This is such an absurd comment. So can Shaman with Earth Ele. So can Warlocks with their absurd tankiness.
Shaman and Warlock also off tanked “back in the day”. Should they get tank specs?
Just because you don’t agree with something, doesn’t make it a troll comment. Bringing up ancient content (15 years ago) or trivial content (m0s) doesn’t make your “SV should be tank” any less absurd than making MM a healer.
I mentioned warlock in my post as having done the same thing - if blizzard wanted a cloth tank, they would be it. And yes, having a toolkit associated with threat and tanking puts it on a different level than troll comparing MM to healing when no hunt spec has ever had a party heal. As far as why they don’t tank higher raid / M+ content - that’s literally what this post is about. “Trivial” content is what 90%+ of the player base engages in.
Either way, you are intentionally being dense so no reason to continue discussing it with you.
It’s pretty funny you’re accusing me of intentionally being dense when you think SV somehow has a toolkit associated with threat and tanking, but don’t apply that same thinking to MM or BM.
Well, Hunters have Mend Pet and that’s just as tenuous of a connection to healing as whatever nonsense you think SV has to make it especially suited to Tanking.
What if we made BM, MM, and SV all tank specs?
Here’s someone coming from the opposite side from Asthelon (I support ranged SV) telling you that this idea is terrible. Yes, melee Survival was a terrible high-risk low-reward experiment that predictably turned out badly, and hardly anyone genuinely wanted it before Blizzard went ahead and made it. That isn’t a license to jump to the next poorly-planned experiment that hardly anyone wants.
Think of all the reasons you don’t like melee SV and why you think it was a bad idea, and I guarantee they all apply even moreso to a Hunter tank spec. It’s bad for all the same reasons, only worse in extent.
P.S. This is one of the enduring negatives of making SV melee: it was bat signal for everyone and their aunt to dump their repulsive class design concepts on the Hunter class. It sent a message that there’s no idea bad enough to avoid and that Hunter is the class where they’re all welcome. It’s open season for bad class design. Although, to be fair, I think the dismal results of Survival have discouraged Blizzard from doing similar things to other specs.
Leveled up alot of toons to farm tusk of mannorath with the leveling buff, most hunters were survival. Twinking most hunters are survival. Much more to the game than being a nerd at 70 trying to push content you already ran for the same piece of gear thats just a little bit better
Im guessing she didnt return your call again huh? feelz
Nice, I guess this forum character wipe that occurred when I transferred to Frostmourne also wiped my ignore list so I get to see that again.
Gotta love the insistence that Survival is positively everywhere in untracked casual content but mysteriously vanishes once we get to anywhere we can analytically compare it to the amount of people playing BM and MM.
P.S. If anecdotal “evidence” is worth a damn I routinely go into BGs seeing 10+ Hunters with 0 Survival.
What are you talking about? It’s not an admission of anything, and “constrained to ranged DPS” is not a real thing. Ranged DPS are not constrained (at least until 40 yards). That’s why they’re ranged. Being limited to attacking in melee is the constraint. Ranged SV could dish out damage just as well at 1 yard as it could at 40 yards. Melee SV can’t do that. Constrained.
Of course, in classic WoW Hunters were “constrained” in that they were not as effective in melee range as they were beyond 5 (originally 8) yards. But that included Survival, so that won’t help you here.
In any case, Survival’s original model in Classic (and to some extent BC) was one that couldn’t have continued without additive design. It was a utility spec with little in the way of throughput and nothing in the way of unique gameplay. WotLK took that utilitarian base and turned it into a real damage dealer spec. That was the only real viable path for SV to take. If it stayed utilitarian/defensive only no one would have ever cared about it. If it went melee DPS… well we see now how that turns out. It’s not pretty.
No one has ever used or will ever use these annoying alternative acronyms for SV.
no, survival reworked to be a support class and get the augmentation treatment is better.
This would also be a bad idea.
Anything other than “ranged DPS” is a bad idea for Survival. No more expensive reworks into high-risk low-reward experiments.
There were no ranged exclusive talents for Survival in Vanilla. Which is, as Ghorak has repeated several times, because the talent trees were focused on supporting or augmenting the basic skills that each specialization contributed to the overall class. It’s a fact that the highest damage ceiling afforded to the base class was in fact rDPS, but that does not make the case for RSV.
Blizzard could have designed SV without ranged talents, while still allowing for rDPS to remain as the highest damage ceiling option. To accomplish this, you would simply need to incorporate throughput modifiers into the base utility provided by the specialization. In this way, Survival would do additional overall damage via *Flare (Technically an MM Skill), Traps, and Tracking. Here are a few examples:
Tracking Mastery:
“Increases damage dealt by 15% to all enemies actively tracked.”
Improved Flare:
"Reduces the armor of all enemies under the Flare effect by 3/6/9% and increases the Flare effect radius by 1/2/3 yds. Does not stack with Sunder Armor."
Trap Mastery:
"Increases the trigger radius of all Traps by 1/2/3 yds and increases damage dealt to all enemies affected by trap effects by 5/10/15%."
The conversation has evolved beyond the age-old ranged vs melee debate, as both mDPS and rDPS were two of three DPS profiles afforded to the overall class. The third is the often-overlooked contribution of Pet DPS (pets came complete with their own DPS and Tanking skillset–of course hidden behind autocasts), which is independent of either a ranged or a melee weapon.
I did.
How does it not make the case for RSV? Survival was a ranged spec, so it makes perfect sense that it got exclusive ranged capabilities. I didn’t read the rest of your post because I can tell from this start that it’s just more of your bad attempts to be revisionist.
