Because most of them are currently MM Talents? At least LNL and Explosive Shots are (even if i’m aware they function differently).
Why should MM be forced to take on RSV and it’s talents? Why can’t it be a 4th spec? Are you telling me they can make 14 unique melee dps specs but can’t make more than 2 unique physical ranged specs?
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Right, as opposed to detonating bombs at point blank range. Using ranged weapons up close makes just as much sense as casting ranged spells up close; for when the enemy charges up to you and you still gotta attack rather than pulling out an inferior melee weapon.
Sure, re-using old MM ideas, not SV ones. Again, I made a thread listing how it could be done: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/potential-design-for-four-spec-hunter-all-spellsabilitiestalents-and-how-to-make-pets-engaging-again/529382
It wouldn’t be difficult.
Are you arguing that Feral was better off before the split? Back when a DPS spec and a tanking spec had to share one talent tree? Just a heads up but Feral Druids are still one of the best melee DPS spec for off-tanking thanks to Guardian Affinity, and now Feral gets their talent tree to themselves as well.
How is adding more content to Feral considered a ‘butchering’ of the spec? It was finally allowed to be its own spec.
Furthermore, nobody is asking for melee SV to be removed or butchered. We just want ranged SV returned as a fourth spec. But some people seem to feel the need to demand that it instead just be re-implemented by butchering MM’s talent tree.
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I hate that it’s melee. I just want another hunter range option that isn’t MM.
Yes, because it could do both competently. Source, my guild’s Heroic FL/DS was a Feral and i did the same in our alt runs.
AFAIK this isn’t a thing in Mythic.
They’re already in your tree…
Idk, ask the guy that decided that DH were a good idea despite the fact Monks were already a thing.
Besides Surv’s damage wasn’t even Physical. It was Fire/Nature.
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Because adding more specs does more dmg. Gotta see the bigger picture and not focus on the small emotional point.
Play BM…?
Play what you like, who cares if they think SV should be range. Its not and not coming back. For range lovers they have MM and BM.
I love survival and play most of the time. I don’t hate range specs either but still prefer melee hunter.
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Doesn’t mean they should be.
Not really the point.
The fel are you on about? How does adding specs do more damage?
Play BM…?
I do. I like BM. The swap to BM was forced upon me when they changed survival to melee garbage. I haven’t spent the last 15 years collecting rare pets to have them fall victim to Lone wolf.
Could you imagine the outrage if they made Arcane mages melee, or if they changed Arms warriors into hammer throwers? I keep engaging with you Mr Monk…
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Then play MM without using Lone wolf… You are not forced to use it. Unless you’re telling me you’re aiming to be #1 mythic raiding guild on your server.
Think of the bigger picture… the new spec is a pebble you throw in the water, the ripples of it can go very far and wide.
Are you trying to say adding more dps specs makes it harder to balance? Because it’s not like they knew how to balance hunters in the first place.
Congratz, you’ve went a little tiny bit further, keep moving… follow that ripple and see how much more it would affect.
He’s said so much weird conflicting things its impossible to keep track of anything he says other than… derrrr, survival good now!
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New SV is just applying a dot, keeping the bomb on cooldown, then spamming Mongoose Bite and Kill Command.
Pretty easy to make any spec sound empty when you boil it down to just the basics. Bad logic.
If it were that good more people will be playing it. I’m not sure what favours you people think you’re doing for your spec when you constantly pretend it’s the most divinely perfect spec that ever existed.
Yes we would because that’s Marksmanship’s fantasy (and has been since the beginning, actually) and Survival does not have the same fantasy.
How do you think it would go down if we merged all Rogue specs into one? People aren’t just going to be satisfied because you still have 1 spec that focuses on dual-wielding and stealth.
Quite a lot of people complain about the direction of Marksmanship, actually. Besides, it does have a clear foundation in earlier iterations.
You can start with Marksmanship in Vanilla and look at every iteration one after the other to see where they were going with it. Legion shakes things up a lot but you can still see elements from the previous iteration built upon. Marksmanship in BFA actually looks more like previous iterations than that of Legion with the re-introduction of Steady Shot.
