Hardly any of the classes have their unique mechanics left
I don’t care if you prefer ranged survival, I’m just saying half of it’s abilities still exist in the game and have been spread out to other specs.
The abilities might have changed in their functionality but half the abilities in their game have undergone a full change
This is all very round-about and evasive. The fact of the matter is the playstyle and theme of ranged Survival does not currently exist and MM is NOT close to it (nor is anything else)… Pretending that Explosive Shot in the MM tree somehow constitutes ranged SV still existing is just that: pretending. If I take Lock and Load, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting as MM, I’m still left with a spec that doesn’t even remotely fit ranged SV’s design because, as it turns out, they were separate, distinguished specs.
No part of his argument was that they are the same merely because “they both fired arrows”. I’m not sure how you conflate that with saying if one had Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, old Rapid Fire, and LnL in place of Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire, Trueshot, and Precise Shots, you would have RSV.
It is quite clear that they’re not referring to the current MM Explosive Shot in this analogy. It is quite clear that they are not referring to the Legion MM Black Arrow in this analogy. It is quite clear they are referring to the WoD/MoP era SV LnL—or the combination of it and T.N.T from Cata, etc—not the free casts solely from AAs that MM has now.
He quite clearly said “replace”, not “haphazardly add atop”. The playflows that would stem from that replacement are not hard to imagine. We had them for more than 3 expansions.
However you might feel about giving MM too diverse of playstyle options (e.g. at cost to its “core identity” where such is outside the "mastery of ranged weaponry, its tools, and killing from afar), you’re going out of your way to misconstrue his argument here.
It should be a tank, obviously. There are no Mail-wearing tanks, and a hunter tank that can spec to ranged attack style is in line with Rexxar fantasy of melee hunter.
Cheers for that, seemed like a waste of time if I’d tried to explain that myself
It still doesn’t work. If you replace things like Aimed Shot in MM Hunter you no longer have MM Hunter. Your argument that MM and ranged SV were interchangeably similar falls flat when you have to remove and replace MM’s most core and iconic mechanics to make it work.
Nothing in current BM comes from the old RSV as we saw it in WoD/MoP/Cata.
As for MM…
Explosive Shot? Has the same name. That’s about it really for this one.
Serpent Sting? I mean sure. Though it lacks pretty much everything which RSV added to it’s base design.
Lock & Load? Same as above. It’s the same effect in name only. It’s designed to work with Aimed Shot.
What else?
“All the old RSV abilities are now different or gone altogether but…everything has changed anyway so it’s all good”
This is pretty much what you just said.
I know. Never said that he did.
Fair enough, I formulated that a bit poorly.
But to clarify…
Replacing Rapid Fire with Black Arrow and Aimed Shot with the old Explosive Shot will not make what’s left in current MM(coupled with the newly added abilities) play like the old RSV.
Not at all. Again, see the bit just above this one.
They’re the two pivotal examples, not an exhaustive list. As such, you’d have to go out of your way despite implication to the contrary to assume they’d be divorced from their usual mechanics, would not replace core MM skills, or would not be the same skills as when attached to RSV, to not imagine a resultant RSV playstyle.
I’m beginning to suspect though that if I literally carbon-copied WoD RSV over to MM, including its old Mastery, you’d still say it’s not SV.
I don’t agree with Nappy that because every other spec has had significant portions of their abilities butchered over the last couple expansions, it’s fine that formerly SV skills now play only an auxiliary, basically fire-and-forget-til-refresh part of any kit, but you absolutely can fit RSV exactly as it was in before into modern MM provided that those tools replace, rather than are added atop, traditionally core MM skills.
MM’s core playstyle cannot accommodate SV’s atop it, but MM’s talent grid can accommodate RSV in place of traditional MM components.
I’ve come because my MM senses were tingling…
MM and RSV, were not almost the same thing. This is revisionist history at best. You could make the argument they were very similar in Vanilla and BC, but starting in Wrath they began to diverge dramatically.
I’m beginning to suspect you have no idea what you’re talking about.
No, no you can not. And even if you could, I would tell you no. Not just no but HELL NO.
As a MM main since Vanilla, I refuse to let RSV exist within MM. MM should not have to be watered down because Blizzard decided to make a stupid decision based stupid logic. RSV and MM are two different playstyles that can not coexist within the same spec. It would literally be like trying to put affliction and destruction in the same spec.
Beyond that say you did recreate RSV via talents in MM, there are only 2 scenarios.
RSV talents are underpowered and MM is the dominate playstyle and RSV players are still not happy because there spec only exists within MM and sucks and to do good dps they are expected to be MM.
