They are far from equal parts. The ranged weapon is the central building block. Stop trying to dispute this and falsely equate melee weapons.
I don’t need a history lesson especially from the likes of you.
SV did not deliberately run into melee range. That’s fantasy. It was intended to stick to ranged as much as possible just as all Hunters were. It was understood that in PvP melee classes would force Hunters into melee range and they wanted Survival to have tools to better handle melee range given they envisioned it as the PVP utility spec. This is a far cry from what Survival is now so enough with pretending that the current iteration represents early Survival. In fact ranged Survival represented it a lot better.
It’s hilarious to see melee SV stans try to pretend having SV being restricted to a melee weapon a) a boost and b) comparable to what Hunters had before MoP.
No, it was not originally intended for Hunters to sell out one of their specs to melee mains like you. If you love melee so much go play one of the plentiful melee classes including every DPS spec added to the game post launch.
Could have fooled me…
It’s one of the most requested spec changes. I’d argue it’s more requested than Frost 2H.
It wasn’t just about giving them the ability to equip a 2h weapon. DW and 2h offered distinct playstyles. 2h being known for its up-front burst damage and focus on obliterate.
Let me fill you in here, He is very toxic and opinionated about classes/specs he has never played. If you corner him he will resort to using out of context jokes/memes/post from WoD (of all expansions) to attempt to beat you down. He will THEN stalk you on social media and harass you but act innocent here. He not just a clown, but the entire circus and the worst part is alot of morons here clap at literally anything he says, even when its just mindless larping, egotistical nonsense being spewed, or talking about things he has absolutely zero real experience in. Like I said earlier, you opened Pandora’s box with this clown.
I agree that Hunters on a honest view should be able to dual-wield. Just look at Rexxar who melee hunters are based on. Animations that would need a make over would be Harpoon, but if SV has a tiny crossbow tucked away then they could have a grappling hook too.
There are plenty of classes that can equip other weapon types and still use their abilities, so it just a programming that needs to be reworked.
Originally Survival Hunters had Lacerate as the 31-point talent in their tree before patch 1.7.0, but its damage was so poor it was considered the worst Talent in the game and replaced by Wyvern Sting. Before 1.7 it was mostly melee and utility talents, but specs didn’t fully define the playstyle of a pure DPS class back then; the baseline class did, and Hunters were ranged baseline. Survival even had and used a ranged weapon. Hunter melee abilities were always designed to be lack luster, and for offensive that way you were not defenseless if someone got too close. Hunter were not designed to be melee fighters as they did not have any strong melee attacks of defenses that could help them survive. As a hunter you always wanted to keep a range distance and anyone would say they played a melee hunter did so as a joke or just to see if they could play with a handicap.
Melee Survival is a completely new spec as it just did not exist before Legion. It had to be redesigned to to melee focused while still having range abilities, which was a completely contradiction to what hunters core was before then.
I would try not to get overly offended by Bepples they can get over worked up when discussing Survival. They can go from being civil to harassing quickly. It why there a like hate relation with Bepples.
Hello.
There were people who played w/o a pet just to embrace the “Ranger” play-style, before there was a buff, true believers. There were others that played petless cause they kept pulling crap, not knowing how to manage their pet…
Not really. I mean, we have the hand crossbow on SV which is as close as it gets, but until they give hunters both weapon types in one spec, what we have is an over-refined, arcade version of the iconic RPG class.
Let’s not pretend that pet management was over complicated. The majority of Vanilla players raided MC/BWL with a wolf at their side with Furious Howl macro’d into Multi-Shot.
In PvP everyone ran 1.0 Attack Speed Broken Tooth and made Cloth Casters cry.
The only reason we had melee spells back in the day was bc we weren’t allowed to use ranged spells within 5 yards of the target. That’s it.
People also forget that we used to equip both melee and ranged weapons at the same time. The whole “melee is part of the class fantasy” is not viable at all. It was a must have in those up close situations.
I can see MSV having its place, but its going to be equivalent to feral druids in that it’s representation is very low, it excels in only unique situations, and once in awhile blizz will buff it enough to get people to play it.
RSV is definitely fits more into what a hunter is supposed to be, it’s ranged, it’s playstyle is much better and fluid than MSV and it already has an identity even though it doesn’t exist.
4th spec is clearly the way to go at this point. Making MSV a melee/ranged spec, while cute from a fantasy perspective, is completely illogical and a tuning nightmare. It would cost more to do that then to just do a 4th spec.
I would argue that, the only reason we had a 5 yard range limitation was to make room for melee spells. They didn’t say “Oh shoot… we made ranged weapons only useable at range, what are we going to do? No… we cant just make hunters able to use them at point blank, that would be too easy and require so little effort. Lets balance a bunch of melee abilities and talents and find a way to fit them into an otherwise unrelated fantasy.”
Thats silly. Melee and ranged weapons have always been a part of every martial class fantasy. The ranged weapon was not uniquely hunter early on either, only the focus on ranged weapons. They didnt take all ranged attacks from warrior and rogues either, they simply took away the ranged weapon slot. Just as throwing a hammer or axe is part of the warrior fantasy, and throwing knives is part of the rogue fantasy, using melee weapons is part of the hunter fantasy. It always was. These arent concessions forced by design limitations. If anything the removal of these elements are concessions made to attract or retain people who will never truly be happy in this genre anyway. Futile concessions.
Even IF melee spells were not born out of necessity, which I disagree with your supposition, they were never a core rotational aspect of the class.
Back in the day, there was never a viable melee build. If hunters talented into those talents it was bc they were leveling, pvping, or some unique situations that required it. The lack of a pure melee build was intentional. It was never mean to be a replacement for ranged.
And there isnt today. It doesnt mean melee weapons and abilities weren’t a part of the original design philosophy, except as a necessity due to the minimum range mechanic. If anything, the minimum range mechanic was developed for ranged weapons which were developed for the hunter class, and without the hunter class both concepts would likely have been scrapped in favor of something less labor intensive for the other classes.
