But why should they need to? Survival was barely played when it was a ranged spec, so why not leave it for the people who enjoy it? I’ve been a hunter since Vanilla and was practically laughed out of a guild for attempting a Survival spec back then. My favorite was my Survival/BM spec that was somewhere just around barely playable but really fun.
worked very well as defined by what metric? a revolving door of OP specs that were given the lime light? or worked well as defined by the spec you liked to play currently existed?
I dont think you read what I said, they want to play a safe spec at range without any actual ranged dps mechanics. do you think people would flock to BM if it had cast times?
so if one spec is consistently low it’s a problem but if one spec is consistently high it’s ok? i feel like if we see spec population as a problem to be solved, the latter is fundamentally as important as the former.
I don’t care about representation. that’s not evasion, that’s just me saying I don’t care about it lol
maybe you cry and say people are deflecting and equating when they bring up things that point out how flawed your thinking is
because you personally agree with it? get real lol
go ahead and give non sv examples
SV had good representation in sl s3 and s4, whats your point?
my question was “do you think they’d introduce a fully mobile 40y spec”. you didn’t answer that. why do you think they don’t add full mobility to every ranged spec? why can’t you answer these questions bud?
but it’s not unwanted, I want it.
why do you think it’s okay for rdps to be able to attack everything with no penalty or downside? shouldn’t that be a problem to you since you’re apparently so invested in the equity of the game? (there’s only two bow specs! we need more! there’s been 3 melee classes added to the game and only 1 ranged class! it’s not fair!!)
how does BM “explore different archetypes of ranged weapon” lol
Conceptually, it doesn’t. In actual gameplay, though, its only frequent and real mechanics commonly taken beyond hitting KC basically on CD are related to ranged weaponry:
- shoot a fan of arrows to have access to passive AoE for X seconds, and
- spread DoTs, previously with a decently significant element of gambling speed to full ramp against chance of losing stacks entirely.
…Because devs/gods/titans forbid BM have any interesting gameplay palpably related to mastery of beasts…
The “benefit” of having cast-times in the class is thematic. It depends entirely on people liking the idea of a Hunter having cast times, and evidently not very many people do.
Again… having skill expressions regarding uptime management is simply a matter of trade-offs, barring a single overpowered outlier (BM), who gets all at no cost.
If you want to use BM as precedent for getting contextual and rotational ease, both (i.e., a shin-high skill ceiling), though, you’ve no business feigning interest in balance or breadth of choice.
You may as well claim that Multi-shot alone carries MM.
Wildfire Bomb itself is just a generic AoE. It has no interactions, and its damage comes from what was siphoned away from former sources of damage. Without it, you’d just have a sh*tton more Carve/Butchery damage, to the exact same output but with Mastery scaling less abysmally, with different skills affecting and being affected by them to, again, the same effect.
No, WFB only comes to carry any interest or unique leverage once it becomes Infusions, which is not Wildfire Bomb itself; Infusions could have easily been attached to any other CD reducible by other actions, just as Frenzied Strikes could just as easily have affected something else.
The basic AoE is not what matters, just as Multi-shot isn’t uniquely necessary to source AoE-ification of other MM abilities. A thrown explosive, moreover, is not mechanically or thematically of any difference from an explosive manifested into existence at the target’s location or launched by string or cartridge. We have other explosives in the game not launched by weapons nor as spells; we have plenty of conal AoEs. WfB could as easily have been Lynx Rush or Chakrams or Hawk Strike or Spear Charge or even just Explosive Shot so long as some RSV enthusiast didn’t insist on its remaining a less interesting copy of Devouring Plague.
What matters is the interactions between actions. Kit-interactivity, not any single action, is what “carries” SV’s kit. (Which is to say, it’s not “carried” at all. It’s just, for all its issues here and there, a decently interactive and generally decent kit.)
Saying otherwise just makes it clear that one’s argument is purely and intentionally reductive, and is once again being applied to one spec while ignoring its implications on all others.
right, which is kind of my point, because 1) isn’t any different than mm and 2) isn’t really any different than MM with SST, nor is it any different than rSV really. I just don’t think he’s actually being honest or interested in any real discussion if he says BM “explores a ranged weapon archetype”
This much becomes repeatedly apparent.
