Is survival hunter the worst class revamp ever made?

[Short]

SV was competative or the best spec in 4.0, 4.3, used in all tiers of mop to some extent (5.0, 5.2, 5.4) and obviously 6.1. During BRF survival wasn't even the best hunter spec and yet ''widely'' played. Major misinformation right there.

you seem to have better sources then i do, please do share

[Orby]

I always thought if any of the specs were going to be a melee spec it would have been Beastmaster, you know like Rexxar who was a melee fighter with a pet.

When I think of survival I think of someone who keeps their distance. you know... 'surviving'.

I am not apposed to a melee hunter spec, I do feel thats what the original intention of survival was supposed to be as horribly broken as it was. Just wish they malee the melee class the Beastmaster and not survival. :P

[Donkeywing]

you seem to have better sources then i do, please do share

You can go first

[jellmoo]

I just wish that Survival had more of an identity than "the melee spec for Hunters". It's kind of a flimsy basis for the identity of a character. I don't dislike the idea of a melee hunter spec, nor do I actually think that the current design of Survival is bad per se. Rather, it just feels cobbled together, like the abilities don't fit a common theme.

It would be cool if it had a niche that separated it from other melee specs in the game. Whether it be a variety of traps, better integration of abilities with the pet, or a mechanic that is truly unique. As it is, it's there, and it's fine, but there's nothing about it that screams "unique".

[Saltysquidoon]

I actually agree with this take a lot. I think (looking past the melee hunter meta-issues) the specs primary problems are:
1. It lacks a cohesive theme; and;
2. It relies on talents to have any mechanics or themeing, instead of having talents build off a solid core.

Look at the base kit without talents. You have a dot that does nothing but damage, a bomb that does nothing but damage, a pet hit that for some reason synergizes with itself, and a hit that does nothing but damage.
I mean think about it, what is survival's thing? Mongoose bite burst window? MB is a talent. Traps? DPS trap is a talent. Bombs? Well, bombs that interact with the rest of your kit is a talent. KC? Well first of all making KC the focus of the spec would be a terrible idea because that's BM's thing, additionally you guessed it for KC to be anything other than 'press to make numbers go brrrrrr' it's talents. Serpent sting? Without talents, it's just a dot.
"But UpsetCephalopod" you cry, "Maybe survival is supposed to have multiple focuses because the whole spec is about being 'ready for anything'". Maybe you're right hypothetical forum poster but right now survival had to pick talents to have any focus at all.

What would I do?
1. Mongoose bite should be baseline, without the plate spinning from legion or the spear, the issues that made it a problem are gone and it would give the spec a foundational identity to build from.
2. Remove Kill command and replace it with Flanking strike. Even if the spell was identical having its own nuke would go a huge way to make survival feel not like a shitty version of BM
2a. Make the KC reset proc off of a different spell, like SS ticks or RS hits or something. Anything.
3. Make a DPS traps baseline: Steel trap for ST (make the talent a bleed or extra charges or both); Shrapnel trap for Aoe; Hell, make Serpent sting, serpent trap.
4. Wildfire infusion is baseline
5. Replace wildfire infusion's spot in the talent tree with some bleed focused ability so you can do a full flanking strike bleed build.

[Bepples]

Jesus Christ there's a lot of sad aggression in this post. Given how much you obsess about this, I'm sure you're aware that Survival was initially a melee spec, and even after being changed, it was still intended to be versatile and use both melee and range. Didn't last past Vanilla, but that doesn't change the fact.

Survival originally had a ranged weapon and primarily used ranged attacks, just like the other two Hunter specs. It did indeed have talents that buffed melee, but they were more or less exclusively for situational use. At no point before Legion was the intended design of the spec to deliberately run into melee range. This isn't remotely comparable to a spec that lacks a ranged weapon and must fight in melee range for its full damage potential, so your comparison is utterly useless like every other point you've shat out into this thread.

I agree, your opinion cannot dispute a fact. But saying "In my opinion the sky is purple" is not the same as saying "In my opinion Survival was a good rework" because the latter doesn't depend on a fact. Now if he had said "In my opinion most people think Survival was a good rework" then you could call him delusional.

What he did say was "in theory - Hunter should've always been more about melee than range", which is delusional. This isn't "I wish Hunter was this way" (which would still be a completely bizarre taste to say the least); it's "Hunters should mainly be melee". So as much as you like to pretend to be the reasonable moderate in these threads, his stance is in fact delusional.

Exactly. There really is no practical reason to play a melee spec instead of a BM hunter. If you choose a melee spec over a BM hunter you're simply just crippling yourself. BM hunter can do everything that a melee can but 40 yards away. In a fighting game, BM hunter would be that OP secret character with no downsides that you can unlock after completing the game.

Yeah, yeah, BM is the devil. You've whined about this on the forums for literally years at this point, and every time the fact of the matter is the same: whining about BM being OP is a sign of someone with very little knowledge on the Hunter class. 8.3 was an exception. BM is rarely the best pick for Hunters let alone by a large margin and whenever it happens to be best it's never due to the spec's mobility.

