Yeah, that’s sort of what players are supposed to do - no players, no game.
The issue is it’s not a matter of “one or the other.” Both options are possible. they wouldn’t have to be possible if the newer MM designs were actually better, but it’s gone through two iterations in four years.
In their own words, “I’ve seen worse, but I’m sure you could do better.”
Im rooting for the return on rsv as 4th spec or reverse if needed. Survival has always been a ranged spec since the dawn of wow, even back then the running joke of hunters was “What do you call a hunter with growl on in dungeon, huntard, what do you call a hunter in melee, huntard.”
I agree. I don’t like it that they removed hunters melee weapons too, for when fighting got close. And ammo. Why no ammo? And made the shots go all squiggly rather than a straight line.
And while we’re on it, what’s with fury warriors wielding two two handed weapons? What part of “two handed” was missed? They were perfectly fine dual wielding two one handed weapons. They just look ridiculous now.
Most of us RSV fans aren’t blaming fans of MSV. We know it was all Blizzard. But why do a lot of MSV fans like Kindwolf only seek to incite those of us who miss our spec of a decade?
The vast majority of us RSV folks aren’t asking for MSV to be removed, we know it has a community. We know some people find it fun. Which is why we advocate to get RSV back as a fourth. But so many MSV fans seem completely against us getting the spec that we found fun, the spec some of us played for literally a decade, one of the most popular specs in the game, back, as a fourth.
MM and SV are also entirely different, both thematically and fundamentally. So you can’t really alter MM to fit SV without making it no longer MM.
It’s no different than Druid’s getting a 4th spec to separate the Feral and Guardian aspects. Which they did because sharing a talent tree was bad. And Blizzard tried that in Legion. Several of MM’s talents were changed to include Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Lock and Load. Core things for Survival. It failed. Because like I said above, fundamentally SV and MM are VERY different. They shared a few shots, that was it. That’s akin to saying Shadow Priests are identical to Discipline Priests because they both have Shadow Word Pain and Power Word:Shield.
Losing options is never a good thing. Especially when it comes to specs. The prunes themselves were a mistake past the first one. It left almost every spec bare bones and caused the whole “leveling sucks because I don’t get anything after X level”. Entirely brought on by the prunes. Blizzard finally acknowledged this which is why they are unpruning some things and squishing levels. There is a balance, but Blizzard always takes it too far, and in the case of Survival being removed and changed to Melee Beast Mastery, they took it WAY too far.
Adding MSV as a 4th from the get go was the most logical choice. “Hey guys, we are trying something new with Hunters so will be adding a melee spec as a 4th option”. Or even “We are trying something new with Beast Mastery so will be adding a level 15 talent that replaces Cobra Shot and Multi Shot with melee versions for those who may be intrigued by a Rexxar thematic”. Bam, this entire situation could have been avoided.
However, a class like Hunter which from its inception had a core identity of ranged with pets, should NEVER have lost part of that identity. And it was unprecedented for Blizzard to downright completely remove a spec, has Blizzard changed things before? Absolutely. Had Blizzard ever completely removed a spec and its entire thematic? Never. And as a result, it left a large portion of the community in frustration and dismay, while bringing a tiny amount of non hunters in. It wasn’t a good trade off in the least.
I’ll agree with this but, what’s best in this situation is the return of RSV as a fourth spec. It’ll end a lot of frustration so a lot of players can once again have fun with the game playing their favorite spec. The game is funner when you are enjoying your class, you know? It’ll also end this community divide that the loss of RSV caused. It’ll also potentially bring back all the RSV players who downright quit when our spec was deleted over night. Seems like a good direction for the game to me.
This is a big thing too. Naturally everyone has an opinion, nothing wrong with that. But there is some merit to what I quoted. A lot of the MSV players(which is still a huge minority) had never touched the Hunter class prior. When you have zero insight into how RSV worked, then proceed to make claims like “It was MM!” or “MSV is better” or “Don’t take my spec away”, its like… /palm.
