I mean, I don’t post on my hunter either, but that’s mostly because my DH is what most people around the forums have known me as since around the start of Legion, and forum notifications don’t carry over between toons (which is dumb). Just because someone is posting on another toon doesn’t mean they don’t play hunter. Hell, just looking at my DH and my hunter, it’s pretty clear that I play my hunter far more than my DH (though my rogue is my technical “main” right now, at least until SL pre-patch).
And I’m one of the ones supporting RSV anyway.
I mean, one of the more active and sophisticated posters out here on the hunter forums, and especially during the BfA alpha, is Maso, who posts on a warlock toon. The class a person is posting on doesn’t really reflect class knowledge or experience.
I didn’t say they didn’t. Most people post on their main or at least I would assume that to be the case and that being the case MSV would just be something they do in their spare time.
When I change mains, I change my posting character to reflect that, though that has only happened twice(well I supposed technically 3 times) in the entire history of wow. Once during MoP for RP reasons. And then in Legion because I couldn’t stand MM, so I swapped to MW monk. Took a break at the end of legion and came back to my hunter.
Don’t pretend like this isn’t.
It very much is. Name 1 other spec that was changed from being a ranged spec to a melee spec.
Yes druids had to separate out tanks from melee to make the current talent system work, but to pretend like this case is not unique as well is being disingenuous at best.
The issue isn’t the range it plays at; it’s the fact the two specs still share the same role. Blizz won’t justify 4 dps specs on a single class, especially when they’ve made it clear that they felt RSV and MM were too similar as is.
Now don’t get me wrong here, I am pro RSV and I want it to return over MSV, but unfortunately a 4th spec is an unrealistic solution. I could only see it return if every class (besides druid) gets a 4th spec as well.
they do not in fact share the same role. There is a large difference between a ranged dps and a melee dps. Just because they fall under the same general category does not mean they are the exact same role.
I suppose I can agree they aren’t quite the same role.
Though the other point still stands that Blizzard, in their idiocy, considers RSV and MM too similar. I really don’t think they’re going to give Hunters a 3rd ranged spec ever again… Man I miss RSV though.
Hell, knowing them if each class gets a 4th spec, they’re going to give us some crazy “tank” spec where you have to change aggro between yourself and your pet. Hah, now that sounds like something ridiculous that is right up Blizzard’s alley.
I really don’t think this is the case. I think this is just a case of they wanted to justify a melee spec for hunters. Any one who played a hunter even casually prior to legion could tell you there was always a significant difference between MM and RSV.
Unfortunately my mind won’t be changed that Blizzard considers them too similar until I hear Ion Hazzikostas himself finally spit out the truth that RSV and MM were never similar.
Some people prefer to retain the same character, even if they don’t actively play it, simply due to the name recognition. Once you become a relatively well-known name on parts of the forums, changing posting toons can be rather disruptive. For example, as a reader, I’d rather you kept posting on your hunter even if you started playing another toon more regularly, simply because I’ve come to know and recognize your name and posting style, which also translates to me being more likely to give your posts weight (as I know you’ve got a good head on your shoulders).
This. Why play a MSV hunter when you can play a rogue or warrior. If SV is nerfed or changed and you don’t like it, then your stuck. If your a sub rogue and it gets nerfed, you have two other specs to rely on. Most likely one will be good.
I think it’s a combination of things. For starters, there were quite a few calls for a melee spec because of Rexxar. I think most people expected such a change to hit BM instead, but Blizz decided Survival was suffering the most in terms of identity.
Second, the style of play that you guys are remembering so fondly was removed from the game entirely. Enjoying the luxury of range, never having to stop, never worrying about being interrupted, but still pumping out optimal dps rendered both melee and casters obsolete. It wasn’t fair to literally the entirety of the rest of the player base. As Blizz moved more in a direction of having the fight mechanics providing the challenge instead of class rotations, the completely mobile ranged Hunter was set to become the answer to all problems and that just wasn’t healthy for the game.