P.S. Watch as most PvE Hunters will be playing Marksmanship in Castle Nathria because, as it turns out, Hunters aren't all functional invalids that can't play anything but BM regardless of how much you like to pretend that's the case.

1st part of your post has been addressed multiple times: melee dps spots are at a premium. It’s hard to justify bringing one over another when it provides no utility bonus to the raid by being there while also not providing competitive damage against other melee that are easier to play.

I'm not sure why you guys think this is an excuse for melee Survival. This is just another reason why Survival should not have been made melee and why the rework was a failure. We knew beforehand that we already had a crowded melee pool and we were getting yet another melee DPS in Demon Hunter. This was a totally avoidable situation. Yet, as Blizzard tends to do, they went full steam ahead into a total disaster because they have an insufferable "don't knock it till you try it!" attitude towards even the absolute worst ideas on paper.

2nd part of your post: stating “the sky is purple,” is not a statement of an opinion. It’s a statement that is a lie or, as you put it, delusion. You can’t have an opinion stated as objective truth. An opinion would be “I think the sky would look better purple,” or “I think blue should be called purple instead.” Stating “the sky is purple,” is a statement that someone is trying to pass off as fact, and that’s why it is wrong. It’s not stated as opinion.

See above. Segus1992 said "in theory - Hunter should've always been more about melee than range" which is a delusional statement. He then demonstrated that he had no clue about how Blizzard initially defined the class which explains a lot of his ludicrous perspective on it.

3rd point: I won’t argue it’s a failed rework. It’s unpopular, for sure, but unpopular doesn’t mean it’s failed unless you are talking about a popularity contest. Sure, Rogue and DK have some range abilities to them, but so do Paladin and Warrior. SV is slightly different in that almost all of its abilities can be used from range and even have a CD to make all abilities used from range. It’s slightly more range adept than all other melee. As far as having a significant amount of its toolkit borrowed from BM, have you even played the spec? It has 1 shared baseline ability.

It went from being a spec that a lot of people play to a spec that very few people play. In the most simple terms this means they drove a lot of people away from their spec and therefore the change they made was a failure. "Popularity isn't the only measure of success" is the go-to excuse for every failed design of marketing idea and that isn't even exclusive to gaming. Ultimately less people are enjoying Survival now due to the rework, and given that the rework (both of them, in fact, given it was remade again in 8.0) took a lot of time and effort it is unquestionably a failure unless your only measure of success is "how much do diehard melee fanatics like it".

It's not just Kill Command, although that alone is overstepping enough. It's mastery is flat out stolen from BM; Spirit Bond had always been either shared with the class or specific to BM. It was even one of our Legion artifact traits. Yet now Survival has it as an exclusive mastery.

On top of that, you have Coordinated Assault. Mechanically, it's extremely similar to Bestial Wrath. Thematically and aesthetically, it's identical. Yet it gets a different name and due to this and the Spirit Bond situation you have clueless people all over the forums declaring that Survival's pet interaction is both distinct and *better* than BM despite all of its pet interaction being copy/pasted or even stolen.

Remember, the entire reason they changed Survival to melee in the first place was because they viewed it as a Marksmanship clone because they both used a ranged weapon and therefore they must have been the same thing (no word on whether all 3 Warlock specs were the same thing because they all used demons and fel magic). At the time the only things it actually shared with Marksmanship were baseline utilities that came with the class (just as they share them today) plus a couple active abilities: Multi-Shot and a casted focus generator. Now you have Survival leaning so heavily on BM's identity that it's borrowing/stealing BM's signature abilities. So if your "measure of success" was thematic distinction then SV has well and truly failed as they actively made the problem worse.

Your 4th point: again, comes down to popularity. It’s a working spec that can compete in current content. By that metric it’s a success since it’s a workable spec. As far as popularity goes it has lost in that department. It also still bears the stigma of “why play melee when you have range secs?” This topic always makes me chuckle because Druids are never asked this or even considered to be asked that. The same with “why play melee dps when you could play tank.”

This is a pretty big switch given your 1st point was specifically about how Survival can't compete in current content, but whatever. A spec that "works" is the bare minimum and a common denominator. This is absolutely useless as a "measure for success". Getting a spec to work is easy. Getting people to get engaged with it is hard, especially when it comes to Survival. The fact that so much time and effort has been sunk into a spec that appeals to so few proves that declaring it a success is not even close to reasonable.

"Why play melee when you have ranged specs" is not a silly irrational stigma worth chuckling at. It's raw pragmatism and practicality. It's a perfectly valid question and this dilemma has been faced by Feral and Enhancement since the very beginning. Druids ARE asked about this and do have to consider it, and a significant amount of time and effort goes into making Feral and Enhancement worthwhile picks in the presence of a ranged spec. Yet again you come up with an excuse for melee SV that doesn't work and only proves my point; we knew this was a tough situation for Feral and Enhancement so why did we add yet another spec with that position? This is not to mention that Feral and SV are established specs with longstanding playerbases unlike melee SV which replaced an existing spec over a decade into the game's life.

6th point: yep. In arguing the persons post about the original definition of Hunter you are correct. However, it doesn’t state “solely ranged attacks,” but “primarily.” In today’s context, these are also old definitions and the class has changed over time.

