Hey, want to remind me what the favored weapons of Rexxar, one of the most iconic Hunters in all of WoW, uses? What range did he attack from in Warcraft 3 all the way back in 2002? I’m not sure why you just make up blatant lies like this. It only makes you look dishonest lol
Rexxar’s axes are magically as effective as a gun is, the same way any warriors sword is. Because the game’s a fantastical, magical world, that doesn’t follow realism. Swords and guns are equals in-universe.
And just another Bepples classic, derailing a thread that never asked for his opinion on Survival’s weapon type. Do you have opinions on how these changes will affect the parse numbers for Survival, or do you just hunt the forums for anything that says ‘Survival’ in the title so you can obsessively say ‘MELEE BAD!!!’?
In any case he’s a Beastmaster i.e. a lore character and not the WoW player class which was absolutely established as a ranged weapon user. Our class derives inspiration from Rexxar in the form of pets i.e. the actual iconic part.
Shrieking “REXXAR” left and right doesn’t make melee SV any less a bad idea.
Oh I missed the part where you can fight with swords at full effectiveness at 40 yards.
I mean you guys are the ones that started preemptively complaining about me in the thread before I posted anything.
As for these changes, here’s my opinion: it won’t affect SV’s parse counts very much because when it comes to SV it’s not enough for the spec to be as good as the others but rather it has to be much better than everything else for people to consider it.
The man who comes up with silly analogies.
Nope. The intent of the class was always to be ranged weapon centric. Even now the class is mostly designed like that; Survival not having a ranged weapon is just a weird unnecessary and ill-fitting quirk.
And melee attacks such as Raptor Strike, and melee weapons like with the survival spec that’s been using it for nearly a decade! Wow, it’s really cool that you’re allowed to borrow more than a single thing from the lore, huh? Open up the talent tree in retail, and you’ll see Rexxar’s the person standing above it that they chose to represent the spec.
This entire “argument” is goalpost shifting by the way. “Hunters ALWAYS used ranged!” “Rexxar, the most iconic hunter didn’t, all the way back in WC3.” “W-well… He’s a lore character which means he has different abilities we don’t have!” Completely irrelevant. Just be an adult and admit that you were wrong lmao
Oh, so you’re not talking about in-universe power, you’re talking about player-power wise? So you believe all warriors should also pick up a bow and/or gun then, yes? Rogues too? Clearly there’s no reason for them to use those silly old melee weapons when the glorious ranged weapon exists! Unless you’re going to seriously argue this incredibly weak and ridiculous point with other classes, it’s a pretty poor attempt at special pleading.
I didn’t say your name, but yeah, you’re notorious for derailing threads with a decade old obsession and weak talking points, kind of like you’re doing right now. If the shoe fits as they say.
The class is still “primarily a ranged attacker.” Even survival, cutting the other specs out of the equation, is primarily a ranged attacker. They also remain as the primary class to use ranged weapons—though were never limited to that. One of the sample abilities listed even is based on melee combat (Wing Clip). Serpent Sting remains a part of the SV toolkit.
The thing is, this sheet is no longer accurate, regardless. Look at those primary attributes of Agility, Spirit, Intellect, and Stamina. Or even the advanced weapon skills below— only 2/8 weapons listed involve ranged use (that is including throwing weapons as a ranged weapon). Oddly enough, I see no bows or guns listed.
So how are those dual-wield axes going for SV right now?
The main point of Rexxar is the pets. In fact both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm gave Rexxar access to ranged attacks because the melee part wasn’t important and it better matched the WoW class closest to Rexxar.
Of all the stupid arguments for making SV melee… which is all of them… chasing lore characters and this one in particular is among the stupidest.
This has been a basic fact since the start. WoW playable classes don’t perfectly mirror lore characters, nor should they. They derive characteristics from them where it makes sense. That doesn’t mean whiplashing SV around to being purely melee after 12 years of using a ranged weapon is a good idea. And look how it’s turned out for SV. It’s been a bumpy ride to say the least ever since they did it. You’d have to be hopelessly biased towards melee to believe it was a good idea and execution.
