so, no ranged survival :(

[F Rm]

the point being that I feel the intention from Blizzard was to make that spec a more melee based spec from the get go

PS. I'm not intending for this to come out as snarky or insulting. I just intend for it to highlight what the purpose of the class was back in the beginning.

Well, first off, it wasn't a spec at all back then. No class actually had defined Core Specializations prior to Cataclysm. We had the baseline core.

What we also had were Talent Categories(Like what we have today as well. Those today serve as extensions to our Core Specs) that focused on different parts of the main features of each different class.

For Hunters, it was:

Beast Mastery - This talent category focused on everything that involved the use of pets and other elements focusing on "bestiality".

Marksmanship - This talent category focused solely on the use of your ranged weapon.

Survival - This talent category wasn't purely focusing on 1 specific element/aspect of the class design. This category held essentially all talents that had a focus on increasing our survivability. That was done by improved tracking(damage), improved traps, straight up defensive talents, as well as talents that focused on better melee-based utility. With the final talent being Wyvern Sting, which was technically a ranged ability but still, did not fit into the MM category as it's main purpose was crowd control, meaning something designed around survivability as well.


Now, I assume that you're referring to the design we had prior to Survival, that one being known as Outdoorsmanship?
It's true that when the talent category was called that, the talents contained within it each held more of a focus on melee-based elements. However, when they changed it into what later became Survival, a lot of those former talents were essentially merged together, with many more elements being added into the category to complement it.

Basically, the first iterations were very lackluster and weren't worth much of a damn, compared to other talent choices at the time.

What the actual intention the devs had for the early design of the talent category in question, we don't know. We can only go on what was there and how it affected gameplay. And no matter what either of the different categories held in terms of talents and mechanics, none of it took away from what the base class was designed to do. The base class was intended to be played as a ranged fighter, primarily relying on the use of a ranged weapon when dealing damage to enemies, in combination with being aided by a loyal companion/a pet. Anything outside of that was, for the most, situational and not as defining in terms of class gameplay.

---

In short, it wasn't until we got actual Core Specializations in Cataclysm(and even more so, going into Legion) where it was intended for us to opt into unique playstyles that differed from that of the others.
If you(read: anyone) did not like the intended design of classes prior to Legion, that's entirely on you(read: the individual). But it was the same for all pure damage-based classes back then; for all classes that held multiple specs with the same core foundation.

but due to hunter being one of the last classes to have their spec finished I feel Blizzard rushed it out the door before release, let's be honest vanilla WoW was very unfinished at launch and that's not distorted memory. Although it might be more speculation. But since it was such a weird mish-mash of abilities it was hard to find it a real reason to go full survival in the early days.

It was indeed.

The devs originally intended for the hunter class to have the resource known as Focus. They just did not get it to a decent enough state in time so they had to put it on hold in favor of getting the class ready for launch. This is why we got Mana instead.
Many abilities scaling off spell power also came as a result of this. Even though the devs had no intention of making the class into a type of magic user. This part being "admitted" by the original class developer himself.

And like I mentioned above, the original tree/category known as Outdoorsmanship was very lackluster in it's design. Many talents were very underwhelming and did not come even close in performance to that of many others.

But despite this, as I also mentioned further up, even with the talents of this original tree being designed better, it wouldn't have erased what the baseline core meant for the class to be like. And that, still, was a ranged weapon-user who also relied on pets.

You said it yourself Survival was mainly for PVP where you would get stuck in melee for some time, hence, melee spec. Or more importantly 'surviving melee' spec

They did not specifically design the category for PvP purposes. They designed it for you to focus on if you often engaged in content where it would be better for you to focus on survivability over for example stronger pets or being fully optimal with your ranged weapon.

What players decided to use it for, is known as "method of playing". This doesn't necessarily line up with what the "intended design" means for us to do.

In later days before the move to melee, survival became more of a utility spec still keeping with enhancing traps up until Cataclysm, with added crowd control but now with with more emphasis on DoT's when serpent sting was taken away from MM and given to Survival, I remember talents like toxicology and Serpent Spread that built on this. Once again Survival looking for identity by taking away from other specs and trying to make it's own. But keeping with survival traps were still a prominent thing for survival during Cataclysm with talents like Lock and Load and T.N.T and Resourcefulness. My memory of WoD is a bit hazy though as I kind of stopped plying my hunter alt during this time as a I didn't like the state of Hunters in WoD. So I cannot express any facts there.

Serpent Sting was available to all specs of the Hunter class up until WoD. Talents like Toxicology and Serpent Spread came waaay before that expansion.

It was also in WoD where they fully removed the ability itself and incorporated it's design and functionality into Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot as a passive. The Serpent Spread-talent was essentially "merged" together with Serpent Sting for the purpose.

In short, Survival got it's identity defined going into WotLK where they added DoT-based abilities and talents that were exclusive to the category.
What they did going into Cata, was essentially just picking a few of those former category-based elements and turning them into a defined choice for us to make. A choice inaccessible to you if you picked one of the other two instead.

