Is survival hunter the worst class revamp ever made?

[melzas]

It was the highest DPS hunter spec at various points in the last 4 years and still nobody played it.

Ok, I should clarify I don't mean "1% higher dps while other specs are perfectly viable anyway". I mean something like 2v2 hunter class representation which is "survival is one of the best specs in the game while BM is midpack and mm is dogshit".

[Kokolums]

I quite enjoyed Legion Mage Tower as survival. But if I want to melee, I'm honestly drawn to enhance shaman. My vision of a survival class fantasy would be about having the ability to harpoon all over the place to hit various mobs or target points on the ground. Tons of mobility via harpoons.

[Sondrelk]

I quite enjoyed Legion Mage Tower as survival. But if I want to melee, I'm honestly drawn to enhance shaman. My vision of a survival class fantasy would be about having the ability to harpoon all over the place to hit various mobs or target points on the ground. Tons of mobility via harpoons.

[video]

The Legion version of Survival you got towards the end when you had all the fun Legiondaries and stuff was really fun, getting movement speed buffs from harpooning, near infinite survivability if you had adds to kill, generally just running around constantly watchign enemies melt.

[Leakage]

I'm talking about the original vanilla talent tree, the one the game was released with. It was a melee spec.

And Vanilla had more time, and ended, with the reworked survival tree. The original design doesn't matter since it couldn't even last halfway through vanilla because it didn't work.

[cozzri]

Survival can be kind of a meme too; especially when you die.

“Haha I guess you couldn’t SURVIVE! Lololol”

Which honestly is a solid point, defensive skills for a class spec that supposedly all about survival are quite hysterically absent.

All they have is turtle shell and feign death. No ability to clear Debuffs and consistently avoid/prevent damage. Give them something unique, like remove all debuffs and 50% chance to dodge spell damage for 15 seconds. Deterrence coming back would be great too.

Kill command needs to go away for survival. It’s not a fun ability to use; especially when your pet dies super easy and you can’t do any damage without spamming it to generate focus.

[Tiev]

I think the main thing about survival is that it gave players something they never asked for. So people, as a whole, play it as a novelty spec that quickly wears off because that's not why people pick hunters.

[Eapoe]

I think the main thing about survival is that it gave players something they never asked for. So people, as a whole, play it as a novelty spec that quickly wears off because that's not why people pick hunters.

I picked Hunter to play a class with a pet and I like the theme of Hunter over DK or Lock.
I didn’t pick it because it was rdps, or to play SV, or BM, or MM or one over the other.
Maybe that’s why these changes never seem to bother me as much as others. I also realize that if the game ever becomes not fun for me I’ll stop playing it. That might be because I hate how classes play (read: I can’t find a single one I like), it becomes P2W, raids/lore/etc become boring. Until then, I’m having fun.

[saixilein]

No, because i loved SV Hunter in Legion PvP. I had so much fun with my Nightelf Hunter + Catpet to defense or attacking bases, defending the flag an oneshotting the FC...

Now its kinda meh...

Dunno how he is in PvE, but Legion PvP was very very much fun.

[Sondrelk]

Survival can be kind of a meme too; especially when you die.

“Haha I guess you couldn’t SURVIVE! Lololol”

Which honestly is a solid point, defensive skills for a class spec that supposedly all about survival are quite hysterically absent.

All they have is turtle shell and feign death. No ability to clear Debuffs and consistently avoid/prevent damage. Give them something unique, like remove all debuffs and 50% chance to dodge spell damage for 15 seconds. Deterrence coming back would be great too.

Kill command needs to go away for survival. It’s not a fun ability to use; especially when your pet dies super easy and you can’t do any damage without spamming it to generate focus.

I find that one viable way to approach the spec other than just making the rotation more appealing is to consider giving the spec all the utility that would fit a survivalist ranger archetype.
Passive movement speec buffs, with good sprint opportunities. Good self-heals. Damage reduction abilities aplenty.

And honestly, what would really make Survival stand out is a unique buff they could get like givnig buffs to the part based on enemies killed. Maybe a tiny 30 second buff after killing an elemental, or leech after killing a beast. Not anything spectacular in the DPS department, but something so you really feel like you have a survivalist in the party.

- - - Updated - - -

I think the main thing about survival is that it gave players something they never asked for. So people, as a whole, play it as a novelty spec that quickly wears off because that's not why people pick hunters.

I would say the problem is not just that it is a novelty, it is that it doesnt have much to offer in terms of DPS that the other two specs don't already have, so you are not just banking on novelty, you want that novelty to overshadow the reasons you like the spec you normally play.

[F Rm]

I'm talking about the original vanilla talent tree, the one the game was released with. It was a melee spec.

It wasn't a spec at all. Specs were introduced in Cataclysm. Anything we had before that was by design not meant to define our playstyle to any major degree. Anything we could get from talents was meant to be an addition to what the class was primarily designed to focus on by default. The default design elements, they promoted ranged gameplay over anything else and melee was only meant to be used situationally(for any case where it was harder to stay away from an enemy).

