If it was it wouldnt have been changed several times.
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Legion is done and dusted; its content is all optional and most players will never see it. Artifacts are no reason to keep bad class design decisions around and itâs absolutely worth an âinelegantâ workaround to in turn fix Survival.
Make a cosmetic melee weapon spot so all Hunters can have the spear (or any other weapon) appear on their characters. Make the appearances shared with other classes on the same account. Survival could just use Marksmanshipâs chain for anyone who picks Legion for levelling; or they can tack on a ranged weapon and some extra dialog to the existing Survival quest. There are lots of things they can do. Sure; they all take work; but like I said itâs worth doing that over constantly tinkering with and reworking melee Survival in the hopes that it goes somewhere when it never will.
As a ranged spec it largely kept the same basic theme, aesthetic, and structure the entire time from WotLK when it got Explosive Shot to Legion. Meanwhile melee Survival needed a total ground-up remake after its very first expansion and still went nowhere fast.
Regardless, Blizzard changing things is not an argument for anything. They make stupid and irrational decisions all the time.
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Surv didnt play in wotlk as it pplayed in cata and by cata standarts it didnt play as mop and wod either.
It kept getting changed.
lol you seem very angry about it.
It kept the same basic structure of Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, and Lock and Load in all of those expansions. Even BM changed more in that time than SV did.
The biggest changes to SV in that time were classwide changes e.g. the transition from Mana to Focus in Cataclysm.
And yes, Blizzard makes dumb decisions all the time. Just look to the entire last year and how they pissed off everyone and made a bunch of people quit with their consistently awful decision making.
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Thatâs misunderstanding me. I didnât say that the set bonus is what makes it a great spec. The set bonus as current puts it into the stratosphere⊠which actually would be awesome to bring it heightened play, though we know it wonât go live.
I remain hopeful they adjust appropriately and donât over-do it, like they did to my unholy DK in CN.
to be fair, all weapons are Hunter Weapons. just needed to give them a more viable solution to use their entire collection. 
But the difference here is they could simply add a fourth hunter spec and everything would be cool.
Something like Destiny hunter would be cool. Void hunter was fun.
There probably is a space in the game for a melee hunter. But honestly, it was a kick in the teeth for those of us who played the spec as ranged and loved every minute of it. Think of the backlash if suddenly Blizz made frost mages a melee spec. No explanation, no compensatory additional spec, just âOh, btw, that spec youâve played for years is now gone.â
I did switch to BM hunter, but itâs not the same. Not even close to as much pure fun as the ranged SV spec. And people who have commented on BMâs crazy mobility are correct â only spec in the game that can be that mobile. But interestingly, a BM hunterâs pet (which provides the bulk of the damage) has some basic melee limitations. For example, they suffer the same loss of dps as melee if they have to keep switching targets to fairly spread-out adds. This makes BM hunters a kind of âranged meleeâ spec.
6 Likes
Agreed.
(They did provide an âexplanationâ as to why they removed it, just it was more of an excuse, rather than a valid point of logic)
6 Likes
I hope they make a hunter or shaman tank spec, or both, we need more variety and or possibilities for tanking and lowering the queue times.
regards, a man who tanks with almost everything : )
True. Me saying no explanation was a bit of an exaggeration. A bit.
My own theory is that they had screwed up the power sources and ratios so badly on SV hunter that they just got sick of constantly throwing it from one unbalanced extreme to the other and decided to throw the whole thing out.
Remember, prior to introducing the melee version in Legion, about halfway through WoD they basically â and on purpose â made the entire spec unplayable. Invalidated the secondary stat values, nerfed the money shots into the ground, etc. That was the point where they totally abandoned it, without any explanation.
Later, as you point out, in introducing Legion, they mumbled a few things about âplay style redundancy is badâ and whipped up some nonsense about âspec fantasyâ, but it was pretty lame.
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Well, theyâve always had a history of âoverdoingâ things when it comes to tuning adjustments/balancing. Or well, either that, or being a bit too conservative. Ofc theyâve gotten it right on occasion, but fairly often, things donât turn out quite like one would expect.
With RSV, I would argue that it was fairly obvious even during the WoD beta that they werenât putting any serious effort into it. Several things that were promised, never saw the light of day. This to me, while not really as apparent back then, now(after the fact) strongly hints at how they were investing in a different direction for SV, even as early as during said beta, or before.
While Iâm not convinced that the effort of balancing/tuning had much to do with the end result, like you said, theyâve come out with several statements over time, serving as excuses to try to justify their decisions.
Some, like those below:
You guys also oversee all the other classes. Are there any particular changes that youâre most excited about?
Adam: Iâm super excited about Shadow Priests, Outlaw Rogues, and Survival Hunters specifically. Proceeds to say stuff about the other classes/specs.
