That last bit of what I said was just an example logic, I’m not saying that they weren’t…aware…of how some of its talents would see more use in a certain type of content. I’m saying that just because players found that some of the talents in the SV category would be most useful in a certain area of the game, that doesn’t automatically mean that this is specifically what they imagined that the primary goal with the category as a whole would/should be.
Their goal with class design back then was to create a foundation of a fantasy, and then have various options available for players to focus on specific parts of that foundation. Allow players to focus on the side of the class which they preferred. Making sure that each category, or that each talent in every category was equally balanced or useful in all parts of the game wasn’t their primary goal. They’ve said as much in the class panels at Blizzcon, in those early days.
But, again, they’ve also repeatedly said that they did design classes, and the respective talent categories with the whole game in mind.
For example, most talents in the BM category benefitted your pet in some way. More damage, more health, armor, improved mend pet, etc. The BM category also had no talents that gave you access to new ranged damaging shots. None of that meant that you were suddenly intended to fight through your pet, or to actively avoid using your baseline ranged toolkit.
It simply meant that anything that could make your pet stronger, or allow you to better support your pet in combat(or out of combat) was found in the Beast Mastery category. Heck, it even had a talent you could take to increase the base duration of Eyes of the Beast.
Beast Mastery focused solely on improvements to pet related elements.
Marksmanship focused solely on improvements to ranged weapon-based elements.
The reason Survival didn’t focus solely on a singular part of the class, like the other two, was because it focused on survivability in general, through many types of elements/means. Some ranged, some melee, some traps, some pure defensives, etc.
BM also didn’t provide any new offensive shots. Does that mean it wasn’t a ranged spec either?
But the class absolutely could function without melee and the minimum range. That did end up being the reality, after all.
As for Classic: if you could spend 100% of your time at range in a combat encounter, you would. It was safer and you did more damage.
It reflects an ability that was classified under SV.
If you’re going to obsess over an old spec icon, why not focus on the fact that for the entire history of this game the icon of the Hunter class has been a ranged weapon.
You haven’t really honed and sharpened anything because you’re still posting revisionist history.
Survival in Classic was a ranged DPS spec, end of story.
At ranged and kiting, funnily enough.
The hell it does. Post-Legion Hunter is utterly alien to classic Hunter. SV didn’t use a ranged weapon at all; not even an animation-only crossbow. Most of the toolkit from original WoW was absent from SV. BFA corrected it to a small extent but it still doesn’t use a real ranged weapon and prefers to fight in melee range, unlike classic SV.
This whole section ignores that 80% of the identity, toolkit, and playstyle was built into the base class.
Labelling every ranged weapon user as an “MM sub variant” is a myopic take. You’re effectively arguing that we can only have 1 ranged weapon user in this entire game with 25 DPS specs. Is every caster an Arcane variant? Is every melee an Arms variant?
People didn’t generally try those builds because they sucked. Not spending any points in Marksmanship was suicidal. Its early talents like Mortal Shots and Aimed Shot were absolutely crucial in all areas of the game.
Classic players tend to vastly overstate the viability of “alternative” builds like this. Like real-life medicine, there’s a reason they’re called “alternative”.
Also 31/0/30 and Beast Within are BC talent builds not Classic, and in BC SV had additional talents that were ranged only.
They were not. It’s an extremely negative influence on the class and we lost a vastly better spec for it.
And I’ll be there to counteract you because you’re being dishonest and revisionist. Classic SV was a ranged DPS spec. That’s truth. No amount of flowery roleplayer language changes that.
We aren’t going to let you sweep it under the rug. SV’s ranged history is important. It can’t be revised away. In all of WoW’s most successful, popular, and definitive years, SV was a ranged spec. It was wrong to get rid of it and anything SV related deserves to be heckled over it. Because as it stands this class is fettered to a corpse.