People with zero insight into what RSV was, how it played, how big its community was, etc… Should absolutely not speak in regards to how RSV was. They don’t know. So why voice an opinion on something you know nothing about? That’s just common sense.
Regardless, we don’t want MSV removed, despite its low representation. Because again, we know it does have a niche community. But please don’t be anti RSV for no other reason than “Just because”. RSV returning as a fourth leaves MSV intact for its community. Nothing would change for you guys and gals. Everything would change for us.
FUN detected. Wont happen. Your post fell on deaf ears.
That is inaccurate. Anyone who thinks they run Blizzard from their little WoW launcher is delusional.
ActiBlizz doesn’t need anyone here, in fact their company had an outstanding year. Their company, not yours.
You didn’t make any of the decisions that brought them the profits from the last quarter, or any fiscal period ever.
no players, no game
WoW has more subs now than they have in years thanks to Classic, this game isn’t going anywhere.
And, thinking you have any power with your little $15 is intellectually dishonest.
In reality, the fact that people played through the WoD exodus and hung on during the worst financial time in WoW…
…and are still here today is evidence that this game is practically bulletproof. All thanks to a fan base that will never ever completely leave WoW.
No, there hasn’t. Anyone arguing that Vanilla was precedent for a Hunter that doesn’t use a ranged weapon is lying or misinformed. Yes, that means you. Take your pick.
The Hunter class was centred around ranged weapons from the beginning and no iteration of any spec before Legion lacked a ranged weapon.
You guys took away our ranged spec, so 0 sympathy from me.
Yes, I will assume that someone that said that making Survival melee brought the class up to date, made it unique, and saved the class from being generic is someone who is hopelessly enamoured with melee specs.
No, that isn’t how auto-attack worked. Casting ranged abilities started Auto-Shot and casting melee abilities started the melee auto attack. It did not switch to Auto-Shot automatically when you went beyond 8 yards, that’s true, but all it took was 1 ranged ability to start Auto-Shot and they are 100% going to be spamming something like Concussive Shot while they run out. You certainly wouldn’t be in melee without Auto-Attack active. I actually tried to replicate what you just described on Classic just now and couldn’t (and yes, I was not using macros). Otherwise, the other Hunter has all the same kiting tools you do, plus they have access to Scatter + Feign + Trap which wouldn’t really do anything for you as valuable it is for them as it could get them back to max range where they can nuke you with their superior gear. As for dancing: unless they are not button mashing, they can get hits off on you too as soon as you come in range (including, most crucially, Wing Clip).
If they had a spec remotely geared towards PvP, this wouldn’t work. No self-respecting PvPer playing a Hunter would go anywhere near PvP without Savage Strikes and Improved Wing Clip. And it would only take one stun or root allowing him to get back to ranged and teach you a painful lesson about the value of Mortal Shots.
I talked to some Hunters on classic about this, and the general consensus is that, given the other Hunter significantly outgears you, it would only work if the starts align and you get all of these things in your favour:
Even imagining this happening once is a strech, much less regularly.
What exactly is this meant to say about today’s melee Survival, again?
Nice try at being condescending, but you’re the one posting absolutely irrelevant nonsense to somehow make melee SV look better because in Vanilla you could possibly find a Hunter so terrible he couldn’t win against a wannabe Warrior playing a Hunter that he vastly outgeared.
Yeah, it does suck when people get all reductionist and over-generalise a spec to just “spam 2 abilities”, right?
On that note, Survival as ranged also had Serpent Sting, Cobra Shot, and Arcane Shot in addition to Explosive Shot and Black Arrow, as well as key passives like Lock and Load and Serpent Spread that added a lot of flavour and gameplay uniqueness to the spec, all of which you flat-out ignored.
You found that because you were ignorant of Hunter class design. Simple as that. Also, if Survival was the one with more flavour how come it was unceremoniously removed and none of it was incorporated into Marksmanship?
