Does anyone miss old survival?

[ItachiZaku]

I have 3 of them. Really like current Survival. Never touch my BM or MM hunters aside from holiday boss.

[Deleted]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#dataset=90
SV sample size is pretty weighted with so few to compare. But ya.

Not a joke. Is your reply one or?

I'm not sure what that is supposed to prove but perhaps you should actually do your own statistical data analysis before trying to question my sayings which come from an extensive background of mathematical data on the topic at hand. Because unless that was a joke, that was kind of embarrassing and pathetic.

[Sastank]

I'm not sure what that is supposed to prove but perhaps you should actually do your own statistical data analysis before trying to question my sayings which come from an extensive background of mathematical data on the topic at hand. Because unless that was a joke, that was kind of embarrassing and pathetic.

Where is your extensive data ? Lul stop pls. Ignoring now. You quoting an old post and continuing is pathetic.

[Bepples]

Maybe it is for you, but its the reason why i dont miss old survival at all. All hunter specs were the same, now they arent. I dont like the current MM design and i think you should be able to play it like you did survival/mm in MoP (or cata for MM) but the survival spec in legion is awesome.

No, they were not. If you feel content with copy-pasting old, over-used arguments, I'll just copy-paste my rebuttals. Here's an excerpt from an earlier post:

"There is no inherent issue with having 3 specs that are similar enough for people to easily switch between them. They were distinct enough for people to develop their own preferences and fill their own niches in the class.

You are making the mistake of equating abilities based on a huge generalisation. Yes, all 3 specs had "signatures". But that doesn't make them the same. They had differing focus costs, which was important when considering the mode of damage delivery (e.g. Marksman had higher focus costs across the board so relied on short-term bursts of damage from Aimed Shot/Chimera Shot as well as cast times, while Survival was very focus-efficient and was always active and delivering a sustained level of damage). They were augmented by other abilities (e.g. Explosive Shot and Lock and Load). They had differing cooldowns, extra effects (e.g. Chimera Shot cleave), etc. So at the base level they are all signatures, but that does not make the spec the same because there are a lot of extra details you are ignoring.

What about things like Careful Aim? That's a playstyle issue that Survival and BM didn't have to deal with, but it isn't an "active ability" or a "signature" or anything. BM had Focus Fire which was very unique from the other specs. Survival, again, had Lock and Load and Serpent Spread.

Basically, each hunter spec at the most general level had a casted focus generator, a focus dump, and a signature. But there were a whole lot of details on top of that basic foundation that made the specs distinct.

It's almost like you have a base CLASS and then you have SPECIALISATIONS that modify that base. Believe it or not, we don't need to have every spec being an entirely distinct, stand-alone class. "

I've yet to understand why they didn't fuse MM and SV together though.

I mean, we have explosive shot, which they turned into a skillshot (for what reason?).
We have BA.
We could easily get Serpent Sting on X somewhere too, maybe as a lvl 100 talent instead of SW.

Such a shame.

This is once again resting on the assumption that SV and MM were similar enough to exist in the same spec.

To make MM play anything at all like the old spec, you would need to:

- Remove Aimed Shot and Windburst because old Survival did not have stand-still casts or high focus costs
- Remove Vulnerable because Survival was very versatile without any excessive ramp-up or dependence on damage windows
- Add DoTs like Serpent Sting as well as its associated effect Serpent Spread
- Incorporate Explosive Shot and Lock and Load (an effect that now influences Aimed Shot instead and is also mutually exclusive with Black Arrow due to being on the same tier)
- Incorporate an emphasis on trapping a la Trap Mastery
- Keep all these options numerically balanced with the prior options for Marksmanship (while also removing several prior options just to make enough space)

So it's all good to write on paper that MM and SV were "basically the same" but as you can see once you start trying to merge them some major issues pop up. You end up trying to force together two different playstyles that appeal to two different groups of people. This just ends up with either one or both of them being watered down and crap. Right now, that's the old Survival one. Yet more damage to the class caused by the presence of the melee spec: why keep up the compromising? The demand for the melee spec just isn't there.

I'm not sure what that is supposed to prove but perhaps you should actually do your own statistical data analysis before trying to question my sayings which come from an extensive background of mathematical data on the topic at hand. Because unless that was a joke, that was kind of embarrassing and pathetic.

His original post was from shortly after 7.1.5 released, where the in-game results were looking like this:



Major hotfix buffs have since gone into effect.

