[Munitions] - The return of pre-Legion Survival as a modern spec

[gd8]

Nothing interesting or different about ranged survival. Suck it up and play MM

so jsut beacuse classic is a thing that means we should ignore the mess that is survival on retail? i mean the specc is in such bad state and blizzard dont know what to do with it, not even the MSV players are happy with the new DF tree for surv, that says something.

In what way is retail survival a mess/"in a bad state" currently lol? Literally one of the most OP specs for M+ and extremely fun and satisfying to play with tier set bonuses + double legendary, it has very few weaknesses

[Makaloff]

Nothing interesting or different about ranged survival. Suck it up and play MM

In what way is retail survival a mess/"in a bad state" currently lol? Literally one of the most OP specs for M+ and extremely fun and satisfying to play with tier set bonuses + double legendary, it has very few weaknesses

telling people to roll MM is just ignoring the issue, it isnt helpful nor is it a way to find a solution either.

Its a mess beacuse outside of this season (where blizzard buffed them to the moon with both leggy and tier set), they bring nothing to the table. no utility over the other speccs and its meele, meaning it will take up a meele spot aswell and there is plenty of meeles that do what survival do better (aside from this season due borrowed power). The specc doesnt have a clear direction, its a almagation of BM and some wierd wannabe rexxar fantasy, just look at the DF talent tree, theres no clear direction whatsoever and it really shows that blizzard dont know what to do with the specc.
Survivals biggest weakness is that it got turned into meele, its been sitting on 4-5% representation for literal years, its only now in 1 season in 6 years survival is put in the limelight and even then, there is still more people playing MM and BM overall in M+. Utility is another issue for survival since they bring nothing to the table that MM and BM cant bring. Worst of all is how all their focus generation is tied to the pet so if the pet dies you are pretty much screwed (this is more a pvp issue but an issue that should be solved nontheless).

Best option blizzard could have done is a talent that lets you play survival as ranged or meele, sure it wouldnt solve all the issues around the specc but it would help heal the infected wound in the hunter community thats been festering ever since legion. When DF hits, survival will go back into obscurity again beacuse it wont carry with borrowed power anymore.

Also i forgot they have uncapped aoe, but that wont save them in DF.

conclusion: blizzards decision to rework survival into meele is the biggest mistake of class design that have ever happened in this game, the niche they aimed for simply doesnt work, and instead of trying to find a compromise to atleast somewhat fix the issue like a talent that lets you choose between meele and ranged, they just doubled down on the stupid niche meme specc they created. Not to mention i still havent forgiven them for messing up MM thanks to trying to cramp in RSV play into the MM tree, its first in DF that MM starts to become MM again but still have a long way to go.

[Rustov]

I thought of a solution to my upper class tree issue. First row is Kill Command, Serpent Sting, Kill Shot as you had it. Second row is Thick Hides (reqs Kill Command), Counter Shot (reqs any one of Kill Command, Serpent Sting, Kill Shot), and Imp. Kill Shot (reqs Kill Shot). Then stick Conc Shot, Trailblazer, Disengage in row 3, all with paths from Counter Shot. Readjust rows 3 and 4 as needed. Since Counter is almost mandatory, and all three specs would have basic access to it, then give it a path to all of the major mobility talents, and from there pretty much the entire tree is open to any of the three specs- it would be elegant and satisfy everyone.

[Schmilblick]

They just confirmed that ranged survival is not coming back, so.

[bloodmoth13]

beacuse marksman and survival played nothing alike. sure it did have slight overlap in wotlk (but so did any specc during that time). they tried to tack the RSV gameplay onto MM in legion, you know what happened? it completly ruined MM and still to this day the specc has to suffer thanks to that decision. you cant cramp 2 different playstyles into the same specc.

RSV was a rot based ranged dmg dealer, imagine a affli lock but hunter, had its own unike playstyle and worked very well untill blizz reworked it to meele.

- - - Updated - - -



so jsut beacuse classic is a thing that means we should ignore the mess that is survival on retail? i mean the specc is in such bad state and blizzard dont know what to do with it, not even the MSV players are happy with the new DF tree for surv, that says something.

The new trees can make large portions separated, you can put the old marksman stuff on one side and the old survival dot stuff on the other and let players pick the difference.

What specificly was different? serpent sting? you can take that now. Explosive shot and lock n load? they are in the class tree and available to everyone. black arrow? was it really worth preserving? it was just a dot that only worked on one target, kind of like hunters mark.

I think peoples fantasy of it doesnt match reality, you can practically rebuild the spec and dont bother complaining about all the new stuff that exists now not being survival because the spec would have been updated regardless.
id be fine with BM or marksman getting survivals old tools on a branch on their trees but its simply not worth a spec slot. melee hunter is an awesome concept and one i want to see further developed and improved because its a fun concept, survival on the other hand was thematically non-existant and didnt bring anything new to the table that the other 2 specs didnt already cover.

[F Rm]

They just confirmed that ranged survival is not coming back, so.

What they said was that their intent with the newly announced "Ranger"-talent in the SV tree, is not to make a ranged SV sub-spec as part of SV itself. Very different from what you said.

What was honestly so different with pre-legion survival that warrants bringing it back?
The spec fantasy overlapped significantly with marksman to the point if it were a venn diagram it would be a single circle so its 'fantasy' isnt anything unique, why not just tack it onto marksman? the new talent trees allow a lot of customization, just throw it in there, there really wasnt so much in the old iteration that it requires its own tree.