You can’t do the same with Survival. Survival before and after Legion are totally different specs. Hell, they are almost different enough to be totally different classes, which is why they had to do another major revision to SV going into BFA just to remind people that it is actually meant to be a Hunter spec.
Similar situation to MM. BM, in fact, is the least changed of all the Hunter elements. We were still using Kill Command, Bestial Wrath, and Beast Cleave in WoD, after all.
It’s not fun and unique to most Hunters which is why it’s such an unpopular spec. Ranged weapons matter a lot to people who play this class. That tends to happen when it was the central focus of the class for a literal decade.
You know what is truly unique in this game? Ranged weapons. Hunters are the only ones that can use those, while tons of other classes swing sticks around. Making a Hunter spec melee is actually making that spec less unique in this game, not more unique.
Describing SV as a carbon copy of MM is such a cliche stance from people who are utterly misinformed about Hunters and are unable to see mechanical nuance beyond “shoot bow”.
Do you give the same criticism towards Affliction and Destruction? I already know the answer, by the way.
It’s not just hyperbole: it’s flat-out wrong and you come across as a dishonest liar/critically misinformed whenever you say it.
Saying that they both had focus builders and spenders is such an over-generalisation that you might as well be telling me they were both the same because they both had action bars onto which they put their damaging abilities.
If Blizzard felt they played too similarly they should have worked with the players to add more gameplay elements unique to either spec, kind of like:
- the ones that were already added to the specs over the years to significantly distinguish them
- the ones that were literally on the beta of ranged Survival’s very last expansion that were abandoned before launch due to Legion development
- the ones that existed on various borrowed power in WoD such as the ability to multidot with Black Arrow
And telling me that there is no need for two specs that both focus on ranged weapons takes some nerve given the existing pool of 11 melee weapon users in the game that Survival apparently had to join (along with a vastly more interesting and unique new melee hero class in the very same expansion). You’ll notice a theme of “double standards” whenever I talk about your posts because you very clearly place a disproportionate value in melee over ranged to the point where you think ranged weapon enthusiasts don’t even deserve more than just 2 specs while melee weapon enthusiasts deserve a spec count in the double digits.
P.S. I’m not asking for 10 ranged weapon specs, but I am asking for them to not delete existing ranged weapon specs and to restore the options they had in the past. If that offends the colonial attitude of melee weapon users then maybe they should work on respecting other people’s spec choices.
I can deny it, actually, because I felt a significant difference between the specs and developed a preference for one over the other. If they were as interchangeable as you’re pretending here you simply wouldn’t have such a consistent and passionate demand on the forums and elsewhere for the removed spec to return.
If Legion proved anything is that being “different” is not the be all and end all for spec design and chasing variety over the cost of everything else can easily damage class design. Hell, Blizzard’s entire stated design goal for Shadowlands class design is repairing a lot of the forced distinction brought upon by Legion to restore the damaged class identity of all the classes. That’s how out-of-line you are on this issue: even Blizzard has moved on for this failed class design.
This is not even remotely comparable given Rogues still kept most of what defined their class and their specs going into Legion… and even the changes they did make were controversial to say the least.
Claiming that Survival had no identity is one thing, but claiming that it had no fanbase is utterly absurd. You still have Survival’s fanbase right here on the forums telling you that you’re wrong and proving to you that it was a widely played spec in the past. What you’re doing here is projecting the failures of melee SV onto ranged SV because you know melee SV undeniably has a fringe, niche fanbase and so you’re only recourse is to make ranged Survival seem just as bad/worse. It’s a very obvious tactic.
Instant casts are bad class design now?
Hunters were much more played in WoD than in Legion so evidently it was, actually, much better class design. Given that you’re now seeing Blizzard deliberately bringing back elements that Legion removed it sounds like they agree to some extent, so once again you’re on your own in your unwavering defence of Legion’s terrible class design.
