As mentioned in blue responses to the inital BM buff, Beast Within mana changed:
The Beast Within now reduces the mana costs of all spells by 50% for 10sec. (Up from 20%)
Now big red pet is further boosting mana efficiency. This change is nice, sure, but doesn’t really do much to change the overall picture of BM as a subpar dps build – since BM was never really sucking mana to begin with, certainly not compared to dps leader MM.
Personally I would love it if all three specs were raid viable. I don’t think it’s necessary – I think having two raid viable specs is plenty nice myself. And if I’m being truly honest, I’ve always felt that BM made sense as a lower dps spec – even back when I was specced BM because it was the best raid dps spec (and best solo, and great pvp…). BM is by leaps and bounds the easiest spec to play.
It just makes sense to me that the easiest spec, and a more mana efficent spec, shouldn’t perform as well as more difficult ones. But maybe that’s just me. I know there’s lots of hunter out there who love their pets and want to see BM back on top again.
Update: Couple of additional hunter tidbits not worthy of their own post:
I can’t go into detail on all of them, but for starters Intimidation could be a lot better and Kill Command could be as fun as say Lock and Load instead of a macro’d ability.
Tranquilizing Shot
We’re not going to be in a big hurry to buff Tranq Shot. It might be a better way to go to nerf all dispels to something more like that so that they didn’t trivially undo buffs, debuffs and CC.
I dunno that it’s “on top,” as much as “not feel ostracized.” As it stands now with the ease of use and easy mana needs, I think the appropriate BM DPS should be about the same as an equivalently-geared hybrid.
If DPS is to be brought comparable to SV/MM, shot rotation could easily be (and to me, should be) more complex than it is. Also, pet/shot synergy is incredibly simplistic now, there can certainly be more to it. We have a few shots available, make them interact with what our pet does in different ways.
I wish BM would get an actual DPS bump up and not these bizarre semi-nerfs and quasi-buffs (lower mana consumption? Thanks…I guess?), but as someone who has never switched from BM despite the mass bandwagon leaping to SV, it always makes me proud to top a VOA25 dps chart with 5000 dps.
Rades • 80 Orc Hunter • Drenden
I agree with you Frost…it would be rather unbalanced (imo) to have one spec be the ultimate leader in solo capabilities, raid DPS, and ease of play.
Oh wait. I think I just described Death Knights. *grin*
“I think the appropriate BM DPS should be about the same as an equivalently-geared hybrid. ”
Good call Axe — in fact that’s pretty much where they are now. BM isn’t that far behind MM/SV – just far enough behind that MM/SV are clearly much better.
As someone who leveled to 80 without ever re-speccing out of BM, and only dual speccing to SV to be “raid viable” I have to say that I am very torn.
I love my pets; Dragonhawk (Ethan), Warpstalker (Scotty), Spirit Beast (Loqui), Silithid (Edgar), and even “Wolf” who remains unnamed because I can’t think of something kitchy enough.. I felt a loss when I let Peter, my spider go in order to tame Garwal, only to lose Garwal shortly thereafter.
I would LOVE to see BM put out competitive numbers with SV/MM so that I could actually take Loqui and Edgar out of the stables for raids. Nothing is more awesome than hearing that beastial roar from Loqui! Oh man I love that!
At the same time, however, I have become enamored with the pet tanking/hunter tanking concept and almost with Blizz would just make BM a tanking spec. I know that will never happen because the logistics of pet tanking raids would be an absolute nightmare without making the BM hunter basically a feral druid. Still, a small part of me thinks “I might actually play a tank if they did that”
I have to disagree, at least a little. I don’t think BM should necessarily be lower because it’s got an easier rotation. At the end of the day, a good player still has to stay out of fire, stop DPS when called, move your pet out of the huge circle of death, and switch to the correct target.. even if they only have one single button to spam.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to see more added, but the clunkiness of Black Arrow really made me dislike survival. If DKs can have it easy on all three specs, and retpaladins can top dps meters with a “ret-macro”, I don’t see why BM shouldn’t be in line with MM/SV for dps.