I dont have the problem with this some do, i mean what is the real point of three specs that fill the exact same role in the exact same manner and only vary based on the button pressed?
I personally feel like Hunter should be split as follows:
BM, ranged with pet. Pet centric skills and shots for falvor as well as exotic beasts
MM, ranged NO pet, ever, not even an option, dps increase to compensate. Exotic ammos and other things for flavor.
SV, melee with pet. enhanced stings and traps for flavor.
Also that ALL stings and ALL traps should be available to all specs.
Other classes that suffer from the same problem, such as mages, at least have more unique flavor per spec. Rogues suffer from a similar problem as we do, i personally think Outlaw should have been a ranged spec.
In short. Not all classes have to be the equivalent of hybrid-classes.
Besides, when you talk about player preferences, itâs not only about whether a spec is ranged or melee.
You say âthe exact same mannerâ. Sure, all 3 specs were focusing on ranged playstyles, but they did so where each had itâs own unique thematic focus.
Both in terms of specific mechanical designs and interactions, as well as different aesthetics and visuals.
All those parts matter, not the just the base concept of whether a spec is focusing on ranged combat or melee-combat. How they do so, is important.
I want my pets as option, why should my hunters faithful companion all sudden run away from me when i pratice more with bow? Same can be said bout survival someone trained and deadly with bow all sudden forget how to use a bow and grab a stick to smack things to âsurviveâ. Variety is nice but why does it have to forget things thats part of class fantasy.
im scared. i really am. my own personal opinion about hunters and how they should be going into Shadowlands is this:
Survival needs to be reverted to exactly how it was at the end of MOP at SOO. Survival hunter in soo in mop was probably the most finely tuned and flawlessly put together specs even at any point in this game.
MM can be put back to how it was at any point during the end of mop even wod and parts of leion.
BM has always been bm so to speak but i think if it will be in shadowlands like it was in wod it should be ok. right now it just feels so lackluster and off putting. i mean just knowing that your pet needs a delay to get to your target swap is kind of a dps killer due to the delay but most importantly not having any sort of focus builder just throws everything off for me.
i just hope that blizzard can get this right and take everyones feedback into account before they go live in shadowlands
Iâm not sure where youâre going with that as having separate play styles does not make something a hybrid. We still donât have heals or tank abilities so, i donât see that as relevant personally.
Changing the visuals doesnât change that much in my view if iâm still standing in the same places doing basically the same things just making it look or sound different, its still the same basic thing.
It doesnt change the class fantasy at all pending how you define it . To me, MM is the archer spec, is the weapon master, not the pet master. The focus should not be on pets for all Hunter classes.
As far as damage focused classes go, changing SV from a ranged spec to a melee spec is the equivalent of changing it to a different sub-role. Sure, itâs still a damage dealing spec, but in terms of the game and how itâs designed, there are clear differences between melee combat and ranged combat.
The term âhybridâ doesnât just apply to classes that have options to tank/heal as well as dps. In fact, there are many ways to define what âhybridâ means.
Your view of classes and specs, as written in your reply further up, basically makes it sound as if you donât want classes to have more than 1 ranged 1 melee focused spec, unless they also have access to specs that fill the role of a tank or healer.
What you said about Outlaw for Rogues highlights that view of yours so well.
Rogues in this game, and in the Warcraft-universe, are melee fighters. And there are many types of rogues out there in the world. 1 opportunistic spec that follows no rules(Outlaw) inspired by the harshness found in the life of pirates, 1 spec that focuses on bleeds and on enhancing poisons(Assa) and one spec that focuses on the art of stealth and surprise attacks(Sub).
Makes perfect sense from an RPG-standpoint.
Itâs wasnât just the visuals that changed between the specs. If you go back and actually look at what each spec focused on and how they did it, you will quickly realize how RSV was about dealing damage over time(DoTs), and about consistency. And it could easily have been designed to focus on that mechanical aspect even more so in the modern game.
Also, if youâre arguing that visuals and sounds donât matter regarding design and identities, keep in mind that this is an RPG. Such things matters a great deal to many players.
My pet is my tank for solo content. Until I can kill elites super quick, Iâm using a pet in solo content. I shouldnât have to go BM to do it. Good thing I can use a pet.
By that definition almost everything then is a hybrid, not sure i can buy into that. For me the term hybrid represents those that can fill more than one role, where a role is dps, tank, or heals⌠and does not apply to different forms of dps.
And no i dont want them all to have one range one melee etc⌠i want there to be a reason and differentiation between them.
There are a few such scenarios:
Locks have 3 ranged dps specs, but they all have different flavors having a pet spec, a direct damage spec, and a dot spec.
Another differentiation might be different play style such as melee versus ranged.
Or perhaps finally a clear distinction between them, such as a mages frost, fire, arcane scenario that by and large require different stat weights or mechanisms.
Ours were all the same pre melee SV⌠Stand back, send it pet and pew pew.
And yes i feel Rogues have a similar problem although in their case you could argue some small differences such as poison versus not but they all appear from stealth and hit buttons. Your example cites more lore than actual gameplay in my opinion. If they had made outlaw ranged it would have made more sense to me personally.
I just want definition between them in some form. Whether that is in role, how it dpsâs, how it plays, mechanics, stat weights⌠something.
This is EXACTLY what hunter used to have! You are either intentionally being obtuse/hypocritical or you donât know what the hunter class was like before Legion.
You canât have it both ways. If the base of the class is similar between all three specs then they are either the same or they arenât. Yes, rogues all attack from stealth but then all Mages and Warlocks cast spells. You canât sit there and say Warlocks and Mages have different flavors, even though Lock flavor is exactly what hunter was, and then say Rogues and Hunter (with RSV) flavor is/was to similar when there are differences between each specs playstyle.