There’s obviously a spectrum here. Specs like MM are changed heavily but retain much of their former identity and style, while specs like SV and Demo are effectively deleted. And yes, I do think Demo can arguably be called “just as bad” as Survival. They utterly destroyed (pun intended) the iteration they made in MoP that was widely enjoyed and loved and very unique and it caused a lot of angst and a lot of people to quit. So deflecting to yet another terrible Legion class design decision is not exactly your best strategy here.
With Demo it at least stayed a ranged DPS like it was before and they were able to rebuild it in BFA into something enjoyable, but I still struggle to find Warlocks who would argue that the current iteration is better than what it was before.
It was not “randomly axed”. Like you said, we only used melee when we needed to and we only needed to because there was an arbitrary minimum range restriction. The entire stated and practical focus on the class was on ranged weapons and the melee weapons infringed on that. Newsflash: it wasn’t exactly a thoroughly enjoyed and celebrated aspect of the class and many Hunters were frankly quite happy to see them gone. So Blizzard saw no need in continuing to force melee on a class that wasn’t melee-centric. You know, because there are already plenty of specs out there that focus on that sort of thing while Hunters uniquely use ranged weapons.
You cannot pretend what Survival is now is even remotely representative of what it was before. It completely lacks a real ranged weapon now and only has a fake “ranged weapon” as a single ability animation. It is thoroughly a melee spec. This is unlike any prior iteration of it, even the original version where it still notibly had a ranged weapon which it primarily used over melee (yes, even in the earliest days with Lacerate as the end talent).
First of all, that very video you linked tells you it wasn’t in an “awkward spot between BM and MM”. I’m sure that line sounded great in your head but the video itself shows you SV did not have any pet focus and in fact could even spec into Lone Wolf. If you want to see a version of SV that awkwardly shares stuff with BM, look to the current version.
The video names several unique elements. For one, the spec had unique abilities like Explosive Shot and Black Arrow. As much as you try to downplay these, they along with the Lock and Load mechanic were nothing like anything that MM had and made the spec feel very different. The spec also had the Serpent Sting effect tied to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot which made it feel special, along with a real focus on traps unlike the current version (despite its description).
MM also had its own stuff like Aimed Shot and Careful Aim. What you’re consistently failing to understand is that these elements don’t work well with those from SV. It only makes sense to try to force them into one spec if you care so little about ranged weapons you view all specs that use them as the same thing. It would be like giving Unstable Affliction to Destruction Warlocks. It only makes sense if you have only the slightest clue about the class’s identity and how it functions.
P.S. What do you notice in the comments of that video? A whole lot of people loving Survival, it seems. It’s almost like the spec had a fanbase or something.
Replacing Aimed Shot would cause it to cease being MM given that it’s MM’s most defining ability. This is the sort of terrible, tone-deaf class design that hurts the game. People like you and the Legion class developers who have 0 clue about Hunter spec identity should not be talking about Hunter class design.
We’re the ones trying to get a spec we played and loved back and you’re the one saying we don’t even exist. You’re in the wrong, here. Don’t try to paint it as anything different.
While you’re actually right here, you literally argued earlier that SV was “in an awkward spot between MM and BM”. Try to remain consistent.
It wasn’t the “black sheep” of the Hunter class. Stop being such a revisionist liar. The only black sheep here is the current Survival. You’re again projecting to try to make melee SV look better and it’s pitiful.
No, I don’t think they put a modicum of effort in to work on SV in Legion. Hell, they had SV changes in the pipeline in WoD with a lot of helpful player feedback and cooperation until they abruptly threw it all away. Celestalon was promoted to a lead role in late 2013 and he was already hinting at a melee Hunter within a few months. I firmly believe this, along with the generally melee-favouring class design direction of Legion, shows that the class design leadership was intent on making a melee Hunter spec no matter what.
No, because those spells constitute a different identity to what MM does and you would have to start making key, defining parts of MM optional just to make it remotely work (almost like they are separate themes or something).
Also, TNT? The passive talent that existed in 1 expansion that changed literally nothing about your gameplay? This is a telltale sign you have 0 idea of what you’re talking about.
Cool story. That’s your (likely made-up) experience. There was a clear and appreciable difference between the specs and people like the ones posting in this thread developed preferences to either one.
