Based on Ion’s reply and current SV… what kind of question is that?
What part of Ion’s reply tells us that SV was always meant to be a melee DPS spec with zero ranged?
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To Bepples credit, Telchaar started the fight this time with this.
No sir, that is incorrect. Read the original game manual. The playstyle of each class is described in detail. Nowhere on the Hunter page does it suggest that Hunters were melee. All other classes that had officially supported melee playstyles are indeed made reference to.
"The hunter is a combat class, like the rogue and warrior, but whereas those classes rely on melee attacks, the hunter relies on ranged power. "
It is really unfortunate that the current Devs, like yourself, don’t know the actual history of the Hunter class.
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You are aware things can change over 15 years?
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I think what Kyrorra is saying is that the claim “Blizzard is returning MSV back to its original roots” doesn’t fly at all, and she cited the original game manual as part of her argument.
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Pre- Mists of Pandaria each class had three talent trees that focused on one aspect of that class. For Hunters we had a Pet focused tree (BM), a range focused tree (MM), and a melee focused tree (SV), which talents selection you selected was not limited by tier but rather by the total number of talent points you gained as you leveled.
Back in Vanilla players could easily muddied up their class by putting too many points into one spec thus loosing out on some of the stronger talents deeper in the trees. Because talent choice was therefore cumulative and limiting, players created ‘talent build’ or simply ‘build’ to focus on improving abilities that optimized one particular area. On the other hand, some players could create true hybrid builds by selecting talents from other trees, such as mages combining Frost and Fire talents to create an Elementalist build.
So, a player if they wished could put all of their points into just one tree strengthening all of those abilities to their maxim potential. A player for just the fun of it could choose to place all of their points into Survival tree maxing out all of its melee combat abilities just to become a subpar melee Hunter.
This is not saying they would get into any raids, or not be laughed at for going in this direction. My point is that Hunters could if they wanted play as a melee spec even if they were designed in mind as a range class.
I was trying to express Survival’s talent tree before patch 1.7, and how it was focused on melee abilties, =http://www.classicwowtalents.appspot.com/index.html?talent=1124125_3=. Each point spent improved Hunter’s melee abilities or traps. Survival’s tree was designed to be the melee aspect of hunters just as each tree was designed to be focus on one part of a whole.
Remember this was back in Vanilla and Blizzard had not put much emphasis on the core concept of each spec. So, even if a class was to be range or melee with enough time and messing around with talents you could have some interesting melding of specs.
It’s a game manual written to capture the overall idea of a class that way you can make quick judgment on either you want to play that class. They are not going to write about each nuances of a class a new player needs to be captured within that few glances or they could just move on.
says “relies”, meaning that they have the ability to use range but are not exclusively a range class.
Have you had a chance to talk with an actual developer? If your job is to design a class think they would do some research into that class. The question is have they played that class to understand it better, or only use what they have heard or read?
If they had gone back saw what Survivals talent tree was like back before Mist of Pandaria then they could make some assumptions that they had more melee focused talents than other specs, and thought to spice up the class they would make Survival a melee spec.
How much do you know about Hunters than what you have read or played? Were you around from the start, or just a beginner?
SV was not a melee focused tree. Let’s look at the WotLK SV tree (https://wotlkdb.com/?talent#c). I’ll categorize its talent into themes (Some do multiple things, like resourcefulness affecting melee, traps and ranged, so I just put talents like that in each relevant category):
Melee focused: 4
Ranged focused: 16
General damage focused (not necessarily ranged nor melee): 4
Trap focused: 6
Defense focused (not counting abilities or CCs like Wyvern or Counterattack): 5
SV was still ranged focused. Heck it had more emphasis on traps than melee attacks. It is more a trap focused tree than a melee focused tree.
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I’m not gonna disagree with you, but I always thought of it as more of a Generalist spec. It may indeed not have been a true melee spec, but when I had a full set of melee talents and used to PvP I never felt out-classed going toe-to-toe with Rogues. You wanna melee? I wear heavier armour, use a heavier weapon and am just as fast as you are… you wanna run away? I got a bow for that.
