What's the reason for people playing SV now?

[Lord Pebbleton]

They want to make me mad

[Bepples]

No, it was just a bad idea to make it the Survival spec that was melee, instead of the BM spec, with abilities based on pets in addition to your own attacks.

Nah it was really just a bad idea no matter which spec it was.

[StephenFromMarketing]

Why do people play survival hunter?

Well sometimes people just like stuff, you know?

[Kehego]

post wod SV hunter is basically arcane mage is basically ass rogue is basically feral druid

they have *always* been fine numbers wise, but they have always had bad representation when they weren't OP

that's fine

would ranged SV probably be better/more popular? yeah. Should we have a 4th spec? imo yes

but is SV fine? its good, its the best hunter spec, but its not overpowered so, just like feral arcane the people who are drawn towards the spec will mostly be the ones to play them



some people play this game to have fun

[Eapoe]

Lmao no you do not.



Most specs have ups and downs. Few specs are unpopular all the time. And only one spec in the game was reworked from something that a lot of people enjoyed into something that very few people enjoy.



Then why do you spend so much time with this obnoxious fence-sitting over melee SV?



There's also no fundamental reason Destruction can't use curses and DoTs like Affliction does.

The reason those are different specs is because those are two different approaches to Warlock thematics and gameplay deserving of different specs.

If you start up with the business of "these specs aren't so fundamentally different so they can be merged" a lot more DPS specs fit that standard.



Don't even begin to pretend what exists in the class tree is an adequate substitute for ranged SV.



Wanting any of the three specs to be melee in their baseline state is stupid, to be frank. Most people who are unhappy with making SV melee would rather they didn't do it to any of the specs. It was an enormous waste of time and effort no matter what.

"Expand on it" is not an excuse. It's good class design. Back in Classic and TBC, all 3 specs were actually identical. Not just in your reductive "well this ability of Survival is kind of the same role as this ability from Marksmanship so they're essentially the same" sort of way, but in a literal "every spec has the same active gameplay and the only differences are passive" way. Then with iterative design each expansion we got 3 specs that were recognisably and meaningfully distinct. It was the most successful track of Hunter class design before the Legion wrecking ball came in.



Making a 4th spec for a pure DPS class is not reasonable.



You also make a lot of excuses for melee SV because you're desperate to come across as a reasonable moderate, to be fair.



And yet you ardently defend your own preferred gameplay getting screwed over. Again, just to come across as the reasonable moderate. That's FF14 level delusional fanboy behaviour.



And you state yourself that you preferred SV so much that you played it over the other specs whenever you could, so whenever you try to extend an olive branch to the melee SV side like this and declare them to be identical it just comes across as not only delusional but insincere.



I'll remember this whenever I hear "The problem is SV is it gets nothing exclusive against the other specs to make up for being melee!".



Yes one could argue that and they would be wrong.



You can achieve this with 3 ranged specs. As demonstrated by the fact that the examples you used to back up your argument are a class with 3 ranged specs and a class with 3 melee specs.



If they turned SV into a healer spec they would have also succeeded in this point.

Hopefully this helps you understand that mindlessly chasing diversity is not automatically a good thing.

In this case they implemented something called tokenism, which is diversity for the sake of diversity. They took away the ranged weapon from SV, giving it a unique handicap and turning it into the circus freak of class design, just so there was a tokenistic obvious distinction to point to.



Again, if you're going to make up such a ridiculous claim, back it up. Post the list of things that were exclusive to SV that got merged with Marksmanship.

Because the fact of the matter is the gameplay and theme of modern Marksmanship is absolutely nothing like that of ranged Survival.



People don't want just WotLK Hunter back. There was Cata, MoP, and WoD before SV became melee.



"SV Hunters aren't snobs! Also the only reason people want ranged SV is because they want an easy spec with zero drawbacks" couldn't resist, could you.

In any case, its drawbacks were having low burst damage and low mitigation.



This is a nonsense statement because SV was not an overpowered broken spec in all that time up to 6.2.



It sounds like you're just pathologically addicted to having bad class design takes TBQH because this is also a terrible idea.



