Those would also add to the issue. Not at once ofc, but further down. They saw this in WotLK, which is why they reworked it for Cata, and included actual defining abilities in what was now called “Core Specializations”.
How you feel, is how you feel.
Yeah, that specifically, was not among their better decisions.
Although, that in itself, would not result in the base system of how talents were designed later on, to be bad. The approach to the system itself, and having more powerful/impactful talent choices, was a good change.
They just partially screwed it up by adding in some specific talents which were either considered synonymous with the class as a whole. Or with more than 1 spec. Or, those specific abilities/effects were so synonymous with the spec itself to it’s core so it just felt wrong not to pick such a talent.
As a base concept? No perhaps not. That would depend more on the base spec itself(the core) and what the passive effect/talent does for the core.
But, in the modern game, having a talent which for example, adds a few % damage to a single ability, it’s just not enough. Most people that I’ve seen commenting on it, they say that such talents are incredibly boring. And I agree with them.
And, that does not make it a better system. That just shows how bad it would eventually become after a while. Where it’s promoted for people to pre-program an addon to choose talents for you just because it’s so tedious to click them yourself.
Depends on who you ask. But yeah, things can be improved for certain.
We all have our favorite period(s) in the game. I for one did not like the MoP-style of the talent-system as a whole. Where talents were for the most part, the same for the entire class no matter which spec you chose.
Got a source on that?
That’s how you feel, yes.
There were no Specs prior to Cata.
We had one core playstyle which you could build upon/add things to via talent options.
That’s literally what Legion and BFA survival hunter is. Just minus the benefits you get with getting exotic pets. Your pet does fight with ya by using kill command, the hunter still have range abilities through their pet, traps, talent and serpent sting and then comes in melee. They’re a combination spec of range and melee giving you the vibe they’re a jack of all trades type.
No that was marksmanship or have people forgotten how specs were viewed during vanilla years. Beast mastery was pretty much Tarzan or Jungle book, Marksmanship hunter was Legolas spec which was obvious to see. Survival spec was a Rambo spec due to having a bit more access to use melee abilities. That’s all three specs were viewed back then.
Well your best bet is Shadow lands expansion. The feedback you’re giving here let’s see if the developers will considered it because that’s the source you’re only going to get.
That’s literally how you expressed it to me, but you’re still continuing with the range thing. It reminds me in the days when survival went pure range and players expressed how they missed raptor strike and etc. It seems like your best argument is fighting the developers with suggestions. They’re the ones who kept with this design since Legion and BFA. You want survival back to range before Shadowlands is here?
Then there’s your chance to give feedback a long with others who want that back. Just know there will be resistance on those who like survival spec now.
Right. I think they should allow the current iteration of “Survival Hunter” to be able to tame exotic pets and change the name to Beast Master and then they can bring the old version of Survival Hunter back
Wouldn’t make sense. It has to be one or the other. Beast Mastery being melee with range abilities a long with pet using beast mastery traits would be OP. There would be no point of Survival Hunter considering it would be the same thing just minus beast mastery trait benefits.
I think it’s actually safe to say that some things WILL change going into Shadowlands. It’s more a matter of how much/in what form.
As for the feedback coming from us here on the forums in regards to RSV, and whether we’ll see it again in the future. We can’t but wait and see, while continuing to advocate for it’s return.
What?
May I remind you that Raptor Strike wasn’t originally an SV-ability. It was class-wide. And the changes made specifically to SV mattered not for RS in itself, and for it’s removal.
Having said that, I understand why past elements/features which were removed, why this would not be liked by some players. In this case, it’s a bit different though as when they removed Raptor Strike and other features/talents involving melee, it was done so for the entire class. Not just for SV.
And, it was done because those features felt increasingly useless as, with the removal of the Deadzone and the min. attack-range on our ranged weapons, we no longer needed to rely on melee-weapons(or abilities tied to them).
