I didn’t quote the rest, as we’re basically saying the same thing but with a slightly different delivery.
For instance, if you say: “Yes”, and I reply: “Rawr! It’s actually Y-E-S!”, that sort of narrative cadence would be quite a silly way to conduct a debate.
As I said then, I found your take mostly agreeable and shifted the discussion elsewhere.
But it is here where we do encounter some ideological friction.
In terms of Vanilla SV, there wasn’t a hard, implicit bias towards escaping melee range. Escaping melee range was but one of several leverageable options that the Survival talents offered, those options being Imp. Wing Clip and Counter-Attack, which are not singularly constrained to setup a kite, but were certainly and effectively used to do so nonetheless.
My message is to think in terms of flexibility, not hard or rigid mental structures.
Deterrence is a defensive mitigation tool, but also an offensive tool at the same time, increasing the chance to proc Mongoose Bite for additional damage. It also slashed the damage output of melee classes in half while allowing us to return offensive pressure– a form of attrition, which allowed our high-burst melee profile to seal the deal.
Wing Clip is as much a tool to kite, as it is an ability to restrain an opponent in melee range to prevent their escape.
Neither did Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite exist solely to escape melee range. What these primary damage skills did was provide a high-burst DPS profile with the 20% increased crit chance from [Savage Strikes] and the higher top-end damage provided by [Lightning Reflexes], which in context of PvP and World Content, is a perfectly fine damage spread, but would considerably lag in organized PvE as it lacks a sustained profile.
Personally, I always leveraged both ranged and melee burst capability, weaving in and out of the deadzone depending on what was on cooldown. In some cases, I utilized the toolkit to setup a kite, and in other cases, I completely dominated melee classes in melee range.
While you did acknowledge the issues with your logic for the purpose of PvE, you do kinda bury it in the “fine print”, sort of.
Much of what you said there, it doesn’t really apply/is of no benefit to you at all in the context of group-based PvE. And if you look to world content/solo play vs NPCs, it’s pretty much the same thing, unless you go out of your way to do different, just for the sake of it. Here, I’m referring to the fact that they specifically designed our class to have pets do the tanking for us in situations where we don’t have a dedicated player tank to handle it for us. Something they officially acknowledged in the manual pages you linked earlier, in the pet section.
And even if you take into consideration the leverageable functions of for example Deterrence into Mongoose, or Counterattacks, you’d never intentionally opt to prioritize it over staying at range, if possible. Why? Simply put, even in a best case scenario, it wouldn’t amount to more than what you can get from simply focusing on ranged attacks, in terms of the main purpose of our combat role.
The devs have outright said, multiple times, that they do not design specific class specializations, or for what we had back then, talent categories, solely for a single type of content(ex PvP). They design(ed) them with the whole game in mind. And as such, it’s just not reasonable to consider that a melee-focused playstyle was ever intended through the SV category, back in those days. Not unless you deliberately wanted to make yourself perform worse.
This, ofc, is up to the individual to decide. But it does by no means automatically equate to the “intent of design”, but is simply a certain “method of playing”.
There are 16 nodes in the Vanilla SV tree. 3 of which provide relevant dps stat modifiers, and there are two talents called [Monster Slaying] and [Humanoid Slaying] that have small damage modifiers. That leaves 11 out of 16 nodes that find no use in raid content. What would be your assessment of that fact?
On Classic Design Intent... Mostly irrelevant to modern design.
Even a more flexible framework, if it is to be at all intuitive, consistent, and/or actionable, will still tend to define hard thresholds for what should or should not be permitted, how a thing should be considered, etc.
Here, we’re looking at tools which do X. Depending on the context, though, X can be two very, very different things. Or, by another view, X may entail multiple functions which are or are not collapsed by the dominant strategy shared across a high portion of situations.
To clarify what I mean by “collapse”, let’s take the example of… Critical Strikes.
If no targets had a means of mitigating or nullifying specifically Critical Strikes, nor do you have any bonuses that act solely on Critical Strikes… then there becomes nothing special about Critical Strikes except in that your attacks have a chance to deal additional damage. “Critical Strikes” goes from a bundled mechanic that includes RNG-damage to simply RNG-damage.
If you don’t have enough burst that there’s a remotely decent chance of killing a target within your burst cycle (say, every 4th, 3rd, 2nd time, on average) where healers could otherwise keep them up if your stats were instead spent on a perfectly reliable stats, there becomes little to no difference between that RNG-damage and a simple damage multiplier; it makes no threshold of difference.