Anyways.
…I hope we can all agree (even if we want to fight about it) that SV had the most melee abilities in their tree, and that was the impotus to make them a melee class. That, and maybe memes about all loot is hunter loot.
Based on the fact that’s what they changed it to in legion. Some people don’t like it, but until Blizz brings back RSV, or changes something,that’s what you’ve got. Time would be better spent working on improving all the hunter specs rather than dragging the class down with past days of “thunder”.
But they did tho. No other melee spec was “forgotten”. A class having a melee option is a big deal. You wouldn’t mistakenly omit a selling-point in an official class overview.
That’s not what “relies” means tho. The word relies means depends on. Read the sentence again.
"The hunter is a combat class, like the rogue and warrior, but whereas those classes depend on melee attacks, the hunter depends on ranged
power."
Its literally telling you we are not like Rogues and Warriors aka melee classes.
Its obvious they didn’t do their homework on the Hunter class. The person responsible for developing hunters should know what the purpose of the hunter class is. What playstyles / themes its meant to capture. The reason why we had melee weapons in the first place. The reason why they were removed, and why RSV, the spec as we know it, came into existence.
The original devs figured out that melee doesn’t add value to a class focused on ranged weapons. It seems as though the current devs have finally started to understand this. History is repeating itself because the current devs didn’t bother to learn the lessons of the past.
Yeah, that’s the problem. They assumed wrong. All they had to do is a minimal amount of research and they would have known better.
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I don’t disagree about a generalist like approach. But the other specs had access to most of the same melee abilities (minus counterattack), and the melee talents were early in the tree so they could be taken by a MM or BM Hunter too.
Ultimately, the benefits that the melee abilities got in the SV tree were still small compared to the ranged abilities and the traps. Any related reason to replace SV with a melee spec would have more reason to keep it as a ranged spec.
You skipping Vanilla and BC.
Lets look at SV tree before 1.7:
Survival Talents (51 points)
-
Precision - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%. -
Improved Raptor Strike - 5/5 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Raptor Strike by 1 second. -
Entrapment - 5/5 points
Gives your Immolation Trap, Frost Trap, and Explosive Trap a 25% chance to entrap the target, preventing them from moving for 5 seconds. -
Lightning Reflexes - 3/3 points
Increases your Dodge chance by 3%. -
Improved Wing Clip - 5/5 points
Gives your Wing Clip ability a 20% chance to immobilize the target for 5 seconds. -
Improved Immolation Trap - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your Immolation Trap by 15%. -
Improved Mongoose Bite - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your Mongoose Bite ability by 20%. -
Deterrence - 1/1 point
When activated, increases your Dodge and Parry chance by 25% for 10 seconds. -
Improved Freezing Trap - 3/3 points
Increases the duration of your Freezing Trap by ?. -
Improved Disengage - 2/2 points
Increases the amount of Threat reduced by your Disengage ability by 20%. -
Deflection - 5/5 points
Increases your Parry chance by 5%. -
Improved Frost Trap - 2/2 points
Increases the duration of your Frost Trap’s movement slowing effect by ?. -
Savage Strikes - 5/5 points
Increases your critical strike chance with melee weapons by 5%. -
Counterattack - 1/1 point
A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent’s attack. This attack deals 40 damage and immobilizes the target for 5 seconds. Counterattack cannot be blocked, dodged, or parried. -
Improved Explosive Trap - 2/2 points
Increases the initial damage done by your Explosive Trap by ?. -
Melee Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases the damage you deal with melee weapons by 5%. -
Lacerate - 1/1 point
Wounds the target, causing them to bleed for 77 damage over 21 seconds.
Notice something about Survival talents? Not a single point in survival boosted ranged DPS, and its 31-pointer was the weak melee bleed ability Lacerate.
