Up now at WoW.com, Can Beast Mastery Raid?
…But even after getting repeatedly beaten like a red-headed gnome, squashed into a wee pet-shaped crater, you still don’t have to look far to find a BM hunter defending their viability in raids.
Today we’re going to take a hard look at the BM spec. We’re going to dismiss the rhetoric of the PUG masses who say “If yer BM yer a noob” and take a look at exactly where BM really is in raid viabilit. Join me after the cut as we take a look at the numbers and the philosophy behind the BM raider…. Read More.
Check out Can Beast Mastery Raid.
And don’t forget, we still have the Hunter vs Druids Bet going on, so take a moment and comment, or respond to someone else’s comment. I have a hunch there’s going to be a lot of discussion around this one.
(15 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)
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I posted a comment over there congratulating you on what will be your new bracelet. Some really hilarious gems of comments from “outraged” fail tards.
Whhhoooooo doggie…I am so enlightened now as to how crazy loyal the BM hunters are to that spec. They do NOT want to hear it.
Personally, I thought you wrote a great, even-toned article that provided some core information. Hey, thats nice if you can do 6k with a Ravasaur in ICC, now why don’t you want to be better? Isn’t that what most endgame players strive for? To be better?
Its seems pretty self-gimping, but they sure seem married to it.
(Grats on winning that bet, tho. Was this all your evil master plan?)
I shed a tear after reading this. Going to have to dualspec and learn a new rotation this weekend :/
I think you accomplished your goal of driving up the traffic in order to beat those dirty druids (my next 80 is a kitty/bear.. lol)
I can barely keep up with the comments!
Excellent article. As much as I love my BM spec, I just cannot justify trying to raid as BM, it’s the same reason I feel ashamed when I sit down to a fish feast instead of partaking of my blackened dragonfin, or when I realize that I forgot to replenish my elixers, or when I say, man, those elixers are spendy, I’ll just take the flask. ( I will readily admit that on a PuG, after 4 or 5 wipes, I start eating the fish and elaving the elixers alone, that’s a personal issue I will some day work toward considering resolving…)
I love how people want to point out how the data is bad because the good players are raiding as Marks or Surv, yet the best BM players are pulling huge numbers in ICC, better than what I am doing as Marks, sad to admit.
tbh i dont see why this topic has to keep coming up all the time.
Admin
To be fair, every article on wow.com this month was in my queue before the bet, however I did anticipate this one being controversial
What I find really dismaying is the number of people who completely misread things — as in read the opposite of what I said. Many commenters think I’m saying that BM is not raid viable, when I explicitly say that they are raid viable. Just that you’re really doing a lot less dps than you could by raiding as BM, which I have a philosophical problem with. If BM was just 5% or even 10% behind, I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with it. But leaving 20-30% on the table?
Member
Nice work Frost. Posted my comment on your article. Shifting Perspectives is gonna have to work pretty hard to try to top you after today. O.o
I was kind of surprised to see how big the reaction was. I posted my comment when there were maybe 80; I refreshed and there were almost 160.
Most impressive.
Contributor
The first three pages of comments are mostly about warlock specs. I kinda chuckled at the random tangent the discussion took before settling down to the controversy over BM.
Clearly there were going to be a lot of people who dwell on the negative and what they don’t want to see, and will ignore your concessions to the BM crowd. It’s the interwebs, after all. I was honestly a bit shocked that there wasn’t more argument.
Also, do we have the hunter v. druid data thus far? It would be nice to know if we’re winning or not.
Considering that you started by asking about raid viability, then very quickly and very thoroughly laid out that in your opinion raid viability = maximized DPS output, I am not at all surprised that many, many people misinterpreted your point. Your data is good, but it’s not communicated in a fashion that makes it clear that they’re acceptable for raids at all. (It doesn’t help that the title is “Can Beast Mastery raid?”, not “Is Beast Mastery raid viable?”)
Just something to think about.
Admin
I suppose a very practical answer would be “Most BM cannot raid, because most raid leaders won’t let you. Here’s why not.”
