so, no ranged survival :(

[Devilyaki]

Are you really gatekeeping being a fan of a WoW class because some might enjoy one third of it that you don't? Is that where we're at now? Is that really what we're doing?

No said they can play what ever they want. You do you. Gatekeeping would be if I kick those melee hunters from guild, raid, or party or whatever. I never have, won’t do that ether. Just odd someone picks the one class that can use bows or guns but instead uses a stick.

[Jazzhands]

https://www.wowhead.com/news=311877/...philo#comments
and no big changes to MM #sad

No MM changes does suck, but I play and enjoy melee survival so I'm glad it's staying, but I understand I'm in the minority. It's nice to be able to swap between melee and ranged just to change things up, BM is incredibly boring so it's needed for me sometimes.

[Devilyaki]

So by saying "true hunter fans like bows, play MM, BM and not survival" you're not gatekeeping being a fan of hunters? You very specifically said that as well, so your "play what you want" means nothing because you're still being snarky.

I'm curious though what to you about a hunter screams bows and guns?

Hunt, verb
\ ˈhənt \
hunted; hunting; hunts
Definition of hunt (Entry 1 of 5)
transitive verb

1a: to pursue for food or in sport
b: to manage in the search for game
2a: to pursue with intent to capture
b: to search out : SEEK
3: to drive or chase especially by harrying
4: to traverse in search of prey

Which of the above require a bow or a gun, which of these couldn't be pulled off with a melee weapon and the right equipment? Seems to me like hunters are far more defined by what they do rather than what they use. If they were defined by what they use they'd be called Archer or Gunslinger but they're not. They're hunters, they hunt, and you can hunt with spears.

In game they are the one ones that use bows and guns.. other use to use them as a stat slot but removed. You can look up the definitions of all the classes and dictate whatever you want onto them. A “warrior” could then just be anything honestly.
Should make melee hunters a fourth spec, none would care then, but they didn’t and removed a range spec instead, and bloated the game with yet another melee.

[Maxilian]

In game they are the one ones that use bows and guns.. other use to use them as a stat slot but removed. You can look up the definitions of all the classes and dictate whatever you want onto them. A “warrior” could then just be anything honestly.
Should make melee hunters a fourth spec, none would care then, but they didn’t and removed a range spec instead, and bloated the game with yet another melee.

But Rexxar is one of the most prominent Hunters, and he have always been mainly melee.

Regardless i do think we need another class that use Bows and Guns.

BTW look at it in this way, it gave us, Hunter players, a new way to play the game, instead of being always range, now we can break the monotony with a simple change in spec.

Though it also have the problem, that after you're somewhat equipped, is harder to change back to another spec, cause you would need to get a bow/gun first.

[Radazar]

Ya rather sad about it as well, the mockery that it is now still hurts to look at. Anyone that likes it is not a true hunter in my book, but play what you want I guess.

by that statement MM hunters that use the lone wolf talent because they don't like having a pet are not true hunters because hunter use pets.

[Devilyaki]

by that statement MM hunters that use the lone wolf talent because they don't like having a pet are not true hunters because hunter use pets.

See you get it.

[salate]

I see no difference between MM and old Surv tbh. Melee Survival is something that brought back my hunter to me, is fun, interesting. Grenades, traps, jumps, damn so mobile, so cool.

Back in the days Survival wasn't really different from MM. Well, from this point of view alotta specs have alotta in common. but anyway, you just rename your spells, wait for lock'n'load, and wait for black arrow CD.
But was so painful to play BM hunter during legion and bfa. It still is And Survival saved hunter (for me, again, dunno about the others ) because hunters became so boring to play i had to switch to DH/priest

[ldev]

MM actually plays quite well right now, it just needs a few changes to make it more fun.

Double Tap should be baseline
Lock and Load, again, baseline

Their AOE needs to be changed, no more limit of 5. If you multshot 3 or more targets, your next aimed shot will hit ALL targets within 10 yards for 75% of the amount.

Lower the cast time on Aimed Shot and MAYBE allow it to be cast while moving.

So design is going to aoe with cap - almost every ability reworked to have a cap - and you'd change hunter to have no cap?

10/10 game designer right there

[Laqweeta]

So design is going to aoe with cap - almost every ability reworked to have a cap - and you'd change hunter to have no cap?

