Btw, I’m not mad but disappointed guys. If I come off pissed, I’m a bit aggrivated but I’ll live with it. I think they really need to work on Cobra Shot and pets getting stuck on everything.
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You should speak for yourself Varrege. I for one love Survival. Yes, I would have been much happier with getting a 4th spec instead of them gutting the one I played the most. Surv is strange, a heavy mix of both ranged and melee abilities with metric tons of outplay potential built in. There are a few things I’d change: I’d like a ranged kick back and they can scrap Binding Shot and give me the option for Ranger’s Net again. Melee Surv is incredible in PvP and respectable in PvE.
The flavor they tried throwing on MM just doesn’t mix right and frankly seems counter-intuitive to the way it plays. BM has always been a lolcow spec, I could set up Drinking Birds that could pull more dps than half that specs player base.
TL;DR - 4th spec would have been a smarter choice. Current Surv is both good and fun. Blizz murdered MM. If you play BM, git gud.
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I mean if you’re looking at it from a general perspective, a melee “hunting/hunter” class makes sense. If you don’t like survival now then that’s fine, don’t play it. But survival has always been sht damage and a confusion of spec with black arrow and everything else it used to have. It’s better than having to use mana and having a 5 yard kill zone where you can’t attack anyone because the rogue is stuck within that zone. Survival is fresh and enjoyable as melee imo, but they could’ve given it a 4th spec I concur. The main issue with that would be other people would be wanting a 4th spec too and instead of implementing changes to specs, people would just want them as talents or a new spec. MM feels bad from last xpac, but it’s called marksman. Standing there to hone in on someone kind of fits the name of the spec. Have you ever tried shooting a gun/using a bow & arrow in real life? You kind of have to take a second to aim. THAT BEING SAID, MM feels clunky as fck right now and this isn’t the only class that’s bleeding from every hole because of the lack of updates and improvements to them. Ele was a shtshow before 8.1, ENH basically got told to get fcked, Spriest only got their voidform elongated but that’s it, and feral is still feral, not to mention countless other classes and specs throughout. I think they should’ve started working on BfA earlier or made the release a bit later and push things back to actually give good updates rather than pushing it out and saying “we’ll fix this later” in a brand new xpac release. But that’s my though
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i played mm for pvp all legion it was the best spec for pvp and now its the worst.
thats just how it goes.
Yes it was LOL.
https://i.imgur.com/ZLU9sCc.png
No, it wasn’t.
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Look, I’m going to agree with Bepples on this. I wish I could ignore him, but Blizzard does not want us to use that function anymore. SV had more tools to get back to Ranged Combat, it was not Melee. At one point they might have wanted it to be melee, and it is Melee now, but before Legion only fools thought Melee would work.
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Have you even played hunter when they had the old talent? It was built around Pet/Range/Melee. You can Hybrid the class or go full spec. Plus there are lore hunters that are know as Survival Hunters. The mess. Some of the abilities Survival hunters have now we had back in Vanilla…
Love SV. Was playing it Legion and playing it now. I also play BM time to time. SV IMO is in a good spot. I been enjoying it. I have never ever played MM. EVER. I been playing since day 1. (Sad I Know).
That said, I hope they figure out where they want MM to be or what they want it to be.
Marksman should be that, a sniper. Incressing a lot his range and some form of camo. And ofc, fix the flow of the rotation.
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Hunter specs were more fun when we got to weave our shots like back in the day, not having to constantly refresh a dot for BM/SV, whack a mole for procs with MM. Blizz has changed most classes to play that way as they felt gameplay and rotations needing to be reinvented which they didn’t need. Those changes right there have killed fun factor big time, especially when done so sloppy as with MM or too over the top BM damage nerfs.
Also pruning abilities and swapping some from one spec to others hurt. Then losing numerous pet unique abilities, imo the class will never be anywhere near as fun as it had been vanilla to Mists.
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I would say MM should be 95% sniper and 5% melee.