This has been bothering me for awhile now, and since Frost has mentioned this before (on Hunting Party podcast) and its appeared again in this BM blog I feel the need to ask a question. Frost you state that ” I do have a philosophical problem with choosing to do so much less DPS” – but if you are holding a 251 gun (or lesser) and Zod drops in 25 man ICC, arent you choosing to do less dps if you refuse to take it because you refuse to wield bows in the game?
Admin
Indeed I would be, but I’d be likely choosing to gimp my dps by 1% or less. Not 30%
Just wondering, the DPS meters on the three bosses, do they include the pets or not?
I always read “hunters dps” but always wonder if it’s combined hunter+pet.
Well played Frost, seems you did what you set out to, and that is generate traffic to this story and post. Nearly every hunter knows what a hot topic BM in raiding is and you have successfully written this article to generate a buzz. You didn’t out right say BM is bad to raid in, you just said it was the lowest dps, which sadly is true. You even threw in the dreaded “viable” word and said BM IS viable, just not optimal.
The downside to this article is that you pretty much said you would look down on anyone trying to raid in a BM spec as someone that didn’t give their all to raiding. Just because you think it’s philosophically wrong to play a spec you enjoy despite it’s lower dps doesn’t make it a bad thing to raid in it. It just make you one of those elitist who think raiding and this GAME are all about the meters and where you fall when a boss dies. In the end this is a game and should be played as one. Not seen as who can do the most DPS on whatever fight. Just because someone wants to raid as BM doesn’t mean they have no concept of team work and doesn’t make them self-centered. Perhaps they know something that you don’t know? Perhaps they are attempting to do some theorycrafting of their own to help other BM hunters out there to squeeze more dps out of this spec? Sure a raid environment isn’t the best place to “test” a spec, but a training dummy will not give accurate enough numbers to demonstrate a significant dps increase if you tweak your spec or gear trying to snag more dps. The only way to know how much you can do is in a raid with proper buffs because there are variables that you won’t get from a training dummy.
So don’t be so quick to judge a BM hunter when they ask if they can be in your raid, or you may just miss the one that can actually out dps a good MM or SV hunter.
Admin
Sharam: it’s combined hunter and pet.
Smoky: the goal was to address a very debated hunter topic with hard numbers, and then add in my philosophy and analysis. Yes, WoW is a game, but raiding is a *team* game, and in my opinion you should be doing what’s best for the team.
Even if the best is playing what you feel comfortable with and know VS playing a spec you aren’t comfortable with, can’t play well, or generally do not like? And if you choose not to respec you are selfish and don’t deserve a raid spot? Hmm, that’s kinda jaded. Glad i don’t play on your server.
Two points of criticism that get lost in the flood of wow insider comments.
1) the exact dps comparison values are incorrect because of the sample bias (the best hunters don’t raid as BM so the top BM hunter data isn’t from the best hunters)
2) You make a logical error. you say BM is raid viable, but is 30% behind other specs. Then you say anyone that raids at 30% below what they could do is hindering the raid, and thus not raid viable. ( b /\ a, a->!b ) = logic flaw.
Admin
BM is raid viable. They can meet the minimum requirements for the raid. But yes, you aren’t helping your raid *nearly* as much as you could be. Raid viable and doing your best aren’t the same thing. You can be raid viable and still be far worse than your best output.
Loved the article. Perfectly matches my feelings on the topic, but I wouldn’t have been able to put it so well.
I would really like to raid with my spirit beasts though someday >.<
Member
Frost, I hope you win the bet, but I just can’t bring myself to comment along with all the tard comments over there. I challenge anyone that thinks Frost is gimping his dps by using the gun from ToTC to beat his dps. Personally, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t.
Koonazz, there are BM hunters out there that are beating Frost’s dps; all beit they are probably a Tier of gear better than his gear.
I thought you may have sensationalised the loss of BM with the whole pants thing; so I dropped my pants (along with T9 bonus) for my MM spec (spreadsheets) which I then compared to the cookie cutter BM build.
Bindi MM: 6122dps
Bindi no pants MM: 5415dps
Bindi full gear set BM: 5183.2dps
I would like to ask though; if I don’t have a ret pally or arcane mage in my 10 man group, would it be better for me to go BM for the good of the raid?
Why is it that no matter what, people always misread articles and then bitch and bash the author making comments that are completely in agreement with the article? It baffles me.
