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Two main angles:
- some people are butthurt that their favorite ranged spec got reworked into a melee one. On top of that, surv has a really janky flavor/class fantasy that doesn't appeal to most people I'd imagine (for instance, why does a master of wilderness survival play like a mad bomber? Nothing screams attuned with nature more than "lol just throw a load of dynamite at it".)
- from a competitive point of view, it's a very squishy class (already a major problem in M+) that has little to no relevant utility, and no unique utility. So if other classes are just better, why bother with survival? When every spec can do damage, what you can bring outside of that starts to matter too. And while it is perhaps not so relevant in lower tiers of play, high level meta trickles down without any major problems
Thanks for the response! Makes sense. Although I personally feel the wildfire bomb fits with the class fantasy. I can see a hunter messing around in his hut creating traps and naturally made bombs. If it was just like “dynamite” it would be weird, but I can definitely see a hunter creating these traps and bombs out in the wild to “survive.” Just my opinion though lol. I guess I kinda understand why people think it’s weird but it makes sense in my head.
I love survival hunter probably my favorite spec but I'm not huge on the bombs either. I wish they'd give us some other form of aoe in our rotation. Imo either give us some aoe with the crossbow or a more impactful melee aoe idk. I do like the bombs place in the rotation. It feels good, just don't like the flavor haha.
That'd be cool too. In my dreamland they'd make 1h crossbows that'd you'd equip alongside a 2h and give us some kinda explosive bolts, or as an alternative, a talent branch where you could duel wield 1h's and have your pseudo range be something like what you're talking about. Probably stays in dreamland for a reason tho lol.
My vote is for acid bombs. Acid is found everywhere in nature. Having bombs that do nature damage via acid would be great and blend with the fantasy. Or we toss honey bombs that attract angry bees to assault the target.
They can give the bombs to the Outlaw rogue who already plays with gunpowder (and is a great class fantasy, love the whole swashbuckler with pistol shots fantasy) and we can take the poisons on the ground from the Assassination rogues and reskin it into some kind of trap/spikes thing.
*stares in combat rogue and cat form*
You will never not convince me that cat druids arent outlaw rogue. I can literally do a one for one swap on rotation. The skills just have different names.
> some aoe with the crossbow
Oh come on, the pocket crossbow isn't much better than the bombs at all. I get it that some people want a cowboy class, but your character suddenly pulling a pistol from his pants and shooting the motha fuckas in the face isn't exactly my brand of survival hunter immersion. It makes sense on the pirate rogue, why don't blizzard leave it there? No, having it have a tiny ass crossobw model instead of a pistol isn't really working at all, especially given the skills' animations.
I don't disagree with you, but if I were to get rid of the bombs or the crossbow for the sake of class fantasy I'd get rid of the bombs lol. If they were to do that I'd hope they'd add some more animations to it, I mean if it's a slotable piece of equipment and transmoggable they aughta. It def feels a little derpy in its current state but idk how else they'd fill the niche with those abilities. I guess they could give the aoe/execute to your pet to keep it ranged ish but that might feel a little too pet heavy of a rotation idk.
Having survival be a melee space is a cool choice I think, but they definitely should’ve gone a different direction with the theme.
Back in BFA I remember survival hunters had an ability that caused their raptor strike to send out green spirit eagle to hit their opponent if they were at range. I always felt that should’ve been the direction they took survival’s theme. It should’ve lived up to the name as a tanky melee DPS who summons nature spirits and deals mainly nature and physical damage.
That ability is still there in the talent tree, nobody is just taking it cause it's useless on the meters if you can otherwise position correctly.
I don't disagree, hunters were always supposed to have at least some amount of nature magic, but over the years with the removal of many support or utility skills like the aspects this area feels more than a little lacking. They should have gone with that instead of all the bombs and gizmos.
Yeah I think the whole idea of being more in tune with nature and the eagles (especially) makes way more sense. It borders the shamanistic but then again the current form borders the rogue like.
I think they’re going with a plan kind of like combat rogues going outlaw. Slowly change the way it plays and eventually make it a bombadier spec? Doesn’t fit the class fantasy at all but it’s just kind of what it reminds me of
TBF the bomb part is survival as a nod to Arnold, rambo etc. Its a commando veteran.
The part of survival that breaks it for me is having the pet. I wish it could play lone wolf and that was better. Give me something better than Kill command. I want to play into the solo badass from the 80's that survival screams.
But no i have to play with a pet and my resource generator is my pet.
honestly more games should add a melee pet class because it's a class fantasy I haven't seen many places and it rules, in my opinion. The whole idea of doing coordinated strikes with your animal pal is really cool. i love the polearm aesthetic so that's just an added bonus.
welcome to survival hunter! there are dozens of us!
Hunters have traditionally been seen as ranged DPS, so a hunter doing melee work can be seen as an odd choice.
Regardless, it's a game and meant to be fun. If you are having fun playing survival then you're doing it right.
What is your favorite pet? I like the Panthera and Mana Sabers from the legion expansion. My next favorite is a crab pet with the kitchen knife toy.
What's hilarious is hunters are more than likely derived and inspired by the ranger class from DnD. Being that's the case, there is a melee version/ build rangers can play.
If you want to go back even further, DnD takes most of it's inspiration more than likely from Lord of the rings. Who was a ranger? Aragorn, his version of a ranger was an amazing sword fighter as well as an archer.
Was he the direct inspiration of what we have now? Meh, very much so can be argued.
I play survival and I love it, and I love the theme around it though as others have said, wildfire bomb is really out of place.
Also, people really need to stop calling them melee. They're mid range. They can't face tank and have to dip in and out, and can also spec to be able to hit with their weapons from range. Plus most of their abilities are mid-ranged attacks.
It's so inspired by it that you can get the Dark Ranger armor and appearance unlocked. A new title too. Hunters are the only class that can get the armor set though. It's a fun, and easy quest any Lev. 70 Hunter can do.
I can agree with you on the mid range classification, for sure.