It sucks that you guys lost your preferred spec, but let’s be honest. The existence of melee Survival isn’t the only reason. Just like MM and practically every other spec in the game, Survival was going to see some drastic changes one way or another. It’s possible that those changes would have been to your liking and you would still be playing ranged Survival, but there’s also a good chance that you would have disliked those changes and would still have switched to MM or BM.
If you’re feeling especially “why meeee?”, maybe go take a look at the Priest forums and see how happy players are with Void Form for Shadow. How about the difference between BFA Demo and Legion Demo, and how different are both versions from what came before them? Long time Demo players get to log in and see what is probably the coolest ability they ever had (Metamorphosis) being used by the newest class in the game.
It’s not news, but you guys seem in need of reminding that the game changes for everyone.
And you seem to be reminded not to fabricate nonsense about an area of the game you have no part in because here you are doing it again. We’ve been over this before many times and you are utterly wrong and making it up as you go along. Every time you just quietly sweep it under the rug and ignore the replies and then come back a few weeks later with the same BS in another thread. Why even bother posting if you can’t even man up enough to defend your own egregious arguments?
It is literally still in the game in the form of Beast Mastery. Did you just forget BM existed or something?
Whining about Hunters’ mobility strikes me as an indicator of someone who completely and utterly fails to understand the power balance of specs in PvE so you can imagine it’s zero surprise to me how here it’s coming from a melee player who has no PvE experience to speak of besides a handful of LFR bosses. Full mobility like BM and ranged SV has never, EVER been a game-changing class design direction that caused Hunter specs to dominate all others and render them obsolete. BM has had full mobility for eight years and for much of that time it has been overshadowed by a spec with movement penalties in the same class. There just aren’t that many situations where there is so much movement on a boss fight that BM and ranged SV dominate.
If you want to talk to me about BM making other specs obsolete: BM right now due to the broken-as-hell BFA systems design (namely azerite traits and corruptions) has one of the highest damage outputs along with the full mobility. Even in this unusual situation you have specs like Fire Mage and Destruction Warlock that are flat-out required for progression. Look at the rest of this expansion and the last one, too. Are you really going to try to tell me in a straight face, after witnessing the game-breaking dominance of funnel cleave specs for the past few years, that its Hunters with the mobility that are breaking everything? Oh, right. You haven’t seen that because you have no PvE experience to speak of. Do you even know what funnel cleave means? Can you name any fight where Hunter stacking to cheese mechanics with mobility was something that actually happened? I already know the answer, by the way.
But never mind the fact that this agonising over full movement for Hunters is a dead argument. Let’s say that it’s all miraculously true and guilds were stacking BM Hunters for all their progression kills, and ranged SV Hunters when that still existed. Why not just… you know… add a movement penalty? Black Arrow almost got a cast time in MoP, and removing the standstill requirement from Steady Shot and Cobra Shot happened partway through that expansion. At any point leading up to Legion they could have re-added that standstill requirement. But they didn’t. Why do you think this is? It’s because mobility had nothing to do with why they made SV melee in the first place. The fact that BM still exists proves you wrong on this, but there’s also the fact that Blizzard absolutely never talked about mobility when discussing the introduction of melee Survival and all this talk about it being a primary motive for the change is fabrication and revisionism.
So? We would still be working from a position of SV being ranged and likely being at least significantly derivative of what it was before. Even if it were bad, it would be salvageable.
Besides, Blizzard is not some unpredictable and inevitable force of nature. They are a group of allegedly logic-minded people who can be persuaded and apply reason. Why are we just accepting this stance of “oh well, they were going to screw up anyway”? How about expecting them NOT to mutilate class design on a whim?
Why do you think deflecting to other bad class design decisions makes this Hunter one less bad? They failed at those other classes too. “You all got equally screwed over” is not a real defence.
Blizz has stated that they feel BM is in an acceptable state because of their dependence on their pet and that issues that arise from pathing and the AI.
