Why won't survival hunter get any changes?

[Evaddon]

It doesn't really need many changes; unless you're the type that believes it should be range and that cater to this idea that Hunters should only be range (when lore and the very past of the class dictate otherwise) the thing about it is its actually the funnest hunter spec...its just not very practical in many situations, and for it to shine it has to over preform other melee that can do more easier and efficiently

[Super Kami Dende]

they just need to let Arcane shot be usable with the little crossbow you pull out for serpent sting and such

feels jarring to have abilities that cant be used with your main Weapon type.

[cparle87]

I dont think SV will get massive changes; blizzard remains convinced that keeping it melee is the best course of action.
I personally will take ranged SV over melee any day of the week, but it's very unlikely that will happen before 10.0, if at all.

As a melee spec it's not horrible, but it could use some changes.

The ones I would love to see are:
- Mongoose Bite baseline
- Wildfire Infusion baseline
- Serpent Sting scaling properly with haste; so it doesn't get reduced with high haste. On live with corruption gear my serpent sting lasts like 4 seconds with haste buffs.
- Base 1 sec GCD like most melee specs, SV just feels bad with 1.5 sec as it's pretty much a GCD locked melee spec.
- 5% parry chance back as melee that all other melee specs have as well.

Other than that the talents need some looking at, but the first two changes in my list above would fix 90% of the issues.

Plus side is that blizzard does not seem done with changing specs, so maybe some SV changes are still in the pipeline.

All melee classes besides the energy users have a 1.5 second GCD. Which makes sense cause a longer GCD would play havok on their energy regen.

[kasuke06]

Melee survival isn't a mistake though. It's a great spec which is a lot of fun, I don't get the hate.

Imagine you had a dog. now someone came in, ripped it's hind legs off, shaved it and dumped a bucket of paint on it. People had a thing they liked, maybe it was even the entire reason they played the class. Then some fucktard said "Hey, let's take away one of the VERY, VERY FEW ranged specs to shit out another spammy melee fighter." and his coked up drones said "Yes, great idea boss!"

[gd8]

Imagine you had a dog. now someone came in, ripped it's hind legs off, shaved it and dumped a bucket of paint on it. People had a thing they liked, maybe it was even the entire reason they played the class. Then some fucktard said "Hey, let's take away one of the VERY, VERY FEW ranged specs to shit out another spammy melee fighter." and his coked up drones said "Yes, great idea boss!"

ranged survival was stupid calm down

[Super Kami Dende]

Imagine you had a dog. now someone came in, ripped it's hind legs off, shaved it and dumped a bucket of paint on it. People had a thing they liked, maybe it was even the entire reason they played the class. Then some fucktard said "Hey, let's take away one of the VERY, VERY FEW ranged specs to shit out another spammy melee fighter." and his coked up drones said "Yes, great idea boss!"

What a shitty analogy.

The class was literally 3 range specs, that had a bunch of crossover moves. how more boring could you get. At least Melee Survival is something different.

[Schizoide]

Just like some people enjoy melee survival today, some liked ranged survival too. I was one of them, I was down with the old lock and load.

Melee survival is super unpopular because most hunters want to play ranged. There's no fix for that. It was a bad idea but now it's done, no reason to compound their error by pissing off the people that like the melee version.

[kasuke06]

ranged survival was stupid calm down

So is every hunter spec. it's a class for people who are either stupid, don't want to try, or try way too fucking hard to be playing hunter but stick with it because it's the only physical ranged class. Did we really need another "push whatever isn't on CD at all times" melee spec?

[aceperson]

i'm guessing blizz gave up on trying to make it fun since the survival player base fell off a cliff and continued to drown to the bottom of the ocean after it was made into a melee spec. and considering we were ignored for basically all of the shadowlands testing cycle, i'd expect big changes for the next expac.

[Gestopft]

SV hunters are pretty fun from a gameplay perspective, and their damage isn't even bad. The issue is that they have a ranged option that brings all the same utility, so there's absolutely no reason to fill a melee spot, which is already hyper-competitive, with an SV hunter.