There was literally no spec fantasy overlap between MM and RSV. In WoD, the last expansion before the rework, MM and RSV did not share a single signature ability or effect. The only common fantasy was the actual core class fantasy of being a ranged weapon fighter. Using that as a basis for your argument of "they were the same..." is like if you were to argue that all mage specs are the same because they all cast spells, just with different colors. Same thing with warlocks.

Honestly even if old survival came back it wouldnt be the same as it was, blizz add and update specs constantly, you would have new abilities, trimmed old abilities and so on, it wouldnt even be recognizable if it didnt get culled.

So what core thematic did it have that needs to come back?

I mean, feel free to read the OP in this very topic which you're posting in: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-a-modern-spec

I structured/compiled the concept so that it would maintain the core of what was RSV's gameplay up until WoD. There's enough in there to the point where you could pick talents and paths so that your gameplay would be, well, about 90% the same as it was before, just more of it.

The new trees can make large portions separated, you can put the old marksman stuff on one side and the old survival dot stuff on the other and let players pick the difference.

Again, look at the concept I've proposed. Do you honestly think all that could be put into MM, while still keeping the core theme of MM itself, the fantasy it promotes of being a sharpshooter? It wouldn't even come close...

What specificly was different? serpent sting? you can take that now. Explosive shot and lock n load? they are in the class tree and available to everyone. black arrow? was it really worth preserving? it was just a dot that only worked on one target, kind of like hunters mark.

Serpent Sting is there yes. Just, it doesn't have any of the interactions and added depth which was available through RSV.

Explosive Shot is in the class tree, but it's been reworked from the core design it held for RSV, into a 30-sec use-on-CD AoE spell, not at all the same as it used to be.

Lock & Load isn't in the class tree. Nor does it's new design interact with anything that was RSV in the past.

Black Arrow, you might not care about the elements of RSV, but many others did/do still. As for it being a ST DoT, again, see the concept in the OP. It's designed so that you could add A LOT more depth to gameplay involving Black Arrow, if you so wish.

I think peoples fantasy of it doesnt match reality, you can practically rebuild the spec and dont bother complaining about all the new stuff that exists now not being survival because the spec would have been updated regardless.
id be fine with BM or marksman getting survivals old tools on a branch on their trees but its simply not worth a spec slot. melee hunter is an awesome concept and one i want to see further developed and improved because its a fun concept, survival on the other hand was thematically non-existant and didnt bring anything new to the table that the other 2 specs didnt already cover.

Based on the things you've said, either you prefer ignorance, you don't actually know what the gameplay was like/amounted to. Or you simply don't care, and are just here to troll.

In theme(fantasy) old RSV portrayed the idea of a munitions expert and trapper. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was about DoTs, rot-gameplay, concistency.

MM was about being a master archer or sharpshooter. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was(and still is) about frontloaded damage and heavy burst.

BM was, well, the beast master. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was(and still is) about a mid-range of burst + a more concistency-focused profile, much based on buffs and power boosts.

[Makaloff]

The new trees can make large portions separated, you can put the old marksman stuff on one side and the old survival dot stuff on the other and let players pick the difference.

What specificly was different? serpent sting? you can take that now. Explosive shot and lock n load? they are in the class tree and available to everyone. black arrow? was it really worth preserving? it was just a dot that only worked on one target, kind of like hunters mark.

I think peoples fantasy of it doesnt match reality, you can practically rebuild the spec and dont bother complaining about all the new stuff that exists now not being survival because the spec would have been updated regardless.
id be fine with BM or marksman getting survivals old tools on a branch on their trees but its simply not worth a spec slot. melee hunter is an awesome concept and one i want to see further developed and improved because its a fun concept, survival on the other hand was thematically non-existant and didnt bring anything new to the table that the other 2 specs didnt already cover.

it was thematically different thought, it was from wotlk all the way to wod. once again, just beacuse you can pick a few talents in the talent tree it doesnt mean it will be the same. MM got extremly watered down thanks to the rework in legion, sure you have stuff you can choose now but that doesnt mean it solves the issue that survival have had since legion, the fact that its meele. I dont want surv tools in my MM tree, i want MM stuff in the MM tree, BM stuff in the BM tree, like it used to.

It might been a interesting concept but it havent worked out, 6 years down the line and blizzard still dont know what to do with the specc, it isnt even clear what its fantasy is, at most its a copy cat BM. Different doesnt always mean its good, old survival had its theme covered with a magic rot dmg dps, MM and BM were nothing like it.

If anything, MSV is the specc that brings nothing to the table and its fantasy is so over the place that nobody knows what its supposed to be, except that you are meele. Its been heavily disliked since its iteration in legion, not to mention, original survival was never a meele specc, it had more tools to get out of meele, sure, but it was never a meele specc. a hunter in meele in vanilla/TBC was a dead hunter.

However it is worth noting that if you atleast had the choice to play ranged/meele in the surv tree that would elevate the infection thats been plaguing the hunter community since legion, beacuse atleast it would give people a choice. im fully aware the playstyle would be different even if RSV was still a thing (and once again, taking RSV stuff onto MM and BM is not viable solution, its ignoring the problems). Blizzard could solve it so easily, yet they double down on the bad decision beacuse they cant admit that MSV is a failure on all levels, the fact that they had to give a broken leggy, borrowed power and uncapped AoE and it still doesnt see more play than MM and BM is showing that people really dont like the specc.

