Make Survival Not Scuffed BM

Classes Hunter
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Proposal to give survival hunter its own identity instead of being BM but bad. (JK…kinda)

The first step is to get rid of the permanent pet. They still have the pet but in a very different way. Lean into the lore of the hunters loosely using nature magic like the farstriders and rangers.

Spirit animals. You choose one of your pets to be your Spirit animal granting different buffs based on the type of animal.

You gain a CD that summons your spirit animal to fight by your side amplifying the effects of your spirit bond.

Needs more but I can’t think of anything right now.

Also make 2H agi swords.

Thoughts?

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Eh. Hard to take someone serious that thinks SV is like BM. Outside of sharing a spell that shares the same name (effect is different) they really are nothing alike if you actually play the spec.

Judging by the fact you seem to be on an ideas roll (just posted a long post about enhancement shamans).

Spirit animal idea is interesting but I don’t need another CD. Pet needs to stay permanent.

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They already took the pet away from MM, don’t take it away from SV too.

Hunters should be THE pet class, not the one that kinda sorta uses pets.

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It’s kinda funny how they made survival melee because it was “too similar to MM” and now we’re complaining about it being “too similar to BM”. Kinda feels like they missed the mark somewhere along the way.

I really wish they would have kept it ranged and focused on DOTs and ammunition instead of now trying to cram all that into MM. All 3 mages specs are pretty distinct even if they’re all magic casters in the end. So I don’t get why they couldn’t make it work.

As for pets, the one big problem with them right now is that, outside of Beast Cleave for BM, they do no AoE damage. So in those scenarios, they quickly fall out of favor when you have an alternative like Lone Wolf. It’d be nice if something was added to both MM and survival to help in those scenarios and make the pets desirable.

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Current sv does take a lot from bm, we have kill command and coordinated assault is basically bestial wrath but worse and less frequent.

TBH i don’t see why Aspect of the eagle was moved from our major damage cd to just a utility one, it was much better than coordinated assault and much stronger than it as well.

Even if you hated SV in legion, it at least had some great burst with its aspect of the eagle cd.

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This. There’s no way they will take SV pet away without another full rework. They have made survival more about you and your pet working in tandem. While BM is more about you using your pet to do more dmg by buffing it. The full-time pet is not expendable in either spec.

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I am pure speculating but this has always been my take on why they did it.

Hunter had always been chock full of melee abilities. A number of which were always purely dmg related. So when they decided to do a rework it only made sense (to them) to take those core abilities that nobody used and build a spec around them.

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That’s not quite accurate, I’m afraid. The Hunter class had 2 baseline melee abilities in Vanilla through WotLK; in Vanilla if you specced deep into the SV tree, you could pick up a couple more melee abilities — but they were extremely underturned.

Cata was when they removed the minimum range; Hunters still had the 2 baseline melee abilities (Wing Clip and Raptor Strike), but they never used them.

MoP changed it so that we no longer have a separate slot for ranged weapons; Hunters no longer carried melee weapons, so they removed the 2 melee abilities.

Hunters were melee-free throughout WoD, and then there was the Legion remake. We all know how that turned out.

Well, nobody used them because they either never existed prior to Legion (Wildfire bomb, Butchery and Carve, Harpoon and more), OR hadn’t been in the game since Vanilla (Mongoose Bite and Lacerate — however you spell that).

Wing Clip and Raptor Strike are the only melee abilities that had a long (albeit barely used) history in the Hunter class.

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Rant inc…

When it comes down to it, there’s really only 1 reason for why they decided to turn SV into a melee-spec. They were on their way with Legion class-development and with the new philosophies and the increased focus on individual spec identities, in their minds, MSV made perfect sense. They didn’t care what most of the then-current hunters wanted or why they had chosen to play the class, the devs wanted to add a melee-spec, and so they did.

They came up with excuses as reasons to why they decided to remove RSV, reasons like “it did not have a niche of it’s own”/“it was underdeveloped”/“it was sort of like MM, but with more traps or different arrows”.

These reasons sound good and all, until you actually take a step back and look at Hunter class design up until WoD. Until you think of what the intent was with class and spec design up until the changes intended for Legion.

Let’s take a look at these aforementioned “reasons”.

RSV did not have a niche of it's own(relative to other hunter specs)?

