Source: https://www.gamespace.com/featured/wow-shadowlands-hunters-horde-hairstyles-oh-my/
Question: The Hunter community is still split on the issue of the melee spec even two expansions after its introduction. With your new stance of “class over spec” and more ranged abilities returning to the class, what does it mean for Survival in the long term?
So, before checking out Ion’s answer, this question directed at him is meant simply to get some info on the future of SV as a spec, based on what has been said/discussed/argued on various forums and sites amongst the community since Legion came out. The parts of Ion’s aswer that motivates why they make their choices in terms of it’s development, those reasons are what they are.
Is it all that they are? We don’t know. But this is what they’re giving us.
Having said that…
Ion: That’s a good question. I think part of what led Survival to a melee space to begin with was trying to differentiate Survival from Marksmanship.
So, in short. Going into Legion, they wanted to further differentiate between the playstyles of MM and SV. Nothing wrong about that specifically as, well, that was their general philosophy in terms of all classes and specs at the time.
Ion: The rotations over the years had become very very similar — OK you might have a couple more magical-seeming shots in the Survival space. Beast Mastery was very clearly its own thing with its clear niche as the pet-based spec. But then you had these two ranged specs that basically did a lot of ranged shots in their rotation.
First off, Ion is wrong when he says that the “rotations” of MM and SV had become very very similar over the years. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
Starting in WotLK, they decided to add in additional key abilities into each respective talent tree in order for players to have more distinct choices when it came to playstyle-preferences.
In Cata, they basically took parts from each talent tree/category and turned those parts into what we now call Core Specializations.
There was more to it than that ofc. But essentially, Core Specs were now the key choices we had to pick between in terms of opting for our playstyle-preferences. Most talents which we picked, only served to further those initial choices made, to a certain degree/level ofc.
Going into MoP, they essentially opted to combine and preserve several talents and passive effects and make them into key elements tied to each respective specialization. Talents themselves no longer served as additional elements of depth and flavor that was tied to a specific specialization/fantasy.
Ofc talents were still unique elements on their own, but they weren’t designed with the fantasy of each spec in mind. They weren’t designed to focus as much on doubling down on said fantasies.
In short, talents were no longer part of what made each spec unique in when it came to design/fantasy/theme. Neither in terms of mechanics nor aesthetics.
What we have left are the actual Core Specs themselves. Those, apart from some minor filler abilities(ex: Multi-Shot), were nothing alike one another when talking about MM or SV(MoP/WoD).
Sure, both specs were designed with ranged combat in mind. Both were designed to focus on the ranged weapon. But those general themes on their own, and the fact that they were the same, does not warrant such drastic changes to be made.
Again, examples:
Marksmanship had Aimed Shot.
Survival had Explosive Shot.
To say that these two abilities were the same/too similar, would be the same as saying that each signature ability of Mage-specs were the same. Or Warlocks with Destruction/Affliction. Or Warriors with Arms/Fury.
Etc.
Marksmanship have more or less always been designed with the idea of big hits and burst potential, while Survival(when still ranged) was designed with DoTs and concistency in mind. Heck, most of SVs key abilities didn’t even deal “physical” damage. With that, I mean that they weren’t designed with the impact of a projectile/arrow serving as the key focus. They instead focused on what was applied to said projectile/arrow and how it affected the enemy target.
Ion: Some of that is actually fallout from the shift that we did in Cataclysm going into Mists. We moved from the old-school talent trees that could probably better support types of play styles and utility without having to build a whole spec around them.
Here, Ion mentions what I said earlier as well about the changes to talent design that came with MoP. And the fact that it(talents) no longer focused on the respective fantasies tied to each spec.
So it is true that we no longer had talents as a way to further distinguish between specializations. But does that mean that the actual Core Specs themselves became less distinguishable? No, not at all.
It just meant that we could no longer count talents as parts of specializations.
Ion: Having a tree like Survival that was about traps and utility and a little bit of melee stuff in there — that worked when it was something that you could put points into as a broader class initiative. But then turning it into its own spec ultimately led us down a path of duplicating a lot of Mark’s abilities.
I don’t get Ion’s reasoning here. Like has been said before, SV did not actually share much of any abilities with MM.
It does sound here like Ion’s actually saying that MM had things like Aimed Shot or Steady Shot, so therefor, giving SV any ability that was ranged(despite those abilities having different mechanics and interactions tied to one another) was the same thing as “duplicating” MM’s abilities.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but, doesn’t all 3 rogue specs have melee-abilities? Doesn’t Arms and Fury both have melee-abilities?
Mages/Warlocks/SPriests/BDruids/EleShamans, don’t they all cast spells?
And so on…
To me, all this just sounds like they didn’t have a clear vision of what RSV’s fantasy was like/was supposed to be like. And instead of actually looking into what could be done with it, they scrapped it because they had something else in mind and they didn’t really care what the then-current Hunter-community(part of it) wanted from the class.
Going into Legion, they designed MM with the idea of casted abilities(aimed shots) in mind. They designed it to be revolving around the idea of a petless sniper/sharpshooter. Even more so now in BfA.
[R]SV was designed with the idea of a mobile/agile archer who did not spend much time and effort focusing on perfect aim. Instead, the focus was on the projectiles/arrows fired and how those could be made to become more deadly on their own. It was also designed with a partial focus on improving the Hunter’s efficiency and deadliness with Traps.
Not even with post-Legion standards could the above be argued to be too similar to one another.
With Legion, they essentially doubled down on such base concepts when they once again made talents that were designed with spec-specific fantasies in mind.
So…why couldn’t they do that with SV as well?
All of this which Ion’s saying is especially ironic considering how current SV(in BfA) shares more with Beast Mastery than SV ever shared with MM between Cata and WoD, despite the fact that BM is designed to be a ranged spec and SV a melee-focused spec.
Just to finish this off…
Anyone who have been here for the last year or so, knows that I’m not one to argue for the removal of current SV and it’s intended design of being a melee-focused spec.
I simply question the developers reasoning and logic for why they did what they did. Specifically with how they did it.
None of the reasons they’re giving us for what they thought warranted such drastic changes were actually valid enough reasons. None of the percieved issues mentioned were big enough for it not to be “fixable” going into Legion.
Especially as their entire philosophy was going to be spec identity and individual fantasies.
How/why were those concepts/philosophies not applicable to RSV?
Going forward, by all means, keep current SV. But nothing above is an excuse not to bring RSV back for all those who enjoyed playing it.