Someone at Blizzard had planned a melee spec for hunters, focused on close combat and traps.
However, the melee hunter never really came together and Blizzard changed did a overhaul in Patch 1.7.0:
Survival (48 points)
- Monster Slaying - 3/3
Increases all damage caused against Beasts, Giants and Dragonkin targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Beasts, Giants and Dragonkin targets by an additional 3%.
- Humanoid Slaying - 3/3
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Humanoid targets by an additional 3%.
Deflection - 5/5
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
- Entrapment - 5/5
Gives your Immolation Trap, Frost Trap, and Explosive Trap a 25% chance to entrap the target, preventing them from moving for 5 sec.
- Savage Strikes - 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 20%.
I
- mproved Wing Clip - 5/5
Gives your Wing Clip ability a 20% chance to immobilize the target for 5 sec.
- Clever Traps - 2/2
Increases the duration of Freezing and Frost trap effects by 30% and the damage of Immolation and Explosive trap effects by 30%.
- Survivalist - 5/5
Increases total health by 10%.
- Deterrence - 1/1
When activated, increases your Dodge and Parry chance by 25% for 10 sec.
- Trap Mastery - 2/2
Decreases the chance enemies will resist trap effects by 10%.
- Surefooted - 3/3
Increases hit chance by 3% and increases the chance movement impairing effects will be resisted by an additional 15%.
- Improved Feign Death - 2/2
Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability will be resisted by 4%.
- Killer Instinct - 3/3
Increases your critical strike chance with all attacks by 3%.
- Counterattack - 1/1
A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent’s attack. This attack deals 40 damage and immobilizes the target for 5 sec. Counterattack cannot be blocked, dodged, or parried.
- Lightning Reflexes - 5/5
Increases your Agility by 15%.
- Wyvern Sting - 1/1
A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 12 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 0 Nature damage over 12 sec. Only usable out of combat. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.
The Difference now is there is less of a focus on strictly melee with points helping range as well, and Lacerate is now gone replaced with Wyvern Sting.
Hunters had poor melee potential but before the redesign Blizzard had the ground work of having a completely melee option.
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I found its biggest selling point was the ability to tame pets.
determined by that unlike Warriors and Rogues, who could also use range weapons, are not proficient as Hunters with range combat.
Maybe they just wanted to try something different, or just wanted to put their own stamp on the classes. We can not get into that mind set of why they made these changes. Maybe someone at top told them to give each spec a defining them, and they felt three range classes was too much.
We do not know how they went about learning each class. They may have spent what they thought was enough time to capture each play-style of a spec and found too many similarities, or just thought they could take all the abilities from one then shove it into the other leaving that one spec with no distinction.
So, you’re saying they’re incompetent and/or lazy?
Ya, because you said
So I chose to use WotLK’s tree, since it best represented the direction that Blizzard was taking the spec.
Again, there is no reason to believe that SV was planned to be exclusively melee rather than just having stronger melee attacks while still being primarily a ranged damage class.
That’s because of the mechanics of the class with the dead zone. They couldn’t just have Hunters do no damage, or be completely unable to do anything, while in melee range. The purpose of these melee abilities was to deal some damage while trying to get back at a range, and to slow/root enemies in order to do so.
Counterattack is a good example of this. Not only is it not an offensive attack, since it required the Hunter to parry an incoming attack, but its entire purpose was to root an enemy so that the Hunter could get back out of melee range. While Counterattack was a melee ability, its purpose served that of a ranged damage dealer. It couldn’t be used to offensively DPS, and it couldn’t be used to root fleeing enemies. It could only be used while being attacked in melee and its purpose was to get out of melee range. Why would you want to root an enemy that is already attacking you that you want to stay in melee range with? Why would that talent be in a melee DPS tree? It only makes sense to be used by a class that prefers to be at a range yet uses melee attacks only when they must.
Well they done messed up then. I don’t see why Hunters had to be singled out when the other pures, Rogues, Warlocks and Mages all had either three ranged or three melee specs and they didn’t get one of their specs deleted.
