So ranged survival in NW

Classes Hunter
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[quote=“Mawthorne-lightninghoof, post:59, topic:1105373”]
How is it not equally selfish (or even moreso) to argue that the hunter fantasy (assuming a 3 spec template) should appeal exclusively to ranged DPS players? [/quote]

Because this is the fantasy that Blizzard created and then abruptly changed out of the blue. Remember: This is the company that creates problems to offer solutions. Leading up to the switch, Hunters had ZERO melee abilities, and it had been that way for a couple of years at that point.

Why don’t we make a melee mage and ranged rogue then? And add a third DH spec that’s ranged? The problem is, the world that was created by the original (and later) game designers laid out a general architecture for the classes; Mages do this, Warriors do that, etc. Some tweaking here and there is OK. Hell, a rework within the structure of what already exists makes sense.

This is what Blizzard did:

Imagine three types of toilets in a public restroom. One’s a normal old whatever, the other is a bidet, and the third is like one of those pit toilet things. The owner of the toilets decides the pit toilet needs some changes, but thinks to himself, “Hmmmmmmmmm this toilet is too much like the other toilets. True, everyone expects to be able to sit on the toilet and poop, but will that be interesting enough? NOPE.” He then installs a pedestal sink with a sign that says “Poop here, NO HAND WASHING.”

The base expectation of how a Hunter was intended to function had been established over the course of many years: Ranger with a pet. The specs added flavor to that (same as the other pure DPS classes) for better or worse, but those classes and their respective specs have ALWAYS stayed within the original scope of the class fantasy. That’s why this change was jarring, and I think one of the main reasons people are still salty about it. Remeber when the Browns became the Ravens? Still a football team owned by Art Modell. Why didn’t all the Browns fans just switch to Raven’s fans? They were being very selfish.

To add, the ONLY lore-based decision for this change is one dude that you can’t emulate anyway because there’s no DW any more, which, ironically, was a defining characteristic of Hunters for some time. That’s where the “Hunter Weapon” meme came from.

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To me it’s about diversity of gameplay. The game has exactly 3 ranged, non-magical (ish) DPS specs in hunter. It had/has numerous melee DPS and didn’t need another. Ranger survival also leaned into the trap aspect of hunter which I loved and made the spec unique.

Now we have another melee spec, which we didn’t need with DK, monk, and DH added and a ranged spec taken. The only this move added was a kinda unique melee that uses a pet. Unholy DK was already ranged/melee hybrid.

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It still wouldn’t justify making SV melee if a melee spec became all-ranged. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

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unholy dk also was already a melee that uses a pet. blizz deleted a spec so that melee people could tame a cat.

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So please explain what is the difference? Skirmisher is focused more on spear abilities that have no range, and few bow abilities.

So what is the difference here seriously? Survival hunter has same play style. Melee range and some bow abilities.

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It’s forums only, in game actually people enjoy SV including me. Here people will complain based how much bored they are. Even if blizzard would give them what they ask for they would complain.

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except that when they reworked survival in legion, keep in mind that they also changed core gameplay for a lot and a lot of specs like:

enhancement, retribution, shadow, demonology, combat to outlaw rogues

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This is a separate problem of design. It is not a reason to homogenize the hunter.

And yes, I realize that the hunter wasnt that same-same, but you literally just stated that hunter was a class— the only class— with ranged, non-magical DPS. Three versions of it in the same fantasy.

There absolutely should have been a ranged rogue, and probably a melee mage and lock, but the game evolved into the whole spec idea… it wasnt designed from the ground up with specs in mind.

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It was a mechanic they created, but the fantasy they originally created was the most RPG like in the game. They abruptly changed that fantasy. The one where you had a cool melee weapon, and a bow, and made/purchased ammunition. The one where you took care of your battle tamagotchi, fed it and trained it, for the reward loop of green smiling mood indicators and heart fx.

The game evolved. It evolved giving us less ways to play our hunters. It streamlined a lot of the class. Good or bad, a lot was removed. One of those things was melee weapons for Hunters.

…But those weapons were just stat sticks!

Yes… I know. Not relevant to my argument here.

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Did they change CORE gameplay, though? All those melee specs became ranged and ranged melee?

To me, core gameplay is the most basic way in which you deal damage. You either stand next to something and whack, stand at range and cast, or stand at range and shoot. That’s core.

No other spec or class has had a fundemental change like Hunter. And again, for no justifiable reason. “HURR DURR TOO MUCH DUH SAME” isn’t an argument if three specs of mage exist. Or two specs of Warrior with varying amounts of zug. Or Warlocks. Or Rogues. We didn’t really get anything even remotely hunterish, anyway. It would have made more sense to call the spec Hussar and tack it on DH.

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This doesn’t even make sense. Perhaps you can’t comprehend due to a barrier in the language. Need to relax.

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Because we had one that worked fine for years

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This is an easy one: because ranged SV players were there first and in greater numbers.

Ah yes because replacing one of 3 ranged weapon users with one of thirteen melee weapon users, including every single DPS spec added to the game post-launch, is definitely creative and out-of-the-box thinking.

Yeah, no. Making melee specs is Blizzard’s comfort zone. Besides; none of the three Hunter specs were as routinely and totally unpopular as melee Survival.

This would be ideal.

This goes both ways. There are plenty of Hunters in game that don’t post on the forums but are still unhappy with Survival being melee. The notion that everyone who doesn’t post here is fine with it is fallacious.

None of these are on the same level as changing SV to a melee spec.

Good grief…

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Lol I love to hear, “RSV worked for years !” But yet when you say its been gone for SIX years its some how magically gets erased and get treated like this change JUST HAPPENED THIS EXPANSION !!! Please. Let. It. GO. 6 years, going on 7. Lol I’m done with this.

I’ll go back poking things.

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Clinging to a bad change for a long time doesn’t make it not a good change. Nothing changes the fact that ranged SV existed for years while doing pretty well and melee SV has consistently been one of the least played specs in the game for its entire lifespan. In fact the longer this goes on the more the failure of melee SV becomes apparent.

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yeah so like, Marksmen?

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lol cope too much

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Either you can’t read or you’re trolling.

About the same level as Kindwolf from a few years back.

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He’s trolling. It’s best to pretend posters like this don’t exist. Then they have to seek attention elsewhere.

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It would be great to see it come back. A lot of specs have been left as hollow shells of what they used to be. Unholy and frost used to be very strong classes and much more popular.

Marksmen used to have great control and mobility for pve and pvp. Now it’s a failing glass cannon.

Survival, from the end of wotlk until the end of warlords, was the only completely viable hunter spec for high end raiding. The other two worked well enough but couldn’t compete with mages, warlocks, spriests, like survival could.

And if we are arguing numbers, msurvival, has less than 100 active players, pushing heroic and mythics in raiding. Well at least and the end of last month, as reported by wowlogs, bloodmallet. The reason survival was chosen to become melee in the first place was because blizzard broke a couple abilities and refused to revert the changes, making the class unplayable past normal raiding, which dropped its representation, and then ion killed it