Alleria's new power - Hinting to the future of hunters?

[ozusteapot]

I agree, that would probably be the best choice. However, considering how few players current sv has had, I'd be surprised if they'd continue to invest into it.

[NoShelter]

Our third spec should be a ranger spec: no pet, high movement and movement speed, and damage should be very dot-based. Old survival was super fun because of full-movement and peppering targets with shots. Along with that return MM to a more heavy hitting stand still and deliver sniper spec.

[Kwaai]

4 specs, 3 range 1 melee. How is that stupid? one beastmaster, one dotty dark ranger, one marksman without pet, one spear wildling.

A sort of merge between Sylvanas shadow stuff an Alleria void stuff would be pretty slick.

[dv4]

I just imagine getting void based powers/talents/weapons and what not.

[threads]

i'd rather they just add a new class called ranger and have dark and void ranger specs. make it petless too so all the pet collector tards stay away.

[TriHard]

Nah, it's probably hinting at the next class.

8.0 will probably be all about Alleria as the first of it's kind and how it evolves, and then in 9.0 we'll probably get the class.

It seems to me that this is the void's version of Demon Hunters. She's essentially the next Illidan now.

[dv4]

Priest will probably unlock some abilities don't really know their lore but it seems like void powers. I'd like a new class but so soon maybe won't get one.

[xalenthas]

May find most classes will get some sort of additional talent system similar to that of the Netherlight Crucible where it's a choice between light and dark powers, and we end up with a combination of both

[Mirishka]

IMO every class should get some kind of void-themed ability. Maybe there could be some kind of consequence to using it too much?

[Vayra]

I personally know few hunters who are actually fond of Survival in its melee form, but I recently had an epiphany. What if Alleria's Void powers are a hint towards a completely new spec in the place of survival?

This would be interesting! We have seen abilities from other characters that have leaked their theme into a spec. Black Arrow is a good example of Sylvanas.

I think if your question is: "What if Alleria's Void powers might come up in a talent or some aspect of hunter in the future?" I'd say it's possible! It would be neat.

Survival has a lot of identity issues right now as well as an absurd amount of negative community perspective (even in this thread), I'm hopefully they will find a theme for survival and stick with it. Would that theme be "Void" related? I don't think it's likely as it's taking an un-finished, jarringly different spec and further pushing it off the edge. We'll also have to see how Alleria's powers develop. As it stands she hasn't really done anything "Hunter with Void power" related as much as just "I'm Alleria with void powers" if that makes sense. The things shes done so far could have been as a number of other classes not specifically hunter.

Interesting to think about though!

[last1214]

Druids with 4 specs is a special case. I don't think they would go that route even though it's the route that most, myself included, would prefer.

Something needs to be done with the current survival though. Wish they would just scrap it. They had no problems scrapping the old survival and that was a spec with solid play style mechanics.

[anon5123]

They also did away with race-specific nuances to classes (ie shadowpriest) because fuck putting effort.

Not just Spriest, but Priest in general, was affected by race. The abilities weren't specific to any spec, they were baseline Priest spells, and each race got two.

I liked them. But really the only useful ones were Desperate Prayer, Fear Ward, and Devouring Plague. All of which became baseline when 3.0 dropped, and the rest were removed. (except Hymn of Hope, which was really shit as a racial spell, but got buffed immensely when it became baseline)

[Bepples]

It's amazing how easily you can tell if someone either started playing Cata-onward or is a FotM reroller.

In Vanilla each class had a utility spec (even if it wasn't as obvious). All hunter "specs" had melee for when you ran out of ammo, and survival just had lots of utility.

Cata did irreparable damage to the class system to ease the burden on the post-merger developers, not the players. They also did away with race-specific nuances to classes (ie shadowpriest) because fuck putting effort.

Druids have 4 specs there's no reason other classes can't have 4 specs. The other solution is to remove the garbage Cata class/spec rework that ruined classes to begin with.

Also Shadow Hunters existed before WoW. Feral Cats did not.

This post is pure misinformation.