2 specs. Wilder and Ranger. Two. Not two + MSV. Two. Just those two. Each supporting damn near triple the breadth and depth of choice of current trees, because that’s a hell of a lot easier to do when not awkwardly cutting up coordinating with pets into a separate spec from summoning and enhancing pets or ranged weapon technique into a separate spec from specialized ranged weapons.
I get the foaming at the mouth to get rid of MSV thing, I do, but it’s damn hard to communicate with others when replacing their clearly stated words and intentions when with those of your random hand-canon boogiemen.
I started with “what would most allow me to engage with the thematic threads promised to Hunter, especially its use of techniques, tools, and/or coordination with pets” because my interest in the class isn’t arbitrarily limited to ranged weaponry.
Apart from that… again, perhaps get your head out of your closet and actually read what people write, not just admittedly intentional misrepresentations that would best feed your anger?
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Discussion aside… if you guys saw this from Wowhead https://twitter.com/Wowhead/status/1747588074526396622
And the article attached to it… it shows a really really sad reality for both MM and SV…
And i think there is hope for MM.
SV is dead tho.
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SV and MM have nearly identical numbers means there’s hope for MM but not SV? huh?
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Yes, becuz the issue with MM is tunning, the fantasy of the class and the feeling of being a Marksman are there. This low representation on MM is relatively new, and it is cleary due really bad tunning.
The low representation in SV is not new. and the problems on SV are far deeper than “just tunning”
MM needs some work… SV needs a miracle
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don’t hurt yourself with all that reaching bud it’s bad for your back. if mm relies on being aggressively tuned to compete with BM that doesn’t sound like a very well-designed class 
Well… i didnt said it was a “very well designed class”.
I said that the Fantasy of the class is there.
But hey, if thats what you read from it, its okey
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Are you talking exclusively about Classic? Because if you include the expansions then this is absolutely not true. It was a highly popular spec from when it got Explosive Shot in WotLK until it got nuked from orbit around mid WoD several years later.
In any case, Survival is barely played as a melee spec. So even if we presume that ranged SV was barely played (again, false), it still had people that played it and enjoyed it just like melee SV does. So what makes the melee SV enjoyers more important than the ranged SV enjoyers?
The metric of appeal to Hunters. While it wasn’t the case that all 3 Hunter specs were equally popular all the time, there were plenty of Hunters willing to play each spec given viability. It wasn’t the case that a Hunter spec was avoided by most of the Hunter playerbase for 4 expansions in a row.
Don’t try to throw the metric argument at me considering you have literally none to support melee SV being a good idea and you’re proud of that.
I think BM wouldn’t be as popular, but it would still be popular.
It would have nowhere near the level of resistance to playing a melee Hunter spec.
One spec being consistently low is a big part of the reason for another spec being consistently high.
And yes, they should also make MM more appealing compared to BM. Melee SV is the much bigger problem, though.
It is evasion because the question is whether SV’s representation makes sense given its performance. Your view on the importance of representation isn’t relevant.
I mean you’re out here saying BM is just as less capable a ranged weapon user as SV is, something no one else has ever thought, so yeah you do deflect and falsely equate a lot.
No because ranged SV used to exist, the class identity is still heavily based in ranged combat, many people have asked for ranged SV including high profile WoW influencers, etc. None of that holds for melee BM.
I would say Demonology in Legion. They made a pretty unpopular rework to the spec because they considered the “class fantasy” (rather their narrow interpretation of it) to be more important. Like Survival, the result was that it bombed and they had to rework it again in the very next expansion.
MM didn’t need to be as far ahead of the rest of the class to get good representation.
I don’t think they would make a 40 yard ranged spec because they conceptually prefer melee. That’s why they made Evoker 25 yard range.
Clearly you take a lot of issue with full mobility. I don’t think as much as Blizzard does. While they toned down ranged mobility across the board in WoD they also said back then that they’re fine with Hunters having mobility as a selling point of the class. If they were totally against a fully mobile 40 yard spec they would have made BM less mobile.
In any case, if mobility is the hold-up then they could just, you know, make a less mobile ranged SV.
