The thing about Survival is you’ll see all sorts of archetypes proposed to make sense of it. The primal spear-wielding melee hunter, the beastmaster that fights alongside its pets, the sapper that throws bombs, the ranger that uses both bows and swords, etc.
What’s often missed is that Survival is not any one of those things. It’s awkwardly trying to represent all of them at once and failing to commit to any one of them. Wildfire Bomb makes zero sense alongside Kill Command. Serpent Sting makes zero sense alongside Raptor Strike and Carve. Yet people will still try to make sense of it by tying it to one of those archetypes, as if the primal prehistoric Hunters were throwing grenades around or Rexxar was dotting enemies up with poison arrows before charging in with dual-wielded axes. Aesthetic incoherence is generally excused when it comes to Survival.
In reality Blizzard and much of the playerbase placed a lot of pride in melee Survival and they’ll find any excuse to paint it as a good idea, even though it’s just floundered for years and years on end while we’re left wondering how it makes sense for a spec to take away parts of the core class foundation.
Yes bard would be great. For game balance, mail isnt the right move. Thematically, mail might be ok, but there are just way too many classes dependent on the leatherworking profession. They should have made monk cloth in MoP, but they didn’t. If bard does appear as a playable class it could be cloth.
The alpha isn’t even accessible yet. How do you know the specifics? Are you even aware of the danger that MSV could be so marginalized that nobody would ever play it that way? MSV started losing the M since BFA. If I can look at trends SV is going to be primarily a ranged spec with some tacked-on melee capability.
I want them to make it a full ranged spec again…I seriously miss it so much. I played BM mainly throughout every xpac, and SV when it was a ranged was my other fun spec to play and enjoyed using my traps and such to utilize procs. I play the NOW SV every once in a while but I suck at wow so I’m garbage at it, lol.
Remember that it’s their game. They CAN do whatever they want in spite or because of said small minority of forum trolls. If they want MSV erased completely, they can do it right now for 10.0. It’s just as likely that the forum trolls would be accidentally right.
We should also remember that Microsoft assumed ownership, which means that Blizzard may have to think more critically on this issue than they have before.
I never said they were going to do a complete rework. I merely pointed out the FACTS that RSV got stronger and stronger in BFA and SL. You can’t be so obstinate to not see that SV now has the best ranged capability of all melee. Not one melee spec can do as many things at 40 yards as SV can. In BFA, they took out baseline Flanking Strike and added a 40 yd Kill Command. In SL, they gave ranged weapon functionality with steady and arcane shots and the LEGGO weapon is a BOW. The most optimal legendary power is Wildfire Cluster, instead of Rylak’s, Butcher’s, or Latent Poison Injectors.
I guess this is uncommon sense, but I can see things. I can see patterns. For Dragonflight they are already bringing back the old fashioned talent trees, which is going to marginalize melee SV. Or it might not. It could be the case that both MSV and RSV are equally strong, that Hunter would have some uniqueness in interchanging the two range types.
TBH I don’t think there’s much of a chance of SV regaining its ranged capability until Hazzikostas is gone. He has been very defensive of melee SV along with a whole host of other terrible decisions. The game needs him gone but he’ll try to stay as long as possible.
I actually want them to put weapon specialization on the generic hunter talent tree. So I can play whatever spec I want with whatever weapon I want. I hope it effectively just decides what your filler spells are and a few utilities.
But you cant play mm with a melee weapon!
Ok… maybe. Or maybe you just shouldn’t in most circumstances. But maybe you want wing clip and rs for PvP. Maybe you still get the main rotational MM spells at limited effect with the generic hand crossbow.
At the same time, you could be a bow spec SV hunter with some passive bow buffs and access to a couple unique bow abilities that replace RS and wing clip.
Pardon me if I don’t take it that easily at face value, unless there’s a hidden successor with a vision to right the wrongs done to the Hunter class. I see what you mean, but it will take a director who WON’T tolerate MSV.
We can remember Alex Afrasiabi as one who trashed hybrids and favored the Warrior class. Hybrid classes since Legion have never been stronger even though it was still several years before he needed to leave Blizzard for…other reasons.
I should add: “We’d rather you not play Demonology” when word on the street says that Demo has been very strong lately. Do I smell a connection? It doesn’t look like Watcher’s vision is succeeding.
“We’d rather you not play Demonology” was referring to the particular state of the spec in late WoD. They were planning a (very bad) remake to the spec in Legion and they didn’t want people staying attached to the spec.
Of course Survival was gutted in the same patch; even moreso than Demonology, in fact. But Survival didn’t get the same acknowledgement so whether it was the same approach is speculation.
I think I watched the fuller segment of that interview and I don’t recall Josh Allen and Ion saying it was because they had those plans. To me their tone seemed flippant and not optimistic for the future. I took it for granted that Demo has never been a raiding spec since the “good ol’” Sac/Ruin days.
I quoted that because Ion’s attitude sucked about spec design and that should have raised the community’s DEFCON level to at least 3. Plenty of warlocks loved Demo. I loved Affliction. I HATED it when I had to use Destro in PG: Gold and for Kanrethad. Water under those bridges anyway.
i think it could work if hunters went back to using ranged and melee weapons on all specs and maybe wing clip was just classwide. i doubt blizz will do anything that requires people to think enough to swap weapons.
I’m tired of that hate towards my Mele Survival hunter but I don’t know why people miss beastmaster without exotic pets aka pre- Legion Survival hunter both classes had mostly the same skills and played so similar while marksman stood out I’m glad they made Survival stand out it is a very cool thematic RP choice to point I wouldn’t mind if they made it more of a hybrid mele class with Aspect of the Eagle making it passive with 25yrd range and a 5-10% leech buff to auto attacks in mele so being in mele will give more healing and to do max dps as long as in mele but you have choice of kiteing with energy slashes how cool would that be to have it all the time.