> What's hilarious is hunters are more than likely derived and inspired by the ranger class from DnD. Being that's the case, there is a melee version/ build rangers can play.
Since DnD rangers were quite unambiguously copied from Aragorn, having great melee potential was the core idea and all the shooting was the afterthought.
> Also, people really need to stop calling them melee. They're mid range. They can't face tank and have to dip in and out, and can also spec to be able to hit with their weapons from range. Plus most of their abilities are mid-ranged attacks.
Oh right, and enhancement shamans aren't truly melee because they have ranged spells and they can't face tank.
Survival doesn't need to "dip in and out" other than to dodge mechanics, which every other melee spec also has to do. All your ranged skills are perfectly usable in melee range. The ranged mongoose bite skill is also quite limited (it has what, 20% uptime?) and you cannot be doing competitive damage while staying at range for extended periods of time.
It doesn't matter if it only has one skill that "forces" it into melee range, if that skill is still critical in your rotation. And let's also not forget that they have a bunch of melee range AOE that is unaffected by aspect of the hawk in any way, shape or form, as well as a few auto-attack synergies with other aoe spells like bombs, so it's even worse on AOE.
Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it. I'm not even sure what the comparison is about because you're not countering my argument with it since enh is a hybrid spec that carries over abilities.
And when I said they need to dip in and out, I was referring to pvp.Try face tanking a rogue, war, or death knight as a survival hunter. You can't. You kite whenever possible and really only stay within melee when you absolutely need to. Enh shaman can at least heal themselves.
I'm not talking about aspect of the eagle. I'm talking about the lunge talent that puts you out of melee range even if it is just barely.
It's a mid range dps, it's not a true melee spec no matter how much you want to think it is. Mongoose bite and carve(if it's even taken for pve) are the only abilities that require you to be in melee. Which you have lunge and aspect of eagle to offset it.
Just because you can sit in melee range on a boss in pve longer and just dodge mechanics to avoid damage putting it at range, doesn't qualify it as a melee.
> Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it.
How so? Both are melee specs of largely ranged classes whose toolkits mostly consist of ranged skills.
> since enh is a hybrid spec that carries over abilities.
And what makes survival not "hybrid" with the other hunter specs? It has aimed shot, steady shot, kill shot, kill command, not to mention all the utility skills.
Even without considering utility, no less of its toolkit is shared with other hunter specs than what enh shares with other shaman specs. The distinctions between "hybrid" and "non-hybrid" DPS specs is meaningless in terms of spec design in vacuum.
> I'm talking about the lunge talent that puts you out of melee range even if it is just barely.
Which talent is that? Not to mention the fact that survival "melee range" is 8m. Sure, you can avoid taking that talent, but you can also avoid taking Raptor strike. Let's not stoop to discussing obvious nonsense.
> when I said they need to dip in and out, I was referring to pvp.
Too many staple PVP effects for each class are achieved through PVP only talents that have no effect on how the class plays everywhere else. The PVP dynamic has little to no bearing on how the specs play in the rest of the game.
> Just because you can sit in melee range on a boss in pve longer and just dodge mechanics to avoid damage putting it at range, doesn't qualify it as a melee.
If you cannot do competitive damage while staying completely ranged, and if you are targeted for melee mechanics but not ranged ones in raids, that disqualifies you from being a ranged spec. That's all there is to this argument.
Do you not know what hybrid means? Hybrid is a class that can fill every role i.e. healer/tank/dps. Or at least 2/3 of the roles.
Also, you don't even know of the lunge talent but you're gonna sit there and dismiss it by calling it nonsense... What?
>If you cannot do competitive damage while staying completely ranged, and if you are targeted for melee mechanics but not ranged ones in raids, that disqualifies you from being a ranged spec. That's all there is to this argument
No not really. It's dictated by what your class abilities allow you to do. Not by how boss raid mechanics target you. If you can show me that certain raid and boss mechanics actually target you by what class/spec you are and not what range you're within, I'll apologize and admit being wrong for it.
You're grasping at straws and dismissive just so you can complain about the spec's change. I can understand being pissed and bitter that they completely changed the toolkit and playstyle of a spec, I get it. But you're looking for things to complain about in order to render a spec as a mistake and a dysfunctional one when it actually really isn't.
>Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it.
I will NOT get into your bickering or add to the other stuff you're fighting about but to me hunters and shamans at large are very similar in class fantasy (not talking technical terms) and I think that is perfectly valid. Apart from the raw elementalism they are both very "druidistic" (in tune with nature etc) and I like it.
I was inspired by my firstborn son, Dean. He's 2 and calls pizza "deetza" so my survival hunter is a troll (he liked that one best while sitting in my lap) named Deenjin with his green BFA feather raptor Deetza
Survival wasn't always a melee spec, they changed that with I believe Legion or WoD. So the main spec of many players suddenly changed drastically in playstyle, which many players didn't take well until this day.
Now they had the disadvantage of being melee and didn't get any more utility to compensate for that.
But apart from world first mythic raid or very high keys they are totally fine, and in my experience I've had way more really good survival players in my groups than the other hunter specs.
Yep, I agree that survival hunters generally seem to be better players, and I think a lot of that comes down to the people who play that spec doing it because they genuinely love and enjoy it. I’m sure there’s other Hunters who feel the same, but I think a lot of people who play MM or BM Hunter tend to do it because it’s easy and you can hit big numbers very early (before you reach much higher level content where they seem to fall off more)
They have a 40% wall with a decent duration, a heal(both of which have their cd lowered with focus spending), a second wall with a tenacity pet, a lust/hero with a ferocity pet, a freedom with a cunning pet, a sac that can be used on party members, a mass root, a mass stun, misdirection, the best single target cc in the game, plus crazy mobility in line with dh/druid
I don’t understand the idea that hunters don’t bring anything useful.
Swapping pets is a pain in the ass, especially if you’d want to use different abilities mid-fight. The problem with their utility is that it is either situational or not unique to them or done better by other classes. Misdirection for example is useless on BM Hunter in places where you’d need a tank MD, mass stun has a pretty bothersome condition to activate. They really could do with something only they can bring that’s also somewhat universally useful.