These choices are what we call "Core Specializations". These are separate elements to that of the talent trees/categories themselves.

Wait, you saying that Survival has no identity? Compared to the other specs its the most identifiable one. And more identifiable than the old survival spec was compared to BM and MM back them, right now its the biggest stand out of all the hunter specs because its the only one that doesn't use a ranged weapon.

I think he meant that SV currently lacks a strong core which everything else revolves around. The intent going into Legion was to make that core be the focus on melee-combat but, since then, they have moved away from that a lot.

Since then, they have added in abilities like a Bomb you throw at enemies. They've added in an animated crossbow that shoots a poisoned dart. And, they have taken several former signature-abilities and effects from BM and copied them over to current SV with just minor changes. This all essentially makes it into a melee-version of BM. But with so little of it's core design actually focusing on melee, yeah...

I mentioned that later hunters struggled to find identity, that's an opinion not faulty memory, or maybe a bit of both. I played survival for most part of cata, probably the last time I even played survival too until BfA. MoP I played survival but moved away later on. If in WoD they miraculously found a balance and made hunters unique I obviously didn't see it because I hated Hunters a whole in WoD. But be free to let me know

And if you loved Survival and felt different that was great, but as an OPINION, I thought pre-Legion, Survival hunters lacked depth. Hell Survival hunters right now still feel like they lack depth, but at least they have their own identity now.

The only thing you can compare between the Core Specializations we had during MoP and WoD was the actual Core Specs themselves. Talents weren't for the most exclusive to individual specs at the time so...no point in even bringing those up.

And if you compared the Core of each spec, they were different. They were designed for different types of gameplay.

Ofc they weren't as different/unique as what we can find today. That wasn't the intent back then, and it's not fair to judge them by today's standards either.

My point here is that if they had actually done to Survival what they did to all other specs going into Legion, no one would've batted an eye. There wouldn't have been any discussion on whether SV was too similar to MM or BM for that matter.
Now, this part is hypothetical since they never showed us any design for (R)SV that was suitable for Legion, we have nothing there to go on but history.

But my argument here isn't about what the specs were like back then. It also isn't about what the specs are like today.
My argument is that, if they had given (R)SV the same treatment as the other specs got, going into Legion, then it would've had no problem fulfilling it's own fantasy and niche while still being synonymous with the class as a whole.

You're ofc free to judge for yourself whether that's true or not, based on history alone.
But before doing so, feel free to check out this link below. I made that concept with the intention to fit the past design of RSV into the modern game, where we also have the added philosophy of "defined spec identity".

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...anged-Survival

Would you say that a spec with such a design would play different from that of BM/MM?

[Bepples]

You're quite right my mistake I was thinking of MoP where each spec got two whole special spec buttons and merely the entire rest of the kit was identical. How silly of me.
(But Mumma Tom said survival and BM had to share cobra shot, not MM though he gets chimaera shot because he's a special boy)

It's not just a matter of different spells. By this logic Arms and Fury are more or less identical right now. It's the special abilities combined with the passive characteristics that made them different playstyles. As an MM Hunter you weren't worrying about Explosive Shot, Lock and Load, Black Arrow, Serpent Spread, and Trap Mastery. As an SV Hunter you weren't worrying about Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Careful Aim, and Master Marksman.

There was also an expansion between MoP and their spastic Legion class design changes where they diverged even further. Within WoD the two specs SV and MM shared literally two abilities (counting Cobra Shot and Steady Shot as the same ability). Everything else about the specs was different.

Besides, if we are going to talk about the literal definition of functionality, that's where the distinction is most evident: MM was focused on burst, particularly for priority adds, while SV was the sustained ST/AoE spec. It's more or less exactly the functional distinction between Affliction and Destruction.

But you often do. In many of your posts you're talking for other hunters. If you always just gave your own opinion then it would be fine, but you often try to speak for others.

Specific examples or GTFO. I couldn't care less about your attempt to pivot here. I specifically said I was talking about people like me and that's that.

I've never claimed that SV was more fun for every Hunter or even most Hunters. I am going to claim it was more fun for some Hunters, though; enough to keep the spec lively until Blizzard killed it off.

The only positive claim anyone here made about the general Hunter attitude towards the old ranged specs was Doffen when he claimed that most Hunters did not like ranged SV. Do you want to go pester him about how he could possibly know this?

How do you know that people didn't play the spec because it was just better?

Because it often wasn't better.

As we can see from tiers like ToT, SoO, and BrF, even when ranged SV was not the best spec it still had plenty of people playing it. In those tiers there was no pressure to play SV and nothing else because BM was better in all those instances. Given that there was no meaningful differences in difficulty between the specs at that point, it's pretty safe to assume that people were sticking to SV because they liked it more.

The only tier where ranged SV could actually be called abandoned was HFC, and that's most likely due to the fact that you couldn't get into raiding at all if you were playing it.