SV in WoD was closer to classic SV than any iteration afterwards because classic SV primarily used a ranged weapon. A real one; not one that only exists in a half-assed animation lifted from another class. It had abilities like Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, and Multi-Shot that it had since day 1 along with spec-unique trapping buffs like Entrapment that it used to kite and control enemies from afar, just as it did in Classic.
Don’t pretend to be open to discussion when you openly threaten to report people and follow up on it. This whole paragraph exposes your true goal: you would rather ranged SV discussion didn’t exist and you’ll stop at nothing to shut it down. As such you’re fine with using dishonestly and content moderation as weapons.
Chaos Bolt was simply a conveyance of fel magic via a spell cast and was thus merely a feat of Fire
Explosive Shot was an explosive munition just like Explosive Trap, a Survival ability from day 1.
Yet thematically it didn’t fit a sniper/sharpshooter well, so it was shifted over to SV. SV has had a focus on Serpent Sting in every subsequent expansion. So is it still an MM variant to this day?
Blah blah, more pretending that every single concept that’s adjacent to ranged weaponry is the realm of MM.
Can’t be, because SV was ranged from the start.
Explosive Shot was SV from the start. Black Arrow was SV from the start.
Is BM an MM variant because it uses Barbed Shot, Cobra Shot, and Multi-Shot?
Hell, SV right now is running around using Kill Shot. Does that make it an MM variant?
No. It’s a different identity, aesthetic, and playstyle to MM. It should not have to awkwardly share the same design space as MM because then we get less exploration of both MM and RSV. All to maintain the existence of the most dysfunctional and reviled spec the game has to offer (MSV). Classic melee favouritism.
Here’s a more fair and acceptable compromise: melee is an on/off toggle BM sub-variant, MM and SV get to explore their own ranged pathways. That way we don’t lose an entire 3rd of the class to Warrior and Rogue rerolls who want to feel more at home in the Hunter class.
WFB is literally the only interesting part of MSV. Everything else is either Warrior-esque or a BM ripoff.
So instead they should make a ranged spec with Wildfire Bomb and Serpent Sting as focuses.
I ignored everything you wrote about Sapper because it’s a waste of time. Hunter class elements should not be parcelled out to other classes; especially not to bail out melee SV.
You gave some roleplay speech about excising an infection instead of letting it fester and rot. We let melee SV rot and you’re encouraging to accelerate the festering. The right decision all along was to not make it melee in the first place. Since we can’t go back in time, the next best decision was to make it ranged again. Melee has not worked out well for the spec, it’s a bad influence on the rest of the class, and it’s totally alien to the spec’s roots as a ranged spec.
the real issue plaguing survival is the really half-assed talent tree. so many nodes that are just % dps increase that could be folded into another talent. the ones that aren’t just dps increases are feel very minor and they don’t feel like they alter the spec’s gameplay in a meaningful way. it also feels like many talents were cut up and stretched out across the tree. the only exception to this is Frenzy Strikes, which lowers the cooldown of wfb as you use carve/butchery. pretty neat little talent and i’d say its a diamond in the rough that is the spec’s tree.
let’s think about it like this.
on the outlaw rogue tree we have talents such as quick draw
(half-shot uses of pistol shot granted by sinister strike now generate 1 additional combo point and deals an additional 20% damage)
and dancing steel
(blade flurry hits 3 additional enemies and its duration is increased by 3 seconds.)
on the survival tree, you can be assured that these would be cut up from 2 talents into 4 talents. for quick draw the additional combo point and 20% additional dps would be split into two, and dancing steel would be cut into hits 3 additional enemies, with the duration increase being its own talent.
i think survival deserves to have an overhaul of the tree by somebody who actually plays the spec or the game at all. whereas you have 2 options for ranged dps on hunter, survival is the sole melee choice. ret got reworked because it was the sole dps spec on paladin.
It is against the rules to abuse lesser lifeforms, so I’ll take care not to do so–well, at least not intentionally.
Oh, thanks! Did you find my stylish roleplay riffs dazzling? How about this snazzy transmog outfit? * glint *
The new Tuskarr backpacks look fabulous!