Here, we have melee tools. The question: Were they really worth considering as a separate class of damage/utility tools, or were they only ever fallback options?
The difference would depend on the tuning, of course, but also on the other tools Hunter had available to it that would potentially split the playstyle and needs around which its dominant strategy would cluster… all the further apart from any cluster of fallback options.
I’ve called Classic Hunter’s melee skills primarily just fallback options before, but I will admit that’s an oversimplification. Moreover, I wouldn’t be able to drop some form of disclaimer (here, “primarily”), though for most builds I could go so far as to say, “almost entirely”. I saw a bit too large a difference in PvP and even in mob-killing speed (especially earlier on or against targets of lower HP relative to the Hunter’s stats) between those who leveraged melee skills and those who didn’t.
Though, in PvP, a lot of that seemed to come down to who knew how to game latency and enemy players’ habits in order to stay behind them most of the time, denying them any chance to swing, so I may be overattributing this difference to leveraging the full kit, though the two seemed to correlate tightly.
Similarly, half of all Subtlety nodes lost most of their value in raid content. While Survival is the most extreme example, there were other trees for which group PvE content did not seem a primary intent of the specialization. While I think Ghorak’s claim mostly holds, it seems to have had exceptions.
Note sure if you remember this from back then, or if you’ve seen/heard it at all.
The link should direct you to the timestamp @4:41 in the video, and the relevant part lasts to roughly 5:20 or so.
Essentially, their philosophy is/was that every talent category/spec should be relevant in every part of the game(all types of content), but not every single talent should necessarily be equally valuable in all parts of the game.
Regarding that bit about 11 out of 16 nodes in the SV tree, just because only a smaller portion of them increased damage, that didn’t mean that the other 11 weren’t useful at all, outside of PvP. In fact, if you consider how many of them focused primarily on utility, and defensive traits, at least 11/16 talents in the tree had some value, even against NPCs(outside of PvP). And yes, I know you chose to single out raid content for your argument there, but I see no point in moving away from what we focused on earlier, that being areas outside of raids as well.
And again, keep in mind that the overarching theme, and focus of the SV talent category was to provide you with options to improve your survivability in [all] parts of the game. Be it through better defensives, utility(offensive and defensive), etc. etc.
They did include talents that focused on damage as well, much due to the fact that the hunter class’ main role was to be a damage dealer, and as such, there need to be options for that in each category.
I find some merit in both quotes but don’t they both appear rather contradictory?
In what way do the 11/16 Group PvE-irrelevant SV talents aid with pet tanking?
If so, didn’t I mention how SV found its niche in World Content and PvP? Following that, you then placed a greater emphasis on SV’s lack of Raid and World Content contribution, but now you say it’s useful for World Content–a tangled web…
Edited: The Video
In so far as the video, and I’ll watch it in a bit, but based on the title, that sentiment wasn’t accurately conveyed into the game from the outset, at least in terms of SV. Now Blizzard is free to take creative agency and do whatever they want with the game, including making Vanilla SV into a MM sub-variant called RSV. The consequences of which, in their own words, “Made SV too similar to MM”, and then pull another arbitrary 180’ turn backwards if they want. The words in the video, the “Ranged Class” clause in the Game Manual, and the decision to axe RSV, come from the same source and are each just as valid.
Why bias one statement over the other?
I wonder, where do you feel Vanilla SV found its highest leaning from a thematic, and talent node point of view–in that pets did the tanking in solo content, and dedicated tanks did the tanking in Group-PvE?
Not sure what you’re trying to do here. From that first quote, I responded to you when you were basically alluding to how the parry/dodge talents, etc., more or less promoted a playstyle where you intentionally wanted to venture into melee as SV. At least, that’s how it seemed when reading your post.
And in the later quote, I’m saying that just because talents don’t increase damage, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful at all(even as you said, in raid content).
When you said “no use(value)”, did you actually mean “no use(value)”?
They’re not “Group PvE-irrelevant”. They don’t all have the same value in all types of content, but “irrelevant”? That’s a stretch. Also, why now switch to the basis of “Group PvE”, rather than just “raid content” as you said earlier?
Having said that, do note that just because your pet does the tanking, that doesn’t mean that talents which provide better defenses to you have no value at all. And for the record, “some value” doesn’t translate to what you argued earlier, about how such talents promoted a valid option for intentionally seeking out melee range.
