First, yes, the spec absolutely does change your entry node(s).
Second, a shorter melee interrupt is somehow “less capable” than a ranged one with a 60% longer CD?
By all means, let’s just ignore the greater portion of M+ history built largely on the greater utility over time of Melee DPS’s lower CDs. ???
Why must its “core identity” = “it must use a ranged weapon”?
No class in the game defines itself so shallowly.
Which they manage in large part by doing the exact thing you were condemning—utterly changing baseline skills.
I didn’t use it as a “jab” at Hunters.
It is simply why I do not care for your “golden age” of Hunters, let alone accept your base_class_plus_handful_of_minor_additives as objectively superior to our current spec diversity.
And that’s the point we will have to disagree on, so long as the result looks anything like it did in the past, with each spec of a given class playing far more similarly to each other and the breadth and depth of opportunities for a player to be attracted to at least one of the specs in a given class therefore significantly less.
Such would be a tremendous waste of potential, especially given the opportunities available to revamped Talent Trees.
How is that a false equivalency? If, as you just claimed, a spec (A) going from ranged to “almost ranged” and/or (B) “diverting from its core” due to even just a few abilities changing is enough to divorce a spec from its class and make it “not a specialization”, that applies to each spec on that list as well.
You keep relying on the idea that melee cannot and must not ever be compensated for their shorter range despite that such has never been the case.
- Outside of Wind Shear, melee interrupts are ~40+% shorter.
- Melee classes have far higher mobility.
- Melee classes typically have far higher self-sustain.
- Etc., etc.
Would a Warrior go ranged if it could do everything it does now? Absolutely. But that—as per your implication that going melee cannot be compensated for—is an utterly ridiculous notion.
That’s the thing. They already have those disadvantages. In recharge time. In mobility. In defensives. In self-healing.
In Survival’s case, the compensation for melee—or the relative disadvantages of remaining ranged—could be handled as simply and singularly as by throwing one simple passive, akin to Lone Wolf, onto the spec, e.g.,
Way of the Mok’Nathal
You may now equip melee weapons. While a melee weapon is equipped, most of your attacks are limited to melee range but those affected each gain certain advantages in turn, your Armor is increased by 30%, and your Versatility, Dodge, Avoidance, Movement Speed, and Leech are each increased by 8%.
That’s all it takes. You estimate the utility and uptime-based throughput value of having a ranged weapon in a typical fight around which you wish to balance, and you make that baseline. When a given fight favors melee, taking a melee weapon may be slightly superior. When a fight disfavors melee, it’ll typically be slightly inferior.
The purpose of each node and the overall design of the Survival tree, then, would go unchanged between having a melee weapon or ranged weapon—simply swapping out certain names and icons where thematically necessary. The tree would offer more than enough mobility for ranged, which melee would likely more highly prioritize, and more than enough general survivability for raids than melee would need, which ranged would likely more highly prioritize.
We literally started this conversation with my having said the same, except in that I think melee should be an option available to all but MM (the ranged spec), just as I think Lone Wolf should be an option available to all but BM (the pet spec), and, say, going basically trap-less should be an option to all but SV (the tools spec).
Which is an issue of choice and framing.
Survival ought to offer the situationally advantageous option of taking on a melee weapon and all compensatory advantages that typically come with that while the melee weapon is equipped / while in melee range. It should not force it.
We have different ideas of fun, then. It was… fine… when adds were rolling out frequently, but in a majority of situations it just became a passive source of %AP per target per second nature damage that nuked our available direct damage in AoE and deemphasized our uptime choices.
…See, this is what I don’t get.
BM literally removes the functionality of Steady Shot (or, puts Arcane Shot out to pasture; frame Cobra as you will). More of the baseline actions are retained on SV than on BM.
If one avoids choosing a spec, they will have a free cast, an instant ST spender, and an instant AoE spender. BM removes a third of those options by consolidating the first and second, and then halves the damage and doubles the Focus cost of the third. SV, on the other hand, retains the free cast, the instant ST spender, and the instant AoE spender. Its rotational depth and APL end up closer to MM than to BM.
More than “Oh, no! My AoE is melee and on a CD now—and (despite being notoriously undertuned) hits for double the damage and at lower Focus cost—and is therefore dead to me,” I would think literally removing that part of one’s playflow would be the larger diversion, no?
Granted, I don’t think that removal is an issue. I like that BM can play more differently from MM specifically because it utterly ditched Steady Shot. I like that MS was allowed to better suit BM by being hugely weaker in its own right on BM. Until such time as we get some manner of Sphere Grid or Talent Circle in place of discrete Talent Trees, we will only ever play specializations, not classes.
Even in Vanilla, we didn’t just play “Warrior” or “Druid” or “Priest”. We played Arms, Fury, Protection, Feral, Resto, Balance, Shadow, Holy, Disc.
I agree that every hunter spec should be usable from range, but failing that alone is not going to be the cause by which a spec fails to be a cohesive addition to a class.
That’s no strawman. What you’ve been repeatedly promoting is literally that, a shallower range of thematic and gameplay possibilities, where each spec had less depth and fewer meaningful options and was itself less of a meaningful choice such that the class had fewer meaningful options. You’ve reiterated the very same points from which that conclusion is drawn across this whole post, too.
The simple fact of matter is that we have very different ideas as to what a good “balance” between class identity and spec identity looks like.
A balance is itself a contest of power. The more “balanced” identity is towards the base class, the less identity and attractors are available to that class, because you’ve now taken the sum of what was possible across n specs and merged it into a single bank of features.
Consider: If 3 specs each currently hold 80% of their gameplay as unique to themselves, then you’ve got 2.4 specs/classes/jobs/professions/what-have-you worth of available attractors. If you insist that the contribution should be more balanced, and thus 50% of each spec’s gameplay should come from the class, now you’re to 1.5.
Ultimately, the individual number of attractors will matter more than the ratios but the more you constrain a specs’ gameplay to a shared base, the less that class will, in sum, have. That much is absolutely unavoidable.
For my part, specs need merely feel like they have a common vibe (excepting those consequent merely to shallow or complex play or this or that APM) and thematic space. To me, the Hunter specs still do that. Specific design problems aside (the spinning plates meta build feeling more like certain iterations of Feral than its own thing), even Legion SV did.
To me, not every Shaman needs to use casted Lightning, nor even Earth spells. Not every DK needs to make rotational use of obviously Frost, Blood, and Unholy magic. Not every Hunter needs to be a ranged pet-user nor to make use of ArS, MS, and StS.
So long as they still feel like {X Class} out and about, then I’m happy to let their specs be expansive, which often requires not arbitrarily fettering them to a shared base if/when it doesn’t serve them well.
I like breadth and depth of options. It’s as simple as that.
Anything that would make Damage and/or your primary role’s numbers (Healing or Mitigation) numbers go up on Details, mostly non-situationally—i.e, even in a 100% uptime, zero-complexity fight. This can also include off-role numbers if their contributing actions are obligatory (such as per the free healing from a Feral’s free Regrowth procs).
If the value is situational, such as a mobility tool allowing you further uptime that indirectly results in numbers going up, or if the numbers we tend to consider that more as “utility”. That’s especially the case if you tend to think of the given tool as more than just a way to increase your numbers. This term also often envelops off-role numbers if their actions are used only situationally.