Ranged SV would make SO many players happy

Other than looking at how more than 1/3rd of hunter playerbase disappeared overnight from WoD to Legion, and less than 5% (at the start) even played survival, when before it was easily 1/3rd of the class representation?

Other than looking at how Survival has, on several occasions, been the top dps out of hunter specs, and despite this has remained at the bottom of people’s playtime. I mean, look at Uldir representation. 4.9k vs 49k.

We could of course also look at current data, like raider IO data on m+ participation on specs. Yep, same result.

Or, maybe, maybe.

People actually want to play a ranged spec? Because hunter is the de-facto ranged class in the game. Melee has no place in it. Deadzone, maybe. But not melee.

Yes, and it comes down to “I don’t like MSV” or “I prefered RSV”. There’s no other valid argument against the existance of MSV. You are just proving what I said. There’s people who like it and play it, and there’s people who don’t.

As people like to keep saying, even when MSV was in an excelent state it wasn’t popular, due to personal preference, and that’s what it comes down to in the end.

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Yes, it does come down to that. Very loudly and clearly. The evidence is absolutely crystal clear: Survival is a perfectly functional spec, nobody just plays it because it is
a) unfun
b) doesn’t fit the class

Whatever the reasons the truth is this: Survival being brought back to ranged would make it a popular spec once again. That’s all there is to it.

Unsurprisingly the majority > Minority.

I strongly disagree, and what is fun and isn’t is up for personal preference. I think Mage is very unfun, yet people out there love it and have fun with it. That is never a valid argument, because it differs from person to person. I, for example, find SV the most fun spec I ever tried in the game, and I tried almost them all.

It does. It always did, you have plenty of examples in game and lore of melee Hunters/Rangers. Rexxar, Nathanos Blightcaller and Lor’themar Theron are a few examples.

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. I’d be willing to bet my left nut that there would be plenty of people complaining that it wasn’t the same as before, and this, or that.

I am one of the players that liked Combat Rogue above all the other specs of the class. It is gone now, replaced by Outlaw. Yes, Outlaw is fun, but it isn’t Combat. Combat felt like a duelist, Outlaw feels like a pirate or something of the sorts. Thus, I really lost interest in playing Rogue, it sucks but I moved on, I’m not crying for the comeback of Combat.

Going back to RSV, sure I would agree in it coming back as a 4th spec, replacing MSV for RSV would be making the same mistake again.
As I said to another person in the past, the people asking for RSV to comeback and replace MSV are being hypocrites, they who miss their favourite spec, should understand better than anyone else how it sucks to have their favourite spec removed and not wish the same upon other people, even if we are just a minory.

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Well, I present to you: The Shadow priest.

A case example of how people who found a gimmick, the voidform, very fun despite it being the single one thing that made us a gimmicky, unreliable and unwashed spec for two solid expansions. Impossible to balance. Yes, I’m sure it was extremely fun for some people, but evidently it was unfun enough for enough people that they changed it.

What a couple of thousand (unironically) people find fun about Sv, ten times that number hunters used to find range fun, and still do, as the numbers show. So again, majority > minority. Fun does matter, it’s just that majority’s fun matters more than a niches.

All of which also make use of ranged weapons. Deadzone is something I wouldn’t mind hunters getting back, but melee definitely should not be their place. It never was in this game till legion. That’s 3 failed expansions worth of design soon™.

No, it would. It’s not a matter of “maybe”. it would. That’s a fact. Ranged survival would revitalize the spec’s representation way, way past that of the melee.

And sure, there would be people complaining about it not being “right”. Look at shadowpriests, or literally any other spec in the game. People always complain. That’s not the point. Player numbers and representation matters. And in the case of SP’s, our representation skyrocketed after the changes- Because we were no longer a unique gimmick spec. We were actually a functional class once again.

Maybe you should keep fighting to bring it back. I fought for shadowpriest changes for, what, two expansions straight. I spammed their twitter feed, made forum threads, kept piling on reddit at them, I did everything and all. And lo-and-behold, they do listen. You just got to scream loud enough.

Outlaw (read. Combat) went from being a perfectly solid, well designed spec into the gutter for being a meme spec that occasionally did really well in m+, but that’s about it. It’s representation numbers leave much to be desired compared to it’s WoD numbers for example.

No, I think in a game with 12 classes with majority of the specs being melee focused, there is plenty of choice for the player and if you can’t find a melee spec to your liking because survival is gone then bye, for all I care. It’s not like Blizzard would lose a lot, some odd-few-thousand players at best? Assuming all of them would quit anyway.

Nah instead I think that we need to stomp down hard on any and all gimmick + unqueness for the sake of uniqueness class design advocates. This is not how you design a class.

Imagine complaining about having a melee spec.

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You don’t even need to go to another class, I used to main MM Hunter (with RSV as offspec btw) until they f*ckd it up with the Aimed Shot nonesense… And I guess there’s plenty of people who felt the same aswell.

Which numbers show that tho? There’s so many of you talking about numbers but never seen links and others. Not that I need to see them, it’s kinda irrevelant just by the simple fact that Blizz doesn’t care about the forums, much less the EU forums, so what we are doing here most of the time is just discuss stuff that the people who should actually read, sadly don’t.

They do, and so do I and other SV Hunters situationally. I even talked in other posts about how to make the spec more “hybrid friendly” by giving SV a non-GCD weapon swap during combat and some other small but significant changes that would allow for that playstyle better. However, matter of fact is that for those 3 examples, at least for 2 of them (but I strongly believe for the 3 of them) the melee weapons are their main weapons.