You said this:
This is not the same as saying that “this is where it found its’ niche”. This is you saying that X+Y skills, combined with Z talents, were decent enough for the purpose of dealing damage in the aforementioned areas. “Niche” implies increased strength, in this case. Again, choosing to rely on those melee skills + talents for the purpose of dealing damage, would not by any means amount to more than what you could get out of sticking to your ranged attacks.
That’s not what I said at all…
I said that the perceived value of relying on abilities with situational conditionals(Mongoose being activated by you dodging, or Counterattack from parried attacks), for the purpose of pursuing a particular playstyle choice(seeking out melee range), would not achieve the intended goal in certain parts of the game.
How in the world can you translate that into how I’m saying that it equates to how the SV category lacked Raid and World Content contribution? Don’t get me wrong, SV wasn’t, at the time, the top choice for Raid content, but that’s beside the point.
Just because you agree with 1, doesn’t mean that you must agree with the other/everything else. Sure, it’s all from the same source, but consider each of the three references you made there:
The words in the video are about their general class design philosophies, what they’re aiming for with regards to designing classes for the game.
The clause in the game manual describes their intent with the hunter class, what they designed it to be about.
Their decision to axe RSV, if you go by what they said on the matter, amounts to how RSV was too similar to MM because they both focused primarily on the use of ranged weapons. Which, again, is the same as saying that all Mage/Warlock(Demo can get a pass, because demons…) specs are too similar to eachother because they’re all designed primarily around the use of magic.
Fair enough if they actually thought that, but why didn’t they apply that same logic to ALL pure damage classes then? Why just us hunters(2 of our specs)?
When you say “leaning”, are you talking about a specific type of content/area of the game, or are you talking about [design] theme?
Which area of the game did the full SV specialization perform best within.
World Content
Instanced PvE (which has two wildly different states, they being: Dungeons and Raids.)
PvP
My entire post was written in a PvP context. You brought up Group PvE, which I showed how 11/16 of the talents have little to no use in it and are practically irrelevant in a min/max raiding build.
Let’s clear some stuff up about Hunter PvP.
The Hunter Class, including SV, wasn’t required to force an engagement in melee due to the critical contribution of MM abilities, and I never suggested otherwise. But in nearly every engagement in PvP, the Hunter would never have 100% ranged uptime either, more like 50% or less ranged uptime under offensive pressure.
This lack of relative ranged uptime wasn’t limited to us kiting melee classes, but to line-of-sight issues, in addition to other casters like the Frost Mages, who would root us in place and sneak into the deadzone, nullifying ranged uptime. Kiting, LoS, deadzone exploitation, and being forced into melee range each nullified ranged uptime.
This is where Survival gets rolling. We didn’t worry about being snared, we didn’t need to run away, and we can choose to kite while the other Hunters had to kite. That’s the key difference.
This head-canon about “Stick to ranged” was hardly an evident reality on the ground, unless that pack of Alliance wasn’t focusing you, because under high offensive pressure you can’t maintain a high ranged uptime. This is why all Hunters failed miserably in all but 5v5 Arena back in TBC, and even then, stood back behind better designed classes and drained the opposing team’s mana with [Viper Sting] while pitifully soaking up heals.
I brought up group PvE because you mentioned it in your post…
This, however, isn’t where you started your argument. You started by making a post, arguing(alluding to) how SV was designed to focus on melee combat. In other posts, further back, you also imply that actively seeking it out would be perfectly fine, from a performance perspective. Anyway, that post did not in any way point to how you based your arguments solely on PvP, but on the overarching class design in general, on the intent of design.
I’m not arguing what worked based on an individuals method of playing, what any single person found to have worked for them. I’m arguing based on the design intent of the class.
Whether you thought that the throughput you could get from your melee-toolkit was sufficient enough to not have to worry about staying in melee range or not isn’t really relevant as, again, they did not design SV solely for the purpose of PvP.
Unlike friend Tanais, with his great patience, I do not long entertain circularity.
In order for the discussion to move forward, you will need to address the concerns that I’ve outlined below. Once this is done, we can progress further into the topic. If not, the topic will unfortunately stall, later remanifesting to corrupt new threads 20 years later. We need to settle these grievances now.
You haven’t answered the question. That question being, from a design standpoint, and an actual gameplay standpoint, in which of the three main gameplay avenues did Vanilla SV as a whole best perform?