With this graph for example you insinuated that Survival was more popular because it was more fun than MM. But how do you know that? It might as well been more popular because it was simply better in performance.

No, I didn't. That's you trying to build a strawman argument because you're a dishonest person. I was responding to the specific claim that its representation was low in Highmaul.

You are twisting the data to fit your agenda and nobody is going to take you seriously if you do that.

And you are posting strawman argument after strawman argument. Weak and dishonest just like 100% of your arguments on the Hunter subforums. You are never posting in good faith when you talk about Hunters.

when BM had 80% of the hunter parses in BrF or when MM had the same in HfC

It really wasn't the same. You still had a decent amount of people playing MM and SV in HFC even though most played BM. In HFC, there were next to no parses for either BM or SV.

So if both Survival and BM was so fun and so close in performance, why did 80% play BM then or why did Survival lose 80% of all the parses from HM if Survival was "that fun".

... because BM was notably better in BRF? We've been over this.

If Survival were so unfun, which was your original claim, why did more people play it in SoO v.s. BM when BM did more damage? You still haven't answered this.

You said it yourself Survival was mainly for PVP where you would get stuck in melee for some time, hence, melee spec. Or more importantly 'surviving melee' spec

No, that did not make it a melee spec because it was still only intended to use melee situationally just like the other two specs. It was also given very good tools for getting back to ranged and that's where most of its PvP appeal came from. This really isn't comparable to modern Survival, which is thoroughly a melee spec that is meant to stick to 0-5 yards as much as possible in most situations, no matter how much you want it to be comparable.

In later days before the move to melee, survival became more of a utility spec still keeping with enhancing traps up until Cataclysm, with added crowd control but now with with more emphasis on DoT's when serpent sting was taken away from MM and given to Survival, I remember talents like toxicology and Serpent Spread that built on this. Once again Survival looking for identity by taking away from other specs and trying to make it's own.

The only reason Serpent Sting was originally an MM thing was because literally every single ranged ability we had was classified as Marksmanship. Serpent Sting never had any particularly strong interaction with MM; they added a Chimera Shot interaction but it was entirely passive. The Serpent Sting interaction with Survival actually goes back into WotLK. When they added Explosive Shot to SV those "special projectile" type abilities fit SV a lot better, especially since it had Wyvern Sting from all the way back in 1.7. If you're concerned about SV stealing MM stuff, wait till you hear about MM getting Readiness from SV in WotLK, or how Sniper Training was originally an SV thing.

The utility and trapping stuff lasted all the way until the end. Originally this stuff was SV's entire focus. That's fine when you have a spec philosophy where not every spec has to be raid viable and you would change specs for different areas of the game, but when they wanted specs like SV to be independent damage specs they needed to expand their identity. What SV became in WotLK onward was the natural result of that.

Wait, you saying that Survival has no identity? Compared to the other specs its the most identifiable one. And more identifiable than the old survival spec was compared to BM and MM back them, right now its the biggest stand out of all the hunter specs because its the only one that doesn't use a ranged weapon.

Please go ahead and tell us all what SV's cohesive identity is, then. Be sure to pay special attention in explaining how Serpent Sting and Wildfire Bomb fit neatly with the melee skirmisher part of the spec expressed by Raptor Strike and Carve, or how either of those aspects of the spec works with the beast mastery parts of the spec in Kill Command and Coordinated Assault. This should be interesting.

All you're demonstrating here is that the spec being melee is entirely a tokenistic difference to make it different from the other specs without any care for the functionality implications of the spec or how it improves on the spec's identity.

I have been playing a hunter (as an alt mainly) since 2006, I have seen a whirlwind of changes to this class and trust me I have my issues with hunter right now, and survival surprisingly isn't one of them, could it better, hell yes! I don't think survival is perfect, there's room for growth, but I haven't had this much fun playing a hunter spec since Cataclysm. Hunters have been dead to me since MoP, thats personal opinion.

Cool story, I don't care. If this is all true then it must just be really bad memory that's the problem here.

P.S. the key and telling words here are "as an alt mainly". That means more to me than you think it does.

at least they have their own identity now.

They don't. They have a confused mess of a toolkit with about 3 different minor identities competing for prominence; one of which is "BM hunter but a bit different" which happens to be the one tons of SV Hunters lean on a lot when talking about what the spec's all about.

They had their own identity when SV was a ranged spec no matter how much you fail to understand it.

[Eapoe]

It's not just a matter of different spells. By this logic Arms and Fury are more or less identical right now. It's the special abilities combined with the passive characteristics that made them different playstyles. As an MM Hunter you weren't worrying about Explosive Shot, Lock and Load, Black Arrow, Serpent Spread, and Trap Mastery. As an SV Hunter you weren't worrying about Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Careful Aim, and Master Marksman.

There was also an expansion between MoP and their spastic Legion class design changes where they diverged even further. Within WoD the two specs SV and MM shared literally two abilities (counting Cobra Shot and Steady Shot as the same ability). Everything else about the specs was different.