10/10 game designer right there

Before I posted this, I didn't realize there was a cap. Hopefully the cap is REMOVED.

10/10 stupid fucking assumption right there.

[Bodakane]

I dunno, to me, the defining characteristic of being a hunter is having pets.

All hunter specs, originally, had pets.
All hunter specs, originally, had a few melee abilities.

It seems at this point, the current hunter spec that is the most against its original incarnation, is MM not Survival.

[Doffen]

Good, survival plays nicely as it is.

Marksman on the other hand. It's only twice as many parses as MM in both heroic and mythic compared to Survival now(both being low of course). MM being ranged. Tells me that if a spec plays like shit it doesn't matter if it's ranged or not, people won't play it. And seeing survival being in such a disadvantage because of the melee "obstacle" it would be played by more people if they got rid of that feeling.

Survival plays good, try it out before ruling it out as a bad spec. It's really not.

Damage increases to Hydra’s Bite, Butchery, Steel Trap, Tip of the Spear, and Flanking Strike. And these are the main changes so far. Seems to me that the devs are trying to buff the different play styles it brings so there will be more options. Good stuff.

As for Marksman:
Pets: Get rid of them. Lone Wolf baseline as it is.
Aimed Shot: Don't have it on a recharge cd. Make it a big proc damage ability of Steady Shots instead if Steady Shots remains(as it seems to be). Aimed Shot replacing Steady Shot wouldn't be bad either.
AoE: Multishot with volley as main AoE. Buff Multishot but remove the proc.
Explosive Shot: Make it baseline or buff it a lot like they seem to do in Shadowlands. Good!
Rapid Fire: Delete.
Procs: Aimed Shot as described further up. Remove the rest. Arcane on a 8 sec cd, buff damage.
Mobility: Make it less mobile. It actually works against class fantasy as a fucking sniper. Buff the abilities to compensate.

Marksman to me now got too many abilities doing the same things, same procs and so on. Needs to be cleaned up a bit. MM is not about having lots of procs and dancing around. It's supposed to stand still and nuke from far away. I would preferably have Aimed Shot as the main shot instead of Steady Shot, but that seems to be a long shot(pun) seeing Steady seems to stay as it is.

[Dadwen]

I played a hunter from the time you could not drop a trap in combat (when all had a melee skills in the bag because of the dead zone), and anyone who thinks MM played just like SV does not have a clue what they are talking about.
*leveled several SV's and a few BM's, every time I tried MM, didn't care for it, but did end up leveling one MM around WOD when they nerfed SV before I quit just to see if I could get into it, and just ended up unsubbing after getting it to max level.

** do agree a true hunter in this game is ranged (someone posted a while back in the original description it had a phrase along the lines stating make no mistake its is a range class or something to that effect when it was talking about the melee talents it had, an they were there just to live long enough to get back to shooting distance).

[Bepples]

I for one love the melee survival version. How come you guys want it to be ranged again? What do MM lack that ranged survival had? And could not MM be what you're looking for, with some additions? Just curious

It had a different fantasy/theme to MM. MM focuses on methodical long-range sniping and primarily physical damage attacks. It's more about mastery of the ranged weapon itself. In contrast SV was always more about resourcefulness and utilitarianism and so it had spells based around special munitions like Explosive Shot. It was nice to have these alternate styles of using a ranged weapon. It doesn't feel great to have to pile every single possible ranged weapon mechanic onto essentially one spec. We don't see people going around saying they should combine Arms and Fury into one spec because there's an understanding that they aren't the same thing and provide different styles of melee combat.

There's also the simple fact that SV had a fun and unique gameplay style that no longer exists. You can't really replicate that in MM because MM already has its own style.

P.S. Do you love melee Survival specifically because it's melee or because of how it flows in combat? Because I find with a lot of people who like melee Survival it's the latter and specifically being melee is not the important part.

Wasn't the whole point of the revamped survival to give hunter's a melee option? I've played as all specs of hunters, and enjoy them all. It's nice to switch it up between ranged/pet - ranged - melee/pet. I'd say if you want ranged and a pet, run beastmastery and call it a day.

Most Hunters weren't interested in a melee option so they aren't finding it "nice to switch it up"; they just avoid Survival entirely. Not a good situation.

