But you’re right, a full rework of MSV will in some ways require more work than adding RSV in as a 4th spec.
I don’t think this is the case. Coming from a software background myself, I can guess at the many unseen integrations that goes into class design, and those complexities multiply with each added borrowed power feature. As one tiny example, when a character hits Legion and they’re asked to choose a spec to get their artifact weapon, and the game check expects one of the three existing specs and finds a fourth, it’ll likely cause a bug or crash, so the devs have to go back and add an exception. Sure, the concept and design is mostly there for a 4th RSV spec, but the code and fine details are not.
It reminds me of another point: in MoP, all dps classes shared the same talents, regardless of spec. They only started differentiating talents based on spec in WoD, but only rarely, and only committed to fully unique talent trees in Legion- after the MSV switch. RSV never got its chance to fully differentiate itself from MM (or BM, for that matter). Recreating RSV would require a brand new talent tree- possibly stitched together from pre-MoP talents and adapted MSV talents. Again, a lot of work for apparently “overworked” (e.g. lazy) devs.
My personal ideal is delete MSV and bring back RSV, but I’m trying to think of different scenarios and realistic constraints on the matter- unfortunately, as with a lot of things lately, Blizzard and Ion only seem to be going for the worst possible solutions.
One could easily say the same for you. You seem to be in the sore winner category. A whole lot of us mained RSV for a very long time and we’re just not going to go away. When you pop in and say “it’s never coming back”, “deal with it” or “I love MSV so much why don’t you” in the discussion it’s going to be taken the same as you see us.
This debate isn’t going to go away, people on both sides are inflammatory and rude. Let’s not act holier than thou.
I agree, this constant bickering isn’t going away. There is only one class that uses the bow/gun archetype, and now–with the removal of RSV–only 1 specialization that leans into that archetype out of the 36 specializations in the game. 1 out of 36. Meanwhile, 6 out of the 12 classes have a dual-wield melee spec. I think thats like 8 specs. Almost 1/4 specs in the game are dual-wield melee. That lack of diversity is abysmal.
Players enjoyed ranged survival for a long time and they shouldn’t have to just ‘deal with’ such a redundant design decision. All hunters, even MSVs, should want a 4th range survival spec. Maybe if that feedback was a little more unified, we could finally move pass this annoying situation.
While this is true, don’t forget that most elements for MSV are already finished(presumably) for the upcoming expansion. This includes everything pertaining to external systems as well. Again, certain code could ofc be kept for the revamp, but you would still have to go back and rework most of that which is tied to the above(incl making sure that everything tied to MSV is “detached” from what follows, or you risk running into a lot of new errors/issues as well).
I doubt that this would require less work than taking the base system codes and adding the features/elements tied to RSV to it, as opposed to the above.
Anyway…
We actually had spec specific talents(the early version of this) during Cataclysm. It wasn’t as restricted as what we see with talents today, but the categories we had in Cata were tied primarily to the newly introduced Core Specs we got back then.
Despite the above, I do agree with this.
RSV had a lot of potential for further development, looking ahead to what Legion brought for all classes and specs(with spec identity). They just did not bother to look into what that could mean for RSV. Sadly.
I’ve linked my suggestions before, but yeah, this is what I would’ve done(or something similar to it) for RSV, if brought with us into the world that is “Spec fantasy and Spec identity”.
I’m still thinking about the talent Rapid Recuperation, about ways to realize it’s intended design without the pet-element. But…yeah.
Where did I even ever say any of those things you mentioned? I just visited this hunter forum a few days ago and don’t even main a hunter. The only thing I alluded to, while debating my SL main, was that the melee survival change is promising, unique and could use a little more love before stripping it away. I have no investment in the spec or even this class. If blizzard’s intention is to keep the spec as melee it would help for positive feedback instead of every post about it turning into a ‘Well back in my day we had it good young man!’ thing. Yeah, we get it. Some don’t like it. Yet some do. Let’s try and improve on what’s not quite there yet on the spec.
Well if you’d spent a little more time on the hunter forums, you’d realize almost no one on either side of the debate wants it stripped away. Most people on the RSV side are more than happy to let MSV continue existing, and only ask that RSV be returned as a 4th spec.
This is an easily disproven false narrative. As of the time of this post, there are two threads talking about MSV specific things inside the top 15 threads under the “latest” category, and neither of them have any mention of RSV in them.
Here is the thing about this statement. People who want to play a ranged spec, to them making MSV, RSV again would be an improvement. Many of them also have no desire to play melee. But again I wish to stress most are willing to let MSV continue to exist and just want RSV as a 4th spec, but expecting them to give suggestions on how to make a spec they don’t want to play better is ludicrous.
I’ve also seen plenty of survival feedback here, and on the shadowlands class feedback as simple as ‘being melee survival back’. Yes of course it goes both ways in that. My point isn’t towards everyone but to anyone who shuts down the melee spec entirely and wants it back. A 4th spec is fine. But for every post you find of someone suggesting that I can already find a ‘remove melee and bring old survival back.’
A 4th spec is a great idea! However it seems a lot of work, for one, but for two it would also open floodgates to other classes who could easily think of some pretty neat 4th dps specs for themselves too, cough battle mage cough.
They didn’t work on anything for SL. That’s not anyone’s fault but blizzard. Promoting positive feedback is the only plausible thing to see the spec get some love. See: Shadow Priest recently.
You guys are really really touchy on this lol. I haven’t even said anything about ranged survival being bad, unwanted or anything. You’d think I did with the salt coming at me for promoting more attention to the melee version on Blizzard’s part.
