Since when was raw damage tied to “respect”? It’s easy to make any spec do good damage. That’s not going to automatically earn the spec any respect. Survival had REALLY good damage in Uldir and it still went nowhere.
In January of 2015 ranged Survival was one of the best specs in the game and had the most players out of any spec in the game and that still didn’t earn it enough respect from Blizzard for them to refrain from trashing the spec just months later in preparation for its deletion in the following expansion.
208 parses versus 8,999 for Beast Mastery. Which means that there are many more mediocre Beast Mastery Hunters bringing the numbers down versus better than average Survival Hunters. (Running the assumption that Survival being niche means you only bring a really good SV over a ranged Hunter or nearly any other melee.)
By WoWlog Surv is middle of the pack in all three tiers of the new raid. Which I’m okay with. If it was high end, more people would whine and if it was low end again more people would whine.
Utterly ridiculous that such a snide and incorrect post has as many upvotes as it does, especially from people who like to pretend to be reasonable such as Naham.
No, they were not redundant and they did not play the same way. They did all use a ranged weapon, just as all three Mage and Warlock specs use magic and all three Rogue specs use stealth and one-handed weapons. Are they reduntant? No; that’s called exploring a class identity and it’s a valuable thing in this game. Having three different takes on the ranged weapon allowed for a much deeper and more fulfilling execution of the ranged weapon user archetype and was an especially important thing to have given that no other class uses ranged weapons.
This is the exact sort of toxic and dismissive attitude towards class design that led to the current issue where Blizzard has focused so much on individual spec identity that they have diluted and lost track of the class identity. Now you have Hazzikostas having to make this developer insights video talking about how they went too far with “spec fantasy” and everyone is nodding their heads in agreement, yet apparently Survival is exempt from that? Survival is the worst example of what he was talking about. He even named it as the go-to example in the Q&A last year where he said much of the same things. He’s wrong about many things but here he is absolutely right. Your class design perspective is strangling it to death.
Yes they did before Legion. Proc based burst (LnL, Frenzy Stacks, InstaAimed), Multi-Shot mechanics, Same Focus/Mana Dump, same Resource Regen Mechanics, similar CDs, Same CC, ect, ect.
You shouldn’t talk about toxic and dismissive attitudes.
Survival is a great spec. Hunters have 2 ranged specs and then a quasi ranged spec (like Unholy DK). They are a great melee spec because movement does not rob them of DPS.
Look, play what you want to play and don’t bash people for liking a particular spec. Would I love to see a rogue spec DWing pistols? Of course, but then the rogue dorks would complain that it’s not supposed to be ranged. Who cares if it’s fun? It’s a game we all pay for. Get over yourselves.
This is just the usual fallacy of focusing on what was the same (i.e. foundational to the Hunter class) and ignoring what was different, sprinkled with a bit of false equivalency. Specs should be sharing some aspects. They still do. If they felt the specs were too similar, which was a result of their changing standards, there were plenty of avenues to differentiate them while preserving the core Hunter identity. By WoD they were already pretty different.
Multi-Shot is actually an example of good execution of spec differentiation. It was the same ability for all three specs but it had different auxiliary effects which each contributed to their spec’s playstyle and theme. For example, Beast Cleave was a more burst-oriented pet-based mechanic while Serpent Spread applied the main DoT to everything. An example of it done badly is Kill Command in BFA. SV has a different effect, but nothing about SV’s Kill Command has a uniquely “Survival” feel to it, whatever the “Survival feel” is because it’s a mix of a bunch of competing identities. So it generates focus instead of spending it; so what? I could easily imagine that being the case for a BM spec, too. Couldn’t do that for Serpent Spread. So Kill Command is just a copied ability that exists solely for two reasons; Blizzard wanted to make SV more familiar to an existing Hunter spec, and Survival is dependent on the pet theme to still be rooted in the core Hunter identity. Both are design issues directly caused by SV being melee.
The Master Tracker’s Talisman from WoD clearly demonstrated the proper way to go forward with Survival. It allowed for Black Arrow multidotting, which would have been a game-changer. That mechanic alone would make SV unlike any other spec, and there was still more interaction and unique mechanics they could have added on top of that. Combine those with the changes to MM and BM and you have absolutely no spec distinction problem.
Why would you care? You don’t do raiding on your Hunter, or any content of importance for that matter.
I played what I wanted, had fun with it, and never intruded on other people’s spec preferences.
Other people intruded on mine, and my spec was changed to a melee spec. Something I specifically played Hunters to avoid.
“Live and let live” is dead and buried.
You’d best believe we would raise hell if we were forced to play SV in PvE.
Translation, “you are wrong because of Flavor and not mechanically”. Stop using a lot of words to hide what you really mean. Mechanically they were way too similar. You used the same CC combination in all specs. BM and SV had a 6 second ability. All three Specs had the same Focus dump for years. You used a 1.5 second cast to rebuild your Focus. Before that you shared the same Aspect. In BC you used a cast sequence macro. Stop acting like they were different because of Flavor. It’s just too short sighted and shows a lack of thought put into it.
The problem is that you are still getting the same result for doing the same action. Like it or not, the ability was way too similar across the board.
This has nothing to do with what I said. One trinket doesn’t change the core mechanics being too similar. It’s like slapping racing tires on a car and saying that it changes the car completely because it does better on a track.