I can understand wanting to switch between melee and ranged often but that didn't align with the general wishes and desires of the Hunter playerbase and it was pretty unfair to force it on the class at the cost of an existing ranged option.

And yes, I can confidently say most Hunters didn't want melee because Blizzard themselves have said it.

I absolutely Love Survival and it is the only reason I can stand to play Hunter.

For people like me this sort of statement just makes me hate it even more. It just signals to me that Survival is specifically designed for people who don't like Hunters and therefore it can't possibly be designed in a way that benefits Hunters.

I don't like Rogues very much. Is it fair for me to demand that one of the specs get changed into a ranged weapon user just because that's what I like more? No, because there are people who play and main Rogues and they probably don't want that. Apparently it's fine to do it to Hunters though.

I mean people are going to default to BM regardless because of 100% movement, It'll be just like it is in BfA now with 99% BM and 1% MM. Restrictions have to be lifted so the spec can compete with BM, or make Aimed Shot a 1.3 second cast.

Not always. MM was pretty close to BM back in 8.1 in terms of represenation and in the past it has surpassed BM despite the movement restrictions. If it's good enough people will play it. Blizzard just struggles to make it good enough to justify the movement restriction.

If you took MM now and made Aimed Shot a mobile class it would still be less played than BM due to the inherent design flaws of the spec and the dominance of BM right now due to secondary stat abundance combined with BM's crazy scaling. In the past it was always MM that scaled better but that's not the case.

Melee survival is great and I'm thankful it exists.

"I'm thankful Hunters get screwed" - you right now

Melee Survival is one of the better changes they made, because the last thing pure DPS classes need is 3 specs that effectively do the same thing just with different flavors. That's horrible for balance, as we can see from e.g. Sub Rogue that just doesn't have any defined niche and as a result is the red-headed stepchild of WoW since what 2010.

I don't give a fuck about balance, to be honest. It's about having good options for ranged weapon combat. There were only 3 specs in the entire game that used ranged weapons; why remove one? For people who liked ranged weapons it was nice to have that variety in choice, especially since one of them (BM) didn't really specialise much in the ranged weapon to begin with. It's not fair at all to pile all the archetypal ranged weapon abilities onto one spec just to cram in yet another melee spec in this game overflowing with melee specs.

Plus, it's not like it's impossible to balance. There have been plenty of times in the past where you could do just fine in a pure DPS class as any of the three specs. For example, in Blackrock Foundry BM was the best spec but MM and SV were close enough that you could get away with playing those if you wanted to.

It takes a lot of denial to say melee Survival is one of the better changes they made. They spent a hell of a lot of developer time and effort to remake a formerly very popular spec into something hardly anyone plays and causes so much controversy in the Hunter playerbase for years and years to come. Their stated goals were differentiating it from other Hunter specs and giving it a coherent identity and they utterly failed at both as it now uses a bunch of BM abilities and is a weird mix of melee fighter plus pet plus some special ranged stuff including a grenade of all things. How does someone look at this and think "job well done"?

alot of people enjoy the spec now

lol

So by saying "true hunter fans like bows, play MM, BM and not survival" you're not gatekeeping being a fan of hunters? You very specifically said that as well, so your "play what you want" means nothing because you're still being snarky.

You're right that he is gatekeeping. And he is fully in the right to do it.

I'm curious though what to you about a hunter screams bows and guns?

Probably the initial outline of the class from Vanilla and every subsequent written brief and in-game design that centred the entire class around ranged weapon?

https://i.imgur.com/kBVr5Uc.png

Going to the dictionary definition of hunter is a pathetic argument. The in-game class was defined around ranged weapons, period. Survival especially is meant to focus on resourcefulness and opportunism. Nothing is more antithetical to that than arbitrarily deciding not to use a ranged weapon.

But Rexxar is one of the most prominent Hunters, and he have always been mainly melee.

He really isn't. He was absent from the game for most of its lifespan, being a minor character in Classic and BC then being absent entirely for every expansion afterwards until WoD where he was a minor character again. He has only been "prominent" in the past couple of expansions specifically in an effort to normalise melee Survival.

This is like saying the most prominent priest is Tyrande and she uses a ranged weapon so they should immediately remake Discipline to be a ranged weapon spec. Ultimately the classes are only very loosely based on specific Warcraft characters and are more a combination of specific characters plus common units plus cool new ideas that made sense in WoW. Rexxar was already primarily represented in the class via pets, anyway; you know, since he is a Beastmaster and the pet side of Rexxar is actually the important part of his identity, not the melee.