We actually don't need a melee Hunter at all, and we certainly don't need "BM and worse BM" as different specs in the same class.

This demostrates a comical lack of self awareness to say "Oh SV was basically just Marksmanship so they could be merged" and then go on to defend turning SV into a handicapped BM.

Can anyone name a more delusional and head-in-the-clouds playerbase in this game than Survival Hunters?



Sounds like you just have bad opinions and tastes, then. And I really couldn't expect any better from someone who doesn't understand the difference between "insulted" and "insulated", to be honest.



It saw higher than usual representation because they made it do over 30% more DPS in M+ than every other spec.

Wow, what a revelation. If we make a spec absurdly overpowered, people will be obliged to bring it to cutting edge content.

You would have to be a complete idiot to think this gives any validity to melee Survival as a concept.

Did you know in late Shadowlands you still had more Hunters opting to take an enormous performance loss and play BM instead in M+? Meanwhile if SV is the best Hunter spec but only by a little, like right now, it remains the least played. So evidently it's not just performance that decides what people play.




Point #5 is the only good idea.

#1 is meh. #4 is not great because a throwing spec is very silly; it's easy to suspend disbelief and imagine the theme of a ranged weapon user who happens to have enough ammo for each fight. It's not so easy for the theme of a Hunter who's lugging around hundreds of spears/axes for each fight.

#2 and #3 are extremely bad. For #2, how on earth would removing SV's high ranged capability, the biggest remaining appeal for the spec, help it in any way? As for #3: tanking is an extremely poor fit for the Hunter class and the preferences of the people who play it.



One has to marvel at the dishonesty at this post.

Firstly, portraying SV for the first 4 years as "heavy emphasis on enhancing melee abilities". This was only a thing before patch 1.7, which was less than a year into the game's lifespan. After that, the "heavy emphasis" was a couple of talents in a tree otherwise focused on utility and stat improvements. Even before 1.7 the spec still had a ranged weapon and you were intended to spend most of your time at ranged; interpreting the melee talents as "it's a melee spec" is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intent of specs back then.

Secondly, there's equating this with being melee, and declaring that SV has been melee for longer than it's been ranged. No, it hasn't. Survival was always a ranged DPS with a ranged weapon before Legion, before the ranged weapon was taken away from it. Post-Legion SV has scarcely anything in common with Survival of old. Even Classic/BC. Appealing to history doesn't work for melee SV.

Even in 2028, when the spec will have actually been melee longer than ranged, that still doesn't give any merit to the pile of shit that is melee Hunter. It just means they doubled down on an idea that's bad, as they often do.

"Live and let live" died with Survival becoming melee. The melee-obsessed devs and players certainly weren't bound by "live and let live" when they got into the business of deleting and replacing specs, so the sentiment can fuck right off.



Man, how much self-loathing do you have to have to actively support your own preferred playstyle getting fucked over? Like I said to Eapoe, that's FF14 levels of delusional fanboyism.



So that small community was deserving of preferential treatment over the large number of players that preferred ranged SV?



Damn, sounds like they shouldn't have made either of them melee, then.

Well, yes, I do. My anecdotal evidence is the same as yours, and you don’t know what I experience. Just like I don’t know what you experience. I do know that multiple people have replied to you and stated they do not experience SV players being snobs in discord, such as you described from your experience.

SV hasn’t been unpopular all the time. It was played for NH a bit, with a caveat that more people probably would have played it had they grinded off spec weapons like top players had. It also showed to be quite popular when its damage was ahead of the other 2 specs and wouldn’t be a burden on raids and m+ by being brought.

I’m not fence sitting. I have a side I pick, and that’s that I miss old rSV and stated Blizz should have kept it and made a 4th spec if they wanted melee. That doesn’t mean I can’t, or don't, have fun with mSV. Nor am I going to shit on the people who do.

We aren’t discussing Warlocks. We’re discussing MM hunters, and how someone made a point of a patient sniper and how that wouldn’t include exotic munitions and types. Your point has no bearing on what’s being discussed.

Just like the last part, you’re making an argument over something I never said. I didn’t say it was a substitute for rSV, I said some of its abilities got reworked and put into the class tree.

