We need range Survival Hunters back

Classes Hunter
865

. Nathanos Blightcaller’s resurrection as one of the Forsaken and service to the Dark Lady has earned him the rank of Champion of the Banshee Queen. He used to reside at Marris Steadin the Eastern Plaguelands, but now resides in the Undercity teaching hunters to learn new talents. Nathanos has recently been training a new generation of Forsaken rangers comprising of undead humans, making the undead racial composition more diverse.

The existing Elf Dark Rangers were part of Sylvanas’ group of regular Elf Rangers killed by Arthas during the Scourge and raised as Banshees.

Sylvanas trained Nathanos to be a Farstrider Ranger while both were alive. Nathanos is training regular Forsaken to be Dark Rangers.

The Alliance has Alleria Windrunner who could train a Void magic variant of Dark Ranger.

Veressa Windrunner and Lorthe’mar Theron could train normal nature magic rangers for each faction.

Death Knight is the evil version of Paladin expanded to it’s own class.

That will never happen because Blizzard’s concept of Marksmanship is based entirely around largely immobile casting and Ranged Survival was all about high mobility, instant shots, and DoT effects. If Blizzard created talents that allowed for RSV game play in Marksmanship with the same damage potential then it would effectively kill off Aimed Shot casting based MM completely.

866

If I’ve somehow interpreted your post the wrong way, my bad. But anyway…

He is not training them to be Dark Rangers.

He is training them to be Forsaken Rangers, which could essentially be the same as what Elven Rangers(incl Sylvanas) were prior to their deaths/resurrections.

What you’re talking about here, is not Dark Rangers.
It’s closer to the Class Skin options we’ve seen people asking for for a while.

Technically yes, you can give every ability tied to Dark Rangers, to Hunters as well. But that wouldn’t actually give us playable Dark Rangers.

A big part playing into the concept/fantasy of Dark Rangers, is how they become one. And what they were in the past.

Take away the use of psychic screams, necromancy and pure shadow magic. What do you have left? Not a Dark Ranger.

Perhaps. There’s a risk of that happening then yes.

There are ofc no guarantees but since Legion, Blizzard has moved further away from any attempts at implementing RSV into the MM spec.

While I’m no big fan of the exact design of current MM, I do think that the aspiration in design towards making it be more about strong DD-based attacks where you focus on hitting that perfect spot, is what it should be about.

The concept that was RSV, where your focus was not on aiming your weapon well, but rather to enhance your ammunition/arrows, it doesn’t fit very well with the aspirations of MM as a whole.

Not to mention that, like Mas has pointed out, the current MM, simply would not work well if you replaced it’s core abilities with those of old RSV.

He also mentioned that he had a workaround for this so, I will wait til I see it😀

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867

If we had racially unique skins, then say, Dark rangers could work or even as fare as Berserker.

868

Only applicable to players who want to literally play dead elf Dark Rangers. Kind of like players who only want to specifically play Dalaran/Silver Covenant High Elves. The implementation doesn’t need to be that strictly defined to have a Shadow/Void Magic augmented ranged weapon. It could be a Dark Ranger class based around the abilities of the existing Blood and Night Elf Dark Rangers but open to more races because at the core it’s just bow/gun/crossbow enhanced by magic and “death” magic isn’t strictly limited to zombies. Point being, the archetypes for developing said class already exist in the game.

The design is a ranged weapon using variant of a caster spec that is not allowed to have truly powerful attacks like Pyroblast or Chaos Bolt due to talent interactions and PvP. The more it plays like a caster, the less Hunters play the spec. Which leaves nearly everyone playing a single hunter spec because for the majority there are only 2 options in the entire game.

Ranged Survival played much more like your standard melee physical damage specialization albeit from range. Think of it as compared to Fury right now on Live with it’s damage heavily tied to proc based Rampage instant attacks.

Looking at top Fury and MM logs Rampage and Aimed Shot deal comparable damage over nearly the same amount of attacks but with drastically different play styles given all those Aimed Shots were casted.

But if you flip that around to move away from casted Aimed Shots you move away from Diabloblizz’s crappy fantasy of MM version version 2.0.

Currently Lock and Load only has a 5% chance to proc for MM versus a 20% chance for SV from Black Arrow and 100% from traps or the brief window in WoD when Multistrike created tons of procs because Diabloblizz wants you to be casting/aiming for thematic reasons regardless of how that effects the gameplay and feel of the spec.

869

The tool’s are there in place right now in the talent tree, they need to just add in black arrow and a new talent row.

15- Keep serpent sting (buff it a little bit) in row move crows to a different tier
30- Keep explosive arrow and have it replace aimed shot if chosen 2 stacks D.o.t
60- Make hunters mark baseline for all specs and replace it’s place for crows
75- Make binding shot baseline for marksman only if Hi-explosive remains as a pvp talent
90- get rid of barrage and replace it with lock and load
100- with lock and load in another tier replace it’s spot with barbed shot
120- i’m guessing this will be the new talent tier place black arrow here and have other talents to

Majority of the things are there in place it’s literally up to them to implement it.
Might be a little bit hell to balance with the haste interaction though.

870

Dead Elven Rangers, that resurrect and forsake their past knowledge in favor of learning the darker elements. That’s what Dark Rangers are.

But I get your point.

The abilities they use that are tied to their weapons, sure.
But Dark Rangers also use other abilities, that aren’t related to their ranged weapons.

