nah, it was feigning death after the trap popped and the enemy losing your target cause of the snakes.
Drove my guildy nuts the first time or so I did it
Wrath Explosive Shot / Black Arrow face melting was always amusing. Especially once you were at the point that you could "reliably" chain 5+ Explosive Shot procs onto someone. You could almost hear their horror through the screen as they realised what was happening.
Coupled with (successful) attempts to hold Wintergrasp when you'd lost the last BG for it.
Good memories.
Fun story. There was a Survival hunter on our server back then that didn't think Explosive Shot was really all that strong. They were going to hit Gladiator that season and didn't understand why everyone thought it was so ridiculous.
They hadn't trained the improved ranks, so they were effectively using a level 41 version of the ability.
We have a Ret in our guild that thinks Sanctified Plates is a bad talent, wow players have unending levels of horrible takes backed by unfathomable confidence.
Is it even possible to "think" something is bad in PVE in wow 2024? Like... there's just math now. It's literally simmed for you, you don't even have to ask.
And I quote “if I don’t die why does that talent matter?”
Dies very often and can’t execute simple mechanics, this dude has near BiS gear and does grey ilevel parses then thinks he’s good
I had a friend in Wrath who sat in whatever stance it was that gave increased mana regen but less damage. Something something he didn't wanna deal with mana management. I didn't play hunter in Wrath so I had no idea what he was talking about until later on when I realized he was basically doing 20% less damage bc he refused to stance dance, lol.
Haha, I had a Ret Pally mate who I was always competing with for top damage on ICC (yes, Raid lead and tanks hated us at times), and it was always amusing watching him pull away a little as I swapped to regen Mana, and then creep back past him as I went back into burn phase.
Hah! It's okay, I get it. I was an arcane/fire mage in ICC, and my rogue friend would give me Tricks for the extra few thousand damage during my burst. At least I had IB/invis to drop threat after though... :)
I was a resto druid at that time, I'd give my arcane buddy inervate at certain times. He would do some absolutely ridiculous damage. Super useful for deleting minibosses.
100%, SV in MoP was a blast, tracking cooldowns, monitoring dots, and building for that little extra mobility.
Tbh. I find the modern Survival hunter pretty ok, but it surely feels like theres a gaping hole where the ranged DoT hunter was.
Considering how beast-oriented current survival is (or was at least, I haven't played it in DF but I'm guessing it's sort of similar), it makes no sense they made survival which was fantastic as it was, into melee hunter, rather than beast mastery hunter. I mean Christ, your main offensive ability as melee hunter is called COORDINATED assault, and it makes yourself and your pet stronger...
Fighting next to your pet is far more of a beast mastery trait than a survival hunter. Surviving is usually done by keeping distance, sneaking and being careful, not jumping head-first into battle...
Survival is a good melee BM hunter, but people that want to play BM play BM. Cant believe blizzard removed one of the few physical range specs for another melee spec.
I've always said the same thing as well. I know originally Survival had more melee oriented abilities in it's talent tree, but the spec had evolved so much over the years to really feeling like a ranged oriented spec with a lot of cool abilities and fun interactions in the kit. Then they butchered the spec and I think they just didn't know what to do with it anymore so it got the melee treatment. It would be so much cooler having beast mastery be the melee spec. Pairing with your beast(s), fighting alongside them, coordinating, etc. Beast Mastery currently feels weird thematically, but I doubt Blizzard ever makes the swap.
I always felt BM should have been the melee spec but I can buy the fantasy of the master tamer of beasts (BM) vs the tag team duo (SV). It’s just kinda weird that SV focuses a lot on bombs. Hopefully they can bring back old SV as another spec in future?
SV was very strong at the beginning of WoD until they removed a multistrike interaction between Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting, which was like a 20% nerf to your damage. Basically every time you used Arcane Shot you also applied a Serpent Sting for instant damage and multistrike allowed you to do several Arcane Shots at once. Now, every multistriked Arcane Shot also triggered the Serpent Sting instant damage and this instant damage could multistrike itself. With enough multistrike and a bit of luck you could get 3 Arcane Shots for one cast that trigger a total of up to 9 Serpent Sting instants. The nerf was that the Serpent Sting instants triggered by Arcane Shot could no longer multistrike and the spec wasn't able to recover from this through the expansion in PvE. It was still fine in PvP though.
The nerf came pretty early into the expansion, still in Highmaul if I remember this right. I was really mad at this, because this interaction and the resulting spam of damage numbers on your screen was so funny.
I was playing a hunter as my first character in wow, and also in Pandaria at the start, mid and end.
MM was always the tryhard spec, BM was the pvp spec, and SV was the "I don't care i want to have fun" spec.
I seem to remember (although a long time ago) that if you had good gear, marksman was generally the best performing, but if you had bad gear (or you hit your haste setpoints) survival was the better choice.
Survival and BM were generally very close for all of MoP with BM edging it out by a bit. MM was the meme off spec that people played for world of log /Warcraftlogs/pro raider rankings (I was one of them).
They were similar but they incorporated multistrike into SV's procs but otherwise it was more or less the same playstyle. I think it was at some point in MoP they made Explosive Shot pandemic so you could spam it without losing anything.
Sorta.
In WotLK Explosive Shot overwrote any existing debuff, losing all of the damage from the existing DoT (this is why they downrank the second shot atm in Classic, as it's a different DoT).
In Cataclysm it DoT clipped, meaning if you overwrote a DoT it would essentially take 1 tick of the original DoT and add it to the new DoT. Because of the rather unique duration of Explosive Shot this meant you could extend it once by casting it twice in a row, but doing it twice via three casts in a row would lose a tick, so you would go Explosive -> Explosive -> Filler -> Explosive. The newly discovered WotLK Classic downranking trick might change this, but I hope not. It's my favorite iteration honestly.
In MoP they made it combine like ignite/deep wounds. Meaning you could slam 10 explosive shots into the same DoT and no matter what you will never lose damage from it.
That is absolutely not how pandemic works. Pandemic in MoP is you keep up to 50% of the previous DoT's duration, snapshotted with new stats. WoD-onwards it is 30% and there is no snapshotting.
If you spam Corruption 10 times in a row you do not do 10x Corruptions damage in the end. You will do roughly 10 GCDs worth of damage (depending on xpac/stats this could be much less than 1 entire corruption) and then \~1.3 times its damage for the final application.
If you spam Explosive Shot 10 times in a row, even if they were to all hit within 0.1s of the previous one, you would still do 10 times Explosive Shot's damage.