[Deleted]

This is once again resting on the assumption that SV and MM were similar enough to exist in the same spec.

To make MM play anything at all like the old spec, you would need to:

- Remove Aimed Shot and Windburst because old Survival did not have stand-still casts or high focus costs
- Remove Vulnerable because Survival was very versatile without any excessive ramp-up or dependence on damage windows
- Add DoTs like Serpent Sting as well as its associated effect Serpent Spread
- Incorporate Explosive Shot and Lock and Load (an effect that now influences Aimed Shot instead and is also mutually exclusive with Black Arrow due to being on the same tier)
- Incorporate an emphasis on trapping a la Trap Mastery
- Keep all these options numerically balanced with the prior options for Marksmanship (while also removing several prior options just to make enough space)

So it's all good to write on paper that MM and SV were "basically the same" but as you can see once you start trying to merge them some major issues pop up. You end up trying to force together two different playstyles that appeal to two different groups of people. This just ends up with either one or both of them being watered down and crap. Right now, that's the old Survival one. Yet more damage to the class caused by the presence of the melee spec: why keep up the compromising? The demand for the melee spec just isn't there.

As if the Meme spec (with a 3x higher ES CD and no BA) isn't pretty much 100% mobile, just as old SV.
So nah, ES/BA/Serpentsting is enough. Just because SV was a little different, or didn't have a certain spell, doesn't mean it has to remain that way.
Patient Sniper MM isn't WoD-MM either, doesn't even play remotely the same and doesn't have the same weakness/strength either.

[DeicideUH]

To make MM play anything at all like the old spec, you would need to:

- Remove Aimed Shot and Windburst because old Survival did not have stand-still casts or high focus costs
- Remove Vulnerable because Survival was very versatile without any excessive ramp-up or dependence on damage windows
- Add DoTs like Serpent Sting as well as its associated effect Serpent Spread
- Incorporate Explosive Shot and Lock and Load (an effect that now influences Aimed Shot instead and is also mutually exclusive with Black Arrow due to being on the same tier)
- Incorporate an emphasis on trapping a la Trap Mastery
- Keep all these options numerically balanced with the prior options for Marksmanship (while also removing several prior options just to make enough space)

Not exactly. First, the hypothetical "MM-Surv" spec wouldn't need to be exactly the same: WoD Surv, MoP Surv or Cata Surv were all different in some aspects. Every expansion changes every spec at least a little.

Second, while old MM and Surv were different, that difference was mostly due to rotational abilities; talents were pretty much the same. As such, you could just swap it around: make some talents baselines, and make talent tiers based on old rotational skills. For instance, Aimed Shot and (Old) Explosive Shot could share a row, so you can choose between a hard-hitting casted burst skill or an instant sustained skill with a CD. That combines nicely with Lock'n'Load as another talent, allowing you to cast 2 Aimed Shots without casting or 2 Explosive Shots without activating their CD.

Things like Serpent Sting could be easily be made into talents, competing with active options.

One example (and it's just one in many possibilities) how it could be done is my old MM suggestion, which not only combined elements from old MM and Surv, but also from current MM as well.

[azurrei]

I love the new Survival, are you kidding?!?! I love it so much that after being 110 on my hunter for over 4 months now I still have not even bothered getting the Survival Artifact weapon...

[Bepples]

As if the Meme spec (with a 3x higher ES CD and no BA) isn't pretty much 100% mobile, just as old SV.

Well, yeah, it isn't.



That's not "pretty much 100% mobile": you have to stop and cast, quite frequently in fact. Even if Sniper Training were back and Aimed Shot/Windburst were mobile, it still wouldn't count as fully mobile because you would have to stand still most of the time for maximum DPS. Survival was 100% mobile: you did not have to stop moving EVER. You could literally not stop moving for the entire fight and not lose a single bit of DPS. Anything less than that is a shitty, watered-down form of old Survival. Any talent configuration would be a shitty, watered-down form of old Survival. It also precludes any extensions/additions to that playstyle in any future expansion, which was always a possibility when Survival was its own spec (a possibility they pretty much abandoned after WoD because they have just about no creativity when designing ranged specs these days).

So nah, ES/BA/Serpentsting is enough. Just because SV was a little different, or didn't have a certain spell, doesn't mean it has to remain that way.

This is just an admission that even with a concerted effort to get most of the SV playstyle you would STILL have a watered down form of it.

