Got a bunch of blue posts today from Ghostcrawler about the cries for a buff to BM hunter pet damage — and BM dps buffs in general. Here’s the pertinent qutoes…
In my opinion, players spend too much effort trying to compare their rotation to that of other classes or specs that they may not understand as well. Bad Arcane mages mash two buttons and bad BM hunters mash two buttons. You’re not going to top charts as Arcane if that’s all you do.
We don’t want to buff the pet damage for BM any more for a couple of reasons. One is that it puts too much dependence on the pet. If the pet does 50% of your damage (which is an exaggeration) and the pet dies, then your dps just dropped by 50%. Even if you can get the pet back quickly, you’ve suffered a lot of damage loss. Secondly, the pet doesn’t require that much babysitting. Few players are clicking their pet abilities on and off. As such, it just acts like a dot with cool art. When we talk about the risk of BM being too easy to play, we don’t want to over-reward players for just doing Steady and having the pet attack. What I’m saying is that the more damage the pet does, the less the hunter player even has to pay attention. If the pet required more micro-management, then that would change. If pets built up combo points, or Kill Command acted like a Conflag, or something where the hunter had to react, then more pet damage wouldn’t be so bad (though the risk of death doesn’t go away).
We’d like to buff BM PvE damage, but we have to be careful not to buff it too much in PvP where it still has really high burst. This means we can’t just do things like boost the Arcane Shot damage of Ferocious Inspiration or the like. The damage would have to be more of the slowly stacking / sustained variety, and that’s harder to implement. (Technically, it’s not hard to implement per se, but it’s hard to get it feeling right without causing weird things to player behavior, the talent trees or causing other problems that lead to a two hour fix taking two weeks instead.)
And…
We want hunters and warlocks, and to a lesser extent Unholy DKs and Frost mages, to care about their pet. We don’t want the pet to ever overshadow the player. You can argue that it wouldn’t, but that’s our concern. Pet damage needs to be a smaller portion, though not trivially so, of total player damage. Thirty percent seems like a reasonable target on the high end.
Ghostcrawler has said many times that BM is not raid viable and they would like to buff BM to get them there. Believe me I know there are BM hunters out there who insist they are viable, who come up with convoluted spreadsheet data to show them not as far behind (usually by ignoring raid buffs), and say the only reason there’s so little BM on top of raid parses is because none of the best hunters raid as BM (and that’s a little clue right there for you). They probably also disagree with blizzard’s assessment.
However I’m sure everyone can agree that a dps buff to BM would be welcome. And Blizzard keeps saying that they intend to do that — but today’s comments make it sound like that buff will come with some increased complexity to the BM hunter — not by buffing their pet (or DoT, as it were).
Sounds like a perfect solution to me, though I’d be a little surprised to see it before Cataclysm, if for no other reason than shuffling up the top raid specs mid-raid dungeon is kinda mean. We can always hope though!
Agreed (again). For the complexity we are, we BM-based hunters are where we should be during raids.
Give us more to do (about like Marksman… none of that Survival twitchy-twitchy-crap) and any increase to PvE DPS would be appropriate. Raiding as BM would also be more challenging and enjoyable. I enjoy the diversity.
silly Ghostcrawler, Arcane mages have to press 3 buttons……..
That’s a nice indepth blue response. As much as I would LIKE to see a BM damage buff, I can’t really argue for it, simply because BM is such a nice leveling spec. Plus, it lets you solo things like old dungeons or Molten Core, if you’re insane like that.
That being said, the idea of pet micro-management is interesting. As it is, I micro-manage my pet with mouseover targeting, hitting Intimidate or Cower, or in rare situations toggling Growl to pull a mob of a healer, but that’s really about all we can do right now. I would welcome the idea and potential benefits (and subsequent learning curve) of more micromanagement for higher damage results.
PTR Patch 3.3.3 Note: Ferocious Inspiration: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards.