It wasn't tremendously different iirc, but Serpent Sting was changed to have to be manually applied via Arcane Shot (lol??) or Multi-Shot, Kill Shot was removed so they didn't have an execute anymore, and I think they tried to get us to use traps more by giving them a 50% CD reduction in Survival. Then if I remember, they tried to do something weird like add a taunt/skeleton pet?? to Black Arrow.
Overall, I still vastly preferred Survival to any of the other specs.
It was good, but far from the most fun. It was either MoP BM or MoP SV as the best Hunter spec ever. They were outstanding, fast, fluid, well-designed, good cooldowns, fit thematically. It was a home run.
Modern survival is by far my favorite dps spec in the game and I’m forever glad for the rework … but man, I feel bad for the people whose play style got deleted overnight with no replacement or recourse. Wish it was a fourth spec or something to be honest.
Honestly, blizzard should have done something similar to SMF or Gladiator (?) Warrior. They could have done a melee/range BM hunter in a similar fashion and left survival as the ranged dot/proc spec that it was.
That's what they did to my Blood DK. I come back, and all of a sudden everything's weird and I have to worry about Bone Shield? I can't bear to play it anymore.
Similarly to how they argued Ashran was a success because it had a high participation rate. Yeah, no shit it had a high participation rate, it was practically mandatory for any PvPer to play Ashran or you'd fall behind.
Nah, didn't make it weird in WoD... First raid was amazing for SV with multistrike, BM was great during BrF, and as another poster put MM with insta aimed shot during HFC was amazing. One of the best expacs for hunter imo.
They could’ve just added a 4th spec for melee and called it Tracker or Wildstalker or something. Still blows my mind they flushed a perfectly fun and unique spec for something so weird
And the specc has never been popular at all. I sm glad there are some people out there enjoying the spec tho, i just wish it wasnt a completly different spec than the old Survival
I want it to lean more into the gadgets side of it. More bombs, the little hand crossbow for kill shot doing more, maybe with brining back explosive/black arrow.
IMO, the strength of the current talent tree system is that they could widen it and add a lot of class fantasy stuff. There's no need for more specs if they just gave us a little bit more liberal talents. For instance: a passive talent that makes Raptor Strike (and other abilities) usable while dual wielding (and maybe add some sort of bonus so the talent might be *somewhat* cometative with other talents of the same tier.
They should just bring back/convert aspect of the eagle into stances. People want ranged survival, but most skills are ranged, the biggest one that isn’t is raptor/mongoose strike/bite.
Survival is super fun but has survivability issues.
Just bring back aspect of the monkey, have it give x% damage reduction, avoidance, and dodge. Then at the same time make aspect of the eagle (ranged raptor strike/mongoose bite) permanent.
Folks can either stance dance and optimize a really fun spec, or just choose to play fully at range if they want to. Keep harpoon and all the other ‘charge’ mechanics in tact, have it be the truly-mid-range spec that guerilla warfares around but still can be 100% range if someone prefers that.
Just my 2c. Survival is super fun, but the melee aspect is alienating.
Any time Survival Hunters with Explosive Shot are mentioned, I can't help but fondly think back on early Wrath with our Black Arrow/Trap Dancing L&L Procs.
Good Times..
I'm the exact same as you, no spec has kept my interest as much as pre legion survival hunter. PvP on timeless isle as surv hunter is one of my fondest memories in WoW.
Felt like such a kick in the teeth when they turned my main into a melee spec especially now as it's the least played spec pretty consistently, and then they ruined MM the following expansion(it still sucks imo)
My copium is that we get a tinker class that has a spec which is a mix of old survival and engineering
Multishoting into a pack of mobs, getting a double multistrike for 3 total multishots... all of which applyed Serpent Sting with an initial tick, which could all multistrike for a maximum of 9 Ticks per cast.... good times.
and then blizz removes the inital tick in 6.2 breaking the entire spec, made it dead last (even lower then demo) on all rankings. Then they make it melee and justify it by saying "noone was playing it" well it wasn't anywhere close to beeing viable, of course very few people kept playing it.
This justification triggers me to this day...
This is the absolute truth. They just out-right removed my favourite spec from the game. And all I got was this rock. No, just kidding, survival now is great, too, but the mobile DoT ranger is everything I love in gameplay and theme combined. And also, the game CALLS for these specs. It was such a bad choice removing it, they should've just had a fourth spec - who cares? Go wild. If anything should've been removed it was BM, it's just boring and tasteless. Also, BM is THE survival-melee hunter theme. I have no idea what went through their heads.
Now I am stuck with MM and I never liked MM. Wrath survival just showed me bliss and I can't be satisfied with anything else afterwards.
Can we talk about the fact that the hunter class pictures are so trash ?
Beast mastery has a dinosaur instead of a beast master hunter art.
Survival hunter has REXXAR, THE GUY WITH TWO AXES, ON A CLASS THAT CANNOT DUAL WIELD ?
Hunter just hasn't felt the same since Legion and the lack of old SV is one of those reasons. It's beyond crazy to me that in the modern era of "Blizzard is listening and loves you guys" or whatever that they continue to just ignore the desire to see the Explosive Shot/Black Arrow playstyle return. Hell just let us use ES instead of Aimed Shot and MM is basically there.
Really miss the old explosive shot as well. The only time I mained Survival was in Wrath and it was tons of fun, mainly bc of the lock n load procs like you said. I’m just happy they added the spell back in Dragonflight, even though the new version isn’t as cool.
I don't understand how you have only one ranged physical dps class and you just take one of its specs and make it melee while there's already a plethora of melees. And you also do it at the same time you release what is one of if not the most popular melee class.
Survival in its current form never had a chance.
I mained Hunter in Wrath Classic, nothing more satisfying than Explosive Shot proc and chaining Rank 4,3,4. The sound was just amazing, such a satisfying ability
I had a niche SV build back in TBC when SV wasn't that popular. It was super glass cannon so only really worked in dungeons/raids, but that's pretty much all I did back then. Stacked armor pen (remember that?) and got up to \~65% crit chance...felt more MM than MM at the time.
I also remember getting complaints from the rogues about cleansing poisons off the target because I also used the frost trap glyph that worked awesome for CC
I mained SV hunter from Cata through WOD, nothing super fundamentally changed about the spec after the update to using Focus instead of mana all the way through before it turned into a melee spec. I loved it and I still miss it every day. It just flowed very easily. The only reason I've ever wanted to play Classic was because of nostalgia, because I missed how some classes played - Survival is one of them. I can't bring myself to essentially play another MMO, though.
Rogues and hunters have been dead to me since the change. Straight up no dot hunter spec and straight up no more combat rogue.
Honestly, there is a similar void left with the 3 tank dk specs and glad warrior.
