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

[Dundebuns]

I am for sure not going to judge you on your account Anyways, while you may be partly correct, whenever I dust off my WoW Bradygames guide book (oh the memories) the talent tree clearly shows that Survival hunters get, oh boy, a melee bleed as their final talent. No, Wyvern Sting was not it on release. As of 1.12 sure, but not initially. I think it's fair to say that survival hunters were in fact intended as a melee or hybrid heavily-leaning-on-melee spec.

Convince me otherwise

Cheers from a fellow keeper of Rhok and Lok

It was likely that during development Survival was intended to be a melee spec. It was similar for Priests who had a melee spec in development but had it removed, and you can see that in having some cloth armour having strength and agility on it. The devs probably couldn't figure out what to do with it in time so just left it in with minimal changes.

[oplawlz]

It was likely that during development Survival was intended to be a melee spec. It was similar for Priests who had a melee spec in development but had it removed, and you can see that in having some cloth armour having strength and agility on it. The devs probably couldn't figure out what to do with it in time so just left it in with minimal changes.

I was actually going to bring priests up as well - they had a +wand damage talent, doesn't mean they were meant to be some kind of magic hunter class xD. Just made you feel a bit better about wanding while your mana regenned.

[threads]

All the 'melee' abilities in vanilla for hunters didn't make any hunter specs melee specs. All those abilities were for cc'ing, slowing with wing clip, raptor strike, and getting back to range.

I am for sure not going to judge you on your account Anyways, while you may be partly correct, whenever I dust off my WoW Bradygames guide book (oh the memories) the talent tree clearly shows that Survival hunters get, oh boy, a melee bleed as their final talent. No, Wyvern Sting was not it on release. As of 1.12 sure, but not initially. I think it's fair to say that survival hunters were in fact intended as a melee or hybrid heavily-leaning-on-melee spec.

Convince me otherwise

Cheers from a fellow keeper of Rhok and Lok

melee for a few months < 5 xpacs of ranged

i'd say it should've been left in the garbage

[Ange]

In vanilla/TBC survival was a melee spec. It was also easily the worst spec in the game and played by nearly no one. It wasn't good at PVP or PVE. A few of the low talents were used in some BM and MM builds, but largely it was a dead spec.

If the deadzone hadn't existed back then, it is possible SV could have been viable.

How can a posting like this not get stoned to death?

MM was just a mediocre spec to begin with for raids. It was maybe the worst spec for pvp or anything else but raids.
SV or BM just took the best 20 talents from MM and pretty much made the hunter class more enjoyble in pvp and pve with either SV or BM. The huge amount of crit from SV with the very good blue/epic pvp gear made a great combo for RANGE DPS.

How can you even say a spec like SV hunter was played as a melee spec?
You had to WingClip most melees, since everyone was in your face and thats all.

The only hunter spec that could really melee, at least in pvp was BM hunter late into vanilla with the OVERPOWERED ZG trinkets for pet armor/attackpower, you could dance/melee/whateverthefuckyouwanted since your pet was unkillable and did more damage than any class/spec in a very short timeframe while beeing immun to CC.

With my ~60 days /played vanilla hunter, I spend most of my time as SV (pvp/raids) and a small portion for soloing as BM (maraudon etc.).
You could not compete in raids agains combat-rogues with MM spec, it was either SV or BM. BM had tons of pathing bugs but you had unblanced things like the ZG bats ignoring armor you could exploit in raids/pvp.

[buckner]

sv sucks, thats my opinion, mm is more fun to play.

[Doffen]

People still going with this?

Cant wait to play my Survival Hunter again when I am coming back in few days after a not wanted break. One of the few specs that are really fun in BfA.

[theossy]

melee for a few months < 5 xpacs of ranged

i'd say it should've been left in the garbage

I think you misunderstood or did not read the previous posts. I was responding to somebody claiming Hunters never (i.e. in classic) had a melee spec, and that the 'melee' abilities were only for getting in range again. I showed that this was likely incorrect, and that Blizzard actually likely did intend for survival to be, if not fully, for the most part melee. Why? Because I'm a nerd who also played classic and this topic is of interest to me.

I did not say whether it should or shouldn't be a melee spec today. That being said though, I think it's a cool spec in its current iteration. I'm sad to hear you're disenfranchised with the spec and want to burry it in the dumpster.

[ydraw]

I think you misunderstood or did not read the previous posts. I was responding to somebody claiming Hunters never (i.e. in classic) had a melee spec, and that the 'melee' abilities were only for getting in range again.

Hunters never had a melee spec, and lacerate was a brain fart that was removed once they realised how stupid it was to give a ranged class a melee ability talent.

[Bepples]

Hunters never had a melee spec, and lacerate was a brain fart that was removed once they realised how stupid it was to give a ranged class a melee ability talent.

The best part of all this is post-1.7 SV did more melee damage than pre-1.7 SV. People don't realise that the pre-1.7 tree was full of useless dead talents and Savage Strikes didn't exist in its later, much more powerful form. The Clever Traps talent of post-1.7, which was 2 talent points to improve all your traps, was previously spread among 4 different talents totaling 12 talent points, each one improving one of your traps; space in the tree was wasted on crap like that so there really wasn't room to flesh out a proper melee playstyle. Just about all the melee talents were extremely minor. The post-1.7 tree ended up keeping the stuff that worked, adding new stuff of value, and leaving behind useless crap that didn't work.

Melee fanatics just fixate on the first iteration because there were no talents that explicitly buffed a ranged spell so they couple that with a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic purpose and function of specs back in Vanilla to declare that Survival was a true melee Hunter like the Legion iteration. They then use that as a platform to declare that making Survival melee all of a sudden after 5 expansions of development of ranged Survival is justified. These are the sort of logical leaps and grasping at straws you have to employ to end up believing that Survival being melee is in any way justified.

On this note, it's worth mentioning that there is a certain person on the classic forums who is advocating for SV to be redesigned for WoW Classic to be a true melee Hunter "like the pre-1.7 version". The argument goes along the lines of declaring that while SV was more viable in endgame content in 1.12 it was thematically a clone of Marksmanship (yep, this one again) whereas the pre-1.7 version was distinct due to the existence of Lacerate, even if there was no reason to ever take Lacerate. This is the melee Hunter genius at work, folks.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...e-launch/43830
(Same person has posted multiple threads about this)