No, it's not enough. It wouldn't have the same strengths as old Survival. It wouldn't have the same theme. It would still have Aimed Shot, and even if they let you spec out of it you still would have Vulnerable and Windburst which fly in the face of the old Survival playstyle. Without Aimed Shot, Vulnerable (and Marked Shot as an extension), and Windburst, you wouldn't have Marksmanship, you would have a different spec. The only suitable solution is having old Survival be its own spec again.

See, this is why Survival was its own spec in the class beforehand: because developers before the incompetent monkeys we have now understood that they were distinct playstyles and themes. You can NOT cram both of them into one spec and expect to have both work just as well as before.

Also, you're neglecting to mention this monstrosity:



Like, holy shit: two core old-Survival abilities on a shared talent tier so you can't have both at the same time. This is the sort of shit that happens when you try to pursue the moronic idea of cramming both specs into one.

Patient Sniper MM isn't WoD-MM either, doesn't even play remotely the same and doesn't have the same weakness/strength either.

It doesn't play the same, sure, but it DOES play "remotely" the same. Just stop with the exaggerations.

Even the ridiculous MM design now is far, far easier to fix than a whole spec flat out missing from the game. And you see how badly they continue to fuck up MM talent balance: imagine if they had two whole specs with their own themes and playstyles jammed into one? It would be utter madness.

Not exactly. First, the hypothetical "MM-Surv" spec wouldn't need to be exactly the same: WoD Surv, MoP Surv or Cata Surv were all different in some aspects. Every expansion changes every spec at least a little.

You clearly misunderstood the point of my post.

Anything short of the points I wrote would be a shitty, watered-down form of old Survival. It also precludes them from expanding upon the theme and playstyle of old Survival. And the assumption was that, for your idea to work, they would have to achieve all those points with talents only. That means fitting all that into 7 talents because you would have to have 1 per tier so that you could actually pick all the options; this is already an issue because currently Lock and Load and Black Arrow are on the same tier so you can't have both. They would have to keep all those options numerically balanced with the other options on the tier.

Even with all that, you still wouldn't be able to emulate the old Survival playstyle well at all. You would still have Vulnerable, Marked Shot, and Windburst. You can't remove those through talents, they are core parts of modern MM (whether we like them or not).

Second, while old MM and Surv were different, that difference was mostly due to rotational abilities; talents were pretty much the same. As such, you could just swap it around: make some talents baselines, and make talent tiers based on old rotational skills. For instance, Aimed Shot and (Old) Explosive Shot could share a row, so you can choose between a hard-hitting casted burst skill or an instant sustained skill with a CD. That combines nicely with Lock'n'Load as another talent, allowing you to cast 2 Aimed Shots without casting or 2 Explosive Shots without activating their CD.

Things like Serpent Sting could be easily be made into talents, competing with active options.

One example (and it's just one in many possibilities) how it could be done is my old MM suggestion, which not only combined elements from old MM and Surv, but also from current MM as well.

Why did you feel the need to explain the basic fucking premise of this whole argument? That we would need to emulate old Survival through talent choices? You spent most of your post explaining to me a basic idea WHICH I HAVE ALREADY REFUTED.

Go scroll up. There are a million issues with that approach and I'm not inclined to repeat them because you don't have good reading comprehension.

Also:

Second, while old MM and Surv were different, that difference was mostly due to rotational abilities; talents were pretty much the same.

Woah... you're telling me that the specs had "pretty much the same talents" when all classes had shared talents between their specs in MoP and WoD? No fucking way!!!

[Deleted]

Where is your extensive data ? Lul stop pls. Ignoring now. You quoting an old post and continuing is pathetic.

I'd recommend that on your behalf. Didn't know <24 hours was an old post. Perhaps you've lost your conception of time in your work or quite possibly this could be a joke like the first poster I pointed out.

[Crruor]

No, they were not. If you feel content with copy-pasting old, over-used arguments, I'll just copy-paste my rebuttals. Here's an excerpt from an earlier post:

"There is no inherent issue with having 3 specs that are similar enough for people to easily switch between them. They were distinct enough for people to develop their own preferences and fill their own niches in the class.