Well, there’s the BM buff. I don’t know the impact for sure, but looks like a nice little bone for the BM raid wanna bees. I’d love to raid BM, but my job is to DPS and MM is tops so that is what I use. I don’t believe this will bring BMs anywhere near a MM with 800+ passive ArP.
FI is not a buff and is nothing new. The only thing that changed is the range got expanded.
However, arcane mages and ret pallies provide the same buff, and they don’t stack, so the BM raid buff is largely useless.
The problem with is with FI is that since it doesn’t stack with the other buffs, BM won’t get much with the raid, since BM is so behind on damage, it’s not worth sacrificing that spot for a Ret pally or Arcane mage and would do more damage in the first place. Sorry BM, I think you’re not raiding anymore.
Saw this on wow.com first, and I also saw your extreme soloing article on WoW. A friend of mine actually found it first and told me “He wrote about pet tanking. Did you help?” and I was like “…the hell?” Then I had to explain the difference to him once I saw the article itself. Still, it was good for a laugh, and a bit of hunter wisdom for my friend (who’s a pally).
I’m pretty apathetic toward what they do with BM as a raid spec. Any viable spec will do nicely imo. Though clearly I’m not in the majority.
Frost: Being one who really enjoys playing BM I tend to agree with what BLUE has to say for the most part. The main issue i have with Blizzards treatment of the BM spec is that to get the very most from BM you have to gem your gear for attack power, and for MM and SV you gem differently for Agility. So they draw a line and say pick MM & SV or pick BM. It wouldnt be a problem if they normalized the boost from the gems in my opinion. That way we could do PVE in an optimum BM mode and the switch specs. to SV or MM for raids. Kinda makes dual spec less attractive for BM hunters as it is now.
To my knowledge most other DPS specs dont have to gem so differently to be say a arms warrior vs. a fury warrior. My warrior I gem for strength or armor pen. doesnt matter if Im fury or arms. And using the logic that the more complex rotation should be rewarded by more DPS then Fury warriors vs. Arms warrior is a direct contradiction of that logic as fury is basically a 2 button rotation vs. the harder Arms rotation that suffers from missing even a single CD. And yet at higher gear levels fury is superior in DPS.
I know they cant please everyone & as a BM hunter I dont expect to be treated any better but I sure dont think I should be treated any worse like we are. PEACE!
Rhino
Am I making any sense?
Could you address the changes to DK’s Might of the Abomination and the other Shaman 10% increase to AP now being changed to auras instead of procs? I feel like this will make hunters (especially MM) the new rogues, since we won’t be bringing any raidwide buff that another class (which at least one of either is guaranteed to be in a raid) can bring?
Actually Rogues are better — they bring the 4% physical damage boost (combat). The only other spec to have that is arms warriors, and they don’t exist in raids.
But the change doesn’t do anything very new to us — the 10% buff was always provided by others almost as good as TSA. This doesn’t make any practical difference from the way it was before the changes.
re:rhinochaser
other classes do indeed have that kind of discrepancy, look at combat rogues vs mutilation rogues. Although in that case not only is it a gem difference its a completely different set of gear.
and for that matter, MM and SV hunters aren’t necessarily gemming the same either, at this point a lot of MM hunters are indeed gemming straight agility, but some are actually gearing for the Arp hard cap (looking doable if you have access to all of the gear in ICC) those arp hard capped MM hunters definitely suffer when they need to switch to their SV spec for whatever 10 man they’re in that needs replenishment.
The simple fact is that BM was a very easy spec to play in (arguably) one of the easier classes to play, they’re not going to up its raid viability until they can make it more challenging (and rightfully so), and buffing pet damage without making the player have to do any work *isn’t* making it more challenging. I don’t think Blizz will ever make a single class’s spec so clearly overpowered as BM was during Burning Crusade.
I approve of making BM more viable an end game class (I love my spirit beasts like whoa, and can’t resist pulling them out in blood princes, I sure do get tired of my frostwolf) but like you say frost, I think it would be unfair to anyone playing the end game seriously right now to buff it by much, and make hunters learn the mechanics of a completely different spec mid progression.