The talents that did somehow improve melee for us, did not change the primary purpose of the class, that was ranged gameplay. And if you actually look at the talents from the original SV tree(with Lacerate at the top), it was the same thing. They did not serve to replace the default ranged abilities that were classwide.

[Rullis]

It was the highest DPS hunter spec at various points in the last 4 years and still nobody played it.

Excuse you? I played solely survival until BM was so much better DPS-wise. Then it became a melee spec and I've never touched it.

[cozzri]

And honestly, what would really make Survival stand out is a unique buff they could get like givnig buffs to the part based on enemies killed. Maybe a tiny 30 second buff after killing an elemental, or leech after killing a beast. Not anything spectacular in the DPS department, but something so you really feel like you have a survivalist in the party.

I feel having debuffs could be more fun and add to class fantasy. Bring back distracting shot; but make it cause the enemy to miss attacks for 5 seconds; a skill to fill a role for tank/healer assist; tank is low healers can’t keep up, hit them with distracting shot to buy some time to recover.

Traps could be improved on as well; tar trap could boost magic damage taken in addition to its slow effect.

Another annoying thing is some of the cool/fun party interaction talents are locked into PvP talents; which is a shame. Roar of Sacrifice, Trackers Net, Survival Tactics.... everything I talked about that Survival feels that it’s missing is designated PvP only.....

[Shadowsgrace]

Nah, I'd say the Disc rework was the worst.

[Perkunas]

This argument really doesn't make sense when there are three talents in the entire survival tree that do anything with melee. Two of them is a defensive spell that only have uses in pvp. Besides that, there is NO additional melee benefits other than a flat 20% crit chance to two melee spells. The rest of the tree deals with traps, the 31 point talent is a ranged spell, and the offensive talents also boost ranged spells.

Melee survival was a thing in vanilla beta and very early vanilla. It was quickly changed and the talents revamped to what they are on classic.

Seriously, if you were a melee Survival Hunter in Vanilla you were not doing it right. The tree was built to Survive when you were deadzoned long enough to get back to range and finish the target off.

[dragi]

In my opinion it's a lot better then marksman spec or any rogue spec. Blood dk in bfa its tragic...

[unbound]

It's been four years since Legion revamped survival hunters, and since then I've barely seen them. I played this new spec for a while and I found it quite boring and pointless.

What are your thoughts on this spec? Why do you think nobody plays it?

One of the biggest problems with the spec is that Blizz has added 5 melee specs since launch (arguably 6 if you include making Feral Druid a specific melee spec). Blizz has added no ranged spec to the game. There was legitimately zero reason to convert Surv Hunter to melee. In fact, there were plenty of reasons not to convert Surv Hunter to melee since we now have more melee specs than ranged...leaving Surv Hunter as ranged would actually be balanced.

Next, it was an underpower spec. Even when played completely correctly (and I literally lol'd at people saying there is a high skill cap for the spec...it is average at best), it fell short of so many other specs. It didn't help that it was done at a time that DH were released, which was a massively OP spec with an actually low skill cap (still is). So, for a great number of people, what was the point of doing it? And for a significant number of people who loved their Survival Hunter, Blizz took something away completely.

As for why nobody plays it, I think the answer is pretty simple:
- It is low power, so FOTM players won't select it
- It doesn't fit with the class fantasy (hunters are ranged), so RPG players won't select it

[Howliest]

I for one really loved Survival from TBC to MoP. Bring back the ranged Survival please.

On another note: look at the role representation that we have at the moment in the game.

Tank (6): Brewmaster Monk, Blood DK, Guardian Druid, Protection Paladin, Protection Warrior & Vengeance DH

Healer (6): Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Mistweaver Monk

Melee (13): Frost DK, Unholy DK, Outlaw Rogue, Subtlety Rogue, Assassination Rogue, Feral Druid, Havoc DH, Survival Hunter, Windwalker Monk, Retribution Paladin, Arms Warrior, Fury Warrior, Enhancement Shaman

Ranged (11): BM Hunter, MM Hunter, Balance Druid, Shadow Priest, Fire Mage, Arcane Mage, Frost Mage, Demo Warlock, Aff Warlock, Destro Warlock, Elemental Shaman

So if Blizzard changed Survival back to ranged, we'd be at 12 ranged specs and on par with melee specs. Another food for thought is, Blizzard has not done a new ranged spec since the original WoW came out back in 2004. So I'm not really optimistic that they will be doing this unfortunately.

[ydraw]

Excuse you? I played solely survival until BM was so much better DPS-wise. Then it became a melee spec and I've never touched it.

I meant after it became a melee spec. Survival was very popular in WoD.

[todzilla85]

I think legion survival had good bones to it, just needed some mechanical fixes and adjustments.

Bfa took everything that worked and dumped it in the trash, creating an empty husk. Essences made the spec work at the cost of any interesting mechanics.

[Schizoide]

I really hated Legion survival, and thought the BFA changes were fantastic. It's a really great spec now. Pity it's melee so I'll never, ever, actually play it.