At the beginning, going LW meant losing access to the part-wide buffs Hunter’s pets could provide. A later patch added access w/o pet.
my only real gripe with SV now is that most of its talents that are mandatory feel like they should be upgrades to abilities that other specs get. you shouldn’t need talents for a class or spec to be functional.
my second gripe is exotic pets. i just want to be able to use cool stuff like quilen or clefthooves. it wouldn’t be any fun for it to be just given to us though, i’d like to work towards like a tome or something that would allow you to tame that certain family. i don’t like having to play beastmaster to use the pets i want. it’s not fun to have to play a spec i don’t like to use pets i do like.
thirdly and i guess this is a problem to hunter in general is that all families are spec locked. i’d like to be able to use all of my pets as the spec i want, because honestly there’s no point to using cunning outside of pvp, and no point in using tenacity at all.
in essence i don’t think they need to go back to the drawing board with sv, i think they have a good framework to properly build upon.
Why? Because that’s how it’s been historically? I’ll take player agency and options instead. It’s fine if all 3 have pet options of some sort, but it feels too blatantly arbitrary for all hunter specs to be pet-centric.
Petless rangers were a notable class construct in gaming well before Blizzard was even a thing.
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Because it’s also one of the core pillars of gameplay involving the class. The three core pillars have always been ranged weaponry, pets, and traps. At best, you can get away without one of those and still have it resemble a hunter in WoW.
The fact that SV went melee and removed an old spec that was really popular is already a really contentious topic. I think if you remove the pet too, then you’ve strayed so far from what the hunter has always been that it might as well be in another class entirely. The specs for each class should be tailored to suit the playwes who actually play the class. I don’t think you can both make SV melee as it is and remove the pet and still have it feel like it is at all intended for hunter players.
You’re right that petless rangers have long been a thing, but the hunter specifically has always had one as being heavily tied to the class.
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MSurv would be better suited as the DH third spec with ability names/animations/weapons changed to appropriate fel themes, and using a bound demon as a pet.
They need to bring back Rsurv. If they really are out of ideas they just need to read the hunter forums - there have been many great ideas floated out since MSurv was introduced.
This would be a win for the vast majority of hunters and DHs.
Clearly Demo was intended to be a melee spec from day 1. They need to revamp the spec to be a battlemage.
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they could literally rip old demo lock for DH 3rd spec as a melee/range hybrid.
That old Demo spec was amazing. It’s a shame what happened there. That and RSV IMO remain one of the biggest mistakes blizzard has made to date. RSV was the best spec in game I have ever played. I loved MoP RSV. And Demo in the beginnings of Warlords was super fun. If played right you could out put some crazy numbers with snap shots trinkets. Putting it as a third DH spec would be interesting. They would have to leave the demon pet part out ish. I mean they could do demon from with in as an attack where the DH unleashes the demon trapped inside for huge pet damage. Lore wise that would be cool.
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FYI: Renaming “Bestial Wrath” to “Coordinated Assault” when they copied it over doesn’t make SV’s approach to pets different to BM’s.
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Oh wow. 1 very similar ability and one ability with the same name
Clearly bm and sv is the same…
And yes. The themes are different with different approaches to pets.
Your are still essentially saying ‘that’s the way it’s always been, so keep it.’ Which is fine, I just can’t get on board with that way of thinking about it. I struggle with the idea of the original concept being a sacred cow - just felt limiting.
If classes were single or even 2 spec I could see it as more of an issue; although I think I’m a minority voice on this one.
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I’m saying that because I think the history is actually relevant to the discussion. I think understanding why players are interested in the hunter class is important. If the game were still back during BC or wrath, I could potentially see where you’re coming from since major shake ups wouldn’t be quite as jarring. But I don’t think alienating players by removing key components of the core class after going on 17 years is a good idea.
It’s why I mentioned how SV is already a really contentious topic. People are already still upset 5 years later at the loss of RSV for a new spec that Ion stated was meant to be niche and likely wouldn’t appeal to the majority of hunters. Continuing down that road and slowly making the core components of the class less important pushes players who already enjoy the class further away and dilutes the hunter class’ identity.
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I think there is some risk with that thinking. Stifles innovation and risk-taking. I’m not saying M-SV is innovative but I’d like to believe they can innovate through iteration. Though they seem to be mostly making mistakes of late.
Might have been less of a leap to make them weaker at range; pet dependent; heavy damage traps; couple melee strikes. High flexibility play style might have been fun.
Push comes to shove I’m fine with the voice of the player-base making the call. I don’t main a hunter any longer but still play one as my #2.