I’d be highly surprised if anything changes before cata. The entire rework of focus and due to that also a lot of talent changes… not to mention the mastery or titan’s path (which both can be an excellent way to ‘fix’ things).
Especially the focus is a major issue. It will change a lot for mm/sv but nothing for bm. A buff there pre-cata will cause most players to stick to BM and never learn to deal with focus.
Hell, i wouldnt be surprised if BM is intentionally weaker untill 4.1 so people will want to learn all about the new focus and changes in gameplay.
@ Melenaus
You can also think of it differently. It means 1 less talent point to spend that can be invested in something that increases damage. More damage means more reason to take that hunter, especially since hunters still got extreme kiting potential, have small dps loss on moving and still bring stuff like MD.
Polarity: Thanks for very well spoken reply. Tough as it is to accept I guess to be in the 7k DPS range thats expected for end game 25 man raids right now we all need to be SV / MM hunters with wolves. It is what it is I guess… Just not all that exciting being just like everyone else speaking for myself that is.
My server has been plagued by lag issues since this last maintenance and out of boredom I have been playing my Dwarf hunter on the Ice crown server that I rolled to be part of Frost’s lvl 1 hunter raid. One of the more enjoyable aspects has been using the random dungeon finder with this toon and doing the old WC & Deadmines instances and topping the meters. LOL Wonder if I should try to lvl as SV or MM so Im proficient at it once i hit 80. Oh an I have a wolf already so I look just like all the other hunters. LOL
One could also make the pet’s damage output depend on the what the hunter does. Say for example, if you made a combo, then the pet’s next attack would be stronger.
Kinda like we already have in Cobra Strikes and Go For the Throat, only expanded more. The real issue I think is not about the relative % of the damage that you pet does (70/30 or 50/50, the outcome is still 100), but rather that not too much of it should be automatic. Pets dying is always unfortunate, but it doesn’t happen too often during raids and it could be the achillies heel of the BM hunter. I don’t think there’d be many Beast Mastery hunters who’d mind losing that much damage if their pet dies, and if they do, well THEN they should respec. That’d make the choice more preference based and less on whatever happens to deal the most damage.
Or to put it in another way: if BM did equal damage to MM and SV, then it’d still be ‘weaker’ because if your pet dies, your damage suffers more greatly than that of the other 2 specs.
I have run into a few heated discussions with my guild mates about this particular subject. I have always been a Beast Master hunter and was told by raid leader and officers that BM can’t raid. I will first admit that I know MM and SV can out DPS a BM. I know I surprised several when I was in far less quality gear then most of the raiders and still finding a way to get into to the top 7 on the DPS meter. I have since changes to MM and I will admit I am doing more damage (Not 20%-30% like a previous article said). As for pets, If they die all specs lose DPS. MM and Surv lose about 10%-15% of DPS from pet where a BM would lose 30%-50%. Also most hunters are running with a wolf whicn means you lose the furious howl buff. If you don’t think this is true for MM and Surv, just show up and not use a pet next raid and see your numbers. As a BM, my pet never really died unless the tank died. Aggro was never an issue for me as a BM like it is for me as a MM. As a MM I have to use Feign Death now which cost a GCD. My raid awareness has slipped a wee little bit as I have to concentrate more on shot priority. IMO, BM can be viable raider but you need to spend the time researching it. You can’t miss a beat and you need to know what abilities of the pet’s you need to control. As for a DPS buff, it won’t happen to cataclysm. They have already stated that cataclysm they are changing character stat contributions to pets to 100%. That is going to be a huge buff on pets and if anything will need to have abilities nerfed to bring and class with pets back to the pack.
Re:Rhinochaser
As a BM, I was consistently over 7k DPS on Boss fights. The reason the change to Surv/MM is to help those classes, or raid members, that struggle to hit the 7k DPS mark.
This BM buff seems more of a pvp buff to me. BM is still pretty popular in 5s and of course beast cleave teams will love this.
“We’d like to buff BM PvE damage, but we have to be careful not to buff it too much in PvP where it still has really high burst.”