It IS an excuse based on what was being discussed. Sheesh, 3 times in a row now where you argue a point not even being discussed.

It might not make sense to you, but it’s not like it would harm anything. As a matter of fact, when discussing this specific topic of rSV vs mSV, it would make a great deal of sense as it would have left BM, MM, and SV as rdps, while allowing some players to enjoy a melee Hunter spec.

I’m not trying to come across as reasonably moderate, it’s how I am when it comes to this topic. I’ve stated multiple times that I miss rSV and it was one of my favorite specs. That doesn’t mean I’m going to huff and puff and get worked up over something like you and others.

It’s not a fanboy to miss one thing but enjoy what it got replaced with. Also, personal attacks now? I would hope better.

How is it insincere to miss something, yet understand why others enjoy its replacement? This is even more so when considering that I still also have fun with mSV. The issue isn’t that I’m trying to be reasonably moderate, it’s that you have no middle ground. It’s all or nothing, and anything that exists outside of your opinion is wrong.

When did I ever say it couldn’t be achieved with 3 specs?

No one said chasing diversity just for the sake of it is good. I’ve also noticed you are grasping at this new buzzword talking point about SV being handicapped, when that’s not true, and just a disingenuous poor take. Unless you’re entire point is that melee specs are handicapped for not being rdps.

Anyways, I’m not going to respond to your posts to the other person, so I’m just going to leave off with this: your arguments are in bad faith and full of strawmans.
You make up arguments against things I’ve never said, as well as try to twist comments I made to be about things they aren’t. I don’t know if that’s because you just misunderstand the topic between me and someone else, or if you are doing this on purpose.
You are pure zealotry in your reasoning as you have clearly demonstrated that there is no middle ground, let alone anything outside of your opinion, that can be true.
I’ve pointed out that while rSV was one of my favorite specs, yet I still have fun as mSV and don’t crap on others for enjoying it, but according to you that somehow makes me disingenuous and insincere.
Basically, from all of my interactions with you, all I can state is I’m done interacting with you as you have demonstrated nothing but an ability to argue in bad faith, misunderstand what others are saying, and misrepresent what has been posted. Take it as a win if you’d like, as I’m sure you will, and have a good day.

[RobertMugabe]

SV hunter is definitely among the most fun and best designed specs in the game. The issue with teme is that there are simply enough melee specs already and most people who have hunter alts are primarily interested in playing the ranged specs.

[hulkgor]

And here i am, with Survival being my favorite hunter spec since the rework.

I actually disliked how broken it was at the end of Shadowlands since it became meta and all the metaboys were playing it like crazy.

I find it -vastly- more fun to play than BM\MM have been for a long time.

[F Rm]

I don't have any alts do no I'm not him.
Feel free to give me the same arguments.

Okay, sure.

I'm not going to reply to everything but I'll address a few things

Survival wasn't ever removed it was merged with marksman, they should have done a better job at that but regardless neither spec plays how it did back in wrath, no spec does, the only thing that has really continued is thematics, which modern marksman has kept almost all of survivals shots.

It was liked because it was an easy spec with zero drawbacks, you had the benefits of melee mobility and ranged convenience, the only way to tune that level of freedom was to dumpster it's damage, which they did, then it was reworked.

The core gameplay, and even the design/mechanics of the individual abilities exclusive to old SV was indeed removed from the class. What they added to MM were [some of] the same abilities in name only. BA was reworked to a stand-alone ability with no interactions or ties to anything else. The same was done with Explosive Shot, on top of the fact that it was reworked from purely a low-CD ST focused burst DoT to a one time event, on use AoE ability with a mid-range CD. Lock & Load? Same thing, reworked to work passively with Auto Shots, and was now tied to Aimed Shot, not Explosive Shot. Aimed Shot in Legion, and any spec-centric functions or interactions for that ability certainly did not promote the same gameplay as ES+L&L did for RSV.

As for your bit about no spec playing the same as it did back in Wrath, old SV held the same core gameplay from Wrath, all the way to the melee rework in Legion. And while Legion itself changed many things for a lot of specs, and their core gameplay, it's very much possible to keep the old core gameplay while expanding on it, to allow for more things to be included. The same would be true for old SV, had they just decided to stick with it, going into Legion.