Regardless i do think we need another class that use Bows and Guns.

Melee Hunter proponents say there wasn't even enough possible variation for more than one spec that focused on ranged weapons so it's hard to ever consider this to be a sincere statement.

BTW look at it in this way, it gave us, Hunter players, a new way to play the game, instead of being always range, now we can break the monotony with a simple change in spec.

You're doing absolutely no favours by continually portraying ranged weapons as mundane/boring/monotonous. People played Hunters because they liked the ranged part. You're not going to have many melee-loving people coming to a class that is entirely ranged. It doesn't make sense to force a melee option in that case. Most Hunters are just going to avoid it (exactly what we are seeing in Legion and BFA) so you're not so much giving us a new option but taking a popular existing one away.

So cut the spin doctoring because it isn't working.

Though it also have the problem, that after you're somewhat equipped, is harder to change back to another spec, cause you would need to get a bow/gun first.

The real silliness comes from starting at level 1 with a ranged weapon and ranged abilities, and then ditching them at level 10 and having to get a melee weapon if you pick Survival. Shadowlands tries to improve on this by letting you keep Arcane Shot and Steady Shot even as Survival, but it's kind of pointless because you still have to switch to a polearm at level 10 despite most of your abilities being ranged all the way to max level.

by that statement MM hunters that use the lone wolf talent because they don't like having a pet are not true hunters because hunter use pets.

Some people do actually argue that. But the fact is, while pets and ranged weapons are important parts of a Hunter, they aren't equally important. Ranged weapons were always far more central and definitive of both our playstyle and identity. Lone Wolf is proof of this. When they added a petless option to MM and SV in WoD all it took was a passive talent option. The way each spec played and felt essentially went unchanged. Making SV into a melee spec, on the other hand, took an enormous amount of time and effort remaking the spec from the ground up. Clearly the ranged weapon matters more.

Back in the days Survival wasn't really different from MM. Well, from this point of view alotta specs have alotta in common. but anyway, you just rename your spells, wait for lock'n'load, and wait for black arrow CD.

This is an ignorant and revisionist viewpoint similar to arguing that there is no difference between Affliction and Destruction, or Arms and Fury. They were substantially different.

If you agreed with those examples I gave at least you can say you aren't a hypocrite with double standards. You do, however, have a standard for spec differentiation that is far, far too high. They are not meant to ever be as distinct from one another as different classes. They are meant to share some core aspects.

I dunno, to me, the defining characteristic of being a hunter is having pets.

Cool story, and you would be wrong about that.

Look at what it took to make a petless Hunter: adding the Lone Wolf passive talent options. That was it. Both MM and SV played exactly the same before and after picking it.
Now, look at what it took to make a Hunter without a ranged weapon: completely throwing out everything an existing spec had and remaking it from the ground up.

Gee, I WONDER which one is more definitive??

All hunter specs, originally, had pets.
All hunter specs, originally, had a few melee abilities.

It seems at this point, the current hunter spec that is the most against its original incarnation, is MM not Survival.

Nice try at deflection but it's still stupid. The ranged weapon is/was the most central part of the Hunter identity so it's Survival that's the most contrary to the original Hunter. Even if you were right about the pets being more important MM still has the option to use pets. SV does not, however, have the option to use a ranged weapon.

Good, survival plays nicely as it is.

Ranged Survival played nicely.

"Playing nicely" is not dependent on being melee. It doesn't fix all the major problems a melee Hunter spec brings to the class.

Marksman on the other hand. It's only twice as many parses as MM in both heroic and mythic compared to Survival now(both being low of course). MM being ranged. Tells me that if a spec plays like shit it doesn't matter if it's ranged or not, people won't play it. And seeing survival being in such a disadvantage because of the melee "obstacle" it would be played by more people if they got rid of that feeling.

zzz more lazy deflection

The difference is MM can and has been a popular spec even if it isn't popular right now. Melee SV has never been popular even when its damage has been really good in the past. Look to Uldir. It was the only time melee SV had more representation than another Hunter spec (MM). It took Survival being one of the game's very best single-target specs and MM being the absolute worst. It was STILL a relatively minor difference and SV was STILL very unpopular.