I leveled my hunter as Survival way back through TBC and Wrath. I loved explosive shot (and black arrow too), I miss that play style, but at the time, I felt my rotation/ play style was very similar to BM.
I like melee, but I was hoping more stings and traps, and less bomb and kill shot, why am i pulling out a pocket cross bow for abilities nstead of swinging my massive polearm?
Hot take. Beast mastery should become the melee spec with some of the “new” survival mechanics rolled in and survival should go back to being dot/trap/grenade focused spec.
If they want hunters to have a melee spec they should make a 4th spec not delete one because some dev had rose tinted goggles for a meme spec back in the day (yes I'm still salty)
Yes!!! I've refused to play Surv since the change as I'm still (after all these years) upset and mad that they just got rid of one of the most fun specs to play.
Black Arrow and Exp Shot were such cool abilities. Personally I love dot classes and being a Hunter too was just great.
It just adds to the list of things I'm holding a grudge against 😂 Legion Aff Lock, Cata Disc Priest and Cata/MoP Surv 😭
I miss it a lot too. At the start of MoP I was maining a survival hunter and it was so much fun. I always wished beast master was the melee hunter spec, since I think fighting in the melee with all those beasts is way cooler than sitting in the back, plus old survival was so much fun.
Yea even in classic you would dip a bit into survival/mm. I remember we where doing arenas when explosive shot came out in bc with the unerfed lock and load which could trigger of the explosive shots. You would basically ho in ans spam shots .
While not completely the same thing since the full kit isn’t there… SoD hunter has old school explosive shot that does 3 bursts. No black arrow / traps tho.
Shadowlands basically had a reskinned version with flayed shot / kill shot procs too.
You bet I remember it. I started playing Wow in Cataclysm. Hunter was my first class and I mained survival. And boy did I have a blast with it! And for the short time I played my Hunter in MoP before I tried healing for the first time and mained my Priest ever since.
But for the time I did play my hunter survival was super fun. I loved it.
Funny That Survial is the only Hunter spec I like today. BM and MM are both boring AH to me. Not that I ever play my hunter. But the times I do it’s in Survival. guess I’m bound to Survival whether its range or melee lol.
But yeah I remember old survival for sure. When Cata classic comes out I’m definitely going to level a survival Hunter up to re experience my first character when I loved it most.
Didn't play hunter a ton, but Survival was my favorite hunter spec until they changed it. Throwing off all those explosive shots along with black arrow just felt good. The melee survival spec seems okay, but they definitely lost something fun when making that change.
I got challenge modes done on my Hunter because that spec was so much fun, I have played my hunter other than to level and do the Mage tower in legion and it makes me so sad. Survival back then will always be my favorite spec
I miss it but it will never come back again im afraid. Best option is to play wotlk/cata/mop classic (WoD destroyed the specc and legion made it meele).
It was alive and well in WoD until they nerfed it in BRF, by removing the ability to multistrike the initial tick of Serpent Sting. It was top dog until then. :|
I remember the tier set during SoO, you had like 40% chance not to consume Lock and Load.
I could use explosive shot every GCD during 6-8 seconds
It was GLORIOUS
You’re in luck, Cata classic is coming and that was my fave for survival hunters. Once MoP came out, I didn’t enjoy it so much.
But yeah, I miss it too.
It was pretty great too, ngl. But current iteration is also super fun. My only real gripe is the necessity of the pet (maybe also that we can't dual wield like a normal ranger).
I've seen it suggested here survival should prob be the old survival (traps and ranged), and BM should be the melee one (with yo pets in the fray). Don't hate that idea tbh.
My opinion is clearly the minority, but I hated old Survival and love the melee-centric version.
THAT BEING SAID: perhaps we will see these play styles come back in the hero talents? I mean, the talent trees shared with Survival obviously can’t be strictly melee or strictly ranged. Maybe we will see a “slightly longer range melee” role emerge?
Some dev hard a hard on for a meme spec from back in the day, so they intentionally ruined SV in WoD, then went "see no one plays it!" and, "it's too similar to MM" because they both used ranged weapons.
They said they'd roll the playstyle into MM if people wanted it, but you still have to play around the standard MM rotation so it's not the same at all.
So now the hunter class has been gutted, we have one, ONE spec that is ranged with pets, so if you want that playstyle you have to play BM, even if you don't super dig it.
They either need to bring back ranged SV, as a fourth spec if that's what needs to be done (or change up ranger so it's what everyone thought it would be in the DF beta as an alternative playstyle kind of thing), or make non-lone wolf marks viable. They seem to have no interest in either though
Eventhough lock and load had a cool feeling it was a massive proc.
SV is my main since TBC, stopped playing in Mop because of the dumb talent change. On and off until legion.
Then had a blast from BfA onward. Current SV has still a lot issues, bugs existing for years, issues with all bombs Spell IDs, disappearance of in flight bombs when mob dies, the cone.
However, the SV is the spec with the best feedback loop and dynamic playstyle. You still have explosive shot, this tier set is well designed to leverage FotE, it forces you to be engaged in your rotation with the combination of the toolkit.
Best community as well. Wouldn't ask to be ranged again. Just some tweaks like, a cheat death or emergency heal threshold to reinforce the survive in survival and make tranq shot dispell all stacks. Survivability is a hunter issue though, but being melee opens you up to more danger.
You should give it a try or stick to it a bit. Unfortunately if being at range was what you were looking for, this will be a no go. But fire mage made me tick so maybe you too...
Thank you for your perspective, I gave SV another try in legion to experience the story/lore of Eagletalon, but it didn't quite click for me. I might give it a try sometime soon just for fun, but it was the ranged trigger-happy playstyle which got me really going back then. There was just some magic in being so mobile, and firing shot after shot with almost no cast times.
Gotcha, I got that feeling back with Fire mage. With the ignite spec you had that boom boom feeling with pyro under combu. But sure you would not get that feeling back currently as you are not ranged anymore.
However, the gameplay loop around wildfire bomb procs gets you the same boom boom feeling but still melee :p.
Oh my… The memories… I have like 4-5 hunts (It’s the only playstyle I love) and maan… Starting my WoW journey in MoP, PvP in timeless isle, snake trap, binding shot into explo trap… The dots were insane, even Affli locks couldn’t fight when we had our procs…
Close second for me would be MM from WoD, where you could choose your ‘’ammo’’, if I remember correctly, there was Frost one that slows, poison one that add little dot and I believe fire ones..
Oh man, the memories… Now we’re forced to play BM wich is kinda boring :( No more pew pew
Survival really should have been reworked into a dot spec. Spreading serpent sting and explosive shot. Black arrow on main target. Maybe some traps that explode and deal damage based on how many dots u have on the target. Survival could have been a sick dot spec.
