why is no one playing survival. its insanely strong right now

[Bepples]

Obviously you've been living with your head under a rock to not notice. How about you look up on the armory at how many Legolases we have? Do you really think there aren't people who rolled hunters for the express purpose of copying?

Did you read my 2-line post at all? My point was that the most iconic part of Legolas was his use of a ranged weapon while the most iconic part of Survival is its lack of a ranged weapon. Yeah, there are plenty of Legolas copycats in WoW. They're all playing Marksmanship.

[Bepples]

People do not like SV because you have to actually understand the builds and setups for it.

Instead of assuming Hunters don't like Survival because they're all drooling idiots, why not ask Hunters why they don't like it?

As it turns out most don't like it because it's melee and they don't play the class to be melee. Most Hunters would welcome build variety in BM and MM. It's too bad most of the Hunter talent tweaking since Legion was wasted on Survival instead.

I think they did a terrific job making a melee skirmisher that fights with their pets and bombs...like someone fighting their way tooth and nail through a jungle being resourceful with poisons and bombs/traps or like a Rambo-esque class identity.

A terrific job building a spec identity which has you fight alongside pets while also using bombs? Are you listening to yourself? That's a completely incoherent identity that makes no sense. It's like three different identities competing in the same spec.

"Being resourceful" would imply not arbitrarily abandoning the single biggest strength of the class: the ranged weapon.

I think its the most fun spec of all hunters...I just think hunters like to be boring "ranged melee" as I call it with 2-3 button mashing like a melee but doing it from range and getting to avoid a ton of shit. Hunters are lazy, or don't want to be melee and that isn't a problem with survival.

See above. I know it's comforting for Survival Hunters to assume everyone's just too stupid for their spec but in fact the reason Hunters don't like it is because it's not ranged. It really is that simple. Don't attack the class because Blizzard couldn't sell them something they don't want.

None of the playstyle elements you talk about here are dependent on it being melee. It could be a multidotting, highly-interactve ranged spec. So why die on this melee Hunter hill? Why handicap the spec and condemn it to niche obscurity forever?

I'd like to see that. But it's probably tar trap + no damage from range and it takes forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_HdMvCeos

That's exactly what it is, in fact. Which of course means the other Hunter specs can do the same thing but better.

The range SV was not fun at all ... it feels like a dot lock. This was stupid ...

You can tell yourself that but that version of SV was vastly more popular than any melee version. DoT gameplay actually fits quite well with the Hunter class both thematically and mechanically. It makes sense to have a spec that focuses on special munitions; a hell of a lot more sense than a melee Hunter, in fact.

The first Design of the Hunter was for me the best. High damage on range but a bit less then the only range class like mage. Viable in Melee but also less damage then melee driven classes. But able to do both, depending on the situation. Prepared with a huge toolbox of ability for every situation a hunter can face in the wild, no other class had this and this was the bonus for a bit less damage.

Today ... You are forced to be only melee or range. With a lot of less damage compared to other range or melee classes without the huge toolbox of abilities ...
MM plays like a mage with less cc an damage ... BM is like a demon lock with less fun at all .. SV is more the hunter should be then the other specs but i miss the range abilities.

You're marketing a strength as a weakness here. Hunters were no more capable due to their melee toolkit pre-MoP. In fact they were less capable because their melee toolkit was designed and tuned to be significantly weaker than their ranged toolkit. The minimum range restriction was in fact a built-in weakness of the class that made them less capable than other ranged specs. You're not "forced to be only melee or range" in modern WoW because you can use your fully-capable ranged toolkit from 0-40 yards. We're better in melee than we were before and SV is the only Hunter spec with a ranged-based restriction within 40 yards. Kind of puts a damper on the whole "it's the most versatile spec", doesn't it?

As for utility: Hunters in fact have more utility and mobility than they had before MoP. The reason it feels like less is because other classes have bridged the gap a lot faster.

P.S. It's incredible how you only have 3 posts on this forum and all of them are god-awful takes on Survival.

[Segus1992]

Hunter players are afraid of melee because it's a much harder role.

[Deneios]

SV fights for the same spot as unholy/frost, havoc, feral, arms/fury, ret, WW, rogues and enha. Out of all those for utility SV is in the last 3 with warriors and rogues. What warriors and rogues lack in utility they compensate with dps and sv is nowhere near those 2 in dps

[Bepples]

Hunter players are afraid of melee because it's a much harder role.