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So was significant access to Frost, Fire, and Arcane for every Mage spec. Kill Command was once available to every spec, and baseline traps could carry actual damage value. Death Knights’ resource system initially depended quite literally on their being a hybrid.
Yet, each spec is thematically intact despite those being squelched or done away with completely. There’s scarcely a single class for which “core pillars” haven’t shifted. Why draw a line before deeper cohesion or player choice or agency on the basis of something clearly mutable?
I disagree. I feel that at present the position of the pet on SV is merely an arbitrarily tacked-on weakness, leaving an otherwise more capable spec vulnerable to focus targeting or environment pathing to starve it. If it had some actual interesting and unique pet synergies, well beyond merely its baseline resource generation being now (and for only 2 out of 9 iterations) pigeon-holed into it at no increase to cohesion or gameplay depth, then I might agree, but our pet presently carries no unique affordances, only unique weaknesses.
Change that, and I’d be happy to see SV continue to operate fully only with a pet. Though, I’d then have to wonder why its approach to pet use is more interesting than BM’s, etc., which is why I doubt, ultimately, that its inclusion the ability to avoid it will ever be more than arbitrary. I do, however, believe that the unique affordances available to a pet would be far more accessible and promotable if we stopped treating a pet as necessary from its history alone, and looked at what specifically it could do for the gameplay, which so far suggestions asking for the ability to avoid it have, oddly, done better than those that ask that the pet’s position remain untouched (and untouchable).
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This is a separate problem. As I havent played BM seriously since Legion (when I was unimpressed with SV) I cant really say what would make the BM pet mechanics more interesting, but a mostly passive beast cleave and weakauras assisted stack management aint it.
I think I would be interested in more relevant stable management. More relevance to the second pet based on family, and the ability to briefly call pet number 3 to perform a family based task.
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Perhaps a bit. But I also believe there is still room within that space to explore unique gameplay that can be new or unique while still satisfying players who were / are interested in the class. As I mentioned earlier, I think at most you can go without one of the main themes of the hunter and it still feel like a hunter, which I think does still leave room for change and innovation without making the class unrecognizable to those who were / are interested in it already.
When you stray too far from the base class and its “pillars” as I’ve mentioned, you push players away from the class. I think the specs should be tailored to those who are at least interested in the base class. And to me, if you want to be melee and without a pet, it does not seem to me you want to be what a hunter in WoW is. Which is fine, but I don’t think changes should be made to the class to appeal to players who aren’t really interested in it to begin with.
I don’t think I’ve said they can’t shift or there isn’t room for additional thematic and gamrplsy identities. I do think you can only change things so much before it becomes something else entirely though.
The pet absolutely should stay. I remain firm on that stance for all of the reasons already stated.
For your mage scenario, all mages can still cast spells from the other disciplines of magic. Arcane intellect, frost nova, ring of frost, conjuring refreshments, etc. The only school I think is left our is fire which I would argue is more of a failing on Blizz’s part.
What you’re asking for is a much bigger departure than I think most people would find acceptable for the class. It’s objectionable because it turns a spec that was originally focused on ranged combat, to melee, and then wanting one of the few things that does make it unique in gameplay and thematics from other melee removed.
Don’t take my statements as change being bad. I think too much change while ignoring the base class can be bad. If you feel
Rather than argue for Lone Wolf, perhaps argue to have the base gameplay behind survival built up and improved upon so the pet doesn’t feel like a hindrance. What you’re referring to here is a separate problem entirely, and I sympathize with the fact that the pet can feel more like a crutch than a boon. But I don’t think that means we should consider throwing the whole thing out, you know?
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I like the idea of MSV being pet-centric; it’s just not designed in a way that draws people in. And, of course, the math under the hood is weak.
I agree the math is week; and it needs an ability change or two to function a bit better.
I think it has some footing. I think the bones are there with the current iteration. But it needs impactful tweaks. Having said that I simply don’t think blizz can reverse the damage done. A spec was lost for MSV…the spec was severely bugged and broken and seemed relatively unfinished in legion.
It was weak in damage in bfa outside of one short time in the first raid.
It’s a melee in a traditional ranged class which is heavily scrutinized. The whole situation has caused much uncertainty in the wow community.
Honestly the only way they could ever salvage this community is bringing back RSV, dedicate some time to MSV to at least make it semi competitive and do something to fix the clunky mess that is MM.
Oh, I agree that it’s not enough, but I do feel that advancement to BM should be made first, rather than that process—of SV breakings its very stale stalemate of pet inclusion only as an arbitrary weakness by making that pet finally provide unique affordances—potentially precluding the options available to the spec to which they should be most integral.
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Thats solid. I think they could just give SV other, possibly less potent focus generators, prior to making pets better for everyone, but specifically BM.