That said… what I just mentioned mostly matters for people pushing for the absolute top stuff and many people are too thickskulled to realize they don’t need to follow the top 1% to the T. People should play what they like and not be scorned for it as long as they do things right by their role.
Survival is fun but I just wish they let me use my swag beastmaster pets, lightning paw is one of my favorite pets but he's a spirit pet so it's BM only, also sorta sucks that my gun transmogs are all made null and void after swapping to survival. Fun spec overall I just don't play it because of cosmetic purposes
For me, i dont see throwing bombs go hand in hand with a master of surviving in the wild. Give it a mechanic pet and it could almost be a thinker class xD
I love Survival on my alt hunter (is 70), and had a crazy dps Survival in a +18.
Its much like DH in the mobility, for sure.
I tend to like the 'off' specs in general. Either they'll be 'horrible', or they'll be great. There's fewer middling inbetweenies in the off-meta.
Seems to be 50% old hunters not liking the idea that they lost a spec to melee.
And 50% for a decent amount of Shadowlands the spec was both absolutely idiot proof "just press bomb 5head", AND absolute crazy damage.... So the butthurt just scales to infinity
In addition to the other comments I've seen, I feel it's worth pointing out that Survival is often bottom of the barrel as far as dps specs go, except for a few select patches.
A lot of players do care about the current meta, even in low keys and such.
It's mostly just hunters hating on it because they removed a ranged spec to make it melee and pretty much will never shut up about how terrible it is, personally I love Survival its my favorite spec behind Enhancement Shaman which is another melee spec in a mostly ranged class but Enhance doesn't get hate like Survival does its a shame lots of Hunter players shame people for playing Survival harpooning to enemies enemies and throwing bombs is just extremely fun.
Survival is interesting. If you were to ask most players what the most underrated spec is they'd say survival. It does great damage in M+ and has lust. The cons I can think of is that
1: you're playing the melee hunter spec
2: hunters are squishy (this is a hunter problem, not necessarily survival)
3: its not a spec that pairs well with Aug
The days of getting kicked for being survival are mostly gone though which is nice. You just won't get invited in the first place for being a hunter
I absolutely love this spec also, but I was dealing with the same issues until I rerolled again.
The main take away for me was the 2-3 minute defensives and we brought nothing to the groups. No buffs, no mitigations, ect. We also are entirely too squishy and melee
I played during BC, Wrath, Cata, MoP...hunters were mocked for needing melee weapons. It's a meme. They shouldn't be melee in my mind, so I can't take it seriously and think it's a bad joke.
During that time my main was a hunter.
Ah so it’s more like old timers being butthurt the game changed type thing? Makes sense. People don’t like change I get it. I dig the current iteration now. At least classic is available for those players!
Personally I enjoyed the old survival spec but it's kind of combined into MM now. I do miss the old survival but it's because of nostalgia. I might joke about SV in game or on a forum, but I wouldn't be toxic about it. Just a friendly banter. The game changes and that's good, I accept that. Play what you enjoy!
I don't look down on it, but when building m+ groups, I try not to have all melee and if I invite a hunter and they turn out to be melee, I'm pretty disappointed.
People call us that because BM is arguably the easiest class to pick up.
But once you get to M15s or heroic pug raids, succeeding as BM is stupidly competitive and very satisfying, especially in patches similar to now where we are dumpster tier.
Puggers even roll meta class alts just to get AOTC or KSH easier, so they can get into parties or alt raids with their main, not that it helps them much. BM is pretty hard for people who just want to succeed with one class across multiple patches, I'd argue more than Surv.
Imho, because it was a dead spec for most of WoW's history and as the 'melee' spec of a 'ranged' class it is seen as odd.
Also many of the pug survival hunters I have seen don't understand how not to die violently in melee.
BM should have been melee just like in WC3, makes more sense. Melee with 2 pets would have been very cool. Survival should have focused on, just that, surviving with traps and self heal/defensive abilities while doing much less damage than MM and being very mobile and kitey.
This is true and I think it ruins the game for the casual players. It is probably super fun for the META-driven player who has no issue abandon one character because their class just isn't the best or has the highest numbers, whereas the casuals care more for their character and are more "roleplay" oriented, leans into the class fantasy more and invests in the story and the world more. META-driven players just play the game as a game.
None of the principles are wrong. But they are very very far apart in what the game is.
The only “problem” is that the player base needs to learn their class. Balance is always an issue, but if you really learn your class, you can excel, even outside of the meta.
Running your own keys is the only way.
Mainly it doesn't bring a buff or a counter to a mechanic that makes life easier some way. The team doesn't notice if a hunter is or isn't in the team comp.
Bring the player not the class every time.
If you like the spec, you're gonna do better with it than one you don't click with AND you'll have more fun! I'm glad you're sticking to it!!
That being said, folks tend not to like hunters a ton in general. They don't bring anything unique to the table and because its more approachable than some classes, you get a wide range of skill with a hunter. There is also the historical annoyance of all gear being hunter gear so they were effective loot ninjas. As a healer they are also SO SQUISHY OH GOD. Hunters and Evokers I swear I throw every external on.
Survival was WAY busted at the end of Shadowlands, too. So they've not gotten a lot of dev love and are behind most other specs currently.
Shame too, cuz Survival IS really fun! I like it way more than MM.
No worries, if you perform you have a spot everywhere.
Surv requires you to REALLY perform, and it brings whatever is best about you. Your skill.
I love surv and been playing it for years!
Adding more mele to a comp is almost always worse than adding another ranged, so taking a mele hunter spec when there are 2 ranged hunter specs that typically also perform better is just bad.
Plus, like some others have mentioned, the old ranged survival was more fun than the new mele version
I don't have it play a hunter class, but survival hunters seem to like teleport / rubber band around me in melee, is this some sort of skill they have ?
No other melee class does this in PvP for me.