The removal of RSV as a spec, going into Legion, was not done because they felt it was no longer useful. The only reason they did so, is because they wanted us to have a melee-spec. No matter what us players wanted at the time.
Our feedback, and suggestions are aimed at the developers yes.
Like I’ve said numerous times, I have no interest in seeing current MSV reverted/removed. None of the 3 current specs we have needs to be heavily changed/removed for RSV to come back.
I’ve already said this to you before. Do you actually read any replies aimed at you?
Take your personal feelings out of it and just look at numbers and fairness.
13 melee DPS, 11 ranged DPS. Equality would objectively be better, no? Shouldn’t people of both camps have an equal number of choices? Moving SV back to ranged would give equality.
3 ranged weapon specs, and now only 2. More variation is objectively better, right? Why would you want something unique replaced with something already abundant? How many people complain that so many DPS specs have devolved into basic builder/spender rotations. How is that homogenization bad but replacing a ranged weapon spec with a melee spec fine? Imagine if they took a unique healing spec like Disc and replaced it with some generic healing spec with the standard fast mana-intensive heal, slow mana-efficient heal, etc. People would rightly be furious.
2nd lowest played spec in mythics, 2nd lowest played spec in the current raid, and it’s not even close. Less than half of one percent of parses for each of those content types are Survival hunters. I think statistically it’s possible that every player that plays Survival at a serious level is in this thread right now. Clearly something needs to be done.
So again - if your defense is that you personally enjoy melee SV over ranged, you are entitled to that opinion. If that is the reason you don’t want it switched back, I can understand that. But can you point to any facts/data/etc. that support a claim that MSV is better for the game than RSV would be if it returned?
Not entirely true, once long ago, Melee Hunters were a thing. It wasn’t the most efficient way to play, but it was effective especially in PVP. Than came a few fixes to classes, and basically forced Melee Hunters to rely on Ranged. Having Melee Survival is a god send, and one of the few Ion lead design choices that I like.
However at the same time, I agree we need more Ranged specs.
I think they just wanted to return some old abilities and try something new hence why it went on to bfa and possibly Shadowlands. Perhaps counterattack may make a comeback if they’re deciding to bring back old abilities.
Debatable on the user depending how they spec themselves on survival. Some wanted to do well at close range if they couldn’t get back to range. We know the purpose of that.
I think the problem is you have a hard to accepting mines and not moving on from it. You’ve made your point plenty of time, but you can’t accept when I decline on your statement.
Read the original game manual. It clearly defines hunter as a ranged class. Melee hunter was not an officially recognized playstyle. Just because you could, does not mean you were intended to do so.
This is not opinion. It’s written there in black and white.
Melee hunters were a gimmick, even in pvp. No other hunters I used to run with when we were all ranking up back in the day took it seriously and none of us knew of any that hit any high rank playing it.
To the people saying we had melee talents in the surv tree conveniently gloss over the fact that most of those talents were to help immobilize the target to help you get back out to range.
Here’s another giant post. Sadly it’s needed because people like Brutalistica lie too much.
Didn’t we already explain this to you earlier in the thread?
Survival was a very popular spec in WotLK, Cataclysm, MoP, and the first part of WoD. Patch 6.2 was the only time it was significantly unpopular, and that was a) because Blizzard made it literally worthless in PvE (it seriously did tank-level damage for much of the patch) and Legion and melee Survival were announced 1.5 months into the patch.
Hmm, nope, you’ve pretty much posted nothing but terrible arguments here from the very start. You didn’t understand the difference between ranged Survival and BM (the ranged one had next to no pet dependence while the melee one literally has BM’s signature ability, for crying out loud). You said it would be easy to put every exclusive thing from ranged Survival into the other specs, which it wouldn’t. You claimed SV was not undesirable for being melee in raiding, which is contrary to what SV Hunters themselves are saying. You said many people enjoy it even though it is demonstrably one of the least-played specs in the game. And you admitted that you have absolutely zero investment in Hunters and have contempt for ranged combat in general.
