This doesn’t make all his takes wrong.
Most normal, heroic, and mythic raids will have at least one person logging. It’s that universal.
Even if not every raid were running WCL, it’s unlikely that for all these years WCL has been specifically missing SV Hunters more than any other spec.
It matters because it’s not indicative of a spec with a healthy reputation and following. Hardly anyone wants to invest time and effort into it.
Nope because unlike you I don’t base my arguments on personal experience.
Where’s the data I won’t like?
I’m sure for some people SV being melee is a critical part of their enjoyment with the spec. The point is that’s not a lot of people; it’s probably not even most of the SV playerbase. Very few people would have their WoW play significantly degraded if SV became ranged. So it doesn’t make sense to continue compromising in favour of that tiny niche of people.
Does it suck to be told that your enjoyment and preference in this game is expendable? Yes, but that’s exactly what happened to ranged SV fans and there were way more of them. The fact of the matter is it doesn’t make sense to take away something from a lot of players just to benefit very few players.
Plenty of SV Hunters are also there for the gameplay/rotation, which could be mostly preserved even as a ranged spec. Then there are those that would prefer melee but it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Very few are there for the specific combination of being melee + the gameplay and would quit if it weren’t so. For most of the melee Hunter roleplayers if they added a talented melee option within BM that would be sufficient.
Well, no, because we know that ranged SV was a lot more popular than melee SV.
Nope because I would just ignore it and never pick it. Ranged BM would still be there as the default option if I wanted to play it, and before Legion I actually didn’t play BM that much at all. I only play it because ranged SV is gone.
Melee Hunter is niche.
It would mostly just be swapping any ranged weapon attack with a melee weapon one, for example Cobra Shot to Raptor Strike, Barbed Shot to Lacerate, Multi-Shot to Carve, Counter Shot to Muzzle. They could keep the rest largely the same. The melee versions would have the same effects and interactions as the ranged ones except they would do some more damage to compensate. That way the rest of the tree could stay the same. From there it’s mostly a matter of tuning.
If they really wanted to make full use of this new talent system they’d be looking into stuff like this. Instead it’s just mostly rebuilding what we had in BFA and SL with extra steps.
Well that’s what happened with melee SV: the smaller party got everything they wanted.
No, it isn’t.
Physical melee is well overdone. We have the 3 Rogue specs + the 2 Warrior specs, and you could probably consider Feral Druid as well.
Physical melee is just not unique or interesting once it’s been done that many times. Take a look at something like Carve/Butchery. What makes them Hunter abilities and not Warrior abilities? Just a matter of the decision, nothing inherent. If those abilities existed on the Warrior class no one would bat an eye.
Good grief, I didn’t even expect you to double down on that. No, calling the spec bad is not insultinmg the people who like it.
Did you miss the part where many of us lost our favourite playstyle option because of melee SV? So yes we did absolutely get targeted.
They’re not, really. It’s just 3.3 with a staggered content release. As someone who played back then I can assure you WotLK classic is mostly authentic.
No. Exotic pets are an iconic and unique part of BM. Just because SV Hunters are accustomed to being handed unique BM things doesn’t mean they should also be given exotic pets.
It’s correct that ranged SV was not any more controversial than other specs but it’s incorrect that melee SV is also not controversial. It’s the most controversial spec in the game. You evidently living under a rock doesn’t change that.
So? Why should they be given special status? The ranged SV fans were there first, for longer, and there were a lot more of them.
This is not proof that SV is not an unpopular spec.
You’re still wrong about MoP and WoD, for one. In MoP SV was more consistently higher represented than BM, and in WoD it wasn’t consistently any of the 3 specs: it changed with each raid release and MM actually spent the most time as the highest represented because 6.2 lasted so long.
But most importantly: you’re still fixated on what was the best/most highly represented (not always the same BTW) and you are incapable of understanding (or unwilling) that a spec can still have decent representation even if it isn’t the highest. For example, it’s true that MM outscales SV in WotLK and becomes the more popular option, but it’s also true that SV remains a popular option and doesn’t drop to something like 3% of the Hunter playerbase like melee SV.
That’s the point: ranged SV was consistently a popular spec. The only time it ever really reached abandonment status was in 6.2 when they gutted it right before announcing Legion. And yes in Classic and BC it wasn’t very popular but all 3 Hunter specs had very little separating them from a fantasy point of view back then. Most people are looking at the WotLK-WoD stretch.
In that time SV was consistently popular. You go at length to deny that because admitting it would put it in stark contrast with melee SV. You’re not delusional enough like Sokyra to argue melee SV is actually popular so your best bet is to revise history and say ranged SV was also unpopular so at least they didn’t actively make it worse.
The truth is ranged SV was popular while melee SV is only really “popular” if it does extremely high damage i.e. the most in the game. Even doing decent is not enough for SV. Right now its damage is actually pretty good but it’s not enough to bribe people to play the spec like it was with the SL tier set bonus. So either we a) keep SV overpowered at all times to keep people playing it, b) let SV remain a very unpopular and alienating choice, or c) reanalyse the decision to make it melee. Only C is good for the long term health of the spec and the Hunter class. The other 2 choices rest entirely on pride and an unwillingness to admit they make a mistake.
Your post back then completely sidestepped the point at hand, which wasn’t going well for you, to try to make it about me instead. I’m not going to indulge that. It’s a transparent attempt to change the focus of the discussion and waste time and here you are trying it again.
The “big boy point” is that ranged SV was a widely popular and enjoyed spec while melee SV is an exclusionary, alienating, niche spec. They made it worse by making it melee i.e. they made a mistake. This is transparently and obviously true to anyone that isn’t hopelessly biased. Rewriting history won’t change that.