Is anyone else worried that we have got no feedback or changes in alpha according to the class forums yet all other classes have? And beta starts next week.
Or are we just so outstandingly awesome we need no changes.
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I can’t wait to abandon this class in SL.
Thanks blizz.
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Depends on who you ask I guess.
For me though…the class still needs a fair amount of changes made to it. Things that simply aren’t in the right place atm.
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Hopefully more are coming it’s just slow… I mean I’m hoping they find a way to bring the damage numbers across all 2 specs within some decent range and not just have bm be the number one again
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I have a bit of hope that we might still get changes… mostly because Eyes of the Beast still isn’t implemented, and Kill Shot is still polearms only on SV. Those are two massive oversights that make me think they haven’t actually gotten to work on Hunter yet…?
It’s also possible Blizzard is ignoring our feedback because the dev team thinks Hunters are perfect, or because they think we don’t have the “full picture.”
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Fixed it for you.
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That snipe lol
what do you expect? we got 2 xpacs in a row of revamps and then the most useless unpruned skills + stable slots. the only way to fix this busted class is a time machine.
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Well you’re probably right, but it’s odd they haven’t tried to fix us. They’ve even tried to fix Shadow Priest and that spec is a bigger dumpster fire than Legion’s SV.
Knowing Blizzard’s idiocy they think our balance fixes are located in the new covenants and legendaries, and that’s why they’ll ignore our feedback. They think they’ve already addressed it through those systems.
I really hope they actually listen to our god damn feedback for once instead of continually assuming our feedback is incorrect or addressed through borrowed powers.
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Not just this, but according to the alpha thread, MSV is a real mess. Arcane shot and one other ability (I forgot what it is, at the moment) requires a ranged weapon to be used at all, Kill shot only works with polearms, whereas the rest of MSV’s abilities only work with melee weapons.
Not to mention, Wowhead has a whole bunch of interviews up, and one with Ion (out of like 4?) specifically mentioned wanting MSV to retain the “importance of melee without surrendering the core Hunter identity.”
Honestly, if you ask me? The only really feasible solution I could think to this mess is to give the Hunter class — as a whole — the ability to dual wield melee and ranged weapons again, like how we used to prior to MoP/WoD (I forgot exactly when we lost the ranged weapon slot).
Because if SL launches with MSV the way it is now… hoo boy, what a mess!
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I’m really scared about what’s going on with MSV. I still plan to main it because it’s my favorite hunter spec, but considering the only change it got in SL so far is a nerf to focus regen and a broken Kill Shot…
I’m starting to think my spec is going the way of WoD and BfA Shaman straight into Blizzard’s “not worth fixing” bin.
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It’s not just your spec, but the Hunter class as a whole. I’m still giving Blizzard the benefit of doubt, but I’m very wary right now after having seen the… disappointments… in both Legion and BFA development.
By the way, I’ve found the interview I mentioned. The bullet point about MSV is all the way to the bottom.
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Melee will be kept as the unique identity of Survival Hunters in Shadowlands, but Blizzard doesn’t want them to feel like their melee strength comes at the expense of the core Hunter fantasy.
I’m sorry, but in wow, there is no way to reconcile these two things. You can’t keep the core hunter fantasy and have a melee spec. It doesn’t work in wow.
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In all fairness Hunters have always had melee capabilities, and I would very much argue it’s part of our core fantasy. I think the only expansions where hunters had zero melee abilities were MoP and WoD? (But also they seriously should have never focused a spec on melee.)
Oh well, I doubt Blizzard pays attention to their forums… Maybe next expansion they’ll finally listen.
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They have not in wow actually. I don’t remember when specifically, I think it was MoP though, the ability to wield both melee weapons and ranged weapons were removed entirely from hunters. Now yes, they could always wield melee weapons, but after they could no longer equip both, they lost all melee abilities.
Also the misconception that survival in vanilla/bc was “the melee” spec is just that. A misconception. While it did enhance melee damage, it enhanced ranged damage at the same time, and the few melee abilities in the tree, where more about allowing the hunter to escape melee then actually doing melee dps.
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And honestly the only survival ability that was used in vanilla was wing clip for the slow. You only resorted to raptor strike if volley broke your ranged weapon.
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Raptor Strike did pretty decent damage and was useful to keep damage pressure up when stuck in melee range. So when the enemy came into melee you could hit them with a Raptor Strike for big damage while also Wing Clipping to be able to get back to ranged.
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Yeah, it looks like hunters won’t get much fixing. Aimed shot is so annoying, most of the time it hits 75% of the damage it says, plus you gotta stand for 2hrs to cast it, while you get hit like a dummy. Class like hunter should have the most mobility, but instead we’ve gotta stand and cast aimed shot while getting our butts kicked. If only this stupid aimed shot would be instant, like it should be, like in WOTLK, it would be right. Arcane shot is annoying as well, does very little damage. We’ve no stings, we used to have black arrow and snake sting ( don’t remember the exact name) and we had some damage going while we had to move or anything, while now we have huge gaps in dps. Auto shots don’t go on while we cast aimed shot. So, what we have here is a broken product if you love playing a hunter. We pay them for a product that we pay for and we get something much less than that.
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Weird, then, that MM and BM have zero melee abilities at all, even in SL. The only baseline melee ability is Wing Clip, and that gets replaced with Conc Shot for MM and BM. If melee were such a central thing for hunters why is it exclusively an SV thing?
The only baseline abilities that require a ranged weapon are Arcane Shot and Steady Shot, and neither are intended to be used by SV hunters. If you want to be a ranged DPS, equip a ranged weapon. Weapon swapping is still allowed in combat, and it’ll apparently be permitted in M+ in SL as well, so SV hunters would benefit from having a macro to toggle between ranged and melee weapons, so you can keep hitting the target if you can’t get in melee range and Aspect of the Eagle is down.
Some enterprising SV hunters are considering whether an Arcane Shot based rotation using a bow would be feasible, though unfortunately it probably won’t, Arcane Shot deals ~14% less damage than Raptor Strike even accounting for armor, and the level 45 talent tier has no non-melee option. If they removed Tip of the Spear and replaced it with a talent that bonused Arcane Shot, it’s quite possible that the rotation could work, however, at least for single target. AoE is still point blank, of course.
In vanilla, Raptor Strike was Next Melee, like Heroic Strike, and thus was off the GCD. It was pretty common to hit it before the target entered melee range, and then spam Wing Clip, causing both to hit the target simultaneously.
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Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, and Wing Clip did not share a GCD with one another so Hunters basically macro’d them all together and spammed it when stuck in melee range.