Sure it did, it focused on augmented shots and enhanced traps. It focused mostly on non-physical damage, dealt to the enemy at a steady and concistent pace(DoTs).
Something that was the literal opposite to what Marksmanship was doing, both thematically as well as mechanically.

For the record, “physical damage” within the scope of WoW, means damage dealt with a focus on the point of impact or the kinetic force gained from a projectile fired from a ranged weapon, or by the strike of a melee-weapon.

RSV was underdeveloped?

In what sense? Sure, ofc it’s design as it was up until WoD wouldn’t have been enough for Legion and it’s changes to design-philosophies. But since when was that a problem? They could just’ve done the same to this spec as with what they did to all other specs, going forward.

By “modern” standards, if RSV lacked certain depth or distinguishing features, then just…add those?

RSV was sort of like MM, but with more traps or different arrows?

No it wasn’t. Like I’ve already touched on before, within the scope of the general class design of Hunters and what specs actually are, RSV was the literal opposite to MM, both thematically as well as mechanically.

Besides, this clearly wasn’t an actual issue with the devs since well, like others have already said, current SV shares more with BM than RSV ever did with MM…

To summarize, the devs wanted to add a melee-spec to the Hunter class because in their minds, it was an easy way to meet the criteria set for Legion and future class design/development.

They did not care about then-current Hunters or what could’ve been done to further the design and gameplay tied to RSV.

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Ok I’ll concede the word ‘always’ was a poor choice. I should have said ‘For the first 6 years’. And when they removed minimum range there was only a couple more years before the rework. So of the ~8 years that game had been out, 6 of them included 3 core, and 1 talented, melee skills. All of which where subject to buffs from the tree, both directly and indirectly.

We had Raptor, mongoose, and wing clip. That would be 3. Add counter strike when talented. Undertuned or not that is still a core amount of abilities. Saying they weren’t is like saying that Firebolt or frostbolt wasn’t a core ability of the mage class. You didn’t use both. But both were there to spec into.

The SV tree even gave you full on insensitives to get into melee and use your melee abilities to some degree or another. Dodge+mongoose, dmg modifier to raptor, parry+counterstrike. Traps where also incentive to melee so you didn’t have as much set-up. Drop trap, shoot to get them to you, trap triggers and you start to melee.

It was the community who decided that the hunter was ONLY to be played as a ranged spec. Not the devs. The Devs made it obvious up front that they had envisioned hunter as a possible melee(ish) class when specced into it.

I thought it was pretty obvious that I was talking about the pre-re-work abilities, when referencing the old ‘core’ melee ones

Add Mongoose and counterstrike to that.

I don’t disagree with any of your statements except the first sentence. They did the rework because of the design philosophy. But that’s not why they chose melee. They could have overhauled it into another ranged spec if they wanted. They chose melee b/c it was already built into the class from day 1. Like, they could have made Disc Priests into wand specs. It would have been a terrible choice. But it would have had palpable philosophy behind it based on previous incarnations of the spec.

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Add to that list Lacerate. Hunters had lacerate in the very beginning. It was a running joke then, and it was horrible. The melee abilities were for when people stepped into the dead zone. But they were so uneffective, it was truly worthless. So the fix was take away the dead zone…the same arguments were the same…“How can we not shoot at point blank range” ?

I like SV as a melee spec. In truth its not 100% melee as you can do things from range, it just needs a better setup. Things from legion needs to come back, and some things should be baseline. Maybe just maybe we may see some changes in this patch, hopefully for the better.

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Ah, yes. I forgot Mongoose Bite. It was overshadowed by Raptor Strike (because Raptor Strike didn’t require a set up, like Mongoose and Counterstrike did). And I mentioned that you could get 2 more via speccing (Counterstrike and Lacerate) — that’s why I used the word baseline, because I was talking about the Hunter class as a whole, so I put the two SV talents to the side. :slight_smile:

Your original post implied that the Hunters had “many” melee abilities (you specifically said “choke-full of melee abilities”), which was what I was replying to. As far as I’m concerned, 3 baseline melee attacks wasn’t “choke-full.”

But I’ll concede that you didn’t word your original post carefully.

That’s because it was the final talent in the SV tree, which meant it was essentially an endgame talent — except it did only 133 bleed damage. (That’s why it was a running joke. BTW, this isn’t aimed at you, I’m just clarifying for whoever reads this.)

Yeah, there’s a reason Blizzard reworked SV halfway through Vanilla (patch 1.0.7 if my memory serves me correctly); Blizzard removed Lacerate, and put in Wyvern Sting.