Hunters should use ranged weapons because it’s a unique and iconic part of the class and it gives a specific foundation to an otherwise vague and broad concept. A Hunter without a ranged weapon was always a bad idea; even before the class development consistently further reinforced the Hunter’s ranged capability and sidelined the melee inclusions.
Ranged weapons are important advantages in both. Classes aren’t all lorewise omnipotent demigods, you know. Being able to dish out damage with a weapon from afar is still a key advantage. That’s why there’s a wealth of lore characters and units that do it.
Me: Spellcasting is an iconic and powerful advantage for mages
Youy: So you believe all Warriors and Rogues should be casting spells, right? No point to using melee weapons when spells exist!
Similarly stupid argument. Warriors and Rogues have class foundations and frameworks that reinforce their use of melee weapons. With Hunters those are all revolving around using a ranged weapon so Survival just comes across as a stunted and handicapped Hunter. This isn’t a hypothetical; you can literally go around and ask Hunters what they think of Survival. Most don’t play it because there’s little sense in opting to be melee in a class that can otherwise be ranged.
Your arguments would fair just as well as shrieking “REXXAR!!! REXXAR!!!” at the top of your lungs in every direction. You’re in no place to judge others on “weak talking points”.
Most of the class following the class identity isn’t license for part of the class to avoid it.
OK then it should be no big deal to make it a ranged weapon user, right?
“Limited to ranged weapons” is an oxymoron. Survival is limited to melee weapons. BM and MM are not limited by their use of ranged weapons.
Bursting Shot is also a melee range ability. I guess that makes Marksmanship a melee spec
Sometimes melee abilities have utility for ranged specs; especially in an era when Hunters couldn’t use their ranged abilities up close.
It’s not even SV specific anymore. SV just has it because it happens to have the same class tree as the others, even though none of that class tree reflects SV at all.
Seriously, have a look through the class tree. It’s designed as if BM and MM are the only specs.
??? Advanced weapon skills just means weapon skills you have to learn at a weapon master in a city…
The point is even at WoW’s launch Blizzard considered Hunters to be a ranged class and that was only more and more reinforced as time went on. The notion of a Hunter lacking a ranged weapon was not something anyone envisioned before Legion.
I can have one axe as my main weapon right now lmao. Since you don’t play retail (Yet have such strong feelings for it?), let me tell you what happens when you open up the talent tree as Survival: You have Rexxar standing above your points and representing the spec. Why do you think that is, buddy? Everyone but you knows the answer why.
Your right! Do you know what Rexxar’s unique ability is compared to Survival? He gets multiple pets and multiple melee weapons! Your countering your own “WHERE’S YOUR SECOND AXE THEN!?!?”, if only you had an ounce of self-awareness.
“Warriors should only use melee weapons and not shields, because it’d make it unique and homogeneous”, “Mages should only use fire magic because-”, “All priests should heal because-”, you’re narrow-minded, shallow, and emotionally-biased views on what a class is mean nothing, and it’s good you’re not a game designer. Priest is less homogenous because of shadow priest, and that’s not inherently a bad thing.
Classes are allowed to explore their fantasy in normal ways (Like a hunter using the tools they’ve been using since the dawn of time), or less normal ways (Like a priest drawing the corrupted power of an old god for power), I don’t know what to tell you other than to stop being so close-minded.
Yeah? So the warrior class is nonsensical, and should all be using guns, with maybe some knives as a backup like any modern-day soldier with access to guns would? We all know turning down a gun to pick up a sword is a death sentence, right? Why don’t you fight for warriors using guns with the same fervor you do survival?
Ah, classic Bepples. Point out his reasoning is nonsense, then he switches up the goalposts the second you do! The part I was responding to wasn’t about how ““Iconic”” it was (Though presenting your feelings of what a class “should” be as arguments, mixed with denialism of established lore and characters already does that), I was responding to your nonsense about power and range.