Sure, they have changed. But that's the point. Segus1992 doesn't think anything has changed because he doesn't think the class was originally defined around ranged weapons.

People hinge a lot on that "primarily" but the fact of the matter is it's describing the class identity. Hunters primarily use ranged weapons. Survival does not primarily use ranged weapons. Therefore it is out of line with the class identity. The same manual also says Priests primarily use spells but no one uses that as a loophole to advocate for a Priest spec that has no spells because "2/3 specs still counts as "primarily"!".

You then say it’s an Arms Warrior ripoff. When did Arms throw bombs, shoot poison tipped arrows, or attack with a pet?

The answer to this lies in your rhetorical question there. Those Survival aspects are all things other than melee combat. Arms is a more-or-less "stock standard" physical melee skirmisher. All of SV's actual melee attacks (Raptor Strike, Carve, Butchery) fit perfectly well within that mould (ask yourself why Butchery can't just be a Warrior ability). There's a whole lot of other stuff that DOESN'T fit Arms Warrior like what you listed, but they don't fit Arms Warrior because they really don't fit melee combat much if at all. Pets just "work" with melee combat but don't necessarily complement it. In contrast, the other things (throwing bombs and shooting poison arrows) just don't make sense at all in a melee spec. They don't work together thematically and it comes off as a clumsy merging of two different classes.

I agree with your last part up until you compare Rogue specs. Rogues were actually in the same camp as Hunters in that most of their specs were completely interchangeable gameplay wise, but with the reworks they went thru don’t play the same.

I'm using post-Legion as a reference point here. I can use the same logic and the same standards of spec differentiation people used to attack SV and MM. Don't get me wrong; Assassination and Subtlety are distinct specs. But I can just be as obtuse as people who talk about Hunters. "Oh but those specs are both just stealthy dual-wielders using combo points! That's practically the same thing! You can't tell me Assassination is different just because it also has poisons and such! You could just put that stuff in Subtlety and it would still make sense!". You can do the same thing with Warlocks too and it's a much better parallel for pre-Legion Hunter design than people realise (think Aff-SV, Demo-BM, Destro-MM).

8th point: I love how when someone doesn’t conform to your ideas you now use the buzz phrase “melee favoritism.” Hell, you even accused me of it at one point even though I stated I loved range SV and would have preferred Blizzard to just add a 4th spec for melee.

I accuse you of it because in every single thread about SV you come up with flimsy excuses for the melee rework. But you're right; saying it's due to melee favouritism probably isn't it. It's probably more that you see yourself as a reasonable moderate so you bend over backwards to cater to unreasonable positions so as not to seem to be "taking a side".

So what you are saying is it had 1 xpac to be good and a 2nd xpac to be good in 1 specific type of content. The rest is memory. Got it.

Why are you playing dumb on this all of a sudden? We've been through this time and time again on these forums in the past few years. Survival was routinely a solid pick all throughout WotLK to WoD with 6.2, the very end of the range, being the rare exception. He gave you an example of a couple stand-out moments of SV and you decided to be obnoxious and obtuse about it and pretend those where the only times it was widely played. Christ almighty, and you like to think of yourself as reasonable and civil. The sheer gall.

But let's take that as true for a moment. Let's say that ranged SV was only a great pick a couple times in WoW's history. That's still a couple more times than melee SV was a great pick.

I do give a fuck, as people are making these types of statements but can’t prove it other than memory. I have personally checked warcraftlogs.com as well as worldoflogs.com and unable to find anything far back enough to verify it.

If you knew anything about this you would know that a) worldoflogs was not very widely used in general and also doesn't have much complete old data and b) warcraftlogs has only been in widespread use since WoD launched. Not only that, but the WCL data for 6.0 and 6.1 is automatically set to show the last 2 weeks of that patch cycle, i.e. when everyone has already mostly switched to BM and preparing MM for 6.2. Here's what you get when you actually plug in the full historical WCL data:

https://imgur.com/a/JRIE0oP

For stuff older than 6.0 you need to look at worldofwargraphs and/or the occasional complete WCL data floating around.

No one is basing this on memory except for the people who swear up and down that SV was unpopular as a ranged spec.

No. Survival is super fun, they just need to fix some talents but other than that it's a great spec.

The worst class revamp goes to Spriest Voidform.

Lots of people actually played that version of SPriest and it had a very unique and powerful niche in content, so actually it seems even that was a far better remake than Survival.

the old survival spec was wack, all over the place with way to many bells and whistles that didn't mesh with each other in any way shape or form.
sure, in it's current form it's not perfect. no class/spec is. but it sure as hell has more cohesion than explosive shot and wyvern sting ever had.
and although the old survival was FotM at one point, that's the only time it was widely played in the first place, because it was actually good/strong.
so unless there's any die-hard old school survival hunter lovers out there that would want to weigh in, the survival hunter revamp is not the worst spec revamp ever made.

What sort of wacky bullshit revisionism is this?

Firstly, you attack ranged SV for being "all over the place" in defense of a spec that mixes pet attacks, melee weapon swings, poisoned crossbow shots, and literal grenades. Brazen projection.