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I specifically omitted Lacerate since it had such a short lived existence and would only undermine my argument :wink:
I get not considering talents ‘basline’ abilities. But you also can’t discount that they were developed to be utilized. I think of it like this. Frost Barrier isn’t a baseline skill … but it would be silly to play frost and not take it. Making it a ‘core’ ability for the spec. If you played deep SV not taking counterstrike would be silly. Why play SV if you aren’t going to utilize the added benefit of having a utility and dmg skill added to your kit? You sure didn’t take SV for the DPS or prestige. You played it because it appealed to you and your playstyle.

I guess my point is that the SV tree was heavily invested in some melee abilities for quite a long time. It would make some sense to try to make a re-work based around the skills the tree pointed you towards in the first place.

Again, I am not saying ‘I am right’ as no1 is right because it’s all speculation. This entire discussion was forworded (yah not a word :stuck_out_tongue: ) with me saying that it was all opinion on my part.

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The dead zone was not melee range. The dead zone was an unintentional exploitable middle ground where hunters couldnt do anything.

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This is an under-appreciated point. The whole hunter class was originally concieved as a hybrid class (albeit poorly implemented and abandoned for whatever reason.)

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I’m dating myself here but …
Hello, I love you, wont you tell me your name!!

Very very very few people see this. The moment you bring ‘hybrid’ into the conversation you are immediately discounted. The devs made it perfectly clear that hunter was designed to be a possible hybrid class. Skills, Talents, Minimum range bow with melee skills to compensate. Heck … they even start you with a single melee skill. If that’s not foreshadowing idk what is …

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Of all the melee-abilities we had back then, the only one that was not entirely situational was Raptor Strike, and arguably even that one was as we never actually wanted to go into melee-range unless forced.

Mongoose bite was useless unless the enemy was attacking you directly, same with Counterattack.

Wingclip was only there for situational utility, that’s not a core ability.

Not really, only when forced due to range-restrictions on ranged weapons.

Traps back then were there for us to deal more damage(through the trap itself) or they allowed us to slow/imobilize our enemies. Nothing of that speaks for an insentive to head into melee as a hunter.

See above…

The issue isn’t that they weren’t part of the class, the issue is that by design, neither of them meant for us to actually want to forego ranged combat in favor of melee-combat unless we were forced to do so, again due to range-restrictions.

Prior to WotLK, the focus and intent with Survival as a talent category was to provide talents that increased our survivability in general, but mostly via situational effects. We had options to do so through direct bonuses to damage, through certain melee-attacks for situations where we were forced into melee(PvP as an example), enhanced traps, etc.

The fact that SV as a category contained a partial focus on melee does not in any way equate to how it intended for us to ever want to fight in melee if we could avoid it.

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Trying to not be combative here. Where exactly did you see the devs say that? How exactly is it that you know what they had in mind 15 years ago when they initially developed the class? If you have hard evidence then I will happily concede all of my points. Otherwise you are speculating just like me.

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NP

I’m not talking about what the devs have said/written here. I’m talking about the actual design and what it in itself promoted in terms of gameplay.

Clarification:

They may very well have had an idea that the Hunter class should’ve had an option to fight in melee, even outside of situational use. But the design and the class as a whole back then, did not reflect this in any way.

The design intended for us to want to fight from afar, aided by our pets, as often as we possibly could do so. We had pets to tank for us so that we could keep our distance, we had traps and utility that all focused on slowing down or imobilizing the enemy so that we, again, could more easily keep our distance. Not to mention how, considering the class was designed as a damage dealer, we dealt the most damage when we stuck to using our ranged attacks.

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This is from the original manual, and there is more in the hunter specific section (though pulling it up from Google is a bit difficult and I no longer have my copy). But it is “primarily a ranged attacker”.

No where does it mention anything about melee or being a hybrid, and the class has always used a bow specifically for the class icon. Given how the specs played back then, I don’t see any reason to believe hunter was ever intended to be a hybrid. The melee was there as a designated weakness for us due to our ability to attack on the move reliably, along with a bigger focus on RPG aspects back then (since archers are typically weak in melee combat).

The gameplay fits what the community believed it was intended to be and even the manual seems to suggest that yes, we were not supposed to be played in melee if we could help it.

Edit: Found another pic of it that focuses more specifically on the hunter itself.

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