I mean look at the talents for DF for survival, its all over the place with no clear theme, the talents are garbage and it shows blizzard have no clue what to do with the specc. They introduced a talent called "ranger" which increases steady shot and arcane shot dmg by 10%, when are you ever going to pick that talent? this hybrid they are trying isnt working and its pissing off both the MSV and the RSV players.

[bloodmoth13]

What they said was that their intent with the newly announced "Ranger"-talent in the SV tree, is not to make a ranged SV sub-spec as part of SV itself. Very different from what you said.




There was literally no spec fantasy overlap between MM and RSV. In WoD, the last expansion before the rework, MM and RSV did not share a single signature ability or effect. The only common fantasy was the actual core class fantasy of being a ranged weapon fighter. Using that as a basis for your argument of "they were the same..." is like if you were to argue that all mage specs are the same because they all cast spells, just with different colors. Same thing with warlocks.




I mean, feel free to read the OP in this very topic which you're posting in: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-a-modern-spec

I structured/compiled the concept so that it would maintain the core of what was RSV's gameplay up until WoD. There's enough in there to the point where you could pick talents and paths so that your gameplay would be, well, about 90% the same as it was before, just more of it.




Again, look at the concept I've proposed. Do you honestly think all that could be put into MM, while still keeping the core theme of MM itself, the fantasy it promotes of being a sharpshooter? It wouldn't even come close...




Serpent Sting is there yes. Just, it doesn't have any of the interactions and added depth which was available through RSV.

Explosive Shot is in the class tree, but it's been reworked from the core design it held for RSV, into a 30-sec use-on-CD AoE spell, not at all the same as it used to be.

Lock & Load isn't in the class tree. Nor does it's new design interact with anything that was RSV in the past.

Black Arrow, you might not care about the elements of RSV, but many others did/do still. As for it being a ST DoT, again, see the concept in the OP. It's designed so that you could add A LOT more depth to gameplay involving Black Arrow, if you so wish.




Based on the things you've said, either you prefer ignorance, you don't actually know what the gameplay was like/amounted to. Or you simply don't care, and are just here to troll.

In theme(fantasy) old RSV portrayed the idea of a munitions expert and trapper. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was about DoTs, rot-gameplay, concistency.

MM was about being a master archer or sharpshooter. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was(and still is) about frontloaded damage and heavy burst.

BM was, well, the beast master. Mechanically/gameplay-wise, it was(and still is) about a mid-range of burst + a more concistency-focused profile, much based on buffs and power boosts.

Survival: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Marksman: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Beast master: ranged weapon user with a pet.

There was a damn good reason for the rework and pretending there wasnt is ludicrous.

If there were 3 fire mage specs id agree that there was some redundancy and if blizz reworked those extra specs into something different id be fine with that.

If you want to seriously argue that the spec identity overlap didnt exist then explain to me why any of the Rsurvival abilities wouldnt fit with the marksman spec. you cant because there is literally no reason marksman couldnt use any of the survival abilities and thats just facts.

RSV as it existed could be recreated with about 5 talents, specs simply werent that complicated back then and if it doesnt work for marksman slap it on beast mastery since it had an almost 100% overlap with that spec too. I dont think i need to look at your proposal simply based on the fact that there really wasnt all that much to add back into the game, i know the specs that existed back then, they werent that complicated, the best parts of that gameplay can be readded to one of the existing hunter specs. If you had more ideas to add to it the question needs to be asked again whether those ideas need a 4th spec to tack onto or if they could be added to one of the existing specs, and i can say with 100% confidence that they can be added onto one of the existing specs.

You talk about damage profiles like they deserve their own spec but they dont, a branch within an existing spec sure, but not its own spec. If the spec tree doesnt allow some changes in damage profiles then its probably failing at its job. If each spec is pigeonholed into one damage profile in spite of the spec customization then the spec customization simply isnt functioning.

For what its worth i dont think adding serpent sting to the class tree is a great idea and having some survival themed talents in the marksman tree with dots and things would be fine and dandy for me. the left hand side can be heavily focused on pure marksmanship, middle being more generic stuff and the right hand side can have the specialist munitions stuff with poisons and explosives.

Im not against trying to preserve what players loved about the spec, but i just dont believe that its worth its own spec because its entire thematics could easily fit in with one of the existing 'ranged weapon user with pet' specs.

- - - Updated - - -

it was thematically different thought, it was from wotlk all the way to wod. once again, just beacuse you can pick a few talents in the talent tree it doesnt mean it will be the same. MM got extremly watered down thanks to the rework in legion, sure you have stuff you can choose now but that doesnt mean it solves the issue that survival have had since legion, the fact that its meele. I dont want surv tools in my MM tree, i want MM stuff in the MM tree, BM stuff in the BM tree, like it used to.

It might been a interesting concept but it havent worked out, 6 years down the line and blizzard still dont know what to do with the specc, it isnt even clear what its fantasy is, at most its a copy cat BM. Different doesnt always mean its good, old survival had its theme covered with a magic rot dmg dps, MM and BM were nothing like it.