Secondly, you attack SV for only being widely played when it was FotM. Not only is this flatly untrue (see Siege of Orgrimmar, where SV was the most played spec even though BM did more damage), but even if it were true it would still be better than melee SV which has NEVER been a widely played spec in PvE.

I agree with the 2nd reply. In it's first iteration in wod when it was full melee it was actually kind of fun, played it quite a bit. But the later changes that made it semi-ranged ruined that, so that's why you rarely see them now. It's not that hunter melee survival didn't work. It was more that (as happens a lot in games, and in cooking too) survival melee was good but they kept messing with it to try to make it even better and ruined it.

Translation: "I like when Survival was trying to be a Warrior and not a Hunter".

You have this totally backwards. Even though Survival isn't played much now, it's still in a better position than it was in Legion. That "full melee SV" you love so much was even more dead in the water than the current version which is really saying something. If you remember an era with a widely-played melee Survival your memory is faulty.

Why is it so god damn hard to implement a melee spec with the ranger/pathfinder fantasy for Blizz? Every single RPG out there since D&D has had that. There's a niche for it. Some people want it. Just make it work.

Um, clearly the fact that Legion SV did so poorly and the situation at least improved a little when they gave it, uh, "gimmicky ranged bullshit" (translation: HUNTER MECHANICS), demonstrates that there isn't much of a niche for this "melee pathfinder" fantasy of yours at all.

If you love melee so much go play a Warrior. This isn't the class for you if you don't like ranged mechanics. A fully melee Hunter has been tried and failed. Tough shit. The debate has moved on to whether it should have any melee at all. A Hunter without any ranged capability is no longer remotely in the realm of reasonable discussion.

Melee Survival is the only hunter spec that I will play. I love it, it made me dust off my old hunter that I had not touched since WOTLK and I love it. The only complaint I have is that they should be able to Dual Wield.

Call me crazy but Hunter specs should be designed for people who like Hunters.

[Kaver]

What he did say was "in theory - Hunter should've always been more about melee than range", which is delusional. This isn't "I wish Hunter was this way" (which would still be a completely bizarre taste to say the least); it's "Hunters should mainly be melee". So as much as you like to pretend to be the reasonable moderate in these threads, his stance is in fact delusional.

It still just his opinion. He even says "My ideal hunter...". So even though his opinion doesn't comply with what a lot of hunter want, it is still just an opinion. When he says "Hunters should mainly be melee" then it's an opinion. You are allowed to disagree with that opinion (as I also do), but that doesn't make his opinion delusional. It's simply his preference when it comes to hunters.

Yeah, yeah, BM is the devil. You've whined about this on the forums for literally years at this point, and every time the fact of the matter is the same: whining about BM being OP is a sign of someone with very little knowledge on the Hunter class. 8.3 was an exception. BM is rarely the best pick for Hunters let alone by a large margin and whenever it happens to be best it's never due to the spec's mobility.

P.S. Watch as most PvE Hunters will be playing Marksmanship in Castle Nathria because, as it turns out, Hunters aren't all functional invalids that can't play anything but BM regardless of how much you like to pretend that's the case.

You can call it whining, but the facts are that BM hunter is by far the easiest spec in the game to keep near 100 % uptime on all fights in both raiding and dungeons. It is by far the easiest spec when it comes to avoiding damage and doing mechanics while keeping uptime. Performing well in a high M+ dungeon is significantly easier on a BM hunter than any other class. That's just a statistical fact.

To compensate for BM hunters advantage when it comes to uptime, it should be the spec doing the lowest damage at 100 % uptime. That's just logic. A class that requires more effort to keep 100% uptime should be more rewarded than a class that requires less effort for the same uptime. A melee spec with 95 % uptime should do the same damage as a BM hunter with 100 % uptime.

Now, ranged hunter is just a low effort class in general. Just because BM is the lowest effort doesn't mean MM is much worse. MM is also a very low effort spec to perform well with in dungeons and raids. Especially with the changes in Shadowlands. Yes you cannot move while casting Aim shot but that's the only ability. Other than that MM can be almost just as effective as BM when it comes to uptime. Especially in AOE situation.

Hunter is simply the class in the game that requires the lowest effort to play in dungeons and raids. That's not whining. That's just a fact. And that should be reflected in the maximum damage potential. In a stationary scenario (on a target dummy) the hunter should be the class doing the lowest damage. That's not whining. That's logic.

- - - Updated - - -

Call me crazy but Hunter specs should be designed for people who like Hunters.

Hunter specs are designed for people who like to perform well in WoW with minimum effort. There's a reason why the Hunter is considered the go-to-class for new players.

- - - Updated - - -

It went from being a spec that a lot of people play to a spec that very few people play. In the most simple terms this means they drove a lot of people away from their spec and therefore the change they made was a failure.

Every change that make the hunter specs require more effort to play will turn people away from the class. The reason why BM hunter is currently by far the most played spec in the game is because it is by far the spec that requires the least effort to play in raids and dungeons. It's pretty simple. And you can easily compared the WOD version of survival to this. It's almost required less effort to play than BM does now considering the fact that current BM at least have to deal with the pet and the barbed shot mechanic. WOD survival had no mechanics. It just had a lot of individual buttons you pressed on CD. There was no meaningful synergy between anything.