You are making the mistake of equating abilities based on a huge generalisation. Yes, all 3 specs had "signatures". But that doesn't make them the same. They had differing focus costs, which was important when considering the mode of damage delivery (e.g. Marksman had higher focus costs across the board so relied on short-term bursts of damage from Aimed Shot/Chimera Shot as well as cast times, while Survival was very focus-efficient and was always active and delivering a sustained level of damage). They were augmented by other abilities (e.g. Explosive Shot and Lock and Load). They had differing cooldowns, extra effects (e.g. Chimera Shot cleave), etc. So at the base level they are all signatures, but that does not make the spec the same because there are a lot of extra details you are ignoring.

What about things like Careful Aim? That's a playstyle issue that Survival and BM didn't have to deal with, but it isn't an "active ability" or a "signature" or anything. BM had Focus Fire which was very unique from the other specs. Survival, again, had Lock and Load and Serpent Spread.

Basically, each hunter spec at the most general level had a casted focus generator, a focus dump, and a signature. But there were a whole lot of details on top of that basic foundation that made the specs distinct.

It's almost like you have a base CLASS and then you have SPECIALISATIONS that modify that base. Believe it or not, we don't need to have every spec being an entirely distinct, stand-alone class. "

I disagree, they played exactly the same. At least in mop they did, which most people here are citing as the perfect example. Totally interchangeable.

[Bepples]

I disagree, they played exactly the same. At least in mop they did, which most people here are citing as the perfect example. Totally interchangeable.

a) No, they didn't. Like I said, Marksmanship was slower paced, less mobile, and harder-hitting, being more caster-like in general. Survival focused on instant casts and DoTs. Whether or not you think the difference was that big (it was certainly large enough to make people develop their own preferences), it was certainly not exactly the same. Stop abusing the word "exactly". This is exactly like all those people who say "literally" when they don't mean it.

b) What matters is the more recent iteration: WoD. At this point MM didn't even have Arcane Shot anymore so Survival and MM literally shared just two aspects: a casted focus generator and Multi-Shot. Everything else was entirely different. If you are going to talk about prior iterations of hunter as if the issues we faced then were somehow relevant in late WoD, why not bring up the fact that all 3 specs did some variation of a Steady Shot castsequence in BC?

[Dadwen]

a) No, they didn't. Like I said, Marksmanship was slower paced, less mobile, and harder-hitting, being more caster-like in general. Survival focused on instant casts and DoTs. Whether or not you think the difference was that big (it was certainly large enough to make people develop their own preferences), it was certainly not exactly the same. Stop abusing the word "exactly". This is exactly like all those people who say "literally" when they don't mean it.

b) What matters is the more recent iteration: WoD. At this point MM didn't even have Arcane Shot anymore so Survival and MM literally shared just two aspects: a casted focus generator and Multi-Shot. Everything else was entirely different. If you are going to talk about prior iterations of hunter as if the issues we faced then were somehow relevant in late WoD, why not bring up the fact that all 3 specs did some variation of a Steady Shot castsequence in BC?

As someone who played both during MOP (leveled a 2nd hunter MM from scratch just to see if I liked the play style and learn it from the ground up, side note didn't like MM but loved Survival) he's full of crap, they didn't play that much alike,

[Crruor]

a) No, they didn't. Like I said, Marksmanship was slower paced, less mobile, and harder-hitting, being more caster-like in general. Survival focused on instant casts and DoTs. Whether or not you think the difference was that big (it was certainly large enough to make people develop their own preferences), it was certainly not exactly the same. Stop abusing the word "exactly". This is exactly like all those people who say "literally" when they don't mean it.

b) What matters is the more recent iteration: WoD. At this point MM didn't even have Arcane Shot anymore so Survival and MM literally shared just two aspects: a casted focus generator and Multi-Shot. Everything else was entirely different. If you are going to talk about prior iterations of hunter as if the issues we faced then were somehow relevant in late WoD, why not bring up the fact that all 3 specs did some variation of a Steady Shot castsequence in BC?

I disagree. To me all the 3 specs felt exactly the same in mop and survival and BM felt very similar in WOD (with mm feeling like total garbage without the set bonus). There was 0 difference, you build focus with a generator that was the same, used your flavour ability (chimera, killshot, explosive shot), the differences in the actual rotation between specs where less then the difference other specs had concerning talent choices. And there was no "mm feels caster like", you didnt cast anything that required you to stay still as you generally only ever used aimed shot when it was instant cast. Send pet at enemy, build focus with steady shot or similar, use flavour ability on cooldown. Survival had a extra dot, BM had extra burst every minute. That was the only real difference in the playstyle.