Some people want SV to be a tank as well.
I think it’s something that can be supported as a unique selling point of a few specs given sufficient downside.
Bard in FF14 is a fully mobile ranged weapon user without a pet. Its existence didn’t invalidate immobile ranged jobs like Black Mage. It has trade-offs in the form of a) being relatively more complex than the average spec and b) being more geared towards sustained DPS and raid-buffing rather than turretting out DPS like a Black Mage.
Funnily enough, there was an expansion where they gave in to niche requests for a “bowmage” fantasy and added a must-use stance that turned Bard into an immobile turret like a mage. The job’s popularity then bombed because, despite having a niche loyal following, it simultaneously failed to appeal to existing Bard players and potential rerolls from the caster jobs. Fanboys on Reddit and the forums though still ardently defended it as a triumph of class design and shouted down critics wherever possible.
A lot of parallels to the history of Survival, except the part where Square Enix recognised it was a mistake and largely reworked it away from that model in the next expansion.
It does explore the archetype of a ranged Hunter with a pet. It’s a very successful archetype in fantasy including WoW as represented in the Vanilla cinematic.
Besides; if your argument depends on BM not being a ranged weapon user with a pet then that makes the decision to turn SV melee even worse. It would mean we only had 2 ranged weapon specs instead of 3 and they still sacrificed one to be yet another melee spec.
I do agree that Savagery increasing the duration of Frenzy was a mistake. The spec needs more complexity, not less. I suspect this was a decision made by a developer who plays BM for the pets and wasn’t very good at the game.
Being a little less mobile v.s. not being ranged anymore is not remotely in the same league of trade-off.
I gotta be real: whenever you post some wall of text locked away behind a section I don’t read it.
However this time I had a look at it, and it’s mostly just “if this list of reasons why WFB didn’t carry SV all magically disappeared, then WFB wouldn’t carry SV” 
Oh, so an even worse idea. Good to know.
The Hunter class not only worked well but worked at its best with 3 ranged weapon specs. They provided a lot of options for exploring the ranged weapon archetype. I’m not interested in any poorly-thought-out deviation from that.
It’s not arbitrary. Hunters were the ranged weapon class because the game needed representation of ranged weapons and melee, especially physical melee, was already well-represented by Rogues and Warriors. It also fits with the utilitarian and resourceful identity of the class.
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what are you trying to say here? you’re the one insisting it’s an important metric lol. melee sv is a good idea because it’s a good idea. having 3 ranged weapon specs on a same class would be like having a frost mage class with 3 different types of cold magic. boring and uninspired.
i very much disagree. I think it’s play rate would plummet if it had cast times. I mean look at MM, that’s 70% mobile compared to 100% mobile as a rdps and barely anybody plays that.
so it’s a problem when SV is op but MM needs to be OP and that’s the ideal solution?
how do you make MM more appealing than BM without making it extremely broken / without making BM entirely undesierable? MM hinging on BM being bad sounds like bad game design
i mean yes the representation makes sense? rogues and DH do more damage and have better utility. you know this lol. it’s the same problem with MM vs BM. one does more damage, is safer, is tankier, so why play the “worse” spec?
please tell me how BM is more capable ranged weapon user as SV? SV’s kill shots hit way harder numerically. BM uses what, barbed shot, cobra shot, and multishot? all do very little damage compared to SV’s ranged weapons.
again with the class identity argument. are you basing class identity on 1-10 again?
and now it does. what’s your point?
i would love if they did this so you would see people wouldn’t play it lol. people would freak out “this isnt the rSV I played when I was 16 wtf blizzard”
good for them? people want enhancement to be support, or BM to be a tank. you can’t say something is “unwanted” when that is observably not the case lol
so you think these downsides should exist in WoW? would you be okay with all rdps numerically performing worse than all mdps? that’s what they do in SWTOR to fix the problem.
what downside would you be okay with in wow? what’s the current downside of BM compared to every other rdps?
but you didn’t read my comment? it explores 0 different ranged weapon fantasy than MM. it performs the exact same without a ranged weapon and it does nothing MM doesn’t. the existence of it’s pet has 0 to do with ranged weapons.