MM in BFA proves that a ranged hunter spec will not necessarily be successful if it requires more effort to play. Especially in AOE scenarios. Even in the beginning of BOD where MM strongly outperformed BM the latter was still by far the most played spec. Why? Again, the effort required to perform.

To make a hunter spec successful is very straight forward: Make it simple and low effort to play. That is what people want and there is no reason not just to say it as it is. Let's just call it what it is. Say to Blizzard.... This is what we want. We want 3 specs:

- One based on pets
- One based on hard-hitting attacks
- One based on dots

... but they should all be based on:

- ranged attacks
- no cast time
- full mobility
- no buff or resource management
- no resource generating ability
- no builder/spender mechanics.
- 3-4 dps abilities
- no dps ration, all dps abilities should simply be used on CD and in no special order
- simple dots, that are just applied by a button and refreshed by other abilities like cobra shot etc.
- have low apm for AOE
- no necessary target switching. Dots should just be spread by multishot in AOE scenarios.
- short burst CDs that apply to the player and not the target so that it works in both AOE and single target scenarios.

Let's just be honest man... this is what hunters want. I think it's dumb to pretend otherwise. To say that hunters like complex gameplay because it is simply not true.

[Malania]

If you're playing a class, unless you're a glutton for punishment, you generally play the highest DPS spec or you play the spec that brings something to the table. SV offers neither of these. It's played by people who want to play it because it's different for the class. If someone wants to play SV despite the drawbacks then it's not the worst revamp. But unless it offers something you wouldn't bring it over another melee that does.

Complicated rotations etc are irrelevant. You learn to play the class and spec if it's worth using. Nothing is too complex it can't be used by the majority.

[8bithamster]

It's a nice revamp but, it should've been done to BM instead.

My thoughts on the specs...
- BM -> Melee spec with tons of pets
- MM -> It's fine how it currently is
- SV -> I think this is where they should add a tinkerer spec

And here it is.. Mmo champion version of a Godwin. The longer a thread runs, the higher the chance someone will turn it into a tinker wishful thinking attempt.

[schwank05]

If you're playing a class, unless you're a glutton for punishment, you generally play the highest DPS spec or you play the spec that brings something to the table. SV offers neither of these. It's played by people who want to play it because it's different for the class. If someone wants to play SV despite the drawbacks then it's not the worst revamp. But unless it offers something you wouldn't bring it over another melee that does.

Complicated rotations etc are irrelevant. You learn to play the class and spec if it's worth using. Nothing is too complex it can't be used by the majority.

I enjoy the odd specs and have the most fun with them with the Talent revamps since CATA and MOP this is no longer a thing like Unholy DW was back in Wrath or many versions of the Rogue based on your weapons, SMF vs Titans Grip which is now back again, Gladiator Stance for Warriors also needs to be a thing again as well. There are no options anymore I love Melee Survival as it lets me play my Hunter in my preferred form of gameplay and that is Melee. I wish one of the mages specs would get changed to Melee or mid range as well as a Battle Mage, and Warlock could allow one where you are a form of Rogue that uses Void Magic. I also Think Monks should have a Ranged DPS class just as Paladins should. Shamans should have a tank spec and Priests I would love to see a Pure support class that just Debuffs bosses with Curses and Buffs the Raid with boons or does Protection Wards.

I have never been one to Play a class or spec just because it is the Best I play what I enjoy and find likeminded people to play with and Raid Heroic if I feel like it and that is good enough for me.

[Cyraxe]

And here it is.. Mmo champion version of a Godwin. The longer a thread runs, the higher the chance someone will turn it into a tinker wishful thinking attempt.

And here it is... Mmo champion version of someone that doesn't provide any constructive feedback throughout 16 pages of nonsense but, instead chooses to attack people. Oh wait, that's not limited to MMOC but, the whole degenerate side of the internet. I don't care for the whole idea of a tinkerer but, to me it would make sense.

[Donkeywing]

To compensate for BM hunters advantage when it comes to uptime, it should be the spec doing the lowest damage at 100 % uptime. That's just logic. A class that requires more effort to keep 100% uptime should be more rewarded than a class that requires less effort for the same uptime. A melee spec with 95 % uptime should do the same damage as a BM hunter with 100 % uptime.

Hunter specs are designed for people who like to perform well in WoW with minimum effort. There's a reason why the Hunter is considered the go-to-class for new players.

This is incorrect. While its true that bm has ''100% uptime'' due to 100% mobility, this is a dps strength. For some reason barely anyone understands this. Warlocks perform well on dot fights and hunters on movement heavy fights. If anything other dps strengths could be tuned down to compensate, but not overall dps. Compensating dps would defeat the purpose of having 100% mobility, as you would rather have slightly less mobility for more dps. 100% mobility is rarely usefull (compared to lets say 80%).

Also while current bm might be braindead, I don't think mm could ever be considered a minimum effort spec relative to other specs, but yeah it is true to some extent that it is considered the new player class.