Besides, if we are going to talk about the literal definition of functionality, that's where the distinction is most evident: MM was focused on burst, particularly for priority adds, while SV was the sustained ST/AoE spec. It's more or less exactly the functional distinction between Affliction and Destruction.



Specific examples or GTFO. I couldn't care less about your attempt to pivot here. I specifically said I was talking about people like me and that's that.

I've never claimed that SV was more fun for every Hunter or even most Hunters. I am going to claim it was more fun for some Hunters, though; enough to keep the spec lively until Blizzard killed it off.

The only positive claim anyone here made about the general Hunter attitude towards the old ranged specs was Doffen when he claimed that most Hunters did not like ranged SV. Do you want to go pester him about how he could possibly know this?



Because it often wasn't better.

As we can see from tiers like ToT, SoO, and BrF, even when ranged SV was not the best spec it still had plenty of people playing it. In those tiers there was no pressure to play SV and nothing else because BM was better in all those instances. Given that there was no meaningful differences in difficulty between the specs at that point, it's pretty safe to assume that people were sticking to SV because they liked it more.

The only tier where ranged SV could actually be called abandoned was HFC, and that's most likely due to the fact that you couldn't get into raiding at all if you were playing it.



No, I didn't. That's you trying to build a strawman argument because you're a dishonest person. I was responding to the specific claim that its representation was low in Highmaul.



And you are posting strawman argument after strawman argument. Weak and dishonest just like 100% of your arguments on the Hunter subforums. You are never posting in good faith when you talk about Hunters.



It really wasn't the same. You still had a decent amount of people playing MM and SV in HFC even though most played BM. In HFC, there were next to no parses for either BM or SV.




... because BM was notably better in BRF? We've been over this.

If Survival were so unfun, which was your original claim, why did more people play it in SoO v.s. BM when BM did more damage? You still haven't answered this.



No, that did not make it a melee spec because it was still only intended to use melee situationally just like the other two specs. It was also given very good tools for getting back to ranged and that's where most of its PvP appeal came from. This really isn't comparable to modern Survival, which is thoroughly a melee spec that is meant to stick to 0-5 yards as much as possible in most situations, no matter how much you want it to be comparable.




The only reason Serpent Sting was originally an MM thing was because literally every single ranged ability we had was classified as Marksmanship. Serpent Sting never had any particularly strong interaction with MM; they added a Chimera Shot interaction but it was entirely passive. The Serpent Sting interaction with Survival actually goes back into WotLK. When they added Explosive Shot to SV those "special projectile" type abilities fit SV a lot better, especially since it had Wyvern Sting from all the way back in 1.7. If you're concerned about SV stealing MM stuff, wait till you hear about MM getting Readiness from SV in WotLK, or how Sniper Training was originally an SV thing.

The utility and trapping stuff lasted all the way until the end. Originally this stuff was SV's entire focus. That's fine when you have a spec philosophy where not every spec has to be raid viable and you would change specs for different areas of the game, but when they wanted specs like SV to be independent damage specs they needed to expand their identity. What SV became in WotLK onward was the natural result of that.



Please go ahead and tell us all what SV's cohesive identity is, then. Be sure to pay special attention in explaining how Serpent Sting and Wildfire Bomb fit neatly with the melee skirmisher part of the spec expressed by Raptor Strike and Carve, or how either of those aspects of the spec works with the beast mastery parts of the spec in Kill Command and Coordinated Assault. This should be interesting.

All you're demonstrating here is that the spec being melee is entirely a tokenistic difference to make it different from the other specs without any care for the functionality implications of the spec or how it improves on the spec's identity.



Cool story, I don't care. If this is all true then it must just be really bad memory that's the problem here.

P.S. the key and telling words here are "as an alt mainly". That means more to me than you think it does.



They don't. They have a confused mess of a toolkit with about 3 different minor identities competing for prominence; one of which is "BM hunter but a bit different" which happens to be the one tons of SV Hunters lean on a lot when talking about what the spec's all about.

They had their own identity when SV was a ranged spec no matter how much you fail to understand it.