Melee copium

[Vampyrr]

Survival should have just been made into a hunter tank spec and not a melee damage. Really missed the ball on the chance to have a mail wearing tank with them for the rework.

[Tumile]

It has little to do with performance. The vast majority of hunters play the class to play ranged, specifically focused around the bow or gun.

Survival goes against the biggest draw of the class itself to go melee. You yourself put it best, it feels like a warrior with a pet. If I wanted to be a warrior, I would be.

I respect that Blizz wanted to expand the class fantasy, but they went about it in a terrible way and Survival will never be popular regardless of how it performs.

its always about performance, covenants taught us that. and it does not perform.

[lazypeon100]

its always about performance, covenants taught us that. and it does not perform.

If that were the case, you'd see SV be more played during the times it has performed well. Which we haven't.

Beyond that, it's really not that bad in PVP as it is and has had several times where it has shined there as well. Regardless of how it performs in PVE or PVP, it simply isn't played.

[KrayZ33]

If that were the case, you'd see SV be more played during the times it has performed well. Which we haven't.

Beyond that, it's really not that bad in PVP as it is and has had several times where it has shined there as well. Regardless of how it performs in PVE or PVP, it simply isn't played.

Nah, we wouldn't, because people don't want that many melees (and the others are even better - or in SVs case, just simply better) and performance isn't measured soley in DPS either.
SV doesn't perform well in a raid enviroment unless you can tunnel in on a boss. Can't remember when it actually did perform well overall. I guess that would be the Surumar raid?
Straight boss DPS is mostly irrelevant.
If it would matter, and SV would deal the most damage, you can bet your silly bottom that you'd see 4 of them in every Mythic raid. Especially in the world first raids.
Because these players surely don't give a flying fuck about hunter being melee or range.

[Bepples]

If it would matter, and SV would deal the most damage, you can bet your silly bottom that you'd see 4 of them in every Mythic raid. Especially in the world first raids.
Because these players surely don't give a flying fuck about hunter being melee or range.

Evidently, given that we've had at least 3 tiers now with good performance from SV yet still minimal cutting edge raiding participation, this isn't true. Enough is enough when it comes to blaming performance. Being melee is clearly the issue. If it were ranged with this sort of performance it would be one of the more popular specs, just like when it was ranged before Legion.

[KrayZ33]

Evidently, given that we've had at least 3 tiers now with good performance from SV yet still minimal cutting edge raiding participation, this isn't true. Enough is enough when it comes to blaming performance. Being melee is clearly the issue. If it were ranged with this sort of performance it would be one of the more popular specs, just like when it was ranged before Legion.

Evidently, it is true, because SV isn't "good".
It's not even a good melee spec, or you simply didn't read what I've written.
Being melee is also related to performance... so I don't even get what you are saying when you say it's not performance related.

If you think mythic raiders wouldn't stack SVs in their melee slots just like they stack arms warriors when it would yield good results, then I don't know what you are smoking.
A lot of high end raiders actually like the SV playstyle as well from what I've heard and seen from streams and statements (although at least *that* is just selective evidence), they would stack 10 hunters (split among range and melee depending on what they need) if that would be the viable way to go due to imbalance and raid design.

It absolutely baffles me that you think SV performs just as well as BM/MM in raids...... just because bloodmallet lists them as relatively equal DPS in a patchwerk fight or something? There are so many mechanics that you simply can't properly do as SV compared to MM/BM. Even simple shit like carrying the orb out for ner'zhul, or walking the runes on Fatescribe.


These cutting edge people, in general, don't care about this "SV was once a range spec" crybaby bullshit.

I mean, I get it, I wouldn't say SV would have as many players as MM/BM.
But it's never been the case that SV is like a top-performing spec as you make it out to be - in an eviroment where every bit matters, it's not even "good"

[T-34]

Survival's main drawback is that it is melee.
In a raid group it competes for a very limited amount of spots.
Survival brings practically nothing to a raid group apart from dps: No buffs, no utility.
Why bring a survival to your group when you can bring a DK, warrior, DH, monk?

You cold ask the same question to boomkins: Why don't you play feral instead?
You could ask the same question to elemental: Why don't you play enhance instead?