It’s ludicrous to pretend that any spec that focuses on the ranged weapon must be identical. By this logic I can call Arms and Fury because they both swing sticks around and use Rage, or all the Rogue specs the same because they all stealth and dual-wield. Marksmanship and Survival were different takes on ranged weapon combat. The most obvious way to see this is how Marksmanship had long casts that did a lot of physical damage while Survival was based on elemental DoT damage. They were as different as Destruction and Affliction, and in much the same way.
And you’d be wrong. It’s pretty easy to verify that I at least played Vanilla considering I have a feat of strength for a PvP rank that was given to me when achievements were first added. There was literally no reason to make such a bad assumption other than a weak attempt at being condescending.
I know how Hunters worked back then. And you’re right: we had Wing Clip to get back to ranged. The key part there is back to ranged. We were first and foremost ranged attackers, as the manual said.
Uh, do you know how either bows or guns work? They’ll still kill you at point blank, you know.
I still don’t know why you think Hunters having a minimum ranged back in the day as a punishment for being in melee range supports a spec today that must stay in melee range as much as possible.
Seriously, what are you even trying to communicate here? Because it’s making no sense whatsoever. Go reread what I posted and what you responded with. Go back a few posts like that if you need. Sort out your train of thought because right now it seems you’re getting confused.
The original point being made here was that timewaster fluff like buying ammo and pet food was not as important to the identity of the class as the possession of the ranged weapon itself. Which is a perfectly reasonable point.
Ok, then what’s the point of this line of discussion? The reason I am pointing out that the original identity said that is because you have many people claiming that the melee Survival of Legion and BFA is more true to the original Survival (or even the BC one) than the iterations between then and Legion. In this very post I am responding to someone who thinks melee-only Hunters were something with precedent from Vanilla. It obviously isn’t true and relies on intense revisionism and ignorance to try to argue.
Yes, they changed the class at some point. Arguing the merits of that is a separate discussions, but the melee lovers need to at the very least admit that melee Survival did not have precedence in the class, did not fit the Hunter class identity at the time they decided to make the change, and was not true to the original Survival Hunter.
I already explained this. You’re being deliberately obtuse and immature now.
At this point you are just stubbornly repeating stuff you’ve already put out there that was already debunked. I’m not inclined to try in vain to explain these things again to you, especially when you’re just taking snippets of a few words of my post and I have to continually go back and find the context you’re leaving out (I’ve had to do this several times up to this point in this post already).
Again, this is about all the people claiming melee Hunter had precedent from the original iteration of the class and is true to that iteration. This ignores the basic fact that Hunters were intended to be made unique by their ranged weaponry, this was reflected in-game back then, and no Hunter lacked a ranged weapon until Legion. Simple as that.
Like I said before, we can argue about the merits of changing the class identity later on to fit a melee Hunter. I’ll still point out why it was a terrible idea and not merited at all, but the point is that you have people making arguments based on bad WoW development history and that’s why I keep talking about the original identity.
Every single time someone suggests a “solution” like this it revolves around letting the niche of melee Survival players keep everything and then some while continuing to try to jerryrig a worse version of what we used to have into the existing ranged specs. So much for “compromise”.
I know it’s all “personal preference” and everything but it’s impossible for me to sympathise with the viewpoint that Survial somehow got worse after WotLK. There was hardly anything unique and significant to the spec in that era besides a few token PvP talents that the other specs could reach anyway. The WotLK version was literally the BC version with stuff added on-top of it (admittedly it lost Readiness but it gained far more other things). Did you log in on patch 3.0 and say “Oh, look, a brand new, unqiue, SV damage ability and a bunch of new and powerful talents like T.N.T., Lock and Load, and Hunting Party… this sucks”?
If people in this thread are throwing out reports I find that extremely disappointing. I typically don’t report anyone unless they are posting totally off-topic trolling nonsense which is very rare and certainly hasn’t happened in this thread. I’ve had my fair share of trigger-happy reporting and suspensions and I don’t support it unless it’s necessary.
Hunters typically didn’t like the melee and the ammo. They were penalties specific to Hunters and it led to pretty crappy situations such as falling off on DPS whenever the raid had to stack on the target, or having significantly less inventory space than other classes because you had to use a quiver.
