It does not have a fully capable ranged weapon. Insufficient.
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That’s why you have BM and MM
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Not sufficient. We want SV back.
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Is this your pronoun “we”
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The melee weapon and Vanilla SV’s melee skills were only fallbacks, though.
- Vanilla SV was an eclectic specs aimed at making the worst times less bad, which was pretty much only useful for leveling. TBC gave it raidbuffs enough to be taken, sort of, and then WotLK just threw at it everything in the bucket, and the bucket, along those eclectic (not MM, not BM, so must be SV) lines.
Heck, MSV’s Legion mechanics descended as much from suggestions on WoD RSV’s Lock and Load mechanic (3 free-cast charges of MB, later with greater ability to force a bonus charge proc [FS, SH] and get funnel value from multi-DoTing, where those could build up to devastating damage) as it did from any Vanilla take on Survival.
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/10char
Ok now you’re just trolling without any excuse. Dream on bud
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I’ve seen you repeat this particular line before on several other threads, which would suggest its a foundational personality flaw.
You’ve betrayed Watermist’s fruitful sentiment and derailed the thread into some type of personal self-promotion.
Vile.
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As you wish.
Moving right along, I would suggest ignoring Bepples’ intrusion into an otherwise fruitful discussion.
In order to understand the Hunter Class philosophically, you have to look at what each individual specialization brought to the Hunter Class superstructure.
[Beast Mastery] contributes:
- Pet DPS
- Aspects
- Stings [Thematically]
[Survival] contributes:
- Melee DPS
- Traps
- Wing Clip
[Marksmanship] contributes:
- Ranged DPS
- Concussive Shot
- Volley
Vanilla BM and SV do not contribute one ounce of value to the ranged dps fantasy. Name a single talent in the original talent trees for either BM or SV that implicitly augments a single Marksmanship ability. Crickets.
Any attempt to normalize Ranged DPS as the sole significator to the broader Hunter archetype is rooted in Marksmanship Centrality, MM in truth contributing one of several critical facets to the overall Hunter superstructure.
Marksmanship contributed two ranged dps rotational elements: The instant-cast Arcane Shot, and the .5 sec cast-time Multi-Shot, which had an instant cast delivery structure but required you to sit still for half of a second to cast it. There was no Steady Shot, no baseline Aimed Shot, etc.
Survival contributed Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Wing Clip, and all Trap abilities.
BM contributed all damage and utility Sting effects [Thematically], Pet DPS, and all Aspect abilities.
You need all three of these faculties to compose the original Hunter superstructure.
Inb4: “Stings can only be fired at range”, yes. But traps could only be dropped at a close distance. Silly logic.
It’s literally my thread.
Actually in order to understand the Hunter Class philosophically, given you’re evidently talking about Classic, you need to not think in terms of strict spec divisions thus outing yourself as not having a clue about how classic Hunter works.
Oh, and you need to also read the explicitly defined Hunter class outlines from the time such as:
BM: Improved Aspect of the Hawk gave it a proc that increased ranged attack speed.
SV: Lightning Reflexes buffed agility by 15%. Agility had double the scaling for ranged attack power as melee attack power. It also had Wyvern Sting.
In any case, like I said, back then all Hunters got a full toolkit of ranged abilities because, newsflash, 80% of the class identity and playstyle was baked into the core class. Ranged weapons, pets, and utility were all essential to every Hunter no matter the build. And ranged weapons defined most of the combat style and aesthetic. As we can see from the manual page above, it was fully intentional and every time they had the opportunity to clarify/better define Hunters it came down to focusing on the ranged combat.
It’s rooted in an elementary understanding of what the class was and Blizzard’s explicit comments about it.
Attempts to revise history and pretend that melee Survival represents classic wow or that ranged weapons weren’t central to the class is rooted in a) profound ignorance and b) fixation on the post-Legion model of each spec being a half-baked micro class with a minimal class foundation of shared traits/abilities.
Ranged weapons were central to the identity and playstyle.
MM was the spec that gave buffs to ranged DPS, but a) buffs to ranged DPS weren’t exclusive to MM and b) ALL Hunters of ALL builds had to make use of them.