You can’t say it is a fact if it didn’t even happen. It’s a possibility, not a fact, not yet. If they ever bring it back then yes, it is a fact, that is if it really goes as you believe.

If I hadn’t found what I was looking for in SV, maybe I would. But honestly, I’m quite happy with SV, despite it needing some improvements, so you know Combat is like that really nice ex-gf that you sometimes miss but you wouldn’t come back to even if she begged.

Survival is very unique in the way it works, and the tools it has. That’s mainly why I like it so much, so yes if it was deleted I wouldn’t find any other like it. Sure, there are other specs/classes out there I enjoy, Monk being one of them (which would be my main if SV didn’t exist), but truth is none of the other specs/classes I enjoy give me as much satisfaction playing it as SV does.

Well, that’s just your opinion, which I completely disagree with. The problem is not in gimmicks and/or uniqueness, but rather on how those things are implemented. When done right, there’s no issue, when done wrong then sure there’s an issue. Sadly, Blizz more often than not does it wrong.

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interesting rhetorical question, considering a lot of people care.

To me the minority of people whom do enjoy survival feel like those people whom like to be strapped up and slapped with leather whips.

Sure some people enjoy being in pain, but the majority of us, no thanks

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I really don’t get to understand how these people think.
Removal of ranged SV pissed off A LOT of players and made their tiny tiny minority happy and they are fine with it.
But reverting it and pissing off their tiny minority to make a lot of players happy again? Nooooo.

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#BringBackRangedAndMeleeWeaponSlots

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Personally I would like to see surv made in to a tank spec. Wouldnt hurt the game getting more tank specs!

It doesn’t have to be one or the others. They can bring it as 4th spec and then make sure it does so little damage that no one will play it cause it ain’t meta.

One of the reason people don’t play msv is because it is one of the hardest specs to play and underperforming. Players don’t like difficult specs hence why they pick BM or ret pala and Boomkins.

Then of course you have the people who think hunters should never be melee for what ever nonsense reason. I mean it’s not like people never hunted with a spear…

What an outrage, we all know the first humans started with a bow and a gun right away.

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I really don’t know what to say in regards to survival being changed back to it’s pre Legion state, simply because I never played it!
I started playing a hunter when it was changed in Legion, because I always liked the idea of a melee hunter. And I like to play melee classes for my solo content, because I find it more engaging and entertaining to hop right into the action.

When I returned for Shadowlands i realized that Survival didn’t get any love at all and I guess we don’t have to talk about the reasons why…

But I thought about what I would really love for SV and I came across the Paragon from Guild Wars. A spear-throwing class with support factors in it.

And I would really love for SV to become some sort of hybrid class, which can harpoon in and disengage out, lay traps, throw spears (not radioactive chicken) and propably bombs and gain benefits from mixing it all together.
I’ve always asked myself why there aren’t any other ranged weapons in the game and I feel like a spear is great for doing both. I mean… SV has the harpoon. Why not make it a damage spell, which hast to be charged up, so that you can jump into melee, deliver a bleeding effect and use the time to lay your traps, before you jump back out again.

I know this may reed like a long shot, but I really do think that SV Hunter has the potential to be the best of both worlds and be really fun to play.

I wouldn’t mind if they made a 4th spec tbh, I personally love the SV hunter as it is. And I am not convinced that the group that likes it as is, is so small.

range survival was the best spec in the game.

wish i had the choice to play Range sv

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No, you obv can’t state such facts on something that is yet to be implemented. You can however make an educated guess or estimation based on the representation RSV saw while we had it.

Historical data and graphs do show that the median for RSV surpassed that of BM as well as MM, by a clear margain. If they were to bring back a spec that plays like RSV, it’s only logical to assume that it will be capable of reaching the same relative levels of popularity and representation.

Unless they ofc botch the design and do things with it that aren’t really in line with it’s original theme, on a fundamental level.

If the representation of the spec is part of the argument, then yes, it really is that small.

Only about 4.5% of all max level hunters are playing as MSV. And as we’ve seen from periods where MSV has performed well in terms of damage, those numbers don’t really change much.

Still no reason to stop it imo, but that’s just my opinion. You can’t like all specs in the game. There’s 2 ranged hunter specs to choose from. Most people just go for the Fotm specs, if SV was Fotm, the numbers would be different.

But this post is yet another one of those, as long as we kids scream hard, loud and long enough, Blizzard will listen to us. That’s some I wouldn’t recommend my son to try with his father, since that doesn’t work. Online it seems the way to go.

Remove current SV? No, agreed.

Add a 4th spec and we’re done with this debate.

Most people don’t, no.

Neither of which play anywhere close to what RSV was like.

Most people that engage in raiding, m+, or PvP, sure.

It has been on several occasions for this class, even of all specs at a certain point.

Again, it did very little for SV numbers (representation).

Well, for family, I would agree.

But this is different, it’s a company(product/service). While the fact that we’re paying for this game doesn’t entitle us to anything as a guarantee, it certainly speaks for how we should expect that our feedback is heard/taken into consideration.

Sadly, the way feedback is handled does promote a behavior like what you mentioned above. People want to play what they like, and if they have to do more to make the devs hear them, it’s not strange that this becomes the case.

1)I read more and more posts of ppl interested about survival
2) survival log in arena are good and i am sure they will climb higher
3) i read less and less post complaining of RSV.

So, i were afraid developers could remove one of the funniest spec ever played wow, MELEE SV. Fortunately, my 3 points prove that the spec is well and will be so