If anything, MSV is the specc that brings nothing to the table and its fantasy is so over the place that nobody knows what its supposed to be, except that you are meele. Its been heavily disliked since its iteration in legion, not to mention, original survival was never a meele specc, it had more tools to get out of meele, sure, but it was never a meele specc. a hunter in meele in vanilla/TBC was a dead hunter.

However it is worth noting that if you atleast had the choice to play ranged/meele in the surv tree that would elevate the infection thats been plaguing the hunter community since legion, beacuse atleast it would give people a choice. im fully aware the playstyle would be different even if RSV was still a thing (and once again, taking RSV stuff onto MM and BM is not viable solution, its ignoring the problems). Blizzard could solve it so easily, yet they double down on the bad decision beacuse they cant admit that MSV is a failure on all levels, the fact that they had to give a broken leggy, borrowed power and uncapped AoE and it still doesnt see more play than MM and BM is showing that people really dont like the specc.

I mean look at the talents for DF for survival, its all over the place with no clear theme, the talents are garbage and it shows blizzard have no clue what to do with the specc. They introduced a talent called "ranger" which increases steady shot and arcane shot dmg by 10%, when are you ever going to pick that talent? this hybrid they are trying isnt working and its pissing off both the MSV and the RSV players.

I dont care that original survival wasnt a melee spec thats irrelevant. original survival wasnt even a functional spec, it wasnt playable as far as i know till WotLK and it got about 5 expansions, one of which it had no development because blizz had already decided they wanted to delete it.

Being a hunter that fights alongside their pet >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ranged weapon user with pet verson 3.

[Rogfaroth]

I dont care that original survival wasnt a melee spec thats irrelevant. original survival wasnt even a functional spec, it wasnt playable as far as i know till WotLK and it got about 5 expansions, one of which it had no development because blizz had already decided they wanted to delete it..

It was very playable in BC, competing with BM at the end while buffing the raid with expose weakness. That aside it's not only that they took away a favorite spec but also the fact that MM has been so extremely boring to play ever since.

[bloodmoth13]

It was very playable in BC, competing with BM at the end while buffing the raid with expose weakness. That aside it's not only that they took away a favorite spec but also the fact that MM has been so extremely boring to play ever since.

Then fix MM instead.

[F Rm]

Survival: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Marksman: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Beast master: ranged weapon user with a pet.

There was a damn good reason for the rework and pretending there wasnt is ludicrous.

If there were 3 fire mage specs id agree that there was some redundancy and if blizz reworked those extra specs into something different id be fine with that.

You must be trolling. Either that, or you have an extremely twisted view of class design. With a massive bias when it comes to the class and spec fantasy of hunters in WoW, what differentiates one thing from another. Your argument there for the hunter specs, that logic could literally be applied to every pure dmg class.

Mage?
Arcane - ranged spellcaster
Fire - ranged spellcaster
Frost - ranged spellcaster

Warlock?
Demonology - ranged spellcaster with a demon
Destruction - ranged spellcaster with a demon
Affliction - ranged spellcaster with a demon

Rogue?
Outlaw(Combat) - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth
Assassination - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth
Subtlety - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth

If you want to seriously argue that the spec identity overlap didnt exist then explain to me why any of the Rsurvival abilities wouldnt fit with the marksman spec. you cant because there is literally no reason marksman couldnt use any of the survival abilities and thats just facts.

RSV as it existed could be recreated with about 5 talents, specs simply werent that complicated back then and if it doesnt work for marksman slap it on beast mastery since it had an almost 100% overlap with that spec too. I dont think i need to look at your proposal simply based on the fact that there really wasnt all that much to add back into the game, i know the specs that existed back then, they werent that complicated, the best parts of that gameplay can be readded to one of the existing hunter specs. If you had more ideas to add to it the question needs to be asked again whether those ideas need a 4th spec to tack onto or if they could be added to one of the existing specs, and i can say with 100% confidence that they can be added onto one of the existing specs.

They wouldn't fit because thematically, MM does not have the same identity or focus. Like I've said before, MM is about sharpshooting, and skilled archery.

RSV was about augmented projectiles, animal venom, explosives, even magically infused shots.

Those were the themes of each spec when it came to fantasy and identity. Talking mechanical differences, MM was about frontloaded damage and burst windows. RSV was about rot gameplay and concistency. That, by any objective measurement, amounts to the literal opposites of one another, while still adhering to a common class fantasy, same as how all mage specs adhere to a common class fantasy of being spellcasters.

What is so difficult to understand about this?

As for your comment about not looking at my proposed concept, it just further highlights your bias against hunter class and spec fantasy. You saying "there wasn't all that much to add back into the game" shows how closed down your mind is. You refuse to accept that like with any other spec, going into Legion, they could've done the same thing with SV as they did to the other ones, further develop it to have a deeper identity.

I'm not saying that you "cant" add those things to the other specs. I'm saying that they should be their own spec because they don't fit, thematically, within either BM or MM. You could, if you wanted to, add fire spells into the arcane spec for mages, but they don't fit thematically in there, so it's best to put them in their own spec.

You talk about damage profiles like they deserve their own spec but they dont, a branch within an existing spec sure, but not its own spec. If the spec tree doesnt allow some changes in damage profiles then its probably failing at its job. If each spec is pigeonholed into one damage profile in spite of the spec customization then the spec customization simply isnt functioning.