Youâre ofc free to have your own opinion. Not saying different.
But the term hybrid has more meanings and it applies to more than just specific combat roles in the game. As an example, an Enhancement Shaman(the spec itself) is a hybrid, with a focus on spells and magic along with physical combat using melee-weapons.
So yeah, in that sense, hybrid can apply to a lot of things.
But again if we talk combat roles, even if you have two different specs that are both designed for you to deal damage, if one spec is designed for ranged combat while the other focuses on melee-combat then they are not the same.
A Frost Mage and a Fire Mage, in that sense, are the same. They both fill the role of a ranged fighter relying on magic and spellcasts. A Rogue and a Mage? Both deal damage, but they arenât even remotely the same.
What Asher said there.
Hunters used to have 3 ranged specs.
Beast Mastery was the pet focused spec that relied on empowerments and managing CDs.
Marksmanship was the direct damage-based spec focusing on heavy-hitters and burst.
Survival(ranged) was the DoT-spec, focusing on just that, damage over time and via that, consistency.
Iâm afraid that here, this means nothing. Itâs all about numbers that have very little to do with thematic design.
Which was also the case between MM and RSV.
Did you actually play a hunter back then?
By this definition, it applies to warlocks as well.
Heck, Mages barely have pets at all. They just âstand back and pew pewâ.
Not really. Itâs about in-game character archetypes and fantasies. And how those are realized as player options.
Anyway, I feel that based on what youâre saying, you donât really know what the old Survival spec did.
But yeahâŚin all honesty, what the specs were like back then in WoD, it doesnât really matter. And it didnât going into Legion either.
Why? Because the new focus in terms of class and spec design, was going to be Spec Fantasy and Spec Identity.
They couldâve done the same thing to Survival as they did with every single other spec in the game at the time, if they felt that it was too similar to MM.
But they didnât.
I canât speak for what everyone else would want from RSV in the modern game, but I decided to put together a concept based on modern design but with the theme and the signature mechanics of the old RSV, based much on what Iâve seen that other players have asked for over the years.
Feel free to check it out for yourself. If you actually compare themes and mechanics, etc. can you honestly say that it would play the same as current MM does? (Link below)
I think a lot of people have too much melancholy about ranged SV. If your comparing that to locks or rogues dot play style, we remember that very differently.
I remember it correctly, Iâm not sure that you do. Black arrow (dot), Explosive shot, serpent sting (dot), arcane shot to refresh serpent sting, LnL procs off Black Arrow to get free Explosive shots, and multishot to spread serpent sting. Serpent sting and black arrow had to have 100% uptime to be effective. MoC, Direbeast/glaves and arcane/cobra in between. Yes, there were non-dot attacks but the spec was built around SS, spreading SS with mulitshot and refreshing with arcane, and BA staying on target with BA procâing LnL for free explosive shots. I may have missed something since itâs been 5 years but that is the basics. Everything survival did was based around BA and SS interacting with other abilities.
Because they all provide meaningful exploration on a base archetype. This is true for all the pure DPS classes.
You might see it as redundant but thatâs your own opinion and itâs not your place to force alternate roles on pure DPS specs because you think thatâs the way it should be done. Some people like having a class with 3 distinct damage dealer options built on a common foundation.
No, you think they suffer but they are actually doing fine. Most people playing rogues came to that class understanding that they are getting some variation of a dual-wielding stealthy melee fighter. There is not going to be much of an appetite for replacing one of those with a ranged spec just for the sake of having something different and itâs not fair to the people who like Outlaw/Combat for what it is. This type of class revisionism is toxic.
The problem is for most Hunters we already had that but people like you minimise and discount all the meaningful differences between the specs and use that as a platform to push radical, unpopular spec replacement ideas.
As someone else pinted out, this was also true for Hunters. You even put it in the correct order for Hunters (i.e. BM/MM/SV respecively). Freudian slip?
Another differentiation might be different play style such as melee versus ranged.
What an absurdly ignorant reductionism of the state of the class.
Warlocks are just stand back, send in pet, and cast shadowy spells. All the same!.. see how stupid that sounds?
The Hunter specs were distinct in both theme and gameplay.
Cool story. BM, MM, and SV before Legion all had different gameplay styles, mechanics, and even stat weights. If only you would actually count them as differences instead of pretending they never existed.
Yes, the key difference being we are remembering it correctly and you arenât.
another thing they should unprune for MM is the old master marksman.
âYou have a 50% chance when you Steady Shot to gain the Master Marksman effect, lasting 30 sec. After reaching 3 stacks, your next Aimed Shotâs cast time and Focus cost are reduced by 100% for 10 sec.â
Actually, what they need to bring back the current Master Marksman. They are removing it in SL. I understand they want to make that talent tier competitive but the reason Master Marksman is BiS in all situations is because its effect is so good its effectively a core part of what makes MM work. Removing it is going to make the spec suffer greatly.
Someone on Trueshot Lodge calculated MMâs focus situation in SL. The baseline focus gain is going from 3 focus per second to 5, presumably to alleviate this problem. However, on an average 5-minute fight an MM Hunter is saving about 1125 focus from Master Marksman while this focus regen change will give about 500 focus over the course of a fight. This means youâre losing 500-600 focus (depending on Master Marksman usage) which is around 20% of your total focus gain in a fight. Itâs a LOT worse than it seems on the surface.
In your opinion. Personally I loved MoP BM and wish they would bring it back. I personally donât like Dire Beast/Frenzy or Barbed Shot as a focus generator because of the cooldown and therefore downtime. Mobile Steady Shot to build focus was much better in my opinion.
Of course you do
There are key things youve left out, but it isnt worth the holy war at this point.
I stand by my statements, especially the one about too much melancholy over the spec.
