That was a decade ago. If it was not noticeably stronger than BM in today’s climate it just wouldn’t see play at all. Not to mention it would be perceived as even more simple/boring than BM in 2025.
I think we all just need to accept nothing is changing till at least 11.0 and, if SV is to be reworked, it’ll just be 25y or a red mage ff14 rip off.
Why the hypotheticals? This wasn’t the case for SV back when it was ranged nor is it the case for MM now.
It’s not the case for MM now because it has a different niche than BM would. RSV wouldn’t offer anything BM wouldn’t as we just talked about mere moments ago. 
People say that of the old RSV yet it saw play even when it wasn’t the best. There’s demand for that playstyle and identity, and these days they could make it do something actually unique and useful for the class like spread cleave.
That just sounds like PR talk to save face. If opposite was true, and it was immensely popular, it would be said they knew they had a good thing going.
You wouldn’t have a developer meeting and state one of the goals of a class design is to have less people play it and make it niche on purpose.
Maybe it was a double-dare dare during one of their drunken cubicle crawls.
Oh, like MSV? 
so it wouldn’t even be RSV that everyone clamors for (read: multistrike dot procs)
They absolutely would and they absolutely have (on record), as have likely every other gaming studio. So…
Fix it as in being enjoyable by the average hunter. Most play hunter for the ranged damage not to be melee.
People keep saying this but RSV played a lot differently than BM did, sure they were both mobile rdps but they had entirely unique playstyles, not unlike say Frost and Fire mage. Both are ranged spell casters but play differently. How can you be sure they think that a 40y fully mobile class isn’t good for the game anymore?
The same way it used to, as a fully mobile ranged spec. It used more dots than bm did and its spells had a lot of interaction with each other. They could easily adjust RSV to fit in with current WoW - they could even use the MoP version as their starting point.
You obviously did not play RSV.
I most certainly did. When people say they “miss how it played” they are invariably either talking about multistrike procing lnl OR lock and load itself.
If I’m making a broad assumption or I’m incorrect, feel free to correct me.
Did they? You had dots that procced CD on explosive shot.
I’m not sure, but think about it for a second and how it harms design space by trying to design mechanics around not one but two fully ranged spec that operate at 100% mobility.
So, your solution is to make MM, but with some old RSV mechanics on top?
That doesn’t give us RSV back.
Show us 1 person here(on this sub-forum) which has argued that they want RSV back specifically because of multi-strike. It was a secondary stat available to everyone, and it sure as heck did not make the spec.
There are different philosophies in place which they lean on to design classes now, indeed. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t create a modern version of old SV, based on the core gameplay it used to have. In fact, recreating the previous core loop/gameplay profile of the spec isn’t particularly hard.
Historical data/statistics says so.
“Very mobile ranged damage dealer” isn’t much of an argument against the reimplementation of old SV. Most melee specs work under the same base profile of “very mobile melee damage dealer”.
You have to look at other, more specific criteria as well. Like BM, RSV would most likely be very mobile, sure. BM offsets that mobility with mandatory reliance on pets and other beasts.
RSV wouldn’t rely on pets as a mandatory part of its core gameplay, which is/could be an upside for sure, as it is for MM. But unlike MM and, historically, also BM, RSV would not be able to provide the same burst potential through its attacks due to a profile made up of mostly DoTs. While it shouldn’t be completely void of major dps CDs or potential for added burst, it shouldn’t be on the same level as some other specs in this game either.
Looking at PvE in general, being fully mobile isn’t as valuable as you make it out to be. It’s useful, sure, but in most cases, it has more to do with QoL rather than serving as a major perk in most encounters. As we saw in the last tier of its existence back in WoD, where not only was it gimped by a lack of damage in general, but also due to how it had no burst potential at all and how many encounters heavily favored burstier profiles, that fact made it fall behind even more.
