I never understood the reason for a melee hunter spec. I liked the MoP and WoD survival specs. Melee hunter is just plain wrong, with the sole exception of that dude that had the melee hunter blog way back and did a bunch of theorycrafting on how to play it well. It's as if some Dev read that blog and decided instead of it being an interesting though ineffective alternative play style, it should become a full blown spec. Are there any stats on how popular this spec is? I don't think I have ever seen anyone play a melee hunter.
I never understood the reason for a melee hunter spec. I liked the MoP and WoD survival specs. Melee hunter is just plain wrong, with the sole exception of that dude that had the melee hunter blog way back and did a bunch of theorycrafting on how to play it well. It's as if some Dev read that blog and decided instead of it being an interesting though ineffective alternative play style, it should become a full blown spec. Are there any stats on how popular this spec is? I don't think I have ever seen anyone play a melee hunter.
Method used one because with bis legos it could annihilate the eyes with burst damage.
i like the idea of melee hunters, but it was implemented terribly. The spec has one of the hardest rotations in the game and several dots and buffs to manage to play it efficiently, survival and feral were the hardest specs to run effectively. Feral recently got a bunch of QoL changes, hopefully survival does as well. i wouldn't be mad if they turned it into a tanking spec next expansion just so we have a mail tank.
I played Survival on a few of the FoH fun raids back in Nighthold and it was like cancer-ridden AIDS that had mutated with Hep C and herpes. I don't think I ever made it past an hour with that bullshit, playing it literally would give me a headache and I'd have to pop aspirin and switch back to BM.
They are about to play DPS musical chairs after the next tier opens, so picking what is, currently, big dick damage, may leave you disappointed. To my knowledge Survival has never been top tier and is just a niche spec, as Sumdain said.
If you are going to want to raid heroic or mythic, ask the people you plan to run with, what they need.
If you are only going to PuG, and only going to DPS, pick a pure dps class, as they usually have at least 1 spec that is mid tier or better. For PuGs, the most important thing for getting in groups as dps (in terms of picking a class), is the specs reputation, and that's where the rankings come into play. PuGs also have a whole bunch of other bullshit hoops that you need to jump through to get in good groups, but they shouldn't be related to what class you play.
Here are current spec standings from logs, this can give you a general idea where things stand, but are somewhat inaccurate due to various things. Such as, this late in the tier will skew heroic standings, and mythic DPS is not always the same as lower difficulties due to mechanic changes.
there is a lot of magic damage in Antorus, and with the general base stagger reduction that happened with the 7.2.5 monk changes magic damage is going to hit BrM really hard, combine this with a very lackluster Tier set bonus that does nothing for shoring up our weakness and it may be bumpy.
I think Monk's will still be top tier but probably 3rd/4th.
We're going for dk/druid tanks next tier with 2 shamans 1 pally 1 priest for healing. Might also do full time mythic this go around. Might have a monk instead of 1 shaman depending on drops but stacking resto shamans never a horrible thing. Fights are looking pretty fun so far.
Hunter will be a bad choice for a returning player next tier. The new tier sets are terrible for MM and BM, so they will still need farm t20. Arms war will be a solid choice, scale well with ilvl and tier set is good.
Unsure what our tank situation is going to be, but we might just be back to DH and DK/Monk. Unless we need to bring in the big guns again, like for KJ, and just go double druid.
We had a really good survival hunter that was rank 5 world wide all star when 7.2.5 released. Along with me playing fury at the time and him, we decimated the eyes on mythic Gul'dan as they do very well on leave fights. Most of the Tomb fights he was up there on the meters as well.
It seems like a fun spec to play on paper, but the reality is it's just an overly complicated mess that got lost in translation. I am guessing if feral druids got some love, survival will too eventually, but it could be Blizz has deemed it a lost cause already and just going to let it ride the rest of the xpac.
I am just sticking with Arms next tier as I am already invested in trying to get 75 points and I am currently almost 72. Once I get 75, I'll just start dumping power into fury just in case they're more apt for certain fights over Arms.
Still wondering if they're going to do another nerf to CoF, because as of right now it's still really good for both Arms/Fury and mainly for Fury it will still be taking a trinket slot. Arms will still use it, but mainly on fights that you need the burst AoE with ravager or like Maiden and get in an extra BC+Rav combo during blow back phases. I kind of want them to kill the damn thing like it did for other specs so I don't really feel the need to want to try and get a +gooder one.