RSV talents are the best talents and RSV is the dominate playstyle and MM mains are not happy, because their preferred playstyle has be relegated to being second fiddle inside their own spec.
So no, enough of this stupid nonsense trying to get RSV to exist within MM. It doesn’t belong, and it will only cause problems.
Are you serious?
Here, again:
You might be saying this(Vitwolfen). But Nippy sure isn’t.
He is flat out saying here that it’s enough to replace RF for BA and AS for ES and keep the rest because the specs were “almost the same thing”…
Ofc not.
It would be what’s left of current MM + what they implemented from the old RSV.
This however is a moot point because you cannot equate the extensive design of current MM to that of old RSV.
Why?
Old RSV wasn’t designed with the same focus on spec identities as the current MM is.
Copy-pasting old RSV into current MM would not completely remove MM in it’s entirety…
Ofc you could do this.
But would the end result of doing this give us RSV as it was?
No.
It would give us RSV as it was combined with whatever is left of MM in it’s current form(what wasn’t replaced by RSV elements).
See the above.
And yet when the best BM is noticeably stronger than any and every MM build in a given tier, or vice versa, that’s fine?
When one build of MM parses 8+% over the next best build, that’s fine, so long as it doesn’t actually vary in any meaningful way from the other choices except by number values?
Every. Level. Of choice. Has that same illusion. That’s true whether it be a certain build, or the spec entire. To refuse any meaningful breadth in playstyle or aesthetic within a spec on the basis of “well, they’ll just have to choose whichever parses better” is idiocy.
By all means, argue that MM has enough enjoyable breadth in its choices as is—or within the range of talents available to it if the devs were just more creative with them—that no room is left for anything as diverse as RSV. That’s a totally sensible argument. If, on average, one in three weren’t dead already or (to me) deathly dull, I’d agree immediately. But spare me the generic illusion of choice argument when it already applied equally when RSV was its own spec.
To be clear here, I am not advocating for RSV in MM spec. I find the present MM tree a bit dull, but not necessarily in need of such a huge increase in breadth as all that. But I do find it ridiculous that people would think it impossible when MM is, and RSV was, such a basic and nearly modular spec.
Again, where is the “keep the rest the same”?
The quote you’re referring to, even, merely confirms—given the “choice is illusion, so people would just swap between MM and SV based on performance” (as if that were somehow a novel concern) argument prior—that the two playstyles wouldn’t necessarily be perfectly insulated from each other, not that they’d be one at the same.
You may as well at that point say that if a spec supports two distinct synergetic talent builds (say, 13X1X13 and 22X3X21), and people swapped between them based on performance, then that’d mean they were the same thing all along. It doesn’t. It just means you’ve two lead choices, probably among several situational hybrids, between which you tend to swap with gear and/or the latest FotM-pushing balance patch. Just as you do with specs themselves.
No I was simply stating half of survivals abilities now live in MM and BM trees and you could get 80% of the spec back by adding a few talents
Keep in mind I’m referring to WoDs survival as it was the last point before it was made into a melee spec
I’m also not stating that it was a good choice to remove a spec, they just happened to completely rework the spec into something that I like more than any other spec that currently exists
See below:
Note the “just” in that sentence.
It literally means that he thinks it’s enough to do the above and we would have old RSV through MM talents.
This also means that with the above, the rest can be kept as it is.
You can spin this however you want or add your own line of thinking into it.
It does not change what he said.
Why are you talking numbers/meta/fotm here?
This is irrelevant to what I said earlier.
Like I said earlier.
Anything we can find in current MM, those are RSV-abilities in name only.
They aren’t designed or amount to a design that is even close to what old RSV was about. (Not even if they were to change current Explosive Shot back to how it was as well as adding old Black Arrow into it)
You know what the difference between 2 playstyles in 1 spec and in 2 spec is right?
Flavor of the month players are going to be flavor of the month. MM mains, like me who have been MM for a long time regardless of what’s “the best” or what’s “popular” right now don’t care if MM is stronger or BM, or Fury, or Destruction, or pick a spec from any class. We’re going to be MM.
When 1 MM talent is 8% better than the rest of the MM talents in the row, that is a balancing issue. If the hypothetical RSV talent is 8% better than the MM talent, now, you’re getting to the point of screwing MM mains, because like it or not, to do the higher end content, people want the meta, and if you’re not the meta, well too bad.
No the idiocy is to suggest that the devs not being able to balance talents is the same thing as “Having different playstyles is just the same thing as the devs not being able to balance the talents.” I play MM because I want to be that long range archer/sniper. I don’t want to be the guy flinging traps and shooting explosives in peoples face. MM, should cater to MM. It shouldn’t have to cater to RSV, just because blizzard is run by idiots.
