The Survival Hunter identity crisis or "wait, why aren't we Commandos?"

Classes Hunter
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I don’t think he disagrees with you there. I think you both disagree on the vision of the spec and the class as a whole.

Similar to Ghorak, I’ve posted my own design within the past week and a half or so. I don’t think conceptionally it’s difficult to make the spec feel different than MM while also filling a different thematic niche.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/4th-spec-rsv-munitions-expert/871855

No worries man, I totally understand. I still need to actually take the time to sit down and address your thread on the topic of BM. There was a lot I liked there, some I think I have some concerns as I think they could lead to similar pitfalls that BM currently has. But I’ll get to that later in that thread :slight_smile:

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Interesting ideas, thanks for the link. There is definitely a cohesive build there.

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Posted a reply, was quite the read^^

<3

I would very much like to know what those are and why you think they are set to result in the same issues as what we currently have.

But as you already know, the topic is up over here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/beast-mastery-future-improvementspartial-rework/885639

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I will again suggest that Hunter should be an analog for the Warlock specs: Pet, Big Nukes, and DoTs. I will also suggest getting rid of Lone Wolf is the correct move all the way around, but that’s for another thread.

On the possibility of Commandos, bear in mind that archetype uses bows or some other ranged weapon almost exclusively. It OCCASIONALLY uses a singular big knife to murder people, but typically only in the final scene of whatever needlessly drawn out assualt in which they are engaging. Bonus tough guy points if they choose to put down their ranged weapon for the fight.

I honestly don’t understand why the existing spec design wasn’t unique enough. I mean, it’s a ranger physical/magic-enhanced caster. Only so many ways to define that. I’d still advocate for being able to choose whatever you want weapon-wise, with the type of weapon determining only your white damage. Skills adjusted appropriately.

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MM is more of a Sniper spec .More focus on ST hard hitting shots where as Range Survival was more of a AOE DOT spec. RSurv did fine on ST bosses but they shined on handling adds . You needed something kited you got the Rsurv hunter on it

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Traps and explosives continue to be a staple of warfare. In last of the Mohicans, we are shown “Indian Scouts” during the French/Indian war and both of the most important combative characters in the movie weave in and out of melee combat on a battlefield more similar to the WoW battlefield than any other movie, in the way that both ranged and melee combat were intermingled, where firearms meet primitive weapons, swords and bayonets. Canons take the place of mages and warlocks, of course.

Each episode of the “Forged in Fire- Battle of the Branches” competion focused in part on a different blade which played an important role in battles in modern warfare history.

Im not saying the commando shouldnt have a ranged weapon, but the type of fantasy being referenced here is that weaving playstyle. It is admittedly not satisfied well by current MSV.

Id make SV ranged and I’d change mongoose bite to mongoose fury, a cooldown that pops the MF window for brutal burst on goes. Harpoon in, pop MF, burst an enemy, disengage and keep the pressure on. The ranged kit should use dots and the pet to that end, with bombs and chakrams baseline, but enhancable on the MF row for fully ranged burst.

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Survival had a strong identity since it’s rework in WOTLK, which imo was way ahead of it’s time. Even SV in TBC had it’s niche, Expose Weakness was a really neat way to buff yourself and others. And talents around traps + wyvern sting added to the CC concept.

SV has been a train wreck since it went melee and hasn’t recovered since, that’s a fact.

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So there’s not much to actually respond to here because like 90% of it is just immature ranting and personal attacks. I responded negatively to your post because you argued and continue to argue that ranged SV was generic and expendable and as someone who played and knew the spec back then I find that to be a baseless attack. Ranged Survival provided a lot of enjoyment to many people playing the class and it had a fun and unique ranged identity. Believe it or not, melee is not god’s gift to WoW class design and ranged specs are not automatically generic and boring. Hell, there are only 2 specs now in the entire game that use ranged weapons v.s. 13 that use a melee weapon so if anything it’s melee that is generic and dime-a-dozen. You’re posting from perhaps the most generic melee class in the entire game and your post history indicates it’s your main, so maybe you calling ranged SV generic is just projection more than anything?