The fact that BM has to rely on a pet alone, makes that statement questionable. Unless it was tuned to perform significantly worse than BM, it would most definitely see reasonable numbers. History has already proven this to be the case, where BM was performing better, but still saw less representation than RSV.
You could obviously look at these criteria(of upsides vs downsides) in more detail, but that’s not needed for this case.
You are incorrect about multistrike.
It’s one thing for PvP, sure. But for PvE, it’s generally not an argument worth entertaining. All specs with movement restrictions are more than capable of performing the movement necessary to handle mechanics where such is relevant. Some can even cover the mobility factor even better than BM, despite BM having no base restrictions to it.
Survival should be a trap based tank spec, fight me
Tell me what youre asking for when you want RSV back.
It certainly made the spec what it was with multistrike offering additional lock and load procs.
Right, because it was extremely barebones. It had less going on than any other spec in the game right now and bringing it forward would make it something entirely different than what the nostalgic gamers want to experience.
Yes. All of the things people like about RSV can fit onto current MM almost seamlessly.
Correct me then.
Tell me what people enjoyed about RSV. Was it lock and load? the RNG proc that worked better with mulstrike?
Was it keeping Serpent Sting up on your target while you waited for black arrow to come off of cooldown? Was it pressing ES every few seconds?
This whole paragraph is pretty much saying "it would be mobile like BM but without the “downside” of a pet.
So if it were to be brought forward it would have to be changed a lot.
Your post reads to me that you would want RSV to be MM but with dots. Two hunter specs without pets would be pretty funny to see.
#https://pastebin.com/pxjdj0wx
Import the code you can copy from that page into TalentTreeManager(TTM), and you’ll see. I can guarantee you that it wouldn’t play like MM does.
I actually saw this tree earlier today. Much like other fan designed trees, it’s a mess of 40+ nodes with a TON of unnecessary, overlapping concepts, and overloaded passive synergies.
Not to mention, it has Lone Wolf, so the hunter class goes from a pet class to just a single pet spec.
Editing cause I feel like this came across harsher as intended. There are definitely concepts here that could work—just personally I think it’s trying to do way too much and stack way too many interactions and synergies, as well as themes too.
thinking about it, why is the only lego ability sv got from sl latent poison injectors? why didn’t sv get any of their old sl conduits? bfa azerite traits? legion legos or artifact nodes?
It was a very different spec in Legion than the BfA version, so not much could be brought forward.
Couldn’t tell you for the rest. Maybe one day they’ll add WFC or Strength of the Pack back.
Every Hunter should get Marksman’s Advantage though.
fair enough, i never played during legion but i understand people whined that it was too complex or something so they essentially put a lot of their dps buttons in a blender and gave us wfb. while they couldn’t necessarily bring the legion ones back exactly as they were, but, i feel like they could’ve at least changed them to keep the intent/feel. i almost wish i could have tried sv as it was back then
Most of the praise you see for Legion SV is “grass is greener” effect. Very few people liked and played it back then. Even fewer than BFA SV and beyond. It was a thoroughly poorly designed spec.
Most of the complexity was from having a large collection of disparate mechanics despite having little to no interaction between them. For example, Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite were separate abilities you had at the same time and the only real reason Raptor Strike existed was for a talent Way of the Mok’Nathal which made Raptor Strike give a stacking attack power buff. So you had to refresh this token buff every few seconds along with the rest of it. It was a lot of busywork with little payoff.
People didn’t “whine” for no reason. The spec was a giant piece of crap even for people open to the idea of melee SV. In 2018 before BFA released all the talk was about how bad Legion SV was and how BFA SV was going to fix everything. Like I said, “grass is greener” effect. Ignoring my bias against melee I think BFA/SL SV is clearly better than what came before it.
as someone with a clear opposite bias from bepples, this is true. i’m a huge melee stan, and legion SV was a lot of messy ideas. the identity they settled on in bfa is great and i’m glad to have played it for 6 years. here’s to many more!