[keyone01]

Isn't it funny that the only unique strength of msv compared to other melee is... ability to dish out high % of its dmg while not in melee?
Kinda hilarious if you would ask me.

[Segus1992]

Melee copium

It absolutely is harder to play melee, especially for Hunter which is also the easiest range DPS.

[Saltysquidoon]

The reason people don't play survival in organised group content is because it's a melee spec in a game where melee is undesirable with two other ranged options, it will literally never be desirable in said content because it not only has to be the best hunter spec, it has to be so good as to dislodge your existing melee players. We don't need any more evidence of this than the fact feral is outplayed by balance 30 to 1 despite being the better spec right now.

Whether hunters 'want' to play melee, or how thematically cohesive survival is, or how well designed it is, literally just do not matter when you only use organised croup participation as the metric to support your point because what I just said in the first paragraph completely eclipses all other considerations.

[kappalol]

Because I don't play hunter to play melee. Just that. And if I wanted to play melee I would play some much better spec.

[TOM_RUS]

Because no one asked for this melee crap to be added as hunter spec. Ranged SV was fine, bring it back, delete this melee trash.

[Nessa-fm]

You're marketing a strength as a weakness here. Hunters were no more capable due to their melee toolkit pre-MoP. In fact they were less capable because their melee toolkit was designed and tuned to be significantly weaker than their ranged toolkit. The minimum range restriction was in fact a built-in weakness of the class that made them less capable than other ranged specs. You're not "forced to be only melee or range" in modern WoW because you can use your fully-capable ranged toolkit from 0-40 yards. We're better in melee than we were before and SV is the only Hunter spec with a ranged-based restriction within 40 yards. Kind of puts a damper on the whole "it's the most versatile spec", doesn't it?

As for utility: Hunters in fact have more utility and mobility than they had before MoP. The reason it feels like less is because other classes have bridged the gap a lot faster.

P.S. It's incredible how you only have 3 posts on this forum and all of them are god-awful takes on Survival.

PreMoP? Who cares MoP? I talked about vanilla, this was the time to shine.

But yes you are right, melee was just for a big hit(Raptor) and rooting, try to attack from range again. Makros works a bit diverent and not all abillities used a GCD. You could Counterattack, Moongose, Wingclip and Raptor in one GCD with just one makro key, this was fun. After parry, 100% hit chance not block or dodge able and root, just awesome. Wingclip 25% root, trapps with root. With a dev ability 50% dodge and parry, and aspect of the monkey.

In Wotlk, and later on ... SV was OK. Just used by many hunter for the better usage of agi on higher itemlevel for the last 5% more damage.

Yes just 3 posts, i just read the news here ... but after all this hate against the sv, I had to write something at least. SV is fine ... ok ... i miss counterattack and scattershot but this is to OP I guess. In the end I just want both back again, melee and range weapon at the same time.

[Bepples]

In Wotlk, and later on ... SV was OK. Just used by many hunter for the better usage of agi on higher itemlevel for the last 5% more damage.

You have a seriously warped recollection of Survival's history. The spec was largely unremarkable in Classic and BC. In both expansions Marksmanship was generally preferred for PvP despite SV ostensibly being the PvP spec (all its best PvP talents were high up and within range of BM and MM specs anyway), and the only time SV got any attention in PvE was in BC due to its Expose Weakness debuff. When WotLK launched and it got Explosive Shot there was a massive influx of players and attention to SV and it remained a popular mainstream spec until it was made melee in Legion.

It honestly sounds to me like you're confusing pre-WotLK SV and post-WotLK SV.

[Nessa-fm]

Yes, MM was the mainstream hunter in vanilla and BC. BM mainly just for china farmer.
SV was the best on high item level. All progress hunter played MM/SV to get the agi buff from the SV. For PvP => MM just to scattershot and then max SV.

The main thing is the playstyle, using both melee and range(all weapons are hunter weapons, hehe). If you like this style of gameplay you had to play SV now. If they would change SV from melee to range only like the other specs ... oh hell boring dotlock style again ... no never plz. don't .. so just stoping asking for this.

Try one week SV, you wan't play MM or BM again. SV is so much faster and stronger also in each open world situation compared to a MM or BM. Try ... you will love it.