4 months of build-up on class discussion

Classes Hunter
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I had also been reading about the biggest controversy of our times, the dreaded MSV. IRL I even hate it when I see some license plates with “MSV” lol. I don’t really have anything new to say about this that I haven’t already said. I do find it interesting that abilities like Arcshot, Tranq Shot, and Killshot are available with ranged weapons for SV. It’s not agreeable that a SV using a ranged weapon even comes close to what it was before, let alone viable. Even from back in Legion as I’ve said, “MSV wasn’t even a good melee,” the new RSV would be laughable. Now if Blizzard incorporated Arcane Shot with Raptor Strike and give SV Multishot to be swapped with Carve across all talents and abilities, we might be looking at a palatable compromise.

The “fourth spec” compromises were something I would be somewhat willing go along with, but this is something that even I know shouldn’t be a compromise. We stand to lose too much in an honest fair shake, because after all, this is where fairness has taken the Hunter class. But either there needs to be a full rollback or a full revolution faithful to the original SV spec. And I’ll be more to happy to say it that as a MM main back in WoD, SV abilities have indeed saved my heinie many times.

It’s hard to see it any other way than for it to be unfair in OUR favor. We had some 6 MDPS specs(Feral, Hance, Sub, Arms, FDK, OL) that have been discontinued for some time now and if Blizzard would pay attention, they ought to make those appealing to those who want a genuine melee experience. By default, RSV ought to be winning in this struggle.

Or maybe the DARK RANGER should have been a thing and that would have wiped the slate clean. It would have been a boon for ranged though that’s diverging from the topic. The point is that acquiescing the current position for MSV is foolish, whether you happen to like what Blizzard did with it or not. In other words, I HAVE to argue against it. I MUST argue against it.

I read up a lot when I was gone for the Spring. There’s plenty of honorable mentions that need no shout-outs for all the discussion I upvoted.

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Current SV is viable, hybrid in doing / using skills at melee and range. For game mechanic purpose we cannot equip both a ranged weapon and a melee one. So we have the animation to support our ranged weapon.

To say its not close to what it was before, that is true… and won’t be, but to say its not viable because it ain’t at the top of the chart that is false. There’s always going to be class/specs at the top and at the bottom of a list.

It was good, but required more work to maintain same dps as another class. Not to mention it was brand new and few knew the proper rotation.

Current sv needs not to change to old ways. It is currently strong, versatile and simply need a few tweaks to be more optimal.

Rerolling back is not an option. 4th is not a realistic one at the moment (maybe in a future where all classes get changes… but I doubt it)

SV offers a unique melee experience as a hybrid class, with multiple ways of playing it. Those other classes have unique ways to play as well, but since the “numbers” aren’t on their side they aren’t played as much. There’s a lot of folks that simply roll for the FOTM class not because its fun or appealing, but because its at the top of the list for DPS. But all those spec you’ve named does well in M+ and Raiding… just not represented as much because of numbers.

The thing with Dark Ranger, is that it ain’t a Hunter. Its something else… it could be a future class but would probably wouldn’t for the similar reason that DH has. How to make multiple unique specs with specific budget and mechanic limits.

Yes, the players have tons of unique abilities, so does the devs… don’t worry about that, they have as many ideas as you. (If not more, they are paid to have them too!) but like said, they are limited in time, resources, budget.

I do believe a certain variation of Tinker class could be possible in future exp if such class comes out. (I hope, since there’s already somewhat one ingame right now)

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Nobody wants to put in more work than others for the same magnitude of result. That might be the core reason why nobody bothers. You’d have to dumb SV down and make it comparable to other melee for more to get into it, but then there’s political backlash for that too.

I know you already got enough replies on that. I read many of them during my Spring break. I’m a new kid on the block compared to the old codgers who’ve been with this class since time immemorial. Authority-wise my word doesn’t count for much. I’m more than happy to tell you how old SV actually saved my heinie as a Marks back in WoD, however.

