It’s the same concept. Shadow is based on the combination of a Forsaken and a Priest. The combination completes the fantasy. That’s how the classes were designed originally.
I’m saying we need a dark themed hunter spec to go along with all the dark themed races. We don’t have that now. We can’t be anywhere close to Vol’jin, Alleria, or Sylvannas.
No we don’t lol everyone has their own perspective on this
Black Arrow and Explosive Shot aren’t very Ranger to me
Some melee isn’t the same as a melee specialization.
We got Survival because of the minimum range. When the minimum range was removed they should’ve renamed and re-themed the spec. It would’ve been a great opportunity to do what I’m suggesting now.
You convince Blizz to make a Dark Ranger class, swap MSV to it with a re-texture of its abilities to fit that theme better and you can have RSV back! Also I will build you a statue in Org and Stormwind!
Thats not what it seemed like you were saying here-
Right before you said-
So it seemed like you were saying any melee is a deal breaker which is what the community seems to be trying to communicate to Blizzard.
Thats also not true, or at least it wasnt until certain segments of the community seeemingly decided that they needed to boycott the spec on principle (and that segment definitely exists).
This is at least partially true, but I dont think it’s as important as some seem to believe. Also, minimum range wasnt bad, the dead zone was. We arent going back to that, but I just wanted to make the distinction. Since there is no minimum range in the modern game, the devs would need to justify the existence of melee weapons in the fantasy in other ways. This is not exclusive to hunters. All melee dps need unique utilities to justify bringing them along on an adventure and thats just not sustainable. If they fix that, and give melee a reason to exist, then they can justify the inclusion of melee in all hunter specs, in the form of baseline raptor strike, carve and wing clip and the ability to equip both ranged and melee weapons (or cosmetic melee weapon appearances for hunters, such as the spear/axe, dual axes or dual blades. So long as those appearances are somehow transmoggable or with regularly updated glyphs.)
And I could think of a couple ways to justify SV jumping into melee range, even when their spec has fully ranged DPS. For example, carve/butchery could automtically apply wing clip via a talent (in a world where WC is baseline for hunters). In a kite tanking meta (which sadly will likely be the case in the first m+ season for any expansion) having more slows is inherently good. If tar trap is balanced in the right way, being able to jump in (with harpoon) and AOE slow a second time would be extremely helpful. The SV hunter could then disengage and continue their ranged DPS rotation and it still feels mobile and hybrid.
Thats just off the top of my head, but the point is, there can be a place for melee in the hunter class, and a place for inproved melee in the SV spec, without needing the spec to be melee focused, and without minimum range.
They could make the class somewhat exclusive. Like, horde could have belf and forsaken rangers and alliance could have nelf and velf rangers with dark ranger as a spec.
Except melee SV, apparently, which is always one of the least-played specs regardless of its damage.
What kind of a statement is this? If SV is played by very few people, as a matter of fact that means few people are enjoying it. Ranged SV provided enjoyment to more people than melee SV.
“bow so same hurrr durrrrrrr” - all I hear from melee brains when I read a statement like this.
Are all three Rogue specs the same because they all dual-wield and stealth? Should we remove Stealth from one of them to make it more different? Since apparently handicapping a spec is a good way to make it unique.
I strictly type in British English because I’m from a country that uses British English spelling standards, thanks. So try not to have a fit whenever you see me type “colour” or “analyse”.
My highest level of achievement is mythic Sylvanas and I hereby declare that Ghorak is right and you and Sinexes are wrong. Is that how this works?
Cool story; the devs make stupid decisions all the time and this is one of them. That’s why the game is dying.
I played it plenty of times when it wasn’t meta back then. The only condition is that it can’t be so underpowered as to legitimately threaten our raid’s ability to kill a boss as was the case in 6.2.
It routinely had a lot of players through all patches where it had halfway decent tuning. In patches like 5.4 it was in a very similar tuning position to where it is right now; the big difference being back then it was the most played Hunter spec.
This whole “no one would play it unless it performed well” argument doesn’t look to good when you consider that melee SV sees hardly any play even when it is performing well.