I agree with you for once: those people did suck.
Yes, spending even 1 point in Marksmanship was in fact suicidal.
Bring it.
Go on and insert that idea into the suggestion box!
Prove it.
You’ve saved me the trouble of adding a Clown Face .gif to this remark.
You can be quite helpful at times.
You speak as if you’ve ever stood a chance.
You’ve harassed me since day one. You can miss me with all that.
… from the start, of Wrath.
It’s a ranged baseline feature offered to a traditionally melee spec.
Heroic Throw, Deadly Throw, etc.
Nope.
As a subject matter, RSV is no longer held in contention by the game developers. I mean, you could try and leverage it against MSV for an extra 8 years or thereabouts 16-years of squandered effort. /popcorn
About the only thing you’ve accomplished thus far is making fresh enemies. How’s that working out for you lately?
The former conveyed via a ranged weapon; the latter placed on the ground. You could draw inspiration from one to the next, but… in Classic, Traps were designated as Survival skills, and Shots were designated as Marksmanship skills.
After a number of paradigm shifts post WotLK, Survival gained additional ranged dps abilities, but that’s not how things were handled in the very beginning, and you would struggle to prove otherwise.
Explosive Shot does not fit into Classic Survival, but I do enjoy it now in retail as a basic class feature fired from my trusty sidearm.
Well, yes. Marksmanship managed to corner the ranged weapon fantasy to such an extent, that archetypes like the Dark Ranger had too much of a thematic overlap. They had the perfect opportunity to create another ranged class in BFA but Blizzard said no and gave us a transmog instead.
I’m not the crazy one here.
But I totally want a class that can wield Rocket Launchers–you know, something actually different.
In my opinion, BM still struggles to carve out it’s own identity.
There’s nothing particularly special about Barbed Shot such that a skilled Marksman could not perform this feat.
Cobra Shot is somewhat creative… and sort of fits the motif. But there’s still no natural relation between a Cobra and say, a gun.
It all feels so forced: The Cobra theme feels tacked on. It would be better if the BM Hunter THREW ALL THE SNAKES at enemies, “Snake Throw”-- now that’s truly unique and fitting for a Master of Beasts.
Not to be like that, but you’re missing the whole point of what class specializations actually are.
A spec isn’t a program your character “loads” in, in order to learn how to do something. From the perspective of our characters, specs are mechanical representations meant to simulate the process of actively choosing what you want to focus on doing.
Marksmanship as an example, is meant to simulate the active choice your character makes towards how to best make use of the weapon, to focus on quick reloads, precision aiming, handling, etc.
Does this mean that, within the context of the wow universe, a non-MM hunter can’t properly aim their weapon? Ofc not. It means that if picked another spec, you[r character] made the active choice to focus on something else, such as relying on augmented shots/ammunition, with old SV.
Now that’s just rude! You skipped over an entire post in our conversational sequence earlier, but now quickly intervene in my clash with Bepples? Let me repost it in case it got buried.
Before we proceed, could you address the points that I’ve outlined there?
Though it may not be your intention, this tag-team approach with Bepples imparts a bad impression.
He responded to my post addressed to you. Now you respond to my post addressed to him. This has been the case since our first clash back in January, here:
I did not respond to your post there, for one, because you keep ignoring the fact that most of what our class was back then was a part of our core, our foundation. The talent categories within our class weren’t representative of various archetypes or individual fantasies. They were simply designed to include talents that focused on parts of the core class, on our foundation.
You keep looking at the Marksmanship category as the sole entity on which the concept of ranged weapon combat was based upon, within the scope of our class. This is categorically false. The Marksmanship category was designed for/comprised of talents with the purpose of building on the entity from which ranged weapon combat was built. It wasn’t the other way around…
To you, every ranged aspect/element of the class, either there from the beginning or added later, was merely an extension to the Marksmanship category, regardless of where it was found or how it was designed.
In your post, you also proceeded to engage in trolling, and in provoking reactions just for the sake of it. Referring to this:
This was the primary reason as to why I did not respond.