If I was a hardcore raid leader, and if I tell you to play a class/spec that performs better, you either play it or don’t go. Thankfully I’m not, but those on the true edge of competition are not interested in “how well it does in M+ and raiding” unless it’s actually true in that given patch.

And those who aren’t competitive are easily dismissed as not being subject matter experts. If you’re not competitive, less people would want to listen to you. I don’t let that stop me, though, but social restrictions are still significant in an MMO.

But it would be a Ranged and it’s something we could definitely use in the great struggle of MeleeCraft. Balance looks like the only RDPS that might pull through in Shadowlands for PvP(assuming there’s going to be any) with Hunter Revive Pet cast and Mages losing their mobility. 2 expansions has been long enough for pain and suffering.

ActiVision must not be that big of a name to allow for that.

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No, some do. I myself liked it, it felt more rewarding to gain the numbers.

Your words count as much as others. You play a hunter, they play a hunter, I play a hunter. We just all have different experience in different content.

Well that becomes a community issue… there will always be a bottom of the list spec/class… yet they can do the content and finish it in time or/and by doing all needed objectives. Goal on balance team is to close the gap from highest to lowest… but there will always be one.

Melee uh? 13 melee dps vs 11 ranged dps. The reason why you could say its “meleecraft” is probably due to how more popular melee is in general. The play style of it. Roughly 28% are ranged dps and 38% are melee dps (using generalized % of class-spec rep.)

I can say it is the case with multiple gaming business… Was with Ubisoft and other smaller ones.

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Anything azarogod says is the opposite of what I’d want in the game. After post after post of his get good speeches and wants for claiming the Hunter class is in a great spot when it’s bad speeches I just can’t stand to see him post. Trollish outlook at best. He literally advocates for anything that nerfs hunters and is fine with blizz allowing some classes (hunter) being trash tier as someone must be at the bottom as he says. He’s even fine with 6 second res timers on pet that will break the class in pvp. Wish the community could black list people

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You are free to simply ignore and move on. There’s an ignore function you can use on the forum’s setting. Feel free to use it on anyone that disagree with you. Doing so will save us from any useless reply or false claims that adds nothing to the subject / topic of this thread.

Now if you wish to discuss the topic at hand, you are free to join.

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Well, the only thing I can say about that it is a sense of superiority. Because you play something that’s more of a challenge, that makes you feel like you’re better than those who don’t. It earns you bragging rights. I might have felt that way for a long time about Warlock until I realize that nobody valued my contribution in raiding back then.

“If you take more than your fair share of objectives, you will get more than your fair share of objectives to take,” Murphy’s Law of Combat said.

Ultimately, I became the Hunter you and everyone else knows because as a Warlock, I got tired of carrying bads and feet-draggers in raids.

That’s nice to hear, but I took advantage of very novel abilities that were traditionally not part of the Hunter class. Lone Wolf, Camouflage? Big game-changers. Opened up a lot of doors for me.

Yes, and I understand Blizzard can’t do everything about that.

Encounters and PvP instances are designed to force RDPS in, because of existentialism. RDPS wouldn’t exist at all if Blizzard could determine that they can create content that has no need for them. I agree that melee is the more popular.

Well, nobody said the genre was a successful one, even those that require a paid subscription model. MMORPG’s are so 2000’s. You’d think that merging with a big AAA publisher would make for better opportunities, though.

That’s a really screwed up way to use the ignore function though. A mere echo chamber doesn’t challenge and test a person’s convictions. Sometimes you want good adversity against your position. Sometimes people want to play devil’s advocate to see what you know. I do this more often than I like to admit.

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People would generally struggle to call a spec viable when it frequently gets excluded from content because other options in its class are far better, and that’s where Survival is right now. It’s worse at all PvE situations compared to BM by a pretty big margin.