Turns out "dead talents’ is about as nonsensical as statement as saying “I just want my spec to be viable.” Every class/spec/talent is a viable choice. You can clear the content regardless. Yes, when you start getting into Mythic raiding and +15 and higher, you’re going to struggle if you don’t have the most optimized talents, but optimal and viable are not the same thing.
Also, spare be the “MM has dead talents” argument. Every class/spec has dead talents. Or would you really try to argue that only hunters have “dead talents”. And regardless, even if you put RSV into MM, you would not change that. Because, say it with me now, “there is always going to be a best choice”. And if that best choice was the RSV talents, MM mains, like me are going to be pissed, because we’re being made second fiddle in our own spec.
And like that you’ve pretty much lost all credibility with me here. “They’re just basic specs, so they’re easily interchangeable.”
Just going to point something out. I’ve seen a lot of people claim that Serpent Sting was a “RSV” ability. Going to correct this nonsense. Serpent Sting was a baseline hunter ability that was eventually made an RSV ability, but giving it to MM after removing RSV doesn’t mean they “gave MM an RSV ability” in this case. No in this case, they were just giving back something MM had before.
Yeah it was made into a RSV ability of time
People conflate it with ranged survival because that was the spec that still had access to it and it’s kit had interactions with it
So become a RSV ability, much like backstab is a rogue ability but it’s currently a sub ability
If you’re willing to put up with a significant performance differential to stay on the same spec, why the heck wouldn’t you put up with a much smaller one to stay the same build when it’s your preferred playstyle?
When everything is “viable”, “viable” has effectively no meaning. Note that I never used that word, however. Nor did I say anything like the phrase your equating it to.
If a talent has literally no case in which it outperforms its alternatives, and is instead always inferior by a notable margin, it’s what is generally called a “dead talent.” Or does this need a semantic dissertation now?
When the parts of a spec are only unidirectionally interlinked, and their playflow differences generated by only 3 baseline skills (and their entireties by 5), yes, their core is “basic and nearly modular.”
And, oddly enough, the closest translation of the then most recent RSV gameplay available via that skill would have been… no Serpent Sting (button) at all—instead placing the DoT on AS/MS. But instead they went back to the… MM roots.
Well, at least I don’t think they ever pretended it was anything but a traditional MM DoT option, despite that obviously being the lip-service originally tied to Legion Black Arrow and Explosive Shot.
To wrap this up, though, I don’t understand why you’d be any less hesitant to give up on a preferred build than a preferred spec unless you are (1) wholly satisfied with the baseline MM experience and (2) feel that talents ought to do as little as possible to stray gameplay from the baseline.
That’s not to say that either of those things aren’t understandable, though; there’s certainly a punchy aesthetic from belting out Aimed Shots that can be satisfying in and of itself.
Personally, having played MM since Vanilla, the actual playflow we have now seems just one of many largely interchangeable iterations. We’ve had instant Aimed Shots on CD; we’ve had accelerated-to-instant Aimed Shots on no CD; we’ve had mobile casted Aimed Shots with no CD; and we’ve had CD-based immobile casted Aimed Shots. When only the name remains consistent between them, I have to wonder if the name is even worth keeping central to the spec at all costs to potential breadth or depth the spec could otherwise afford.
Put simply, I’m less satisfied and more ambitious, and view the spec through a less necessarily present lens. We’ll therefore have to agree to disagree on the spec’s affordances. Fortunately for you though, the things I’d want from the spec have only an infinitessimally small chance of occuring; after all, from what we’ve seen so far the devs’ ambitions rarely go any further than modest reiteration or prototypes thought-out enough only for lip-service and self-gratification.
Tl;dr: I think specs, not just MM, should allow for more depth and breadth of gameplay. I think exploring multiple avenues of Marksmanship, instead of merely the American Sniper knockoff theme, would be beneficial to the spec. I believe there is certainly space enough for such. However, my thoughts on this are irrelevant; the devs are satisfied with the basic format of a priority spender which is either CD-restricted, accelerated, or unlocked, and fillers there-between—even if a second priority skill may occasionally be added to or removed from it. That has been the only consistency across MM’s various iterations, and I suspect it will always be its limits.
Because you’re an idiot and think I would give up being MM and think that for some reason RSV should be forced into MM. There is absolutely 0 reason the thought of RSV being forced into MM should even be entertained. They aren’t the same spec, and they don’t even play the same.
“But they have a few core abilities that can be interchanged”… this such a stupid argument. This doesn’t take into consideration of all the passives and way things within the spec interact. You can’t just change the core abilities and call it X spec.