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Please do link such a reply from Ion.
Also, current SV doesn’t mean a thing here. As the SV in discussion is one of the past. Not current MSV.
Go up and check my post which you replied to, check who I responded to, what they said, and in turn, what that person replied to.
The SV tree pre-MoP wasn’t focused on melee.
In Cata, the SV tree was specifically designed to hold talents that supported the Core Spec known as Survival. That core spec was designed around Explosive Shot/Black Arrow/SrS, etc.
Besides, like I said earlier, those talent trees of the past(pre-Cata/WotLK). Those weren’t what we call Specializations. The class design back in Vanilla, was designed for us to have a Core playstyle, and any talents we could pick, no matter what talent tree/talent category they came from, only built upon said Core playstyle.
None of them intended for us to stray from that core playstyle to any major degree.
Yep, so subpar that your only offensive damaging-ability in certain areas of the game, would be Raptor Strike.
Again, whatever individual players decided to do, is not the same thing as what was the intent of the actual design itself.
So when people argue that SV was a melee spec in Vanilla, that simply isn’t true.
Because such an argument, is based on the intent of the design. And that design, did not intend for you to be a “melee-hunter”.
If people picked those talents and then decided that they should only fight in melee-range, that’s entirely up to them. But that has nothing to do with the intended design.
Yep, I got that part.
Still, even if you did spend every single talent point you had in the old Outdoorsmanship-tree, it did not take away the Core toolkit of the class, which was, despite said talents, what you primarily wanted to focus on as a damage dealer.
There were indeed many flaws with the design back then.
But they did not design classes/talents back then with the purpose of creating as defined playstyles as what we can see today, where we actually have Core Specializations meant to completely distinguish between what a BM hunter is and what a MM hunter is.
What we see today, just wasn’t what was intended back then. The intent was always for us as Hunters to focus on the playstyle promoted by the Core design.
Again, whether individual players actually did this or not, is not for me or anyone else to argue.
The thing about the SV talent-category prior to WotLK, was that it held talents designed with increased survivability in mind.
It did not promote a specific playstyle that heavily strayed from what the core of the class was designed like.
You know you replied to a comment where I was talking about Survival as a talent-category in the old days, don’t you? Before it was an actual Core Specialization.
I wasn’t talking about the current MSV.
Indeed.
If they actually intended for Hunters back then to either have a primary focus on ranged combat OR on melee combat(by opting for different talents), then they would have highlighted how the class had the option to switch and rely on both ranged/melee combat.
1.7 wasn’t BC.
No, they hadn’t.
Because none of what you could pick in that old talent-tree, removed the core playstyle of the class.
None of it meant for you to focus on melee-combat over ranged combat.
IF you actually look at those talents, you can see that many of them are focused on traps and defensives, just like what we got after 1.7.
Like with the post-1.7 tree, the one you have there, did not intend for us to focus on melee over ranged.
It was designed with Survivability in mind. How you focused your talents, depended heavily on what type of content you engaged in. As it determined how much you could make use of your ranged weapon.
I would agree with this.
It still does not justify removing a ranged spec option which could’ve been defined and developed to the same degree as all the other specs were, going into Legion.
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could care less because this is all silly… However, you claimed that SV wasn’t a melee tree here:
You used the WOTLK tree, because using the Classic and BC trees prove you’re wrong, which is what Ogdenir pointed out. Your attempt to paint SV as a non-melee spec was disingenuous at best.
Again, this entire argument is silly. Blizz decides if SV is melee or ranged, or if they add a 4th spec or not. Endless days of arguing isn’t going to have any impact. Blizz responds to meaningful input, these forums are anything but that.
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Perfectly put.
I see Ogdenir has returned to the “defend melee SV” state. Give it another few weeks or so and he will once again flip-flip back to attacking melee SV and promoting ranged SV, and then the cycle will continue.