I dont want stings, traps or black arrow, and someone somewhere always suggests some of these as additions to MM.
I played SV in WoD. Loved it. Don’t want MM to be a copy of it though.
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I think that some Stings and Black Arrow could be given to MM, but not Traps unless they’re universal. Thinking about it, making a Spec about Ammo could be weird when MM uses unique arrows of it’s own.
Funny, there has been plenty of information given on these forums showing that Survival’s usage took a nosedive after WoD and it hasn’t recovered.
If they don’t care about the melee/ranged difference then changing the spec back to what it was shouldn’t be an issue.
Perhaps, but continued punching of the black eye is worse than putting makeup on it.
Honestly, the only way to make both sides happy is to bring back RSV as a fourth spec. Not only that, but it would allow Blizzard to make talents themed for MM instead of trying to mash RSV into MM.
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I could get behind this. 4th spec.
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SV, not hunter. Everyone making this argument thinks there some mythical pool of people just clamoring to play WoW if only SV returned to ranged. There isn’t, which makes your argument null and void.
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That’s what I’m saying!
BM: Pokemon Trainer.
Survival: Tricks. And the pet is one of them.
Bepples generally has a couple good points, but none of them except his complaint about Spirit Bond support the idea that Survival is infringing on BM. And certainly none of them support the claim that hunters cannot or should not be melee.
I recall. I was a big fan of that, thematically. And we still kind of have it, with Engineering ammo. But it’s not worth using. I would love to see a more active, mechanical representation of that ammo if Survival went back to ranged.
But have we considered that might be because so many hunters end up Beast Mastery now, due to how easy the spec is to play and gear up for? And it’s been that way since Legion day 1.
I’m not trying to insult BM. I play one right now, specifically because it was more accessible than MM or SV when I switched off my rogue as my guild started Ny’alotha. I appreciate the need for accessible, so-called “easier” specs.
But when you’ve got an admittedly hectic spec like Survival and a slower, slightly more demanding spec like Marks but up against modern BM? BM becomes an attractive option for a lot of players.
What I mean to say is: Not all players are choosing to NOT play Survival, many are choosing to play BM independent of Survival’s current state.
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Disappointment, bring back our range SV hunter.
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If you don’t think a “gives your pet the command to kill” represents a heavy pet focus you need to get some perspective.
Kill Command in its post-Cata form is a signature ability of BM, period. It’s the most recognisable part of BM’s toolkit and it does the most damage. It’s as quintessentially BM as Aimed Shot to MM. When you share it to other specs it takes away from BM’s uniqueness. How can BM be called pet-focused if its pet aspects also exist in otehr specs? That’s why MM and SV should not have it.
Kill Command did actually exist in a baseline form in the past before MoP; it was a much weaker and underwhelming classwide ability you tended to just macro in to your shots and forget about and we saw exactly what I described with BM. It struggled to have any sense of unique combat style.
I shouldn’t even be the one saying this. The whole premise of making Survival melee in the first place was because ranged SV ostensibly infringed on MM’s identity, and it didn’t even share any of MM’s iconic abilities. I’m currently arguing with people on MMO-champion who are saying Explosive Shot was not sufficiently different from Chimera Shot because they both slotted into the “signature shot” part of the rotation, never mind the fact they differed heavily in aesthetic, theme, and mechanical interaction with the rest of the spec. This sort of talk about how Kill Command in the SV toolkit is jsut fine because “SV does everything” only reinforces my belief that all this talk about spec differentiation was never sincere and was just PR spin from people who want SV to be melee.
It’s not only tied to one button but that one button is pretty damn important. It’s actually our only active ability based on the pet as the rest are ranged weapon based. And, of course, it’s not just Kill Command because there’s also Coordinated Assault.
The only one of those that can be described as “army of pets” is Stampede and even then it’s an exceedingly small part of the over all gameplay. Plus, every example you mentioned so far is an optional talented part of the spec.
MM’s identity depends on more than just Aimed Shot but if they made Aimed Shot available to other specs it would infringe on MM’s identity just as badly. “It’s just one button” is a facetious argument; that one button is the most recognisable one.
If they want to make these sort of things shared they need to follow the example of things like Serpent Sting, Aimed Shot, or even Kill Command itself in the past; make it available to all specs but make it clear that one spec “owns” it by making that spec work much better with it both through its raw performance and interaction with other parts of the spec. That doesn’t happen with Kill Command. BM and SV both have a focus on it and they both have mechanical interactions with it. Why does SV get a reset mechanic for KC while BM doesn’t? That mechanic doesn’t even fit SV while it would make a lot of sense for BM.