Evidently you won’t be very happy with SV staying melee because you’re posting in a thread you created starting with an esay about how SV doesn’t have a very good identity or fantasy. It’s pretty weird to me for someone to pick such a context to suddenly gloat about how great melee SV is, not gonna lie. I don’t expect SV to be ranged any time soon, but that won’t mean I’ll stop talking about it because making it ranged again is the right thing to do.

Calling out the top thread on ranged Survival not having replies for a year is pretty silly. We have moved on and there have been many Survival threads since then. We just had a 300+ post one over the last few months. Since you evidently figured out how to sort by replies you should have noticed that out of the top 30 most replied-to threads on this subforum 21 are explicitly about Survival and every one of those has a big ranged v.s. melee argument in them. It’s clearly still a major controversy this many years later even if you pretend it isn’t.

As for the last attack at ranged Survival: it was actually the most popular Hunter spec plenty of times in its day, including most of WotLK, Cataclysm, and MoP and was even the most popular spec in the whole game as late as 6 months before Legion’s announcement. You should go check these things before making such embarrassingly wrong claims. Since you have trouble remembering what ranged Survival was actually about: it was the resourceful and utilitarian munitions expert that used special ammunition and traps to get an edge in combat. This meant it used things like Explosive Shot and Serpent Sting and focused more on sustained damage via DoTs. It’s good to have varied choices on ranged weapon combat like that. It’s also good to have varied melee choices in the game but we already have 12 other melee specs for you to get lost in which includes the one you’re currently maining and posting from.

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I’ve always envisioned SV since vanilla as a combination of Rambo and The Predator.

We should be able to use traps, snares, guerilla warfare. Hell, I’d love to play with just one dagger to get that Rambo knife fantasy going.

I know a lot of people really liked the whole magical munitions change at the end of TBC/beginning of Wrath but to be honest that spec never really shined until WoD when multistrike came into play. Then Blizzard did what Blizzard does and removed multistrike and crippled SV. Honestly though, if I want to play a character with a ton of DoTs I’ll just play an affliction warlock and call it a day.

Make range/melee a stance or something. Let us be able to mix it up and live out a fantasy that not just the single archer/sharpshooter play that we’ve had forever.

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This is kind of what Survival was when it was ranged, too. Granted, no melee as of MoP, but hey: Rambo used a gun.

I know you’re trying to be diplomatic here but this really isn’t true. Ranged Survival had plenty of good tiers throughout WotLK to WoD and was usually a decent and popular option. One of its best tiers was Siege of Orgrimmar in MoP and that was before multistrike. What crippled ranged Survival was the removal of the initial Serpent Sting’s initial tick in 6.2 (along with tier-specific things like the legendary ring) which was how Survival derived so much value from multistrike. They had certainly already decided to make Survival melee by that point; Legion was announced just a month later.

This logic doesn’t really work. A multidotting/funnel-cleaving gameplay would suit Hunters well and it’s not such a specific playstyle that it can only belong to one spec in the game. Shadow Priest and Balance Druid also do it. It would be a great alternative ranged weapon playstyle for Hunters.

“If I wanted to play a character with melee and a pet I’ll just play Unholy Death Knight and call it a day”. Consider why that doesn’t sound like a fair argument to you.

The problem with this is “mixing it up” by replacing ranged with melee is utterly unappealing to the overwhelming majority of the people playing Hunter. As much as you might love the fantasy of being melee, ranged weapons are far more unique in this game and people have been playing this class since the start specifically for that. It makes zero sense to devote an entire third of the class to this niche playstyle and you’re not going to convince most Hunters by acting like ranged weapon gameplay is generic/boring. If they were going to make a melee Hunter it should have been a talented stance within BM, not the baseline for a spec (especially when it entails replacing an existing spec).

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I don’t think it has an identity crisis I think it has a performance issue

We have to go into melee to use our big damage ability but it hits like a fly, then our other AoE damage melee move only gets used to use wildfire bomb

Both those abilities need to be made way meatier and then we need to rid the community perception of survival being bad

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I have been enjoying Jelly playing SV. It’s striking to me how little time he spends in melee. Like, at all. I guess my question is: Do you need there to be a melee component if you use it only once every 2 minutes for 12 seconds?

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So with further consideration three things come to mind.