Anyways, that’s enough hunter forum for me. They can’t even make MM or Surv quite right. Dunno about that 4th spec thing but good luck y’all.
They’ve already set that precedent when they gave druids 4 specs. This situation is not exactly the same. Druids were a case of no long being able to have 1 spec accomplish 2 roles because of how the new talent systems worked. This is a case of they removed a playstyle and people want it returned.
That said, I see no issue with letting all the classes have a 4th spec. Do we need a battle mage? No, personally an honest to gods “Time Mage” would be awesome. I could see a 3rd Demon Hunter Spec based around Metamorphosis, except being melee it focused more on the magical side of being a demon. Warriors having a sword/board dps spec. Just because I find the thought amusing, give monks a DBZ style spec, shooting energy beams etc.
Long story short, I don’t see why people have this aversion to a 4th spec for hunters and/or every other class if necessary.
It’s only been 4 years, hardly a lifetime. I do agree with the other guys, 3rd expansions the charm!
Like it or hate it, anytime you mention how to improve SV someone is going to suggest making it range again and then someone (Not you young man) will pop up and say “Deal with it! It’s melee and I love it.” Call it whatever you want but it’s never going to stop. At least that’s how it used to work in my day young man.
We actually had spec specific talents(the early version of this) during Cataclysm. It wasn’t as restricted as what we see with talents today, but the categories we had in Cata were tied primarily to the newly introduced Core Specs we got back then.
You’re right; I was referring to MoP and WoD era where core kits were more-or-less unique to specs but talents were still shared. Cata was that phase where talents were unique to each spec and your primary nuke was tied to the spec, but the rest of the core kit was shared between specs. I liked that system, at the time.
I like some of your suggestions. My pet idea (don’t tell Bepples) was to bring back the Cobra Shot adding Serpent Sting duration, then allowing Serpent to proc LnL. DoT everything in sight and then skilled hunters would minimize GCDs with strategic Cobra Shots- Beps showed it was too easy to maintain it at +6 seconds so maybe scale it back a bit to make it a skill differentiator. Get it rolling and you’re spewing Explosive Shots left and right and lighting your screen up with numbers.
Survival needs a complete rework to be more like it was in Vanilla: A melee ranged hybrid with a specialization in traps and damage over time. They’d remove the dependency on pets for focus restoration and replace it with focus being restored by DoTs. No more Kill Command because that’s BM.
Focus costs would be removed from all damage over time effects while Mongoose Bite, Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot, and Chakrams, would be your focus consumers. NO Steady Shot, thank you. Additionally, Legion’s trap bonuses must be restored, allowing for methodical trappers to get that setup bonus after a 1.5 seconds. This would make traps dangerous again. You still get the instant effect, but you just better effects for being more prepared.
Duel wield should also be restored and change up your combat style slightly: If you like the current mongoose burst with a two hander, cool, however if you’re more about DoTs then duel wielding changes Mongoose Bite to Lacerate - an attack that causes your target to bleed and drastically speeds up your melee attacks for 5 seconds, each consecutive hit refreshing and increasing the damage over time effect. This would create a synergy between melee and ranged, because you’d need to do both to apply all your DoTs.
Traps and Wyvern Sting would be part of how you expedite this balancing act.
And finally, useless talents like Sticky tar will be reworked into older style talents like in classic: Increasing the radius and slowing effect of the trap to 60% and having a 25% chance to immobilize targets trudging though it. This would give survival excellent support role cc - one of our primary functions.
This would restore Survival to the fast paced, rapid damage spec that it’s supposed to be, not the clunky burst format of MM, or the pet dependent combat of BM.
It was a fairly popular element back when they added it(I personally disliked how they just ended up, baking SrS into Arcane Shot in WoD).
I included a version of what you mentioned in the talent section; Spitting Cobra, with the added bonus of more manual focus gen. That entire row/tier is focused on DoT-management in different ways.
Mostly to allow players to pick w/e they prefer as the choice affects your gameplay decisions. Balancing is what it is ofc, depending on the encounter, there will always be that “optimal choice”, no question.
The vision I had for a ranged Survival had 2 dots: Serpent Sting and Black Arrow (possibly rebranded to something else to better fit the theme).
Serpent Sting would be cheap and its ticks would return focus with no internal CD. There was actually a focus return on Serpent Sting ticks but it had a 3 second GCD. This way having Serpent Sting up on multiple targets means the focus regeneration scales up. Cap the focus return effect to 5 applications (i.e. can apply SS to however many you want but the focus return doesn’t give any more after the 5th target) so it doesn’t go nuts.
Then you could have Black Arrow which procs Lock and Load just as it did in WoD: one guaranteed proc per BA application, more by chance scaling with a stat (multistrike in WoD but they could tie it into the spec’s mastery). This time Black Arrow has a cooldown reduction effect tied into Serpent Sting so you can multidot with it.
This way you would put the cheap dot up on everything (Serpent Sting), and that focus return and CDR chance per tick allows you to apply Black Arrow to more targets and this scales up. Having Black Arrow on many targets is not only heavy dot damage but also gives Lock and Load procs to funnel into single target.
The obvious problem with this is that on single target there’s no difference to what ranged Survival already had. Perhaps a talent that allows Black Arrow to stack on one target for ST situations? I’m not sure. But they had something interesting going on with HFC with the trinket that allowed for Black Arrow multidotting and they should have leaned into that. It would have ended up with a playstyle that Hunters had never seen before. I know funnel cleaving can be problematic when it comes to balancing but there are only so few specs in the game that can do it and we’ve never seen something like that in this class.