Eidal
Molten Core Raider
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Heroics have never been hard enough to require spec-swapping. Unless you're referring to heroic raiding in which the guild will likely easily be able to afford those consumables.
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
- 5,907
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Yeah, heroic dungeons... probably not. At first I thought he meant the new mythic/challenge dungeons, but those don't use group finder so there's no port in/out.
Argarth
On the verandah
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I was under the impression that changing spec happens when you equip a different artifact weapon. Say, a Druid would need to do all 4 artifact quest-lines to get the weapons, and then your bars/talents etc will swap as you swap the weapons.
Not sure if there is anything else involved, but I read that somewhere quite a while ago.
Argarth
On the verandah
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Where did Blizzard get the idea that there is a significant demand for a meleeonlyhunter spec? Of course I remember well, certain individuals begging for it in the early days (even now?), and even gearing specifically for it when hunters were able to carry a 2H/2x1H as well as a gun/bow. I was pretty sure it was just an extremely vocal minority, and I played a hunter a ton through Vanilla and TBC.
Having said that, I was extremely disappointed when Blizzard completely removed our melee weapons, but that was because I loved using them a part of the complete toolkit.
It was a ton of fun doing the ol' - big fat Raptor Strike crit/Wing Clip and kite away - for example.
I haven't seriously played hunter for a long time now, so perhaps I'm out of touch, but I fail to understand why Blizzard flipped 100% the other way for SURV. Just give back the melee weapon skills, and done.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Not that I've seen, it's just a practical limitation in that if you don't have the weapon you're using a WOD weapon at best. It wouldn't make much sense if you couldn't unlock any other spec until 100 while leveling.
Argarth
On the verandah
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Oh yeah, wasn't thinking about non-legion subbed or sub 100 characters. Maybe a poor assumption on my part, just thinking it didn't change until you "entered" the Legion game world/content. Will investigate further.
(edited: for clarity, need another coffee!) Well forget all that, looks like the current spec swapping mechanics still work, we just get enough slots to use them all. My bad.
Tarisk
Pathetic Reaction Bot
- 1,567
- 370
It's a good question. I certainly didn't miss the melee aspects. Only memories i have of hunter melee are shit ones and in PVP. melee class gets in your face so you cant shoot them. run at them, raptor strike, wing clip and keep running through them and hope they suck at turning around fast enough to follow so you can gain some distance again so you arent spammed with "Target is too close"
Argarth
On the verandah
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Ha, that just reminded me of those pesky Frost Mages in your dead zone. Did some of it myself for revenge
Kuro
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 8,350
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On my first WoW character, a Dwarf Hunter, I ran out of ammo halfway through my first Deadmines run. So I rolled on and won the 2handed axe off the goblin and went melee, specced survival for dem +X% Raptor Strike Damage talents, yo.
It was early enough in the game's life that not even the people in the dungeons were entirely sure I was Doing It Wrong (I was Doing It Wrong), but it was pretty fun.
Didn't buy ammo again until 48.
It was early enough in the game's life that not even the people in the dungeons were entirely sure I was Doing It Wrong (I was Doing It Wrong), but it was pretty fun.
Didn't buy ammo again until 48.
Argarth
On the verandah
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Had completely forgotten about that. From the Wiki:
"Was the Hunter's only melee DoT. Its damage was worse than a Rank 4 Serpent Sting, because of this it was considered the worst Talent in the game, let alone worst 31 point talent in the game. Very few people ever took it for anything other than a joke. Patch 1.7.0 (13-Sep-2005): Has been replaced by Wyvern Sting."
Miele
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 916
- 48
I have an idea about this. The premise is that the Blizzard idea of class fantasy is fucked up by a nostalgia bigger than any player may feel. There must be someone in their dev team that dusted off these old concepts that were (rightfully so) buried under the label "mistakes" and forced them to become alive. Melee hunters are just one part of the tragic story (they also wanted to copy Beastlords maybe, who the fuck knows?).
I never played hunter as a raiding main past TBC, but it's certainly one of my most played characters and I dedicated to the class a fuckton of time over 11 years. My hunter tamed every special pet in the world (all spirit beasts and taming challenges) and got every special item it could get except Rohk'Delar, because in vanilla nobody helped alts getting important shit (not people I knew back then at least).
I consider myself a good hunter, hell I can even PvP with it, something I hardly do if not forced.
My idea of hunter goes back to vanilla: find a loyal friend, explore the wilds, learn skills from other animals and teach them to your best friend, keep him happy and he'll fight for you until dead. That's my concept of hunter, with a bow or a gun, able to do amazing shots from a very long distance (41 yards vs 35 for other ranged classes, remember?) and to perform an amazing amount of tricks to survive in any circumstance: feign death, various traps, disengage, deterrence, stings, eagle eye, eyes of the beast, etc.
The specializations were the hunter focus: their pet, their weapon, their traps and tricks. Somehow these became their pets (plural), their weapon without pet (wtf?) and melee (which is a freaking joke, thankfully there is the pet at least).
Gameplay: since the change hunters received that swapped mana with focus as their resource, the class has been built on a builder-spender system. Steady/Cobra shots were the builders and had to be weaved into the priority list, according to the chosen spec and adapting to different gameplay situations to maximize efficiency and damage. The builder was spammable and I dare say, for a reason. Now, unless you take Chimera Shot (a talent) for BM or Steady Focus (a talent) for MM, you're there watching paint dry until you have enough resources to play the game the way it's meant to be played (or they think it is).