Yeah, you can get carried to a win. Any spec can. That doesn’t make them viable. There were a few kills of Archimonde back in 2015 with Survival Hunters. That didn’t mean the spec wasn’t bottom-of-the-barrel back then. Viable v.s. unviable is a spectrum and Survival right now is well on its way into the “unviable” side of that spectrum.

Generally people would call such a spec not good.

“Not knowing the proper rotation” really isn’t a factor in modern WoW. You have a lot of competitive players who figure this stuff out really quickly. When people are comparing performances of specs they are always using skilled players as the benchmark so poor skill is not a variable.

It is NOT strong and it is NOT versatile. This is why it gets kicked out of groups. It is massively outclassed by the other specs in its class while also having the limitation of being melee. It has been so even from before 8.3’s stat weight madness made BM the best spec in the game.

You keep contradicting yourself like this. You basically keep saying “this spec is strong… it just isn’t brought to raids because it isn’t strong!”.

A melee skirmisher lacking a ranged weapon is also not a Hunter yet here we are.

Add an “almost” to the “nobody” then, to fulfil the obvious hyperbole that every mature poster could pick out immediately. Obviously some people are masochists who prefer to play a harder spec for worse results. Most people aren’t like that, however.

Your posts on this subforum strongly suggest you do not, in fact, play a Hunter or play one to any significant degree. This is why you hide behind an alt.

If anyone is wondering where he got this from, he went to worldofwargraphs.com and added up all the "% level 120 " percentages for melee and ranged DPS, of course ignoring the fact that there is absolutely no way to accurately count what specs people are playing at level 120 primarily because people don’t tend to stick to a single spec and people also tend to play multiple classes. This is why people like to look at content participation.

If you do the same for raids, you will find that there is a lot more ranged participation because raiding content favours ranged. If you do the same for M+, you will find that there’s more melee participation because M+ content favours melee. As it turns out, it’s not possible to make absurdly blanket statements such as “more people prefer melee/ranged in WoW” because that’s a matter of preference.

I’ll tell you one thing, though: Survival is pretty much as unpopular as it can be, unless the scales are massively tilted in its favour e.g. rated PvP in earlier seasons. Even there, SV hasn’t had amazing representation v.s. other specs and only looked good because of how poorly the ranged Hunters have been treated for PvP in this particular expansion, and it also needs to be said that Hunter representation in rated PvP has plummeted in this expansion in general. As for PVE, I’m going to ignore raiding because that favours ranged anyway. As for M+: Survival would flat-out be a better option for M+ than Marksmanship primarily because it’s a melee spec and melee specs are valued in M+ due to their shorter interrupt cooldowns… yet there are many more Marksmanship Hunters in M+.

When people asked Blizzard about SV’s unpopularity, they didn’t say that Survival was “really popular in the game but it just gets excluded from most trackable content”. They said “we knew we were making a niche spec because most Hunters prefer ranged”.

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My point-of-view is that melee has been far too favored. For the past three expansions, I ate excrement from every melee in continuance(and you wouldn’t believe how rare a SV was). I tried to go beyond the scope of Hunters and look at all ranged in PvP.

A niche spec for a niche place. If nobody bothers you in PvP, then I will still argue that SV is a great melee supporter. But as I said many moons ago, any PvPer with half a brain knows to take them as the weak link out. To quote the former U.S. President if you get high ratings as a SV, “You didn’t build that!”

Note also the comparatives, Azagorod: sadly the way it works in WoW is a zero-sum game. There’s no thing as good or bad, but there is better, best, worse, and worst. I’m only fluent in the language of comparatives. My opinion is that SV is a great melee supporter, but it’s technically WORSE than many other melee. “Not as good as this class,” and “Not as bad as this other.”

The most reliable way you can make MSV attractive is to nerf-nuke the crap out of the other two specs. YET EVEN SO, from start to finish(except 8.3, tangential to other problems), I played MM the whole time AND GOT RESULTS. I’m now over 5,500 HKs with this toon in Eastern Kingdoms. I even tried SV and boy howdy, it sure sucked in Stormwind City.