You’re suggesting that the game is best crafted around a quota system of an arbitrary taxonomy (not range, not uptime, not playflow, not theme, not damage profile, not their considerations, but purely their weapon type). That is arbitrary. As arbitrary as insisting we need a class or spec each and separately for guns, bows, and crossbows, for throwing axes, throwing spears, and throwing knives, for staves, wands, and scepters.
Limiting the “resourceful” class, moreover, to the single and by your selling point most niche/rare type of weapon, moreover, is not particularly resourceful.
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i find your niche obsession with ranged weapon representation so utterly bizarre.
it’s so weird! it’s like saying “there isn’t enough light wielding dual wielding DPS specs” “why is there only one arcane magic wielding DPS spec” “why are there only two shield using tanks?”
it’s a meaningless metric he can use to avoid any real discussion. he is not interested in “fairness”
top 5 doesn’t mean anything I don’t know how good the other players are in that raid, surely you can post the log so I can see how well a rsv build parsed
And there are none that don’t use weapons / use only the shield!!
- Where’s the true Monk? Why do they need back-ornament weapons?
- Where’s my Capn’ America? Prot Paladin is merely half-assed!
The funny thing is that if there were actual mechanical differences between, say, an Arcane Shot itself (no Precise Shots yet) and an Ice Lance itself (no Shatter yet), I’d be tempted to agree. But there isn’t. Bow vs. staff = just different skins on stat-sticks, same the difference between bows, xbows, and guns or any melee weapon distinction.
All that being said…
I disagree. Ideally, it’s like a Mage having 3 different kinds of magic. Which is fine.
The problem is when obviously synergetic themes get randomly split into separate specs.
- Why should coordinating with your pet be the exclusive provenance of MSV, rather than available to BM?
Why should MM have access to special munitions only if they’re physical, bleeds, frost, nature, fire, arcane, or shadow… okay, bad example, but…Why should the ranged specialist have access only to an arbitrary limited set of ranged munitions, and the guerilla warfare theme have basically no access to sniping or hit-and-run technique?
It just makes no sense to randomly cut such capacities / themes in two. They go to the point of sabotaging each spec just to piecework a third spec out of synergies of the other two themes, whether it was RSV before or MSV now, and while that was largely unavoidable before anyways when there was no real build choice, we have actual talent trees complete with pathing and choice nodes now, if we just cared to actually do something good (rather than bloated) with them.
The difference is, and I guess this is a world-ending, super important difference, is that the bow rDPS can auto attack in between casts. To Bepples, his fantasy preference of an archer supersedes anyone else’s fantasy preference.
Yeah, exactly
Not to mention right now, in DF, MM even has two different ammo types on the talent tree. That’s why I think the elements of RSV that people want (i.e DoTs and DoT based procs) can easily be slotted on to MM with 2-3 talent nodes.
Love surv RN and would kinda hate for a rework, I think we could use a little pruning and like an evasion esk defensive (would fit in with the class fantasy), I think people would like more bleed DMG and dots which we have a lot of it just needs a lil more buff
Here’s a kicker you might not be a fan of, though: to me, Legion-esque primal, bestial/aspective (fierce, cunning, and tenacious) pet-coordinating SV could as easily be part of BM, and would likely make BM and itself better for it.
Some further device usage via a revamped Class Tree that gives always-taken utility baseline and forces choice of utility in leading to vital choice nodes, and you’ve got the best of modern MSV as well, but behind a more thematically cohesive and expansive core (pet coordination, additional aspects, and/or being fierce, cunning, and tenacious in palpable/gameplay-affecting ways).
We ultimately play builds, not classes or even specs, so I’d like as much freedom as possible to customize apparent theme and gameplay (even if I typically care little about fine-tuning capacity for particular fights, which tends to just mean underperforming outside of whatever we can most exploit via menuplay prior to combat). That works better, actually, without over-segregating threads of the same broader theme, even if it means fewer trees (otherwise sabotaging each other to carve out their own part of the pie).
To use the Mage analogue before, the three specs since WotLK after differently but to the same result Legion and onward have felt like Fire, Frost, and Frostfire. And that only becomes more obviously a waste with the opportunities available to modern talent trees.