Why do Hunters and Shamans have to use mail ??

[Fantazma]

Okay, I know that maybe this is not a unanimous opinion but most of the players I talk to agree with me when I say that MAIL is the worst armor category in the whole world of warcraft. I speak of the appearance of this and the enormous difficulty in assembling an xmog that we like.

Now that the class sets are gone to never come back the developer team must be doing a huge job to make a set mail that matches a hunter and a Shaman. Two classes that have incredibly different "fantasy-class".
And the worst part of this story is that the Hunters are incredibly damaged.

My main is this rogue in my photo beside. I'm lucky to be able to use the badass set I know in the entire game: the mythic tier-19.
My favorite alt is my Hunter. And in the pre-patch, playing Hunter is a lot of fun. Both BM and MM are great, especially in PVP.
Unfortunately I suffer from a psychological problem: I can't get excited about character wearing something I think is ridiculous. ( Forgive me, my doctors are trying everything ).

Jokes aside .... I keep asking myself: Is it that hard for developers to just merge leather and mail ??

Mail doesn't make any sense to hunters or shamans. Serious.
As a hunter, in my opinion. it's more obvious that I use leather extracted from the beasts that I handle, right? The same thing for Shaman. My God ... shammys are wizards. Why they use mail ???

And to end my outburst I leave below an image of Hunter more Badass that you (maybe) will never see in the game:

[Rendark]

Shamans are not wizards dude and that armor may look "ok" on a rogue but not on a hunter.

[paxen]

I've wanted to dump mail for years now. To be pedantic "mail" was heavy armour, and often heavier and more hindering than a proper suit of plate (also, categorizing armour that's been developed and used over 2 millenia is just not feasible in any meaningful way). I'd go with no armour/light armour/heavy armour, but it would probably be best to just call it cloth/leather/plate, as before.

Hunters would wear leather. Shamans would wear plate

[Throwme]

Okay, I know that maybe this is not a unanimous opinion but most of the players I talk to agree with me

And most of the people I talk to, agree with me in whatever things we discuss. That's how most people are, they surround themselves with people that think sort of the same in many many cases. Not always, of course not, but often. Look at your current group of real life friends, if you have one. How many of them do you have absolutely nothing in common with? How many of them do you not share opinions about something with? It could be sports, politics, gaming, whatever. I'm guessing the answer is close to, if not exactly, zero.

As a hunter, in my opinion. it's more obvious that I use leather extracted from the beasts that I handle, right?

I think you should take a look at most Leatherworking recipes. Most of the Mail armor actually do use some kind of Scale instead of the leather.
Example from Vanilla:
The mail Black Dragonscale Boots uses leather and.... black dragonscales.
The leather Bramblewood Boots only uses leather.

More recent recipes include
Mail: Banded Cragscale Boots with Cragscale and Mistscale
Leather: Banded Dredged Boots with only leather and hide.

So basically, you are wrong in saying mail is bad.

[Raugnaut]

The issue is that Leather would then bloat to 6 entire classes. Leather already has the most number of seperate classes at 4. Also keep in mind that most Mail is literal scale-mail made from literal reptilian scale. Leatherworker's have been making Mail goods from scales since Classic.

Overall, I call it a bad idea.

[paxen]

Oh, and monks should wear cloth, not leather. They originally had to use leather because otherwise they'd have to make ton of agility cloth drops, but that's not applicable anymore.

4 cloth (casters and monks)
4 leather (rest+hunters)
4 plate (current+shamans)

Balanced, as all things should be.

- - - Updated - - -

I think you should take a look at most Leatherworking recipes. Most of the Mail armor actually do use some kind of Scale instead of the leather.
Example from Vanilla:
The mail Black Dragonscale Boots uses leather and.... black dragonscales.
The leather Bramblewood Boots only uses leather.

More recent recipes include
Mail: Banded Cragscale Boots with Cragscale and Mistscale
Leather: Banded Dredged Boots with only leather and hide.

So basically, you are wrong in saying mail is bad.

This is mostly because they wanted to put mail into one profession, and chose leatherworking. The abundance of "scale armour" is an effect of an artifical divide, not a reason to put it in. If they hadn't put mail into leatherworking, chain armour would be far more common than scale.

[Fantazma]

Okay, some people didn't like my xmog. OK. I forgive you.
Let's get to the main topic:
You have to admit that when Blizzard shows us the sets for the first time, they has to tell us what the leather is and what the mail is. Right?
If they doesn’t do that you (and me too) would never know which is leather and which is mail. Right?
(Maybe ..just maybe... the mail one has something "Aztec" to match the shamans but ...lol... poor Hunters).
And if it is a fact that today we are barely able to differentiate between mail and leather with the wow graphics ... it would be more satisfying and correct just merge leather with mail for players like me (who can't find a worthwhile set mail). Right?