The differences between the specs was way way way to low.

Im not saying it was bad design (in mop, didnt like wod hunters), but it was way to similar. I whished they had kept one the same (of either 3, as as said before there wasnt much of a difference) and that that would replace either current MM or BM. But survival is fine right now.

[Deleted]

Black arrow and explosive shot I kinda miss.

[Deleted]

@EpicFail
Did you actually play the Meme spec? Did you even play Hunter at all in Legion?

There is basically no movement restriction whatsoever, at least no encounter demands so much movement that you can't squeeze in a cast here and there and I see absolutely no reason to go full retard and say "BUT THEORETICALLY, YOU HAVE TO STAND STILL TO CAST X".
And that's without BA, that's without a 6s CD explosive etc.. And even if you cap a little focus (that's the only reason why you have to cast AiS), the DPS loss is so marginal, you wouldn't notice the difference from that alone with that version of the spec.

100% movement 100% DPS is an abomination in itself, I'm glad it's gone and I hope it'll never return. And a new/oldschool SV doesn't need to have that either, Hunters never needed it in the first place. Hell, it would vastly improve the SV/MM playstyle because you could actually work with CDs and talents that way. Somestuff to work around boss mechanics with, is always better than a braindead "I'm just working my 3 spell priority list"-rotation.

Meh, I'm not looking for a ranged "SV" spec because I want to have an easy time tbh. In my eyes, it's not that you'd get a watered down SV from making BA/ES more viable, it's actually the opposite. Old SV would be the boring/watered down version.

It doesn't play the same, sure, but it DOES play "remotely" the same. Just stop with the exaggerations.

Even the ridiculous MM design now is far, far easier to fix than a whole spec flat out missing from the game. And you see how badly they continue to fuck up MM talent balance: imagine if they had two whole specs with their own themes and playstyles jammed into one? It would be utter madness.

I love it how you think that, when at the same time, you are so desperate to make a point of how SV was so different to MM.
Current (trick-shot-)MM is *so* not similar to WoD MM, I have no freaking clue how you'd even think that...which is why I'd like to ask again, did you even play hunter in Legion?

I mean, this is not 7.0 anymore. The new Patient Sniper and the *need* to fit in late AiSs is making the difference clear enough.

[Mackk]

I loved old SV (has gotta be the funnest spec I've played), getting to dot up with Serpent Sting (as a separate ability not baked in like in WoD), spreading it with Multi Shot, Black Arrow (snapshotting Black Arrow) and proccing into lnl (I think this was SoO tier or trinket bonus) and then spamming Explosive Shot. Tossing out a Glaive Toss on ST or smashing Barrage on AoE to fill in gaps, I felt like I was always pressing something with no downtime and it felt fast, now with BM I'm waiting around for focus regen and MM is full of long casts, it also felt better to have focus generators with cast times and the spenders to be instant, not like how it is now. (I feel dirty even putting 35 traits in my SV wep, blizz needs a much data as possible that people don't play current SV)

I just long for the nature damge dottiness fast paced action of it all.

[Deleted]

Not really missing it, but I miss old MM, the even older pets who had their own CC and especially the glyph of concussive shot in PvP.

[Darth Belichick]

I miss old Survival on a daily basis. I rolled a ranged class to play, well, ranged.

[Caaethil]

There are plenty of other badly designed specs in the game, INCLUDING BM and MM, yet none of them are as unpopular as Survival.

The unpopularity is caused by both it being different and it being unfamiliar. As I said, hunter mains probably don't want to play melee, but people can change mains and hunter may become more appealing with a melee spec. The problem is as you said - all the specs are terribly designed for hunters. You're pointing the finger at melee when that's simply not the problem. The only people playing such a terribly designed class are older hunters, and they really don't like change.

If the playstyles were different, the highly-general conceptual similarities don't matter. Period.

Of course they do. Corroborate this statement.

Class fantasy is a buzzword that doesn't mean anything.

A lot of people sure do like this expansion's focus on a buzzword, don't they? Almost as if it's not a buzzword and it actually matters to people who have different opinions to you.

No, this follows exactly from what you were saying. Hunters, even at a conceptual level, were no more similar than mages or the other pure specs. You have to explain why you think hunters were uniquely homogenised compared to the others.

