Hard Copium
The spec system as we now know it is from Mists
then you shall remain like sisyphus, bound forever to hell
Legion was the first time each spec had its own baseline kit and talents. Before then every spec shared talents, a majority of the base kit, or both.
We never got to see what RSV would have looked like with its own fully-fleshed-out unique identity. MoP showed us a perfect spec existing within the overall Hunter framework, with enough mechanics to feel like its own thing. WoD, it fell victim to the game-wide chainsaw pruning. Legion was a chance to fix and evolve the concept further- but Blizzard used their own mistake as an excuse to delete the spec and replace it with some dev’s Rexar fantasy.
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All 20 of them, I know.
If only…
Would’ve been fun to see what they could’ve done with it. In the meantime, we’re stuck theorising for ourselves: [Updated for Dragonflight] Munitions - If RSV was to return
When the current spec system was implemented was irrelevant to my point.
In BC, BM made the 1st move in diverging from the base hunter play style in the form of it’s 1 button macro and no need for aimed shot. MM and Survival still played fairly similarly all xpac though.
In Wrath, Survival made it’s own move to be it’s own thing and Wrath going forward all 3 hunter specs played in different ways. Ways which continued to diverge all the way through the end of WoD. In WoD all 3 specs shared all the talents, except BM having Adaptation instead of Lone Wolf. But All 3 specs had their own baseline abilities and which talents you took and how they acted depended on which spec you were playing.
Starting Legion, Survival started encroaching on BM and since then has moved closer and closer to being BM.
Yeah… I mean it’s not like RSV was the most popular hunter spec and arguably one of the most popular specs in the game before it was deleted.
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MM and SV also stopped using Aimed Shot in BC and did the same Steady/Auto weave as BM, only slower because they didn’t have the +20% haste of BM. The change that made Aimed Shot undesirable for rotational usage was patch 2.0 making Aimed Shot reset the Auto-Shot timer. That made using Aimed Shot rotationally extremely inefficient.
As for differences between the specs; rotationally the only difference was BM got +20% haste so it played faster. Otherwise they generally had the same priorities and rotations. MM and SV might melee weave more because the loss of +20% haste made the rotation have more gaps in it that could be filled with a Raptor Strike. Blizzard wasn’t aiming to give each spec play differently at the time so they gave them mostly passive differences. They decided to have each spec give it’s own raid buff like MM’s Trueshot Aura; BM got Ferocious Inspiration and SV got Expose Weakness. As it turned out Trueshot Aura was largely outclassed by the others so there was no reason to bring an MM Hunter to your raid; you took exactly one SV Hunter for Expose Weakness and had the rest of the Hunters spec BM.
One thing worth noting is that all classes worked this way, not just Hunters. It should be obvious but I’ve seen more than one person on the Hunter forums try to use the fact that the talents were classwide against ranged SV, as if it wasn’t the case for every class in the game.
SV has been the “oddball niche” spec for so long now that people assume it’s always been that way; even back when it was ranged. The fact that ranged SV’s last year of existence was patch 6.2 when it was utterly gutted contributes to that.
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This is very false, by the time hunters changed from survival in BrF to MM in HFC with instat aimed shots you would 100% notice their similarities. With steady shot and cobra shot being almost the same, thrill of the hunt procs gave very similar vibes to lock and load procs, their biggest diffrence was that MM had pretty much zero aoe power. Them being similar was a stated reason for the hunter rework.
That would be great in theory but if hunters get a 4th specc everyone else will want one as well, this would increase the workload for blizzard by a decent margin. And you would also get people wanting a tank specc instead of a 4th dps specc.
I think you are really overstating how invasive it would be, realisticly it would be to add an alternative to aimed shot in the tree, give the specc option for less stationary play and maybe give the option for serpent spread instead of trickshot.
Thrill of the Hunt was absolutely not comparable to Lock and Load and it was a classwide talent since MoP anyway.
Making Aimed Shot instant was not nearly enough to make MM just like SV. MM still had an entirely different flow and had things like Careful Aim and Sniper Training to worry about, rather than Lock and Load and Serpent Spread. It’s a terrible reason to hold against ranged SV when it was a temporary borrowed power, especially when you’re ignoring the borrowed powers SV got in the same patch that actually changed it quite a bit.
Let’s also not forget that MM was completely reworked in 7.0 as well, so even if they didn’t change ranged SV at all it would still end up vastly more different to MM.
Over all making SV melee because “it was too similar to MM” was always a piss take. Fun fact: SV actually played far more similarly to BM in spite of the difference in pet dependence. The only reason people keep comparing MM and SV is because it’s generally people with a very limited idea of what the class actually did back then so they focus on the more immediately obvious thematic differences: MM and SV both had low pet dependence while BM was intrinsically and necessarily dependent on the pet, so they figure the other specs had the most overlap. Yes this includes the class developers of Legion who evidently had no idea what they were doing when it came to Hunters.