Just to the first part of your post, I take issue with this as you keep making this faulty argument. Every time someone says the specs played the same (well, maybe not every time because people could make the same mistakes as you are for you topics) they are stating they played almost the exact same. As in, button press priority, resource management the exact same, and CDs. Hell, for the exception of 1 button difference they were almost interchangeable and required almost the exact same amount of keybinds that you used in almost the exact same order. People aren’t talking about identity. Anyone can see they have different ability styles, but that doesn’t change that you could literally change from SV to BM to MM and worry about 1 different button to hit in their rotation.
The 2nd part is Kaver nitpicking your wording. Multiple posts of yours you state “SV is more fun.” You’re now trying to correct that by stating people like you, which is fine, but realize that Kaver is arguing a technicality, but even so he isn’t wrong to what you stated.
BRF was released Feb 3rd. Going by Warcraftlogs, SV had 66k parses on for that ending week with MM only having just under 15k, and BM a whopping 2.1k. Judging from those parses it’s just as easy for anyone to say people played it because it was the better spec over how popular or liked it was, compared to your argument of it being good and fun.
SV identity right now? Latent poison for a survivalist to bring down bigger prey, bombs and traps from using things found in the elements as well as just being resourceful, hunting with a pet (which actually has more to do with Hunter core identity in the link you always provide over the range weapon). SV moves more from Rambo shooting explosive arrows to more Dutch from Predator surviving in the wilderness.
Apart from this post I’m responding to, one of your major issues in all of your arguments is popularity of a spec. You use HFC a lot right now and discuss how it was bottom of the barrel below the tanks and that hurt it’s popularity, but you never consider how it’s popularity is hurt right now from close to the same issues. All you care about is popularity because it’s not rdps now. Even if someone points out the possibility of it not being as popular as it once was due to the fact of the stigma of it going melee, it’s extremely low damage compared to it’s other 2 specs, it’s low utility and damage to other melee, you go on a tirade to twist that into suiting your needs. You never once admit those could be issues hurting it’s popularity and viability, but you jump on it losing popularity because of its damage in HFC.
No, I’m not arguing it was viable then, I’m simply pointing out you can’t use an argument affecting popularity of something and then dismiss the same argument thrown back at you. While it’s not below tanks, it’s not much higher, while being well below the rdps specs.

[Appelgren]

Good! Melee survival is one of the most fun specs ever in world of warcraft. Play MM or BM if you want ranged!

[Dadwen]

Or hunter since it's also melee, ya know

with any luck much not longer, seems they keep making more of it ranged so at this rate.

*plus side it seems the only place MSV is used is PVP so that also means it will keep getting nerfed to oblivion.

[Appelgren]

with any luck much not longer, seems they keep making more of it ranged so at this rate.

*plus side it seems the only place MSV is used is PVP so that also means it will keep getting nerfed to oblivion.

I hope they keep melee survival. There is literally no point in having 3 specs doing the exact same type of gameplay with minor variations.
Like mage or rogue for instance. No major gameplay-differences other than they are switching whats better than the other for every other season.

I would enjoy if a class had different specs like druid for instance. Where you can actively choose to be melee, ranged or healer/tank.
It would be better for the game for sure.

Hunter already have 2 ranged specs and a third would just be retarded... there is a reason they changed it...

I wouldnt mind if mage changed arcane to some sort of healing-spec or rogue changing one of the specs to tank.

[Dadwen]

I hope they keep melee survival. There is literally no point in having 3 specs doing the exact same type of gameplay with minor variations.
Like mage or rogue for instance. No major gameplay-differences other than they are switching whats better than the other for every other season.

I would enjoy if a class had different specs like druid for instance. Where you can actively choose to be melee, ranged or healer/tank.
It would be better for the game for sure.

Hunter already have 2 ranged specs and a third would just be retarded... there is a reason they changed it...

I wouldnt mind if mage changed arcane to some sort of healing-spec or rogue changing one of the specs to tank.

It's retarded to make a spec for people that don't play hunter classes (ion's own words) and retarded to change a spec that's been around this long with people playing it for 10+ Years, that's retarded.

Reason they changed it they're dumb-asses hence the un-pruning and such they are having to work on now.

[Appelgren]

It's retarded to make a spec for people that don't play hunter classes (ion's own words) and retarded to change a spec that's been around this long with people playing it for 10+ Years, that's retarded.

Reason they changed it they're dumb-asses hence the un-pruning and such they are having to work on now.

Agree to disagree Also.. gimme the link where Ion says survival is retarded. Ill wait here!

[Dadwen]

Agree to disagree Also.. gimme the link where Ion says survival is retarded. Ill wait here!

I said a he was making a spec for people that don't normally place the hunter class, reading issues much...
I said it was "retarded to make a hunter spec for people that don't play hunters and retarded to change the spec that's been around that many years (normally don't use that word but you started it so I figured it would describe best the term you were looking for.)

[sam86]

didn't we agree that blizz wanted hunters to be melee since classic, it just took them 14 years to notice they were - gasp - not melee!
i wonder if they will noticed water is wet or not

[Dadwen]

Bro you said that Ion said it was retarded don't knock his reading issues since he read it just fine.

right he typed that in my post durp, wow I thought I just typed that. "it's retarded to make a spec for people that don't play hunters (and it was Ion's own words that he was making a spec for people that didn't normally play the hunter class seems you don't have any obvious comprehension skills ). *guess I gave too much credit for people to have more than 2 fucking IQ points an know the conversion that is going on.

[Devilyaki]

I hope they keep melee survival. There is literally no point in having 3 specs doing the exact same type of gameplay with minor variations.
Like mage or rogue for instance. No major gameplay-differences other than they are switching whats better than the other for every other season.