If you think the pet is as iconic you’re just wrong. Literally. Objectively. Adding a petless option required a passive talent starting in WoD that made no notable difference to the playstyle or identity of MM and SV. Adding melee required totally replacing an existing spec. It’s not on the same league.
That’s really not unique at all. It’s the same as MM’s mastery last expansion and it’s just another flat damage percentage boost. It’s not like SV is the only spec with focus spenders or anything and there’s nothing about the focus-spending restriction that speaks to SV’s identity, whatever that is nowadays. SV had a pretty boring mastery when it was ranged but at least it telegraphed SV’s uniqueness over the other specs; it was a boost to all the abilities that did magic damage. That made sense because SV’s toolkit was much more focused on that v.s. the other specs.
The problem is because SV’s identity is heavily fragmented you can’t really come up with a mastery that encompasses all of it. That’s probably why they just slap “focus-spending abilities” on it. I’m not sure why they even bothered to go with focus-spending abilities given it hurts one of the actually unique parts of the spec (Wildfire Bomb), it’s still distinctly pet-focused and it doesn’t say much about the rest of the unique abilities of the spec, and they already had experience from last expansion with why this sort of thing was problematic when MM’s mastery worked the same way.
It literally has the same tooltip as BM’s one and it does NOT divide damage between the Hunter and the pet. You’re getting it confused with Flanking Strike from Legion. At its core it works the same as BM’s one; commands the pet to do damage. The significant difference is generating focus instead of spending it which is pretty tokenistic; there’s no inherent reason why that should be the case or why it makes sense other than the fact that they needed a focus generator for SV.
But all of what BM does is now just part of what SV does because apparently SV does everything. You keep saying “bag of tricks” but that is indeed a euphemism for “SV does everything”. People accuse ranged SV of this exact thing yet apparently, just like sharing another spec’s abilities, it’s fine for melee Survival.
Uh, what? The pet focus is far more prominent now than it was in Legion. Flanking Strike, while pet-focused, was less so than BM because it distinctly shared damage between the Hunter and pet. It didn’t have Coordinated Assault, either. It had a damage cooldown that was suspiciously animal themed but the main part of it was the Mongoose Bite component and it certainly didn’t share an animation with Bestial Wrath. It’s mastery was pet-themed but certainly wasn’t just lifted straight from BM like the current one and again at least also tied in Mongoose Bite. So the infringement on BM’s identity was still there but it’s a lot worse now.
It’s been the most iconic part of the class since the beginning. When you came to this subforum to post you would have had to click on our class name with a picture of a bow next to it. Ranged Weapons constituted the foundation of the playstyle and aesthetic of the class. Even now, with one of the specs not having one, they have to tack on a ranged weapon attack just to make it fit and most of the new abilities/returning baseline abilities are ranged-centric.
Put it this way. It’s far easier to tell BM and MM apart from other classes in the thick of combat than SV Hunters. This isn’t just my opinion; I’ve asked many people about this.
It really isn’t distinct. The only meaningful distinction is the mechanical distinction of increasing the chance of Kill Command to reset. Both BW and CA are flat damage increases to you and the pet which is both mechanically and thematically important. CA also shares BW’s animation.
Slapping a different name on it doesn’t suddenly make it unique and “leveraging the pet v.s. commanding the pet” has always been empty PR spin that doesn’t have any real distinction.
It doesn’t split damage. That’s Legion Flanking Strike.
And you’d be wrong to disagree. Look at what it took to add a petless option v.s. adding a melee option.
Blizzard themselves said that Legion SV strayed too far from the core identity and they specifically added ranged elements to fix that.
This is tenuous at best and you know it. The only part of Survival right now that remotely represents what it was before is Serpent Sting and even that is in an extremely diminished form. It’s not enough to just crap out “bag of tricks” into the thread like some magic password to make it true. Current SV is unrecognisable when compared to ranged SV from a gameplay and theme perspective.
It literally is, though. Being able to attack at ranged is the single most significant “trick” it had. It’s an enormous advantage in combat and there is absolutely no sense in a supposedly opportunist, utilitarian spec arbitrarily deciding not to use such an important part of the Hunter “bag of tricks”. It undermines the core identity of both the class and the spec. Stop trying to downplay it.
BM is one spec of the class, and even BM makes heavy use of the ranged weapon.
Well the trapper theme is not gone according to Blizzard and just about every other SV player. They still think it’s there.
