I think it makes perfect sense for hunters to be able to have a melee spec in contrast to MM and BM.
It makes perfect logical sense in balance and even lore content.
What is the part that makes some players complain that SV shouldn’t be melee?
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Mostly because hunter love being ranger (not me), and ranger specs are easier to play compared to melee.
SV hunter became a nice spec since legion, but since it was ranged before people complained. I like it now, but it was mine go to spec even during Cata, mop and WoD. I loved and still love SV because it’s always underdog. SV was always good in pvp, and pve depends on tier sets. 9.2.5 when they gave them huge boost with sets they still didn’t overpopulate other specs, just increased the number of SV hunters.
Because it used to be ranged. If a 4th hunter spec was added (which is near impossible since only druid has 4 specs and it’s the most hybrid of the hybrid classes, having a tank, heal, rdps, and mdps spec), no one would really care.
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I heard if you say “M-S-V” three times in a mirror it will summon something terrible!
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Why is this such a mystery to some people?
It used to be a popular ranged spec then they reworked it into a niche melee spec. So the original audience is largely upset that they lost their favourite spec. Hunters always had 3 ranged specs before Legion so the Venn diagram overlap of people who like melee and people who like Hunters is very small.
It also doesn’t make logical sense. Hunters in WoW are thoroughly based in ranged weapon combat. We are the only class that uses a ranged weapon, we start with it at level 1, and we have many baseline abilities, talents, and covenant abilities based on it. It doesn’t make sense at all to have a specialisation (i.e. something that’s meant to extend on part of the base class) to ask you to stop using a ranged weapon. It’s like having a Rogue spec without Stealth or a Mage spec without spells.
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what if you logged in tomorrow and melee spec was gone? would you complain and ask for it back?
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The answer is pretty simple. It was shoe-horned into a class where, as the devs have said themselves, most of its’ players don’t want to play as melee. And on top of that, it was added as a replacement to a spec that, looking at historical data and statistics, had the overall highest median amount of players, of all hunter specs. This despite how there were plenty of times, for extended periods, where it wasn’t the top choice in terms of damage.
Add to that the fact that the devs accused the old SV, while it was still the ranged version, they accused it of essentially “being Marksmanship, just with more traps, or different arrows”, basically saying that the specs were the same/too similar. Despite how the two specs didn’t actually share any signature abilities with one another. Now, since then, we can see the current SV, where it has borrowed/taken multiple abilities and effects from Beast Mastery, as a means to further its own identity.
The irony of all this, considering how the lead class designer, and the senior producer at the time, came out and said in an interview that SV “has finally gotten an identity of its own; the beast companion guy”
If this is the beast companion guy that you’ve always wanted to play then you’re going to have that role.
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Dude, is SO MUCH simplier give MM an option to play around explosive shot and lock and load instead of making a “4h spec” or gut the unique melee spec.
Its just ilogical for me.
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What’s illogical is assuming that for Survival to be unique it has to be melee.
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Melee hunters are iconic in many universes.
Predator, Rengar, Rexxa…
You proposing “lets just remove the only melee hunter of the game ignoring balance and lore just because i want the survival spec to be ranged”
- Melee Hunter has an extremely niche audience
- The Hunter class in WoW is heavily built and themed around ranged weapons
- Hunters are the only class that can use ranged weapons. There are already many melee specs.
- Making SV melee is effectively defining it on a handicap rather than sensibly building on the class foundation (tokenism)
- We already had an existing ranged Survival spec which was very popular and unique
- Survival has always been about versatility, opportunism, and escapism, not arbitrarily avoiding the most powerful tool of the class and sticking to the vastly more dangerous melee range
- Making SV melee has necessitated copying several pet aspects previously unique to BM
- Despite multiple reworks and tweaks it still has the most confused and directionless identity in the game
- Everything positive about SV e.g. good rotation flow and damage can just as easily be achieved on a ranged spec and doesn’t require melee
It never made logical sense to make SV melee. If they wanted a melee Hunter so bad (and nearly no players cared for it) they should have just made a talented melee stance in BM. That way we wouldn’t have a separate melee spec replacing a unique ranged spec while ripping off BM at every turn.
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my dear lord rolfmao
Can you elaborate about “opportunism, escapism” unique aspects of what survival is suposed to be?
What survival can do which MM doens’t?
Is so easier to make MM choose between aimed shot and explosive shot instead of change a whole spec. (You also could choose between explosive shot/ranged weapon and wildfire bomb/melee weapon inside survival tree) Options is ALWAYS better than gut melee spec of the game.
Hunters have a lot of utility, kiting, and special munitions. It’s part of the base class identity, just like the ranged weapons themselves and the pets. Traditionally Survival has been the spec that focuses on those aspects, thus meaningfully extending from the class foundation.