I would enjoy if a class had different specs like druid for instance. Where you can actively choose to be melee, ranged or healer/tank.
It would be better for the game for sure.

Hunter already have 2 ranged specs and a third would just be retarded... there is a reason they changed it...

I wouldnt mind if mage changed arcane to some sort of healing-spec or rogue changing one of the specs to tank.

Always so stupid, ''it has two range and third would be stupid''. So by that regards, mages, warlocks, and priest need a melee, rogues, warriors, monks, DK need range?

[F Rm]

Just to the first part of your post, I take issue with this as you keep making this faulty argument. Every time someone says the specs played the same (well, maybe not every time because people could make the same mistakes as you are for you topics) they are stating they played almost the exact same. As in, button press priority, resource management the exact same, and CDs. Hell, for the exception of 1 button difference they were almost interchangeable and required almost the exact same amount of keybinds that you used in almost the exact same order. People aren’t talking about identity. Anyone can see they have different ability styles, but that doesn’t change that you could literally change from SV to BM to MM and worry about 1 different button to hit in their rotation.

Are you actually arguing spec identity and spec variation based on how many different buttons on your keyboard you can/could assign abilities to with each spec chosen?

Also, no, it wasn't just one button.

And, as for what you referred to where others are saying that they "played almost the exact same"...
Like above, no they did not.

BM was(and is today) designed around the idea of CD management and empowering pets/pets empowering yourself.

MM was/is designed around strong burst potential and large instant damage-based attacks(some with a cast time). Again, especially today.

SV/RSV was designed around abilities that dealt damage over time(DoTs). It relied more than the other specs did on certain elements of RNG. Strong burst or heavy reliance on passive empowerments or even pets were never signature features for the spec.


How can you/anyone possibly say that those 3 variations are the same? I mean yeah sure, you can ofc say it, but it doesn't make any sense to do so.

BRF was released Feb 3rd. Going by Warcraftlogs, SV had 66k parses on for that ending week with MM only having just under 15k, and BM a whopping 2.1k. Judging from those parses it’s just as easy for anyone to say people played it because it was the better spec over how popular or liked it was, compared to your argument of it being good and fun.

The point he is/was making is that even during periods where SV wasn't the top performing hunter spec, like the ones he mentioned earlier, it was still decent in terms of representation.
The one exception being that of HFC. This was also the time where they literally destroyed the specs performance, unlike anything ever seen since before we actually got dedicated Core Specializations.

And yes, during Highmaul/early WoD, RSV had an insane amount of representation, much due to it's potential level of performance for certain encounters.
He also pointed out that RSV wasn't the top performing spec for all encounters at the time(not even the top Hunter spec). So unlike in HFC where no matter what encounter you went up against, it would not make sense to do so as a SV hunter. But in Highmaul or even BrF, all three specs were perfectly viable.

Apart from this post I’m responding to, one of your major issues in all of your arguments is popularity of a spec. You use HFC a lot right now and discuss how it was bottom of the barrel below the tanks and that hurt it’s popularity, but you never consider how it’s popularity is hurt right now from close to the same issues.

Even if someone points out the possibility of it not being as popular as it once was due to the fact of the stigma of it going melee, it’s extremely low damage compared to it’s other 2 specs, it’s low utility and damage to other melee, you go on a tirade to twist that into suiting your needs. You never once admit those could be issues hurting it’s popularity and viability, but you jump on it losing popularity because of its damage in HFC.
No, I’m not arguing it was viable then, I’m simply pointing out you can’t use an argument affecting popularity of something and then dismiss the same argument thrown back at you. While it’s not below tanks, it’s not much higher, while being well below the rdps specs.

Current SV(incl both the Legion version and the one we have now in BfA) have on several occasions been the top performing hunter spec. Despite this, it still wasn't/isn't desired by a lot of players.
It also does not have the same issues as RSV did during HFC. Not even close.

Other than that, I do believe that he has pointed out multiple times that the fact of the spec being turned into a melee spec has had an EXTREME impact on it's representation in e.g. content in general.

In PvE, it has pretty much the same utility as the other Hunter spec do.
The only big difference from that of the other hunter specs, is that it's a melee-spec. There's a stigma of it going melee? You damn right there is.

The above are guaranteed reasons for why it's not being played as much.

It has been mentioned by Ion himself that "most hunters play one because they want to be ranged".

I hope they keep melee survival. There is literally no point in having 3 specs doing the exact same type of gameplay with minor variations.
Like mage or rogue for instance. No major gameplay-differences other than they are switching whats better than the other for every other season.

I would enjoy if a class had different specs like druid for instance. Where you can actively choose to be melee, ranged or healer/tank.
It would be better for the game for sure.

Hunter already have 2 ranged specs and a third would just be retarded... there is a reason they changed it...

I wouldnt mind if mage changed arcane to some sort of healing-spec or rogue changing one of the specs to tank.

You have your opinion ofc.