You’re the one being a close-minded melee fanatic here. What could you possibly offer this discussion as someone who self-admittedly doesn’t know about Hunters and doesn’t care for ranged specs? You do realise that one of the primary arguments against melee Survival is that it’s a spec purely aimed at people who don’t play the class, right? You are thoroughly proving that point here.
Actually, it does. Let me state it bluntly for you:
Your opinion is invalid and wrong
I’m not saying your opinion is bad because I don’t agree with it. I’m saying it’s bad because you’re speaking from a position of ignorance. As someone who doesn’t like ranged specs you should not have a place in the Hunter class, period. It was established as a ranged class and was specifically tailored for ranged players for over a decade. This is the most essential reason why making Survival melee was a bad idea; it was explicitly designed for people other than Hunters. So Hunters didn’t want to play it and most of the melee players it was aimed at are already playing their own specs. Look at all the people shilling for Survival in this thread. The overwhelming majority of them are posting from their non-Hunter mains. Including you. Survival will NEVER amount to anything if it continues to give the middle finger to its own class.
Uh, yes, there is a lot wrong with making a melee Hunter spec. Almost no Hunters were interested in melee Hunters, almost no one else in the game was going to reroll for one, and the class’s identity has been explicitly centred around ranged weapons for its entire existence. Going into BFA they literally said Survival was problematic because it stopped feeling like a Hunter; that’s why they added so many ranged abilities to it in BFA.
Oh, and there’s that small fact that it replaced a very popular and unique ranged spec.
Survival did not have the same identity of the other two specs. It did not focus on pets or long-range sniping. It was the utilitarian spec that focused on explosives, venom, and traps. You can’t just cram everything it had into MM and call it a day. It would dilute MM’s identity and fail to represent the ranged Survival everyone loved. They literally tried this and this is exactly how it turned out. Things like Aimed Shot do not make sense for ranged SV. Things like Entrapment and Serpent Spread do not make sense for MM.
It’s like saying they could just remove Assassination from the game and give everything it had to Subtlety. I mean, they both just use stealth and dual-wield, right? Or maybe we should remove Affliction and give all its stuff to destruction? They both just use fel magic and demons, right? Obviously not. Everyone knows that would be a disaster and those are unique specs with their own fantasies, yet for some reason it’s fine to walk all over Hunters and take their specs away and say that any spec that uses a ranged weapon is exactly the same and we can only have one spec in the game that focuses on them.
Why doesn’t it make sense? Melee has more representation than ranged. Plus, you have ranged casters and ranged weapon users. There are only 2 of the latter, one of which hardly focuses on the ranged weapon at all. So ranged weapons are critically underrepresented in WoW. It’s utterly ridiculous to take away one of the only ranged weapon specs in the game to add to the increasing pool of melee weapon specs.
Like I said earlier, it didn’t make sense in the fantasy of the class. It doesn’t even make sense for the fantasy of Survival. Survival is meant to be about utilitarianism, opportunism, and… well… survivability, and arbitrarily not using a ranged weapon goes against all those things.
It’s only balanced in your opinion (which is a bad opinion, remember) because you favour melee and so does the game.
You realise you’re the one aggressively and selfishly defending a spec made for a fringe minority because the spec it replaced was a type of spec you didn’t personally like? Maybe YOU should accept that Hunters generally don’t want a melee spec and therefore Survival shouldn’t be melee. You can stick to your Paladin main and still be just fine.
Hunters did just fine before melee Survival and we would do just fine after it. If it means people like you would have to abandon your couple days or so /played on your Hunter and go back to your melee main then that’s fine.
And a whole lot of existing Warlocks would be screwed and you’d probably stick to your main anyway. This is why it’s a bad idea. It’s also why melee Survival is a bad idea.