Being melee is not meaningfully extending from the class foundation. It’s a jarring deviation from the class theme and a practical handicap just to be a special snowflake. After all, it’s not like BM and MM can’t use their complete damage toolkit in melee range, so what’s so alluring about SV? It’s the only spec in the game predicated on a handicap. You literally start a Hunter at level 1 with a ranged weapon, the ONLY class in the game that has it, and speccing SV at level 10 asks you to throw it away and be like the 12 other melee specs that already exist. Don’t talk to me about “uniqueness” when you’re championing the removal of one of three ranged weapon users to add a thirteenth melee weapon user.
MM is not the dumping ground for every ranged weapon concept. It’s the careful sharpshooter and patient sniper. Explosive and venomous munitions aren’t a good fit. I bet you can contrive an argument that everything Affliction has can be watered down and crammed into Destruction to make way for a melee Warlock spec, but that would be similarly reductionist. Contrary to ignorant melee brain belief, not every ranged weapon user is the same thing. We should NOT have lost one of the only ranged weapon specs for yet another dime-a-dozen melee.
Finally, yes, it makes more sense to just provide melee as a subspec of BM. For one, as I said already, melee Hunter is extremely niche. Very few people are specifically interested in the concept of a melee Hunter. After all, why be a melee weapon user like everyone else when you can be one of the only specs that uses a ranged weapon? Secondly, as we can see from current SV, the concept of pet companionship is inseparable to the concept of a melee Hunter. Yet we already have a pet spec: BM. The result is that SV awkwardly copies BM’s iconic stuff. Since they can’t decide on what identity to go with, however, they also cram in other unrelated stuff like Wildfire Bomb and Serpent Sting. Those are cool and unique abilites… but what do they have to do with pet stuff like Wildfire Bomb? Or being melee for that matter? I don’t see Rexxar running around chucking grenades. Instead of this nonsense they’ve made of SV, and given that melee Hunter is an inherently niche concept, it makes perfect sense to represent melee as an optional part of BM rather than a separate spec. We don’t need “melee BM” and “ranged BM” as separate specs in the same class.
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This right here is the problem. Survival wasn’t just explosive shot and lock and load. It was enhanced traps, buids around serpent sting, black arrow, and a different set of passives.
This isn’t those universes. Not to mention the fact that Predators at least also have ranged weapons.
The lore of WoW hunters has them as ranged. Hunters had melee early on because of the minimum range of ranged weapons. The old Survival trees had what didn’t fit in the beast enhancing BM tree or the ranged damage enhancing MM tree. However, the core damage from a Hunter in any spec was ranged.
With Wrath of the Lich King the specs started getting a more focused identity. While melee enhancement was still present, the aspects that Survival is known for (elemental damage and enhanced traps) became much more enhanced.
Finally, with MoP, the minimum range of ranged weapons was removed. This removed the need for Hunters to use melee weapons and attacks.
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“Black arrow” we got flayed shot now.
serpent sting, we still got it.
Rexxar is from this universe.
Most of the survival kit is ranged.
No. One of the strongest hunters (maybe the strongest) of all time was a Tauren, Melee.
Hopefully it doesn’t need to be explained to you how a SL borrowed power that still works quite differently to the original ability is not an appropriate substitute.
It’s great that Serpent Sting exists but it’s still a shadow of its former self. SV before Legion could spread Serpent Sting with Multi-Shot which was awesome and it also had a real ranged weapon with which to do it rather than a fake animation-only crossbow.
Rexxar is not a playable Hunter. Lore characters do not fit neatly into playable classes and chasing them is a bad idea. The important part of Rexxar is the pets, not the melee, and Hunters inherit that with BM spec (after all, Rexxar was a Beast Master).
Yes, most of SV’s kit is ranged. Why would it be such a sin, then, to just make it ranged? You’re both insisting that being melee is an integral part of what makes the spec unique while also downplaying how much the spec actually uses its melee weapon.
Huln Highmountain? He was retconned into being a Hunter with Legion. Before Legion’s announcement he was a side-character in the books that had absolutely nothing to do with the Hunter class. Very weak backing for a melee Hunter. I also don’t see him chucking grenades around either 
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Paladin Wake Of Ashes were borrowed power.
Today we got a baseline skill.
Your point is invalid.
I know flayed shot doens’t work like black arrow, but it could work with different effect/behavior through specs.
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Has Flayed Shot been made baseline yet? No. Until it has, it is a borrowed power that will be dropped at the end of the expansion. It is not (yet) comparable to Wake of Ashes.
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Agreed, yet we are talking about survival right now, not survival in the next expansions.
Surv should be ranged and BM should be melee