But objectively? Not everyone wants classes that are only designed with hybrid gameplay-options in mind.

Agree to disagree Also.. gimme the link where Ion says survival is retarded. Ill wait here!

Bro you said that Ion said it was retarded don't knock his reading issues since he read it just fine.

At least try to think for yourselves...

[PalliesThrowStuff]

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.



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.



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.



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.



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



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"?



lol



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



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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??



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.




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.



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.



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.



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.

Such a big post and so many things to individually quote and maintain and I don't want to mess with all of it.

I love Survival as a Polearm based melee because it's the only melee spec in the game that makes me feel like I'm using a spear with unique weapon characteristics to itself, similar to what you are saying about bows/guns/crossbows. Hunter is the right class for this role, because a Spear is as much a Hunting weapon as a gun or a bow, and many civilizations have used them as their first weapons of any kind, used to hunt with, be that ambush/melee style, or thrown at medium range.

I made my Survival Hunter as the very first toon I made in WoW, a day or two after vanilla launched, because I liked the strategy games and for whatever reason, I liked Troll Axe/Spear throwers, and felt like that was going to be the coolest way for me to enjoy the new game.

From day 1, despite this being a major component of several characters set up in the lore/previous games, thrown weapon combat has never made much of an appearance in WoW, and furthermore, Hunters didn't have access to ANY of it, it was all Rogues and Warriors. Not an elegant or ideal design, and my needs were never catered to in any way until Survival became a melee spec with a thrown spear/melee gap closer.

It's a shame they also got left out of having extended melee range, just to 10yards would be A-OK, a distinct advantage for a trap/pet spec, which would play up the Spear/Polearm fantasy a LOT, in addition to pairing well with the pet and the traps, a mobile, kiting melee class that can hit other melee from further away than they can retaliate. The fantasy is THERE it's just not being utilized fully.

As for MM, Lone Wolf should continue to be an option, whether with or without is talented, it should be a talent option at some point to opt IN or OUT of having a pet as MM. And Survival why not.

I'm all for Survival sharing in the wealth of new features. I believe that the correct method for handling all this is to make Survival able to TOGGLE ranged attacks without being punished too severely for it. Serpent Sting is already ranged. Aspect of the Hawk makes Raptor Strike ranged, and honestly it should be a toggle to do so, less of a cooldown and more in a vein with Blade Flurry or Sweeping Strikes in terms of how often it can be used.

Fuck firing hawks though, that's a silly thing to see, the Hunter could just as easily throw their weapon with each Raptor Strike. Other critical Survival rotationals are already ranged, Lacerate/Butchery is already a talent that wonks around with its own range/functionality and baseline Lacerate can just hit at ranged by throwing a Spear that sticks in the target for the duration of the bleed, still works from melee, just can be used at range. Nothing else in the kit is restricted to melee except Auto Attacks, and that is a perfectly acceptable trade.

I personally don't want to attack Rogues or Warriors, but I bet there is a subset of those players, who are just as opinionated as you are on this issue, that would absolutely love to see Arms and Outlaw given the opportunity to equip ranged weapons and use their rotations from the back of the fight. Arms Warriors are masters of martial training, 2 handed weapons, and have a tactics-based power set. Nothing in that description rules out a bow or rifle as the main weapon, other than that their spells are given melee sounding names. Outlaw Rogues already rotate ranged attacks, a similar toggle replacing more melee attacks with ranged options isn't terribly far fetched, IMHO, in the name of letting more specs opt IN or OUT of melee.

[Saltysquidoon]

Are you actually arguing spec identity and spec variation based on how many different buttons on your keyboard you can/could assign abilities to with each spec chosen?

Yes? It's explored further below but hunter specs had two buttons difference in their priority, for comparison in the same expansion dks had every button different.

Also, no, it wasn't just one button.

And, as for what you referred to where others are saying that they "played almost the exact same"...
Like above, no they did not.

Bro I get that this is some sore of crusade for you (based on your lengthy posts and your sig). But denying basic truths is not going to help your cause, nor is lashing out at people who are quite clearly memeing.

In MoP hunter specs had incredibly similar rotations, like the hunter dev blog for WoD specifically addresses it as a core issue;

Hunters have lacked a strong distinction between the different specializations. What we mean by that is that the Hunter specializations all had rotations that felt similar, with Marksmanship and Survival having the most blurred identities (Beast Mastery felt well rooted in the pet). Hunters were also some of the most afflicted by button bloat. To address these problems, we opted to make changes to each specialization's rotation.

For reference the mop st priority was

BM
Mark
Sting
Focus fire
Kill shot
Kill command
Glaive toss
Arcane shot
Cobra shot

Surv
Mark
Sting
Explosive shot
Kill shot
Glaive toss
Black arrow
Arcane shot
Cobra shot

MM
Mark
Sting
Steady shot
Chimera shot
Kill shot
Glaive toss
Aimed shot
Arcane shot

As you can clearly see every single spec is almost identical except for 2 good boy buttons (MM technically has 3, but it's rude to talk about in polite company). Even their CDs were identical (crows, rabid, rapid-fire, stampede).