In other words, if you don't pick Chimera as BM, you have empty globals and can be completely excited watching your focus bar replenishing, until you can do something else. You can't lose dps by using one builder too many or capping focus (hell, I'd like to see a hunter capping if not afk): you just wait.
Now if something changed very recently I don't know, but this was the broad picture and as a long time BM fan, I didn't like it at all.
Also the new Stampede sucks. I fucking hate it and I want the other one back.
Survival: I can see adding diversity, but SV had its theme, now stolen by MM: magical damage instead of physical: serpent sting, explosive shot, black arrow, etc. With the introduction of Multistrike in WoD, it was quite good in Highmaul, a lot of people still appreciated it, even with the loss of Kill Shot (why? oh why did they have to prune it?).
A melee spec will be good to fuck around, even if with Demon Hunters in the game, nobody needed more melees into the equation. Boss asses are gonna be busy!!!
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,647
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No you can switch specs like you used to dual specs just go to the spec window pick the spec you want to change to and if you are in an area you can gain reseted xp you will flip to the new spec. You don't need that specs artifact but this expansion is going to get ugly if you don't have it as I don't think you are going to find any dropped weapons/crafted weapons other than the artifacts so it may be okay for level 100-101 its going to pretty quickly not be viable to have a spec but not its artifact.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I played a few more specs this weekend just to do some testing.
Shadow priest they seem sort of similar in a ways to demo warlocks WOD play style with the transformation. In general its a bit easier to manage because once you go void form you pretty much seem to just want to burn damage until its over and then work your way back up again. Seems solid play wise not my cup of tea but thats mostly because I did not care for the transformation burn stuff of meta in warlocks. They seem plenty strong and reasonable healing/shielding. One thing to note their weird shadow mend heal when out of combat does not apply the dot debuff so you can use this to top yourself/others off with out of combat.
Frost mage: I have been enjoying my frost mage alt on live so I figured I would give it a try in beta. It is pretty close to what we see on live a few talent changes but overall playstyle is 95% the same if you like it in wod you will like it in legion. One interesting thing if you don't care for the water elemental at all you can take talents that basically are like lone wolf to get rid of it and give you a pretty big damage boost for not using the pet and there is another talent that you can force the 2 fingers of frost procs every 30 seconds which simulates the active use of the water elementals aoe root ability. I could not finish the artifact as it is bugged out on one stage and I was seeing similar reports from others as well so may have to finish this test up later but overall they did not seem much different.
Windwalker monk. I never really tried windwalkers before my monk is brewmaster/mistweaver so I figured I would give it a shot. I have to say I am pretty impressed seems like a really fun melee combatant. Strong single target and strong aoe damage once I got the hang of using my earth air fire power and the spinning crane kick. Decent self healing abilities and talents downtime is negligable.
One complaint I have seen is they are stuck using fist weapons for their artifact that you cannot transmog to other weapons like swords/axes/maces. I have to say if you are going to be stuck with fist weapons these guys have some freaking AMAZING looking fist weapons to use. I can't say how different these guys play than what we currently see but they seem very solid legion. I was wrecking stuff with my windwalker a lot faster than I was my outlaw rogue.
Shadow priest they seem sort of similar in a ways to demo warlocks WOD play style with the transformation. In general its a bit easier to manage because once you go void form you pretty much seem to just want to burn damage until its over and then work your way back up again. Seems solid play wise not my cup of tea but thats mostly because I did not care for the transformation burn stuff of meta in warlocks. They seem plenty strong and reasonable healing/shielding. One thing to note their weird shadow mend heal when out of combat does not apply the dot debuff so you can use this to top yourself/others off with out of combat.
Frost mage: I have been enjoying my frost mage alt on live so I figured I would give it a try in beta. It is pretty close to what we see on live a few talent changes but overall playstyle is 95% the same if you like it in wod you will like it in legion. One interesting thing if you don't care for the water elemental at all you can take talents that basically are like lone wolf to get rid of it and give you a pretty big damage boost for not using the pet and there is another talent that you can force the 2 fingers of frost procs every 30 seconds which simulates the active use of the water elementals aoe root ability. I could not finish the artifact as it is bugged out on one stage and I was seeing similar reports from others as well so may have to finish this test up later but overall they did not seem much different.
Windwalker monk. I never really tried windwalkers before my monk is brewmaster/mistweaver so I figured I would give it a shot. I have to say I am pretty impressed seems like a really fun melee combatant. Strong single target and strong aoe damage once I got the hang of using my earth air fire power and the spinning crane kick. Decent self healing abilities and talents downtime is negligable.
One complaint I have seen is they are stuck using fist weapons for their artifact that you cannot transmog to other weapons like swords/axes/maces. I have to say if you are going to be stuck with fist weapons these guys have some freaking AMAZING looking fist weapons to use. I can't say how different these guys play than what we currently see but they seem very solid legion. I was wrecking stuff with my windwalker a lot faster than I was my outlaw rogue.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,647
- 1,187
I am not expecting much from the movie but I put enough years into this game I am willing to fork out 8 bucks and see this. Shit I made myself sit through all 3 D&D movies how bad can this be(please don't let it be D&D movie bad my brain can't take another).