Sure. All the hunters had bows/guns which they shot things with, and pets. What were even the descriptions again? The beastmaster is, well, a beast master, the marksman is better at shooting stuff, and survival is... something. It was supposed to be more of a tracker of something? What exactly did that tell you about the gameplay? This has been a complaint towards the hunter and to an extent the rogue for a long time. I'm not just making it up out of thin air. You might not agree, you don't have to, it's all subjective. But it's been a complaint. When people see the mage specs they can immediately see the differences. Fire, ice, arcane, it's fairly straightforward. People know that if they're playing frost they're gonna be freezing things rather than incinerating them. They expect more crowd control. People know these things immediately on seeing the names and pretty pictures.

Also, Outlaw is a great example, because it shows that they were able to differentiate the spec without changing its role. Outlaw is still a melee DPS. Why were they unable to differentiate Survival as a ranged spec?

Why should they have? What's wrong with melee other than you personally don't like it? As I said before, people don't like change and no new people are going to a class which is so poorly designed. It's a series of inconveniences stacked on top of each other which make people look at statistics and decide melee hunter must just be a terrible idea.

[Bepples]

@EpicFail
Did you actually play the Meme spec? Did you even play Hunter at all in Legion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pe-UD-tPwM

This is the video showcasing the meme build on Icy Veins. Outside of Trueshot, he has to hard-cast Aimed Shot fairly regularly. Not to mention Windburst.

Immobile cast times were not part of the old Survival identity and playstyle.

Not to mention that this is the more mobile build. The actual Single Target optimised build is far, far more immobile. Not only that, but it's likely to become mandatory due to the set bonuses in T20.

And yes, I have obviously fucking played a hunter this expansion. I don't main MM but I have tried it out, including the meme build. It's nothing like old Survival and it never will be for as long as the core 7.0 Marksman mechanics are in place.

There is basically no movement restriction whatsoever, at least no encounter demands so much movement that you can't squeeze in a cast here and there and I see absolutely no reason to go full retard and say "BUT THEORETICALLY, YOU HAVE TO STAND STILL TO CAST X".

Having to stop and cast is a movement restriction, regardless of how much you can work it around the fight mechanics. Casters all have movement restrictions; they have to work them around mechanics, that doesn't make them not movement restrictions any more.

A core part of old Survival was not having movement restrictions at the expense of raw DPS. That was its niche.

100% movement 100% DPS is an abomination in itself, I'm glad it's gone and I hope it'll never return.

God forbid that people who like mobility get a spec in the game that focuses on it over damage. God fucking forbid there being a couple specs in the game that aren't generic standstill casters.

If you didn't like full mobility, you had Marksman. Those of us who did want it had Survival.

See how that works? See why SV was a different spec? It's almost like it was a different playstyle for different people!

And a new/oldschool SV doesn't need to have that either, Hunters never needed it in the first place. Hell, it would vastly improve the SV/MM playstyle because you could actually work with CDs and talents that way. Somestuff to work around boss mechanics with, is always better than a braindead "I'm just working my 3 spell priority list"-rotation.

If it's too easy, make the spec more complex rather than removing the mobility. Simple.

It's also not about what hunters "need". It's about what makes the class better. If you are going by what classes "need", over half of their mechanics aren't technically needed.

Meh, I'm not looking for a ranged "SV" spec because I want to have an easy time tbh. In my eyes, it's not that you'd get a watered down SV from making BA/ES more viable, it's actually the opposite. Old SV would be the boring/watered down version.

I'm guessing you didn't elaborate on this point because you didn't have any good argument for it, which makes sense because it's a nonsense argument. Survival as its own spec inherently provides more depth and possibility than Survival as part of another spec. This is the exact reason why they made Feral and Guardian different specs. You just can't cram 2 specs in 1 and expect them to both be as good as distinct specs.

I love it how you think that, when at the same time, you are so desperate to make a point of how SV was so different to MM.
Current (trick-shot-)MM is *so* not similar to WoD MM, I have no freaking clue how you'd even think that...which is why I'd like to ask again, did you even play hunter in Legion?

If you make Aimed Shot a mobile cast while reintroducing Sniper Training, you get a spec that's largely WoD MM expanded upon (i.e. Vulnerable). Yeah, it's different. But you said it's "not remotely the same". "Not remotely the same" would be like turning a ranged spec into a melee spec while retaining none of the former abilities.

Now you can fully understand why you get backlash on the forums when you say that WoD SV and WoD MM were the same.