We need to stop redesigning specs to explicitly cater towards people who don’t play the class to which the spec belongs. This is also why there should not be melee Mages, tank Shamans, ranged Rogues, or any other hair-brained idea the forums like to come up with.
Thankfully Blizzard is unlikely to do any of those things after the resounding failure that was melee Hunters.
The difference is MM has shown that it can be a popular spec even if it is sometimes unpopular. It wasn’t good in MoP because Blizzard consistently failed to meaningfully buff it in a way that made it competitive with the other specs. Most famously, they kept buffing Aspect of the Hawk because they didn’t understand that all 3 specs getting buffed at the same time means MM would still be behind.
Before and after MoP MM was popular. This is unlike melee SV which is always unpopular.
So much better that it has a fraction of the playerbase it had when it was ranged and has to get reworked every expansion. Amazing.
No, you’re not an expert. I can tell because you keep making up easily-disprovable falsehoods in a feeble attempt to revise history. For example, you have had multiple people link to you hard, numerical proof that ranged SV was a popular spec yet you continue to deny it.
I don’t know or care what specific tuning changes they made to melee abilities in WotLK, but the wowpedia page for each ability tracks each patch change and on the Raptor Strike page I’m not seeing any major nerf during WotLK. I’m willing to accept that there was some stat scaling change that resulted in Raptor Strike doing a lot less damage but I’ll need to see hard proof of it first.
Claiming that any ability was doing 10k crits is absurd, especially Raptor Strike. That would literally be enough to 1-shot many players in PvP from 100% to 0% at level 70. There would literally never be a reason for Hunters to leave melee range; Raptor Strike alone would be doing over 1,500 DPS which is actually more than the minimum DPS required for Brutallus in Sunwell. I looked at some PvP videos of Hunters in BC and their raptor strikes are typically doing around 2k.
Raptor Strike was strong burst damage, but it was absolutely not worth deliberately running into melee in Burning Crusade. It was good when someone went into your melee range, but being in melee range was worse for the Hunter in the long term and the goal was always to get back to ranged as soon as possible. Hell, many of our talents including Survival talents exclusively buffed ranged, many of our gear bonuses buffed ranged, our primary cooldown only affected ranged haste, and we had plenty of tools to stick to ranged and kite people to death.
Survival was not meant to lack a ranged weapon at any point before Legion. We have already established this. Making it melee turned a very popular ranged spec into a very unpopular melee one that has been their biggest time and effort sink in the game (they’ve had to remake it twice now). Once again you are revising history. Survival’s peak was when it was a ranged spec, plain and simple. And that goes for PvP as well as PvE; its golden ages as a PvP spec were actually in WoD of all expansions. Nowadays I can go into an epic BG and see 12 Hunters, none of which are Survival. Making it melee was only good for melee fanatics such as yourself who hardly even play a Hunter if at all to begin with.
It has already been pointed out multiple times; Survival was routinely a very popular spec when it was ranged. You’re just denying hard numbers at this point.
Here are the fortnightly parse counts of Highmaul from Warcaraftlogs:
https://i.imgur.com/yduITaW.png
As you can see, Survival dominated that tier. It wasn’t just the most popular Hunter spec; it was the most popular spec in the game (the second place, Frost Mage, peaked at just 40,000 parses). It wasn’t just this tier either. The spec was the most popular Hunter spec most of the way through MoP, the most popular in the whole game during DS, and very popular throughout the rest of Cata and WotLK.
It’s wild how you are trying to pretend WotLK was some dreadful change that made everyone abandon Survival. WotLK’s Surival update with Explosive Shot, Lock and Load, and Black Arrow was what put Survival on the map. It was a niche spec before then, but even then it was still ranged. The primary asset of Survival was Expose Weakness, something that only worked from ranged attacks. As I said before, melee only had situational importance in PvP. In PvE there was no meleeing at all.