“Affliction is just a dot-focused Destruction Warlock”
“Subtlety is just a stealthier Assassination Rogue”
“Fury is just an angrier Arms Warrior”
- Similarly bad logic
No, it wouldn’t. The only failed experiment here is melee Survival. Hell, a couple of the dead talents in MM right now are weak attempts to represent ranged SV in MM. Trying to force two different specs in one is just bad class design but you do seem like a fan of bad class design.
The degree to which Combat got redesigned was far smaller than that of SV and even then it was controversial. This isn’t the strong defense of spec redefinition you think it is.
Those melee abilities were peripheral to the core focus of the class. Survival had a ranged weapon with Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, and Multi-Shot in every single iteration all the way up until Legion. This is a terrible argument just like 100% of the rest of your arguments.
This line may have sounded great in your head but it doesn’t work that way.
For one, Survival lost its trap focus. Yes, originally traps were exclusive to melee SV but that didn’t last long (primarily on account of being an utterly horrific decision) and after that its trap focus over the other specs was weakened. It only had Waylay (lol) and Explosive Trap as part of its rotation. Now that both of those things are gone it has pretty much 0 trap focus over the other specs. Compare this to ranged SV which, in every single iteration from the beginning, had Trap Mastery to buff every trap and Entrapment to add a strong CC component to its traps. Just another example of how ranged SV was objectively better than the current iteration at achieving all its stated goals.
As for the bond with the pet: we already have a spec that does that. It’s pretty hypocritical to bash ranged SV for copying MM while promoting melee SV for copying BM.
I don’t trust you, particularly because of this weak excuse.
You know it can still have all that stuff if it were ranged, and they would actually all make more sense than they do now with the melee side of the spec.
The benefit is being true to the class identity and not bogging the spec’s design down with tacked-on, unwanted melee crap.
Seriously, even you are saying here that melee is not the primary appeal of the spec. What’s the point of keeping it melee, then?
I can’t tell Arms and Fury Warriors apart from a distance. Or any of the Rogue specs, for that matter. Does that mean all those specs should be mutilated too?
Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot alone were distinct enough to tell the specs apart. The entire reason I got into Survival in the first place was because I loved the aesthetic of Explosive Shot so much.
It was removed because it detracted from the core focus of the class and frankly most Hunters really didn’t like it. They were doubling down on the ranged aspects of the class far earlier than MoP. In the Cata class review they made a stated effort to reinforce Hunters as a ranged class by significantly cutting down on the melee, and the deadzone (5-8 yard) was removed way back in BC.
Yeah it pretty much does mean that, actually.
You missed the point. Using bombs in melee range is just silly from a thematic and aesthetic standpoint. Wildfire Bomb is a great ability, but it would have been far better fitting for ranged Survival.
Hell, you said earlier that Survival is also meant to focus on a bond with the pet. How exactly does the bomb fit in with that?
This is the sort of Frankenstein’s monster of an identity melee Survival has led to. Remember, the entire stated point of making the spec melee in the first place was to improve its identity.
Classic players have a way of just slapping the word “flavour” on every bad mechanic to make it seem better.
- “Most MM talents are bad”
- “The solution is to make ranged SV abilities into MM talents”
- “MM already has ranged SV abilities among its bad talents”
- Your terrible logic
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Hey now. Just because you didn’t enjoy the RPG elements of the class in Vanilla, which is fair, doesn’t mean they’re bad mechanics. Poorly implemented, there is an argument there to be made. A lot of it could have been modernized rather than whole sale cutting them out.
The damage tied to pet happiness could have been removed, but keeping pet happiness for pet training to make your pet know the skills you want could have been way more interesting then what we have now as far as pets go.
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They already made the ripple when they introduced the new melee spec. They had to balance it from square 1. They’ve already got tons of experience on balancing ranged SV though, so they wouldn’t have to start from the beginning there.
Any argument of this nature will fail because melee SV is the new spec that took up all the resources to exist, and ranged SV would just be a continuation of a spec that already existed for over a decade.