Some comments I wanted to make:

RSV never really need to go. A while back, for Legion brainstorming, I entertained the idea of giving Titanstrike to MM, Thas’dorah to SV, and a novel “throwing axe” weapon to BM, in order to honor the lore. Sylvanas, being the premier SV hunter, and Rexxar being the premier BM hunter. If I was the game director back then, I’d tell the team this is the way it’s got to be done, essentially to keep the game the way it has been, even to stay true to previous installments!

As a Warlock that got Black Harvest(AND I got the Mage Tower challenge done on SV), you should know I’m no stranger to pointless, difficult things. A lot of hours and gold were wasted to get fel-green colored Fire spells and effects. But the thing is, no more than 8% of those polled by worldofwargraphs. com got the Feat of Strength. So people like you, Azagorod, and I are in a very small minority that gets some degree of satisfaction from putting in the most work getting the same or less. But I’m going to be careful in saying this: Blizzard does not care about us. The greater community does not care about us. So effectively, this game shouldn’t be about just us.

I didn’t get MVP for it. Nobody worships the threads I tread. And that’s okay because I knew I was never the best warlock(I need to be a minimally-responsible European, real talk folks). But it was there and I got personal fulfillment. In a way, that’s all it matters when it comes to playing a game, but don’t forget that my personal fulfillment should be robbing from others’ personal fulfillment.

That’s why even now, I want a revival of RSV, even though I went steady with MM the entire time as a newb from WoD. Because I knew a) this mattered to those who been at this for YEARS, b) RSV’s toolkit has saved my heinie, and c) give me those Tripple D’s!

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You are right, however some people tend to just hate because I’m against the current. Some of them outta just put me on ignore, they’ve never added any argument or opinion… they’ve simply replied in hate.

What im saying is that current SV lacks dmg numbers compared to other melees (DH / Rogue / Fury). Mechanicly it has a lot of useful tools / utilities compared to other melees. The numbers just arent there on average.

Viable = top of the list, “unviable” = bottom of the list… that’s how the community is seeing it. You ain’t the class shown in MDI or at the top 5 of details? Then you are clearly “unviable” and will get rejected.

Yes some will get carried, but some can do it… but it does require you to be quite knowledgeable about your spec. I highly doubt all the survival hunters in +20 and higher all got “carried”.

You can keep your hate crusade toward SV, but what ever you say… SV is versatile and strong. You can check the feedback on SV mains.

You keep assuming the wrong thing. All spec can clear any content, some simply require more work than others. More specific gear than others. Top raids dont ask for fun spec, they want the optimal ones. Same goes with lower skilled raids, they follow the lead of top ones. It was said on the forums as well, some people really love SV but are forced to go BM by raid leads.

Thats just you refusing to acknowledge the primal hunter style. You’ve set your own fantasy and it doesn’t include the current SV in it. Thats your choice, but current fantasy does fit Hunter and will keep doing so.

Theres quite a lot of players that love more complex rotation… punishing if not done properly. Most people aren’t like that, however Indeed, not everyone is the same… this MMO is huge and there’s multiple variation of players all with different styles.

You’re resulting to the basic troll attack of the avatar. Argument used by trolls that are just filled with anger and cannot provide valuable arguments.

(using generalized % of class-spec rep.)
Yes I used that. Yes I pointed out thousand of times that its the closest thing we have to accurate data. That the hand picked data you chose didn’t tell anything about the whole game. If I wanted to talk about specific content I wouldn’t had used those %.

So keep attacking my avatar, since you are running out of good arguments to reply with. Keep hating the SV. Thats your choice, but just dont reply if you dont have anything to add other than petty insults.

