Stop trying to remove melee

Classes Hunter
246

Yes, because it was badly balanced and the melee abilities weren’t worth using. But the intent behind all the various melee damage talents (melee weapon specialization, melee hit/crit, etc) was clearly to specialize in melee combat, just as that was the intent behind enhance’s design even though enhance still had all of its ranged abilities. Marksman still had all of its baseline melee abilities; if MM was poorly balanced and saw better performance by running in to melee instead of using its ranged weapon, or if fire saw better performance by spamming frost bolt, that would not be proof that mm was intended to be a melee spec, nor that fire was intended to be a frost spec. That’d only prove that blizzard is bad at math.

The end result was the hunter specing into SV, going “oh this is weak” and 99/100 times swapping out. Or going “oh, the deep melee stuff is weaksauce but hey, the early sv talents give a bunch of control and some defense, I could use those in pvp to stay alive better!” Blizzard then saw how the spec was being used (mainly, that most players dropped a handful of points in early sv for support, with the rest of their talents being used in MM) and doubled down on it by adding control and utility deeper in the tree, as well as swapping some of the melee focused talents to generalist talents. But the original intent was still melee, even if the original execution was weak.

1 Like
247

To put it short.

The original intent(read: intended design) was not to provide talents/options for hunters to opt into melee combat rather than ranged combat.

Longer version:

The original design of SV as a talent category, was to, like the later version which was actually called Survival, not Outdoorsmanship, was to improve utility and survivability.

That included melee abilities as in certain areas of the game, such as PvP, you weren’t going to be able to keep your distance to the enemy in such a reliable way as in other areas.

What would the result be?

Since they designed our ranged weapons to have a minimum attack range this meant that when we weren’t capable at keeping the distance, we had to make use of what we had. And thus it being reasonable to have talents which focused on making us stronger for such occasions where we would not be able to use ranged weapons as reliably.

Neither Outdoorsmanship nor the old SV talent categories, intended for us to intentionally move into melee range and start whacking the enemies with the melee weapon(s) rather than trying to keep our distance.

It wasn’t just a case of bad tuning/balancing in terms of numbers.
Yes, true, many of the talents were improperly tuned/balanced, but even if they had done that part better, we still did not have a class and a talent design which intended for us to opt out of ranged combat.

If at any point in the past(prior to Legion), there was an actual intent for hunters to opt into melee combat instead of ranged, they would’ve given us more than 1 baseline offensive melee-ability. If it was intended for Hunters to fight in melee over ranged, they wouldn’t have taken away everything involving our melee weapons(incl the actual ability to properly use the weapons themselves).

Having said all that:

Does the above mean that a melee playstyle/spec has no place within the class?
No, it doesn’t mean that. Class development can move forward like most other things do.

But giving us the option(for those who wants to) to focus on melee combat, does not justify further limitation on ranged options or fantasies.

What they did going into Legion, wasn’t the above. They did not bring hunter class development forward. They severely cut out a large portion of it’s main features, resulting in an equally large portion of the development of the class which we’ve gone through over several expansions, basically now being done for nothing.

The biggest waste of dev time and money, wasn’t what they did/had to do to MSV going from Legion to BfA with giving that spec yet another overhaul.

The biggest waste, was all the dev time and money spent on developing the spec between WotLK and WoD.

Not to mention the massive waste of player-time. Meaning those of us who had come to love that old SV(RSV) playstyle. Doing what they(devs) did to SV, basically told us that we did not matter. They basically told us that they did not care about what we as players liked.

7 Likes
248

Devs, as late as 2009, said otherwise.

I’ll add that the melee attack issue for hunters themselves is something we keep discussing. While we are unlikely to go back to a melee-focused build for hunters, we might consider a model where hunters don’t run away most of the time but switch to melee attacks – perhaps even a single punishing attack on a cooldown before the hunter Disengaged or whatever. This would be one of those things that helped hunters feel more different than actual magic casters, and might make them care about melee weapons as more than stat sticks. Additional feedback from the community on this sort of thing would be appreciated.

Admittedly, ghostcrawler was proven wrong as they did go BACK to a melee focused build, the point stands that they considered early survival to be a melee focused build, not utility and defense.

He also commented on another not-melee related issue which has cropped up, funnily enough;

Q: Would we consider allowing auto-shoot to work while moving? If there aren’t plans for that specific change, is there anything in the works that will assist hunter dps in fights where a great deal of movement becomes necessary?

A : Moving should feel like a penalty. We don’t want ranged attackers constantly circle strafing FPS-style because it confers a defensive advantage without giving up an offensive one. Moving is supposed to be bad and how you handle it is a test of your skill. We do give instant cast spells to some classes, but it should always be a dps loss when they have to focus on these exclusively. We would consider giving hunters another way to pull off an instant shot or beef up their dots, but we would want to make sure these would only be used in true long-distance movement situations. What I mean by that is we think we’ve possibly already gone too far towards balancing the Arena around instant attacks that can’t be countered before they go off.