(P.S. This isn’t directed at anyone here. Just an extra comment about the stupidity of posters I’ve noticed on wow.com)
Member
Im looking forward to seeing all the die hard BM hunters trying to prove you wrong Frost. I think your right about the DPS increase to MM / SV though would the difference be nearly as much during heroics where most fights are VERY short ?
The article is about raiding, not about heroics. But anyways, if you are pulling over 6K in Icecrown Citadel heroic dungeons as MM/SV you would be pulling over 5K as BM which is still far more that you are going to see from most puggers so I wouldnt be much concerned about your spec in heroics (unles the talents are spent correctly within the spec, of course
)
@Korenn: I agree with you there, and I’d like to expand it a little further: it’s no less anecdotical than the quoted ‘random mail’ that Frost gets every week. The best hunters are compared…that’s only 3 out of all hunters in the game, with no comments whatsoever about what gear they may have, what raids they were in, etc.
Sure, it’s good to use as an indication…but it’s also merely 1 measurement of data that gets compared, with a lot of variables remaining undefined.
And yes, the sad part of this is that the majority of the readers will view the article as ‘BM-ins’t viable’ as once they read the 30%, it gets burned into their mind.
@Bindura:
If you assume that they deal equal DPS to you, then you simply multiply the number of damage dealers (including tanks if you prefer) times 3%, and you’ll find out how much ‘additional dps’ you cause relative to you own dps. If the raid on average deals more dps than you, then it will be more favorable, if you’re the top dps, then it will be less.
Assuming you have 8 people dealing damage in the raid, who, on average, deal the same dps as you do, then you’ll deal 8*3=24% more overall damage.
So if you compare this to Frost’s 30% (assuming it’s correct for all hunters everywhere), and factor in the loss of Trushot Aura or Hunting Party, then no, switching purely for the dps increase would not be a good idea most of the time.
Member
I left a comment replying to one of the indignant BM fans. It was my personal favorite, since the player was saying that BM is completely acceptable in their raids while having any ungemmed gear was not, and that they spent “countless hours” researching gems. That would be allowing a pally in fully gemmed gear who was missing Crusader Strike and Divine Storm in his spec, while booting a properly specced pally who had a missing gem. Completely absurd.
If you don’t care about maximizing performance, then fine, do what you want. But to claim to care about that while playing BM is hypocritical in the extreme.
/rant
woah.Frosty, you got a storm in a tea cup going on in WoW.com lol
I haven’t plowed through all the comments there (I’m only on page 7 or something), but it seems like a lot of the BM hunters are really mad not so much because of your article, Frost, but because they’ve caught so much crap from other “helpful” people. Many WoW players are perfectly willing to make overly simple assumptions about others’ value. In this particular case, MM = good and BM = bad, with a never-you-mind about what that particular player is capable of doing. Of course, on my server, if the BM hunter had a higher GS, he’d be going instead of me.
Why Raid as Beast Mastery?
By now most of you have seen the outraged reaction of many BM hunters to Frostheim’s article on “Can Beast Mastery Raid”. The response to the outrage has been to discredit is as illogical, factually wrong, and irresponsible to other players in a raid.
What I think everyone has missed is any serious discussion of why this is controversial in the first place. Why are so many people so firmly committed to their BM spec? We don’t see this much loyal dedication in almost any other “inferior” spec in any other class… Why?
We all need to remember that at its core, WoW is a game. For the most part, people choose a character class that, for whatever reason, appeals to them personally (be it for the character concept, or the playstyle, or whatever). To join in raiding, players are expected to work with in the constraints of their chosen character to do the best that they can possibly do. If you’re not doing the best you can with your character, you should endeavor to improve.
Why Play a Hunter?
In my opinion there are really two fundamentally different character concepts bundled into the Hunter class (and in Warcraft III they were totally different classes).