Are you under the impression that ranged SV was the best Hunter spec from WotLK all the way up until WoD 6.2?
That patch was the only time ranged SV ever saw levels of representation in raids as low as melee SV, and the reason is because SV was so badly nerfed and underpowered that having one in your raid instead of MM could easily be the difference between killing a boss and not killing it. Teron Gorefiend, for example, was a boss where you needed your Hunters to be MM or you just didn’t kill it.
If you invest that much into SV you don’t get later MM things like Rapid Recuperation and Chimera Shot. So, yeah: even in an era where standards for spec distinction were much lower you still had major differences between the specs that made them different experiences.
Not really. It was ahead of the other two Hunter specs but not by an incredible amount. You still had a decent amount of BM and MM around. Ranged SV just didn’t have a problem pulling in players like melee SV does.
Yes and SV is a dying spec in a dying game. Treating Blizzard decisions as self-justifying doesn’t work when they make stupid destructive changes all the time.
Ranged Survival made far more economic sense than melee Survival. It took far less effort to maintain and appealed to far more players. If they had any sense at all they would be working on ranged SV right now, or rather have it already done by Shadowlands. The problem is sense is severely lacking at Blizzard these days which is why the game is at a all-time low in terms of reputation (and likely subscriber count as well).
Have the melee vultures considered getting lost in one of the plentiful and even oversaturated melee specs already in the game including every single DPS spec added to the game post-launch, instead of clinging to part of the Hunter class?
There’s a big difference between having a melee weapon that you were forced to use when stuck in melee range and actually needing to be in melee range to deal optimal DPS.
IMO any baseline state of any Hunter spec that makes being in melee range preferable to being far away is a dealbreaker.
The minimum range was absolutely bad and only became a bigger and bigger handicap as the game went on.
This could be extremely problematic. If Raptor Strike were baseline and it were optimal to use it that means MM and BM now perform optimally when in melee range and now you’ve just turned the entire Hunter class into a melee DPS. There’s no middle ground between “pointless to use” and “melee range is now optimal”.
Wing Clip baseline makes a lot more sense. It actually is baseline and isn’t replaced by Concussive Shot when specced into BM and MM until level 13. It has relevant usage to a ranged spec, just like how Bursting Shot is relevant to a ranged spec even though it’s a melee range ability.
Gotta love how like 50 posts were devoted to idiotic and pointless tone policing.
Let me clarify.
Melee of any kind is only acceptable as part of a trade.
Certain “sacrifices” could be made to get RSV back.
Melee attacks should be exclusive to an optional melee BM sub spec.
Melee stat sticks are acceptable class wide.
Thats it.
I dont think all baseline abilities need to be optimal. Sometimes they just exist. There is little to no point to most warriors to use shield slam. People thought there might be, but it was obvious that it wasnt there for that. I dont particularly like that spell reflect doesn’t require a shield though i get it. If they balanced the specs to make spell reflect less vital to arms and fury in pvp, you could justify making them equip a shield to use it, and therefore justify the existence of baseline shield slam.
I do agree, sort of. I do think that “based on” is a bit much, rather, “takes some inspiration from” is more fitting. Anyway, that’s a matter of definition I guess.
Except for the fact that Kevin Jordan have outright said that they did not want hunters to be about magic, to any larger degree. They chose to add certain minor elements, such as Arcane Shot, because they thought that school wasn’t being represented enough amongst other classes. And to that, the primary idea of having access to “shots” that include magical infusions, isn’t based on us as the hunters, doing the actual infusion, but rather just procuring the arrows/projectiles, or the service from someone else. Someone schooled in the art of magic.
Lore specifically states that, while in-game you see both hunters and dark rangers interact, Dark Rangers are described to, during the process of becoming a Dark Ranger, they have to let go of their past as Elven Rangers, and everything they were taught, along with the connection they had to the nature, the wild(that being the primary connection of hunters, in a spiritual sense). The ordeal of becoming a Dark Ranger is based on how you literally have to give up everything that made you a hunter.
On top of it all, you also have the fact that the very base fantasy of Dark Rangers, is relying on someone having to have died, followed by being resurrected, before they turn to the path of becoming a Dark Ranger. The only race that fits this, even remotely, are the Forsaken.