Your strawman actually leads in to a salient point though: All classes and specs don’t have to be carbon copies of each other, you’re right. So accept that about a melee hunter and move on, it’s been a decade lmao
Yeah, but WHY would a warrior use a sword, instead of picking up a gun and having a 40yard range warrior? That just plays worse than any ranged weapon! Clearly Blizzard is out of touch and is spitting on the idea of a warrior by intentionally handicapping them! All warriors are inherently broken and can never work because they’re denying their TRUE weapons: Guns!
Oof, I see Rexxar is a sensitive topic for you buddy, and I get it. Really hard to argue “FANTASY! LORE!! RANGED!!!” when the most iconic hunter of the series was melee long before they even started the game we’re currently talking about. I completely understand why you’d want to pretend he doesn’t exist considering that single character dismantles all of your ignorant arguments.
You literally believe anything in a 5 yd range is interior to you at 40 range but dont seem to realize hunters are below damage wise to guess what, melee classes lmfao. Go ahead and honk your nose my dude
you got rsv in classic wrath and its already dying off so
doesnt matter what you will ever say, when the game came out survival was a melee spec. Learn to code and deal with it. You cant keep running from your demons forever my guy
Hey there main SV hunter here since legion. I’ve been playing with the new buffs and let me tell ya it feels nice. Once you get the haste it feels even better. I’m pretty competitive with other specs at my ilvl and get inspected a lot during dungeons because of the damage I can dish out. Something like bursting over 120k sometimes higher depending on the pull. Also its the beginning of expansion. our spec scales better and better as the expansion goes on so there’s that. Keep playing it, I recommend it, master it, and turn heads.
Some new developers came in later on in WoW’s development and retconned stuff left and right to make their idiotic decisions make sense. That doesn’t make the decisions self-justifying. Classifying Rexxar as an SV Hunter is entirely a post Legion invention. He was always associated with pets and was known as a Beast Master. All his WC3 abilities are now part of BM or, at least in the case of Stampede, something themed after BM.
Also this is a weak response to what you quoted. The fact of the matter is if Survival is meant to emulate Rexxar it does an extremely poor job at it. It doesn’t use dual-wielded axes or even dual-wielding at all and most of the way Rexxar interacts with pets is represented more thoroughly via BM. Rexxar also doesn’t go around throwing bombs.
Never a good sign when they don’t know whether to use “your” or “you’re”…
Rexxar is better represented in BM. End of story. Because the point is being a beastmaster.
All of those are hilariously bad examples. With Hunter they took a core capability away from one of the specs. That would be like making a Rogue spec that can’t use Stealth. None of your examples reflect that.
Yeah, tools like ranged weapons…
Don’t say “yeah” when you evidently totally misunderstood the point.
Classes have key, unique advantages. Warriors have their own advantages in that they can charge into the thick of things and tear enemies apart. Rogues can use their stealth and agility to pull through in close combat. Mages can use schools of magic, Druids can shapeshift and draw on nature’s power, and Hunters can use their versatility via ranged weapons and pets to gain an advantage. Making SV melee is trying to turn a Hunter spec into a Warrior, and given that we’re here 6 years later still talking about how SV needs more and more special treatment just to tread water evidently it didn’t work out so well.
You’re trying to argue that ranged weapons have no lorewise advantages over melee weapons or spells. I shouldn’t need to explain why that’s silly but you have a way of surprising me in that respect. The way Warriors fight also has its own advantages. They don’t transfer well to Hunters, and it doesn’t make sense to pretend that ranged weapons are equivalent to melee weapons to excuse haphazardly trying to cram melee aspects into the ranged weapon class.
Yes classes don’t need to be carbon copies of one another. That’s why it’s good that Hunters use ranged weapons to distinguish themselves from the wealth of already-existing melee weapon users.
Making SV melee is literal homogenisation. It’s taking one of three ranged weapon users to add a thirteenth melee weapon user.
A decadce ago we were raiding in Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs as Survival, which was a highly successful and widely enjoyed ranged spec. So no, it has not been a decade.