As for why I opted to reply to your comment on Barbed Shot, and how or why that could be something that a MM hunter was capable of…
…this is a public discussion forum. If you write something, expect other readers to reply, even if you did not direct your comments to them. I have no interest in getting between whatever it is that you and Bepples are doing. You commented on a design aspect of the class, insinuating what it actually was like, but based in on a flawed logic.
Very well–and until you manage to directly refute the contention outlined there any present or future discourse between us is meaningless. At the height of our discussion, you opted out–that’s improper mannerism in a debate. Then you return and intercede in an exchange between myself and another user. That’s very rude and dismissive.
It was a light-hearted poke at how you’ve evaded admission of the fact that Survival’s spec icon wasn’t a Trap, nor was it a utility spell. The icon was related to a melee dps throughput ability in Mongoose Bite, which required sustained provocation from either a player or npc in melee range to trigger it.
It was a simple question about a basic symbol that is wholly relevant to the intrinsic design features of the spec in question. And thus, I found your arbitrage of that fact comical when the premise of your argument leaned towards communicative design intention, and how melee dps wasn’t particularly relevant in the grand scheme of Survival, when its blatantly communicated via the spec icon as a centralizing locus.
I could have perhaps communicated that a bit better though, and apologize if it came across as trolling.
We don’t want a fusion of two watered-down spec concepts sharing the same space. It’s bad for the class, it’s bad for enjoyers of both archetypes, and it’s not even a compromise let alone a fair compromise because in this situation melee players get to keep 100% of what they want while ranged players have to fight over the leftovers.
Any spec design compromise for Hunters that favours melee is necessarily ridiculous because very few of the players of this class prefer melee over ranged. It’s a statement that a melee-preferring player is far more important and valuable than a ranged-preferring player, and while I’m sure there are plenty in this community that genuinely believe that, it shouldn’t be the founding philosophy of modern class design.
Does Rexxar use a spear? Does he use a sidearm crossbow? Does he throw bombs?
Rexxar was always a poor foundation for Survival because a) he doesn’t interact with any of the characteristic utilitarian side of Hunters represented by Survival and b) we already have the spec Beast Mastery representing the iconic pet aspect of Rexxar. People just fixate on “melee” and nothing else.
Huln does have Hunter aspects such as using a pet but they were all retconned in with Legion. Before Legion he was a minor character in the books that had nothing tying him to the Hunter class beyond using a spear (but of course Hunters aren’t the only class that ever used a spear).
No, it would not be wise to give up and feed the delusion. Melee SV is a bad idea, it was always a bad idea, and the best suggestion is discontinuation. I’m not up for praising the emperor’s new clothes, here.
> Constantly threatens to flag people and follows up on it
> Calls people “lesser lifeforms”
Sounds about right.
The builds sucked, period. You could get by in non-competitive situations because the average player especially in Classic is extremely bad and can’t even handle someone jumping in circles around them, but that doesn’t mean the builds were good. Without a significant gear and/or skill gap they would fall apart.
Usually when people drop snarky one-liners like this they at least twist the words of the person they’re quoting, but in this case this is literally the exact opposite to what I said. Spending no points in MM was suicidal.
Its ranged toolkit was more complete in both design and tuning.
Its melee toolkit was insufficient even when taking the melee damage talent (yes, singular).
It had the best tools to slow/incapacitate enemies and escaping back to range.
It had the agility scaling talent, and agility gave double scaling for ranged damage.
Its end talent was a ranged CC.
Every time Blizzard iterated on the spec they made it more ranged-centric.
Most of all, it was a Hunter and Hunters’ use of ranged weapons was baked into the class foundation. It’s not something you specced out of.
You made a ridiculous remark so I’m ridiculing it.
Notice how at no point do you actually address the substance; you have a standard for Hunters that says any ranged attack is effectively Marksmanship’s domain, yet you don’t apply the same standard to any other class in the game.