  1. Melee SV isn’t “just another melee spec.” This is lazy reductionism. Specifically it’s a melee/melee pet spec, of which the only other is Unholy DK. At least three other mmo’s have this idea (Rift/Guild Wars 2/ Warhammer Age of Reckoning) so despite what anyone wishes it’s not an unheard of, horrifyingly aberrant design nobody could ever possibly play. The Unholy DK also is a melee/melee pet class that tanks for it’s pet(s) while the SV Hunter has a pet that can tank for it.

(INB4 “those mmos failed because they had a melee pet class, lel.”)

  1. Though well thought out your, let’s call it the 4th Spec, design is there’s already three specs that do Ranged DoT with Pet. They’re the Warlock specs (arguably also partially Balance Druid for dots and Unholy DK again). There’s the argument that what 4th spec adds that they don’t is mobility and durability. That’s not imo persuasive because…

  2. My final consideration comes back to what inspired this post of mine: who is the 4th spec? What is the fantasy archetype that inspires it? All of these questions deeply matter.

They’re why we have Frost DK’s when most posters in this thread would, following their own logic about the melee SV, just ask “who needs that we already have Fury Warriors?” Frost DK’s are part of the Death Knight canon and are probably the closest spec to playing as The Lich King.

Or “who needs Feral Druids because we have Rogues?” Maybe players who like the idea of being a literal murderous predator creeping around in the shadows.

“Do we really need Arcane Mages because all Mages literally use the Arcane?” Turns out Arcane Mages are the technicians of the Academy who have the deepest bags of tricks. See also Rogues.

Every spec, including the SV, who’s seen a conceptual overhaul and eventually landed has had to deal with this challenge. Combat Rogues became Outlaws, Subtlety Rogues became Ninja, Assassination Rogues became the poison specialists -and changed the least, to be fair.

Another parallel situation is the Destruction Warlock. Before Desto Locks had Chaos Bolt they struggled to have a conceptual niche. They veered around between “Fire Mage, but worse” and “Affliction, but uses fire.” Although the exact order of events is hard to know about the time they got Chaos Bolt they started to concretize as “reckless power drunk-obsessives,” Gul’dan became this turned up to 11, and it’s turned out that the mechanics of Chaos Bolt serve this theme by paying off the hoarding of power with a massive blast of death. What serendipity.

See also Protection Paladins becoming layers of divine self-buffs, Prot Warriors becoming about using rage to literally Ignore Pain, Blood DK’s being about the consumption of life energy to sustain themselves like the vaguely Vampire-golems they are when they started as a dps spec, Balance Druids acquiring their various kinds of Sun and Moon mechanics, Mages getting a Water Elemental pet because, hey hey, Jaina the Iconic Frost Mage has one, and so on, et al ad nauseum.

This concepts do drift and mutate frex the complexity of the Balance Druid’s mechanics has changed a few times, DK’s used to be all specs at once because so was the LK, etc. But I think they’re basically locked in. The fine details will probably change, but the specific role and archetype won’t. Want to be Jaina? Play a Frost Mage. Want to be Prince Arthas? Play a Rett Paladin. Uther? Holy Pally. Anduin is a Holy Priest, Velen is a Discipline Priest, and Tyrande …well, she looks kinda Shadowy these days eh?

(Wowhead featured an article breaking down her powers as a kind of Balance Warrior. Interesting idea.)

The crowning irony of this thread is that my conception of the SV Hunter as the Commando is actually very compatible with the 4th spec’s idea of traps and dots.

But in truth it’s time for me to pack up my fanfiction and go. Given the spectacular dyspepsia even not-reading my post has caused I clearly have wasted everyone’s time by failing to anticipate the bitter crusade to “reclaim” the SV Hunter in retail (because seriously you can just go play Classic; Waylay will probably happen eventually) versus my naïve belief that the Survival Hunter forums would be the best place to discuss ideas about the Survival Hunter.

So I’ll leave on this note: if you can’t define a solid, clear concept for 4th spec you won’t succeed. Mechanics aren’t as important, Blizz has mechanics people for days. You need a specific vision, an identity. A theme.

And y’know I could help with that. I even have a word in mind right now. But, eh, I won’t. I don’t have a stake in this fight and frankly little about the proponents of this raging crusade makes me at all sympathetic to a change I don’t need and am not invested in.