Without ranged-exclusive talents, the notion that Survival was a “Ranged spec” falls flat. A specialization is characterized by it’s talents, and in terms of VSV, there were no ranged talents thus it wasn’t a ranged specialization.
You are free to avoid imagining other options that were clearly available for development to attempt to insulate the false validity of RSV. Whatever makes you feel comfortable.
Being a Hunter, the notion that Survival was anything but a ranged spec falls flat. Any alternative is just your headcanon. Made up, intangible, not real.
Just like this acronym “VSV” that you’re trying to turn into a thing. It’s not a thing.
Because all the other “options” were nonstarters. What they went with was the natural progression of where to take SV after classic, and it was a great success.
This idea that they did SV wrong and should have taken another path is, again, just your headcanon. It’s not a real issue, it never was. Hell, I’ll just go ahead and say the obvious: there’s not a chance even you thought it was a real issue at the time and said anything of the sort back when it happened. You made up this position after Legion to retroactively justify melee SV.
Show me a single ranged talent or ability and I’ll delete my account. Here’s your chance to rid me from the forums.
Well, it only means Vanilla Survival Specialization. Why are you so bent out of shape about it? It’s simply a means to shorten an otherwise cumbersome to write description aka an acronym.
You’re free to have an opinion on the subject.
What you call a “nonstarter” in terms of a more comprehensive expansion of SV abilities, RSV to me was simply a lazy design with tacked on ranged elements that were incongruent with the original design scope for SV.
To each his own.
Mmm, I was more concerned with IRL issues such as several unfortunate losses of family members at the time. I did play WotLK beta though, but as a true ranged spec in MM, not a half-baked variant. RSV gameplay was so alien to the class that I had to respec into my most hated archetype: Marksmanship.
@ you reading my mind like 18 years back. Skills, breh.
Please stop twisting what I’ve said in an attempt to support your arguments.
I know you love to continuously harp about the so-called melee playstyle we got through SV in vanilla. But don’t use what I’ve said to make it seem as if I agree with the notion that SV in vanilla ever intended us to have a dedicated melee option.
What I’ve said, is that we had NO [core] specializations in vanilla. We had no dedicated choices to pursue individual playstyles. In vanilla, regardless of which talents you picked, your gameplay changed very little (even in the video you linked a while back, playing as SV in PvP, you used the same attacks as any other hunter would at that time, incl the ranged ones). Regardless of which talent category(BM/MM/SV) you ventured into, per our role as a damage dealer, we did the most damage, by far, by focusing on our ranged attacks. Attacks/abilities that were baseline to the class as a whole.
By intent, they wanted us to focus on our ranged attacks to deal the most damage, regardless of which talent category you chose to invest in the most.
Just because the SV talent category in vanilla did not provide its own ranged shot/ability, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t intended to be played at range.
So yes, it did make the case for RSV, because RSV was designed as an extension of said focus on ranged combat. The only differences from vanilla is that they set out to provide us with multiple core playstyle options, with individual identities in terms of how each focused on said ranged combat, and also how they gradually moved the initial focus on survivability more towards becoming class-wide/centric, and less constrained within SV itself.
Like I said, it wasn’t a specialization at all, in the sense of providing us with an exclusive dedicated playstyle identity. Like you proved in your own video, the gameplay as SV was the same as if you were playing as MM back then.
This would be so cool! I’d switch my tank to be a hunter any day! And the spear-chain surge forward ability (I’m running on 2 hours of sleep and my brain ain’t braining) is perfect since many tanks have a similar ability!
If you can link a quote in this thread where I assert a primary dedicated mDPS role for VSV then I’ll delete my account. I believe you are once again carrying grievances from previous threads simply in order to argue and make noise, rather than making an honest effort to absorb information because you are afraid to admit that you may actually agree with me.
Since day one, I’ve communicated to the forums that the spec was focused on personal defensive potential first and foremost, and how that defensive potential was expressed by the player in melee range as a key marker of distinguishment. None of the VSV cooldown abilities apply outside of melee range, with over 1/4 of the tree focused on general performance in melee range.
This is irrefutable.
RSV proponents can no longer claim VSV as their own.
Not at all.
Survival had its survivability gutted in WotLK, and ranged-centric talents were wedged in. That’s my entire point. Explain to me how that’s true to VSV and I’ll delete my account.
That’s not a case for RSV, as in, the Classic design topology for Hunters focused mainly on augmenting the basic skills that each specialization archetype contributed to the overall class. For example, you did not find Pet Supportive Talents in Marksmanship nor Survival, but solely in the talent tree of Beast Mastery.
If Survival did not contribute ranged skills to the class, then it didn’t have ranged supporting talents. And in Classic, the tree did not possess ranged-exclusive attributes. That changed in BC, where for the first time in history, Survival talents were forced to lean on the basic ranged skills provided by Marksmanship instead of carving out it’s own utilitarian identity by improving its own skillset.
The only specialization/archetype to enjoy preferential treatment throughout this era was Marksmanship. Marksmanship became the central locus for the overall class, with it’s emphasis on ranged weaponry spilling over into and contaminating the identity of the other archetypes, with BM and SV talents functioning merely as supporting elements to Marksmanship skills.
Thankfully, Ion said there are no more drastic role reworks, so SV is staying melee
If you think this is unique to SV you’re absolutely delulu. Every spec in the game has people suggesting increasingly ridiculous reworks
The Rexxar build <3