Damage increases to Hydra’s Bite, Butchery, Steel Trap, Tip of the Spear, and Flanking Strike. And these are the main changes so far. Seems to me that the devs are trying to buff the different play styles it brings so there will be more options. Good stuff.

Seems to me that they are doing lazy maintenance and deciding, wisely, not to waste any more effort on a dead-on-arrival spec. These changes will do nothing for Survival. The existing options will in all likelihood still be the best ones (fat chance Chakrams, for example, suddenly becomes competitive) and the spec will suffer a lot with the loss of the azerite traits it heavily depends on.

As for Marksman:
Pets: Get rid of them. Lone Wolf baseline as it is.

Stupid suggestion so I didn't read the rest of them since they are in all likelihood equally as stupid.

There is literally no reason to restrict MM from summoning a pet. None. Not a single one of you proposing this idea can state why it should be done.

[Unholyground]

Imho, fortunately no.

It is nice to have:

- a melee + pet build
- a lone archer build
- a beastmaster build

I would just like to see the beastmaster more a hybrid version between mm and surv.
A build you can play melee or ranged, depends your choice ( like the actual BM or like rexxar, just to make an example ).

Survival would have been amazing as a tanking spec where your beast becomes a shield and splits some of the damage you take and have a cool ability that increases its damage mitigation and taunts for a short time. You could even have a tanking bleed that is applied by your pet reducing the damage you both take.

[Radazar]

easy way to settle this look at rangers in D&D, WoW hunter are kinda based after them anyways, they use pets and at level 2 or 3 forget what one, they get to pick ranged specialization or duel weapon specialization so they can focus on melee or range.

[Doffen]

Stupid suggestion so I didn't read the rest of them since they are in all likelihood equally as stupid.

There is literally no reason to restrict MM from summoning a pet. None. Not a single one of you proposing this idea can state why it should be done.

God thing no one cares what you think or read, most importantly blizzard. You don't even seem to grasp what the class fantasy of neither Marksman and Survival is even, but I guess someone around here can explain why a Marksman don't need a pet. You heard about Night Elf Huntresses or Sentinels?

They don't have to change survival as it plays good like it is now. Whats funny you try to say Survival rely heavily on their azerite traits when both MM and BM are more dependent on them. They won't change survival, stop trying to make it worse than you really think it is.

And btw, old ranged survival played like shit.

[Devilyaki]

God thing no one cares what you think or read, most importantly blizzard. You don't even seem to grasp what the class fantasy of neither Marksman and Survival is even, but I guess someone around here can explain why a Marksman don't need a pet. You heard about Night Elf Huntresses or Sentinels?

They don't have to change survival as it plays good like it is now. Whats funny you try to say Survival rely heavily on their azerite traits when both MM and BM are more dependent on them. They won't change survival, stop trying to make it worse than you really think it is.

And btw, old ranged survival played like shit.

Old range survival was one of the best specs the class has had, even when they nerfed it at the end to try to make people hate it, it still was fun to play.

[Doffen]

Old range survival was one of the best specs the class has had, even when they nerfed it at the end to try to make people hate it, it still was fun to play.

And I am happy you liked it. I played MM from 2006 to 2018 myself except for Sunwell which is also the only time I liked Survival which me and the the two other hunters swapped on being in the raid. But then Survival was playing almost like Marksman so thats probably why I liked it. My complaint on MM through all those years was the useless pet that didnt do anything for the spec. Which is one reason I can't bear it in BfA, though the actual rotation is the main reason.

Got three hunters. One of each spec. The Marksman one is dusting alone atm, only looking good transmogwise(god I miss Legion so much).

[Maxilian]

Survival would have been amazing as a tanking spec where your beast becomes a shield and splits some of the damage you take and have a cool ability that increases its damage mitigation and taunts for a short time. You could even have a tanking bleed that is applied by your pet reducing the damage you both take.

Yeah, it would have been quite nice and interesting, i mean... they even made Rexxar in Heroes of the Storm a quasi tank.

- - - Updated - - -
@FpicEail You know, if you discard every view that's not yours as silly, stupid or just plainly wrong, is hard for people to even care about your view and wish to even answer you back.

[BetrayedOf52]

I actually really like current surv lol