For what its worth i dont think adding serpent sting to the class tree is a great idea and having some survival themed talents in the marksman tree with dots and things would be fine and dandy for me. the left hand side can be heavily focused on pure marksmanship, middle being more generic stuff and the right hand side can have the specialist munitions stuff with poisons and explosives.

Im not against trying to preserve what players loved about the spec, but i just dont believe that its worth its own spec because its entire thematics could easily fit in with one of the existing 'ranged weapon user with pet' specs.

You do know that they design all specs in this game to focus on specific damage profiles, don't you? They design each spec to have it's own strengths and weaknesses. IF you were to suddenly include several base profiles in a single spec, it would literally be all strengths, no weaknesses. How it's done can vary, depending on the spec ofc.

I dont care that original survival wasnt a melee spec thats irrelevant. original survival wasnt even a functional spec, it wasnt playable as far as i know till WotLK and it got about 5 expansions, one of which it had no development because blizz had already decided they wanted to delete it.

Being a hunter that fights alongside their pet >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ranged weapon user with pet verson 3.

Not sure what this is meant to highlight, except more of your bias.

1) Survival wasn't even a spec before Cataclysm. Survival in Vanilla/TBC was a talent category designed to provide us with better utility and defensives, and some damage, to increase our survivability in all types of content in the game.

2) In WotLK, it still wasn't an actual core spec with a dedicated core playstyle. They did add several talents(abilities) that were designed to allow you to create a more defined identity for yourself, compared to what you could pick if you went deeper into either MM or BM. But even then, that still isn't what you'd call core playstyles or specializations.

3) See the top of this reply, regarding your comment about "ranged weapon user with pet version 3".

[bloodmoth13]

You must be trolling. Either that, or you have an extremely twisted view of class design. With a massive bias when it comes to the class and spec fantasy of hunters in WoW, what differentiates one thing from another. Your argument there for the hunter specs, that logic could literally be applied to every pure dmg class.

Mage?
Arcane - ranged spellcaster
Fire - ranged spellcaster
Frost - ranged spellcaster

Warlock?
Demonology - ranged spellcaster with a demon
Destruction - ranged spellcaster with a demon
Affliction - ranged spellcaster with a demon

Rogue?
Outlaw(Combat) - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth
Assassination - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth
Subtlety - melee fighter with 2 sticks + stealth




They wouldn't fit because thematically, MM does not have the same identity or focus. Like I've said before, MM is about sharpshooting, and skilled archery.

RSV was about augmented projectiles, animal venom, explosives, even magically infused shots.

Those were the themes of each spec when it came to fantasy and identity. Talking mechanical differences, MM was about frontloaded damage and burst windows. RSV was about rot gameplay and concistency. That, by any objective measurement, amounts to the literal opposites of one another, while still adhering to a common class fantasy, same as how all mage specs adhere to a common class fantasy of being spellcasters.

What is so difficult to understand about this?

As for your comment about not looking at my proposed concept, it just further highlights your bias against hunter class and spec fantasy. You saying "there wasn't all that much to add back into the game" shows how closed down your mind is. You refuse to accept that like with any other spec, going into Legion, they could've done the same thing with SV as they did to the other ones, further develop it to have a deeper identity.

I'm not saying that you "cant" add those things to the other specs. I'm saying that they should be their own spec because they don't fit, thematically, within either BM or MM. You could, if you wanted to, add fire spells into the arcane spec for mages, but they don't fit thematically in there, so it's best to put them in their own spec.

And what makes you think i dont have a problem with rogue? or disc, holy and holy specs? there are a limited number of specs that blizz is willing to put effort into and the more diverse they are with as little overlap as possible the better. Rogues have 3 specs that are all light fighter with poisons. They have done a little work to differentiate them but many of the same arguments apply to them too.

Id even agree that destro and affliction seem superfluous, demo is fine since its the minion master akin to beastmaster but the other two have a thematic overlap in some regards but the display and playstyle is vastly different and MoP did a good job at granting them distinctions.

>RSV was about augmented projectiles, animal venom, explosives, even magically infused shots.
ugh. It wasnt about anything, it was about explosives and venoms and black magic and arcane arrows and procs. none of that made a lick of sense it was a thematic graveyard and i laugh anytime someone says there was a shred of thematic cohesion in that spec. Its the only spec in the game that was culled and it was culled for a damn good reason.
Also acting like marksmen cant use augmented ammo is ludicrous, its such a bad argument its not even worth refuting.

>You refuse to accept that like with any other spec, going into Legion, they could've done the same thing with SV as they did to the other ones, further develop it to have a deeper identity.
They did, they removed the clownshots and renamed it marksman lmao. they changed the spec so damn much you cant recognize it anymore, they already brought it back its just marksman, unfortunately they trimmed the things you were in love with and im sorry about that but its still there!
This is basically what you have to accept, the spec wouldnt BE the same spec even if it wasnt culled, perhaps they would have changed its damage profile and thematically realigned its shots to fit more inline with the nature theme or just have removed the dots altogether. Look at how different many other specs became, culling survival just let the other two specs that overlapped it take the good stuff.

magic school matters a lot for thematic cohesion, acting like giving a marksman a dot is the same as giving a holy priest chaos bolt is such a nonsensical argument. again, there was nothing survival did that marksman or beastmaster couldnt have also done.