One thing (of many) you’re forgetting is that the intent wasn’t to spend all points in one tree but to either get the capstone in one tree and spend about 20 points in another or go for a hybrid if it made sense (rarely). You wouldn’t come across a Hunter with 0 talent points in MM. There was important stuff right at the start that Blizzard intended most Hunters to take including Aimed Shot.
P.S. Stings were also classified as MM, aside from Wyvern Sting which was Survival.
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You are functionally unable to process information. Ranged DPS is a core attribute of the original Hunter superstructure, but so is everything else, including Melee DPS under offensive pressure. Your frail attempt to overdraw against an actual Vanilla SV Hunter rings hollow, little Goblin.
Do note that,
A: I wasn’t talking to you
B: You played BM in Classic
C: Have no idea how Vanilla SV functioned under stress
I have more HKs on my Vanilla SV Hunter, Greendeath-Argent Dawn US, that got retired in early Cata, than you do presently on your little Goblin. Your theorycrafting can’t even begin to hold a candle to my experience with the game.
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Wow it’s weird that you apparently have all that vanilla SV experience yet you’re still so wrong about it. Wonder what happened.
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All Stings are named and themed after Beasts, not quite Marksmanship-y. In another take, so is Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite. The Hunter Class isn’t so sectarian and compartmentalized, but is ONE overall superstructure.
Yet, despite the beast names (Cobra, Viper, Scorpid, Chimaeral), Stings are also ranged, and later, as poisons, they would be considered thematic property of Survival, even influencing their Mastery.
Stings were in the MM section of the vanilla Spellbook because at the time Survival was actually about surviving (Wing Clip, Feign Death, Freezing Trap, and then therefore the other traps), and BM already had value enough via pets, but… it’s honestly pretty arbitrary.
Given that, though, they seem perfect as an all-specs/classwide feature now. There’s really nothing preventing them from being used or even applied from melee (see Viper’s Venom) or by pets (see old pet poisons) or BM/SV skills (Volatile Bomb, AotW, etc.).
That said, neither is there anything in any spec but MM that would require that 100% of one’s damage and utility can be done from range. That, too, is arbitrary and has more to do with simply ease of gearing than it does necessary design constraints for Hunter.
None should ever lose what ranged/pet/tool capacity they had before going into their given spec, but that doesn’t mean that can’t find other ways to reach those same benefits.
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I’m posting this quickly during my break.
In my thread’s introduction, I clearly laid out my interpretation regarding “class-focused identity” — 80% shared toolkit, 20% unique spec abilities.
I said the numbers aren’t exact but it does get the concept across.
That is where I’m coming from. So I see ranged as a class thing, not primarily MM. I’m basing this off the pre-Legion Hunter.
I don’t agree with you two, but I do appreciate you taking the time to clearly lay out your interpretation and explain your points. 
It’s good reading for me.
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good post, watermist. and thank you - although i know you wish you could have done more with your cc position but for rl getting in the way, i just wanted to say that i appreciate the threads you started and the thoughtfulness you brought to discussions. i do wish the devs had been a bit more responsive, but nobody can say it was for lack of trying on your behalf. have a good one.
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I went back and added a [Thematics] clause to Stings, to convey the proper intent and not mislead others. Stings were thematically Beastial, yet conveyed as a feat of Marksmanship. The same could be said of melee utilities, taking thematic inspiration from BM, but were conveyed as a feat of Survival.
There’s alot of grey areas and thematic overlap, which further proves the individual Hunter specialzations had a larger thematic overlap with one another than present-day compartmentalization would suggest, which is what Watermist is trying to get across.
And to be similarly brief, I’m more aligned with the opposite — 20% shared/baseline; 80% varied/spec-based.
Or, if we include class tree options as well, then perhaps 40% of any given build’s depth coming from shared sources and 60% from its spec.
Or, if we improved the breadth and depth of options available in the class tree but somehow didn’t want to do the same for any of the specs (each continues to have only a few build choices with little thematic variance available to them), then 50/50. But, that’s just a hypothetical; I feel the spec trees should be improved upon, too – not just the class tree.