Its like the same people complaining about a spec that “was” what it is now. You can argue as much as you want, but the spec was melee/survival. Get that through your thicc skulls. Stop reaching. I see the same two people (Bepples and Ghorak <-- I put it in bold since you two love attention) have this hate against a spec that started off as melee/survival, which, I might add, was deleted for range survival, and went back to its original form, but better. Was Survival the best then, NO! Just like how a few melee classes/specs were trash in Vanilla+. Should they improve on it to make it more engaging now? YES! Speak up on that.
If you don’t like the spec simply, avoid it. Are you being forced to play it? NO! I view BM as straight trash, boring, lacks engagement and uniqueness, but that is my opinion. I play MM or Survivial. Regardless of what you write, the 
spec was/is MELEE and SURVIVAL! Just like how BM is centered around PET and RANGE . MM is centered around RANGE! No mater how hard to try to deny it, 2+2 = 4. 
I’ve seen some thirst before, but the hatred these two have for this spec is … WOW! Ya’ll colors are showing, might want to hide it . They over here making a cult!!!
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Melee survival was a meme before meme’s were a thing. Survival in vanilla was not a melee spec. It was a survivability spec. Hunters in Vanilla couldn’t stand toe to toe with melee and survive so survival had a lot of extra and enhanced ways to get back out to ranged.
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This is a ridiculous, revisionist statement spoken by someone that has no idea about the design of Hunters at the start of WoW. No, Survival in Classic was not a melee spec like Legion Survival. Like the other Hunters it had a ranged weapon and primarily used it over the melee weapon. Specs back then did not work the same way as they did now; they were mostly passive improvements to certain aspects of the class for situational purposes. Most of the identity and playstyle of a pure DPS class came from the base class and for Hunters that was the ranged weapon user with a pet as explicitly stated in the WoW manual.
If you don’t believe me, look at the toolkit: every iteration of Survival, from the very beginning all through to Legion, had a ranged weapon with Auto-Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, and Multi-Shot. Where was the abrupt removal of melee Survival? How does Legion Survival, a spec with no ranged weapon nor any of the abilities I mentioned, better represent the original Survival than what came before it?
Every iteration of Survival built on the previous one until Legion. You can walk back from 2016 through every version of the spec and see how it evolved. There was no abrupt moment where Survival changed to something totally different like we saw in Legion.
No discussion about improving the current Survival in the context of keeping it melee is productive. Being melee is the single biggest issue of the spec and the source of all its major problems. The only productive discussion is that of returning ranged SV. There are other, better approaches to melee Hunter than this.
I guess I shouldn’t expect any better from someone who unironically spams emojis in their post like some Facebook boomer. I have some emojis for you right here:
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You must’ve missed the “R” in “RSV”.
From WotLK, they kept building on it to suit all new philosophy changes over the expansions, and it did make for it’s own spec, exactly as it was intended, based on the general direction in design set by the devs, for that time.
Saying any different is nothing more than you trying to assert modern design philosophies onto versions of the game where that wasn’t the intent.
As for the change in philosophies going into Legion, no they did NOT try that with SV. It’s blatantly obvious how they didn’t bother looking into what the old SV could’ve been like post Legion. They discarded it in favor of the new MSV.
You say “minor” while ignoring how those things were the intended ways of differentiating specs at the time(combined with the aforementioned core abilities, and more).
Don’t look at it through eyes clouded by design philosophies of modern expansions(Legion + BfA).
No, it doesn’t.
Would you say that this(link below) is “identical” to the current MM spec?
No, they aren’t.
Why not?
So why suggest doing just that to MM then?
I hate to break it to you but, prior to Cata, SV wasn’t even a Core Specialization.
It was just a talent category that focused on survivability(in several ways ofc) through situational choices.
SV as a talent category did not promote it’s own fully unique and defined playstyle with a primary focus on melee-combat.
No matter what you picked from SV in terms of talents, it did not take away the core focus of the class, which was ranged combat, supported by pets.
Furthermore, I don’t hate current SV. I don’t care about it at all really.
What I do care about, is how they removed a unique/defined aspect of the class just to “make room” for that new thing.
A 4th spec and there wouldn’t be any issue whatsoever, with this.
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