Level 13 is still pretty early but I agree: it’s a really silly compromise to try (and fail) to make melee Survival make more sense.
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This just brings up questions.
(As an aside, I think Raptor Strike is the better melee ability to use in the 1-9 bracket to introduce people to MSV.)
If Hunters are gonna get both melee and ranged spells in the level 1-9 bracket, what does this means for them, weapons-wise? Are they gonna dual wield both melee and ranged weapons?
…could that tongue-in-cheek comment I made months ago about Blizzard solving this issue re: dual wielding actually come true?
For the very same reason they hunt… for the thrill, the feeling they get fighting close. But yea… I’ll go with Darkforge reply in your case.
A tactic that came in time, in other case they would weaken the beast with a trap and get close to finish with a “spear”. Shooting arrow wouldnt finish a cornered beast, the spear would allow you to do so while keeping some safe distance.
Players would simply start with both weapons. Like first intro quest lets you pick the one that you want.
That’s what I meant. Blizzard removed the ranged weapon slot in MoP, so we couldn’t wield melee weapons at the same time as ranged weapons. We still can’t.
So is Blizzard going to return the ranged weapon slot?
Is Blizzard going to create low-level off-hand ranged weapons?
And while your idea is a decent one, I’m still leery of it due to the fact that it would immediately prevent players from using some of the abilities they learn in the level 1-9 bracket. (If you pick melee, you can’t use Steady Shot, and if you pick ranged, you can’t use Raptor Strike. That’s an example.)
I really, really think it’s a bad idea to make it so that players are immediately excluded from certain abilities from level 1 to 9.
SV has had a crossbow for a while now.
Though it seems like it’s finally gonna swap to a bow now, thank god.
Hemet Nesingwary would like a word with you. He hunts for the thrill, and he uses a gun, so point moot. Also, at that point why even call them a hunter if they just attack things in melee range just ‘for the thrill’? Fighting up close and personal exclusively for the thrill is something that a warrior or rogue would do, not a hunter.
Tbh though yall are trying really hard to justify this. As if hunting (like actual hunting, not just lunatics running up to bears and stabbing them ‘for the thrill’) hasn’t used ranged weaponry ever since the conception of ranged weaponry.
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The more it goes, the more I can see it now. These crusaders are truly lacking something…
If it stays an animation, would be cool to have a Glyph to change the weapon we use to cast
those abilities.
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Agreed.
10char
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Archaeologists in Texas have discovered what they believe are the oldest weapons ever found in North America: spear-point tips from 15,500 years ago. Ostensibly used to hunt game, the weapons offer new insight about the continent’s earliest settlers, according to a new paper published in *[Science Advances.]
The most popular hunting weapons during antiquity were the bow and the spear. Prior to the invention of the bow, the most popular was arguably the atlatl, which consisting of a weighted stick with a flexible spear or dart that could detach if thrown. Primitive hunting weapons are the only weapons permitted for some types of modern-day hunting. For example, the newly opened 2007 Florida Alligator Hunt specifically prohibits firearms due to the dangers of firing bullets around bodies of water, and recommends instead the use of a detachable-head harpoon for a specialized type of firearm, is then often used to sever the spinal cord of the alligator just to the rear of the head. This kills the alligator immediately upon its being taken, as required by regulatory laws governing the hunt.
Boar and Spear hunting go hand in hand. In fact it’s a long standing tradition throughout the world to hunt wild boar with a spear. Spear hunting of boar is often called pig sticking, and is an old sport. Pig sticking became popular with the Imperial British military and was actively encouraged. The military felt that the challenge, and the skills, both physical and mental, was those that officers needed to develop.
Today, however, the most popular primitive hunting weapons are muzzleloading rifles.
Then if you want to go off of WoW lore you need to remember that Firearms are a relatively new dwarven invention. Despite the dangers of dealing with volatile explosives, dwarves are fascinated by the possibilities. Dwarven gunmakers constantly tinker with the guns they craft, trying out new designs and upgrades, naming and decorating their weapons.
So, before Dwarfs created Firearms most races had two options Bows or Spears as hunting weapons, and there is even on group who has the name “Spear” in their title.
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Right. When people lacked ranged weapons, they used melee weapons to hunt. But once ranged weapons were invented they became the de-facto weapon to hunt with.
My point was people still use melee weapons to hunter, and not just for a thrill. Many seem to have forgotten that not every culture has access to firearms. It is like once guns were invented every part of the world suddenly had them.
Likewise, humans have used melee weapons to hunt from the beginning, so why just forget that all together? Melee hunters happen and it fits just fine in a fantasy world.
Because choosing SV literally makes you forget how to use a ranged weapon apparently. Why, when hunting an enormous elekk with enough strength to tear you in half, would you pick a polearm instead of a gun?
