Loffter wrote:They need to heavily diversify the trees however. Survival and marksman play exactly the same, and BM goes between being crazy good to being unplayable constantly, and even then it STILL plays exactly the same as the other two specs. The only difference is shots you have access to. The game would be more interesting if we had a choice to make, but we dont.
I disagree. The three specs play remarkably different from each other in so far as each is a ranged pet class with the same basic mechanics. Marksman does not play exactly the same was as Survival. They have much different shot priorities and different tools to manage. SV has a heavy reliance on situational positioning, proc management and response to those procs. Marksmanship relies heavily on maintaining an optimal shot rotation and adapting cooldowns to get the most advantage out of procs and raid buffs. Survival needs to tend heavily to maintaining DOTS while MM does not and each spec has a unique way of maximising their core shot for damage.
If the specs played the same no one would have preferences for the spec they've chosen, but obviously they do.
You say the only difference is the shots you have access too, and while this is partly true, those shots make a big difference in how you play your spec.
Then you have hunters, where the only difference between our trees is whether we use arcane shot, explosive shot, or chimera shot. Oh, and we have to use explosive shot or chimera shot, or we wont stand up in DPs. Oh, and once we get enough armor pen we have to use Chimera shot, or we wont stand up in DPS.
ArPen has nothing to do with Chimera Shot. At all.
As for your comparisons, you are comparing magic using classes to a physical DPS class. The magic classes do have wider spell and spec variety, but they also are fundamentally different from a physical DPS class. How about you compare Rogues to Hunters instead, they might make for a better side-by-side. All the Rogue specs use weapons and have a few different abilities just like the different Hunter specs, but they all also use the same basic abilities.
We are PIGEON HOLED. The only way to fix this glaring, obvious problem, is to take away something we have and rework it. If pets had originally been a talent, you wouldnt have complained about not having a pet if you went marksman. Or you know what? You would have leveled BM, like most people do anyways! Aion rangers dont have pets, and they are just, well, petless hunters. You learn to kite! As marksman your burst would be high enough to kill things before they got to you if you knew how to kite, and as survival you would just melee. There is NOTHING wrong with this idea except "Waaaah change! Scary!"
The only way Hunters are pigeon-holed is that we're a pure DPS class, and not a hybrid.
Why would pets be a talent? That makes no sense? And you're contradicting yourself here when you say "if pets had originally been a talent you wouldn't have complained about not having a pet if you went Marksman.....You would have leveled BM, like most people do anyways". So if you leveled as a with-pet BM, then went Marks and didn't have a pet, you think no-one would complain? No, what would happen under your proposal is that ALL Hunters would take the required points in BM to get a pet and the game would have to be balanced around ALL Hunters having pets, so in other words, exactly as it is now.
Talents are there to customise and build your character, class features are there as fundamental cornerstone abilities of a class. WoW is not Aion, you cannot expect WoW to do what Aion does, they are different games.
There is everything wrong with your concept as you are trying to change the Hunter class into something it is not. Survival would be melee? Why not play a Rogue instead? Marksmen would be petless mail-wearing casters, well, we have Elemental Shaman for that.
The fact is, as much as I love my hunter and more so my pet (I even post regularly on petopia), this is the best way to diversify the class in one clean sweep. It doesnt force you to spec anything, gives you total free will in how you play, and still keeps the hunter as a physical dps class at its core.
WoW gives you free will to play as you want to play, there are more classes than Hunters. If you don't like the way a Hunter plays, there are other classes for you to choose from. And if you want to play a crazy Hunter build it's your subscription fee so do as you will.
But what you are basically doing here is a very elaborate way to ensure your preferred spec and personal vision of what a Hunter should be becomes the predominant raiding spec for the class.
As for diversification, let's see what happens in Cataclysm. We're switching from Mana to Focus, so you can bet there will be lots of new talents and re-designed talents addressing how we regenerate Focus, we've got the Mastery system which rewards you with how you spec into a tree and we've got the new Archaeology skill which is there to basically add more variety to how we construct our characters.
But I can assure you that all Hunters will have a pet as a core class feature without any artificial and biased restrictions.
Loffter wrote:
And if most hunters spec into BM anyways, then whats the problem? But they dont. Most hunters spec into BM and get imp aoth and focused fire, because its a dps increase.
Why should most Hunters spec into BM?
They then put the rest of their points into survival depending on their armor pen. No one dual specs any points into BM except for the slight DPS boost....
I reiterate, almost all serious raiding guilds will make you spec BM in order to raid anything that isnt on farm, and if they do they are hendering their own progression. I dont want to force hunters to go BM, I want to diversify the class and make it fun for however you want to play! Not just "do I want chimera shot or explosive shot? Or do I want to be BM because pets are pretty".
I want the choice to be "Do I want to stay at maxed range, dance in and out of melee, or have my pet deal most my damage and I focus on keeping him alive first and formost." THATS how hunters should play. And as much as I would hate to lose access to the pet, I think the best option is to remove the pet as a garentee and let the hunter choose his playstyle.
As I said in the last post, we are pigeon holed and without a major overhaul that may involve making a sacrifice, its never going to change....We are the same thing packaged 3 times. We are ranged physical dps with explosive shot, ranged physical dps with chimera shot, or ranged physical dps with arcane shot. its the same thing no matter how you spec! You do exactly the same thing and use exactly the same abilities.
Honestly, I don't think you know what the other specs play like or how they differ in raid and/or PVP situations. I am not going to go into a detailed analytical breakdown of how each spec varies from the others and explain how you are wrong in your assessment that you do exactly the same thing with the same abilities, because if you can't see that I'm not going to make you see it either. And if you can't see it, you are not in a position to seriously expect other Hunter players to agree with your perceptions and ideas.
Ok, then outside of "I like my pet", explain why it wouldnt work. I mean, I don't understand how people dont love this idea.
Because as I said in my initial reply to your topic "Pets play a vital role in any Hunter raid strategy, from keeping adds busy to interfering with raid-punishing mechanics or simply maintaining DPS on the boss while the Hunter tends to other targets. And many Hunters, of all specs, are very proud of their pets and the pet's abilities to fulfill a raid role."
When we apply for a raid, if the question comes up "I have a survival hunter and a marksman hunter wanting in the raid, which do you want?" I dont want the answer to be "The marksman has higher dps BECAUSE hes marksman. bring him."
Only bad raid leaders would respond that way.
this would just completely and utterly suck
