Lol, speak for yourself dude you come across as mad salty. Hunter fantasy? Or Ranger fantasy? Sounds like you’re getting those confused
The idea of a hunter being in melee/semi melee actually fits pretty well with a survivalist fantasy in my opinion, some more semi-ranged abilities would be cool though
“Arbitrarily abandoning the greatest strength of the class and sticking to the vastly-more-dangerous melee range just for the thrill really comes across as an opportunist survivalist to me”
Again coming across super salty lol
Do you even read entire posts, or just cherry pick whatever fits your argument?
“HuNtErS iN MeLeE? PrEpOsTeRoUs”
You honestly consider yourself to be some kind of authority talking down on people with different attitudes eh
Literally Rexxar.
Exactly. Dumb dumb people man
If what you’re saying is ridiculous I’ll ridicule it. Survival beforehand was independent of melee. It had maximum control and mobility with no limitations. It used exotic munitions and utility. That’s opportunist. That’s a survivalist. Now, melee Survival is some confused mix of Warrior-esque melee attacks, BM clone abilities, and the old special munitions theme with bombs and poisons.
There’s literally no reason to have a melee dependence other than pride at this point. With most Hunters wanting nothing to do with melee and most melee players sticking to their own classes keeping it melee is utterly pointless and self-destructive. All this talk of “playstyle variation” means NOTHING if you’re forcing a variation that Hunters don’t want. You might as well be trying to sell a Hunter healer spec at that point.
Yes, although that argument holds for nothing if the diversification doesn’t follow the class fantasy. If the spec is made different just to be different rather than it following a class-wide main theme, it no longer makes as much sense. You can make specs very diverse/distinguished in design and gameplay without having to do what they did to SV.
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree that there can be a theme of a melee-oriented hunter in this game, it just doesn’t adhere to the history of the actual class that is the Hunter. Because, historically, this class has never utilized melee-combat as a major/primary focus in the past.
If they want to expand on what was there before, by all means, but removing an existing spec for the sake of this melee-version, is not expanding on our available options in any way.
Something you point out as well:
Agreed.
He means “hunter fantasy” as in the history/historical design of the hunter class.
Whether one can hunt IRL using a melee-weapon or not isn’t as relevant here. Mostly because part of the hunter fantasy in this game is about the actual fantasy, about the game’s portrayal of the class and it’s lore.
Still doesn’t justify what was done to SV as Rexxar was put into this game with the background and fantasy of being a Beastmaster.
Last I recall Survival doesn’t really have a whole lot more buttons than BM. We both use KC, they press cobra shot we press raptor strike, they press barbed shot we press bombs, they press multi shot we press carve. Seems the same to me 
Still baffles me how you are arguing about fantasy IN A FANTASY GENRE GAME…
" Some hunters focus their talents on melee weapons. These brave individuals take up the spear or axe and stalk dangerous creatures until they are close enough to pounce. They revel in the danger of their actions, feeling an unparalleled rush when they can bring a deadly creature down in equal combat - especially if they use their bare hands. Other hunters will prefer to use twin daggers, augmented by the elemental power of their traps, although their style of dagger fighting is much more loose and improvisatory than that of the [Rogue].
The melee hunter’s animal companion assists its master by distracting the enemy and flanking it."
From wow rpg wiki page.
But nope. Can’t exist in wow, doesn’t make sense.
There are people hunting with melee weapons in real life for the thrill of it, yet somehow it is impossible for a fantasy world?
There are quite a few of melee hunters in wow too (Rexxar, Beastlord Darmac to name a few)
Heck there is a whole orcish clan dedicated to it (thunderlords)
But nope… Cant exist in a fantasy world. Doesn’t make sense…
If we were following logic, everyone in wow would be carrying a machine gun, yet majority of foot soldiers are still running around in plate armor with swords and shields…
Like… Cmon man…
Look, I respect your knowledge of the game and your ability to find information, but stay away from the fantasy part…
their focus building/spending is nearly identical which is the whole reason the old specs were called samey and changed in the first place.
it’s kind of hilarious that the same people that say rsv was MM with dots are now playing BM with a dot.
What does that even mean? None of us are fantasy world Hunters. We’re mostly people living content easy lives who “hunt” our meat on styrofoam trays in the refrigerator section of the grocery store.