Now, of course, as you said, the numbers aren’t exact and it’s not always clear exactly what we mean by “shared”*, so take that, too, with a grain of salt.
- *Here I’ve split that into the automatically acquired non-spec skills [baseline] vs. also accounting for all options in the class tree, but one could constrain that to only the spec-viable class tree options or to also include any thematic overlap that’s entered into the others specs’ trees.
This is because I prioritize what breadth and depth Hunter would house in total.
- If 80% of a given build’s depth is shared/baseline, while each spec contributes only 20% each, Hunter houses in total only some 1.4 kits’ worth. On the other hand, if only 20% of a given build’s depth is baseline, that means you have a fifth of a toolkit therefrom atop at least 80% each of a remainder of kit’s worth of options from each spec, for a total of some 2.6 kits’ of depth available to Hunter.
- That’s your sort of on-paper minimum increase to what all Hunter would be capable of by not being so tied to a shared center. In practice, though, not constraining so much around the shared base also allows each spec a great deal more breadth and depth, so the result is far more than a mere doubling in what themes, profiles, and gameplay considerations and gameplay loops are available to Hunter.
When so much comes from the base, needing to avoid any anti-synergies or wastefulness for elements that have nothing to do with the point of a given specialization in turn prevent the majority of otherwise cohesive and thematic options for one’s spec. That in turn gives you increasingly few and increasingly shallow options within each spec and on the whole.
This already assumes that the shared base can be beefed up; I’m not assuming that it’d be left at its skills that are currently baseline or may as well be baseline (Concussive, Countershot, Misdirect, SotF), or even the 20 or so available once accounting for capstones. But even then, the above problem remains. Even if you beefed up that baseline by forcing additional BM, MM, and SV mechanics each into each others’ specs so that there are no low-trap, pet-less, or not-purely-ranged builds available to Hunter, the available depth by focusing on a shared base greatly reduces what Hunter, as a whole, would be capable of.
Likewise! Thanks, as always, for these back-and-forths, Watermist.
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On this point I have to slightly disagree. They’re named after beasts because they’re the source of the poisons. But if I killed someone with Nightshade, that wouldn’t necessarily make me, say, a Restoration Druid, despite that poison coming from a plant. Beast Mastery has always had more to do with direct control of beasts, as opposed to wielding their resources. If I skinned a giant chameleon that could somehow continue to camouflage after death and wore that as a cloak, I wouldn’t consider that a direct manipulation of that beast.
Counterpoint/Aside: Firing literal damned snakes out of your gun, as per Cobra Shot’s animation. I’ve got no idea how to thematically classify that crap.
Exactly. Raptor Strike should ideally strike like a bird of prey (a Raptor), in that it should be sudden, swift (which, of course… is not at all what Raptor Strike does, but that’s basically par for the course in WoW). Mongoose Bite implies something that might not be the most powerful in itself but is a weapon of superiority against some particular threat (hence its originally being a counterattack). Etc., etc.
Aye. And the part I most agree with on that is that whatever has been traditional but is basically spec-agnostic should remain, differently leveraged by different specs. I just wouldn’t want to, say, make it so every spec has to leverage, say, Kill Command or… Bestial Wrath/Rapid Fire just because they’d been made either baseline or basically so (essentially forced within the Class Tree).
- It’s also partly why I don’t want to see anything like traps or Camo made SV-only, the likes of Concussive Shot or Chimaeral Shot to be MM-only, Interlope or Intimidate to be BM-only, etc.
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Building on this point, I see no reason why BM is unable to share in the gift of Flanking Strike, with say, an animation only melee weapon. Likewise, I would prefer it if Beast Cleave and Rapid Fire (or at the minimum Aimed Shot) were made baseline (and available to SV via the ranged sidearm). The apparent lack of a baseline Beast Cleave is severely damaging to MM Hunters that use a pet, and the lack of Multi-Shot and Beast Cleave hurts SV in the AoE department.
Fair.