And as soon as that was changed and BM/RSV gained full mobility, oh look they gained a massive defensive advantage without losing any offensive power, and ended up causing all sorts of issues in pvp; and to a lesser extent in raids.

1 Like
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When wow shuts down, is all of the game going to have been a waste of your time? What about when they implement the level squish in shadowlands, does that mean that leveling from 50-120 was a waste of your time?

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World of Warcraft Game Manual Page 84

The Hunter
The hunter is a unique class in World of Warcraft because it is primarily a ranged attacker. Even though other classes can learn to
use ranged weapons, none of them is as proficient in their deadly
use as the hunter. To support the hunter’s ranged attacks, this
class has two main advantages: a loyal pet and a wide array of
movement-restricting spells.

Class Abilities
The hunter is a combat class, like the rogue and warrior, but whereas those classes rely on melee attacks, the hunter relies on ranged
power. It does have spellcasting ability, but the hunter’s spells are
supportive ones, used to enhance the hunter’s natural abilities.
To complement its ranged attacks, the hunter has a number of
spells that imbue its gun or bow with additional damage, damage
over time, or other magical effects.

Hunter Pets
Pets are a key component of the hunter class. After the hunter
gains some experience he can learn to tame the wild beasts of
Azeroth. Using the beast taming spell, the hunter can select a
beast in the wild and turn it into a loyal companion. The hunter’s pet can then attack the hunter’s target and keep it occupied while the hunter engages in ranged attacks.

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251

Stop trying to make hunter melee, melee doesn’t belong in a ranged class.

9 Likes
252

but it already is bub

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253

They got survival, BM isn’t going down without a fight.

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254

but it already happened

rexxar’s a beastmaster, therefore bm should be melee too

just delete mm at that point and replace it with a third melee too cause mm’s awful rn anyways

that’d be amazing

255

Should go back to range survival and dump this trash of melee spec. No hunter spec should be melee ruins actual fantasy of class to a fake class fantasy. When even devs thiught it was mistake proves how much trash of idea it was.

9 Likes
256

I enjoyed melee survival in Legion and I’d love to make one for BfA and possibly Shadowlands but I’d absolutely despise rolling a melee hunter only for the people crying to successfully get it removed.

257

There are far too many melee classes as it is, there is only 1 ranged attack class, that would be hunter.

Melee, you have, warriors, paladins, death knights, rogues, demon hunters, shamans, monks, and druids.
We don’t need more melee we need less of it. And survival as melee needs to go bye bye and make an entrance to one of the many other melee classes available.

Hunters are ranged physical, the only class in the game with that setup, and now 1 of the 3 specs has been converted to melee. That is totally gross.

12 Likes
258

Thrall lost his shaman powers, therefore all shamans should lose theirs too!

Am I doing it right?

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259

solution: delete hunters

260

yeah that’s fine, you can delete this entire class and replace it with something else
shaman’s been terrible ever since the legion changes, maelstrom’s garbage and stormbringer is an embarrassing, modern design vanilla-windfury

glad we agree
let’s get rid of ranged hunters and shamans

261

There’s only so many niches one can give ranged classes without utterly breaking them.

On a conceptual level, melee is easier to design around to try and make them feel more unique. It’s why I’m a fan of melee survival despite all the other melee specs that exist, it has its own rotational feel that isn’t really matched by any of the others.

Ranged ultimately still has some unexplored wiggle room but the classes universally tend to fall into some roles and it’s hard to distinguish them without simply just giving them someone else’s ranged niche.

I’d wager real money this is why none of the new classes that have been added are ranged, because ranged design space is immediately more limited.

Re-creating Survival playstyle baked into Marksman talents seems like one of the better compromises to try and make everyone keep what they like about the class without taking anything away.

262

RSV wouldn’t play like either of the other 3 current hunter specs.
It would bring it’s own niche.

2 Likes
263

I’d love a fourth spec for Hunter but I think that’d open a can of worms that Blizzard is too lazy to deal with.

266

I posted about what I would envision a 4th spec looking like here: Ranged Survival seemingly a no go in 9.0 - #97 by Beastbashx-area-52

Those are just off the top of my head… if they did it right they could make it a fan favorite spec of all hunters in one go. Kinda like a cross of a unholy dk, shadow priest, sub rogue, and affliction warlock, all tied together in a survival 2.0 ranged addition mesh. I think it would be a cool spec addition and a solid middle ground for what is currently missing in survival being melee, without removing it entirely.

267

I don’t think Dark Rangers would work as a 4th spec because, to my knowledge, all Dark Rangers are undead.

Also, in my opinion, Dark Rangers’ theme is the complete opposite of hunters. Hunters are deeply connected to the natural world. Whereas Druids represent the beginning of the cycle of life (birth), Hunters represent the natural end of all living things (death). Being undead, Dark Rangers are a crime against nature. They’re unnatural.

And besides, its not like there are 100 other ranged weapon specs in the game. Dark Rangers could be made into a complete class.