If you play a Hunter, you’re a Hunter, in WoW terms. If someone did not previously play a Hunter, and now wants to play a melee Survival Hunter, they’re a Hunter.
I’m surprised you didn’t cite Ion’s quote from that Legion-era interview in which he explicitly said that MSV was a “niche spec” designed for non-Hunters, and not for existing Hunter players.
Bepples, care to help track down that article? I just woke up so I’m not at my best currently.
Is the concept of class fantasy really that difficult to grasp?
see my post above if you wanna talk about fantasy.
I don’t think arguing about fantasy makes a whole lot of sense. I absolutely think current SV fits within the hunter fantasy, or at the very least what it could be.
The real issue is they removed a different fantasy to put in the new one that they knew was going to be intended for a different set of players. I think the fantasy argument isn’t a great one, and really it should have just been a 4th spec instead.
There are a ton of a different fantasies we could get out of the class. I just don’t think any of them should come at the cost of what we already had.
In your post, you confused reality with fantasy.
Something can be unrealistic to our worlds standards, like throwing a fireball. But it can still make sense within the game. Hence the argument “bUt iTs FaNtaSy” is very overused and mostly in the wrong way.
Why you use a fansite as authority?
People hunting for sports dont really compare to the characters, literally fighting for their lives and their world…
If you can do the same damage to an enemy from far away as you can from close up, only a moron would run into his range to bring himself into greater harm.
This would be the realistic approach.
The class fantasy approach has pretty much already been widely discussed. One of the core features of hunters is them being ranged. And as it currently stands, this is the way the vast majority of hunters sees it, otherwise the numbers wouldnt be so abysmal even when theyre strong.
Funny, all the way up through Cataclysm they were required to equip melee weapons, had melee skills and couldn’t use their ranged weapons in melee range, unlike ranged casters. This was a defining characteristic of Hunters starting in Vanilla and continuing through four expansions, so you might call it a “core feature.”
Your entire post is nonsensical. You want to have both the “realistic” and “but it’s just fantasy” arguments as your own but deny them to people who interpret them in ways differently than you do.
That has nothing to do with my post. Bepples has this weird structure built in his head where any Hunters who don’t hunter the way he likes aren’t real hunters. It’s ridiculous. As I said, flat out, if a player decides to play the Hunter class because he likes melee survival, he’s a Hunter, period.
A “core feature” that you wanted to avoid like the plague, that would plummet your damage to oblivion and was only used when you were forced to. Yeah, it was great having this disadvantage compared to casters. It sounds really bad to make a whole spec around this disadvantage. Better give survival hunters the dead zone back.
Again, you dont understand class fantasy. If you click on the hunter button and create a character of the class “hunter”, youre a hunter in WoW.
The concept of a class fantasy is something completly different. It defines what conceptually makes a hunter in WoW a hunter.
So they took the disadvantageous core feature and made it advantageous to a spec. If melee is inherently disadvantageous, you should start arguing for removal of all melee classes/specs. I suppose that’s why rogue has always been such a sucky class (/sarc.). Arguably they never intended the hunter melee disadvantage to be as dramatic a disadvantage as it was, judging by their progressive attempts over four expansions to make it less disadvantageous. It was a really hard balancing act they never figured out how to solve satisfactorily, so they eventually removed the melee element. Then, two expansions later, they reintroduced it as a dedicated melee spec. with some ranged components, which sidestepped the difficulties of having three specs. that had to unsuccessfully negotiate the gearing and game mechanics chasm between melee and ranged. Survival is the most hybrid range/melee spec. in the game. It’s interesting, unique and fun to play.
Stop saying I don’t understand class fantasy. Of course I do. I just don’t agree you (or Bepples) have the last word on the scope of the Hunter class fantasy. This hearkening back to some imaginary hard-bounded fantasy of what a hunter “is” is ridiculous.
Also, look back at my original quote from Bepples:
What’s not to get? It’s theme/fantasy is pretty explicitly aimed towards people who aren’t Hunters.
“people who aren’t hunters.” Not “non-Hunter class fantasy.” Bepples has more than once expressed this idea that some people, not characters, not class fantasies, are hunters and some are not. But thank goodness he has you to speak for him.