I’m about sick of seeing this.
Pretty easy to figure out.
#1 Give BM a talent with +8% hit — give this constant effect to Invigoration maybe?
#2 Make a complete set (all 16 paper doll slots) of BM optimized armor with high RAP and no +hit
Exact numbers could be tweaked ofc, but the idea is the same. MM and SV would still need their hit rating, while BM could stack AP/Crit/ArP/Haste. Would be completely useless to the PvPers who use their Gladiator gear and have no use for huge amounts of +hit.
great band-aid before Cat “fixes” everything. Tell your friends.
I think the BM spec is fine at lower levels since I’m lowbie.But it brings me to this.Why is dps so important at lower levels.It’s getting retarded.GS same thing.I can’t believe the way the game is shaping now.5 years ago it was nice to raid and have fun.The more I read about raids and this GS crap.I don’t think I want to raid.I’d probably quit WoW.I can only see how Cata is going to fair.I’m going to take a shot in the dark here but Cata is gonna suck just like TBC did.With Blizzard keep screwing up stuff it comes to no surprise.This game should have been buried long time ago.It’s funny that I can tank lower instances and dungeons better than a tank.I get yelled at and kicked but you know what,I really don’t care.IT’S A GAME.People forgotten those simple 3 words.So if I ever do raid ICC,probably wont because of the way this GS and horseshit that follows it.I’ll just play a new hunters different spec.
Group hug for Raybeez every1
its never been easier to get gear, the problem isn’t people asking for GS the problem is GS being the deciding factor in you getting into a raid or not when although you might have a 2600 (on wow-heroes) GS this does not mean u have the skill or even understand your hunter, trust me once you hit 80 you main goal is the impress people, let people see you have skills, but dont cry about 5 years of change because i gaurantee you, if we were all sitting here (which we probably wouldnt be) 5 years later and WoW was still like vanilla we would be QQing like crazy, saying of the day “if you think you cant or you think you can, you are right” attitude is everything m8, so relax and enjoy being a hunter
Does this count for the hunter bet frost? Even though its not on scattered shots, you still made it and its in the hunter column. I’d like to add those extra 48 comments to our tally. =D
To increase BM spec dps i think they need to add another shot , give the BM hunters something else to do as the rotation to me seems to simple and easy compared to MM or the movement of SV. I think blizzard should not make it any easier but make there rotation harder if they are willing to buff the spec to make it more interesting, MM makes its dps by a numerous shot rotation and has the most shots in the game give BM a few more shots to if they want to turn it into a raid spec. However I cant not see anything happening before Cat due to the fact of the new wings and hard modes for ICC and it would be easier to make the changes while there setting up hunters focus etc and the new 5 levels that will be available.
Quick question, you noted most BMs say they’ve got comparable DPS in spreadsheets, usually by excluded raid buffs – does this mean their spec doesn’t scale as well as others with raid buffs?
Perhaps Blizzard could look into that instead of bolstering the pet…
In terms of raid damage, BM is exactly what it stands for medically: shit.
Hmmm. I guess the wise raid leader will be wanting to bring that BM Hunter along now for the extra THREE percent RAID WIDE DAMAGE!
Having another hunter spec along just wouldn’t be giving the TEAM the DPS boost that Beast Master specced Hunters will soon provide!
Read the PTR patch notes!
For the not-so-bright (hunters that haven’t specced into Beast Mastery) you can find the notes here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html
Lluvatar, you’re an idiot. that ability has been there since BC, and Ret Pallys have the same thing. Arcane mages got the same buff, I think in 3.3.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I think BM could use a talent that gives a chance to proc a kill shot opening off of pet crits. It’d be a little rough to balance, but it would make bm a bit more reactive and should provide a nice dps upgrade.
Your name calling and your handle speak volumes as to your intelligence and maturity.
Perhaps you are confused about the difference between an aura and an ability.
I’m not at all surprised.