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Yeah, and the sad part is I don’t even know if they are actually playing the spec when putting these abilities in. It seems like they just adding them in with numbers rather then testing them. Considering many spoke about their experience old Vs this talent tree and how out of place and fantasy many classes feel. Then again, looking at how they ignored Feedback, it seems Devs are fixated on what they deem fun rather then if players are enjoying themselves.
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Yes, I did. No, it wasn’t.
Hunters had to use melee abilities when the enemy came within 5 yards. It was a deliberate handicap for the class. At no point were you expected, required, or rewarded for going into melee range. Keeping at ranged was ALWAYS preferable; even in the days of Lacerate (not that there was any real reason to go Survival in those days). Survival had talents that let you not be so useless in melee range and be able to escape to ranged better. Going hybrid/full melee was NOT a viable playstyle.
All 3 Hunter specs had this handicap; not just Survival.
The ones that weren’t invented post-Legion were relabelled as Survival in that expansion.
The two “iconic” SV Hunters are Rexxar and Huln Highmountain.
- Rexxar was labelled as a Beastmaster before Legion and all his attacks from Warcraft 3 resemble BM abilities. In HotS and Hearthstone they actually give him a ton of ranged abilities to better match WoW Hunters.
- Huln Highmountain was a pretty minor character before Legion who did not appear in the Warcraft games. He was not labelled as a Hunter; Wowpedia actually labelled him as a Warrior before the Legion announcement. His pet was made up post-Legion as well.
So there isn’t any actual lore precedent here. The SV Hunters in lore were either invented post-Legion or redefined as SV post-Legion in an attempt to retroactively justify the spec being melee.
Ok? Survival never lacked a ranged weapon or abilities like Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, Multi-Shot, Concussive Shot, etc. before Legion. While it just got Serpent Sting back, it’s still missing the others. Again, those melee abilities it has now belonged to all 3 specs. The most iconic SV ability of all time is indisputably Explosive Shot which it no longer has.
Historical precedent does not favour melee SV no matter how much you pretend it does. The post-Legion iterations of SV are further from the Vanilla version than the ranged iterations that came before Legion.
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Not to be that guy, but there was a reward back in Vanilla to opting for being in such a range that you could raptor strike between auto shots… but honestly I have no dog in this fight for survival’s fate. Just a fun anecdote.
Actually, raptor strike did a lot of damage in vanilla. It wasn’t a handicap it was a skill Hunters have/had. Hunters don’t only use Bows and rely on their pets when they are Hunting. Keeping at range wasn’t “always” preferable it was players “choice” in doing so, hence why the talent tree was placed out the way it was. Survival talents in Vanilla + alone should tell you it was meant to Survive adding some Defensive and melee boost, which was an arsenal for Hunters like how Warriors and Rogues were able to use Bows, but I guess by your logic Warriors and rogues shouldn’t use bows and should only stick to melee weapons. So there isn’t any actual lore precedent here. The SV Hunters in lore were either invented post-Legion or redefined as SV post-Legion in an attempt to retroactively justify the spec being melee. <-- WHAT!!! The spec Survival had talents that boosted your Mongoose and Raptor Strike and later made the spec more of a Hybrid of Melee/Survival/Range. The fact that they took away Survival range was because we already have a Full ranger, which was Marksman. They didn’t build up on it and should have transferred all the Survival abilities to Marksman talent tree. This move, though, allowed them to bring back Melee Hunters giving Hunter variety to be Marksman, Melee, or Beastmastery.
But Lacerate, amirite? (would link the vanilla level 40 talent, but I guess I’m not a cool enough dude, I guess)
Ahh… yes how I forgot about that LOL. I think it was brought back in Legion too?
No it wasnt? It had 2 melee attacks but that was for them not being able to attack in melee range . theu didnt really do anything
I’ve seen this claimed before but I’ve never seen any backing for it. You can rule out any PvP/world situation for this because this would put the Hunter in too much danger to justify any DPS advantage. But I’m not even convinced there is a DPS advantage. You would have to ensure you can actually run in, cast Raptor Strike (which buffed your next melee auto-attack, by the way, and wasn’t itself its own melee attack), and run out within the swing timer. On top of that this would preclude casting any ranged attacks, namely Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot; actual Vanilla rotations rely on pretty precise timing of these abilities and the swing timer and I don’t see any room to fit in a Raptor Strike. Not to mention having to actually talent into certain things to make this worth it.