This is it; they are competing with other melee and other Hunters that bring all of the same things they do only from range.

The only change Blizz could make for them to be meta is to mega overbuff them.

Or give them a unique buff or utility that would set them apart from ranged hunter specs.

[Bisque]

It would be nice if SV brought it's own unique buff.

You could call it "Hunting Party", "Tracker's resolve" , "Survivalist's determination" with the effect :

"Increase the damage and/or crit rate of all bleeds and poison's by 5%, does not stack with other "Hunting Party", "whatever name you want to call the ability"

Something that fits the whole rugged tracker vibe that WoW wants for SV hunters.

[last1214]

I know its petty of me, but it sure does bring a grin to my face to hear that blizzards melee hunter experiment failed. I still feel burned/betrayed by the loss of ranged survival. I would like to see nothing more than for them to can the spec altogether.

[Eapoe]

I know its petty of me, but it sure does bring a grin to my face to hear that blizzards melee hunter experiment failed. I still feel burned/betrayed by the loss of ranged survival. I would like to see nothing more than for them to can the spec altogether.

Well, it is petty, but still kind of understandable. I enjoy the spec but I still think Blizz should have just made a 4th spec if they wanted a melee spec for Hunters.
SV used to be my favorite spec, but I tend to be easygoing and moved on from it without much issue. I do wish that Blizzard could bring it more in line with other melee. If it did comparable dps to the other melee we would probably see more people play it, but it’s so undertuned that it’s completely understandable a lot of people won’t touch it.

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It would be nice if SV brought it's own unique buff.

You could call it "Hunting Party", "Tracker's resolve" , "Survivalist's determination" with the effect :

"Increase the damage and/or crit rate of all bleeds and poison's by 5%, does not stack with other "Hunting Party", "whatever name you want to call the ability"

Something that fits the whole rugged tracker vibe that WoW wants for SV hunters.

The issue with this is that players would be mad that the other Hunter specs don’t provide the same buff SV would. The classes that provide buffs are applied by every spec, such as DH increased magic damage and Monk increased physical damage.
SV should mainly just get damage buffs to bring it more in line with some possible changes. Some changes I’ve seen people suggest that would help out is MB being baseline and getting rid of Raptor Strike. Wildfire Infusion baseline, but I’m on the fence about this. I’d rather the bombs did increase damage if it hits 2 or more targets, that way it’s not a ST ability. Rework mastery to increase all damage, instead of just focus spenders since there’s only 2 in a ST/Cleave setting, while AoE is now capped at 5 targets. Biggest issue is the SV has a 1.5 second GCD while all other melee have 1, and SV is the only melee without baseline 5% parry.

[Gelantious]

Imagine you had a dog. now someone came in, ripped it's hind legs off, shaved it and dumped a bucket of paint on it. People had a thing they liked, maybe it was even the entire reason they played the class. Then some fucktard said "Hey, let's take away one of the VERY, VERY FEW ranged specs to shit out another spammy melee fighter." and his coked up drones said "Yes, great idea boss!"

Problem with this is that for me SV was fun in Vanilla and TBC, and then they changed and gutted it to become just another boring ranged spec like MM always was.
So with your type of viewpoint it means I was here before you, and should get my way. So melee sv it is!

[SirCowdog]

What a shitty analogy.

The class was literally 3 range specs, that had a bunch of crossover moves. how more boring could you get. At least Melee Survival is something different.

Here's a better analogy.

Imagine someone takes mage, which has three specs, each focused on a particular aspect of magic. Then some crayon-eating idiot comes along thinking they're smart and turns one of those specs into a melee spec. All your spells and abilities can only be used out to 5 feet. And you lose access to some of the class-defining features....because melee.

I'm sure all the Spellbreaker fans out there would spooge their pants and lose their minds about how good it is. Meanwhile completely ignoring all the mage players who already enjoyed the class and spec for how it was and what it represented in terms of gameplay.