[Dadwen]

lol, just...lol. So you gonna cite where Ion called it retarded or no? Also try not to be so emotional when you respond it's unbecoming.

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What is that even supposed to mean?

sorry maybe 2 IQ points was a bit of a overestimate thought I spell it out that Ion was the one that said the Spec was created for non-hunters and it was me saying it was retarded but I didn't account for the completely brain dead people out there.

[ONCHEhap]

sorry maybe 2 IQ points was a bit of a overestimate thought I spell it out that Ion was the one that said the Spec was created for non-hunters and it was me saying it was retarded but I didn't account for the completely brain dead people out there.

You probably should just drop it before you make even more of a fool of yourself.This accomplishes nothing for this thread

[Nefarious Tea]

with any luck much not longer, seems they keep making more of it ranged so at this rate.

*plus side it seems the only place MSV is used is PVP so that also means it will keep getting nerfed to oblivion.

I do pretty good with mine. It's tough to pug as SV but with guildies my Hunter is capable of 13-14 keys. Not quite able to +15 yet. It's a solid alt spec TBH

[Dadwen]

You probably should just drop it before you make even more of a fool of yourself.This accomplishes nothing for this thread

I think I was fairly clear, only a true moron would think he said that, and anyone that's been in this discussion didn't know what I was talking about just means they have no clue about it, and at this point I have neither the time anymore nor the crayons to explain it to someone that thinks other wise.

even after clearing it with the "thought I spell it out that Ion was the one that said the Spec was created for non-hunters and it was me saying it was retarded".

they showed they were dumb enough to keep asking.

*only foolish thing I did here was assume people were not complete dumb-asses.

[Kaver]

Because it often wasn't better.

But when it wasn't better how many people were playing Survival? And how much worse than the other specs was SV at that given time? You need to include questions like this when you analyze the data. Otherwise you cannot claim that based on the data the majority of hunters found SV most fun.

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No, I didn't. That's you trying to build a strawman argument because you're a dishonest person.

But what was your point of showing that graph then? All you did was showing that SV was the most played spec at a time where it was also the best performing spec. I don't think that is a surprise to most people. What did you try to prove with that data?

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And you are posting strawman argument after strawman argument. Weak and dishonest just like 100% of your arguments on the Hunter subforums.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. But all I'm doing is calling you out for twisting the data to fit your agenda. Now, I understand that you don't like being called out. It's never fun to be exposed in a lie. but you have to understand that you're the one not arguing in good faith when you try to trick people in here with a wrongful presentation of the data.

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I dont understand how you can call the current Survival "BM but melee" and at the same time you often argue that there was a huge difference between MM and Survival and WoD.

The current difference between Survival and BM is much greater that the difference between Survival and MM in WoD. Survival and MM used to play much more similar in WoD than Survival and BM do now.

@FpicEail I think it's interesting that you didn't answer this. You're calling the current SV out for being similar to BM but at the same time you say that there was a huge difference in gameplay between SV and MM in WoD. It doesn't really make sense. You are once again twisting things to fit your agenda.

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Just to the first part of your post, I take issue with this as you keep making this faulty argument. Every time someone says the specs played the same (well, maybe not every time because people could make the same mistakes as you are for you topics) they are stating they played almost the exact same.

I also find his argumentation towards this topic very interesting. Notice that he "forgot" to answer my post about his claim that current SV is a "melee BM" but at the same time is proclaims that there was a huge difference between SV and MM in WoD. He just doesn't like being called out with he makes faulty claims.

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In MoP hunter specs had incredibly similar rotations, like the hunter dev blog for WoD specifically addresses it as a core issue;

For reference the mop st priority was

BM
Mark
Sting
Focus fire
Kill shot
Kill command
Glaive toss
Arcane shot
Cobra shot

Surv
Mark
Sting
Explosive shot
Kill shot
Glaive toss
Black arrow
Arcane shot
Cobra shot

MM
Mark
Sting
Steady shot
Chimera shot
Kill shot
Glaive toss
Aimed shot
Arcane shot

As you can clearly see every single spec is almost identical except for 2 good boy buttons (MM technically has 3, but it's rude to talk about in polite company). Even their CDs were identical (crows, rabid, rapid-fire, stampede).

Thank you @Saltysquidoon for presenting this. It's so funny that FpicEail calls the current version SV for "melee BM" but at the same time claims that there was a huge difference between the specs in MoP/WoD.

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If anything, what we can take from those logs is more likely that people thought BM was more fun than Survival. Again, he has written that himself a few pages back. His arguments just backfires and he's shooting himself in the foot. It's just bitterness. Good grief.

Yes, it's just like his argument about the current SV being "melee BM" but at the same time he claims that there was a huge difference between the specs in WoD. If anything, SV is much more different from BM and MM right now (and not only because it's melee).