Poor Beps. I wish he could have enjoyed MM more or something. No one can say Bepples didn’t stand his ground through the years through the fire and the rain… Despite our quarrels let us remember Bepples as a hunter of steadfast-ness. I hope he’s well!
2 Likes
I enjoyed having the option of taking Animal Companion or not. I like to level with a kind of middle-ground build that isn’t hugely AOE or Single Target, and I had one pet for it. Skipping multi-shot and just using Barrage for AOE. One hunter, one pet, kind of the original Hunter way of being, aside from Dire Beasts.
AC was a nice option to try in other builds. I do NOT min-max. I do try to play around with other talents and builds now and again to see if I like them more if they just flat-out perform better in some areas of the game, sure.
Now AC may as well be baked into the class and not a choice. 
Hunters like myself who also preferred range survival will carry the torch for him (though differently lol)
5 Likes
Shadow Hunter, Headhunter, Farstrider, Ranger, Witch Hunter, Mountineer, REXXAR!? Plenty of hunter fantasies.
Also, Sentinel is not actually a hunter thing, I think the wow devs just pulled another redshirt guy moment. Sentinels were the Night Elf Military and did not consist of just hunters or rangers, and in the warcraft games they had mounted warriors.
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i wouldn’t mind sentinel if it was actually based on the two reasonably hunter-esque units (huntress and archer)
but no we get priestess of the moon’s elune magic. we don’t even get a kitty to ride on 
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Looked at Shadow Hunter first, and they’re closer to Shadow Priest or Shaman in abilities. They use Shadow magic and Vudoo to curse enemies or heal allies. Also are a melee fighter.
These two can be combined together as they are two side of the same coin. The differential feature of them is they can use nature magic like druids, but otherwise they are Marksmanship Hunters.
Rifleman = Marksman.
Headhunter and Rexxar are melee Beastmastery Hunters.
Blizzard has interwoven many of these other classes into each Hunter spec to create during beta. Hunter is a really broad catch all class lore wise. It includes everything from Rangers to Beastmasters to Archers to a bunch of other things. They all fall under the “Hunter” class category though.
My point was why Shadow Hunter was not a choice for a Hero talent tree. They have “hunter” in the name only, and are more closer to melee Shadow Priest.
Mounted ranged combat lets gooo! Give the riders of the apocalypse a run for their money!
Doesn’t matter, those fantasies all exist. Shadow Hunter being melee means nothing. They made survival melee, so clearly they are down to play around. Dark Ranger also uses shadow magic, so also not a problem. While I do agree they are closer to shaman then anything, it’s still a fantasy people have wanted for either hunter or shaman.
Still a hunter fantasy that could be hero talents, especially since you are adding magic to them.
Still a fantasy they could play into. They have plenty of options, it’s a load that they only have two.
Also headhunter is not melee, they threw spears and yet again, is a hunter fantasy people are into. It’s very hard line troll, but hard line fantasy didnt stop them from making Dark Ranger, or Sentinel even though I question that decision.
Yep, that was my bad. Misread.
Small nitpick: They aren’t melee. They use thrown weapons.
Missing the last part were I explained that Hunters cover mostly all of those fantasies already since Blizzard took bits from each of them to create Hunters.
There is not enough substance in each to create a whole talent tree that would be unique enough. Pack Leader does not even have an identity and are just some buffs to BM abilities.
If Survival had not gone melee than Blizzard could have brought in the Rexxar fantasy and had SV and BM play become the melee Hunter fantasy.
As a spec they would likely use melee weapons and also have a throw spear ability. However, Survival Hunters have this already with Harpoon.
I think they still could’ve made an entire full spec for hunters using simply diff flavors of ranged spec from other mmos, be it closer to D3 DH (mid ranged petless spec), some sort of Magic Archer (utilizing the new charge mechanic from DF) with focus on using elements in arrows (not ele sham) or some further hooks.
And if things can be built out into a talent tree they could’ve been built into a hero tree.
As for not being fully based on wc3 ? I mean i don’t remember anything involving dracthyr in wc3 either, so it’s not like it couldn’t have been done.
A combination of nature and elemental magic would have been an option. Hunters have used both and lore wise as well.
Freezing Arrow, Entangle roots, calling Wild Gods, stone skin.
Hunters are capable of using lesser druid abilities and that could of fit with SV/BM.
I mean elemental archer (we do have arcane arrow) with heavy self buffs could’ve been bm/mm hero spec or a separate spec.
D3 demon hunter mid range spec could’ve been a MM/SV hero spec (with bonus points of possibly setting up turrets)
Overall there is plenty of design space for additional mini specs or even full blown specs in the design of “the only class with a ranged weapon and/or living pets”
Man, thats such a small and unimaginative position to hold up. “They took a small piece of this, so it covers the whole thing.” Same could be said for most hero talents. The point of them isn’t to construct a whole new fantasy, just to capitalize on them. Each one of those could easily be made into a hero spec, it’s a hunter fantasy, no matter how small you think it is, or covered, (which it isn’t).
Hero specs are basically sub-specializations, not a whole new class, not even a whole new specialization. You gotta be more creative about what these could be.
Survival is not a Rexxar fantasy just because they wanted to put his picture on the tree, by the way. Too many gadgets Rexxar never had. It base template that is broad, hero specs focus on specifics, and for that, we have a lot of fantasies we can pull from. Rexxar still included if they can fix Pack Leader.
Guys this thread is about balancing and changes on the specs. Please make a new thread for lore discussions
3 Likes
My point being is that the took bits from different Hunter classes, and patchworked those into Hunters. So Hunters are a little bit of each of those fantasies. They even had Black Arrow which is one of the Dark Ranger hero unit’s abilities in Warcraft III.
Just as Celinamuna mentioned that a Hero talent tree focused on Nature/ Elemental magic would fit nicely for SV/BM. Hunters were also know to use lower tier magic; however, Blizzard has dropped most of it.
However, I don’t think there’s enough meat left on each fantasy to build a completely original Hero talents. Pack Leader is just unimaginative, and borrowed from BM.
Never said Survival was Rexxar fantasy. I said was if Survival had stayed a range class then a Hero talent tree could have covered it, and SV/ BM could have both become melee. A melee BM would capture the savagery of being a Hunter, which Survival does not have.
To all that I can literally say the exact same thing I already did. Same to every class and hero spec. You are losing the plot here, my man.
Warrior already had Mountain Kings thing, then they went an capitalized on it with Mountain Thane.
Death Knight already had San’layn themes going for it in Blood, but they still went in on San’layn.
Druid of the Claw, Voidweaver, Frostfire, Diabolist, all of them are the same story. You are not making sense here.
Hero specs, create the meat. You just need the theme then you get creative. You want to argue blizzard isn’t being creative with them, then thats fine, I can agree with that. But to say there is nothing for them to pull from? You are just wrong there.
There’s something to pull from, but Blizzard’s team of designers needs to dig deep to create hero talents that are not just copied abilities we already have.
Farstrider that focuses on Nature spells calling on the primal spirits for aide.
So with all this shadow dmg what do you think mm dark rangers stats priority will be?