The melee Survival Hunter has lasted Four expansions and counting. It doesn’t really have a theme, but it’s got definite mechanics, and it’s already in code. It has already had a Legendary; at the minimum implementing the 4th spec means burrowing back into Legion content and patching in a plot branch for the Hunter’s Class Hall. Designing new models since in no existing case would sharing Legendary models with a different spec would be acceptable. Would there be a retroactive Mage Tower challenge? The budget for this offshoot of Hunter gets deeper and deeper, eh? What do you think? Does Blizz want to spend on changing up a, as already asserted, deeply unpopular spec for the sake of a few thousand incredibly angry forums obsessives?

That’s what you’re really up against: yourselves.

Tah. o/

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You might have me confused with Bepples there. I don’t believe I ever called it that. And while I disagree with how the spec was implemented, I believe there is room within the hunter fantasy to fulfill the melee niche.

I’m not sure that really matters to be frank. I don’t mind a little overlap in certain things so long as thematically everything is unique and the gameplay is varied. I wouldn’t really compare Shadow Priest and Aff Lock for instance despite both using dots, so I’m not sure why that should be done between the hunter class and warlocks when they both clearly fill different identities.

I believe I answered that earlier. An arcane archer is thematic enough that it warrants its own subclass in games like D&D, and the iconic Ranger also uses magic in their shots. That’s something we had and lost and I think that’s a missing void within the class ever since Legion.

Edi:

This is exactly why I posted my version of what I could see a 4th spec looking like. There is a clear defined theme with the abilities there that go beyond just mechanics and it leaves room for MSV to grow and get out of the shadow of what was lost.

Further edits:

I don’t think you’re wasting time wanting to discuss ideas of where to take SV, but how the spec was implemented will inevitably be brought up since it’s entirely relevant to what some people think should happen with the spec (or the class as a whole) moving forward.

There’s also a number of facts you’ve gotten wrong and have made some assumptions which I think further puts some people off, you know? Most people here aren’t looking for classic SV. The SV most people tend to recall fondly was the version brought about in wrath that lasted eight years.

MSV is only on its third expansion and received an immediate rework going into BFA due to how poorly it was implemented in Legion. And quite frankly, I don’t think old content like Legion is a good reason to stop Blizz from adding new content either. Limiting themselves there would be foolish.

In the case of a 4th spec, they really could just slap it onto MM’s or BM’s artifact questline and call it a day. The artifacts no longer provide any unique powers anyway. And if you think they won’t for story reasons, that would also be short sighted since multiple quests (some of which were incredibly important) have been removed before.

Yikes lol. But no, as stated you’re really making assumptions man. I’m not sure how much more blunt I can be about that. I don’t want MSV gone at all and think that would be the wrong choice. Likewise, I think a 4th spec makes a whole lot more sense since RSV was an incredibly popular spec and fills a missing fantasy that was removed. Legion content should not be what holds back game development.

We can quite literally have our cake and eat it too in this scenario.

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Did he just once again assert:

  1. Survival was melee in WoD
  2. Waylay was a mechanic of ranged Survival

…? Seems like he’s just ignoring everything we’re all posting.

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I am honestly confused if their post was meant to be a reply to me or not. I honestly got the feeling it was intended for you based on the tone and initial part of the post, but it was marked as a reply to me.

Regardless, I didn’t mind trying to respond to what I thought about it. I’m not sure why they think it has been around as long as they have asserted and I think they misunderstood about waylay? I’m not entirely sure.

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Am I the only one that noticed this?

Speaking of reductionism…

Anyway.

To start off, I DON’T want MSV to be removed. I want RSV back as a 4th spec option.

Warlocks are designed around using Fel magic and summoning demons.

There’s no similarity between that and what hunters do. None whatsoever.

As for the Balance Druid and Unholy DK part, what do either of those two have to do with what you said about “Ranged DoT with Pet”?

Balance does not use a pet.
Unholy isn’t a ranged spec.

You can’t mix and match however you want to make it fit your arguments…

And again, both Balance and Unholy are magic-based specs. Neither of which rely on the use of a ranged weapon as a part of their gameplay.

In regards to RSV?