Not to mention, we have pets to attack in melee range for us. They are meant to distract the target while we take it out from a range, while dealing damage at the same time. That’s why Hunter and pet works so well.
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How did you forget? Just switch specs and you can use a gun again. Maybe you ran out of ammo, or it you do not have enough space to pull out your weapon, and maybe there was a axe just in reach.
Perhaps you are a race that finds kinship with your pets and want to get closer to them, so you lay down your firearms and fight toe to toe with them.
Go watch The Beastmaster, then ask “why he did not just use a gun?”
But we already have a beastmaster spec. I’m not saying that there is no such thing as a fantasy for fighting toe to toe with your beast, but that isn’t what Hunters have been about. Hunters have always been ranged weapon plus pet. That is what defined us. If Blizzard wanted to make a melee beast master, why not make a new class? Or heck, why not introduce a new spec to Hunter instead of removing one that was already so well loved? You can introduce new Hunter lore with it and everything.
I’ll say though, that’s I’ve always felt great kinship with my pets, even if I am between 5 and 40 yards away from them. I probably remember more of my pet’s names than I do my WoW friend’s names.
Well the thing is Blizzard original intentions for Survival was it to be a melee spec. Way back in beta patch 0.9, released on August 17, 2004. This was a very special patch because it’s when hunters were added to World of Warcraft – the last class to be added, in fact. Things were different back then. The survival specialization was known as “outdoorsmanship” and marksmanship was known as “ranged combat” because it was the only specialization actually focused on ranged combat. However, even after outdoorsman had a name change to Survival it still kept it melee focused roots.
Back in Vanilla mixing melee and ranged gameplay was heavily encouraged, and Survival talent tree was focused on melee damage with all its points going to strengthening melee combat, and had the worst final tier talent in the game’s entire history. Lacerate was a melee attack which caused 133 damage over 21 seconds. No, I didn’t miss a zero in there somewhere. One hundred and thirty-three damage over twenty-one seconds. That’s a whopping 6.33 DPS. Lacerate wasn’t removed from the game until patch 1.7 in September, 2005, which was replaced with Wyvern Sting.
In other words, Hunters had a fully melee spec for 10 months, which after finally became a range only class. Blizzard simply did a rewind and started over like it was 2004 again.
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From my understanding SV was not a melee spec. It was a ranged spec with enhanced melee abilities for when they were caught in melee. That’s how it was played, if/when it was played, and that is how it continued to be designed all the way until Cataclysm.
Also, I’m not sure why you are attempting to justify melee Hunter with the game’s original beta, but the five expansions packs afterwards mean nothing.
Again, it’s fine if you want melee Hunter, but you should understand that that is a new thing for Hunters to be just melee. Hunters have always emphasized the ranged weapon and pet as its class identity.
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The thing about this argument, first off, is that we had no “specs” at all back then.
We had a core class design and whatever talents you could pick(no matter what category they came from), said talents were only meant to build upon/add to said core.
Even if you picked everything possible from the old Outdoorsmanship, it still did not take away the fact that the core of the class was designed primarily for ranged combat, and picking talents from that category did not allow for melee-combat to be a particularly “viable(for lack of a better word)” option.
It just wasn’t designed with the intent for you to focus on melee over ranged, whenever ranged was still a possibility to maintain.
Note that I’m talking about the actual design we saw, not what the intentions the devs had with it were. Obviously we don’t know their intent. We only know what the actual design we got, ended up to be like.
The only time where melee-combat as a hunter was “encouraged” was if you spent a lot of time doing content where you frequently ended up in close proximity to the target.
Hunters had a minimum attack range on ranged weapons. This forced any Hunter who ever got caught in close range, to make use of their melee-focused toolkit. And if you did spend a lot of time doing content where this was a big risk then ofc it was only natural for you to have a more developed toolkit for those situations.
But that did not mean that if you had the opportunity to get away from your target, that you would not(want to) take it.
Same as with the above, no, the class did not.
It wasn’t a spec at all back then. It was just a category that held talents focusing mostly on your melee-toolkit. Where said toolkit made for a part of your entire core, which in itself, was mostly made up of ranged abilities.
The design of those talents, did not allow for you to exclusively be focusing on melee-combat as a Hunter, for it to be a reasonable alternative to the actual core, considering the entire purpose of the class(by design).
Whether people/individuals actually followed that direction is a different story ofc. People play the game however they want to. But that’s not the same thing as saying that this is how it was designed for you to be playing.
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Clearly Blizz designed SV for us to play as melee…
Next slide
Based on.?
we should redesign every spec to fit the bad 2004 beta ideas, because apparently that’s what everything should be like in 2020.
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