I know everybody is remembering to keep hunters as hunters, Ranged DPS with a Pet. However, I always looked at BM Hunters as not having a Pet (Wepon / Decoy) but a Friend or an extra limb. Basicly what I’m saying is, why not make it so where a BM Hunter would actually fight along side with his Pet. Not just send the pet in and DPS from a far but have abilities where the Hunter is mounted like the Samurai and actually fight from the Pet. Utilizing a different set of abilities that the Hunter and Pet use in Tandem. I guess an ability like druids have when they switch in and out of their different forms. The ranged part would be small, I’m thinking this would be more Melee Range since all Pets are Melee. Of course this is just a personal opinion about BM Hunters that could make them more playable at End-Game content in Cataclysm. Though I know they would never do it. Would be a viable way to increase the DPS of both without Over Powering the Pet.
Lluvatar: the 3% damage buff is also provided by arcane mages and ret pallies, and of course it does not stack. In fact, it’s better provided by them, because they provide it while in their top dps spec.
If you are in a 25-man raid with no mages or ret pallies, then going BM for FI would be a good idea. However, I have to think that would be a very rare raid composition
Re Lluvatar
In response to the 3% raid wide damge buff, FI will not stack with a Ret Pally’s crusade talent. The only way FI would be worth anything in a raid is either you don’t have a ret pally or your ret pally finds a way to die consistently.
Maybe, I’m missing the point here, but what is the point Ghostcrawler tries to make? I guess I miss the context, but he is saying:
- BM pet damage is not going to be increased (even though BM’s are asking for it)
- Hunters should care for their pet. Duh!
Well, since Wow patch 4.0 will be out end of 2010 and redoes the whole hunter thing (as well as all of the other specs) anyway and – please god forbid – will replace mana with focus, anyone expecting any major change was naive. Blizzard is just going to maintain this release and no more. So major bufs for BM are out of the question. See it as patch 2.4.2 After that there was no overhaul of anything up to 3.0, just tweaks.
This brings me to my second point. I don’t know for any hunter that doesn’t ‘care’ for their pet. It is why we play hunter!
But since Blizzard also give slow priority on pet scaling, it means also our pets are becomming more and more like non-combat pets in terms of overall dps for us MM and SV hunters. Nice funny companions.
OK, if they are alive they give us 2% extra scaling damage through talents and a random (since pet crits are fixed, it could just as wel be a random proc) 3% scaling damage through the new CotH, but that is it. Their own damage is like a nice semi-static bonus.
OK, I’m being cynical here, but if this blue post was anything more than a long way of saying to BM players to stop whining and either respec or live with BM the way it is, then I’m missing the point.
I have to say that I raided tonight as been doing 25man voa the newest boss. As BM I was doing 5k+ dps and was the number 1 hunter out of 5 in dps. IMO BM is a raid viable spec. As long as you know how to play it. I am an orc for the extra pet damage. I do not mash just 2 buttons but 4 with rapid fire when it is up and the orc racial when it is up. Also with bestial wrath and kill command when they are up. I do not feel that there are a lot of needed changes to the BM spec. Only change I can think of that I wanna see is ammo. Just make it an item you get:)
@ Rades: so you’re saying that, because us BM’s are able to solo some instances (and there are not likely many of us that do) we don’t deserve a damage buff that would push us closer to being raid-viable? (We are not for end-game raiding no matter how people try to prove we are)
Frankly I don’t have the time to put in the effort required to solo instances (if I were so inclined). I enjoy raiding even though I’ve only been doing it for 6 months and I’d love to raid more as BM but the GM more than the RL wouldn’t allow me to because of the dps gap to SV/MM. I’m not the best MM – I pursued both the ArP and Agil builds but for some reason I do about the same dps as BM (yeah I’m terrible at movement) – and I’ve given SV a good go but I hate it so I’d welcome anything Blizz does to improve BM damage for the hunter. Hell give us a bit more complexity so we can prove false the stigma of the faceroll BM.
And I do hope they nerf the Furious Howl ability sooner than later so that we can see some diversity in raiding pets and not just different worg skins…
Response to Nayr.