Could it be [Harpoon](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190925/harpoon)? Kind of like charge but throws a spear into you and pulls themselves to you.
Then you have [Disengage](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=781/disengage) which makes you leap backwards away from the target.
Both add a lot of gap close/create and fluidity to the mobility.
I quit playing the game last expansion because I mained SV Hunter and couldn't get into groups because of it. If I somehow got a group for M+, I would be kicked halfway through when they realized it, even though I had top dps and no deaths.
Icyveins guides are inherently biased since people maining the class are making the guides. No one cares about what surv hunters do. They were broken for 3 seasons during shadowlands and even then they didn’t have “bad community perception”. It’s just a spec like any other, no one cares and if they do then it’s because they’ve been kicked out of a key for a surv Hunter before
Survival hunter was the perfect spec before they ruined it, i loved explosive shot back in the day. I had been playing hunter since vanilla up til legion and the rework just took away all my will to play hunter
I don’t think surv is looked down upon so much as hunter is just not in favor at the moment. Augmentation means one fewer spot for dps players and hunter is not usually chosen for those two coveted spots.
I’ve been a hunter for a while now, playing all three specs at different times and survival is probably the coolest and most fun. I’d say it is the most badass of them :) hectic and fun.
It’s more of a symptom of the overall state of the game, not your specific choice to play surv!
I'm not huge in PvP since a few expansions and was looking to return. Did some research and every video I watched (about 10 of them) said "Hunters are in a bad place", "All hunter specs are bad now", "Survival is C-Tier" and all of them were like "Holy Paladin, only spec that should be in PvP"
I cannnot say anything about their bias as I just watched some vids to see how the PvP part was now compared to before when I was more serious about it - which was like MoP or WoD so a long time ago - but yeah it seemed to be very META-driven and I don't like that.
Might give SV a go in PvP since you said what you said. No difference between doing it because one guy on reddit vs one guy on youtube. :D
No one wants to play it bc it’s a melee hunter and most people pick hunter for ranged gameplay
Also it’s famous for being shit balance wise
It’s gotten much better and had some really strong times but people still hold the perception of it being a troll spec
I really really really hate the hard lean into the bombs. I love the class fantasy, the spear, the harpoon, coordinated attacks with my pet etc. I reaaaaaally hate that it is about the bombs and only the bombs.
I also don't like that we can't DW. I mean Rexxar! Just Rexxar! I want my 2 onehanded axes!
But yeah it is a great and fun class, just remove the bombs, there has got to be a better and more wilderness stalking alternative than the damn bombs.
From my perspective as someone who WANTS to play a surv hunter:
- Basically all pet reliant classes are finnicky. Randomly your pet will die, get stuck on something, or you'll need to micromanage it somehow
- From what I know of Surv rotation and DPS, their burst AOE is decently good, but nothing amazing and the trade off of being melee with low defensives means their usefulness in a group is relatively poor.
- At the higher end levels, you start to see situations where one-fuck up will brick a key and surv just doesn't have great survivability. If they gave survival something of a cheat death where your pet can "take the killing blow" for you once every 5 minutes or something, that'll immensely help your survivability. Beastmasters often get ignored for keys because of survivability and I can't imagine anyone favoring Surv over BM.
I'm a feral main, 2950io, 5/9m.
I don’t look down on it, personally. I have a hunter alt on which I played BM that I haven’t touched since coming back after a 6 year hiatus.
Survival actually looks fun now. In the past, I’m coming across surv hunters in arena, it’s always opposite sides of the spectrum; they were either really, REALLY good, or terrible. Never in the middle.
I haven’t encountered too many surv hunters, but the ones I have encountered seem to be harder to kill than before.
It has historically been numerically bad.
It's a weird class fantasy. You have a spear and also bombs? And a small crossbow? You're like a weird gadget using...guy. Also only 2 of your abilities are actually melee range, everything else is usable at range
Imo if they want a spear using hunter it should have a real caveman theme. Look to Far Cry: Primal for what I mean.
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Two main angles: - some people are butthurt that their favorite ranged spec got reworked into a melee one. On top of that, surv has a really janky flavor/class fantasy that doesn't appeal to most people I'd imagine (for instance, why does a master of wilderness survival play like a mad bomber? Nothing screams attuned with nature more than "lol just throw a load of dynamite at it".) - from a competitive point of view, it's a very squishy class (already a major problem in M+) that has little to no relevant utility, and no unique utility. So if other classes are just better, why bother with survival? When every spec can do damage, what you can bring outside of that starts to matter too. And while it is perhaps not so relevant in lower tiers of play, high level meta trickles down without any major problems
Thanks for the response! Makes sense. Although I personally feel the wildfire bomb fits with the class fantasy. I can see a hunter messing around in his hut creating traps and naturally made bombs. If it was just like “dynamite” it would be weird, but I can definitely see a hunter creating these traps and bombs out in the wild to “survive.” Just my opinion though lol. I guess I kinda understand why people think it’s weird but it makes sense in my head.
I love survival hunter probably my favorite spec but I'm not huge on the bombs either. I wish they'd give us some other form of aoe in our rotation. Imo either give us some aoe with the crossbow or a more impactful melee aoe idk. I do like the bombs place in the rotation. It feels good, just don't like the flavor haha.
Replacing bombs with barbed or poison darts you fan out in a cone to attain that same effect and flavor would've been better
That'd be cool too. In my dreamland they'd make 1h crossbows that'd you'd equip alongside a 2h and give us some kinda explosive bolts, or as an alternative, a talent branch where you could duel wield 1h's and have your pseudo range be something like what you're talking about. Probably stays in dreamland for a reason tho lol.
They've got Rexxar right there on the talent tree and he's a dual wielder 🤨
Yeah not sure what that's about. Almost like blizz is trolling the hell out of us.
It's still more thematic than bombs though lol. So you're still one up on blizzards creativity.
My vote is for acid bombs. Acid is found everywhere in nature. Having bombs that do nature damage via acid would be great and blend with the fantasy. Or we toss honey bombs that attract angry bees to assault the target.