About drawbacks, and tuning...

Tuning/balancing for old SV worked perfectly fine for most of the time it was in the game(WotLK - WoD). The exception was ofc the later half of WoD where they intentionally destroyed its performance in preparation for the melee rework. And yes, that had to be intentional. They literally reduced its capability/throughput below what tanks could achieve, not by an input of the wrong numbers, but by a mechanical rework of certain effects.

Unlimited mobility is not, nor has it ever really been a big factor for PvE tuning/balancing since there aren't nearly any encounters in the game where having zero movement restrictions would count for a major advantage over other specs. If you believe otherwise, feel free to list the encounters where you think a ranged spec with no such restrictions would vastly overshadow other ranged specs, because of said lack of restrictions.

[Kehego]

I'm not going to reply to everything but I'll address a few things

Survival wasn't ever removed it was merged with marksman, they should have done a better job at that but regardless neither spec plays how it did back in wrath, no spec does, the only thing that has really continued is thematics, which modern marksman has kept almost all of survivals shots.

It was liked because it was an easy spec with zero drawbacks, you had the benefits of melee mobility and ranged convenience, the only way to tune that level of freedom was to dumpster it's damage, which they did, then it was reworked.

As for other specs with heavy overlap I'm actually in favour of merging them, like sin and sub, I was actually hoping they would merge those two specs and give rogue a ranged DPS spec in Legion.

As for splitting melee vs ranged... Uh does this need to be explained? They use different weapons, require different utility and need to be balanced differently.
There are classes, specs and subspecs, classes are an overarching thematic idea, specs are divided by role, weapon choices and magic school, subspecs are styles that use the same magic school and weapons in different ways. Survival and marksman can both exist as subspecs in the same spec, melee hunter and ranged hunter need their own specs

tbh sv and MM do not play in any similar way, and other than the names of spells (not even the functionality) shares nothing with MM

[Neuroticaine]

One has to marvel at the dishonesty at this post.

Firstly, portraying SV for the first 4 years as "heavy emphasis on enhancing melee abilities". This was only a thing before patch 1.7, which was less than a year into the game's lifespan. After that, the "heavy emphasis" was a couple of talents in a tree otherwise focused on utility and stat improvements. Even before 1.7 the spec still had a ranged weapon and you were intended to spend most of your time at ranged; interpreting the melee talents as "it's a melee spec" is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intent of specs back then.

It wasn't a "melee spec" but it DID have a strong emphasis on enhancing your melee abilities, and it is incredibly dishonest to claim otherwise. Most of the talents in the tree enhanced raptor strike, wing clip, mongoose bite, increases dodge and parry, and giving you melee counter attacks. This is true even through the end of TBC, so your claim that that ended before 1.7 is just a lie. It still had access to most of the ranged tools that all hunters had access to, but it did have stronger melee capabilities than any other hunter. The seeds were planted since the very start of the game.

Man, how much self-loathing do you have to have to actively support your own preferred playstyle getting fucked over? Like I said to Eapoe, that's FF14 levels of delusional fanboyism.

Kiddo, I raid log for 2 hours a day, 2 days a week. I have next to zero investment in this game. I simply play to have a good time with my friends.

"Live and let live" died with Survival becoming melee. The melee-obsessed devs and players certainly weren't bound by "live and let live" when they got into the business of deleting and replacing specs, so the sentiment can fuck right off.

This is genuinely unhealthy behavior. Your telling me that you can't find something else to play and have fun with 30+ specs after 7 years, and yet you still just keep playing it? Developers are constantly changing their vision for aspects of online games. If you only like one singular spec that only existed for a small portion of this game's life, I don't think you enjoy the game. I genuinely recommend you play something else.

Yes, Blood DPS and Legion Shadow were the most fun I've ever had in this game, but there's still a lot of fun to be had, especially playing with friends I've had for over a decade. So no, I'm not going to have an aneurism over the fact that my preferred order of pressing buttons doesn't exist anymore.