The fact that we’re still here talking about it means you haven’t swept it under the rug.
People disagreeing with you on a public forum is not harassment.
Nope SV was ranged from the start. It got its own unique ranged abilities later on but it was still ranged from day 1. It’s not something you specced out of.
So was Multi-Shot but you still labelled that as an MM thing.
The real squandered effort here is melee SV. Almost 7 years in and look at how much of a dumpster fire it still is. If Blizzard doubles down on melee SV they can accept melee SV always being an embarrassing failure of class design.
I played back then and unlike you I can verify it.
No one figured that Explosive Shot didn’t fit Survival when they were adding it. It was a perfectly natural fit to the spec that already buffed the Hunter’s key explosive munition Explosive Trap.
You’re also forgetting Survival got its own unique ranged ability Wyvern Sting during Vanilla. Patch 1.7 (September 2005) to be exact. No one saw SV as a spec that didn’t use a ranged weapon with ranged attacks (yes even when Lacerate was the end ability). Arguments that it was melee now are the product of revisionist history.
Marksmanship does not “corner the ranged weapon fantasy” any more than Fury corners the melee weapon fantasy. Ludicrous statement.
BM does not struggle to carve out it’s own identity. SV does. You’re just deflecting here.
Once again you’re quadrupling down on “every single ranged weapon ability is necessarily Marksmanship”.
Barbed Shot is not Marksmanship because ranged weapons aren’t the sole domain of Marksmanship. MM focuses on a specific mode of ranged weaponry i.e. sniping and expert sharpshooting. Barbed Shot is not necessarily a BM, MM, or SV ability, but it fits BM well because the idea is it causes the target to bleed which sends the pet into a frenzy. It’s actually a great thematic fit for BM.
The fact that Mongoose Bite required a dodge should tell you that it wasn’t intended as a primary offensive capability. It was a capability that gave Hunters some ability to respond to pressure when stuck in melee. You did not deliberately run into/stay in melee for Mongoose Bite, or even Raptor Strike for that matter.
If the shoe fits? It was a fairly non-specific statement.
Firsthand experience? If not, sit down.
That’s your own limited understanding of the ability. Survival was about turning defense into offense. You would know that already if you would internalize some of my earlier posts in this thread.
I explained everything here:
Mongoose Bite was the central icon of Survival in Classic.
In retail, Mongoose Bite is the central ability in Survival’s damage rotation.
You’ve lost a considerable amount of influence as of late.
The tides have turned.
Marksmanship was a powerful contributor to the class.
Perfectly balanced for PvP.
One of its numerous, leverageable options.
You again underestimate how powerful we were in melee range. If we had 2x scaling in MAP, it would be completely imbalanced from a design standpoint if we did equivalent sustained damage to dedicated melee classes, while Survival still had access to powerful instant-cast ranged tools.
We were fine in melee range with 1:1 AGI/MAP under Deterrence.
Lacerate. The perfect utility tool provided by a PvP tree used to prevent a Rogue from vanishing.
I made a funny
Until they made it melee again. Each phase of Survival was legitimate for the respective time period. The RSV phase ended 8 years ago, let it go.
I mean, you couldn’t spec out of melee either.
Only it wasn’t a mere disagreement.
What exactly does “Tar Trap-Flare interaction is brilliant” have to do with the “SV was ranged even in classic” line you attempted to impose on me?
What is this ‘substance’ you make reference to? False equivalency.
Not sure what you’re missing here. False equivalency.
You’re free to have an opinion.
Didn’t I disclaim: “In my opinion”? I’m not sure why you’re so upset–why does my opinion wound you so?
The statement made about [Barbed Shot] was that I felt it was basically a generic feat of skill, and that it doesn’t scream BM like [Stomp] does.
[Cobra Shot] does fit the theme. I think it’s a good idea, but it feels crammed into the ranged weapon aesthetic. BM is still shackled to MM a bit as a result, which I think is holding BM back from its full potential.