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Bepples has the facts and the truth of the matter well in hand. I don’t say this in vain, because even when I try to stick up for this class(and it’s an honor to do so, by and by) almost every non-Hunter treats me like total dogcrap. It didn’t matter that I played this for ~35 hours a week on average, which was almost hardcore level. After I explain what I need to tell them, I just write them off after that if they don’t desist.

The dirty little secret is that every Hunter spec is loathed. This could be the consummation of a lifelong hatred of how easy and how soloable Hunters are by principle, perhaps. Being able to do things on your own does bother the traditional MMOers. I could have been a SV main the entire time and nobody would have cared about how hard I would have it to compete with the exception of being enable-trolled. There’s always one certain ED druid that comes to mind. It’s almost as if Blizzard wasted their time revamping SV because it was nothing that brought people to it in droves. Demon Hunters coming out at the same time didn’t help. DKs and Pallies, being so strong then and now, didn’t help. Hybrids–and this is the big one–prevailed over pures in PvP in Leg and BFA.

Forget that most Hunters, as Ion stated, would prefer ranged. Most PLAYERS at all never really bothered with Survival. We would have seen a BOOST of a percentage, but actually, we LOST Hunters.

Imagine back at Wrath launch, the DK class came out and too few bothered with it. Brand new class, but all the other vanilla classes were far too better. But Blizz knew it back then that they had to make DKs GOOD–TOO GOOD as a matter of truth–in order to get people hooked. If Tigole and Furor had it their way, DKs would have “never grossly overstep their bounds” as a hybrid class back then. And lo and behold, they’re getting a second expansion, which grates on my nerves even now.

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I honestly think SV is exempt from this by most of the non-Hunter community because they subconsciously see it as a way to get back at Hunters.

… at least on the forums, because when push comes to shove people still exclude SV Hunters from their groups.

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No… they’re waiting until the game changes, literally. Pretty sure when someone makes a decent MMO on a decent VR platform, MMOs will take off, because of course it will. What better way to play an MMO then to actually be looking through the eyes of your character?

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Cant say hes always wrong, but hes always strongly hating on SV just to hate it. Never tried, never will, just pure anger. Early back late winter? He was hand picking data to say it was the case for the whole game… ignoring every other content than the one used.

Maybe, but at the same time… up until now in 8.3 Hunter was rarely useful in high competition. Because it was hardly on tops it somewhat created something with the community that they are just bad to have, sort of? If you get what I mean.

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A lot of them have tried to kill WoW, but it never quite happened. That was a remark going back to EverQuest, THAT era. But what happens a lot is that MMO’s go F2P. It’s tangential to other things but the Internets have expanded MUCH since then. And I for one boast a far better online pedigree: Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike, haa haa.

I did. I explored the new SV, both expacs. I suppose I’m just as angry when as a melee, SV has no absorbs, no really good self-healing, and no good damage immunities. Other melee DPS have dodge/parry cds, good shields, mitigation, etc… But SV, if you’re not careful, takes damage up the wazoo. I considered it a melee glass cannon.

Something you can have for free, and I’m dead serious: I like MM burst because the more damage you do quicker, the higher the “panic factor” of the other guy. Nothing puts someone on the defensive better than him just seeing he just got halved in a few globals. Sadly, SV is not capable of that kind of burst. Now, SV has really good damage thru-put, but in WPvP(that was my specialty) it doesn’t drop people like sacks of potatoes.

I’ve seen a certain Twitcher make some fatal mistakes as a MM when he would try to kite and maintain max range. You NEVER give your opponent time to adjust and react. I give BM spec a pass because the spec is better designed for longer fights(but that’s another controversy too), but SV? Forget it either way. It can’t do the short nor the long in WPvP. WPvP. Which means your happy butt better call somebody or go do something else.

But this is me arguing the merits of MSV as it stands now, which isn’t really meritorious in my mainly WPvPish view. I’m more inclined to see what a traditional RSV can do out in the field.