It would be extremely problematic. If MM and ranged SV were different specs they could focus and build on their identities separately thus providing much better exploration and coverage of ranged weapon archetypes. The MM tree could look like what it does with DF now, where it’s all focused on the general theme of sharpshooting expertise with options for more steady sniping with an Aimed Shot focus or a faster pace with a Rapid Fire focus. If SV were ranged it could have a clear focus on exotic munitions with a focus on Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, and additional elements we never got to see but were planned with ranged SV such as multidotting and funnelling.
However, if they tried to represent both in one spec, 100% of your talent choice would be choosing whether you’re playing MM or ranged SV. They would be extremely restricted in what they could do with either archetype, either one or both of them would be extremely watered down, and the game’s representation of ranged weapon archetypes would be just as limited as in reality.
This is all to tread on eggshells around melee Survival, the most unsuccessful and controversial spec in WoW’s history. It’s a completely nonsense pseudo-compromise designed to give melee players 100% of what they want while the ranged Hunters have to shoulder the entire burden. Just look at what they could come up with for the SV tree. It’s pathetic and they clearly have no solid ideas to build on so they’re continuing to try a bunch of separate, irreconcilable concepts at once. That was worth losing ranged SV? Evidently only if you’re helplessly enamoured with melee combat.
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melee chads always win
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It was very comparable to lock and load since it also reduced focus cost of aimed shot by 50% for MM, this made it so that when it procced you would be able to cast 2-3 aimed shots in a row and in HfC with instant aimed shot it just silly to say that it was similar.
Careful aim was litrally just a passive bonus you got on targets above certain health, you didnt spend some massive amount of time thinking about it, the only time it mattered to your gameplay was if it was fine to focus which ever target you wanted and one of the mobs was about the health treshhold.
And sniper training wasnt some massive gameplay change either, all it did was that it made you want to move 3s which sometimes made you do a slow 3s move and 3s stand still intervals to get to were you wanted but most of the time it down to the fight if sniper training stayed up or not.
I havent forgotten that, i think the rework they did for MM ended up causing alot of problems
All 3 speccs played extremly similar to each other in WoD. Compare it to how much mages and warlock speccs differed and it was night and day. Blizzard wanted to rework them in WoD but ran out of time. I think its just silly to pretend like they were some massivly diffrent speccs when they were already considered dated years before they wre even reworked.
I dont care for melee survival but i think its just pure delusion to think that they will remove it and bring it back to ranged. I also think trying to create a ranged specc within the survival tree would just be a mess that woul have nothing in common with ranged survival but its name. Blizzard are extremly unlilkey to want to do a 4th specc and even less liley to want it to be a dps specc so what options are there. Personally i think making survival a melee specc was a massive misstake, i think the archer archetype is interssting enough to have more than 1 specc given to it. But they wont reverse it now so whats the point to argue about it.
I agree that it would be more intressting with more ranged speccs but currently we dont have it. And the MM tree is full of awful talents, just look at the top rows you could easly fit more intressting stuff in there. Giving a talent to replace aimed shot with a more explosive shot like spell wouldnt just be of service to people that miss old survival but it would make the MM tree more intressting cus right now its pretty boring.
Here’s TotH from WoD.
Thrill of the Hunt
You have a 6% chance per 10 Focus spent on Focus-costing attacks to trigger Thrill of the Hunt.Thrill of the Hunt reduces the Focus cost of your next 3 Arcane Shots, Aimed Shots, or Multi-Shots by 20.
In the sense that it was a random proc, sure, it was similar to L&L. But that’s where the similarities end…
Okay, so just because you didn’t agree with the rework, you decide to ignore the main point? That point was that they could’ve literally done pretty much nothing to RSV, going into Legion, while making the changes that they did to MM, and by your standards, the differences between them would’ve been more than enough.
“Extremely similar”? No, they didn’t.
They were different enough, based on what their design philosophies were at the time. Sure, by modern standards, and modern class design philosophies, it wouldn’t have been enough. But that’s not the argument is it now?
And, as for those modern philosophies, you keep dodging the point of how they could’ve done the same thing to RSV as they did to all other specs. That being giving it a more fleshed out core design + a set of spec specific talents to go along with it.
During WoD development, they were already working on the early concepts for Legion class design reworks. At that point, as was clear from their 180 turns with some things during WoD development, they had already decided to rework SV to melee by then. Rather than taking the time to actually look into how it could be further developed in its ranged form.
Considered by who? You?
Again, you keep dodging the main point. We can argue all day about whether they were too similar to one another or not. It doesn’t change the fact that it wouldn’t have mattered going forward into Legion, as they were dialing up their focus on spec identities by that much. They could’ve just gone further down the road of making RSV into the DoT-centric playstyle it already focused on before then.
Agreed. It would be the same with MM. Simply adding in a couple of old RSV abilities/effects in the MM talent tree wouldn’t by any means be sufficient enough to achieve the gameplay of RSV, nor would it allow us to, by modern standards, explore the theme of such a fantasy. Not to mention how it would mess up the current structure and design of MM itself, considering the rest of the talents in the tree.
You’re severely downplaying how it would affect MM itself, its current structure and design. Not to mention, like I said above, how bare-bones of a version of RSV we would get in the process.