Aimed Shot has only been instant cast twice in the history of wow and 1 of those was because a 4-pc set bonus. Changing how long it takes to cast or if it has procs to make it instant is not a complete and fundamental change to the ability.
And it’s not even about the name or the ability, it’s about the playstyle. The long range archer/sniper doesn’t require a 3 second caster shot, but it does require being a ranged physical dps that can be mobile but has moments when standing still to line up a shot. That is what MM always was. RSV has always focused on elemental damage and dots. Do you think that you can put affliction into destruction and still produce affliction? Because that is the equivalent of what you’re trying to argue.
You’re a warrior who thinks that RSV and MM are basically the same thing and are easily interchangeable when they’re not.
And I will fight tooth and nail to make sure it has a 0% change of happening, because they tried this stupid experiment already. Legion MM was what happens when they try to push RSV into MM, and it was the worst iteration of MM Blizz has made.
The “you can only play the character you post on” argument from a hunter with only one raid cleared non-LFR and an average keystone level of 8? Should I take that, therefore, as the sum total of your experience—let alone capabilities—despite it being, clearly, a toon you have specific goals with? This is an alt that fills in my friends’ M+ group because they already have a Hunter and Paladin (each of which have more gear than this guy). I have every class at level cap. I’m not about to swap every time I want to make a post in a class section, splitting my post activity and notifications among 12 characters any of whom may soon be retired in Shadowlands.
And I’ve never argued that they are the same. They are, however, the most easily interchanged specs in the game.
On the off-chance you’re not strawmanning purposely, let me clarify.
It would be like arguing that if the entire Venomous Wounds were replaced with Venom Rush (thereby affecting only affecting the core skill, Mutilate), and the entirety of Shadow Dance wasn’t a thing, Subtlety and Assassination could be easily cloned onto each other, because MM (much like RSV) really is that basic and modular already.
Trick Shots affects only one ability. Precise Shots is triggered by only that same ability. Both passives could be replaced by a longer tooltip on Aimed Shots (via Rank upgrades to the skill) and no new MM player, playing identically, would know the difference, but literally all that differentiates MM as MM would then be four skills—Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire, Steady Shot, and the mess that is Trueshot. Rather, it always has been, while merely pretending to more.
Compare that against RSV: you have Black Arrow, Explosive Shot with a chance to be refreshed by ImT/BA DoT ticks and a guaranteed refresh on IcT/FT, auto-DoT on filler focus spenders, and (old) Rapid Fire. That’s all that differentiated it from BM and MM. 4 mechanics. Each modular. The passives are no broader than rank upgrades to the one ability each they affect.
When no surrounding systems break from swapping something, because the mechanics are really just part of the ability being swapped (i.e. in the same way that Rank 2, 3, etc., upgrades of any ability are), they are “modular”. When all playflow-generating aspects of two specs are entirely modular, their playflows are mutually accommodatable. That’s not a subjective matter. Theme can be, but this is just plain.
That’s beyond disingenuous. You know full well that the problems with Legion MM resulted almost entirely from the vulnerability system, not two random talents that, despite their name, had absolutely nothing to do with pushing RSV into MM, but instead merely providing a leveling tool and a further CD for the burst (“meme”) spec (about the only way to have fun in dungeons on Legion MM, when it was meta, but nothing at all to do with RSV).
I encourage you to do so, as that’s how conflicts of interest play out towards what the most people want, but do be honest in your reason. They have never once tried to put RSV into MM. They have at most provided a leveling/MoC-lite tool and an awkward skillshot AoE that each happened to have the same name as a core RSV skills. That does not RSV make.
Yeah, and this has what to do with my argument? My comment was about how you are clearly demonstrating you have no knowledge of what you’re talking about in regards to MM vs RSV. Hence “You’re just a warrior”. Your avatar has nothing to do with it other then to point out you don’t know what you’re talking about, but please continue to spout non-sense.
And I never asked you to. Nor do I care. When you make non-sensical arguments, your avatar means nothing.
And they aren’t You can’t just replace the core of 1 spec with another magically get the spec you took the core abilities from. It doesn’t work like that. Specs are made up of more than their core abilities and 1 or 2 passives. I’m not even going to bother with going farther with this, because arguing with you is going to go no where.
That was literally what they did in Legion. They straight up said in WoD when they announced Melee Survival that Ranged Survival would continue to live on in Marksmanship. They tried that experiment. It failed.
They lied. I don’t know how you can look at Legion MM and find even the slightest intent at remaking RSV therein. There was no experiment, because there was no attempt. You got lip-serviced only.