 'muh mythic' change the difficulty same ratio at all levels of play), no one brings it to M+. Hell, the same is true for feral compared to balance (even when feral is the stronger spec) and it only has one ranged (and dps) competitor.
So yeah melee is bad is a pretty smart argument when we're talking about group content.

[Razion]

It's great that you guys like it, and it is a well-designed fun spec. If it was the third DH spec I would play it on that character.

Thing is indisputably, only 1 in 20 hunters choose to play Survival. Something is clearly wrong there. That number should be 1 in 3, or maybe as low as 1 in 10 if it was just a weak spec. It's not about performance OR how the spec plays in melee. Hunters overwhelmingly do not want to melee. There's no way to fix that.

So if you're Blizzard, what do you do? It's a tough problem. If they revert Survival to ranged, they'll seriously piss off 5% of the class and throw out a ton of work.

IMO, they should swap Survival to the third DH spec and offer everybody with a lvl 60 hunter over itemlvl 200 an equivalent premade DH. Ideally they'd restore ranged Survival but of course they won't do that, so Hunters would end up with 2 specs. And that would be an improvement, because DH players would actually play the new spec.

I feel like, as a m-Surv player, I'd be cool with m-Surv going to DH... except DH isn't available to any of the races I'd like to play DH Surv. DHs currently only have two races.

(There are some thematic changes that could be done, like traps being changed to sigils, and beast pets being demons, bombs and poisons being fel magic or fel poisons, etc.)

It is kind of worrying what kind of replacement spec Hunters would get. It'd have to be ranged dps. But like, what else can they do with ranged dps? Thrown weapons? DW ranged weapons? Maybe.

[FrostyButt]

It's great that you guys like it, and it is a well-designed fun spec. If it was the third DH spec I would play it on that character.

Thing is indisputably, only 1 in 20 hunters choose to play Survival. Something is clearly wrong there. That number should be 1 in 3, or maybe as low as 1 in 10 if it was just a weak spec. It's not about performance OR how the spec plays in melee. Hunters overwhelmingly do not want to melee. There's no way to fix that.

So if you're Blizzard, what do you do? It's a tough problem. If they revert Survival to ranged, they'll seriously piss off 5% of the class and throw out a ton of work.

IMO, they should swap Survival to the third DH spec and offer everybody with a lvl 60 hunter over itemlvl 200 an equivalent premade DH. Ideally they'd restore ranged Survival but of course they won't do that, so Hunters would end up with 2 specs. And that would be an improvement, because DH players would actually play the new spec.

So piss off 5% of the Hunter player base, or make 95% of the Hunter base happy that they can get old ranged Survival back.

[Schizoide]

What is a hunter? I am a player who plays a few classes, one of them being hunter. Am 'I' then a hunter? What you mean is, people who play hunter don't choose survival often.

Yes, that's what I meant. I'm not sure why that distinction is at all meaningful, but sure.

If you read my prior post, I didn't look at total population, I looked at M+ and all 3 non-LFR raid difficulties. Hunters overwhelmingly don't play Survival. Its top representation is 5%. One in 20.

If there will be any rework of Survival, I'd actually prefer seeing it reworked into thrown style ranged dps with melee throwbacks to early hunter iterrations.

Those are fine ideas, but a) they would piss off the 5% of Hunters playing the current spec and b) would mean Blizzard building a completely new spec, which they absolutely will not do. Remember, DH only got two specs because it was too much work to create a third.

[germanfridris]

I'm not sure population number as anything to do with the fact that people like or don't like a spec. WW monk was almost always consider a very fun spec but it had less and less player playing it until they just made it do more dmg.

[inyu]

https://www.arenamate.net/?region=&r...class_filter=3

No, you don't.

And no, Survival is not just a few buffs away from being more popular than the other specs. Hunters have an aversion to playing melee and we can see this in tiers in the past where melee Survival did have favourable tuning.

Suprising tho that there are 6 SV in top 10 from that top50 list.

[threads]

Survival Hunter is my main alt for 9.1. .

My main alt is a Survival Hunter. I get trolled for it, but oh well.

this shit pisses me off every time i see it. literally my fav spec and char i played in the game for 10 years deleted for some random people to have a dumb meme alt

[Doffen]

this shit pisses me off every time i see it. literally my fav spec and char i played in the game for 10 years deleted for some random people to have a dumb meme alt

It was the most boring garbage spec in the game, and I am glad they got rid of it. My favorite spec for 11 years, Marksman got obliterated in BfA, but I am not here throwing a tantrum about it. So very happy old survival got thrown out seeing melee Survival is the only fun hunter spec.

I even have two survival hunters.

[Bepples]

It was the most boring garbage spec in the game, and I am glad they got rid of it. My favorite spec for 11 years, Marksman got obliterated in BfA, but I am not here throwing a tantrum about it. So very happy old survival got thrown out seeing melee Survival is the only fun hunter spec.

I even have two survival hunters.

^ Melee SV copium because no one likes their spec

[Doffen]

^ Melee SV copium because no one likes their spec

I am not the one who throws a tantrum. It would be a nice burn if I was the one starting it, but you know, it wasn't.

No, it's the old "I can't get over that one spec got changed so my life got ruined" kinda thing, which makes me wonder, when are you starting yours today?

I find it nice to play a spec many others don't. And you know, if someone came here and quoted me and said they understand that some people like survival but they miss the old ranged one a lot, I would actually respond that I feel sorry for those who lost their favorite spec.

But, throwing a tantrum just makes me indifferent. Then you can have it that way.