Should you refuse this question, which you are free to do, have you conceded to my assertion that SV performed best in PvP: my original point, thus perhaps contradicting your subsequent analysis?
Will you confront this point or allow it to stand uncontested?
The intra-specialization design of Survival did not originally have ranged talents nor ranged base-skills. The nigh sole contributor, with few exceptions, of ranged dps, talents, and skills was in fact MM. This point also stands uncontested.
You also did not confront the riddle that I deposited about what the original Specialization Symbol for Survival was. Is it a Bull’s-eye, as in MM? Was the symbol a Tame Beast icon, as in BM?
/www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/hunter
Tell us what it is!
Can you admit that SV was not solely limited to, yet best suited for PvP combat?
Can you admit that SV only contributed melee dps as a throughput option to the base Hunter Superstructure?
Can you admit what the signifying specialization symbol of SV originally was?
If not, I find that most interesting.
I said that it has performance angles in PvP and ‘World Content’, and lacking a sustained profile, doesn’t fit into Organized PvE, later citing how 11 out of 16 talents do not register as particularly relevant to organized, competitive PvE. This assertion also stands uncontested.
If 2/3 of the talents are not required in an end-game competitive Group PvE or Raid setting, then what particular gameplay avenue may they have been designed for? Well, in order to find that out, you’ll have to determine where the spec best performed, performance itself a signifier of game design and balance, but for some reason you won’t answer that question.
This debate has stalled. If you may, address these concerns so that constructive discourse may continue.
I mean, what was your intent with it anyways, though? We can gather examples and draw conclusions, but… this direction seems leading rather than solely exploratory. I think Ghorak is just wondering… what towards?
We’ve already noted that there are enough changes to the broader design philosophy that Classic isn’t necessarily pertinent to later design. Capacities are no longer so segregated-yet-interdependent.
On the semantic matter of “solely” vs. “primarily”, etc…
If, as you’ve noted, Hunter leveling was meant to depend on a pet and Hunter group content was meant to depend on a tank, I think it’s safe to say that the likes of an improved Wing Clip, Dodge chance, and bonuses to dodge-dependent attacks would be meant only for PvP.
The point in difference would only be the bonuses to the likes of Raptor Strike. If even the most melee-empowering builds still had no reason to melee-weave, then that, too, would have to assume PvP, as otherwise you’d have a tank (be they pet or player) and could stay out of melee range.
As such, I think we can safely say the bulk of Survival’s nodes depend on PvP to see the bulk of their value. From that, it wouldn’t be odd to say it was a tree built primarily around PvP.
As for the italicized bit (“solely”)… I’m not seeing any claim above of SV being “only” or “solely” for PvP. If anything, Allied would seem to be suggesting that melee was less restrictive — that even unforced melee-weaving was at least marginally useful — and therefore not only useful for PvP, whereas if one were to claim that melee-weaving was never intended at all except as a fallback, then that would mean that the only PvE bonuses were the arbitrary bloat nodes (%Damage, %Stat, %Hit Chance).
Put more simply, if there was indeed no PvE benefit to anything but the stat-stick talents, would it really be wrong to call Survival a PvP spec, since one would have to purposely play non-optimally to garner any value from most of Survival’s abilities in PvE, at which point it’d still have no net benefit? What else would one call a spec for which all (if RS wasn’t intended for PvE) non-stat-stick nodes depend upon PvP?
That all being said, I do not see how any of this would be relevant today. We’re in a totally different era of class design (to my mind, for the better).
Back then, you had what would today most closely be equal to 2-5 mostly viable builds of a single spec per class. You thereby take a different burst CD or even forgo any, and might even take up to 3 unique abilities based on that build choice, but all were alike in theme and mostly alike in capacity (as much as any talent-swaps among ST-, AoE-, or utility-focused builds today).
Now you can actually pick a theme in earnest beyond mere class selection. And we aren’t likely to undo that.
Given that, is the Vanilla design intent, which was thrown together over at most a couple years from the least common factors among highly varied WC2/WC3 examples, really all that important, going to be more relevant than the changes in design principles that are 16 years in the running, and the largest change over which time has now covered over half that duration (8.5 years since Legion)?
This is a quick reply. I’ll be MIA for a little bit more.
One of my students lost their mother over the weekend. It fell upon me to inform every adult working with this student about the mother’s passing. So, yeah. Tons of meetings and back-and-forth. Means I leave work with my brain fried everyday.