I’ve gone over old guides from Vanilla/BC as well as current private server guides and I’ve never seen anyone advocate for running in and Raptor Striking at any point.
You know what did more damage? Your ranged attacks, especially given the fact that Agility provided 2 points of ranged AP per point v.s. just 1 melee AP. Raptor Strike was only a useful tool when you were stuck in melee. Not being able to use your powerful ranged toolkit when in melee ranged was the handicap. The melee abilities existed to lessen the effect of the handicap, but it was still a handicap.
WoW Hunters do, or at least did before Legion.
If the Hunter has a ranged weapon at hand there is no reason to use a melee weapon, period. You can get pedantic about whether they can use a ranged weapon in melee range if you want, but a) getting concerned about realism in WoW is a farce and b) it is unnecessary and disruptive to portray that in WoW as it restricts the actual unique aspects of Hunters (i.e. ranged weapons) and gives them a limitation no one else has.
It was absolutely always prefereble to keep to ranged. Not only was it better DPS; it was safer for the Hunter. No talent combination would make it worth it to deliberately run into melee range. Not even the pre-1.7 talents. If you ended up in melee range it was because someone or something else caught up to you, not because you caught up to them. If you actually were running in deliberately, I’ll be blunt: you shouldn’t have been playing a Hunter. It’s your preference to fight in melee? Too bad. Play a melee class if that’s what you want. Hunters had a “choice” to fight in melee as much as they had a choice to stack Spirit gear, i.e. you can do it if you want, but you’ll be unviable and undesired in all forms of competitive content.
Because nothing says “defend and survive” like deliberately running into the vastly-more-dangerous melee range when you have a superior ranged weapon in hand already, right?
Those tools existed for the cases where you got stuck in melee, not for deliberately running into melee.
Yes, actually. They didn’t have any ranged abilities other than Shoot. The only reasons for the ranged weapon were pulling and situations where you couldn’t reach the target at all (i.e. they were on some raised inaccessible platform or something).
I was talking about lore precedence in that part you quoted, but it seems you got lost along the way and started talking about talents again. I’ll play along regardless. You’re assuming specs back then defined your entire playstyle and identity like they do now. That wasn’t true, especially for pure DPS classes. Most of your identity and toolkit was in the base class with the specs enhancing certain parts of that. Survival enhanced the utility/melee; this is true. That doesn’t mean you were meant to go Survival and stick to melee. No self-respecting Hunter did that because, again, it was not a viable playstyle nor was it intended to be. Survival would go on to double down on the utility aspects and that’s how it developed into the eventual Explosive Shot spec we all knew and loved.
And yet all three Mage and Warlock specs are classes, and all three Rogue specs are stealthy physical melee weapon experts. Apparently it’s fine to have the same basic archetype for multiple specs in one class but this is ONLY ever a problem for Hunters when it’s all 3 ranged weapon specs. Why is that?
Specs do not need to be totally different in playstyle and identity. That’s why they are called specialisations. The foundational identity comes from the class. Stop trying to turn specs into classes. Survival and Marksmanship had enough differences between them to justify being different specs.
No they shouldn’t have as this would only water down both Marksmanship and ranged Survival for the sake of a melee spec hardly anyone wants. It’s already been established that this “Vanilla melee Hunter” is a figment of your imagination so they didn’t bring anything back; again, no Hunter spec lacked a ranged weapon before Legion and no amount of revisionist history can change that. The specs already had plenty of variety and, if they needed more, they could be diversified even further while still keeping them all ranged. Again, none of the other pure DPS classes are a mixed of melee and ranged; there is no reason 3 ranged weapon specs is untenable.
You probably forgot about it because it was generic, bland, and useless. It was Rend with a different name and no damage scaling and therefore functionally useless (it even had Rend’s icon). They brought it back in Legion as nostalgia bait and then promptly removed it in BFA in favour of Serpent Sting, a hallmark of Ranged Survival, thus further demonstrating the superiority of Ranged Survival.
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