It’s trivial to check that all my mythic progression this tier is as BM. Marksmanship was actually typically less popular than SV most of the time between WotLK and WoD. You’re just further demonstrating your further cluelessness about Hunters. That’s pretty embarrassing for a self-declared “expert”.
You are similarly clueless about Hunters. Survival was a niche spec before WotLK, and WotLK enhanced the spec by adding unique ranged abilities. Even in Classic and TBC, however, the spec was played at ranged most of the time. It was never, ever a spec that had you abandon the ranged weapon and stick to melee as much as possible like it is now. Stop inventing history, you liar.
Here are some real statistics from 4.3 to 5.4. Oh, look, Survival was an extremely popular spec and MM was in fact in the dumps for that whole period, and you’re lying again.
Surely if you know about Trueshot Aura you would also know about Expose Weakness? Surely you would also know that other attack power raid buffs were added to the game so Trueshot Aura was no longer necessary? Shouldn’t a Hunter expert know these things???
Citation needed.
Looks like you are inventing history again. Current Survival is nothing like old Survival. Old Survival had a ranged weapon, the current one does not. If you really played Survival back then, you would also know that Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, and Lock and Load i.e. the unique Survival ranged mechanics already existed long before Cata which is when they started removing melee stuff. Melee was well and truly obsolete by then. There was no single date when they suddenly changed Survival from a melee spec to a ranged spec. It used ranged weapons from the very beginning and had ranged-buffing talents and unique abilities since 1.7.
Oh dear, our resident Hunter expert seems to have forgotten that Raptor Strike’s damage was based on the main weapon’s damage and therefore it was only ever good when using a 2-hander. Dual-wielding was actually something you did to buff your ranged damage since you could put an agility enchant on each weapon.
Yes, you could crit high with Raptor Strike. It also had a 6-second cooldown and would require you to enter the vastly-more-dangerous melee range and stop using your ranged abilities which have high sustained damage. Any half-decent opponent would have no trouble roasting a Hunter playing as a wannabe-Warrior.
Blizzard literally said it was unpopular because it was a melee Hunter.
People actually like its playstyle and it has pretty strong performance.
More made-up history from melee fanatics.
Hunters always used ranged weapons before Legion. Even the early iterations of Survival.
Survival was often a very strong spec, and was very popular until the last patch of WoD.
I guess we can just take away a Rogue spec or maybe a Warlock spec and turn them into something no one else in the class wants because they’ll still have 2 proper specs remaining? Stupid logic. Hunter specs should not be designed for people who don’t play Hunters.
Lol!? There are more melee specs out there, including the one you’re posting from. There actually are not enough ranged weapon users while there are more than enough melee classes out there.
You’re not a Hunter so go away.
There were hardly any people going to Survival at all before WotLK and there are hardly any now. Melee mechanics for Hunters are a far, far, far more niche and unwanted mechanic than you think. Survival wasn’t even a popular spec until they added unique ranged abilities to it. Even many of the people who defend the current Survival like it for reasons that aren’t dependent on it being melee, such as a good rotation and choice of talents. You’re living in an alternate reality.
This is because you are minimally informed about the Hunter class and have no investment in the class.
Arms Warrior isn’t much different to Fury Warrior to me. I don’t use that as a platform to demand they turn one of them into a ranged spec I’ll never play anyway.
You guys didn’t give a damn when they took away ranged Survival from us so why should we give a damn about your tastes?
Ranged Survival was really fun to play too, you know. In fact, evidently it was more fun for most people since it was vastly more popular than the current Survival.
More lies and invented history from the “Hunter expert”. WotLK did not prune Hunters. Survival in WotLK was literally just Survival in BC with extra stuff added to it.
Legion did in fact prune Hunters. For example, every single iteration of Survival before Legion had:
a ranged weapon
Arcane Shot
Serpent Sting
Multi-Shot
Distracting Shot
Tranquilising Shot
Legion removed all of these things, not to mention the things they added after WoW launched such as Wyvern Sting, Explosive Shot, and Black Arrow.