This discussion is interesting, and I’ll need to re-read it with a fresh mind someday.
HOWEVER, I just wanna point out that the reason I refer to Vanilla in my thread isn’t because I’m saying “we must return to Vanilla design!”
What I’m saying is, “Blizzard has stated their intention to move the classes closer to their Vanilla roots and it shows in their class talent trees. And look at the Hunter’s class tree. The Vanilla roots really comes through the class tree. That’s why the spec trees design don’t make sense to me, thematically.”
I feel like my point is a little different than the one that you guys have been discussing. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, nor am I telling you to stop. But I bring this up because, indirectly, I sort of triggered this discussion about Hunter design.
I just wanted to share my two cents, is all. I’ll go quiet for a while until things finally calm down at work — hopefully 1-2 weeks.
You’re the one that kept changing the focus of parts of your posts. I simply replied to what you said(the arguments that were actually relevant to design intent). But anyway…
There’s nothing to concede to. You can see why I left that question of yours unanswered. In which avenue the players saw most success with talents picked from a particular category isn’t as relevant to the topic of design, as the intent of the actual design is in itself.
You can design something for a broad purpose, and in the end, the outcome can be something completely different to what’s expected.
Are you talking offensive damaging shots? Agreed. But the problem with that argument is that you’re ignoring the overarching hunter class design, in favor of looking at the SV category in a vacuum.
We had a baseline class wide toolkit that included ranged skills, pet skills, melee skills, utility and defensives, and some flavor spells.
Beast Mastery focused on ways to improve everything that had to do with pets. Offensive, defensive, utility.
Marksmanship focused on everything that had to do with the ranged weapon. Offensive, utility.
Survival focused on everything else that did not fit into the other 2 categories, and it did so with a primary focus on improving our survivability. Offensive, defensive, utility.
I did not confront your “riddle” because it was a pointless take. If you look at skill icons in this game, you can see that they’re often do not 100% reflect what it is that you do.
A few examples:
The Explosive Shot icon is a piece of dynamite on a stick. Good luck applying that logic when using a gun…
The original Subtlety rogue spec icon is the same as their Stealth ability icon. Are you saying that only Subtlety was designed to focus on stealth? Are you saying Subtlety was designed to only focus on stealthing, and nothing else?
See above.
No it didn’t.
See above.
That’s not how you phrased it earlier. Either way, nvm.
Like I said earlier, and they as well, they designed it for the purpose of the game as a whole.
I agree with you that this is getting repetitive. If you have any further question on design intent that you want to discuss, feel free. If not, take care.
here is an idea. put range survival back to the way it was from 5.0 to around 6.2 with or without the exotic munitions. and then put a 2nd tree in for the best iteration of melee survival.
then after 1 patch look at the data and see how many people each of the 2 specs had playing it and keep the more popular spec.
i will say sorry in advance the 3 people that actually play melee survival because it would be deleted after this test.
As 1/3 of MSV reprentatives, i dare say that the main reason players pickes RSV was because MM was bad/not appealing/etc.
A rework of the class tree, what’s common, what’s not, (and probably remove Lone Wolf) could be fine and we would keep the 3 specs as they are.
i dunno ranged sv was so good that right now about 20% of MM is old sv. with the serpent spread type ability from hydras bite and explosive shot. same tar different brush.
ranged survival especially mid>end mop around 5.4 was the most polished and unique the spec has ever been. it was the only spec in wow to reach its final form. it had its own identity via dots and explosives and traps. it had its own very unique form of aoe with dots via serpent spread and it was the master of sustained damage.
for it to have ever been changed to melee broke all the rules lore wise and fantasy wise. see: bm rexxar and beast lord darmac. both melee bm hunters.
i dunno. i been at this since it was announced back in mid to late wod. it was a mistake then and still is today.
and to be quite honest i would play a 5.4 C tier ranged survival over a S tier melee survival anyday and everyday.
The thing is the spells you’re pointing at serpent/hydra, explosive shot, dots like master markman, all these are in the class tree now. That’s why i said a rework of the class tree is needed first.
MM could be a mix of direct/dot damage fusing only the goods of actual MM + the goods of old RSV. Maybe a rework towards the dark ranger ppl asked for.
About the lore/fantasy, SV is still represented by Rexxar the beastmaster (the name is stupid but still). Rexxar uses melee weapons, throw axes, go stealth, totally fit the guerilla/hunter theme. He mostly uses Misha but is able to fight w/o (as SV now is restricted on some skill if no pet, but the main skill Mongoose isn’t).