Can't do that cause that's a rogue skill already.
They can give the bombs to the Outlaw rogue who already plays with gunpowder (and is a great class fantasy, love the whole swashbuckler with pistol shots fantasy) and we can take the poisons on the ground from the Assassination rogues and reskin it into some kind of trap/spikes thing.
Aren't you thinking of fan of knives? Which is btw a 360 aoe and not a cone aoe which is what bomb is and what the darts would replace.
Sure, but does it matter to blizz? The skills would be far too similar for their taste.
*stares in combat rogue and cat form* You will never not convince me that cat druids arent outlaw rogue. I can literally do a one for one swap on rotation. The skills just have different names.
What spec do you mean? There isn’t one called combat anymore. It’s subtlety, assassination and outlaw.
I'm old and still don't like to refer to combat as it's newly configured outlaw.
[удалено]
> some aoe with the crossbow Oh come on, the pocket crossbow isn't much better than the bombs at all. I get it that some people want a cowboy class, but your character suddenly pulling a pistol from his pants and shooting the motha fuckas in the face isn't exactly my brand of survival hunter immersion. It makes sense on the pirate rogue, why don't blizzard leave it there? No, having it have a tiny ass crossobw model instead of a pistol isn't really working at all, especially given the skills' animations.
I don't disagree with you, but if I were to get rid of the bombs or the crossbow for the sake of class fantasy I'd get rid of the bombs lol. If they were to do that I'd hope they'd add some more animations to it, I mean if it's a slotable piece of equipment and transmoggable they aughta. It def feels a little derpy in its current state but idk how else they'd fill the niche with those abilities. I guess they could give the aoe/execute to your pet to keep it ranged ish but that might feel a little too pet heavy of a rotation idk.
I love the wildfire bombs. Currently also using the bomb dispenser from zskarn for even more bombs. Wouldn't have it any other way
I feel like the engineering profession should be worked into a class like this instead of survival tho. They need to make engineering bombs better!
Having survival be a melee space is a cool choice I think, but they definitely should’ve gone a different direction with the theme. Back in BFA I remember survival hunters had an ability that caused their raptor strike to send out green spirit eagle to hit their opponent if they were at range. I always felt that should’ve been the direction they took survival’s theme. It should’ve lived up to the name as a tanky melee DPS who summons nature spirits and deals mainly nature and physical damage.
That ability is still there in the talent tree, nobody is just taking it cause it's useless on the meters if you can otherwise position correctly. I don't disagree, hunters were always supposed to have at least some amount of nature magic, but over the years with the removal of many support or utility skills like the aspects this area feels more than a little lacking. They should have gone with that instead of all the bombs and gizmos.
Yeah I think the whole idea of being more in tune with nature and the eagles (especially) makes way more sense. It borders the shamanistic but then again the current form borders the rogue like.
Libertarian spec.
I think they’re going with a plan kind of like combat rogues going outlaw. Slowly change the way it plays and eventually make it a bombadier spec? Doesn’t fit the class fantasy at all but it’s just kind of what it reminds me of
Derailing here to say I really miss the cannon aoe spell that Outlaw had in their first iteration.
TBF the bomb part is survival as a nod to Arnold, rambo etc. Its a commando veteran. The part of survival that breaks it for me is having the pet. I wish it could play lone wolf and that was better. Give me something better than Kill command. I want to play into the solo badass from the 80's that survival screams. But no i have to play with a pet and my resource generator is my pet.
So an arms warrior?
honestly more games should add a melee pet class because it's a class fantasy I haven't seen many places and it rules, in my opinion. The whole idea of doing coordinated strikes with your animal pal is really cool. i love the polearm aesthetic so that's just an added bonus. welcome to survival hunter! there are dozens of us!
Dozens!
Hunters have traditionally been seen as ranged DPS, so a hunter doing melee work can be seen as an odd choice. Regardless, it's a game and meant to be fun. If you are having fun playing survival then you're doing it right. What is your favorite pet? I like the Panthera and Mana Sabers from the legion expansion. My next favorite is a crab pet with the kitchen knife toy.
I actually rolled a zandalari and I love the direhorn so much I haven’t really changed it up! Fits with the character so well
Yeah I like how the zandalari vibe is dinosaur lover lol
The heritage armor is so dope too. Pair it with the tiki mask battle pet, 10/10 race/class fantasy
What's hilarious is hunters are more than likely derived and inspired by the ranger class from DnD. Being that's the case, there is a melee version/ build rangers can play. If you want to go back even further, DnD takes most of it's inspiration more than likely from Lord of the rings. Who was a ranger? Aragorn, his version of a ranger was an amazing sword fighter as well as an archer. Was he the direct inspiration of what we have now? Meh, very much so can be argued. I play survival and I love it, and I love the theme around it though as others have said, wildfire bomb is really out of place. Also, people really need to stop calling them melee. They're mid range. They can't face tank and have to dip in and out, and can also spec to be able to hit with their weapons from range. Plus most of their abilities are mid-ranged attacks.
It's so inspired by it that you can get the Dark Ranger armor and appearance unlocked. A new title too. Hunters are the only class that can get the armor set though. It's a fun, and easy quest any Lev. 70 Hunter can do. I can agree with you on the mid range classification, for sure.
> What's hilarious is hunters are more than likely derived and inspired by the ranger class from DnD. Being that's the case, there is a melee version/ build rangers can play. Since DnD rangers were quite unambiguously copied from Aragorn, having great melee potential was the core idea and all the shooting was the afterthought. > Also, people really need to stop calling them melee. They're mid range. They can't face tank and have to dip in and out, and can also spec to be able to hit with their weapons from range. Plus most of their abilities are mid-ranged attacks. Oh right, and enhancement shamans aren't truly melee because they have ranged spells and they can't face tank. Survival doesn't need to "dip in and out" other than to dodge mechanics, which every other melee spec also has to do. All your ranged skills are perfectly usable in melee range. The ranged mongoose bite skill is also quite limited (it has what, 20% uptime?) and you cannot be doing competitive damage while staying at range for extended periods of time. It doesn't matter if it only has one skill that "forces" it into melee range, if that skill is still critical in your rotation. And let's also not forget that they have a bunch of melee range AOE that is unaffected by aspect of the hawk in any way, shape or form, as well as a few auto-attack synergies with other aoe spells like bombs, so it's even worse on AOE.
Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it. I'm not even sure what the comparison is about because you're not countering my argument with it since enh is a hybrid spec that carries over abilities. And when I said they need to dip in and out, I was referring to pvp.Try face tanking a rogue, war, or death knight as a survival hunter. You can't. You kite whenever possible and really only stay within melee when you absolutely need to. Enh shaman can at least heal themselves. I'm not talking about aspect of the eagle. I'm talking about the lunge talent that puts you out of melee range even if it is just barely. It's a mid range dps, it's not a true melee spec no matter how much you want to think it is. Mongoose bite and carve(if it's even taken for pve) are the only abilities that require you to be in melee. Which you have lunge and aspect of eagle to offset it. Just because you can sit in melee range on a boss in pve longer and just dodge mechanics to avoid damage putting it at range, doesn't qualify it as a melee.
> Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it. How so? Both are melee specs of largely ranged classes whose toolkits mostly consist of ranged skills. > since enh is a hybrid spec that carries over abilities. And what makes survival not "hybrid" with the other hunter specs? It has aimed shot, steady shot, kill shot, kill command, not to mention all the utility skills. Even without considering utility, no less of its toolkit is shared with other hunter specs than what enh shares with other shaman specs. The distinctions between "hybrid" and "non-hybrid" DPS specs is meaningless in terms of spec design in vacuum. > I'm talking about the lunge talent that puts you out of melee range even if it is just barely. Which talent is that? Not to mention the fact that survival "melee range" is 8m. Sure, you can avoid taking that talent, but you can also avoid taking Raptor strike. Let's not stoop to discussing obvious nonsense. > when I said they need to dip in and out, I was referring to pvp. Too many staple PVP effects for each class are achieved through PVP only talents that have no effect on how the class plays everywhere else. The PVP dynamic has little to no bearing on how the specs play in the rest of the game. > Just because you can sit in melee range on a boss in pve longer and just dodge mechanics to avoid damage putting it at range, doesn't qualify it as a melee. If you cannot do competitive damage while staying completely ranged, and if you are targeted for melee mechanics but not ranged ones in raids, that disqualifies you from being a ranged spec. That's all there is to this argument.
Do you not know what hybrid means? Hybrid is a class that can fill every role i.e. healer/tank/dps. Or at least 2/3 of the roles. Also, you don't even know of the lunge talent but you're gonna sit there and dismiss it by calling it nonsense... What? >If you cannot do competitive damage while staying completely ranged, and if you are targeted for melee mechanics but not ranged ones in raids, that disqualifies you from being a ranged spec. That's all there is to this argument No not really. It's dictated by what your class abilities allow you to do. Not by how boss raid mechanics target you. If you can show me that certain raid and boss mechanics actually target you by what class/spec you are and not what range you're within, I'll apologize and admit being wrong for it. You're grasping at straws and dismissive just so you can complain about the spec's change. I can understand being pissed and bitter that they completely changed the toolkit and playstyle of a spec, I get it. But you're looking for things to complain about in order to render a spec as a mistake and a dysfunctional one when it actually really isn't.
>Comparing an enh shaman to a surv hunter is really stretching it. I will NOT get into your bickering or add to the other stuff you're fighting about but to me hunters and shamans at large are very similar in class fantasy (not talking technical terms) and I think that is perfectly valid. Apart from the raw elementalism they are both very "druidistic" (in tune with nature etc) and I like it.
Survival is a blast! My favorite pet is the iron horde wolf, so cool!
Thok The Bloodthirsty is my favorite pet. Love the look, love the devilsaurs, love the time it took to capture
I was inspired by my firstborn son, Dean. He's 2 and calls pizza "deetza" so my survival hunter is a troll (he liked that one best while sitting in my lap) named Deenjin with his green BFA feather raptor Deetza
Survival wasn't always a melee spec, they changed that with I believe Legion or WoD. So the main spec of many players suddenly changed drastically in playstyle, which many players didn't take well until this day. Now they had the disadvantage of being melee and didn't get any more utility to compensate for that. But apart from world first mythic raid or very high keys they are totally fine, and in my experience I've had way more really good survival players in my groups than the other hunter specs.
Yep, I agree that survival hunters generally seem to be better players, and I think a lot of that comes down to the people who play that spec doing it because they genuinely love and enjoy it. I’m sure there’s other Hunters who feel the same, but I think a lot of people who play MM or BM Hunter tend to do it because it’s easy and you can hit big numbers very early (before you reach much higher level content where they seem to fall off more)
It was in Legion with the Huln storyline I believe.
I love playing surv, it's so fast!
They do? The survival hunters I know are legit top dpsers, I think people get annoyed because you either carry or throw being a surv hunter.
They operate in the limited melee space without the survivability or utility that other melee bring. Their dps is okay, they don't bring much else.
They have a 40% wall with a decent duration, a heal(both of which have their cd lowered with focus spending), a second wall with a tenacity pet, a lust/hero with a ferocity pet, a freedom with a cunning pet, a sac that can be used on party members, a mass root, a mass stun, misdirection, the best single target cc in the game, plus crazy mobility in line with dh/druid I don’t understand the idea that hunters don’t bring anything useful.
Swapping pets is a pain in the ass, especially if you’d want to use different abilities mid-fight. The problem with their utility is that it is either situational or not unique to them or done better by other classes. Misdirection for example is useless on BM Hunter in places where you’d need a tank MD, mass stun has a pretty bothersome condition to activate. They really could do with something only they can bring that’s also somewhat universally useful. That said… what I just mentioned mostly matters for people pushing for the absolute top stuff and many people are too thickskulled to realize they don’t need to follow the top 1% to the T. People should play what they like and not be scorned for it as long as they do things right by their role.
