It’s truth.
Hunter representation is fine. It’s Survival’s representation that’s bad.
Yeah it was like that, actually. It was the resourceful utilitarian and fit the role of “guerilla fighter” much more, because it actually used all of its resources to the fullest.
I think being ranged is a major part of it, yes.
If the pet were the most important part SV would also be popular.
Yeah they are pretty important, actually.
Thematically it could be possible to replace all the ranged shots with melee hits, but then few people would play it because melee Hunter with a pet is not a compelling fantasy to many people.
It does define the class. It’s the most impactful and central part of the class’s aesthetic and gameplay.
This isn’t even a matter of opinion. When adding a petless option all it took was a talent for 2 of the specs which had a minimal impact on the playstyle and aesthetic. Adding a melee option took entirely remaking one of the specs and since then most Hunters find it alienating. That’s because the ranged weapon was critical.
BM and MM can fight in melee, though. SV is just speccing out of the ability to be ranged.
Weird because melee supporters continually pretend it was with revisionism about SV being melee in classic.
They are unlikely to make Legion Classic. If they do it again SV will just die a second time and you probably shouldn’t be celebrating that.
Who knows; at that time you might have flipped back to supporting ranged SV, just as you always flip-flop between supporting melee SV and ranged SV:
No, that’s not why. They had a tree with some melee buffs (not dedicated to strengthening melee) because they understood that in PvP other classes would try to close the gap as much as possible so they wanted there to be some catch-up bonuses for when you couldn’t be at range. The same tree also offered useful capabilities for getting back to range.
Believing classic SV provided a melee Hunter playstyle is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Hunters worked and the role of Hunter specs relative to the baseline class.
This was a silly tactic not recommended by anyone because ammo was extremely cheap.
The melee capability is extremely limited and the scaling is bad. It’s supporting a melee weaving playstyle rather than a pure melee playstyle.
Probably because a pure melee playstyle never made sense for a class based around a ranged weapon. Go figure!
Given the ease of the content you can still try to fight in melee and ignore the ranged weapon entirely and you’ll probably still clear it assuming you don’t get kicked out, but any ranged Hunter will outclass you significantly.
Yes, that would be ignorant. No one’s saying that, though. The contention is that healing and tanking are not good fits for either WoW Hunters or the broader ranger concept. Using bandages being a basis for healing Hunters is an absurd position. Rogues also use healing potions in their kit; it doesn’t make that concept support healing well either.
“It’s fine to have variety” is a thought-terminating cliche.
Yes, variety is good. That isn’t a blank check to destroy an existing playstyle and fantasy, replace it with something tremendously niche and poorly-fitting the class identity, and dilute the identity as a result. Variety is not the only end goal for class design and there’s such a thing as going too far with chasing variety at the expense of other things.
I’m a big fan of Metroid. In the early 2000s after many years of dormancy they brought the franchise to the modern 3D gaming space with Metroid Prime. They extensively studied the design of the older games in the IP and balanced it with new mechanics and modifications to make it make sense in a modern context. The result was a resounding success and one of the highest rated games of all time.
Later on a different team took an alternative angle and produced a new game that largely did away with traditional Metroid elements and instead went for a more story-first approach. The result was a dismal failure and disappointment; both financially and critically. It both failed to appeal to existing fans as well as any potential new audience that preferred the story-driven approach.
The allegory to SV should be obvious. The only difference is Nintendo did not double down on the failure while Blizzard did.
SV fails to live up to Hunter expectations and also largely fails to pull in many new players. That’s why it’s always so niche. Our price for this was losing a spec that was actually successful and broadly enjoyed. So while it’s fine to add variety, the way they chased it with SV was notably not fine.
Bonkers take. Classic SV, even before 1.7, had a ranged weapon with a complete ranged toolkit, and it preferred to fight with that ranged toolkit as much as possible. Every ranged SV iteration, even those that didn’t have a melee weapon, was closer to classic SV aesthetically and mechanically than modern melee SV.
Clearly not many players felt that way because SV is an extremely unpopular spec.
Look, I never watched any of the Rambo movies so I won’t pretend to be an expert. That said, I’m always suspicious of SV being described as a “Rambo” spec when Rambo is so frequently portrayed as using ranged weapons.
Clearly not interesting to that many considering it’s always very unpopular.
Wow, yet another ardent forum SV cheerleader who doesn’t play the spec. What a surprise.
This spec sure seems to generate a lot of forum fanboyism without pulling in much actual player engagement. What a mystery…
So? There are hardly any of them and most of them are melee mains who only alt SV anyway.
Yet another Bepples alt. How many is this now? Ghorak is apparently me as well.