[F Rm]

And what makes you think i dont have a problem with rogue? or disc, holy and holy specs? there are a limited number of specs that blizz is willing to put effort into and the more diverse they are with as little overlap as possible the better. Rogues have 3 specs that are all light fighter with poisons. They have done a little work to differentiate them but many of the same arguments apply to them too.

Id even agree that destro and affliction seem superfluous, demo is fine since its the minion master akin to beastmaster but the other two have a thematic overlap in some regards but the display and playstyle is vastly different and MoP did a good job at granting them distinctions.

I mean, good on you I guess, for being concistent in saying that you feel the same way about other pure dmg specs as well. Still though, your bias still shows, as seen below.

This comment of yours is pretty ironic though, considering how they've now gone so far with current SV, to the point where much of its core gameplay and its abilities are borrowed straight from BM, in an attepmt att creating an identity for the spec. They're literally marketing the spec as the "beast companion guy", something that was a frequent stamp of BM back in the days before they came up with MSV.

>RSV was about augmented projectiles, animal venom, explosives, even magically infused shots.
ugh. It wasnt about anything, it was about explosives and venoms and black magic and arcane arrows and procs. none of that made a lick of sense it was a thematic graveyard and i laugh anytime someone says there was a shred of thematic cohesion in that spec. Its the only spec in the game that was culled and it was culled for a damn good reason.
Also acting like marksmen cant use augmented ammo is ludicrous, its such a bad argument its not even worth refuting.

You laugh at it because you don't understand where the cohesion was, or at least, you prefer to ignore the fact. The cohesion, while the spec held abilities focusing on venom, explosives, magic, etc. was in how it all connected to the overarching theme of a munitions expert. It was about augmented projectiles. And as we can see, there are many ways to add augmenting effects to said projectiles.

Note that when I say "munitions expert", I'm considering that definition within the scope of WoW. It's not (necessarily) a 100% reflection of what that would mean in real life. Anyway, my point is once again that there was in fact thematic cohesion within old SV. Everything within fit under the theme of someone who chose to focus on augmented shots/projectiles(or arrows if you so wish, using a bow).

>You refuse to accept that like with any other spec, going into Legion, they could've done the same thing with SV as they did to the other ones, further develop it to have a deeper identity.
They did, they removed the clownshots and renamed it marksman lmao. they changed the spec so damn much you cant recognize it anymore, they already brought it back its just marksman, unfortunately they trimmed the things you were in love with and im sorry about that but its still there!
This is basically what you have to accept, the spec wouldnt BE the same spec even if it wasnt culled, perhaps they would have changed its damage profile and thematically realigned its shots to fit more inline with the nature theme or just have removed the dots altogether. Look at how different many other specs became, culling survival just let the other two specs that overlapped it take the good stuff.

magic school matters a lot for thematic cohesion, acting like giving a marksman a dot is the same as giving a holy priest chaos bolt is such a nonsensical argument. again, there was nothing survival did that marksman or beastmaster couldnt have also done.

Nice attempt at trolling.

As for your comment on what a spec "can or can't do", this makes it seem like you don't actually know what the intent with specializations is, on a core design level, talking design philosophy. Core Specializations in this game are literally meant to portray how you as a character are choosing to focus on a specific part of your class, relying mostly on that part during combat.

I equate the differences between MM and RSV, to those of what can be found in any other pure dmg spec, simply because they all (are meant to) adhere to the same philosophy of focusing on specific parts of the core class fantasy. For the hunter class, and in the case of RSV, that theme was to focus on your arrows/projectiles, rather than perfect aim, or beasts/pets for that matter. That was what each spec focused on, but they were all still a part of the hunter class, and a common class fantasy; a ranged fighter that relied on pets. The difference, and the intent with the design, was in how the specs focused on it/them, and how much.

[Makaloff]

Survival: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Marksman: ranged weapon user with a pet.
Beast master: ranged weapon user with a pet.

There was a damn good reason for the rework and pretending there wasnt is ludicrous.

If there were 3 fire mage specs id agree that there was some redundancy and if blizz reworked those extra specs into something different id be fine with that.

If you want to seriously argue that the spec identity overlap didnt exist then explain to me why any of the Rsurvival abilities wouldnt fit with the marksman spec. you cant because there is literally no reason marksman couldnt use any of the survival abilities and thats just facts.

RSV as it existed could be recreated with about 5 talents, specs simply werent that complicated back then and if it doesnt work for marksman slap it on beast mastery since it had an almost 100% overlap with that spec too. I dont think i need to look at your proposal simply based on the fact that there really wasnt all that much to add back into the game, i know the specs that existed back then, they werent that complicated, the best parts of that gameplay can be readded to one of the existing hunter specs. If you had more ideas to add to it the question needs to be asked again whether those ideas need a 4th spec to tack onto or if they could be added to one of the existing specs, and i can say with 100% confidence that they can be added onto one of the existing specs.

You talk about damage profiles like they deserve their own spec but they dont, a branch within an existing spec sure, but not its own spec. If the spec tree doesnt allow some changes in damage profiles then its probably failing at its job. If each spec is pigeonholed into one damage profile in spite of the spec customization then the spec customization simply isnt functioning.

For what its worth i dont think adding serpent sting to the class tree is a great idea and having some survival themed talents in the marksman tree with dots and things would be fine and dandy for me. the left hand side can be heavily focused on pure marksmanship, middle being more generic stuff and the right hand side can have the specialist munitions stuff with poisons and explosives.