… because that class has a framework and foundation that supports melee combat. Hunters don’t. Like I said many times already. You seem to have very bad reading comprehension. Or at least you already think of what you’re going to reply with before reading so you end up missing things a lot.
It doesn’t, though, because sensible class design isn’t blindly chasing what lore characters are doing. This is common sense stuff. Survival is the go-to example of this being a bad idea, so it’s a little weird being here 6 years later pretending it’s all fine and it was a good idea.
The Hunter class was, and still is, built as a ranged weapon user. We did get pets from Rexxar, but that doesn’t mean making one of our specs melee (especially after a very long history of being ranged) is a good idea.
While I am a bit curious on how/ what math lead blizz to settle on a 2% buff to everything, the buffs are still nice. WFB hits harder though yes I still do miss ye olde days of wild fire cluster but bombs hitting harder are always a plus. Also a beefier fury of the eagle is nice.
Overall I am happy with the buffs. Yes we could argue that blizz seems to be a bit slow when it comes to balancing specs but on the surface it does look like blizz is trying to make more things balanced rather than “well you have 1 spec that is doing well our work is done till next patch cycle”.
Oh look, Bepples showed up and did exactly what I said he would. How predictable.
Yeah, and that manual you have absolutely fallen in love with spamming on Survival threads also says that Paladins use some combination of Auras/Seals/Blessings, that they’re important for the class, & are “heroes of the Alliance” (alliance only), Shamans use totems and their wording for “Horde only”, and that Rogues aren’t tanky/can’t take a beating.
And yet, all of that isn’t factual anymore. It’s almost like something from 20~ years ago isn’t totally relevant when things are having massive changes every 6 years~. Almost like when time changes, visions , directions, and ideals change as well.
Also, here’s your own reminder: they literally revamped the entire trees and kept Survival melee, and after Dragonflight Melee Survival will have existed for as long as well-defined Ranged Survival.
Ahh, OK, I get what you do now, Bepples. You throw out 8 different talking points at once, then disingenuously shuffle between them when people try and breakdown why they’re each nonsensical. “From a realism and player-power standpoint a hunter that doesn’t use ranged is a bad hunter.” “So from a realism and player-power standpoint a warrior not using a gun or exclusively throwing his weapons is a bad warrior?” “Well, let’s actually talk about class design instead of player-power and realism.”
Let’s laser focus in on a single topic for one second: Class Fantasy.
Try and explain to me how Rexxar himself, specifically, betrays the class fantasy for what a “Hunter” is in the WoW universe. And again, I’m not talking about class design in WoW. I’m talking specifically about established lore that the games pull from, and what the original team envisioned when they thought “Hunter” back in 2002.
Are you going to try and argue that Blizzard conspired to make Rexxar strictly so that they could justify survival’s changes 15 years from then, or can we agree ‘Rugged, melee survivalist’ fell in to the category of what they believed a “Hunter” could be?
Can confirm the new buffs feel nice, I’m only 5 ilevels behind you but my weapon is not as good as yours and my burst the other night was about 99k, steady around 44k - 50k dps atm which is pretty nice. My only issue is we need another button for the rotation, just seems too…easy(?). Almost seems easier than Arcane Mage at times haha. I wish we had black arrow back on survival to reset explosive shot. Miss the OG Survival hunter, was so much fun.
Also, I wish our AoE rotation wasn’t so RNG based or felt better. Wish we had a way to reset butchery that wasn’t our 4 set. I also feel like our talent tree could use some fixing or tweaking, atm we really only have 1 dedicated mythic + build. We only switch out Fury of the Eagle for increased Mongoose bite damage and Death Chakram to Stampede depending on Tyrannical and Fortified weeks.
Those are all bad examples. None of them are talking about something as core to the class as the mode of combat that defines it. The Hunter one defines the class as a ranged weapon and pet user.