The elements I mentioned aren’t contingent on being in combat or not. They were beneficial out of combat, too. Traps being usable in combat is basically a gameplay compromise. In Vanilla you couldn’t use them in combat and it so signficantly diminished their usefulness (and therefore the usefulness of Survival) that they deemed it untenable.
Wildfire Bomb and Serpent Sting aren’t replacements for traps (well, Wildfire Bomb is a replacement for a rotational Explosive Trap but that was always a bad idea) because the primary purpose of traps in the past was as CC. Of course, SV currently has extremely powerful CC options via PvP talents, namely Ranger’s Net. But ranged SV didn’t need stuff like that because its strong trap focus was built into the baseline spec as it should be.
Using either of them in melee combat is just awful from an aesthetic perspective. As for thematics; the spec is so often branded as this faithful partnership of Hunter and pet; Serpent Sting doesn’t really mean anything for that and Wildfire Bomb actively contradicts it as you’re throwing a bomb at your feet (and therefore your pet as well). It’s the main part of what makes SV’s identity incoherent. Usually specs have a strong, simple underlying focus. SV doesn’t have that. They can’t decide whether to focus on being a utilitarian gadgeteer or something like Rexxar with a totally-not-like-BM companionship with pets so it does both at the same time.
It doesn’t matter if it’s “just part of SV”. It’s still ripped off from BM. And you have many SV hunters across the forums claiming that SV’s pet focus is, in fact, better than that of BM. They are wrong in that but they still believe it.
This will never be a good point no matter how much you try to sell it. You are basically saying that SV is the spec that does everything and BM’s focus is just one of those things. It is infringing on BM’s identity, period.
When people asked Hazzikostas about Survival’s representation he didn’t say “they like SV but the PvE environment makes them all play BM”. He said “Most Hunters want to play ranged”.
Why would there be? There were way more people playing ranged SV than melee SV. Melee SV is way less treasured in the community than you think it is. I’d wager most playing the game forget it exists, and many of the people playing it would be perfectly fine with playing ranged SV.
If there’s a dedicated effort to keep it melee they are doing a bad job because most of the spec is ranged and it’s going even more in that direction next expansion. In the next expansion SV will have access to 8 damage abilities. Two of those use a melee weapon.
There’s actually a good point to be made here. Dumping all of the possible ranged weapon aspects onto MM doesn’t make as much sense as people think it does. A lot of those things don’t fit MM well. This is why we had 2 ranged specs.
As it turns out, not all ranged weapon specs are the same thing with interchangeable fantasies.
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This is probably the longest post I’ve seen to date.
It was awesome tho.
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No, the hunter class as a whole took a nosedive after WoD. I made a post about it a while ago that has since been deleted apparently. Had all the math and everything. Basically Hunters as a class lost way more players than every other class. The classes that lost the 2nd, 3rd and 4th most were DKs, rogues and warlocks, which made sense since their playstyle was most akin to demon hunter. Hunters on the other hand couldn’t be more different from demon hunters, yet we lost way more players than the others. 250,000 players left the Hunter class going into legion. So it isn’t just people changing from SV to BM. There were lots of players who left the class altogether.
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They should replace survival’s kill command with flanking strike and create a new talent
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i’m absolutely sick of people bagging on survival. i like survival because i like being melee with a pet. you cant really get that with any other spec. and i dont like unholy being so dot focused. admitedly i prefered the leigon version but beggars cant be choosers. i miss leigon flanking strike
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i hated hunter in WoD, way too homogenius. leigon is when it became fun for me. so much so that i have 3 hunters now 1 for each spec.
i agree with this because to me suvival is about you and your pet fighting as a cohesive unit as opposed to being the pets master and commanding it around. they should strip out the old survival stuff for a 4th spec and double down on this identity for the melee spec.
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WoW lost players after WoD… Any attempt to try and correlate those numbers, unless cited by Blizzard, is disingenuous hogwash. By the way, you’re full of crap, considering using the same bad, crappy data, hunter is still right near the top of player representation.
In short, quit trying to make crap up to fit your narrative.
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Agreed. If they do that, all of this stops. More happy players.
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Im one of those who left sv at end of wod cause deletion of rsv, there is plenty who have but either dont go forums or make posts. I went bm which was “only” option to be ranged “with” pet. I unstand making some variety but to remove options, and take away core fantasies will ruin it for those who mained class for years. Sometimes they made changes to make things better, for some classes it worked others like hunter it was a dud, and they knew it was at start. I know we all have our own views but stating one is right other is wrong isnt way to go or be. All i can say is i lost what i enjoyed most, i had to say goodbye to something i enjoyed for 9 years. I will now and always ask to have what i liked back, nothing will change my mind on it.
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