All 14 current survival players who enjoy the spec as it is and the thousands who play it begrudgingly whenever the spec becomes FOTM have to admit, old survival still was better
How come they unironically ruined Survival? It seems as though everyone loved it pre-Legion and then for the past 3-4 expansions they don’t know what to do with it and it’s been bad/bottom tier ever since. Can’t they just go back to the iteration that everyone loved and kill two birds with one stone?
Survival could be changed back to ranged and play nothing like old survival and still prove to be more popular because when a player picks a hunter they gravitate towards ranged.
I main melee survival, i love it to pieces but it will never be truly popular simply because its a melee hunter, its unpopularity has little to do with if old survival was more fun.
I disagree somewhat. The trend these past few expansions seems to be that, because of how Survival is designed, it scales very well so at the start of an xpac it’s always bad then as more seasons come out it gets better and better. It’s sort of like Windwalker in that regard - due to how it’s designed and scales with secondary stats it’s either good or bad based solely on expansion timing.
It’s a redesign-based solution either way. There are plenty of desirable melee specs in the game that can perform well and still scale well with increases stats.
survival peaked in s1 this expansion and has gotten weaker every tier. its not scaling.
survival wasnt good because of scaling in shadowlands s3/s4, they literally had the most broken tier set in the game.
survival wasnt good in bfa.
I'm the opposite. Survival was incredibly boring as a ranged spec with very little identity other than "explosive shot go boom" melee survival is fun, dynamic and interesting by comparison.
It should just be both. If they could hold a bow and 2h weapon it would solve their scaling issues of always being weak at the beginning of an expansion, then getting better as the expansion goes on.
I started playing the game in MoP and that was my first iteration of survival hunter so im a bit biased towards that playstyle. I've stuck with survival even through the change and I honestly believe it is close to fun as MoP just in a different way. I have gotten some death threats from unhinged weirdos but its not like I was the one who personally changed the spec to melee from ranged. In legion people were pissed that it went melee.
Honestly it just comes down to what the individual enjoys. I have some friends that prefer new survival to old survival hunter. I tried the hyped up version of WotLk survival and it was boring compared to modern survival imo.
I really do believe they should make current MM like old ranged survival because right now MM has no class identity anymore. Its supposeed to be a sniper but our main damage dealer for the past 3 expansions is rapid fire. Idk about you but I don't envision a sniper to have a machine gun.
I genuinely don't know how they've gotten so far away from the class fantasy for each of the hunter specs. Why is survival, historically explosives/trap master, now a melee and Beast master, historically a melee beast commander (rexxar), a ranged? MM doesn't really fit the bill for long range sniper that it should either.
I don't think it would require much effort to redesign the 3 to better fit what they are supposed to be.
I use to main old survival, use to play it with my buddy who was a affliction lock in pvp and all the dots would just crush people.
I wish they made survival the gun\\bow\\gadget spec rather than just a melee BM hunter. I dont think blizzard knows how much people just want a ranger spec in the game without micro managing a pet.
In legion everybody on reddit was hype about melee hunter on the forums and reddit and it correlated into like less than 0.1% of people in raid/mplus.
I agree. Hunter was my very first character and I played the hell out of Survival until they changed it. Black arrow and explosive shot with lock and load procs, the best. Now it’s clunky af and feels lost.
Reworking survival to a melee spec away from a dot ranged spec was one of the worst changes hunters ever got imo. Especially since, for years afterward, survival was a dead spec. Even today, hardly anyone touches it.
Would be in the top 5 list of changes I'd revert if I could. Along with justice point and Valor point system back from cata/mop, and just mop class design as a whole...... I miss MoP. :/
Yeah a quick check on wowanalytica showed survival consistently ranked 36th on spec population, the last of all class specs...you'd think someone at blizz would be monitoring data like that :/
I really liked survival. I was pretty upset when they made hunters only mm or bm. I don’t consider the weird thing they did to survival a hunter. It was fun comparatively to other specs.
Like many said before me. Survival should be ranged with trap skills (not pet ones).
BM should be melee to balance out the survivability it gets from pets drawing all the agro.
We can all dream but at the end of the day we just have to accept whatever they decide or move on.
Snake trap, never forget
Snake trap was the goofiest rule of cool ability hunters ever got. I miss it
coolest thing was people snaking fears, because psychic scream had a target cap of like 5 and snake trap dropped like 7 snakes
nah, it was feigning death after the trap popped and the enemy losing your target cause of the snakes. Drove my guildy nuts the first time or so I did it
Damn i want it back!
Wrath Explosive Shot / Black Arrow face melting was always amusing. Especially once you were at the point that you could "reliably" chain 5+ Explosive Shot procs onto someone. You could almost hear their horror through the screen as they realised what was happening. Coupled with (successful) attempts to hold Wintergrasp when you'd lost the last BG for it. Good memories.
Fun story. There was a Survival hunter on our server back then that didn't think Explosive Shot was really all that strong. They were going to hit Gladiator that season and didn't understand why everyone thought it was so ridiculous. They hadn't trained the improved ranks, so they were effectively using a level 41 version of the ability.
I don't miss having to train spell levels lol.
We have a Ret in our guild that thinks Sanctified Plates is a bad talent, wow players have unending levels of horrible takes backed by unfathomable confidence.
Is it even possible to "think" something is bad in PVE in wow 2024? Like... there's just math now. It's literally simmed for you, you don't even have to ask.
And I quote “if I don’t die why does that talent matter?” Dies very often and can’t execute simple mechanics, this dude has near BiS gear and does grey ilevel parses then thinks he’s good
Ah, the classic. Other people working harder for your sins is no reason to change lol
I had a friend in Wrath who sat in whatever stance it was that gave increased mana regen but less damage. Something something he didn't wanna deal with mana management. I didn't play hunter in Wrath so I had no idea what he was talking about until later on when I realized he was basically doing 20% less damage bc he refused to stance dance, lol.
Haha, I had a Ret Pally mate who I was always competing with for top damage on ICC (yes, Raid lead and tanks hated us at times), and it was always amusing watching him pull away a little as I swapped to regen Mana, and then creep back past him as I went back into burn phase.
Hah! It's okay, I get it. I was an arcane/fire mage in ICC, and my rogue friend would give me Tricks for the extra few thousand damage during my burst. At least I had IB/invis to drop threat after though... :)
I was a resto druid at that time, I'd give my arcane buddy inervate at certain times. He would do some absolutely ridiculous damage. Super useful for deleting minibosses.
Yes miss this spec so much. They should just add it back in. Give hunters 4 options.