It’s not all failure, and that is what you won’t allow yourself to recognize. You lose some stuff you love, but you gain some stuff that you grow to love. If the game never changed we would likely have grown tired of playing a long time ago.
Yes. Let me scour through hours and pages of interviews because you border on mentally unstable levels of attachment to a spec that was removed years ago. Sorry, but I’m not that invested in the debate.
You can take my word for it, you can look for the info yourself, or you can try to convince yourself that I’m making it up because it would crush your hopes of ranged Survival as you remember it ever returning to the game.
And they’re idiots if they thought rsv was similar to MM.
This is literally BM right now, and has been MM and hunters in general for the majority of WoW. So this non-argument.
No one is denying that it would have.
No one is asking for the game to never change… except for no change classic players, but I digress. No one who plays retail is asking for all classes to be frozen in time.
No, you made the claim now the burden of proof is on you. AKA pics or it didn’t happen.
The playstyle is remarkably similar to current fire actually. Minus the physical and magic dmg working together. It was a unique spec and it’s a shame that it’s gone.
What’s sad is people can’t see that now because it is gone. Smooth gameplay in pve, is really what it was. In pvp, you could dispell 85 percent of the dmg. Los it. Just like any other caster. You had two, 3 instants max, to apply dots, and then you had to cast. It wasn’t broken beyond all repair because it’s dmg was all instant cast. It was glorious because it used every aspect of the game. Casting, instants, sustained dmg, almost no burst, everything worked together inside the spec. High mobility, ability to kit, traps. Only spec I played from bc on actually.
It did have drawbacks, but nothing like the mess hunters are today. I have 2 other max level hunters. I’ve raised to end game (at least heroic) with each. Nothing fills the niche that survival filled, (with current fire being the only thing close)
Stop attacking people that want it back. People who are tired of playing broken, clunky, incomplete classes and specs. When we had a very solid one
As a surv main this xpac I can tell you the ups and downs after being a MM main since Vanilla/BC. In truth when survival went from ranged to melee it was a wild change and interesting one at that. While probably 98% of us who play hunters enjoy ranged(I still love ranged hunters) survival was a rock thrown in the engine of our class. I played MM my entire wow career up until now simply because I enjoy my hunter… but mainly this xpac killed MM. The melee idea to me was awesome and still is, but we literally lack all the fundamentals of being melee. Yes people will complain and tall trash about why melee hunters are a thing, and in retrospect a hunter can still be a viable melee spec with a bunch of re-tuning to make us one. Mind you a lot of people will also cry and say “iF yoU lIkE mELEe PlAy AnOtHEr ClaSs”, are the ones who usually just hate what they can’t get all the time. Survival is a great spec for pvp, even though we dont have a lot of utility our burst dmg is amazing, but the fall off is also pve side. BM is dominate because it’s been tweaked here and there. MM is slowly getting in a better spot and hopefully before SL drops they fine tune it. For us we rely on so much BM mechanics the class is stale, mind you we cant do the same amount of DPS a BM player can unless you have the right gear, even then it’s hard. If theh are going to keep melee surv, we need a whole new tool kit, not to mention more of our talents baseline and not on a GCD. We need to actually have attacks similar to other melee classes and if worse comes to worse hell bring back RSV. I never played RSV until Wrath and even then I went back to MM but it was fun. We will get a ton of flack because majority of hunters hate melee aspect of surv, we have tons of weaknesses to except for pvp being our only strong point. Blizz needs to re-tune this spec or bring back RSV so that it pleases the hunter audience more. Hunters having 4 specs would still be good in the grand scheme of things but blizz doesnt listen to feedback for our class as much. Hell they are giving us a 6sec cast time to bring back pets… for what reason. MM and lone wolf is a joke because that’s still a slight loss to dps which is why BM is still the best spec, boring but still good. Until blizz can either agree to update surv or bring a 4th spec, survival will always get crapped on. But I’ll still main it