Hope they leave Survival alone all expansion

[ydraw]

I really do enjoy the spec compared to the other two but if it wasn't there id find another melee to play.

It's a pity people who like archery no longer have the same option.

[Pronbear]

Except they were up front and honest about nerfing demo because almost the entire playerbase of Warlocks played it because of how strong it was, ease of use compared to Aff, and very little representation of the other specs.

Except demo was far from easy to use. Demo was the hardest lock spec (and one of the hardest I've ever played) meanwhile aff, which was played only in ST, was kinda ez to learn and not that hard to master, at least way less hard than demo.
And they just said : "We don't want you to use that spec", not what was prolly a real consideration "we gonna give some of this spec core attributes to the upcoming new shiny class, Demonhunter".

So, in both cases, a nerf then, a patch or too later, a rework.

[Bepples]

In the end, we see the same methodology at use :
1/ nerf to the ground a popular spec, with whatever bullshit argument u can come by
2/ rework later that spec when no one is still playing it, so the backslash will be less harder
3/ ???
4/ profit

Your post is spot on, except at this part step 4 should be "End up with two specs that are hated by most of their respective classes and consistently drain developer resources as they try to push their unpopular redesign"

SV was a fix because Multistrike affected something it wasn’t supposed to.

This would be valid if the change was "Multistrike no longer procs from Serpent Sting multistrikes" (the only part that could really be called a bug) and came with sizeable buffs to SV's baseline to counteract its unfavourable boss fights in HFC. But what they actually did was take out a crucial mechanic of the spec: Serpent Sting dealing an initial tick of damage. Survival relied heavily on that and it was absolutely not a bug; it was a talent from Cataclysm that was made a spellbook passive in 5.0 and baked into the base ability in 6.0. The 6.0 patch notes actually directly refer to it. That's an outrageous change. You can't call it a bug fix when it's straight up removing an important mechanic from the spec.

I think it failed due to basically being in a beta state the entire expansion, with multiple spinning plates often competing with each other for your globals, not that it was melee. It had fun moments like the mongoose bite windows and burst aoe though, and those were kept and improved imo.

This is a good description for the state of Feral, too. But even that spec had a decent amount of players.

The ranged mechanics added to me feel more like a bandaid due to it's lack of defense/utility for the purposes of M+. "You can disengage out of the scary stuff and harpoon back in when it's safe while still doing some damage" so to speak. Personally I'd rather they make it more melee again and give it better defensive tools. It is called "survival" after all, maybe go for the self healing route.

Blizzard told us what the ranged stuff was for; to make SV Hunters more recognisable to the rest of the class. See the Q&A responses. Doubling down on melee again would be a catastrophe given how badly Legion SV failed and how many of the people who play SV now play it specifically for the ranged mechanics.

actually survival now is (subjectively) the most fun and engaging hunter spec, with competitive pve dps and not only solid dps but also a robust toolkit in pvp

None of that depends on the spec being melee, and much of it is subjective. It clearly isn't the most fun and engaging spec for most Hunters because most Hunters are sticking to BM despite lower performance.

[Deleted]

Blizzard told us what the ranged stuff was for; to make SV Hunters more recognisable to the rest of the class. See the Q&A responses. Doubling down on melee again would be a catastrophe given how badly Legion SV failed and how many of the people who play SV now play it specifically for the ranged mechanics.

No,no, no, no, no, no, no. People aren't playing SV now for the fucking ranged abilities, stop saying that shit.
The spec is now less demanding, less clunky and more enjoyable, every ability could be melee range and it would make almost fuck all difference to the people that play it.

[Irian]

I just want dual wield back

It's so weird. I feel like Survival would feel so much better as a 1h dual wielder than a 2h spec, but here we are.

It'd be even cooler because you could opt into the 2h visual by transmogging into the spear artifact weapon. Best of both worlds if they made surv a DW spec.

[Cyanu]

And yet still nobody plays it. Less than 7% of all hunters play it, despite it being in a pretty good spot in raids. It's an objective failure, no matter how much you might enjoy playing it.

Only 3 specs in the game have lower representation, and those 3 are specs that were savagely undertuned at the beginning of the expansion and are still the worst DPS specs for their respective classes (demo, feral and MM). Survival is our top DPS spec but still played less than specs which are literally garbage tier.

No matter how you spin it, melee survival is a failure. Taking away a ranged spec for yet another melee spec did nothing except make more people spec into BM or MM. It took away choice and gave the game something it didn't need and doesn't want.

do you pvp? how often do you see non-survival hunters in arenas? BM only in lower brackets for being new player friendly and MM is an exotic beast

survival is the go-to pvp spec for any serious pvper with the best performance and the most viable comps

also bm has always been very popular due to it being easy to play, in other words regardless of theoritical potential in practice it works best for the average player

[ydraw]

do you pvp? how often do you see non-survival hunters in arenas? BM only in lower brackets for being new player friendly and MM is an exotic beast

survival is the go-to pvp spec for any serious pvper with the best performance and the most viable comps

also bm has always been very popular due to it being easy to play, in other words regardless of theoritical potential in practice it works best for the average player

No I don't PvP and don't care at all about PvP.

[Jibjub]

If SV had a raid-wide dps buff like Monk or DH then it would be played a lot more. That's how Blizzard messed up. They either need raid wide buffs or they need to do more damage.

[ydraw]

If SV had a raid-wide dps buff like Monk or DH then it would be played a lot more. That's how Blizzard messed up. They either need raid wide buffs or they need to do more damage.

Raid buffs should never have been brought back in the first place. Raiding in legion was perfectly fine without them.

[Jibjub]

Raid buffs should never have been brought back in the first place. Raiding in legion was perfectly fine without them.

I can agree with that. I am all for class fantasy and totally against unbridled homogenization... but raid buffs have zero flavor, they are passive (and therefore boring), and they result in "forced" roster spots (or at least the perception of such). SV would be a great melee choice if it weren't for raid buffs.

I'd be down with experimenting with a pure support class (like a bard) to accomplish these sorts of things... but just throwing it onto some specs and not on others is beyond dumb.

[Bepples]

No,no, no, no, no, no, no. People aren't playing SV now for the fucking ranged abilities, stop saying that shit.
The spec is now less demanding, less clunky and more enjoyable, every ability could be melee range and it would make almost fuck all difference to the people that play it.

I'm taking Survival Hunters at their word. I read all the SV threads; people praising the spec for its ranged capabilities is a regular thing. In fact, I've seen very few people specifically for the melee abilities. It's actually somewhat a problem as people convince themselves that the spec is fully or almost-fully ranged capable and we have to convince them that it's still a melee spec.

A recent example:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769557242