Easy, RSV presented a strong theme of you, being a “Munitions Expert and Trapper”.

As a comparison…

Beast Mastery was…well…the spec where you mastered your skill of controlling and training wild animals to fight with/for you.

Marksmanship have always been about mastering your skill with the ranged weapon itself. Focusing on perfect aim, rapid firing, and so on. Essentially, the sharpshooter, where the point of impact of the shot is what matters the most.

How does RSV differ from those themes?

A Munitions Expert and Trapper, as portrayed in WoW, focuses on the augmentation of arrows/bullets and Hunter traps. Making them as lethal as possible. The point of impact doesn’t really matter at all(like it does with MM) as no matter where you hit your target, the augmented shots will still do what they are meant to do. Whether that is poisoning the target, exploding in their face, burn them up, or…or…

In other words, that is a completely different theme from the other two specs mentioned above.

This is also why I frown upon your double-standards when judging different specs, the below serving as proof for that:

How come you don’t look at ranged hunter specs(ranged weapon-specs) in the same way as the above?

Plenty of distinguished themes have been presented, going back in time all the way to the initial announcements of how they were turning SV into a melee-spec.

But none of that matters if you’re not actually open to the idea that different Hunter specs that all focus on the use of ranged weapons can actually differ from one another, and from other classes/specs as well.

Legion + BfA + Shadowlands.

That’s 3.

In terms of legacy stories tied to old expansions, they don’t have to do much at all to cover for new specs added to existing classes.

They can, and arguably should to a degree. But they don’t actually have to…

Are you referring to MSV here?

I mean, it isn’t particularly popular no, but why would that matter anyway if the goal for us is to get RSV back as a 4th spec? Something you’ve already acknowledged us saying.

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It’s not an assertion. It’s kind of a fact really…

Hunter Population - Google Sheets

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I like the idea of survival being melee. I know that’s not a popular opinion, but it IS nice to be able to switch between melee and range dps without switching characters. in theory … in world content.

Personally, I think survival should be more traps and bombs and steampunk to add something besides nature/beast to the mail transmogs and hunter lore but then it would make more sense that that would be ranged. Guns and what-not.

They should at least let survival hunters dual wield since we have the weapon skills and blizz doesn’t seem to be backing down on it being a melee class.

I think what’s the most annoying about it is only like mongoose bite and cleave are melee spells. Then you pull a crossbow out of your backside to shoot one of your spells?!?! wuh tuh fuh. It’s like rubbing how half-done the spec is in your face. Like “we wanted to go melee but really couldn’t figure out any other way to poison your target without adding a random crossbow.”

Everything else can be done at range. Maybe they could make Aspect of the (whatever take the range requirement off) baseline or a talent and the spec could be more like… using a polearm like a staff to channel the nature energies and throw it at the enemy. Then it’d be more druidic and less tinker warrior. So like… mongoose bite/cleave always works at a distance, but it’s not a melee slash, more like a ripple of nature energy. And then change the animation of serpent sting to not have a random cbow.

So yes. Make it range, BUT with melee weapons giving us the power. Like how a monk or a druid’s weapon is basically useless as far as animations, etc. But if we lose melee completely I feel that takes away from the class. But I also don’t want any melee in any other hunter spec.

Maybe give survival lone wolf, and a lone wolf-like ability that buffs you if you’re in melee range. So the survival part is that you have no pet and you’re in melee range.

Sorry for the chain of consciousness here. I’m just kinda spit-balling.

Maybe in the 10.0 pre-patch we’ll get a rework like shadow priest did until then I think the best “identity” we can give survival is “Angry hiker smacking you with his walking stick.”

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^ If anything, if they were going to go this route, they should have added a Warden Hero Class in order to find that fun fighter/ranger/tracker/harrier/bounty-hunter/templar hybrid and apply the new melee hybrid concept(s) there, rather than taking out RSV. Sadly, the obvious time to deploy such a class would have been Legion, and it’d never top Demon Hunters for an iconic new-with-Legion selling point.

To be clear, I don’t hate the concept of MSV. I just hate how we got there and find how it presently plays… disjointed and without niche or substance. Perhaps if had a better home from the start, let alone avoided evicting many a lover of the guerilla/arcane archer aesthetic, something like it would see far more popularity.

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