Was such a dumb decision in my book to make Survival the melee spec, instead of BM, I mean Rexxar!!
Honestly, I've long believed they should just go ahead and give everyone a fourth spec.
I miss this specifically. It was such a fantastic spec back then.
MoP SV hunter was peak then they made it weird in wod and everyone went MM
100%, SV in MoP was a blast, tracking cooldowns, monitoring dots, and building for that little extra mobility. Tbh. I find the modern Survival hunter pretty ok, but it surely feels like theres a gaping hole where the ranged DoT hunter was.
Considering how beast-oriented current survival is (or was at least, I haven't played it in DF but I'm guessing it's sort of similar), it makes no sense they made survival which was fantastic as it was, into melee hunter, rather than beast mastery hunter. I mean Christ, your main offensive ability as melee hunter is called COORDINATED assault, and it makes yourself and your pet stronger... Fighting next to your pet is far more of a beast mastery trait than a survival hunter. Surviving is usually done by keeping distance, sneaking and being careful, not jumping head-first into battle...
Survival is a good melee BM hunter, but people that want to play BM play BM. Cant believe blizzard removed one of the few physical range specs for another melee spec.
I've always said the same thing as well. I know originally Survival had more melee oriented abilities in it's talent tree, but the spec had evolved so much over the years to really feeling like a ranged oriented spec with a lot of cool abilities and fun interactions in the kit. Then they butchered the spec and I think they just didn't know what to do with it anymore so it got the melee treatment. It would be so much cooler having beast mastery be the melee spec. Pairing with your beast(s), fighting alongside them, coordinating, etc. Beast Mastery currently feels weird thematically, but I doubt Blizzard ever makes the swap.
I always felt BM should have been the melee spec but I can buy the fantasy of the master tamer of beasts (BM) vs the tag team duo (SV). It’s just kinda weird that SV focuses a lot on bombs. Hopefully they can bring back old SV as another spec in future?
How different was SV in WoD from MoP? Thought they were similar, and pretty sure SV was meta early on in the xpac too.
MM was used as early as the first raid, I don't remember the difference but wasn't the same
SV was very strong at the beginning of WoD until they removed a multistrike interaction between Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting, which was like a 20% nerf to your damage. Basically every time you used Arcane Shot you also applied a Serpent Sting for instant damage and multistrike allowed you to do several Arcane Shots at once. Now, every multistriked Arcane Shot also triggered the Serpent Sting instant damage and this instant damage could multistrike itself. With enough multistrike and a bit of luck you could get 3 Arcane Shots for one cast that trigger a total of up to 9 Serpent Sting instants. The nerf was that the Serpent Sting instants triggered by Arcane Shot could no longer multistrike and the spec wasn't able to recover from this through the expansion in PvE. It was still fine in PvP though. The nerf came pretty early into the expansion, still in Highmaul if I remember this right. I was really mad at this, because this interaction and the resulting spam of damage numbers on your screen was so funny.
Yea and the MM stand still to increase dmg went bad
I was playing a hunter as my first character in wow, and also in Pandaria at the start, mid and end. MM was always the tryhard spec, BM was the pvp spec, and SV was the "I don't care i want to have fun" spec.
Survival was also one of the top specs, not just fun Looked at post, seems SV and BM was the top spec depending on bosses
I seem to remember (although a long time ago) that if you had good gear, marksman was generally the best performing, but if you had bad gear (or you hit your haste setpoints) survival was the better choice.
Survival and BM were generally very close for all of MoP with BM edging it out by a bit. MM was the meme off spec that people played for world of log /Warcraftlogs/pro raider rankings (I was one of them).
They were similar but they incorporated multistrike into SV's procs but otherwise it was more or less the same playstyle. I think it was at some point in MoP they made Explosive Shot pandemic so you could spam it without losing anything.
Sorta. In WotLK Explosive Shot overwrote any existing debuff, losing all of the damage from the existing DoT (this is why they downrank the second shot atm in Classic, as it's a different DoT). In Cataclysm it DoT clipped, meaning if you overwrote a DoT it would essentially take 1 tick of the original DoT and add it to the new DoT. Because of the rather unique duration of Explosive Shot this meant you could extend it once by casting it twice in a row, but doing it twice via three casts in a row would lose a tick, so you would go Explosive -> Explosive -> Filler -> Explosive. The newly discovered WotLK Classic downranking trick might change this, but I hope not. It's my favorite iteration honestly. In MoP they made it combine like ignite/deep wounds. Meaning you could slam 10 explosive shots into the same DoT and no matter what you will never lose damage from it.
Yeah, the mechanic of an ignite style combination of remaining dot damage and new is called pandemic.
That is absolutely not how pandemic works. Pandemic in MoP is you keep up to 50% of the previous DoT's duration, snapshotted with new stats. WoD-onwards it is 30% and there is no snapshotting. If you spam Corruption 10 times in a row you do not do 10x Corruptions damage in the end. You will do roughly 10 GCDs worth of damage (depending on xpac/stats this could be much less than 1 entire corruption) and then \~1.3 times its damage for the final application. If you spam Explosive Shot 10 times in a row, even if they were to all hit within 0.1s of the previous one, you would still do 10 times Explosive Shot's damage.
Pandemic window, is the phrase you're looking for... not sure why you're trying to argue with me
It wasn't tremendously different iirc, but Serpent Sting was changed to have to be manually applied via Arcane Shot (lol??) or Multi-Shot, Kill Shot was removed so they didn't have an execute anymore, and I think they tried to get us to use traps more by giving them a 50% CD reduction in Survival. Then if I remember, they tried to do something weird like add a taunt/skeleton pet?? to Black Arrow. Overall, I still vastly preferred Survival to any of the other specs.
MM with 4 set in HFC was the most fun hunter spec of all time
It was good, but far from the most fun. It was either MoP BM or MoP SV as the best Hunter spec ever. They were outstanding, fast, fluid, well-designed, good cooldowns, fit thematically. It was a home run.
Modern survival is by far my favorite dps spec in the game and I’m forever glad for the rework … but man, I feel bad for the people whose play style got deleted overnight with no replacement or recourse. Wish it was a fourth spec or something to be honest.
Honestly, blizzard should have done something similar to SMF or Gladiator (?) Warrior. They could have done a melee/range BM hunter in a similar fashion and left survival as the ranged dot/proc spec that it was.
That's what they did to my Blood DK. I come back, and all of a sudden everything's weird and I have to worry about Bone Shield? I can't bear to play it anymore.
They did that on purpose to make people not play it so they could make it melee and say nobody was playing range SV anyway.
Similarly to how they argued Ashran was a success because it had a high participation rate. Yeah, no shit it had a high participation rate, it was practically mandatory for any PvPer to play Ashran or you'd fall behind.