Firstly, melee was not for when you ran out of ammo. Running out of ammo in a combat situation was a death sentence. You couldn't just keep going; you had to go to a city to get more. Extremely shitty mechanic regardless of rose-tinted delusion, but moving on. Melee was for when you got stuck in melee range since your ranged abilities didn't work closer than 8 yards. That was a crutch, and pretty shitty class design. Basically, you couldn't use any of your class's primary throughput abilities so you got shitty consolation prizes in the form of mostly-worthless melee capabilities. No other ranged class had this, and it led to the wonderful little nugget of shit class design oversight where you could stand within 6-7 yards, use a snare, and literally shut down a Hunter entirely. They took melee away because once you could shoot at point blank, which should have always been the case anyway, they were entirely pointless. Plus, the abilities were boring anyway. The only one that added any sort of gameplay dynamic was Wing Clip, which was primarily for getting back to ranged.

Secondly, claiming Cataclysm did irreparable damage to the class system is like claiming Vanilla did irreparable damage to the RPG system by not having death penalties/permadeath mechanics (which, quite hilariously, some nutters actually believe in full sincerity). Sure, you can hold that position tenuously on a subjective basis, but when the vast majority of people involved glowingly approve of it you can't really act like it's pure, impartial truth. Cataclysm's class designs were almost universally well received, especially by Hunters with the new focus mechanics. Hunters experienced their highest class population after 4.0, so there's really no factual perspective you can take on this. You could just say it's your own personal opinion, but you certainly didn't qualify it as such in your post.

Also, the entire WotLK expansion and half of Burning Crusade occurred after the Activision merge, and most of the developers in 4.0 were the same as those in 3.0, so blaming it on that is revisionism. Specs didn't even become strictly more similar/simple after 4.0. For the first time, specs were receiving truly unique core mechanics (e.g. Eclipse) whereas before 4.0 most of a spec's toolkit was shared with the other specs of the same class; that means MORE effort and MORE complexity for the class developers, not less.

Race-specific nuances to classes has absolutely nothing to do with effort. Things like races and genders should be cosmetic choices. Sure, you still have racials, but they do a pretty decent job at making sure there is no clear winner for racials and they certainly don't deal in class racials anymore. It sucked when you played an alliance Priest and you had to play a Dwarf for Fear Ward. What if you didn't like Dwarves? That's extremely short-sighted and deleterious class design. Japanese MMOs, for example, routinely gender-lock classes (e.g. you can only play x class as a female). It's a shitty decision. It's not rooted in any lore consistency either; it's purely to save costs in animation (so, the opposite of effort). Such choices should be entirely up to the player's personal preference. Also, how does something like Fear Ward being race-locked v.s. class baseline have anything to do with development effort? How does it take more effort to make new abilities specific to races instead of baseline for the class? Seriously; I want you to explain the thought process step-by-step here because it looks to me like you just pulled this out of your ass.

Finally, you are committing the same fallacy that the no-flying diehards make when they say flying ruined the game; are you seriously trying to argue that some aspect of the game has been ruined for most of the game's lifespan? WoW has more time after 4.0 than before 4.0. How on Earth can classes be ruined for that long? What do you say to the thousands of people on the forums who cite Cata/MoP iterations of their classes as the best ones, as they do all the time? Is everyone else a "FotM reroller" to you? If that's how you dismiss everyone else's opinions, we can easily dismiss yours as the product of niche-loving, nostalgia-fueled dementia.

[Arvandor]

No. Just no.

I would flat out quit the game. SV is stupid enough, change BM into melee is retarded.

same for me..

playing hunter for over 8 years.. in legion i never touched sv as melee..

[scrappybristol]

I could see Blizzard adding a Shadow Hunter spec in.

[Deleted]

They need to just go ahead and make Survival a tank spec. I'd actually play it then. Would be a cool change of pace.

Just this. Even that name "survival" is for tank role. and BM should be melee/raged dual wield spec like rexar. And MM ranged with full mobility. With 1 casted huge dmg ability where you have to stand with CD.

also posibility of 4th "elite" spec for each class. But cant imagine balancing that.

[psychosaimon]

they need to make every class choose between shadow or light and that's it

[Eurhetemec]

they need to make every class choose between shadow or light and that's it

That would be so lazy and tacky, I really hope they come up with something a bit better than "JUST CHOOSE LIGHT OR DARK!!!!". We already have the Netherlight Crucible, I don't need the Netherlight Classible.