Im not against trying to preserve what players loved about the spec, but i just dont believe that its worth its own spec because its entire thematics could easily fit in with one of the existing 'ranged weapon user with pet' specs.

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I dont care that original survival wasnt a melee spec thats irrelevant. original survival wasnt even a functional spec, it wasnt playable as far as i know till WotLK and it got about 5 expansions, one of which it had no development because blizz had already decided they wanted to delete it.

Being a hunter that fights alongside their pet >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ranged weapon user with pet verson 3.

i rest my case, the fact that you claim survival wasnt even a functioning specc before wotlk shows you dont understand the class and were it came from. Its like saying Arms should be removed and turned into a ranged specc beacuse its too similar to fury. MSV may be unike, but it has no direction what it wants to be and it will forever be a meme specc whos fantasy was based on a meme from vanilla and lack of understanding how the core class+speccs works.

[Bepples]

Lol hi Hanwolo. Your arguments are still just as ludicrous as always, I see.

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ugh. It wasnt about anything, it was about explosives and venoms and black magic and arcane arrows and procs. none of that made a lick of sense it was a thematic graveyard and i laugh anytime someone says there was a shred of thematic cohesion in that spec. Its the only spec in the game that was culled and it was culled for a damn good reason.

Readers, do note how this is part of a broader argument in defence of melee Survival which is widely regarded even by melee-preferring players as perhaps the most thematically confused, dysfunctional, and bankrupt spec of all time; no coherent identity to speak of other than a number of irreconcilable concepts including lifting much of its toolkit straight from BM (so much for "we made it melee to make it unique!").

Hypocrisy is the first word that comes to mind but another should be "projection". I'm going to assume it's Hanwolo speaking because the arguments are the same, verbatim. And one thing Hanwolo absolutely loved was projection. He will accuse you of having all the flaws he himself has and accuse ranged SV of being flawed in all the same ways melee SV is. The intent of projection is generally to distract and keep the opponent on the defensive, but I don't even think it's intentional when it comes to Hanwolo. I think it's so inherent and habitual to his mindset that he can't approach arguments from any other way.

In any case, Survival is widely regarded as the worst talent tree of Dragonflight and they're evidently out of ideas for making melee SV compelling. They literally just added a talent to make its ranged shots do more damage while still refusing to actually give it a ranged weapon, so we're continuing with the trend of SV becoming more and more ranged while Blizzard steadfastly refuses to admit they made a mistake and the design decision of Legion was always a deadend. So we can look forward to Survival being a dysfunctional dumpster fire of a spec for a 4th expansion in a row, and as much as Hanwolo will like to pretend this was actually the case for ranged SV he will be unable to gaslight people who played and experienced it back then.

P.S. If you want another glimpse into the hilarity of Hanwolo's arguments, ask him about Explosive Shot. He insists that, despite explosives being a part of literally every SV iteration from Explosive Trap in classic WoW and despite MM still having it as a talent option, that Explosive Shot was somehow completely unfitting of the Hunter identity. But Wildfire Bomb is fine somehow! Don't ask me to make sense of it; ask him.

[kasuke06]

Nothing interesting or different about ranged survival. Suck it up and play MM

In what way is retail survival a mess/"in a bad state" currently lol? Literally one of the most OP specs for M+ and extremely fun and satisfying to play with tier set bonuses + double legendary, it has very few weaknesses

Nothing new or different about melee surv. You wanna play a partially ranged DoT and pet 2H melee with good cleave? play unholy.

[Bepples]

Nothing new or different about melee surv. You wanna play a partially ranged DoT and pet 2H melee with good cleave? play unholy.

Nah Unholy is different because the pet is a ghoul, not something you tame. Apparently the goal of WoW class design is to appeal to every minor variation and archetype melee players ever want at the expense of ranged fantasies.

[gd8]

Nah Unholy is different because the pet is a ghoul, not something you tame. Apparently the goal of WoW class design is to appeal to every minor variation and archetype melee players ever want at the expense of ranged fantasies.

I'm personally in favor of turning unholy ranged

[Eosia]

Survival wasn't even a spec before Cataclysm. Survival in Vanilla/TBC was a talent category designed to provide us with better utility and defensives, and some damage, to increase our survivability in all types of content in the game.

Back in BC one hunter in the raid, the one with the highest AGI, would go Survival. Their DPS would go down a little in exchange for every physical damage spec getting a buff of 25% of that hunter's AGI as Attack Power every time that hunter crit.

And if you take a look at the Classic trees, most of the talents back then that affected abilities were aimed at the Melee ones and Traps. So you could argue that Survival was aimed more at melee and traps. So the Legion revamp just went back to that concept.

In WotLK, it still wasn't an actual core spec with a dedicated core playstyle. They did add several talents(abilities) that were designed to allow you to create a more defined identity for yourself, compared to what you could pick if you went deeper into either MM or BM. But even then, that still isn't what you'd call core playstyles or specializations.

The problem with this statement is that it completely ignores the fact that Wrath not only saw a major philosophy change in class design, but also that there were the usual OP spec, a new stat, etc. that made people choose BM or MM over Survival regardless of any "core play style". This was actually when it started transforming into "Marksman, but with Magic Damage". The other confound in this was the fact that Survival's 41pt Talent, Explosive Shot, was not implemented correctly for a good chunk of the expansion. It was supposed to stack so if you landed one and it had 2 charges left when a second one landed, it would reset to 3 instead of 5. IT also got hit pretty hard with the Nerf Bat in Patch 3.1 with its base damage getting a 10% reduction and its Attack Power scaling reduced by 12.5%.