It’s not just the manual, either. I like linking the manual because a) it’s clear and unambiguous and b) it’s from the game’s release so it dismisses the often-repeated revisionism that melee Hunter was an intended playstyle at the game’s launch and that gives precedent to melee SV. Every single time they had the opportunity to revise the Hunter class and update it they doubled down on the ranged aspects. It was only in Legion when some newer developers whiplashed SV around to not having a ranged weapon at all, and even then they still design the Hunter class as a ranged weapon user with SV being an awkward, ill-fitting exception. SV itself has access to several ranged weapon attacks; they just arbitrarily and nonsensically force it to rely on a couple melee attacks just so they have a pointless categorical distinction from the real Hunter specs.
That would just mean they quadrupled down on a terrible decision as they often do.
Besides; WoW’s in its stagnation/decline phase anyway. In all the most memorable and popular parts of the game’s history including the current Classic version Survival was a widely enjoyed ranged spec, so its ranged tenure will always be relevant. If people can make a big deal about a supposed melee SV tenure in classic that didn’t even exist you can bet 12 years as a ranged spec will remain relevant in discussions about the spec’s direction.
When the foundation and unique advantage/appeal of the class is established to be the use of ranged weapons, then yes shoehorning in a melee Hunter is just giving us a handicapped Hunter. It still follows all the same design principles and standards as the rest of the class and it still uses the same baseline kit and class tree; only it nonsensically asks you to throw away the ranged weapon. In fact, it’s such a handicapped Hunter that SV Hunters routinely ask for special treatment to compensate for being melee.
Warriors are built from the ground up around melee weapons; their appeal and strengths are centred around it. The entire framework of that class is melee. A ranged weapon spec would be a very poor fit (even if it would actually cause viability issues for the other specs since being ranged is generally more desirable). Some people like melee weapons, some people like ranged weapons. That’s why they should have classes that focus on either and not change ranged weapon users to melee or vice versa. Chasing the Warrior audience when designing a Hunter spec was destined to fail (and yes they explicitly admitted they were aiming for rerolls and new players over Hunter mains when changing SV).
I find I have to repeat myself a lot when talking to you…
Well I am talking about class design in WoW since that’s what matters when talking about how Hunters are designed.
This seems like a fundamental disagreement because you believe (incorrectly) that unconditionally chasing what lore characters do is good class design and I think that, while it’s good for classes to derive elements from lore characters, it’s not good to suddenly bring over a decade of iterative development to a screeching halt to try to imitate a, let’s be honest, relatively unimportant side character.
We already know what the original team envisioned when they thought of Hunter back in 2002 (or at least in 2004 since Hunters weren’t actually added in until the very end of WoW beta in that year) because we have the launch manual which says Hunters are primarily a ranged attacker and that while other classes like Warrior depend on melee weapons Hunter depends on ranged weapons.
When have I ever in my posts implied that they conspired to make Rexxar to justify melee Survival later on? What an utterly ridiculous strawman. It’s now evident to me after less than 20 posts from you that you just have extremely bad reading comprehension so you rely on what you think other people are saying and not what they’re actually saying.
Rexxar did influence Hunter development in the form of pets. End of story. A Hunter without a ranged weapon wasn’t part of the vision until the Legion developers came along. As for them: I’m confident that Chad Nervig (Celestalon), who was likely the main advocate for melee Survival, was just a genuinely stupid and talentless person. Hunters aren’t the only thing he screwed up in his time on WoW.
One topic at a time, big guy. This is what I was talking about when I said you love you shuffle around talking points so no one can be on the same page about what you’re actually trying to argue for. You’ve talked about class fantasy being a knock against Survival, so let’s finish the conversation of class fantasy before we tackle design.
If you believe melee hunter fits the fantasy of the class, just say ‘Yes, I agree’, and we can move on from there.
Didn’t answer my question, buddy. Wanna try again? Can we agree ‘Rugged, melee survivalist’ fell in to the category of what they believed a “Hunter” could be back in 2002, and did it contradict any previously existing lore when he debuted? This is a straight forward question, and everyone knows why you’re attempting to dodge it.