Why should MSV be moved over to a Dark Ranger class? That’s not what I said…
Eh, you’d get your coveted RSV back, so why would you care?
If Blizz gave RSV back to Hunter and moved MSV’s playstyle to a new class with a new theme, it would be a win-win.
All the diehard RSV fans get what they’ve wanted. MSV playstyle gets a new home where it’s not seemingly reviled by the majority of players.
Don’t get me wrong I doubt this would ever happen, but I think it’s an interesting idea.
Absolutely, and Im not suggesting that optimal dps at melee range should be the case for any spec. Im just saying that there can be a place for melee weapons in the class as a whole, and all specs can be ranged DPS… as they always had been. The melee weapons dont need to just be cosmetic either. They can be tied to utilities, or very circumstantial abilities. I think wing clip is a good justification for melee weapons. There can be more without forcing hunters into melee range for dps.
That may have been true, in the beginning, when survival was still about surviving. That all changed when they gave the spec Black Arrow.
If they didn’t want hunters to be magic based then they shouldn’t give them magic shots. Black Arrow was obviously added to appeal to Dark Ranger fans. The question is: why stop there?
The same argument could be made against Shadow Priests.
Settle down over there little buddy
No need to throw a tantrum just because Blizzard disagrees with you over how they run their game. Maybe they feel that Survival being Ranged as absolutely no impact on sub numbers. I mean you’re still subscribed are you not lol
No it didn’t. Like I said, in lore and in the game, looking at descriptions, there’s nothing that points to how we as hunters are the ones to actually infuse magic into the shots we fire. In the RPG, hunters are described to procure the service/the projectiles with infused magic from others.
In short, you can make use of magic shots without any direct connection to the school of magic infused in said shots. Based on how the class was originally designed, plus how it has been developed since, this last part makes more sense than anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, I do very much agree that there should be a more magically-oriented class in the game, one that has part of its core fantasy being focused on bows. Dark Rangers would be a prime example. I just think that they’re better suited as their own class, rather than as a ‘nth’ spec of the Hunter class. Primarily due to how they’re described through lore, and due to their intended general fantasy/theme.
You do know there is a video from the devs explaining why they changed it, right? A video that specifically says they felt MM and SV were too similar. You can’t possibly be this obtuse…
As for Bepples, well he sticks to the same garbage and has literally just repeated himself for the past six years. When the new xpac launches with SV still as melee it should make for a good couple of weeks.
Frankly, that sounds like a terrible fantasy.
How are people supposed to care sbout an archer who simply buys and uses special ammo?
A specs uniqueness should not be store bought!
Dark Ranger sounds a million times better than that.
To some perhaps. I, however, very much like to invest in such a fantasy. To me, the idea of venturing out in the world to obtain/extract venom from certain creatures, like scorpids, or serpents, to then apply directly, or refine and then apply to the bullets/arrows I intend to use in combat, this sounds awesome. RSV also allowed you to tinker with explosives that you could attach to your arrows(or create explosive bullets/projectiles to fire).
On top of that, in accordance with the theme of relying on ranged weaponry, and firing bullets/arrows, if a part of the fantasy is that you interact with and/or seek aid from fellow travelers, or certain people you meet when visiting a city, you realise that with their help you can become more effective as a hunter/fighter that uses ranged weapons.
It can be as simple as “you don’t have the time to, or perhaps not the interest in learning how to tap into the magic schools, the potential benefits of certain types of magic, but still you would like to have access to it/them”.
It would really only be a part of the fantasy that involves buying special ammo, specifically, magically enhanced ammo.
The base fantasy is that you’re a hunter who fights using ranged weapons, and arrows/bullets. RSV as an example, had a main theme/fantasy of being a Munitions Expert and Trapper. Being a schooled magician is not a requirement for the above to be true. The expert-part of shots augmented by magic, can simply be that you’ve taken the time to learn how to handle those particular arrows/bullets, how to best make use of them in combat.
Again, to some perhaps. I for one very much prefer the above.
This is subjective ofc. We’re all different here.