[Ragnarohk]

it would be more satisfying and correct just merge leather with mail for players like me. Right?

If changes were done to accomodate individual wishes then the game would just implode. Just like you want leather for hunters there are probably players that want plate on mages or cloth on paladins. And they can probably find "arguments" In favor of that too.

Also, something "Aztec" would be closer to leather than mail.

[enderzone]

Okay, some people didn't like my xmog. OK. I forgive you.
Let's get to the main topic:
You have to admit that when Blizzard shows us the sets for the first time, they has to tell us what the leather is and what the mail is. Right?
If they doesn’t do that you (and me too) would never know which is leather and which is mail. Right?
(Maybe ..just maybe... the mail one has something "Aztec" to match the shamans but ...lol... poor Hunters).
And if it is a fact that today we are barely able to differentiate between mail and leather with the wow graphics ... it would be more satisfying and correct just merge leather with mail for players like me (who can't find a worthwhile set mail). Right?

I feel mail has more or less grown to mostly include bone as well. While plate has some bone on their items usually with notable exceptions like garrosh's shoulders its metal stylized to look like skulls.

So I feel like mail/bones is more the armor type. That said I have to mix and match different sets and random items on my mail characters then any other class. I found I like the old Savage Gladiator Chain set with the Yaungol Slayer's Spaulders (normal) shoulders on my hunter for a working baseline set though the models look a bit dated.

[Kehego]

Monks wearing cloth is probably one of the most pants-on-head "special" suggestions I've heard on here for a hot min.

[jellmoo]

Eh, armor type as a whole is weirdly pointless in this game. Survivability just doesn't come from it. Shaman use the second highest armor in the game, but have, bar none, the absolute worst survivability. Most of what we have that keeps us alive is either active defensive abilities or passive ones bakes into the class or spec. Armor itself does precious little to actually protect us.

Armor should either be made to actually matter in some way, or just rework the system and allow people more freedom to transmog stuff since it's pretty much just ornamental at this point.

[crakerjack]

If you like the aesthetics of leather gear, then you have to gauge what's more important to you: Playing a leather wearer for the aesthetics or playing a hunter for the gameplay? One will weigh more than the other, then you'll have your answer.

[Saltysquidoon]

While plate has some bone on their items usually with notable exceptions like garrosh's shoulders its metal stylized to look like skulls.

The tusks of manneroth are literally the tusks of the pitlord manneroth OG grom and Thrall killed in WCIII.

[paxen]

Monks wearing cloth is probably one of the most pants-on-head "special" suggestions I've heard on here for a hot min.

Yes, monks in cloth armour, that's stupid. I mean, why would you import the fantasy concept famous for being the "unarmoured melee" and then not give them leather armour, duh.

[Phaqfu]

I dont care that shamans and hunters use mail, I just think we need another class that uses mail, thats all really.

[Throwme]

You have to admit that when Blizzard shows us the sets for the first time, they has to tell us what the leather is and what the mail is. Right?

No.

If they doesn’t do that you (and me too) would never know which is leather and which is mail. Right?

No.

And if it is a fact that today we are barely able to differentiate between mail and leather with the wow graphics ...

It is not. It's not due to graphics, it's due to the actual model and a lack of insight to their design philosophies.

it would be more satisfying and correct just merge leather with mail for players like me (who can't find a worthwhile set mail). Right?

And... No.

[Fantazma]

If changes were done to accomodate individual wishes then the game would just implode. Just like you want leather for hunters there are probably players that want plate on mages or cloth on paladins. And they can probably find "arguments" In favor of that too.

Also, something "Aztec" would be closer to leather than mail.

Jesus, bro. Your opinion makes sense when you separate one of my sentences from everything else I said.
A mage wearing a plate ... or a Warrior wearing a cloth is VERY different from what I suggested.
There are very clear differences between cloth and plate .... however we hardly see any difference between mail and leather. (the only difference is that it seems that the team of developers responsible for the mail sets are unhappy ...)

[ZazuuPriest]

The tusks of manneroth are literally the tusks of the pitlord manneroth OG grom and Thrall killed in WCIII.

thats what "with notable exceptions" means.... wtf are you on about?

[Throwme]

wtf are you on about?

That's probably one of those cases where a well-placed comma (from @enderzone in this case) would have made a difference in understanding what was written.

[Fantazma]

No.

No.

And... No.

C'mon man...
Look at the two images below.
If Blizzard had not told us that the the top one is mail and the one below is Leather we would never know.
Show me where the "mail" is in the first image and where the "leather" is in the second image!
Also the first one (mail) looks like leather ... and the second one (leather) looks like plate. lol
For Blizzard the mail and leather sets follow no criteria and are only named when they are ready.
I keep asking: What's the matter with simply merge mail with leather ??