This is what I was driving at mate.
Things have changed since those days, changed a lot. The game stopped being that fun. Less challenges were present in the game, and as we got through TBC and more so in WotlK, homogenization started to rear its ugly face in World of Warcraft. Everyone running around with identical gear, looking the same, doing the exact same things. With arenas, changes were made on a monthly basis that affected the way classes were developed, and subsequently also lead to how PvE was being done in the game. It got stale, predictable and repetative. The whole notion of hybrids in the midst of all this was just a fucking slap in the face by Blizzard. If you’re going to remove everything unique and interesting about the classes, at least make them equal in the roles that they are performing.
I would like to thank Muqq for this.
@dinozzo, Umm 5k isn’t that impressive on the new VoA especially in 25 man buffs. I understand getting defensive about your rotation, but the it is quite a bit simpler than the MM rotation, I know because i spent all of BC as BM and quite a bit of early WotLK. Simple isn’t bad, most of us raided as BM at the beginning of WotLK and loved how straight forward the rotation was.
Raid how you want to and how your guild allows, If you decide to raid as BM go into it knowing that your dps is quite a bit lower than it could be. If your cool with that, and your raid is cool with that, then more power to you guys. Don’t put lipstick on the pig by saying you have 4 buttons, and the gap isn’t that large.
Anyway The hunting lodge fires back with another article that attempts to stretch a blizzard comment to imply that blizzard has said that BM is raid viable. Link below:
http://www.brigwyn.com/2010/02/23/beast-mastery-is-raid-viable-so-sayeth-blizzard/
It was my understanding that MM was basically ‘hit the strongest of whatever’s not on cooldown’. With most of the research done by Frostheim, you could line up your shots in order of power, and then it’s little more than hitting the left most button that’s not recharging.
How’s that much more complex than Beast Mastery? Or am I missing something?
@Grimgold
A couple of things about the post your linking. (And I appreciate it by the way.)
First, my issue with the post here and over on WoW.com is more about Frost making statements like
And not providing any sources for such a statement. (Sorry Frost, but that’s a beef not just with you but the community as a whole. You just got the ire.)
Next, I provided a link to the only post I could find or think of from Blizzard that even hints at BM’s viability. And using just that one post you can see that even Bornakk didn’t really mean “Viability” in the true sense of the word but that BM isn’t an “Optimum” raid spec.
This is one area Frost and I both agree. I completely concur that BM isn’t optimum. And just as I feel BM raiders shouldn’t try and force their way onto Competitive/Hardcore/Min-Max Raiders that don’t feel the same way. I feel just as strongly Competitive/Hardcore/Min-Max Raiders need to realize that they’re not the only one out there that plays the game.
Anyways, sorry this came over here Frost. But I just wanted to make sure and clarify that post.
I’m not entirely sure where I read it, could be here on WHU, but apparently MM spam Steady Shot more often than BM in their rotations so following on a bit from Snoggi’s post, how is that more complex than BM?
As BM we also have to worry (as do SV) about re-applying SrS before it falls off whereas MM only have to worry about it once due to Chimera Shot refreshing it. As I said earlier I would welcome another shot in the BM rotation just to add some spice to it and make it less simple.
I switched from BM to SV some time back after a little experiment on dummies showed just how badly BM was falling behind. In SV while still AP gemmed I was out-dpsing my BM spec. Add considerations of limited practice SV, and that SV has better scaling, and the decision was a no brainer.
Nevertheless, I figured I had found an opportunity for BM to prove useful in ICC; specifically in the PP fight where it could be convenient to finish off one of the adds during a Tear Gas phase.
Alas, it turns out that the biggest gem of a talent in the BM tree should in fact be worded: “While enraged …. cannot be stopped unless killed OR PP USES TEAR GAS.”
To make matters worse, I noticed that the BM spec burned mana much faster than my SV spec.
Sad to say, but my BM spec continues to gather dust.
Why not a simple pet buff that is only usable in Pve zones..