And then Survival HunterâŠ
Travis: It was another one that was missing its niche. Itâs kind of like Marksman except more traps? Or different arrows? So it was kind of missing that âwhat is the core fantasy?â
Having it move into the melee space and actually return to its roots that was the vanilla Survival experience. You got your Raptor Strike and all that and having those come back and play a role, moving into melee, giving mobility like the Harpoon to draw you in â itâs like it finally gave them a unique identity. If this is the beast companion guy that youâve always wanted to play then youâre going to have that role.
Generally those are the ones that probably got the most drastic changes but every single class â I think one of the things thatâs fun to see is when you go into a five-man dungeon now and you can actually pretty readily, visually go: âOh look the Rogue is doing his roll of the dice right nowâ or âOh look the Paladin just threw his hammer.â
You get more flavor both visually and also as a player. That feeling of âWhat is that experience that I wanted?â and it delivers a little bit more for every class now.
There are several things you can say to pick this answer apart, showing how it simply doesnât hold up whatsoever. But either way, thatâs what was said there.
Next up, while I hesitate to quote something that was said in an informal setting, a non-official capacity, hereâs what Chris Kaleiki, the dev who originally brought the RSV fantasy to life, said about the teams thoughts regarding RSV at the time of itâs removal. Itâs taken from a DM, so again, not an official interview or anything.
Chris: Youâre right that I did foster that gameplay during that time in development, and I was fond of it like you were.
If you can remember, the team at the time had a mission to focus on the fantasies of the different specs. While you did think they(it; RSV) were an ammunition expert and master trapper, they saw that fantasy as not as quite developed and lacking. There were a vocal number of players who did have ambition for a melee spec, and I think the team thought thatâd be a good way to break up the 3 specs available to the Hunter. It was a rocky start, but I think a good number of players are fond of that change now.
I would argue that the actual number of players who have an interest in the current playstyle, isnât all that âgoodâ. Something Ion admitted to himself in an interview. But anyway, thatâs what he said.
He(Chris) proceeded to add some of his own thoughts/opinion on the matter:
Chris: However, I think it was the wrong decision to rebuild the old Survival spec into the melee hunter because it disenfranchised all of the players who were fond of the original gameplay like yourself. But I donât think the team would agree with me, obviously, and perhaps Iâm a bit bias since I was fond of that original gameplay.
I do think the team may in the future re-introduce some of the original gameplay (in terms of the tempo and ability usage that Survival had in the past), its definitely something I advocated for.
Again, this last bit wasnât from an official interview, but simply a direct conversation. And as so, theyâre the thoughts of an individual, not the current dev team. Who knows were their heads are at atm.
3 Likes
no offense but there are 6 classes that can tank already. thatâs plenty of variety. the game has 3 ranged weapons that only 2 specs can use, and BM hardly counts as it mostly just spams a green glob shot.
Why not a ârangedâ tank, you can throw axes or use a bow short range, rogues use pistols most of the time when it procs at close quarters.
We have Rexxar as the prime tank hunter as an example. And iâm sure there are plenty of shamans too.
Why more tanks ? variety brings more people to it, and the more tanks we got, the lower the queues will get.
I love tanking, but then⊠i want to do quick content for a while with my mail or cloth characters, and they cant instant queue, unless i heal (which i like, just not as much as tanking).
a 4th spec shaman tank would be cool with earth stuff and rockbiter, but tanking is kind of antithetical to hunters. the whole class is built around having your own personal pet tank already. and rexxar was a beast master not a tank.
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Ranged tank would require some kind of redesign to work. Positioning a pet to tank a raid boss would be extremely difficult in practice.
I guess the ranged tank could put some kind of debuff on the boss that says âAlways remains 30 yards awayâ or whatever. But there needs to be some kind of solution because pets arenât it.
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Wow! How did you manage to get a response directly from the developer? This is the sort of dialog sorely needed between the developers and the Hunter community on this matter.
Heâs/sheâs the new Toxic(Metroid). Donât bother wasting your time. 
To all the people who have played here the longest with a Hunter. We all know for a FACT that Survival range was never great or had a HUGE player/following. We all know that the three specs were becoming the same and not distinct from one another. Even Blizzard said this, FYI.
*Theyâve denied Hunters ever had melee abilities but Classic proved them wrong.
*Theyâve denied that Survival was a melee oriented buff tree in Vanilla.
*Theyâve denied that the Survival tree was originally supposed to be what it is today and that is the melee spec for the Hunter Class.
You can post videoâs at them. You can show them the Vanilla spec tree. You can show them current survival abilities that were in Vanilla and this SMALL group of pro-range survival players will still deny it as if they live in a alternate reality.
Its frankly weird to be honest. 
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Iâm currently leveling one that is up to level 49. Itâs quite fun I think personally! Then again I mostly always play melee classes so it feels more natural to me. I hope they donât ever remove it.
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