As for shot animations: most of them still go in a straight line.
You’re childish and you’re just trying to get to my nerves… enjoy your little crusade.
Druid has 2 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank spec. Honestly it’s not a good comparison.
It sounds easy and a simple solution, but considering the technicals of implementing a 4th dps spec on a pure dps class is not as simple as it seems.
Also the 2 dps specs for druid, one is ranged and the other melee.
I can assure you, if you could debate with a dev he would tell you exactly that, adding a 4th dps spec to a pure dps class is not viable. You can doubt me, but it’s the truth. If a 4th spec is your only option to be happy, i’d say this is viable:
Losing option is never good, i didn’t state otherwise. If you took time to read i said there’s also the problem of “too much”, wich is also an issue.
I’m happy were getting lot of stuff back, am i angry i’m not getting Exorcism back? Absolutely not…
More options are good, when they are good options. Just adding stuff for the sake of adding is what created problems that made the situation were in right now.
I’ve made a post up on this thread with an idea that could solve this problem, without the need of a 4th spec, or any specs at all. You probably won’t like it.
I find it an interesting take to say how melee survival should never be deleted when that’s exactly how it came to be by deleting ranged survival.
I didn’t say ranged survival should have been obliterated either. I said asking for a spec to be annihilated entirely is bad juju, and as I have repeatedly stated, I am all for ranged survival returning as a fourth spec with some changes in mechanics to make it different enough from the other two.
I do doubt you. Because as I said, deleting a spec overnight was a unprecedented change that forced a vast majority of the hunter community to reroll, swap specs or quit. Do I think a 4th spec would work for every class? Absolutely not, hell Demon Hunters only have two. But again, Hunters are a unique case where a spec was outright removed. The most popular spec, the spec with the most representation. Removed and replaced with a spec so niche it struggles to reach 1% in varying forms of content. So in this particular case, because the community already exists and the thematic is still unique and has yet to be replicated by any other class or spec? I absolutely believe RSV coming back as a fourth would be doable. Hell, the entire spec and its abilities and passives and talents are already known, they’d just have to add it back and tweak Attack Power modifiers for abilities(which they do for every spec anyway).
Yet, you think a BM tank, or ranged support, if not both, would be easier to implement into a class that from inception was all about ranged damage and pets? I legit don’t even know how to respond to that so I won’t.
But again, you openly admitted you didn’t play a hunter. So you aren’t aware of how things were and how popular the class is. I respect your opinion but I highly disagree with it. And even mentioning BM as a tank spec shows just how little you actually understand, especially considering how horrible the pet AI is and you want to tie that into making our pet a tank for dungeons or raids? That’s downright laughable.
You also are missing the point I was trying to make. Is adding too much for the sake of “just adding” bad? Absolutely. But this isn’t a case of “just because”. Again, it was unprecedented and the huge following of Ranged Survival has not dwindled. I also said that unpruning some things is a direct result of Blizzard taking things too far(the multiple pruning in this case), so they are seeking to rectify that a bit due to overwhelming player frustration.
Simply put, the first prune was warranted. We did have some button bloat. The second though? Or the third some classes got? That was way overboard. They took it too far, so they are trying to fix it via unpruning some things and the level squish. The multiple prunes were a direct cause of all the “Leveling sucks past 80 because I don’t gain any abilities!”.
You mean the idea to roll SV abilities into MM, which I responded by saying they attempted that with Legion and MM talents? It doesn’t work. You CANNOT give the SV playstyle via MM talents because thematically and most importantly fundamentally, they are very different. They shared Arcane Shot and Multi Shot. That was it. But I don’t see you saying Shadow Priests are like Discipline because they share Shadow Word Pain and Shadow Word:Shield. I don’t see you saying Retribution and Protection are the same when they both are melee, share Judgement, Avenging Wrath and Hammer of Justice. I don’t see you saying Assassination and Subtlety are the same, despite both being dagger wielding melee involving stealth and combo points.