[Orby]

Of all the specs to eventually go melee you'd think it would have been BM. You know Beast Master, who is a beast master > Rexxar > Rexxar is melee, weird they never went that route personally.

When I think of survival I think of a survivalist, I think of someone who is keeping their distance using a mix ranged and melee, replying on traps and other skills, kind of like old school hunters when they used to equip weapons and a bow.

[Bepples]

It still just his opinion. He even says "My ideal hunter...". So even though his opinion doesn't comply with what a lot of hunter want, it is still just an opinion. When he says "Hunters should mainly be melee" then it's an opinion. You are allowed to disagree with that opinion (as I also do), but that doesn't make his opinion delusional. It's simply his preference when it comes to hunters.

If I thought Hunters should be a healing class people would rightly think I would be delusional. That's how I view any notion that Hunter should be a melee-based class. I don't believe in use of the "my opinion!" shield beyond personal preference and I don't think his original post was from the standpoint of personal preference. End of story. His opinion is delusional.

You can call it whining, but the facts are that BM hunter is by far the easiest spec in the game to keep near 100 % uptime on all fights in both raiding and dungeons. It is by far the easiest spec when it comes to avoiding damage and doing mechanics while keeping uptime. Performing well in a high M+ dungeon is significantly easier on a BM hunter than any other class. That's just a statistical fact.

I would actually agree that it's the easiest from the standpoint of DPS uptime. What we disagree on is A) that its significantly easier than other classes, B) that this constitutes a major competitive advantage, and C) whether it's a valid strength of a spec or something overpowered. These three points will come up a lot in the rest of my post.

To compensate for BM hunters advantage when it comes to uptime, it should be the spec doing the lowest damage at 100 % uptime. That's just logic. A class that requires more effort to keep 100% uptime should be more rewarded than a class that requires less effort for the same uptime. A melee spec with 95 % uptime should do the same damage as a BM hunter with 100 % uptime.

No, it shouldn't, because mobility is rarely if ever a major strength in any competitive environment. Most specs in the game are very in-line in terms of how much skill they require to execute. Unless you're playing a funnel cleaver that has to manage multidotting, which describes maybe 3 of the game's 24 DPS specs, you're playing a spec that can comfortably be described as "easy". BM having reliable DPS that fits into any situation is a selling point of the spec. If it didn't have that there would be no reason for it to exist. I know I probably just got you excited with the idea of BM not existing but unless you have a Ny'alotha situation where BM is outperforming everything (which was entirely on the back of broken borrowed power systems) it's just about always fine in terms of tuning. Right now going BM is less DPS than MM but passable, which is exactly where it should be.

Pro tip: arguing that mobility does constitute a major competitive advantage is indicative of a lack of experience in competitive content. This hasn't even been true within the Hunter class. There have been plenty of tiers where the less mobile MM beats out BM as both the competitive and popular choice, including this very tier about to start. It's downright juvenile to still be sulking about BM's full mobility this many years later.

Now, ranged hunter is just a low effort class in general. Just because BM is the lowest effort doesn't mean MM is much worse. MM is also a very low effort spec to perform well with in dungeons and raids. Especially with the changes in Shadowlands. Yes you cannot move while casting Aim shot but that's the only ability. Other than that MM can be almost just as effective as BM when it comes to uptime. Especially in AOE situation.

You're onto something, but unfortunately you stop here at "Hunter" so you can double down on portraying all Hunters not playing SV has mindless simpletons to further your own sense of self-importance. The fact of the matter is most of the game's specs are low effort.

You're also once again portraying mobility as the sole deciding factor in what makes a spec easy or not. This is positively ridiculous. Back in BC BM Hunters could do none of their rotation on the move. They weaved Steady Shot and Auto Shot, and did all of that through spamming a castsequence macro copied off the elitist jerks forums. Their entire damage profile boiled down to 1 active ability and there wasn't even any great degree of cooldown management as BW had a static cooldown and no GCD so it just got thrown in with the castsequence macro. Yet it required them to stand still. With your twisted and uninformed logic this makes Burning Crusade BM harder than modern BM, which is laughable to say the least.

Hunter is simply the class in the game that requires the lowest effort to play in dungeons and raids. That's not whining. That's just a fact. And that should be reflected in the maximum damage potential. In a stationary scenario (on a target dummy) the hunter should be the class doing the lowest damage. That's not whining. That's logic.

Blithely repeating "That's not whining. That's a fact" (literally twice in one paragraph here, as well as elsewhere in the same post) does not actually make your ramblings here any more factual, you know. It just makes you wrong multiple times over.

It's clear to everyone you've had a longstanding grudge against this class so it's honestly pathetic that you spend all day and night derailing thread after thread (including this one) about how BM can move while casting. Most people got over this years ago when they realise it doesn't, in fact, break the game. Complaints about BM's mobility being overpowered are relegated exclusively to casual players in non-competitive content who don't have the knowledge or experience to know any better.

Every change that make the hunter specs require more effort to play will turn people away from the class. The reason why BM hunter is currently by far the most played spec in the game is because it is by far the spec that requires the least effort to play in raids and dungeons. It's pretty simple. And you can easily compared the WOD version of survival to this. It's almost required less effort to play than BM does now considering the fact that current BM at least have to deal with the pet and the barbed shot mechanic. WOD survival had no mechanics. It just had a lot of individual buttons you pressed on CD. There was no meaningful synergy between anything.