[Bisque]

Well, it is petty, but still kind of understandable. I enjoy the spec but I still think Blizz should have just made a 4th spec if they wanted a melee spec for Hunters.
SV used to be my favorite spec, but I tend to be easygoing and moved on from it without much issue. I do wish that Blizzard could bring it more in line with other melee. If it did comparable dps to the other melee we would probably see more people play it, but it’s so undertuned that it’s completely understandable a lot of people won’t touch it.

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The issue with this is that players would be mad that the other Hunter specs don’t provide the same buff SV would. The classes that provide buffs are applied by every spec, such as DH increased magic damage and Monk increased physical damage.
SV should mainly just get damage buffs to bring it more in line with some possible changes. Some changes I’ve seen people suggest that would help out is MB being baseline and getting rid of Raptor Strike. Wildfire Infusion baseline, but I’m on the fence about this. I’d rather the bombs did increase damage if it hits 2 or more targets, that way it’s not a ST ability. Rework mastery to increase all damage, instead of just focus spenders since there’s only 2 in a ST/Cleave setting, while AoE is now capped at 5 targets. Biggest issue is the SV has a 1.5 second GCD while all other melee have 1, and SV is the only melee without baseline 5% parry.

Hmm I am not sure, you already have some people asking for SV to bring a unique buff to the group and if MM and BM have an edge because range dps is usually better than melee (because of how blizz designs encounters, affixes), then a unique buff that only SV brings should be okay.

That aside unique buff or no unique said there are some people who downright just hate melee SV and want it removed. Even if blizz was to give SV a unique buff and make it the top melee dps class, I guarantee, 100% guarantee you would still see posts of "Melee SV sucks please bring back ranged". I don't think blizz can do anything to please that s "melee SV sucks bring back ranged" crowd aside from getting rid of melee SV or bringing back ranged SV as a 4th spec.

[keyone01]

Hmm I am not sure, you already have some people asking for SV to bring a unique buff to the group and if MM and BM have an edge because range dps is usually better than melee (because of how blizz designs encounters, affixes), then a unique buff that only SV brings should be okay.

Imagine your spec being so bad in terms of participation that it needs SPEC UNIQUE THROUGHPUT "UTILITY" to be even considered and not kicked on sight. Hell, the only sv unique strenght compared to other melees is the fact that so much of toolkit can be used from range, making the spec simply... scuffed range. That's the reality - even blizzard can't think of any seling point of melee survival apart from it being kinda range.

[Super Kami Dende]

Here's a better analogy.

Imagine someone takes mage, which has three specs, each focused on a particular aspect of magic. Then some crayon-eating idiot comes along thinking they're smart and turns one of those specs into a melee spec. All your spells and abilities can only be used out to 5 feet. And you lose access to some of the class-defining features....because melee.

The difference being Mages are Mages. They are masters of Elemental Magic. Hunters aren't required to be guys that only use Bows and Guns. If they were called "Archers" yeah sure. Having a Spec that you can fight alongside your Pet is one of the main draws for many People to a Melee Hunter. Having it be a survivalist who also heavily relies on traps/bombs is also fun.

I think People that still cry about it now when this will be the 4th Expansion it has been now need to just quit whining and play the other 2 specs if they want a "Ranger" it's not like there is any huge difference between Old Survival and the other Specs anyway. The main defining and pretty much only major spells Survival had that were different were Black Arrow and Explosive Shot. Big wooohooo there guys.

[Dancaris]

SV used to be my favorite spec

You all cant even describe what was good in Surv Hunter, that define spec. Its has been changed a lot, and has no selling points. Just another hunter spec with same toolkit.
Mellee is far better for some new ideas. Just poor design and lack of attention from Blizz makes him awfull.

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VERY, VERY FEW ranged specs

what? we have almost equal amount of ranged/melee specs. 20 melee with tanks and 17 ranged with healers.

[Jazzhands]

So is every hunter spec. it's a class for people who are either stupid, don't want to try, or try way too fucking hard to be playing hunter but stick with it because it's the only physical ranged class. Did we really need another "push whatever isn't on CD at all times" melee spec?

That's not how survival works.