- - - Updated - - -

tbh sv and MM do not play in any similar way, and other than the names of spells (not even the functionality) shares nothing with MM

It would be very easy for them to give MM talents to play exactly like SV did. It is exceptionally weird what they did with explosive shot, and I don't think anyone likes it.

[Venziir]

Because it's a fun and reasonably unique spec?

[Kehego]

It wasn't a "melee spec" but it DID have a strong emphasis on enhancing your melee abilities, and it is incredibly dishonest to claim otherwise. Most of the talents in the tree enhanced raptor strike, wing clip, mongoose bite, increases dodge and parry, and giving you melee counter attacks. This is true even through the end of TBC, so your claim that that ended before 1.7 is just a lie. It still had access to most of the ranged tools that all hunters had access to, but it did have stronger melee capabilities than any other hunter. The seeds were planted since the very start of the game.



Kiddo, I raid log for 2 hours a day, 2 days a week. I have next to zero investment in this game. I simply play to have a good time with my friends.



This is genuinely unhealthy behavior. Your telling me that you can't find something else to play and have fun with 30+ specs after 7 years, and yet you still just keep playing it? Developers are constantly changing their vision for aspects of online games. If you only like one singular spec that only existed for a small portion of this game's life, I don't think you enjoy the game. I genuinely recommend you play something else.

Yes, Blood DPS and Legion Shadow were the most fun I've ever had in this game, but there's still a lot of fun to be had, especially playing with friends I've had for over a decade. So no, I'm not going to have an aneurism over the fact that my preferred order of pressing buttons doesn't exist anymore.

- - - Updated - - -



It would be very easy for them to give MM talents to play exactly like SV did. It is exceptionally weird what they did with explosive shot, and I don't think anyone likes it.

I dont think so chief

[Bepples]

It wasn't a "melee spec"

Good to know. So modern SV, a melee spec, is not representative of classic SV, a ranged spec. Classic SV is also certainly not a platform to state that SV has been melee longer than it's been ranged, which is what you said in your last post.

but it DID have a strong emphasis on enhancing your melee abilities, and it is incredibly dishonest to claim otherwise. Most of the talents in the tree enhanced raptor strike, wing clip, mongoose bite, increases dodge and parry, and giving you melee counter attacks.

This is the list of talents that enhanced melee:

- Savage Strikes
- Deflection
- Improved Wing Clip
- Deterrence
- Counterattack

So right off the bat, that's 5 talents. Certainly not most of the tree. Furthermore, only one of those is offensive. The rest is mitigation or kiting ability, both immediately relevant to ranged combat as well.

You better not call me a liar when you're the one presenting this so dishonestly.

This is true even through the end of TBC, so your claim that that ended before 1.7 is just a lie. It still had access to most of the ranged tools that all hunters had access to, but it did have stronger melee capabilities than any other hunter. The seeds were planted since the very start of the game.

It's not a lie; you just don't have a clue and you're projecting your own dishonestly.

Before 1.7 there were more melee talents including the end talent Lacerate. They were all very weak and probably ironically amounted to less melee DPS than post-1.7, but you could actually say that the tree had an emphasis on melee combat. You were still a ranged DPS with a ranged weapon, however they clearly wanted you to have improved melee ability for situational usage given Hunters could not use ranged attacks up close and other people in PvP knew that.

As for BC, what exactly did you think the spec did in that expansion? It got Expose Weakness and Master Tactician, two critical ranged-exclusive talents, and it played primarily at range. Back in the day it was 100% ranged DPS. In BC Classic people mastered melee weaving tech to squeeze out a bit more DPS, but that was relevant to all raiding Hunters not just SV, and you could still perform just fine without doing it. There are 99th percentile parses with no melee weaving. Are there 99th percentile parses from ranged-only SV Hunters in retail WoW?

To argue that classic SV was comparable to modern SV or any sort of precedent is utter nonsense. The ranged weapon was critical to the theme, aesthetic, and gameplay of the entire class including SV from day one. This is both a result of the class's design and the clearly-stated intent (https://i.imgur.com/kBVr5Uc.png). Every iteration of every Hunter spec before Legion had a ranged weapon and used it as its primary mode of combat, so any melee Hunter spec is utterly alien to the original class. SV in its last ranged iteration in WoD was a better representation of the classic SV Hunter than what came after. To think that a melee Hunter is a good fit based on classic SV is a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the extent and purpose of the melee improvements in SV back then.