In Wrath they got rid of all the unique class buffs for groups. This was the heavy-handed start to "Bring the Player, Not the Class" which is why you barely saw any Survival hunters during the expansion since Expose Weakness was no longer a raid-wide buff but only for the hunter themselves. So there was no real reason to gimp your damage like there had been in Burning Crusade because Expose Weakness' buff for the raid would cause an overall damage increase where it was a loss in Wrath.

Most of us were playing 40/21/0 BM Hunters until that got nerfed because of PvP Crybabies whining about us having two Bestial Wrath uses every two minutes. When that happened, we switched to Marksman because it had great mobility with Aimed Shot no longer requiring you to stand still and such. Couple that with the Armor Penetration stat that most of us capped out by 3.3, there was no reason to play any other spec since the magic damage of Survival was not affected by ArP whereas the MM physical damage was.

[Bepples]

And if you take a look at the Classic trees, most of the talents back then that affected abilities were aimed at the Melee ones and Traps. So you could argue that Survival was aimed more at melee and traps. So the Legion revamp just went back to that concept.

The spec was still a Hunter and therefore had a ranged weapon it intended to use most of the time. The melee buffs were for situational usage. So the paradigm was entirely different to modern SV which lacks a ranged weapon and prefers to stick to melee for maximum damage. Saying that melee SV is representative of SV in Classic/BC has always been extremely incorrect and dishonest.

The problem with this statement is that it completely ignores the fact that Wrath not only saw a major philosophy change in class design, but also that there were the usual OP spec, a new stat, etc. that made people choose BM or MM over Survival regardless of any "core play style". This was actually when it started transforming into "Marksman, but with Magic Damage". The other confound in this was the fact that Survival's 41pt Talent, Explosive Shot, was not implemented correctly for a good chunk of the expansion. It was supposed to stack so if you landed one and it had 2 charges left when a second one landed, it would reset to 3 instead of 5. IT also got hit pretty hard with the Nerf Bat in Patch 3.1 with its base damage getting a 10% reduction and its Attack Power scaling reduced by 12.5%.

In Wrath they got rid of all the unique class buffs for groups. This was the heavy-handed start to "Bring the Player, Not the Class" which is why you barely saw any Survival hunters during the expansion since Expose Weakness was no longer a raid-wide buff but only for the hunter themselves. So there was no real reason to gimp your damage like there had been in Burning Crusade because Expose Weakness' buff for the raid would cause an overall damage increase where it was a loss in Wrath.

Most of us were playing 40/21/0 BM Hunters until that got nerfed because of PvP Crybabies whining about us having two Bestial Wrath uses every two minutes. When that happened, we switched to Marksman because it had great mobility with Aimed Shot no longer requiring you to stand still and such. Couple that with the Armor Penetration stat that most of us capped out by 3.3, there was no reason to play any other spec since the magic damage of Survival was not affected by ArP whereas the MM physical damage was.

This is mostly incorrect and perhaps even revisionist. It seems you're remembering a few details here and there correctly but your general understanding of SV's status in that expansion is wrong.

It's true that when the expansion launched BM was king due to being able to take Readiness and double up on Bestial Wraths. SV was extremely strong when 3.0 dropped but it got nerfed a couple times so it became mediocre but still relatively popular. The reason it got nerfed was because the original Explosive Shot actually did AoE damage on top of its single target. Having that much passive cleave back then was unheard of. So they nerfed it but shortly into WotLK they buffed Explosive Shot again and removed the AoE from it. The same patch (3.0.8) heavily nerfed BM and since MM hadn't really scaled to greatness yet most raiders actually started going SV.

Survival in 3.1 didn't just get a lateral nerf. It saw quite a bit of tweaking and updating; most significantly it got Black Arrow so it no longer had to rely on trap dancing to proc Lock and Load. Gaining a whole new very powerful DoT that also at the time increased your damage to the target by 6% was a major buff and the spec was actually in a better position after 3.1, not the worst one. Survival was the spec of choice for much of the cutting edge Ulduar progression. You can see the Hunter is SV in this video of Ensidia's world first Mimiron kill:



SV remained a popular spec option throughout WotLK. MM did later surpass it in raw DPS starting in ToC and especially in ICC because of the armour penetration matter you described. However there were still plenty of people playing SV.

P.S. The Explosive Shot thing you described wasn't a bug. It was just how DoTs worked back then; new applications would overwrite previous applications and you would lose the remaining ticks. Pandemic was the exception, not the norm. SV Hunters simply waited 0.5 secs between launching Explosive Shots.

P.P.S. This line "This was actually when it started transforming into "Marksman, but with Magic Damage"." in particular is disingenuous. It implies that it was different/unique beforehand and turned into an MM clone later. In reality before WotLK there was no gameplay difference between the specs whatsoever. All three had the same playstyle. The only difference was that BM got +20% haste baked in. Also the whole "Marksman but with magic damage" line itself relies on the tired old shit take that any spec that uses a ranged weapon is automatically the same thing. That sort of overgeneralisation is never applied to other pure DPS classes so it's hypocritical and facetious when it gets applied to Hunters.