4th Hunter Spec: Warden.
Take a lot of influence from Wrath SV and build the class around black arrow.
It is simple why a good amount of people do not like Melee SV - Hunters did not want a melee spec. It comes down to personal preference. Most Hunters prefer ranged DPS and or they played old survival so they won’t bother to try Melee SV.
I mean it is the equivalent of taking someone out to eat for lobster dinner but they are deathly allergic to shellfish. Wrong demographic.
I actually think Melee SV is awesome and fun to play but I was battling illness through most of the expansion. Now I play BM because I loved SV hunter in legion but there is something missing in BFA - I really like it but not enough for a main.
Melee Players want to play traditional Melee classes, so they will not give Melee SV a fair shake most of the time. So SV is stuck between two demographics that lack interest - even if the spec is fun to play. I get fun is subjective but there is nothing wrong with SV in theory.
The Metacommunity also doesn’t like SV either because ranged hunter specs always win out due to range - that a it needs a buff most of the time. Your average raiding guild or mythic+ guild doesn’t know enough about SV to recruit one because not many play the spec. I got told all through Legion “oh look you play the hunter spec nobody else does” or “Hey hunter why not go BM OR MM”.
SV still has it’s fans despite this, so why not add the Warden Spec, turn it into a spec influenced by original SV. That way everyone wins, people who like Melee SV get to keep it, people who miss old SV get a ranged spec.
I don’t see the downside outside of the fact due to budget cuts Blizzard probably would never dedicate the resources to give us a 4th spec.
This presumes that they made MSV to try to convince ranged dps to switch to melee, and not to give melee dps an attractive option in the hunter class. Hunters may not have wanted a melee option but I assure you that melee wanted a hunter option.
I think we have that playstyle covered in Unholy, and enh. If anything they should tighten up enhance. I’d also say they should have started with unholy as a healing spec, with the playstyle revolving around keeping diseases up on your party that make your unholy spells heal. If the diseases fall off, your unholy spells do shadow damage. That would have been sweet and way better than the mess where every spec could tank or dps. At least now they are a little distinctive. But I digress…
In many cases yes. Sometimes though you have redundancies. I think rogue could afford to lose/assimilate one of its dagger specs. We’ve got so many melee dps as it is. RSV wasn’t the best thing to scrap. I understand why SV was chosen to be the melee spec (familiarity goes a long way in selling a new idea) but the loss of RSVs theme was not something the game nor the class needed. But do you make a third nature themed class? Sentinel? How are they distinct from Hunters? Or druids? Druids are the shape-shifting class, ok. So Sentinels… another elf only class? No. Thats silly. You make a melee hunter. Once you decide that you put the idea on the back burner until it comes up as the solution to “how do we make artifact weapons that are unique and interesting for the hunter class”.
Fundamentally changing certain classes and specs isn’t always and needn’t always be as painful and bad as RSV. Adding something new doesn’t always need to come at the expense of something else, but its OK, and even good if sometimes it does.
And yet you’re arguing in favor of deleting a ranged DPS spec and adding yet another melee spec. There are now 13 melee to 11 ranged. In fact, ranged DPS is the only role available with more spec options on the Classic realms than on retail.
Fundamentally, it was just flat flawed to delete a spec so many enjoyed just so the pitifully small minority that advocates for MSV can enjoy it. That said, I do tend to agree that, my bitterness about MSV aside, RSV should return as a 4th spec rather than doing the same thing again in reverse and denying MSV players of what they enjoy just so that we can have back what we do.
“It won’t ever happen”
[cites example of it happening]
But on a more serious level, I really actually wouldn’t be surprised to see 4th specs on the table for 10.0. You know, assuming the dev team can break out of this “how little effort can we put into an expansion and still have it sell?” corporate funk they are currently in. And knowing the current devs, the 4th spec would be an only-for-that-expansion-system.
But aside from that, there’s solid argument across a number of specs for a 4th spec. So who knows. I’d be cautious about making definitive and enduring statements like “it won’t ever happen”. You’re not a dev, and frankly even the devs change their mind. They insisted that flying was gone for good. They insisted that account-wide essences weren’t going to happen. They’re insisting that the ripcord for covenants doesn’t exist and won’t be pulled, but I can almost guarantee you that it will have effectively be pulled by 9.3, possibly as early as 9.1 (as they substantially reworked Azerite gear and traits in 9.1, and essentially completely removed the scaling neck level requirement for unlocking them after 9.2, as they finally realized that continually grinding just to re-unlock (or avoid locking) things you had previously wasn’t terribly compelling).
So saying it’ll “never happen” is frankly lunacy. People asserted that dual-spec, and later multi-spec, would never happen. People asserted that account-wide unlocks would never happen. People asserted that queueable raids would never happen. People asserted that dynamic raid sizes would never happen. Your assertion bears no more weight than those.
Honestly before they ever officially made Feral 2 specs it already was 2 specs. If you built a Feral Druid prior to the Cata talent build changes you either specced DPS or Tank primary. You geared DPS or Tank leather. Sure you could off tank or off dps but people were already treating Feral as 2 different specs all the way back in BC. Druid has effectively always been a 4 spec class with Bear, Cat, Boomkin, & Tree. Oh how I miss my permanent Treeform when I played Druid.
I have fond memories of me and my fellow tree guildy roaming around Karazhan back in TBC (back when Lifebloom stacked 3 times, wasn’t target restricted, and the bloom was garbo, so you had a rotation for keeping it up on both tanks and peppering Rejuvs around for auxiliary heals).
Still, adding it back in as an optional form with no benefits (ie. purely cosmetic) was a good call. It lets those of us that like treeing it up do so, and lets those that don’t, not.