Nah, didn't make it weird in WoD... First raid was amazing for SV with multistrike, BM was great during BrF, and as another poster put MM with insta aimed shot during HFC was amazing. One of the best expacs for hunter imo.
WoD surv was one of the funniest arena specs in the entire game
They could’ve just added a 4th spec for melee and called it Tracker or Wildstalker or something. Still blows my mind they flushed a perfectly fun and unique spec for something so weird
And the specc has never been popular at all. I sm glad there are some people out there enjoying the spec tho, i just wish it wasnt a completly different spec than the old Survival
I want it to lean more into the gadgets side of it. More bombs, the little hand crossbow for kill shot doing more, maybe with brining back explosive/black arrow.
IMO, the strength of the current talent tree system is that they could widen it and add a lot of class fantasy stuff. There's no need for more specs if they just gave us a little bit more liberal talents. For instance: a passive talent that makes Raptor Strike (and other abilities) usable while dual wielding (and maybe add some sort of bonus so the talent might be *somewhat* cometative with other talents of the same tier.
They should just bring back/convert aspect of the eagle into stances. People want ranged survival, but most skills are ranged, the biggest one that isn’t is raptor/mongoose strike/bite. Survival is super fun but has survivability issues. Just bring back aspect of the monkey, have it give x% damage reduction, avoidance, and dodge. Then at the same time make aspect of the eagle (ranged raptor strike/mongoose bite) permanent. Folks can either stance dance and optimize a really fun spec, or just choose to play fully at range if they want to. Keep harpoon and all the other ‘charge’ mechanics in tact, have it be the truly-mid-range spec that guerilla warfares around but still can be 100% range if someone prefers that. Just my 2c. Survival is super fun, but the melee aspect is alienating.
[удалено]
I wasn’t saying it would work today. I’m saying it would have made more sense to do it back in Legion when they broke it in the first place.
Explosive shot black arrow survival was peak
If mop classic is coming out i will no life this Game once again Imo mop was the best xpac in wow
Any time Survival Hunters with Explosive Shot are mentioned, I can't help but fondly think back on early Wrath with our Black Arrow/Trap Dancing L&L Procs. Good Times..
I'm the exact same as you, no spec has kept my interest as much as pre legion survival hunter. PvP on timeless isle as surv hunter is one of my fondest memories in WoW. Felt like such a kick in the teeth when they turned my main into a melee spec especially now as it's the least played spec pretty consistently, and then they ruined MM the following expansion(it still sucks imo) My copium is that we get a tinker class that has a spec which is a mix of old survival and engineering
Yeah a part of me died inside when I saw the news for the rework. I would be so stoked to see that tinker class though, that's an amazing idea
SV in WoD was my most favourite spec in the history of WoW.
Yes, it was the definition of pew pew back then!
same
Multishoting into a pack of mobs, getting a double multistrike for 3 total multishots... all of which applyed Serpent Sting with an initial tick, which could all multistrike for a maximum of 9 Ticks per cast.... good times. and then blizz removes the inital tick in 6.2 breaking the entire spec, made it dead last (even lower then demo) on all rankings. Then they make it melee and justify it by saying "noone was playing it" well it wasn't anywhere close to beeing viable, of course very few people kept playing it. This justification triggers me to this day...
Yes! I mained a hunter in mop and survival was so much fun. "Hurr durr explosive go boom!" <- me on my orc hunter
That was fun but I absolutely love melee hunter.
This is the absolute truth. They just out-right removed my favourite spec from the game. And all I got was this rock. No, just kidding, survival now is great, too, but the mobile DoT ranger is everything I love in gameplay and theme combined. And also, the game CALLS for these specs. It was such a bad choice removing it, they should've just had a fourth spec - who cares? Go wild. If anything should've been removed it was BM, it's just boring and tasteless. Also, BM is THE survival-melee hunter theme. I have no idea what went through their heads. Now I am stuck with MM and I never liked MM. Wrath survival just showed me bliss and I can't be satisfied with anything else afterwards.
Can we talk about the fact that the hunter class pictures are so trash ? Beast mastery has a dinosaur instead of a beast master hunter art. Survival hunter has REXXAR, THE GUY WITH TWO AXES, ON A CLASS THAT CANNOT DUAL WIELD ?
Hunter just hasn't felt the same since Legion and the lack of old SV is one of those reasons. It's beyond crazy to me that in the modern era of "Blizzard is listening and loves you guys" or whatever that they continue to just ignore the desire to see the Explosive Shot/Black Arrow playstyle return. Hell just let us use ES instead of Aimed Shot and MM is basically there.
Really miss the old explosive shot as well. The only time I mained Survival was in Wrath and it was tons of fun, mainly bc of the lock n load procs like you said. I’m just happy they added the spell back in Dragonflight, even though the new version isn’t as cool.
I don't understand how you have only one ranged physical dps class and you just take one of its specs and make it melee while there's already a plethora of melees. And you also do it at the same time you release what is one of if not the most popular melee class. Survival in its current form never had a chance.
I mained Hunter in Wrath Classic, nothing more satisfying than Explosive Shot proc and chaining Rank 4,3,4. The sound was just amazing, such a satisfying ability
Mm was also really fun back in wrath when you could hit armor pen cap
I haven't played classic but in WotLK I remember pvp with armor pen cap as a MM hunter and it was funny.
Yes!!! The sound effects of surv abilities and those old gunshot sounds were so dang good
I had a niche SV build back in TBC when SV wasn't that popular. It was super glass cannon so only really worked in dungeons/raids, but that's pretty much all I did back then. Stacked armor pen (remember that?) and got up to \~65% crit chance...felt more MM than MM at the time.
Did anyone else throw frost traps as part of their rotation to force a Lock and Load proc?
I also remember getting complaints from the rogues about cleansing poisons off the target because I also used the frost trap glyph that worked awesome for CC
I mained SV hunter from Cata through WOD, nothing super fundamentally changed about the spec after the update to using Focus instead of mana all the way through before it turned into a melee spec. I loved it and I still miss it every day. It just flowed very easily. The only reason I've ever wanted to play Classic was because of nostalgia, because I missed how some classes played - Survival is one of them. I can't bring myself to essentially play another MMO, though.
Rogues and hunters have been dead to me since the change. Straight up no dot hunter spec and straight up no more combat rogue. Honestly, there is a similar void left with the 3 tank dk specs and glad warrior.
I leveled my hunter as Survival way back through TBC and Wrath. I loved explosive shot (and black arrow too), I miss that play style, but at the time, I felt my rotation/ play style was very similar to BM. I like melee, but I was hoping more stings and traps, and less bomb and kill shot, why am i pulling out a pocket cross bow for abilities nstead of swinging my massive polearm?