This right here is another reason why making Survival melee was a bad idea; it invites repulsive ideas like this that would butcher the class even further.
Hardly anyone at all was asking for melee mechanics and the minimum range back.
I remember the days when they said they were removing melee entirely in 5.0 and most Hunters were happy about it.
You certainly didn’t get 300+ posts like this one on the General Discussion Forums asking for melee back years later.
So much nonsense in just a few lines.
Melee Hunters were not a thing. We couldn’t use our ranged weapons within 8 yards (later 5 yards) so we had to use melee when caught up close, but you were never intended to stick to melee and it was always an extremely suboptimal way to play the class. The identity and purpose of the class was explicitly centred around ranged weapons and the in-game design reflected this. Hunters always depended on Ranged. Plus, when they added unique ranged abilities to Survival like Explosive Shot people were very happy about it and excited for the spec really for the first time ever.
A “god send”, really? Just screw all the people who played the ranged version, right? How do you even reconcile this statement with your wish for more ranged specs in the game??
Uh, you sure about that? Because it’s pretty widely known how unpopular melee Hunter is right now.
Only new ranged spec I want to see is a rogue ranged pistol spec. Now that would be awesome. Outlaw rogue using pistols all the time: gunslinger style.
Well who fault is that “Mr.Expert Survival hunter”? if you did play the spec so well you would of noticed the numbers before Wotlk nerf, but you didn’t because you didn’t gear your hunter that way. If you need proof on that then you need to wait until classic gets up to Wotlk era or find a private server that hosts it. I know you can’t accept the fact I have that knowledge, but I am one of those players who explored survival hunter spec to its fullest.
1 shot pve players without resilience yes, but not with pvp gear. 6k - 8k depending on enchant procs is the damage on pvp players. Nevertheless that’s how far your knowledge is with survival spec, but you’re claiming you’re this expert yet never explored that far. That’s your fault for assuming how the spec should be played.
Listen. No one cares, but your fan base. Even with all the sources you think will back you up it won’t matter. Move on and accept it.
I didn’t go on the forums much until Wotlk and Cata. By the time Wotlk and Cata came the melee damage was already diminished. The melee abilities were useless to use compared to Vanilla and Burning Crusade. Most hunters who were excited about it was probably happy considering the damage of melee abilities hit like a wet noodle. I wasn’t interested in survival spec in that era, but still was geared well.
Since we don’t have lancers or dragoons we need a class or spec that wields a pole arm or lance or spear so I’m glad there’s one in game to be. I was thinking about wanting to make a melee that hacks and slashes away while holding onto a long, trusty friend-of-a-weapon with my buddy fighting and journeying next to me. I was thinking Vulpera or mechagnome would be cool to go with that fantasy and so I am glad there’s an up close and personal cleaving fighting style for aggressive or disciplined spear wielding / pole arm brandishing / lancing brawler. That’s a cool fantasy that no other class or even spec has and so you may want to consider being proud that wielding a spear with your buddy by your side is one of your options and fantasies, part of the kit and breadth of being a hunter, what a refreshing and exciting flavor of combat and aesthetics.
If they add a dragon race or class someday maybe lancer or dragoon like, you can leap up into the air and heave your spear downward like Freya from ff9! Or give that ability to spear hunters (unless they already have it, I’m still learning), a quick Vulpera bouncing high up into the air and hurling their spear down to the ground / enemy before landing with a light foot or maybe even a thunderous boom if you’re a Tauren hunter or a troll, etc, …and catching their rebounding spear mid twirl as it returns to them!
During Cata -WoD pre 6.2 was when range survival was at the hight of it’s popularity and was the highly mobile Legolas spec. By then the Rambo aspect was gone because hunters no longer used melee weapons.
I never said anything about vanilla days. back then and now in classic surv is just a pvp spec.