Hunters required far less effort to play on boss fights back in Vanilla, BC, and WotLK, yet there were more Hunters in later expansions as the class had higher APM, resource, and cooldown management. So this is pretty much just revisionist nonsense again that isn't worth anyone's time. It will also be quickly be exposed as bullshit as you're about to see most M+ Hunters sporting an 11-button MM build.

As for the topic of Survival: let's not forget that we actually have an active thread here on MMO-champion suggesting a future ranged Survival as a funnel-cleave spec, i.e. a spec that has to manage DoT uptime and procs on multiple targets which is the only mode of DPS gameplay that can really be described as high effort in this game. Does this thread ring a bell? It should, because you spent the first few pages chucking one of your famous tantrums about Hunter mobility and how this spec would be too easy because... you could use weak auras to help keep track of the mechanics, as if that somehow doesn't apply to literally every single other spec in the game.

MM in BFA proves that a ranged hunter spec will not necessarily be successful if it requires more effort to play. Especially in AOE scenarios. Even in the beginning of BOD where MM strongly outperformed BM the latter was still by far the most played spec. Why? Again, the effort required to perform.

Wrong and wrong. It did not strongly outperform BM and BM was not by far the most played. They were roughly on par in DPS, with MM being ahead on some bosses and BM being ahead on others, and correspondingly they were roughly on par in participation.

... but they should all be based on:

- ranged attacks
- no cast time
- full mobility
- no buff or resource management
- no resource generating ability
- no builder/spender mechanics.
- 3-4 dps abilities
- no dps ration, all dps abilities should simply be used on CD and in no special order
- simple dots, that are just applied by a button and refreshed by other abilities like cobra shot etc.
- have low apm for AOE
- no necessary target switching. Dots should just be spread by multishot in AOE scenarios.
- short burst CDs that apply to the player and not the target so that it works in both AOE and single target scenarios.

Let's break down this list:

- ranged attacks: True, they should all be based on this.
- no cast time: No one has this standard. MM has always had cast times, and even BM and SV did in the popular pre-Legion iterations of those specs.
- full mobility: Again, MM has always had mobility restrictions. I'm sure there are people who want all 3 specs to be fully mobile, but most Hunters are fine with MM having some form of mobility restriction.
- no buff or resource management: All 3 specs have always had this so it's flatly untrue.
- no resource generating ability: Not only have all 3 specs historically had this, but BM's lack of an active focus generator was a huge source of controversy in Legion and beyond. Pretending that players not only accept this but celebrate it and want it for all 3 specs is spectacularly egregious.
- no builder/spender mechanics.: All 3 specs have always had this so it's flatly untrue. You're also repeating yourself now to pad out your list length.
- 3-4 dps abilities: Again, historically untrue and a major source of controversy for Legion BM. That iteration of the spec was so slow and bare players complained on the forums for months for all sorts of new baseline mechanics, some of which are now part of the spec e.g. Barbed Shot with 2 charges. Blizzard forced a slow, bareboned BM on us and you're pretending that this is what we wanted despite overwhelming player rejection and BM being updated to be far more fast-paced and involved since then.
- no dps ration, all dps abilities should simply be used on CD and in no special order: Rotations are easier than dynamic priority systems i.e. what Hunters have had since Cataclysm, not harder. Another nonsense point from someone capable of little more.
- simple dots, that are just applied by a button and refreshed by other abilities like cobra shot etc.: Dot refreshers/extenders are common for DoT-based specs. Besides, people who are suggesting a DoT-based Hunter spec are generally pushing for something with funnel-cleave capability which is far more involved. We saw this same song and dance in the ranged Survival suggestion thread where you went balls-to-the-wall with the reductionism and dishonesty to pretend the spec archetype people were suggesting was simpler than it actually was because, as we have established many times, you're a dishonest person.
- have low apm for AOE: As has been said multiple times at this point, low APM was something Hunters actively complained about and wanted addressed. Blizzard pushed a low APM model of BM and the players soundly rejected it.
- no necessary target switching. Dots should just be spread by multishot in AOE scenarios.: Avenues for easy DoT spread in clumped cleave scenarios is a common design trope in WoW. Besides, manual multidotting for spread cleave scenarios is something many players have been actively pushing for.
- short burst CDs that apply to the player and not the target so that it works in both AOE and single target scenarios.: Uh, sure? I've never heard this being a point of complaint with Hunters before. Most cooldowns in the game are things that apply to the player and not the target. Besides: cooldowns that are only good for one of the other indicate lazy design and actually make the game more simple by narrowing our options.

So, to recap, the only valid point here is that we want all 3 specs to be ranged. Yeah, sounds about right. Everything else is inane, dishonest strawmanning which pretty much sums up 100% of your posts on the Hunter forums.

[Saltysquidoon]

Wrong and wrong. It did not strongly outperform BM and BM was not by far the most played. They were roughly on par in DPS, with MM being ahead on some bosses and BM being ahead on others, and correspondingly they were roughly on par in participation.