Ideally, BM would dispense with hard weapon requirements within its spec tree entirely. At this point in the game, it makes no difference if BM had an Animation-Ranged/Melee Weapon for focus-spenders, Dual Throwing Axes like Rexxar in HotS, etc.
You shouldn’t get all bent out of shape over an opinion.
The reason you’re like this is because of your controlling nature which is a severe social maladjustment. Live and let live or get shouted down.
Oh, then where’s your 2nd seperate class that uses Ranged Weaponry?
You were an admitted BM Hunter at the time. You would only have a secondhand perspective on what SV gameplay was like.
The original SV Tree had no ranged abilities.
While Wyvern Sting was a welcome addition to the game, your notion of a ‘Ranged Survial’ cannot be proven by any logical means.
Survival was a melee archetype, BM was a pet archetype, and MM was a ranged archetype and they shared abilities to create an overarching fantasy.
In practice, the Classic Hunter was one of the first true physical damage hybrids.
95%+ Ranged DPS contribution came from Marksmanship
100% Melee DPS contribution came from Survival
100% Pet DPS contribution came from Beast Mastery
The original SV Tree had no ranged abilities and there was no baseline ranged abilities provided to the Hunter Superstructure by Survival.
Survival’s intra-specialization damage profile consisted of 90%+ melee dps with some added contribution to that figure from Immolation or Explosive Trap.
You can go back and forth on… please forgive my English tonight — I am tired, and I am not a native English user — whether “in practice” the Vanilla Hunter was really a “physical damage hybrids.”
Because, ultimately? That’s not how players played the Hunter class and all three specs back in Vanilla.
I’m a Vanilla veteran, too. I started in 2005; I was a high school student taking AP classes and was in the swim team. I had minimal play time — but I still managed to hit level 60 by the time BC launched.
I do mean it when I said that the players viewed, and played, the Hunter class (and all three specs!) as a physical ranged damage-dealer.
GhorakWatermist If you guys are in the self-punishing mood to see even more brazen revisionism and lies about Survival’s past, here’s an active thread on the general forums. We have a Hunter claiming ranged SV was never a good or widely-played spec.
Dart seems to be arguing based on his/her perception of the SV category from the BC days, not as much about the playstyle we’re refering to, involving ES, BA, etc.
There are mentions of SV from the wotlk-wod era, but the arguments seem based on pre-wotlk days still. Since he/she admitted to not investing any time into it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is all based on the pre-wotlk days.
I also played hunter in vanilla. My best friend and I were both hunters. I specced mainly in the MM tree with a little from BM and SV. He specced mainly SV with a little from the others. We were both ranged damage dealers that had melee weapons only due to the range restriction. As soon as mobs were at range we switched to bows or in his case gun.
I am really surprised that people think SV was melee back in the day. We both played at range with one pet. I miss the old hunter spec. Anyone of them had range with one pet. Now we have zookeeper, no pet or melee. Makes me cringe but I pick BM because one of the reasons I picked to main a hunter was for the pet and using a bow.
There’s nothing wrong about leaning into or leveraging MM skills where appropriate. However, BM or SV simply did not contribute to that notion in Classic.
If you allocated points into a 0/20/31 SV, 31/20/0 BM, or even an x/31/x, you were still basically an MM hybrid that leaned heavily into an MM skillset playstyle. The fact that BM and SV were typically forced to hybridize with MM for competitive ranged dps is somewhat self-explanatory in that they weren’t independently ranged dps archetypes.
Blizzard wanted to further develop and characterize Hunters away from MM’s centralizing role and redeveloped the original BM and SV archetypes in Legion. In my opinion, BM may yet further be developed away from traditional ranged weapons.
That is your opinion. When I picked hunter as my class it was because it was a range damage dealer with a pet to assist. I have played MM, BM and RSV. All were enjoyable.
Basically, all I want is to play a range damage dealer with one pet. I want my pet to assist me. I prefer doing more damage myself with the pet helping or pulling off mobs. I would never pick a range spec so I could melee.
