Like I want to main bow again but i just feel like its the most boring iteration of a bow spec I have ever seen in a MMORPG.
I Have played Archer from BDO:
I have played dragonhunter, ranger and theif bow spec in guild wars 2, New world, Aion, Lost Ark ranger…
Wow has one of the most vanilla plain, immobile and boring bow specs… I have waited so long for MM to get a nice rework and yet again its just the same.
How long will it take to get a good bow spec in wow?
TBH it seems like Blizzard doesn’t have any class devs on hand that are genuinely interested in ranged weapon fantasies. Once you assume that a whole lot of the state of Hunters since Legion launch makes sense.
“Dragonflight Marksmanship Hunters are at the bottom of the tier list. Their skill ceiling can be very high and therefore usually a harder specialization to master. They do offer some good burst damage with Careful Aim for the beginning of encounters, but that’s about it. They also don’t have really anything to provide good survivability and utility.” ( a recent quote from some gaming website)
About -7 years. Negative seven years. Going back in time to the year 2015 would do it. 3 good bow/rifle specs available, seven years ago. None of them played anything like a Warrior.
Probably going to catch flack for this, but I wouldn’t mind seeing “one” of the Hunter specs play like a Red Mage from FFXIV. That spec would have 2/3 Range, 1/3 Melee. Would give that “Ranger General” Vibe.
That being said, you’re absolutely right. MM Hunter is just… there.
Just kidding but one thing I would like to mention talking about other games… Why can’t WoW make arrows arc up through the air at increasing angles as you get further from the target. Asheron’s Call managed it in 1999.
True. Used to have this really cool mobile archery spec, but evidently two archers is too many and a bajillion melee just ain’t enough. C’est la vie.
I always thought MM should be just the stand alone magic\bow night elf spec. I was hoping for dark ranger class during shadowlands but we are still stuck with MM which has been kept locked into this awful period of a failed rework that was never fixed for nearly a decade.
It was a very lazy rework. Hunters sucking at PVP for years and they didnt even give hunters any new utility or mobility or anything useful. It just blows my mind.
Yeah and if you think about it, only two specs in the whole game use a bow. Wheres the Robin Hood Rogue bow archetype? Why isnt there a mage bow spec, magic archer?
They lacked creativity for ranged specs so severely that they had to remove one of our existing options. There’s no chance we’re getting any new bow specs unless we get better class designers first.
For the life of me I will never understand why they made SV the melee spec instead of BM, if they had to make one of them melee. Survival was the most unique of the 3 specs at the time, both in theme and playstyle, a dot & trap centric spec with a sustained magic dmg profile, compared to BM and MM at the time which were both bursty physical dmg specs. And the melee SV even feels a bit like BM in playstyle with kill command being such a big part of your rotation. And IMO theme wise it would make a ton more sense for a BM hunter to be up in the fray fighting alongside his exotic pets than a magic & trap focused build being in melee. And on top of all that lore-wise we’ve had melee BM hunter representation since the Warcraft days in Rexxar, there’s not a single melee survival hunter in the lore, that I’m aware of anyway.
Give back old survival please, was such a fun spec.
Playing MM currently has really made me appreciate the spec designs of SV and MM from Wrath.
It feels like Im playing the same MM from Shadowlands, but less fun and somehow much worse. Imo Shadowlands MM was getting pretty boring, and it’s only redeeming quality at some points was doing some big damage at the start of an aoe pull. Monkie brain sees big green bar, neuron activation.
The spec seems not very well thought out, and the few “new” buttons we got aren’t even used, seem to conflict with what the spec wants to do, or are just flat out unfun.
Wailing Arrow, while essentially just the Legion ability, it’s at least a ranged attack and feels somewhat cool to press. Oh wait too bad it’s not taken in either M+ or Single Target builds.
Poison Injection just makes no sense to me. The spec seems to revolve around getting out as many Aimed Shots as possible, so why add a debuff that stacks up to 10 times that gets removed when hit with an Aimed Shot. I could understand if it started off at 10 and stacks started to fall off, cause that would make sense but it’s not.
Steel Trap, Steel Trap??? Are you kidding me?? Throw a trap for bleed damage. I fell asleep writing this with how boring of an ability it is.
I would love for Bliz to either completely rework this spec, or just give us back ranged SV. Wrath SV has so many fun little optimizations and gameplay choices. Downranking Explosive Shot (while obviously not doable nowadays) is a cool quirk to eek out a bit more damage. Trapweaving puts actual thought into my rotation instead of just “rotation go brrr”.
Yup cant beleive thry gutted a bow spec just to add Nithrr melee spec itno the game. I loved survival hunter in cata and mop. Played with a lock played a dot cleave wasnt that great but was a good change of pace from mm
I’m enjoying it atm but I really feel like a glass cannon. Doing some of the DF quests solo with just Exhilaration to heal me is rough, if I got swarmed by like more than 3 enemies I would die 9 times out of 10.