Abilities that requires the use of Death-magic and also mind-bending.

I don’t mind it if there would be a playable Dark Ranger-option in the game. Just that I have my doubts as to how many of the hunters/players who are requesting for RSV to return, how many of those who would actually like the Dark Ranger alternative.

Considering how Dark Rangers fight, there aren’t a whole lot of similarities to that of the old SV spec.

Never said that they hit the mark with the specifics of the current design. Just that the intentions and the vision for what the overall design is aiming for, are on the right track.

This is ofc dependent on what you think Marksmanship should be about yourself.

Survival was a lot about procs idd.

As for current Fury, I have no idea. Not familiar with how it plays.

Indeed, not very interesting.

My concerns aren’t just about whether it’s possible to implement RSV into Marksmanship. But also about whether it should be done.

To some people, sure it would make MM more fun to play. But that wouldn’t be because of MM in itself. It would be more fun because you had introduced a different playstyle into the spec.

Also…

Having everything related to the playstyle of RSV through talents, would be a incredibly loaded, or even controversial situation. How should it be balanced?
Should everything in the talents related to RSV be slightly undertuned so that MM “fans” don’t feel forced to pick the new playstyle?

And vice versa ofc.

We’ve already had many cases for the class where more…controversial talents have been introduced that some players just “cannot” play without.

Examples:
Lone Wolf being one.
Animal Companion, being another.

Will come back here later. Being called back in for some progression raiding…

871

Wonder if sub-specs could be brought into WoW?

Instead of a new class just add talents to exsisting specs, which would creat a off spec of a main.

BM could have a melee option, SV could have range, MM could have a Dark Ranger.

872

Could you elaborate a bit more?^^

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It could be too much customization, giving too many options for which some may be meaningless in the long run.

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It would be the same as having cookie-cutter biulds or old talent trees.

You start with MM, but by choosing black arrow, serpent sting, and lone wolf you are now a Dark Ranger.

You are still under MM but are sub version of it.

Think FF and jobs, you start with a main that branches out into another off shoot of that job.

875

Just for the record, Dark Rangers do use pets, in Lore as in Game. One is even quoted as preferring Spiders.

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I only seen the ones in Southshore with spider pets, but the known Dark Rangers all walk around petless.

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One of the Dark Rangers Saurfang kills talks about her fondness of Spiders. But yeah, they can have pets. One of the ups and downs of RPing is knowing the lore. I RP a Gilnean Solider turned Hunter with a hatred for the Twilight’s Hammer Cult and Dark Rangers. Knowing the enemy is key to survival in Azeroth’s battlefield.

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I think that would be pretty cool actually.

It makes me think of talents arranged in the shape of an actual tree.

Class-wide talents along the trunk, spec-specific talents on 3 major branches, and spell-specific talents on minor branches that are connected to each major branch.

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879

Borderlands 3’ Skill Trees remind me of that.

880

they actually seem pretty cool, if blizzard were to do that for the next expansion it would garner attention for sure an would bring back the idea of talent tree’s and stats.

881

Haven’t seen that specifically but, sounds interesting.

Also sounds like it would be a quite…ambicious task, as far as talent design goes.

Way beyond the scopes of the original goal with this thread :smiley:

While I’m not overly thrilled by the current talent design, that has more to do with specific talents, rather than the general systems design/approach as a whole.

Having said that, if the suggestions you guys are talking about, would allow me to play the old RSV spec again. Fine by me!
(Note: giving us the old RSV spec back but with the theme of Dark Rangers, is NOT what I’m talking about).

The old RSV, should be just that, RSV.
I get that things have to change with it in order to get it into the modern game. Which is why my suggested design looks like it does.
But overall, the playstyle should still be focused on the same core as in the past. It should still have the same theme.
IMO.

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882

Have altered the talent Resourcefulness in my RSV spec suggestion post(s).

It’s no longer designed to grant you bonus damage when triggered manually and standing close to it.

Instead the design is as follows:

Resourcefulness - Reduces the cooldown of all traps and Black Arrow by 20%. Your Freezing Trap and Tar Trap both have a 100% chance to proc Lock & Load when triggered.

Freezing Trap when triggered manually can now withstand 100% more incoming damage before shattering.

When an enemy breaks free from your Freezing Trap, they will take an additional 10% damage from all sources for the next X seconds.

Critical hits from Immolation Trap causes an additional X% damage to the affected target.

The new design is meant to cater more towards the intentions and theme with the talent as a whole.

The decision to change it was made in response to feedback given.

Hopefully, it’s for the better.

Edit: Also cleaned up some of the “tooltips” for other abilities, effects and talents.

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With Freezing/Tar triggering LnL, that would place traps back into the rotation.

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I liked the idea of traps being more than just utility. I think the way they were integrated into MSV legion was too clunky.

If you just through them at your selected target it could have been smoother. Classic SV was about improved traps, and it could be more unique with them.

They could work as DKs Death and Decay, as a AoE ability.

[Frost Trap] A trap that creates an ice slick around itself for 30 sec when the first enemy approaches it. All enemies within 10 yards will receive ice damage while in the area of effect.

[Explosive Trap] A trap that explodes when an enemy approaches, causing Fire damage and additional Fire damage over 20 sec to all within 10 yards.

[Snake Trap] A trap that releases several venomous snakes that bite inflicting poison damage to all within 10 yards for the next 20 sec.

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