The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all time. Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)
It should be no surprise to anyone who has been on these boards for long that we’re trying to chill out abilities that convey offensive and defensive bonuses with the same button press. At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet. With this change, hopefully, Bestial Wrath becomes more of a defensive ability while taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.
The tooltip doesn’t say this, but it now breaks all forms of CC that a PvP trinket would break (including Cyclone, Sap, etc.).
This is big news for BM hunters!
Sure big red pet is being cut nearly in half, but giving hunters the 10% damage increase always, rather than just during big red pet is a very nice dps boost! Will it make BM competitive with MM and SV as a raid spec? Probably not.
But if, as they’re saying, patch 3.3 brings transfer of all stats to the pet (and I’m predicting a decrease in pet base damage to compensate) then BM might be in the running again.
Nice. Napkin math suggests it’s not quite in the running at similar gear levels, but not terribly far behind. Nice change.
Now we’ll just have to deal with duration jokes.
I have mixed feelings about this. While it may slightly improve overall DPS, that comes at the expense of burst damage and general awesomeness. However, I was glad to see Ghostcrawler say that BW will act like a second PvP trinket, breaking all CC.
Unfortunate for PVP BM hunters, though I don’t know how many of them there are.
I roll BM most of the time and I seem to do much better with it than with SV. I gem for all attack power and I do 3k easy in 5 man heroics, and around 4500 in 25 man raids. I have noticed that I do as much or more DPS that similar geared SV hunters in 5 and 10 man but they seem to do more DPS than I do in 25 man raids. I have only done 10 Man Ulduar but I did it with a good SV hunter that has slightly better gear than I did and our DPS was nearly the same but I did a good bit more total damage done than he did. His wolf was dead allot which is something I see allot from the SV guys. Their wolfs die fast and my Devilsaur does not.
I am dual spec and have tried SV but I do more consistant DPS as BM. I will admit I have not spent allot of time trying to improve my SV DPS but I am putting together a seperate set of gear for SV that I can Gem for all agility so that i can have a honest comparison. Here is my link. Bm is not dead, I enjoy it more and everywhere you go there are SV hunters with wolves so i stand out a bit. LOL
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aggramar&n=Rhinochaser
I am glad to see BM given a bump as I love taming the rares (I would like to see an expanded stable) and to date have Loque, Gondria, Skoll, and Aotona although the parrot is damned annoying. I only break him out when I play with a buddy that hates the “SQUAWK!” emitted.
I opted for MM main spec as I see enough SV folks out there and felt the overall contribution of trueshot aura probably helps us down the bosses a bit faster. I am curious how to handle enchants and gem selections given that certain attributes seem to help BM spec my not be the best choices for MM/SV. Going back and forth between specs I can see an issue with getting the most out of those items.
Well good to see them helping the BM spec but lowereing pet damage and increasing hunter damage will make pet tanking alot harder i think, at the moment the pet does most of the damage which holds the agro if they remove alot of this i can see agro flying everywhere. Looks like pet tanking maybe become a thing of the past and lately i have left it behind to work on my SV and MM skills maybe i missed the boat ?.
This shouldn’t affect pet tanking much at all — it’s only lowering the dps of pets while big red pet is up — not lowering it overall. Not a huge difference in overall threat.
“BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet.”
…Isn’t the point of BM to be fully reliant on your pet for the majority of the offensive crap?
This is a straight-up nerf to pet damage to buff hunter damage, which is thematically opposite of the point of the BM tree. If you check the Hunter forums, you’ll also find there are a lot of BM PvPers. I raid Survival, but use BM for limited PvP (they never expect the Silithid Inquisition!). If this goes forward I’m going to have to drop my exotic pets and level a crab or spider for a PvP survival build.
Remember when readiness would let you pop a second BW? I’d like to see that brought back…
This may not increase BM DPS much, around 2-2.5% apparently. Some interesting posts and theorycraftying/calculations about this change are up at huntsmanslodge.com
Has anyone done any test with the wolf and seen the increase in dps over the rex ?
I have tested the t rex against the wolf extensively and the T-rex delivers more DPS consistanly accross the board. Our DPS will spike a bit when the wolfs Howl is up but in the long run and durring instance runs and raids the T-Rex out performs the Wolf by a good margin from what I have seen.
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In heroic TOC which I run daily Im doing about 3000 to 3200 DPS total and 1500 of that is the T-Rex. Its like having an Arms warrior in the group that doesnt roll on plate or two handed weapon drops and can rez, himself if he pulls too much agro.
Nice 1500 dps is your in game name rhinochaser for your hunter i would like to look up you build and stats. And I am doing 4k plus dps in toc and wolf does 1400. Yet I have done reg toc farming and switched the wolf in and out with rex yet for me wolf still came out on top. So i would like to check out your build if you dont mind.
Wow 4k in 5 man is good. 3380 is my best so far in 5 man. My armory link is below. I dont have any raid gear as my guild is a social guild and we never raid. I gem for AP & I have 1 or 2 things I do that help my pets DPS that I dont think many do but they work for me. Im very nervous about this up coming change to Bm as I really dont want to be SV like everyone else. I just enjoy BM. Email me if you would like to talk in detail.. I would welcome that.. [email protected]
Opps here is the armory link.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aggramar&n=Rhinochaser
Rhino – note that this change is a dps INCREASE for BM — only a few percent total increase, but it still will make your dps better than it is now. Hopefully patch 3.3 will bring BM back to a viable raiding build.
Frostheim: I sure hope so. It seems like we are losing a 50% DPS increase for about 40% of the time in return for a flat 10% DPS buff to the hunter . I really wish that 10% was applied to the pet and the hunter. We will see. thanks