1. Shooter: this character concept appeals to people who want to blow big holes in things, and seems to disproportionately attract players who enjoy shooter games. Both MM and SV match the shooter concept, in different ways. Pets are incidental to this concept, more of an extra tool in the DPS box than a core reason to play. Those interested in the shooter aspect of hunters are likely fairly willing to spec BM if that’s the top spec, because it doesn’t prevent them from continuing to focus on the shooting. A stereotypical shooter loves guns…
2. Beasts: Another entirely different character concept is of a character who defeats enemies by taming an controlling fearsome beasts. To those interested in this concept, the whole point of playing a hunter is for the pets. In my case, this concept is what attracted me to WoW in the first place. A stereotypical Beastie loves animals…
I think the reason there is so much attachment to the BM spec is that it is in many ways a totally different character concept that is the reason many players chose a hunter in the first place.
The Limits on the DPS Race
It seems to be conventional wisdom that you pick the class you enjoy with the most, and then strive to excel in it. We’re not told to all switch over to play the current top DPS class, not just because it would take time to level a new toon, but because that seems a violation of a player’s right to choose the class they enjoy. If “Shooters” were told they must respect to being a melee hunter to top the DPS charts, a great many would protest. Likewise, when players who chose to play a hunter for the fearsome Beasts are told that their concept of the character is inferior, ineffective, and irresponsible, they are outraged. The DPS race is good to encourage raiders to excel in their chosen class, but in the case of hunters I believe there are really two classes in one. Forcing people to totally change their reason for playing is probably taking the DPS race too far…. but it would be good for the raid…
So Now What?
I think that conceptual difference in the Hunter class is why the ineffectiveness of BM is such a hot topic. Hopefully in Cataclysm Blizzard will recognize that people with very different interests play the hunter class, and will make more of an effort to make the class viable for the different players. Ideally, they’d give the BM spec more interesting pet abilities, rather than just have the BM pet as a mostly mindless DPS Machine. Of course, none of this is within the reach of the Mighty Frostheim to do anything about, unless we can convince him to write some powerful prayers for BM and send them to the Blizzard gods… But I hope all this clarifies why I think this has been such a sensitive topic.
Of Science and Dwarven Stout
So why are BM hunters angry at Frostheim? There’s a strong message in his most recent article (and several previous ones), that BM hunters should all respec to raid. In many cases, a skilled BM hunter can still be the top DPS slot in the raid. Could they do even more DPS in a different spec? Probably, but they certainly don’t deserve to be pressured or booted as long as they are more than upholding their end of the DPS bargain. When someone’s DPS is too low for your raid, pressure them, and if that doesn’t resolve it, boot them. That is the mentality of most guilds I know, but it doesn’t show up much in Frostheim’s writing. Science is supposed to be above influence from anyone’s opinion, but any good scientist knows that’s very rarely the case.
Holes in the Science
The other major problem with Frostheim’s most recent article is that it doesn’t really meet his own standards for rigorous science. Ideally, you’d resolve the BM DPS capabilities by finding the best BM hunter in the world and the best MM hunter in the world, gear and buff them equally, and then put them to work on a training dummy or a boss for hours and hours and hours… That seems a little hard to arrange. Barring that, we have two readily available data sets, each with their problems:
1. Actual data from the top hunter’s performance in each spec, available on WoWmeteronline. The problem is that this data is by no means unbiased. Since BM is currently the weakest raiding spec, the top 20 BM hunters are likely to also be the least hard-core raiders, and therefore also the least geared and the least attuned to squeezing out every last drop of DPS when compared to the top MM hunters.
2. Data from hunter spreadsheets, pitting the top MM spec against the top BM spec, in the same gear (and it would be wise to test this at several gear levels). Of course, this data has the weakness of assuming a perfect DPS world, but it eliminates many of the selection biases of wowmeteronline. Unfortunately, this source of data was largely ignored in Frostheim’s latest article. He says that BM is 20% behind on spreadsheets, but I find that hard to believe since in my tests BM is consistently within 10%, often within 5%.
If actual hunter data shows BM behind by 30%, but spreadsheets show them behind by 10% or less, it’s probably fair to assume that there are some unbalancing problems in the data set.
Parting Shots
Frostheim is a phenomenal asset to the hunter community, and I’ve dutifully read virtually everything he’s written about hunters. I think he’s fantastic as the new writer for Wow.com. But with the new and growing audience, I’d just like to request a little more openness to understanding and respecting different perspectives on why we should choose to play a hunter in the first place (versus whatever class tops the DPS charts), and under what conditions we should call for a class or spec to be effectively banned from raiding.