Even the pre-1.7 iteration of the Survival talent category did not promote the idea that you were meant to focus primarily on melee-combat. In the days before WotLK, Survival was always focused on the utility side of the class as a whole, with the ultimate goal of improved survivability. It provided better utility, defensive capabilities, and certain ways to increase throughput as well.
Anyone who argues that the roots of SV were focused on making you a melee-fighter, really don’t understand how it worked for the class, nor its’ power level relative to the core playstyle, in order to achieve the highest potential.
As another goblin hunter, I agree. I personally love the melee version (except I wish I could equip 2h Maces for the transmog). Wouldn’t mind if they just added a few extra spells and tweaked it so you could be ranged or melee, that’d make it complete imo.
Throwing bombs and traps? Hi-Explosive Trap? it’s the best. Throw a hi-explosive trap and launch someone off of lumber mill, and then rocket jump away with a /guffaw macroed to it. You’ll never play another character again.
Listen, Warrior isn’t a better class for me and I find your suggestion of that really odd considering the context of the conversation. And certainly not for the weird and arbitrary condition that “hunters never have equipped maces before”. The “it’s what has always been” argument is a fallacious, surely you know that.
2H Maces make sense. Think about it – I can pick up a stick with a sharp piece of metal on it, but I can’t pick up a stick with a dull piece of metal on it?
What does melee weapons vs range weapons have anything to do with “fitting for a race”? Who decides what distance from the enemy is more or less immersive? I didn’t even say melee weapons were better than ranged weapons, I said that I wanted maces for the transmog because they’ve got some good “gobliny”, mechanical, cool transmog looks and the argument against it is trivial at best.
I guess the reasoning was that maces (especially 2h) are much heavier than axes and swords. Hunters’ primary stat is agility, whereas Warriors’ primary stat is strength.
Now, I don’t actually know this — I’m just drawing a logical conclusion based on the game manual.
Plus, do you really wanna deal with the headache? We’ve had to put up with other players’ frustration with us — “all weapons are Hunter weapons!” was true back in Vanilla/BC since Hunters could benefit from every stat — and I, for one, greatly enjoyed not having to compete with other classes prior to personal loot.
But, if we start being able to equip maces (which is a little silly because we already could use nearly all the weapons in the game), we’ll get whispers all the time from warriors, paladins, death knights, druids, and rogues begging us for the mace.
Hahaha, ok yeah I can get that. I mean, to be fair, technically we can use a wide variety of one-handed weapons that no hunter ever uses, ever, but we don’t get those as drops. I’d personally take the whispers for the transmog options, but that’s just me. And I’m saying that not being in the situation, so I could get sick of it down the road.
I guess with the whole “maces are heavier” idea in mind, we can look at who can use what and see the commonality there. Would you believe that even though we can use every other 2H, I still have a problem getting weapons?
edit: You know I’d take the compromise of just getting more goblin-themed 2h axes. Imagine a shredder saw on a greasy stick. That’d be freakin awesome!
… Combined with this, may have posed some developmental challenges for the game when they decided to apply MOBA style effects to the visual style of WoW combat.
There are some notable strengths to highly visual spell and ability effects. For group combat focused games, immediately recognizable effects are good for everyone. Struggling to create a visual style that was distinctive between MM and RSV could have influenced the decision to make SV melee more than we know.
I’m sure that this was part of the reason for the rework, for the new devs on the team. As a long time hunter player though, I never had any issue seeing the differences between the two specs. And while it technically was harder to make that distinction, in terms of visual effects, in group-based content, that was mostly because of the abundance of effects overlapping eachother, either in the same area, or on the same enemy. Besides, in group-based content, most won’t notice anything other than that there’s a hunter, shooting at things. Heck most people won’t care about the animations coming from the hunter, unless they’re the one playing it.
Either way, that would be the most idiotic excuse to go through with such a rework. “Because other players who, most of the time, don’t pay attention to it anyway, can’t so easily see a difference between shots”?
Knowing what type of hunter, and what abilities he/she is using, and what the effects are is important in PvP. I dont think they designed the classes with PvP in mind, but Im just saying, knowing whats happening with other players is important to some people. Particularly in large BG scrums.
Its not idiotic to be inspired to rework some things by a new visual philosophy, even if you don’t like it or it adversely effected your enjoyment of the game. Im not saying this is what happened, but if the devs decided that the abilities of the different specs should be distinct, like heroes in a MOBA style game, thats not an idiotic philosophy. Its not genius either. Its just a philosophy.
I disagree, anyone who plays at any level remotely close to where this can make a big difference, they probably have ~5 other ways to quickly check which spec is being played, or more specifically, what abilities are being used.
And even if that is the case, reworking a spec from ranged to melee, is beyond drastic. And frankly, in a game where the primary goal of class/spec design, should be to allow players to pursue their chosen identity, reworking a spec to suit the needs/preferences of vastly fewer players compared to before, is the wrong way to go about it.
While this is kind of a moot point, because we dont even know if that was the philosophy behind the decision, a distinct visual style behind the effects of major abilities would make a difference at every level, particularly the less hardcore players. Especially if, as I presume is the case, WoW was/is trying to emulate MOBA style games with its iconic visual effects. Those effects, while immersion breaking for a typical RPG, are helpful to our primate brains when the gameplay becomes fast paced and hectic. The more distinctive features of the game are, the more sense our brains can make of the chaos… which is why successful MOBAs use this strategy. Even a mediocre player feels better when things make more sense.
While I dont agree that this is what happened here, I do think that Blizzard did not achieve the intended result. When the next wave of MMORPGs comes around and they look back at this, I hope what they learn is that players are an angry mob if they think something has been taken from them, and that you are better off making a new game than modernizing an old one.
It was a blast last expansion with the butchery talent. like fury warrior with pets, lol.
I tried it this expansion, but its lost its appeal for whatever reason.
I can barely get it out, but…ive resorted to running BM this expansion for the most part. I feel like i need a shower, lol
That cause of the ease of range. You don’t need to reach your target to engage or have to worry about damage. It less difficult to solo elites and you get to have the cool pets.
BM the spec you use to sit back and enjoy the world.
Im not for giving hunters maces, though Id be open to the idea, I guess. But the “all weapons are hunter weapons” meme was stupid, because warriors literally could need on all weapons. And shields. In this day and age with personal loot, and tokens to get weapons, it’s a moot point.
Asking players on a forum if a spec is fun is just asking for toxicity. Playing a hunter since BC i can tell you that i hate SV as a melee spec but that is just me and I have talked with other hunters who like SV and I am glad they like it and won’t trash them for them enjoying a spec I personally don’t enjoy.