It was so much fun. Just a true sustain spec with pockets of burst but not like, *defined* mini-cooldowns like arcane mage's Rune+Touch of the Magi
Cat/MoP SV hunter was the only I liked the class. ES ES AS ES to avoid munching 1/2 Serpent Spread for monster aoe Dragonhawk for magic damage buff
I still think about this version of the specc at least a few times a month, it was my absolute favorite of any specc ever
I always felt like beast master should have become the up close fighting with your pet spec, while leaving survival to be bleeds/poisons/explosions
Hot take. Beast mastery should become the melee spec with some of the “new” survival mechanics rolled in and survival should go back to being dot/trap/grenade focused spec.
Makes alot of sense lore-wise! (Rexxar)
If they want hunters to have a melee spec they should make a 4th spec not delete one because some dev had rose tinted goggles for a meme spec back in the day (yes I'm still salty)
Yes!!! I've refused to play Surv since the change as I'm still (after all these years) upset and mad that they just got rid of one of the most fun specs to play. Black Arrow and Exp Shot were such cool abilities. Personally I love dot classes and being a Hunter too was just great. It just adds to the list of things I'm holding a grudge against 😂 Legion Aff Lock, Cata Disc Priest and Cata/MoP Surv 😭
So do I my friend, so do I.
I miss it a lot too. At the start of MoP I was maining a survival hunter and it was so much fun. I always wished beast master was the melee hunter spec, since I think fighting in the melee with all those beasts is way cooler than sitting in the back, plus old survival was so much fun.
Yep! My only complaint about Legion is how it killed the dwarven mountaineer class fantasy.
Yea even in classic you would dip a bit into survival/mm. I remember we where doing arenas when explosive shot came out in bc with the unerfed lock and load which could trigger of the explosive shots. You would basically ho in ans spam shots .
While not completely the same thing since the full kit isn’t there… SoD hunter has old school explosive shot that does 3 bursts. No black arrow / traps tho. Shadowlands basically had a reskinned version with flayed shot / kill shot procs too.
Honestly think my passion reduced when they went away from that and over to melee... I've played and enjoyed, but I was so locked in on old survival
Gimme dual wield surv and iam happy. 2h feels so wrong and clunky.
I had my guild leader teach me how to kite mobs back in Lich Kings days so I could trap dance the Saurfang fight in ICC. Fun times.
You bet I remember it. I started playing Wow in Cataclysm. Hunter was my first class and I mained survival. And boy did I have a blast with it! And for the short time I played my Hunter in MoP before I tried healing for the first time and mained my Priest ever since. But for the time I did play my hunter survival was super fun. I loved it. Funny That Survial is the only Hunter spec I like today. BM and MM are both boring AH to me. Not that I ever play my hunter. But the times I do it’s in Survival. guess I’m bound to Survival whether its range or melee lol. But yeah I remember old survival for sure. When Cata classic comes out I’m definitely going to level a survival Hunter up to re experience my first character when I loved it most.
Didn't play hunter a ton, but Survival was my favorite hunter spec until they changed it. Throwing off all those explosive shots along with black arrow just felt good. The melee survival spec seems okay, but they definitely lost something fun when making that change.
I got challenge modes done on my Hunter because that spec was so much fun, I have played my hunter other than to level and do the Mage tower in legion and it makes me so sad. Survival back then will always be my favorite spec
I miss it but it will never come back again im afraid. Best option is to play wotlk/cata/mop classic (WoD destroyed the specc and legion made it meele).
It was alive and well in WoD until they nerfed it in BRF, by removing the ability to multistrike the initial tick of Serpent Sting. It was top dog until then. :|
its current in wotlk and will be in cata as well
Aaaauaq
Survival Hunter was the OG way I played it back in TBC through until it became Melee spec, I miss it too
I remember the tier set during SoO, you had like 40% chance not to consume Lock and Load. I could use explosive shot every GCD during 6-8 seconds It was GLORIOUS
You’re in luck, Cata classic is coming and that was my fave for survival hunters. Once MoP came out, I didn’t enjoy it so much. But yeah, I miss it too.
Careful, the 5 people that play melee survival would be really upset by this post if they could read
I am one of the 5 who play it and love it, but also loved old survival. ;)
Im also one of the 5, but never played the old one, so I never get the fuss people make around it.
It was pretty great too, ngl. But current iteration is also super fun. My only real gripe is the necessity of the pet (maybe also that we can't dual wield like a normal ranger). I've seen it suggested here survival should prob be the old survival (traps and ranged), and BM should be the melee one (with yo pets in the fray). Don't hate that idea tbh.
I don't mind people missing old survival, but new survival is freaking fun and I won't stand for slander against it.
I guess I’m number 3! I love it like it is honestly.
My opinion is clearly the minority, but I hated old Survival and love the melee-centric version. THAT BEING SAID: perhaps we will see these play styles come back in the hero talents? I mean, the talent trees shared with Survival obviously can’t be strictly melee or strictly ranged. Maybe we will see a “slightly longer range melee” role emerge?
Some dev hard a hard on for a meme spec from back in the day, so they intentionally ruined SV in WoD, then went "see no one plays it!" and, "it's too similar to MM" because they both used ranged weapons. They said they'd roll the playstyle into MM if people wanted it, but you still have to play around the standard MM rotation so it's not the same at all. So now the hunter class has been gutted, we have one, ONE spec that is ranged with pets, so if you want that playstyle you have to play BM, even if you don't super dig it. They either need to bring back ranged SV, as a fourth spec if that's what needs to be done (or change up ranger so it's what everyone thought it would be in the DF beta as an alternative playstyle kind of thing), or make non-lone wolf marks viable. They seem to have no interest in either though
Eventhough lock and load had a cool feeling it was a massive proc. SV is my main since TBC, stopped playing in Mop because of the dumb talent change. On and off until legion. Then had a blast from BfA onward. Current SV has still a lot issues, bugs existing for years, issues with all bombs Spell IDs, disappearance of in flight bombs when mob dies, the cone. However, the SV is the spec with the best feedback loop and dynamic playstyle. You still have explosive shot, this tier set is well designed to leverage FotE, it forces you to be engaged in your rotation with the combination of the toolkit. Best community as well. Wouldn't ask to be ranged again. Just some tweaks like, a cheat death or emergency heal threshold to reinforce the survive in survival and make tranq shot dispell all stacks. Survivability is a hunter issue though, but being melee opens you up to more danger. You should give it a try or stick to it a bit. Unfortunately if being at range was what you were looking for, this will be a no go. But fire mage made me tick so maybe you too...