The only weird thing about MSV is how Talonclaw was introduced. Because except for basic hunter skills Huln has nothing to offer except being blessed by Cenarius, which can’t be the case for every hunter + we have absolutely nothing going towards nature magic/spirit/etc. (this could have also been a possible rework more druid/ranger like)
I understand the loss of a loved spec but it’s almost guaranteed they won’t take it back. So it would be wiser to just put RSV somewhere as a good memory and try to bring the good it has for MSV and MM (as these 2 are quite tied to it)
So we did find common ground afterall. That may yet prove reason enough to continue.
The broader class was composed of 3 different archetypes. I simply dissected the whole into its three constituent parts which was done to glean the nuances that each contributor offered to the overarching whole.
Think in terms of anatomy. The Liver and Kidneys are both filtration organs but one interacts with pre-digested food and the other filters waste from the blood. One is not superior to the other. All organs function independently, but the BODY needs each of them to perform their independent functions.
So to say that Hunters were a fully ranged class is only partially true. The truth was that ranged dps was a critical feature of the class, its prime contributor the specialization of Marksmanship. The base ranged feature had broad applications, in addition to severe shortcomings which allowed the other archetypes to shine.
Which this post highlights:
This is an agreeable take. I once said that you were in fact the more reasonable rival. Now if only you could let go of cherished yet outmoded philosophy concerning SV, then all would be well between us.
Thoughts on RSV and Hero Classes
[Explosive Shot] was simply a conveyance of incendiary ordnance via a ranged weapon and was thus merely a feat of Marksmanship.
[Serpent Sting] was also originally a feat of Marksmanship.
[Serpent Spread] was simply [Serpent Sting]-laced ammunition conveyed via [Multi-Shot], which was a dual-feat of Marksmanship.
RSV finds its roots in MM and its proponents should take their grievances to the true parent specialization, and not antagonize the adopted parent.
If it were to be reimplemented, it should be an on/off toggle MM sub-variant.
The highest form of WFB and Explosive Shot finds its leaning towards a dedicated Sapper class. The Sapper dispenses with all physical dps elements and pets.
[Sapper]
The Sapper sets depth-charges that knock the opponent upwards. They would hurl dynamite at targeted areas and asphyxiate targets with plumes of toxic vapors and smoke.
Some of these elements do overlap with traps and ranged weapons, but there is enough lore and a large enough interest that it deserves a new one-off hero class, a class befitting of a Goblin.
The same could be said of a one-spec Elven Dark Ranger, Troll Berserker, Dwarven Mortar Team, Gnomish Tinker, etc but Blizzard is set on jamming these otherwise worthy archetypes into a limited class fantasy.
It’s a fairly simple question that doesn’t require abstract examples to internalize.
What was Survival’s original symbol?
May you instead feel that the Specialization Symbol doesn’t accurately reflect the intended design of SV. Is that an accurate assumption?
Do the symbols for BM and MM somehow miraculously communicate the intended design features that they respectively offer, but the SV symbol is somehow a mistake?
How far are you willing to go with this?
I was once distraught in that we could not reach common ground earlier, but now it has become if not mildly enjoyable.
What was Survival’s original symbol?
What was Survival’s original symbol?
WHAT WAS SURVIVAL’S SYMBOL?
I find this sport most enjoyable. How long will you afford me such sweet merriment over a technicality?
Well, this is an exploratory topic.
The statement was a retrospective summary, not a recontextualization.
In the beginning, I arrived here with a particular set of unrefined ideas that with time were honed and sharpened into a more cohesive argument and is yet ever improving. I gain knowledge and wisdom about the class with each passing exchange, the constructive discourse opening up new channels of insight into the class that I once may have taken for granted.
The issue that we’re having is that by attempting to minimize or outright ignore my points, you have stunted your own internal growth which inhibits further discourse upon this topic.
And so, I once again ask:
From a design standpoint, what do you think the fundamental purpose of specialization icons were meant to convey?
What was SV’s iconic symbol?
What was SV’s contributive physical dps profile?
Where were its intended design features best leveraged in-game?
These questions are legitimate angles in terms of design philosophy which I feel are purposefully being minimized or outright ignored.
I thought this as well, but after analyzing the design scope of the original trees, the post-legion design philosophy for Hunter Throughput has more in common with Classic Talent selection than I first thought.