Fundamentally, all those specs are different. But for some reason you think RSV’s thematic and playstyle can be shifted into the MM spec. It just doesn’t work.
You also completely left out one important bit I posted.
That is way, way, WAY more logical than “BM tank, Ranged Support”(this ain’t League of Legends friend).
For what it’s worth, I haven’t reported you. I hated how you attacked every RSV defender and were so adamant that playing Survival as pure Melee in Classic was the “proper” way. So I just put you on ignore so I wouldn’t get notifications when you inevitably quoted or responded to me. 
How was it similar to the other two? Ranged damage and Arcane Shot and Multi Shot. Okay? Survival’s entire thematic and playstyle was vastly different than Beast Mastery and Marksmanship. I’m glad you aren’t opposed to it coming back but I see no reason to change it mechanically when it was already mechanically different. Besides, if RSV coming back in it’s MoP or WoD form happened while leaving MSV completely intact, it wouldn’t affect you. So why change what’s not broken? Especially considering the MoP-WoD iterations were the most popular iteration of Survival by far. Expand on the concept? Sure. Add some new talents? Sure. But its core thematic and focus should absolutely not be altered if it comes back.
I salute the effort you’re putting in to this, but the thing is I was there and it DID happen. Look at the number of if conditionals in your hypothetical scenarios for how the fights would go down and try to appreciate that having to make that many decisions leaves room for being outplayed.
Trying to claim other peoples experiences didnt happen because they don’t suit your narrative is pretty condescending. lol
Ok, it’s your argument.
All i’ll say is it wasn’t overnight and it wasn’t removed, reworked is the word.
Take from it what you will, this is like arguing with a child and it’s getting bored.
I didn’t say it was. But it was Blizzard’s reason for removing it. I’m saying from their perspective.
I mean, it quite literally was overnight. And no, Ranged Survival was removed entirely. Literally. That spec no longer exists. Shadow Priest got a rework going into Legion. Survival got a rework coming into BFA from Legion. Discipline Priests got a rework going into Legion. What happened to Ranged Survival is in no way, shape or form comparable to a “rework”. The spec was removed and replaced with melee BM.
Boring to you perhaps, because I mean, you openly admitted you didn’t play a hunter. You are not invested in the class. You are literally posting in this thread because you are bored and feel your opinion is important in a matter you know nothing about. /shrug.
Gotcha, misread your intentions in what you said, my bad. That’s honestly one thing that continues to boggle my mind. I don’t deny that some people enjoy melee Survival. But saying Ranged Survival wasn’t unique and then turning around only to make melee Survival essentially a form of melee Beast Mastery… That, isn’t unique. But I digress, lol.
I’ll be honest, as a 2k+ multi-classer of multiple melee and ranged, survival is one of the most unique, and enjoyable specs I’ve ever played with in its current iteration. Of all the spec / class changes of BFA, melee survival is one of the best and unique specs I’ve played.
But that’s my opinion.
I’m mostly speaking from a thematic viewpoint and its abilities. Kill Command, Coordinated Assault, BM’s old passive Spirit Bond, a talent that enhances Kill Command, etc… That to me just screams melee BM. Survival lost its focus on exotic munition, venoms and traps.
Everyone has an opinion and I respect yours but to me, MSV, given its thematic could’ve easily been achieved by a talent early into BM that replaces Cobra Shot/Multi Shot with Raptor Strike/Carve, etc… Thus leaving RSV alone.
Oh well though, we can only hope Blizzard acknowledges how many RSV fans still exist and decides to bring it back sometime. It’ll always be my favorite spec so I’ll never give up on hoping for its return as a fourth spec so everyone can be happy.
I like it as is ¯_(ツ)_/¯
They could add a talent that turns you into a ranged spec. It could be like a few of the warrior specs from Rift. You would still gear as melee, but all your attacks, and your auto attack, would have range on it. You would have to give up some survivability, being a melee at range, but it’s an interesting concept.
I’ve always thought this game needed mid ranged classes (as well as true support classes/specs). Ret, eng, one of the DK DPS (probably UH), and now surviving could all fill that role.