I mean, this is not 7.0 anymore. The new Patient Sniper and the *need* to fit in late AiSs is making the difference clear enough.

Sorry but apparently the meme build is all that matters, so much so that the Patient Sniper build is apparently irrelevant to discussions on mobility.

The unpopularity is caused by both it being different and it being unfamiliar. As I said, hunter mains probably don't want to play melee, but people can change mains and hunter may become more appealing with a melee spec. The problem is as you said - all the specs are terribly designed for hunters. You're pointing the finger at melee when that's simply not the problem. The only people playing such a terribly designed class are older hunters, and they really don't like change.

Like I said, plenty of other specs in the game are badly designed. Survival is uniquely unpopular.

Also, people who actually play the spec (all 5 of them) fall over themselves to rave about how well designed Survival is over the other hunter specs.

Hunters have clearly NOT become more appealing with a melee spec. Not only that, but that invokes the idea of Blizzard willingly screwing over Hunter mains in favour of grabbing people from other classes. Selling out, if you will.

Of course they do. Corroborate this statement.

Abilities and conceptual matters can be rebranded. Playstyle differences are where all the work is. Therefore playstyle differences are the ones that matter.

It would be like saying that a spec is tuned badly so they need to remake the whole thing (which is actually kind of what happened to SV). Why redo everything to fix such a small, superficial issue?

A lot of people sure do like this expansion's focus on a buzzword, don't they? Almost as if it's not a buzzword and it actually matters to people who have different opinions to you.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...3200828?page=1

Yeah, people seem positively fucking thrilled with the outcome of "class fantasy".

When Blizzard's actual reasoning behind Aimed Shot becoming a standstill cast is that it "fits the fantasy better", it's a buzzword used to excuse shit game design.

Sure. All the hunters had bows/guns which they shot things with, and pets. What were even the descriptions again? The beastmaster is, well, a beast master, the marksman is better at shooting stuff, and survival is... something. It was supposed to be more of a tracker of something? What exactly did that tell you about the gameplay? This has been a complaint towards the hunter and to an extent the rogue for a long time. I'm not just making it up out of thin air. You might not agree, you don't have to, it's all subjective. But it's been a complaint.

Oh, so all Hunter specs had ranged weapons and therefore they must be the same.

And all Mage specs are the same because they all cast spells with mana.

And all Druid specs are the same because they all shapeshift.

Anjd all Paladin specs are the same because they are all based around holy spells.

And all Warrior specs are the same because they all do physical damage with melee weapons. Same goes for Rogues.

See what happens when you rely on over-generalisations like every person fucking ever who peddles this nonsense argument?

These are the actual descriptions of the three specs, which have remained intact since they started showing the descriptions in-game (Cataclysm):

Beast Mastery: "A master of the wild who can tame a wide variety of beasts to assist him in combat."

Marksmanship: A master archer or sharpshooter who excels in bringing down enemies from afar."

Survival: "A rugged tracker who favors using animal venom, explosives, and traps as deadly weapons." (this is fucking gold, because you have to spec into the "animal venom" part: perhaps using the exact same description going into Legion was a bad idea)

Those are all distinct themes, not to mention the playstyle differences. If people who don't play Hunters had trouble telling them apart, fuck them. They are not the relevant audience for Hunter changes; Hunters are. And I truly believe that most of the complaints about Hunter's "homogenisation" came from people who weren't playing the class to begin with. Think that's a spurious claim? Maybe, but so is your claim that a significant contingent of people thought homogenisation to be a pressing issue. I'm reminded of this comic:

When people see the mage specs they can immediately see the differences. Fire, ice, arcane, it's fairly straightforward. People know that if they're playing frost they're gonna be freezing things rather than incinerating them. They expect more crowd control. People know these things immediately on seeing the names and pretty pictures.

Nope, they all cast spells.

Think that's unfair? You established your standards, live by them. If hunters were the same because all 3 specs used a ranged weapon, Mages are the same because all 3 specs have an assortment of immobile cast-times and instant burst, mana-using spells.

Why should they have? What's wrong with melee other than you personally don't like it? As I said before, people don't like change and no new people are going to a class which is so poorly designed. It's a series of inconveniences stacked on top of each other which make people look at statistics and decide melee hunter must just be a terrible idea.

Why leave it as ranged? This guy put it pretty well:

hunter mains probably don't want to play melee