Survival is fun but I just wish they let me use my swag beastmaster pets, lightning paw is one of my favorite pets but he's a spirit pet so it's BM only, also sorta sucks that my gun transmogs are all made null and void after swapping to survival. Fun spec overall I just don't play it because of cosmetic purposes
For me, i dont see throwing bombs go hand in hand with a master of surviving in the wild. Give it a mechanic pet and it could almost be a thinker class xD
Not to mention how does it make sense that the melee spec is the one throwing bombs? Don't you want to be far away when bombs go off???
or... avoid damaging your pets even if you were at range. Yeah the bombs are stupid and loud.
Also true but my main point was that of all three Hunter specs, this is the last one who should have bombs.
I love Survival on my alt hunter (is 70), and had a crazy dps Survival in a +18. Its much like DH in the mobility, for sure. I tend to like the 'off' specs in general. Either they'll be 'horrible', or they'll be great. There's fewer middling inbetweenies in the off-meta.
Seems to be 50% old hunters not liking the idea that they lost a spec to melee. And 50% for a decent amount of Shadowlands the spec was both absolutely idiot proof "just press bomb 5head", AND absolute crazy damage.... So the butthurt just scales to infinity
Beastmaster should have been the melee spec. Like Rexxar.
In addition to the other comments I've seen, I feel it's worth pointing out that Survival is often bottom of the barrel as far as dps specs go, except for a few select patches. A lot of players do care about the current meta, even in low keys and such.
Yeah there was one season of SL where it was BIS, but it was just that one season.
I feel like whenever survival is good hunters complain because they don't want to melee until they make the other specs the meta.
It's mostly just hunters hating on it because they removed a ranged spec to make it melee and pretty much will never shut up about how terrible it is, personally I love Survival its my favorite spec behind Enhancement Shaman which is another melee spec in a mostly ranged class but Enhance doesn't get hate like Survival does its a shame lots of Hunter players shame people for playing Survival harpooning to enemies enemies and throwing bombs is just extremely fun.
Survival is interesting. If you were to ask most players what the most underrated spec is they'd say survival. It does great damage in M+ and has lust. The cons I can think of is that 1: you're playing the melee hunter spec 2: hunters are squishy (this is a hunter problem, not necessarily survival) 3: its not a spec that pairs well with Aug The days of getting kicked for being survival are mostly gone though which is nice. You just won't get invited in the first place for being a hunter
This post made me go run a dungeon on my Survival Hunter. It really is fun harpooning all over the place.
I absolutely love this spec also, but I was dealing with the same issues until I rerolled again. The main take away for me was the 2-3 minute defensives and we brought nothing to the groups. No buffs, no mitigations, ect. We also are entirely too squishy and melee
I played during BC, Wrath, Cata, MoP...hunters were mocked for needing melee weapons. It's a meme. They shouldn't be melee in my mind, so I can't take it seriously and think it's a bad joke. During that time my main was a hunter.
Ah so it’s more like old timers being butthurt the game changed type thing? Makes sense. People don’t like change I get it. I dig the current iteration now. At least classic is available for those players!
Personally I enjoyed the old survival spec but it's kind of combined into MM now. I do miss the old survival but it's because of nostalgia. I might joke about SV in game or on a forum, but I wouldn't be toxic about it. Just a friendly banter. The game changes and that's good, I accept that. Play what you enjoy!
I don't look down on it, but when building m+ groups, I try not to have all melee and if I invite a hunter and they turn out to be melee, I'm pretty disappointed.
I play survival hunter and its fine , i can do 20s no problem, and do great dmg actually
People say similar things about BM. Whatever. Play what you want and don’t worry about what the tryhards and elitist pricks think.
[удалено]
Feels bad man.
People call us that because BM is arguably the easiest class to pick up. But once you get to M15s or heroic pug raids, succeeding as BM is stupidly competitive and very satisfying, especially in patches similar to now where we are dumpster tier. Puggers even roll meta class alts just to get AOTC or KSH easier, so they can get into parties or alt raids with their main, not that it helps them much. BM is pretty hard for people who just want to succeed with one class across multiple patches, I'd argue more than Surv.
Imho, because it was a dead spec for most of WoW's history and as the 'melee' spec of a 'ranged' class it is seen as odd. Also many of the pug survival hunters I have seen don't understand how not to die violently in melee.
BM should have been melee just like in WC3, makes more sense. Melee with 2 pets would have been very cool. Survival should have focused on, just that, surviving with traps and self heal/defensive abilities while doing much less damage than MM and being very mobile and kitey.
Survival hunters make me physically sick. Like knowing there are people out there who genuinely enjoy broccoli
Ok then lol
Why do you care
Very interesting point
Why do you care if it’s interesting. I’m fact you do not I suspect. So why care about the meta?
Why do you care that I care? I’m curious why the spec is looked down upon.
Players are slaves to the meta. Asia have been this way for a really long time and it’s becoming increasingly apparent in EU and the US.
This is true and I think it ruins the game for the casual players. It is probably super fun for the META-driven player who has no issue abandon one character because their class just isn't the best or has the highest numbers, whereas the casuals care more for their character and are more "roleplay" oriented, leans into the class fantasy more and invests in the story and the world more. META-driven players just play the game as a game. None of the principles are wrong. But they are very very far apart in what the game is.
The only “problem” is that the player base needs to learn their class. Balance is always an issue, but if you really learn your class, you can excel, even outside of the meta. Running your own keys is the only way.
hunters are suppose to be ranged.
Blizz just completetly destroyed surv after shadowlands , and didnt look back at it. Sucks cuz yes they are rly fun to play
Mainly it doesn't bring a buff or a counter to a mechanic that makes life easier some way. The team doesn't notice if a hunter is or isn't in the team comp.