I played Affliction warlock, the spec that’s most akin to RSV in a class-to-class comparison. The famous/infamous Siphon Life/Soul Link build from back in the day is probably by far the best traditional PvP warlock: you were mobile(practically no hardcasting), had good self-healing, decent damage, and survivability. And as a factinion, these should be the Survival’s forte.

Well, now you have corruption gear carrying most of the freight. That’s why I opted out of WPvP this season: too hard or too easy. Both I can’t handle, especially the latter. The community is fully aware of this too.

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Yes, you did, however that other hunter never did and only cares to bring down that spec.

Wpvp might differ from one to another. Aye, SV not the one that going to burst down right away, but it can somewhat control the fight. If anything you could talk with Scabber from ED about wpvp. He does it a lot as SV and is pretty much his main thing. wpvp / bg.

I will add, that compared to MM, it has a lot more to watch/think about. To know when to go range and when to go melee. Save up the bomb effect or use it right away? (with the wildfire talent).

Only scource on Solo Wpvp as MM is mostly from lonewolf guy on youtube… otherwise im more often in a group as MM.

Aye, all the instants is a strong thing for a range. Stronger than some can think. I do think, and it does seem so, that they have moved away from anything that could be too heavy instant cast at range. Heck, just thinking of WOD Warlock to today’s warlock… so much casting to do now.

Yup, corruption… when they said Titanforge was removed… we all got excited! but they replaced it with something far worst. At the same time … they are testing it. End of xpac, might as well… its just going to stab us harder going into SL. (Hopefully corruption effect being inactive once you hit level 51 max)

Have you seen the video on it with pvp ? I think just that alone and looking at current state means they are more focused on SL.

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I don’t know if that was established about him. I once told Bepples that I liked the new design of Demonology, but at the same time Demo really sucked hard. As a lifetime warlock, I hated the “Illidan” stuff of Demo, which true to the lore should go to Demon Hunters. The same guy quoted about SV being a niche spec is easily quoted, “We’d rather you didn’t play Demonology,” from back in WoD. Two expansions and Blizz never got the new Demo quite right. It was good in PvP for a while because of the CC spamming utility, but CC runs out after a while. And when you’re busy doing that, you’re not hardcasting your HoG’s and keeping thru-put like you’re supposed to, which can easily be CC’ed back.

I find it funny that Demo and SV are two sides of a new coin. I’m in the zoo camp myself, but I know there’s probably some salty warlocks that hated losing the traditional Meta “Illidan wannabe” Demo.

Two of the worst OP warlock builds, SL/SL and [Dem] Sac/Ruin, were heavy Demo builds. But that was Vanilla and TBC. That was ~15 years ago. I think it’s petty to hold an animus against one warlock spec for that long.

I know Scabber. We’re Gob Squaddies, and we do WPvP events. Sadly, I’m a Normie so I can’t really help them. The first time I got into a group with them to defend Org, I couldn’t even see the enemy Alli raid, because it was in a WRA(Wyrmrest) shard. But it’s nice to be in a goblin-exclusive community showing solidarity for all things goblin.

But yea, there’s video content that explains 8.3 PvP quite well. One of the nice things about retirement is that you get to watch stuff like that lol.

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Its the same with any big change that occured. I love the new spriest void form, but you have a group that hates it. I also do love the new demo, feels more true to the “summoner of demons”, but like you say… theres a group that dont like it and want old form back.

Heck yea! Nice to know.

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Interesting thing about the new Spriest is that it’s practically copypasta from the old Demo demonic fury system. Yea, it’s a concept that I also think suits Shadow well, but it would leave much to be desired for innovativeness and execution. I sure do feel sorry for them these days.

They’re a really good bunch, provided that you’re well connected to goblins aesthetically.

Scabber and I had some argument on the forums months ago, and I don’t even really remember what it was about.

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I’m a goblin and I think Scabber is a terrible person, for what it’s worth.

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