Retail SV: ~60-70%+ Melee DPS
Classic SV: Sole Contributor of Melee DPS
The key difference is that the base class overlapped more which comprised a tripart Pet–Bow–Axe: each separate but whole, with each independent archetype covering the shortcomings of one another.
Its only that Legion tossed out the notion that BM or SV were merely MM sub-variants.
BM was a pet spec in terms of physical damage delivery.
SV was a melee spec in terms of physical damage delivery.
MM was a ranged spec in terms of physical damage delivery.
Some build options
…and you were free to hybridize these independent archetypes at leisure. Most choose a hybrid MM-build which provided a higher damage ceiling but would lack in other critical areas under offensive pressure as a counterbalance. There were also the lesser-known SV/BM and BM/SV hybrid builds available. Ever tried a 31/0/30 build, or used [Bestial Wrath] without [The Beast Within]? Ever tried a spell power BM/SV melee build with fast ZG Hakkari Manslayers for high self-sustain? Probably not.
All the years spent attacking MSV were in error.
A non-specific warning
Do note that if I catch any erroneous “Classic SV was a ranged dps spec, therefore RSV is valid and MSV is invalid” style tropes in future threads, I will be there to counteract it. Such fallacy will not escape my watchful gaze. It is better to quickly excise an infection than to watch it fester and rot– enduring such toxicity for an extra 20 years, or a sum total of 40 years into the future.
I’m not sure if you realize how disgusting this has all been, that we can’t come unto the forum and discuss our chosen spec without heckling–without passive-aggressive existential threats upon SV’s legacy, when it is now closer to the original design than it has ever been since Vanilla.
If you say, ‘delete MSV’ you will be flagged.
If you say, ‘reimplement RSV as a dedicated hero-class, 4th spec, or an MM sub-variant’, you will encounter no friction from me.
Thoughts on RSV
[Explosive Shot] was simply a conveyance of incendiary ordnance via a ranged weapon and was thus merely a feat of Marksmanship.
[Serpent Sting] was also originally a feat of Marksmanship.
[Serpent Spread] was simply [Serpent Sting]-laced ammunition conveyed via [Multi-Shot], which was a dual-feat of Marksmanship.
RSV finds its roots in MM and its proponents should take their grievances to the true parent specialization, and not antagonize the adopted parent.
If it were to be reimplemented, it should be an on/off toggle MM sub-variant.
The highest form of WFB and Explosive Shot finds its leaning towards a dedicated Sapper class. The Sapper dispenses with all physical dps elements and pets.
[Sapper]
The Sapper sets depth-charges that knock the opponent upwards. They would hurl dynamite at targeted areas and asphyxiate targets with plumes of toxic vapors and smoke.
Some of these elements do overlap with traps and ranged weapons, but there is enough lore and a large enough interest that it deserves a new one-off hero class, a class befitting of a Goblin.
The same could be said of a one-spec Elven Dark Ranger, Troll Berserker, Dwarven Mortar Team, Gnomish Tinker, etc but Blizzard is set on jamming these otherwise worthy archetypes into a limited class fantasy.
Which I can see some of the logic behind, but do not agree with.
Moving “classes closes to their Vanilla roots” does not have any bearing on spec design or freedom of build choices outside of a half of one’s talent points (nearly all non-preselected obligatory or near-obligatory nodes among which are not tied to any single spec) being shared options.
That’s still fundamentally different from when, say, the only sources of DoT damage outside of Incendiary Trap were tied to the MM tree. As such, a class will merely include the option of something more akin to Vanilla apportioning of specs, rather than removing options in order to force that blending of spec characteristics (as would be the case in returning to a Vanilla-ish model).
Nor do I see why that would have any bearing on the spec trees themselves. The closest thing to having any bearing there are the tiny amounts of spec bleed we see in the forms of Hunter’s Prey, Salvo, Ranger, etc., and those enlarge build varieties permissible, rather than constraining them.
More on SV's original design intentions.
I would agree to this in principle, but…
When literally almost two-thirds of a spec do little to nothing outside of a given content type, and underperforms on the whole in all other content types but at least could see niche/advantage in the content type its talents are most built around… why wouldn’t it be called a “{that content type} spec”? That was the case for Vanilla SV.
And it’s been the case at other times, where maybe Fury just was not, for a patch, viable for PvP while Arms was doing very well in PvP, and the inverse was true for PvE. Now in those cases you can blame oversight, but that’s because their talents were still individually useful for both.