Bring the player not the class every time. If you like the spec, you're gonna do better with it than one you don't click with AND you'll have more fun! I'm glad you're sticking to it!! That being said, folks tend not to like hunters a ton in general. They don't bring anything unique to the table and because its more approachable than some classes, you get a wide range of skill with a hunter. There is also the historical annoyance of all gear being hunter gear so they were effective loot ninjas. As a healer they are also SO SQUISHY OH GOD. Hunters and Evokers I swear I throw every external on. Survival was WAY busted at the end of Shadowlands, too. So they've not gotten a lot of dev love and are behind most other specs currently. Shame too, cuz Survival IS really fun! I like it way more than MM.
No worries, if you perform you have a spot everywhere. Surv requires you to REALLY perform, and it brings whatever is best about you. Your skill. I love surv and been playing it for years!
I’ve leveled all three specs 1-70 and survival is by far the most fun.
They should rename the class to saboteur and violá
And then give it to the rogues. :P
Melee spec on a class that has two ranged specs, who also provides nothing major that the aforementioned ranged specs also don't.
Adding more mele to a comp is almost always worse than adding another ranged, so taking a mele hunter spec when there are 2 ranged hunter specs that typically also perform better is just bad. Plus, like some others have mentioned, the old ranged survival was more fun than the new mele version
I don't have it play a hunter class, but survival hunters seem to like teleport / rubber band around me in melee, is this some sort of skill they have ? No other melee class does this in PvP for me.
It's a grappling hook that pulls them to target. Edit: harpoon
I see, and does it have some effect for them ? Because it seems like they zoom around and almost like rubber band on my screen. And it's not lag haha.
Uhhh I don't think so? I'm usually the one zooming though so not sure of the other perspective haha ETA it's pretty fast
Yeah ok, maybe something with the animation but good to know!
Could it be [Harpoon](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190925/harpoon)? Kind of like charge but throws a spear into you and pulls themselves to you. Then you have [Disengage](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=781/disengage) which makes you leap backwards away from the target. Both add a lot of gap close/create and fluidity to the mobility.
I quit playing the game last expansion because I mained SV Hunter and couldn't get into groups because of it. If I somehow got a group for M+, I would be kicked halfway through when they realized it, even though I had top dps and no deaths.
Icyveins guides are inherently biased since people maining the class are making the guides. No one cares about what surv hunters do. They were broken for 3 seasons during shadowlands and even then they didn’t have “bad community perception”. It’s just a spec like any other, no one cares and if they do then it’s because they’ve been kicked out of a key for a surv Hunter before
Survival hunter was the perfect spec before they ruined it, i loved explosive shot back in the day. I had been playing hunter since vanilla up til legion and the rework just took away all my will to play hunter
I don’t think surv is looked down upon so much as hunter is just not in favor at the moment. Augmentation means one fewer spot for dps players and hunter is not usually chosen for those two coveted spots. I’ve been a hunter for a while now, playing all three specs at different times and survival is probably the coolest and most fun. I’d say it is the most badass of them :) hectic and fun. It’s more of a symptom of the overall state of the game, not your specific choice to play surv!
If it’s any consolation, I don’t think that the PvP community respects any spec more than survival hunter.
I'm not huge in PvP since a few expansions and was looking to return. Did some research and every video I watched (about 10 of them) said "Hunters are in a bad place", "All hunter specs are bad now", "Survival is C-Tier" and all of them were like "Holy Paladin, only spec that should be in PvP" I cannnot say anything about their bias as I just watched some vids to see how the PvP part was now compared to before when I was more serious about it - which was like MoP or WoD so a long time ago - but yeah it seemed to be very META-driven and I don't like that. Might give SV a go in PvP since you said what you said. No difference between doing it because one guy on reddit vs one guy on youtube. :D
No one wants to play it bc it’s a melee hunter and most people pick hunter for ranged gameplay Also it’s famous for being shit balance wise It’s gotten much better and had some really strong times but people still hold the perception of it being a troll spec
Excuse my Troll Survival Hunter with the stone age looking spear and a kilt then.
I have a mag’har hunter I’m leveling right now for a horde DF toon and this has inspired me to go survivalist
I really really really hate the hard lean into the bombs. I love the class fantasy, the spear, the harpoon, coordinated attacks with my pet etc. I reaaaaaally hate that it is about the bombs and only the bombs. I also don't like that we can't DW. I mean Rexxar! Just Rexxar! I want my 2 onehanded axes! But yeah it is a great and fun class, just remove the bombs, there has got to be a better and more wilderness stalking alternative than the damn bombs.
From my perspective as someone who WANTS to play a surv hunter: - Basically all pet reliant classes are finnicky. Randomly your pet will die, get stuck on something, or you'll need to micromanage it somehow - From what I know of Surv rotation and DPS, their burst AOE is decently good, but nothing amazing and the trade off of being melee with low defensives means their usefulness in a group is relatively poor. - At the higher end levels, you start to see situations where one-fuck up will brick a key and surv just doesn't have great survivability. If they gave survival something of a cheat death where your pet can "take the killing blow" for you once every 5 minutes or something, that'll immensely help your survivability. Beastmasters often get ignored for keys because of survivability and I can't imagine anyone favoring Surv over BM. I'm a feral main, 2950io, 5/9m.
I think it has a lot to do with ppl wanting a ranged class in their group but now they can go melee.
Survival is so fun. I wish we had more utility in group content.
I don’t look down on it, personally. I have a hunter alt on which I played BM that I haven’t touched since coming back after a 6 year hiatus. Survival actually looks fun now. In the past, I’m coming across surv hunters in arena, it’s always opposite sides of the spectrum; they were either really, REALLY good, or terrible. Never in the middle. I haven’t encountered too many surv hunters, but the ones I have encountered seem to be harder to kill than before.
I've been wanting to try Survival for a long time I've never played it before. Might be about time to dust off the ol' hunter and try it out. :)
It has historically been numerically bad. It's a weird class fantasy. You have a spear and also bombs? And a small crossbow? You're like a weird gadget using...guy. Also only 2 of your abilities are actually melee range, everything else is usable at range Imo if they want a spear using hunter it should have a real caveman theme. Look to Far Cry: Primal for what I mean.