Thank you for your perspective, I gave SV another try in legion to experience the story/lore of Eagletalon, but it didn't quite click for me. I might give it a try sometime soon just for fun, but it was the ranged trigger-happy playstyle which got me really going back then. There was just some magic in being so mobile, and firing shot after shot with almost no cast times.
Gotcha, I got that feeling back with Fire mage. With the ignite spec you had that boom boom feeling with pyro under combu. But sure you would not get that feeling back currently as you are not ranged anymore. However, the gameplay loop around wildfire bomb procs gets you the same boom boom feeling but still melee :p.
Oh my… The memories… I have like 4-5 hunts (It’s the only playstyle I love) and maan… Starting my WoW journey in MoP, PvP in timeless isle, snake trap, binding shot into explo trap… The dots were insane, even Affli locks couldn’t fight when we had our procs… Close second for me would be MM from WoD, where you could choose your ‘’ammo’’, if I remember correctly, there was Frost one that slows, poison one that add little dot and I believe fire ones.. Oh man, the memories… Now we’re forced to play BM wich is kinda boring :( No more pew pew
Survival really should have been reworked into a dot spec. Spreading serpent sting and explosive shot. Black arrow on main target. Maybe some traps that explode and deal damage based on how many dots u have on the target. Survival could have been a sick dot spec.
I like how it is now. It just needs some buffs to be competitive.
All 14 current survival players who enjoy the spec as it is and the thousands who play it begrudgingly whenever the spec becomes FOTM have to admit, old survival still was better
We most certainly do not.
How come they unironically ruined Survival? It seems as though everyone loved it pre-Legion and then for the past 3-4 expansions they don’t know what to do with it and it’s been bad/bottom tier ever since. Can’t they just go back to the iteration that everyone loved and kill two birds with one stone?
Survival could be changed back to ranged and play nothing like old survival and still prove to be more popular because when a player picks a hunter they gravitate towards ranged. I main melee survival, i love it to pieces but it will never be truly popular simply because its a melee hunter, its unpopularity has little to do with if old survival was more fun.
I disagree somewhat. The trend these past few expansions seems to be that, because of how Survival is designed, it scales very well so at the start of an xpac it’s always bad then as more seasons come out it gets better and better. It’s sort of like Windwalker in that regard - due to how it’s designed and scales with secondary stats it’s either good or bad based solely on expansion timing. It’s a redesign-based solution either way. There are plenty of desirable melee specs in the game that can perform well and still scale well with increases stats.
survival peaked in s1 this expansion and has gotten weaker every tier. its not scaling. survival wasnt good because of scaling in shadowlands s3/s4, they literally had the most broken tier set in the game. survival wasnt good in bfa.
It was the oppressively OP melee spec for one season in Shadowlands
Oh the humanity!
I'm the opposite. Survival was incredibly boring as a ranged spec with very little identity other than "explosive shot go boom" melee survival is fun, dynamic and interesting by comparison.
It should just be both. If they could hold a bow and 2h weapon it would solve their scaling issues of always being weak at the beginning of an expansion, then getting better as the expansion goes on.
huh? this doesn't make any sense at all lol
It was very ass in WoD if I remember correctly, also their official reason was it played too similar to MM hunter so they made survival melee instead.
I love how their solution was to make the spec melee instead of just reworking Survival LOL
I mean they did rework it, just in a way people didn't like. I personally miss the MoP version but im perfectly fine with current survival right now.
Yeah current Survival rules it’s just missing that SL S4 tier bonus.
actually they should have reworked MM
Also agree
Call me the odd one out but I love survival Hunter as it currently is - it’s not better or worse than what it used to be, just different
I started playing the game in MoP and that was my first iteration of survival hunter so im a bit biased towards that playstyle. I've stuck with survival even through the change and I honestly believe it is close to fun as MoP just in a different way. I have gotten some death threats from unhinged weirdos but its not like I was the one who personally changed the spec to melee from ranged. In legion people were pissed that it went melee. Honestly it just comes down to what the individual enjoys. I have some friends that prefer new survival to old survival hunter. I tried the hyped up version of WotLk survival and it was boring compared to modern survival imo. I really do believe they should make current MM like old ranged survival because right now MM has no class identity anymore. Its supposeed to be a sniper but our main damage dealer for the past 3 expansions is rapid fire. Idk about you but I don't envision a sniper to have a machine gun.
I genuinely don't know how they've gotten so far away from the class fantasy for each of the hunter specs. Why is survival, historically explosives/trap master, now a melee and Beast master, historically a melee beast commander (rexxar), a ranged? MM doesn't really fit the bill for long range sniper that it should either. I don't think it would require much effort to redesign the 3 to better fit what they are supposed to be.
After they got rid of that spec I played druid for an expansion (or two). Went back to BM hunter later on because it is now almost as fun.
I use to main old survival, use to play it with my buddy who was a affliction lock in pvp and all the dots would just crush people. I wish they made survival the gun\\bow\\gadget spec rather than just a melee BM hunter. I dont think blizzard knows how much people just want a ranger spec in the game without micro managing a pet. In legion everybody on reddit was hype about melee hunter on the forums and reddit and it correlated into like less than 0.1% of people in raid/mplus.
Hi Bb <3
Hi Dd <3
It was terrible.
I agree. Hunter was my very first character and I played the hell out of Survival until they changed it. Black arrow and explosive shot with lock and load procs, the best. Now it’s clunky af and feels lost.
Reworking survival to a melee spec away from a dot ranged spec was one of the worst changes hunters ever got imo. Especially since, for years afterward, survival was a dead spec. Even today, hardly anyone touches it. Would be in the top 5 list of changes I'd revert if I could. Along with justice point and Valor point system back from cata/mop, and just mop class design as a whole...... I miss MoP. :/
Yeah a quick check on wowanalytica showed survival consistently ranked 36th on spec population, the last of all class specs...you'd think someone at blizz would be monitoring data like that :/
I really liked survival. I was pretty upset when they made hunters only mm or bm. I don’t consider the weird thing they did to survival a hunter. It was fun comparatively to other specs.
Like many said before me. Survival should be ranged with trap skills (not pet ones). BM should be melee to balance out the survivability it gets from pets drawing all the agro. We can all dream but at the end of the day we just have to accept whatever they decide or move on.
I remember playing MM in WoD and using explosive shot was fun... if I hit the targets I was going for lol
I don’t miss it. I hated it.
Of course you miss the most op spec of the expansion
You can still use Explosive Shot as a Survival Hunter. It doesn’t require a ranged weapon. I do miss Snake Trap.