That wasn’t the case for Survival or Subtlety, though; half or more of their talents required situations (needing to avoid detection, dodge-chance, counterattacks after dodge, etc.) that saw little to no use outside of PvP.
Subtlety was commonly called the “Stealth spec” if only in that if you didn’t need to improve your Stealth capacities, it was a net loss compared to Combat or Assassination, and nearly all its unique features required stealth.
That “test” would already require housing 4 specs for its duration (unless you’re honestly advocating for the temporary removal of BM and MM), at which point… why would you delete either?
And it would take only 4 new talent choices, at least 1 of them a choice node opposite Aimed Shot, and addendums/conditions (already possible, already seen) to Aimed Shot talents to have old RSV’s every spec-specific mechanic taken, and adjust pathing to take on more filler and keep your mechanical depth lower, per MoP/WoD RSV over modern MM.
Yes, you’d likely rename your 10s-CD 6s-duration ST DoT to something other than Explosive Shot unless you wanted to remove that burst AoE from the game. Whoopdeedo; your non-explosive shot is no longer called “Explosive” but instead “Caustic”, “Immolating”, “Wildfire”, etc.
The only reason we’d actually need an entire spec tree for RSV would be if we were reimagining beyond the incredibly narrow bounds, playstyle-wise, of old RSV and trying to make it something with actual depth and breadth available to it. If you literally just want old RSV, though, that is very doable within MM. That does not remotely require an entire tree to provide.
I still don’t get where people are drawing this from. He throws weapons in only 1 of 3 games. In all 3, outside of a brief retcon-y appearance in a single BfA RP quest, his skills are entirely Beast Mastery. In HotS, where he has a ranged auto-attack (but you’d have to look to Zul’jin to actually find any axe-throwing abilities), he functionally has a Move Pet/Sic skill has his passive, Mend Pet, 2 other pet-summoning skills, and either Bestial Wrath or Stampede for his Ultimate.
Rexxar’s not SV. He’s never been SV. He’s just a typically-melee (rarely mid-range) BM hunter — literally a more purely BM Hunter than any BM Hunter, in that 100% of skills are pet-summoning or pet-buffing. Which is probably why his unit was called Beast Master and why, until the Legion acid-dream BS, Beast Master was Rexxar’s subtitle.
In 2/3 games he’s appeared in, his own ranged capacities have been between non-existent and far less prominent than that of any melee class in WoW, and even his (weapon-)throwing in particular still less prominent than Rogue or Warrior.
His sole overlap with SV, which doesn’t even have anything to do with SV’s kit —only its headcanon— is his gruff/grizzly Wild-man/Outworlder-ness. But that could be attached to any kit — including an MM, RSV, or even actual MSV one, instead of one 100% related to pet skills (BM).
the new ring can help with survivability but its only a borrowed power solution and you will loose out on dps im most cases over a crafted ring.
Desirous Blood Stone = Equip: [Dealing damage has a chance to drain life, dealing 12,127 Shadow damage and healing you for that amount.]
Prophetic Twilight Stone = Equip: [Damaging effects from your Primordial Stones trigger one of your healing effects, and vice versa.]
Exuding Steam Stone = Equip: [Receiving heals has a chance to exude steam, restoring 12,039 health to yourself and 2 nearby allies.]
My thought process is if the first 2 trigger each other constantly if the lifesteal count as a heal like you think it should then Exuding Steam stone should heal us extra and our pet and also hopefully trigger Desirous Blood Stone more that can trigger itself and Exuding steam more.
But if that dosnt work there always
-Indomitable Earth Stone = Equip: [Taking damage has a chance to shield yourself, absorbing 32,506 damage for 12 sec.]
and you know us hunters always taking damage so that be useful or the…
-Cold Frost Stone = Gain a Frost shield every 20 seconds that absorbs 21670 damage and slows melee attackers by 15% for 5 seconds.
A slow and shield pretty useful maybe but if your just suffering and need more dps
Freezing Ice Stone = Dealing damage can chill the enemy, dealing 16,171 Frost damage and slowing them by 15% for 6 seconds.
and as a class that is very mobile this is nice
but honestly where were these cool effect ideas when they were thinking of talents for hunters i hope they recycle some this for us when this gear becomes obsolete to fix hunter.
I find this sport most enjoyable. How long will you afford me such sweet merriment over a technicality?