Despite being on aggregate the worst-performing hunter spec over the course of the BoD, BM consistently had the highest participation. Ultimately BM had ~85,000 parses and MM had ~38,000.

You could argue in 8.1 participation was close, but BM was also the worst-performing spec in the game in 8.1 so it was actually hugely over represented when you look at it in that context.

[Bepples]

Despite being on aggregate the worst-performing hunter spec over the course of the BoD, BM consistently had the highest participation. Ultimately BM had ~85,000 parses and MM had ~38,000.

You could argue in 8.1 participation was close, but BM was also the worst-performing spec in the game in 8.1 so it was actually hugely over represented when you look at it in that context.

Even Kaver was sensible enough to specify EARLY BOD and you clearly looked at the latest rankings. Of course we are talking about 8.1. No, BM was not the worst in the game. MM and BM were very close in performance. So you just posted some pretty major cringe.

[Saltysquidoon]

Even Kaver was sensible enough to specify EARLY BOD and you clearly looked at the latest rankings. Of course we are talking about 8.1. No, BM was not the worst in the game. MM and BM were very close in performance. So you just posted some pretty major cringe.

There are only three fights in BoD where BM wasn't the bottom spec, which makes it mathematically to worst spec in the game in 8.1, we can just straight up look this up.

What is 'very close in performance'? There are fights where the difference is in excess of 15% and there are still more BM parses than MM parses. Further, there is not a single fight where BM outperformed MM.

It's also interesting that for all the pure classes spec parse frequency and performance are essentially 1:1 tied together, except for bm that despite being the worst performing hunter spec was also the most frequent parser.
Might you have a suggestion as to what caused this anomaly since mobility and ease of play are completely irrelevant in a competitive environment (also please ignore havoc being the most played melee spec by like a factor of almost 50% mobility and accessibility are irrelevant).

[Bepples]

There are only three fights in BoD where BM wasn't the bottom spec, which makes it mathematically to worst spec in the game in 8.1, we can just straight up look this up.

What is 'very close in performance'? There are fights where the difference is in excess of 15% and there are still more BM parses than MM parses. Further, there is not a single fight where BM outperformed MM.

It's also interesting that for all the pure classes spec parse frequency and performance are essentially 1:1 tied together, except for bm that despite being the worst performing hunter spec was also the most frequent parser.
Might you have a suggestion as to what caused this anomaly since mobility and ease of play are completely irrelevant in a competitive environment (also please ignore havoc being the most played melee spec by like a factor of almost 50% mobility and accessibility are irrelevant).

If only when you looked at the rankings you noticed that MM had more parses than BM on every fight after Opulence (including the movement-heavy Rastakhan), and how almost the entire parse lead of BM comes from the very first boss indicating both the parse count and therefore the DPS score for BM were being skewed by casual raiders dipping into the easy first boss and doing no more. If only you then remembered that BM was by far the better spec in Uldir, indicating that casual players were more likely to stick to it especially given it was an expansion full of systems design that actively punished you for switching specs.

But really we can just focus on the Rastakhan example. If mobility were so important, you would see an overwhelming lead of BM on that fight in both performance and parse count. Instead there are far more MM Hunters and they are performing better. So, as per usual, the entire premise of your argument is wrong and you're still posting cringe daily.

[Meowtwo]

If I thought Hunters should be a healing class people would rightly think I would be delusional. That's how I view any notion that Hunter should be a melee-based class. I don't believe in use of the "my opinion!" shield beyond personal preference and I don't think his original post was from the standpoint of personal preference. End of story. His opinion is delusional.

No it isnt, the hunter draws its class fantasy from - you guessed it, hunters. And melee hunters were much more common in human history then bow and arrow (and exsisted alongside with that till guns became the go to - see the boar spear). Bows/guns are modern advancemants, for most of the time human hunters were melee hunters (alongside traps, and throwing big rocks). Melee hunters make perfect sense, even in the wow universe.




As for this thread, NO. If you go through this entire thread you will find that almost all the complaints are either "its melee, i dont want melee" or "its not viable, it has to compete with melees and other hunters as well, it just isnt the proper choice" - both of which have very little to do with the mechanics of the spec, or the enjoyment of playing it as you will. Yes there are some issues with talents, but overall its a fun spec and by no way a bad revamp (although imo they should have removed one of the other 2 specs, instead of survival, it was the best of the 3 in WOD, mostly because it was clostest of them to their MOP counterparts).

Imo the worst revamp for the hunter class was going from mop MM(and BM) to wod MM(and BM).

[Saltysquidoon]

But really we can just focus on the Rastakhan example. If mobility were so important, you would see an overwhelming lead of BM on that fight in both performance and parse count. Instead there are far more MM Hunters and they are performing better. So, as per usual, the entire premise of your argument is wrong and you're still posting cringe daily.

It's just so weird that despite BM being literal gutter trash it was massively over-represented compared to performance (completely opposing the trend set by every other pure dps class), yet when performance was reversed MM falls perfectly in line with that trend (i.e off the face of the earth).

It's truly a mystery for the ages, oh wait no it isn't you're just posting pure COPE.