Kiddo, I raid log for 2 hours a day, 2 days a week. I have next to zero investment in this game. I simply play to have a good time with my friends.

Yet here you are spending time and effort to make bad arguments about something in the game on a forum. Seems like you're more invested than you like to believe.

This is genuinely unhealthy behavior. Your telling me that you can't find something else to play and have fun with 30+ specs after 7 years, and yet you still just keep playing it? Developers are constantly changing their vision for aspects of online games. If you only like one singular spec that only existed for a small portion of this game's life, I don't think you enjoy the game. I genuinely recommend you play something else.

I can find other fun things to play. I still play the game, after all. However I can also recognise that my favourite way to play was removed and I'd be having a lot more fun if it weren't.

I'm ignoring the attempt to minimise the spec rework and equate it to others because it's reductive and dishonest. For one, no other spec was changed to the extent Survival was, where it changed roles from ranged to melee. But also many of those other total spec reworks have also been mistakes, such as Demo warlock in Legion. It doesn't make sense to defend a bad decision with "but they've done this same bad decision multiple times".

You seem to think it's a virtue to see the developers uprooting and fundamentally reworking specs people enjoy and just say "oh well, it is what it is". It's not. People should actually stand up for what they believe in. Change is not automatically bad but it's not automatically good either, and if Blizzard is selectively fucking over parts of the playerbase by changing the intended audience of their favourite spec then they should be called out for it. Especially when the change has resulted in such demonstrably worse outcomes for the spec in question. Survival is the circus freak of class design now; one that entertains very few players and requires high maintenance. They turned SV into a joke. It's worth calling out. If you want to campaign against your own interests and spend more time and energy attacking the players instead of the developers, maybe you're the one who should re-evaluate how you approach the discussion if at all.

It would be very easy for them to give MM talents to play exactly like SV did. It is exceptionally weird what they did with explosive shot, and I don't think anyone likes it.

It wouldn't be easy, and it would be a bad idea. MM is a different theme and gameplay style to ranged SV. Cramming ranged SV into MM just results in a watered-down and limited representation of both. Most of your talent picks would be for either picking the patient sniper MM style or the utilitarian munitioneer SV style, with little to no ability to elaborate or explore either theme beyond the basics. It would also be an egregiously unfair compromise because it's the ranged Hunters having to make all the sacrifices while the tiny niche of melee Hunters keeps 100% of what they want with no concession whatsoever.

It would be like trying to cram everything Affliction does into Destruction to make room for a melee Warlock spec.

[Donkeywing]

It would be like trying to cram everything Affliction does into Destruction to make room for a melee Warlock spec.

Don't give the lunatics any ideas. Soon enough they'll be asking to play side by side with their succubus to complete their fantasy. They'll claim cursing enemies by touching them makes more sense, and they will have a big finish when they realise how unique melee-cloth is going to be. Oh, and:



''The seeds were already planted''

[Bepples]

Don't give the lunatics any ideas. Soon enough they'll be asking to play side by side with their succubus to complete their fantasy. They'll claim cursing enemies by touching them makes more sense, and they will have a big finish when they realise how unique melee-cloth is going to be. Oh, and:



''The seeds were already planted''

Yes this is an ongoing challenge I have with talking to people with habitually bad takes on class design. You bring up an absurd example to prove a point and they end up thinking it's a good idea. Melee Mage is a big one. I also like to compare taking the ranged weapon away from a Hunter spec to taking Stealth away from a Rogue spec. The problem is some people think that sounds like a great idea. Some people really are beyond help.

[Bepples]

It wasn't a "melee spec" but it DID have a strong emphasis on enhancing your melee abilities

Damn, 2 weeks later and you've run off to other threads instead of trying to reinforce this nonsense any further. I guess you did figure out it was nonsense after all. If only you would explicitly own up to it here, though.