This has never been an “all or nothing” type of case. That has already been determined by the fact that Druids got a 4th spec back in MoP, but no one else did. I’m not saying that other classes couldn’t be considered for a 4th spec as well. I’m just saying that the argument of “all or nothing” doesn’t apply.
Now, as for how this argument of yours tie into your previous one about the similarities or differences between MM & RSV…my point, once again, is that had they given RSV the same treatment as all other specs got, going into Legion, it would’ve been more than enough to develop a fully fleshed-out playstyle, including a full set of talents. One that wouldn’t play like the current MM does(or will do, come Dragonflight).
This is merely a theoretical mock-up ofc, a proof of concept. I’m sure there are issues that need to be iterated on further. But feel free to read it through, and compare it to how they’re designing MM for Dragonflight. They wouldn’t play similarly to one another.
#[Updated for Dragonflight] Munitions - If RSV was to return
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Please quit linking your forum post. We don’t need several more years of you derailing every single SV post with this drivel. It’s not returning, move on already.
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Ironic statement, considering which topic you’re posting in.
Anyway, there are plenty of SV topics that I’m not posting anything in. Why? Because those have nothing to do with this topic. You should also look up what “derailing” means.
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They were both proccs that allowed you to spam cast your primary dmg dealing spell, for lock and load you would cast exlosive shot 3 times in a row and for MM you would now spam aimed shot 2-3 times in a row.
This has litrally ben my point about the legion rework, they reworked all speccs from the ground up which resulted in the old hunter playstyle being pretty much deleted form the game. I 've always been of the opinion that one specc should’ve kept the old way of playing and if survival was to be a melee specc MM would be the specc that would make the most sense to stay the same.
They were extremly similar changing between hunter speccs where so much easier than changing between amges or lock specc since once you got over the diffrent spell names you realized that the playstyle itself is very much alike. And they were outdated even by the standards then, blizzard wanted to rework them for WoD since they were so outdated, now if you ask me i would preferd them to stay that way but thats becuse i have a dog brain and enjoy simpler speccs.
You seems to have a lot of rage for melee survival that you end up projecting to others. Im not doding this, im of the opinion that making survival melee in the first place wasa misstake and would’ve prefed to see it continue to evolve as ranged. But survival is melee now and that unlikely to change in a long time.
They were considered so by blizz and pretty much the whole community, in BrF survival was by far the simplest specc to play, i loved it but it was simple and very basic.
I’ve never argued against this?
Ofc it would never be able to fill the role of a ranged survival specc that has been allowed to evolve over the past few years, but it would allow it to change up the feel for MM and while providing some diffrent fantasy. And it would in no way mess up the current MM tree the way you say it would, MM has very little interactions between their spells and alot of straight up dull and pointless talents. There is room in the tree for stuff like a aimed shot replacement and i would argue these talents would make MM beter since now you get to make gameplay choices in the tree instead of choosing between diffrent % dmg increases and being forced to add the focus regen to your builder.
Druid was diffrent since they had tank and dps in the same talent tree from the start, they had to eventually seperate those for balance. And sure they dont need to give all aother classes another specc but the outcry if they gave hunters a 4th specc would be enough for them to avoid the issue all together. You will also end up with the problem that there is alot of people asking for a hunter tank specc so they would now be angry over getting a 4th dps specc. Unless blizzard decideds on a 4th specc as a feature for a future expansion its very unlikely to happen and even if we get a 4th specc its far from certain it would be build from old ranged survival.
The topic should be deleted like every other post for the last 5-6 six years where you and Bepples have derailed literally every topic regarding SV,.
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blizzard just needs to stop already trying to reinvent every spec in the game every xpac. its ludacris.
sure if there is some flavorless spec with bad design then take a vote with the player base that actually play and or care about said spec and layout some designs and work with the customers to create a perfect polished spec.
they need to stop making decisions based off what “they think will work” because as history showed they have 0 clue. and the few times they got it right they did a 180 next xpac.
i dunno about anyone else but i grow tired of this. if it aint broken dont fix it. if it is broke then start over.
i will always be one to point out this ranged survival deletion as a slap in the face to every player that played that spec. you dont do that. they did. its 1 of many reason players are up and leaving in troves. its not because people are out growing the game. its not because of real life stuff. its because blizzard keeps trying to reinvent every aspect of what people love about this game. and that alone is what is pushing everyone away.
just look at tv shows or music bands. the walking dead. or metallica with load album. they all had something good and they tried to change and looked what happened. blizzard is right there on that same wagon. just stop already blizzard.
they keep on trying to reinvent the wheel they gonna end up with a square dud.
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So, a topic that was created to talk about RSV(this topic we’re in right now), it should be deleted because me and Bepples(who created this topic) have derailed this topic by talking about RSV?
Sound logic…
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RSV doesn’t exist. So yes, it should be deleted. Lack of logic is someone who continues to whine about something that was removed 6 years ago and continues to flood the forums with the same exact drivel for those 6 years.