After yesterday’s comment from Ghostcrawler that BM wasn’t far behind SV and that they hope the patch 3.3.3 buffs will bring BM close enough to start seeing a spike of BM hunters raiding… well, he got a lot of responses. A lot of people pulling together a lot of different data sources to contradict it.
Ghostcrawler’s response is a bit lengthy, and you can read the whole thing Here, but this is I think the gist of it:
Subtlety, BM, Arms, Frost and Frost were so far down that it was unreasonable to expect players to raid with them. We buffed them where we thought it was safe without, as I said above, pushing every existing player into that spec or creating PvP problems.
I think this is a really interesting statement. Basically Ghostcrawler is saying that they don’t want to buff BM so that it’s clearly better than SV or MM this late in the expansion — they don’t want to force raiders to have to switch specs mid-raid. (Well, force is the wrong word… they don’t want to create a situation where it’s better for raiders to switch specs).
So they’re trying to increase BM raid dps, trying to get more BM hunters raiding — trying to make it feel like you can bring whatever spec you like to your raid. If you’re preferred spec is behind, it won’t be so far behind that you’re called a huntard for raiding in it. It won’t be a thousand dps behind — you won’t be turning those nick of time kills into wipes.
But they’re trying to increase BM dps without having it overtake existing specs. So it’ll probably be Cataclysm before we see BM up in the ranks with the other hunter specs, but we can hope to see BM moving closer — beyond just viable and into the same general realm as SV.
My prediction is that after a couple weeks of 3.3.3 we’ll see Blizzard making another small tweak to BM to boost them a bit more, because it seems pretty clear that the current buff isn’t going to accomplish the goal. I think they’re just moving in baby steps to avoid the risk of boosting BM more than they intend. Small tweaks are the safest way for Blizz to make changes without unintended consequences.
Have you considered the change to Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn to provide the bonus to player pet health and damage Frost?
I am aware that this influences all 3 hunter specs, but BM would surely gain the most out of this.
@ Lolbroek
Um.. When pet damage was not affected by the buff, BM was penalized more than the other specs, due to their higher reliance on pet damage. Now that it properly affects pet damage, it benefits all specs equally. No spec benefits any more or less from the buff now.
Frost; I have to agree with the new methodology Blizz is using in regards to BM hunters. They’re starting a year and a half late, but small steps is the proper way. I am one of those who has been a BM at heart since I started playing the game, but have to raid MM now to be competitive.
While I did greatly enjoy the golden days at the end of BC, when BM reigned supreme over pretty much everybody on the DPS meters, I think all any of us wanted post 3.08 was to stop the heavy handed nerf bat, and bring the spec in line with the other two.
Fingers crossed this will be the beginning of some steps in that direction.
Not to be a jerk, but I caught a grammatical error:
If *your* preferred spec is behind, it won’t be so far behind that you’re called a huntard for raiding in it.
Interesting posts as always.
Hi fellowships.
At least now Blizz is putting their eyes on BM Hunters.
However, as everyone check, and Frost already confirmed, that Steady Shot buff is not enough for BM.
Some more tweaking is needed, and there is many proposals to buff, like special shot or other tweak points affecting pets. However, Blizz will not spend many time now, I guess, because Cataclysm development.
Anyway, I think a good way to tweak should be just ‘exchange’ talents of Improved Arcane Shot (15% damage to Arcane at Rank 3), from Marksmanship, and move to BM Tree, to simply replace Catlike Reflexes.
Reason why: Arcane Shot becomes then like ‘Signature Shot’ of BM Hunter, while Catlike Reflexes is not working as intended, maybe, because there is not many PVE Builds using this talent.
This change should not affect so much MM in DPS Loss, because best specs don’t use Arcane Shot anymore, because ArPen. Agility MM build loss a bit of DPS, but they can increase a bit pet damage by Catlike Reflexes.
Regards
Moving IMO arcane doesn’t change anything, bc bm hunters should be speced into it already
Imp arcane, damn you iPhone for changing my words with predictive typing
unless im just behind the curve with this BM stuff (not a BM fan personally), i read something today that made me go hmmm.. it was my understanding that initially the FI change replaced the buff to arcane with a buff to steady. today, ghost posted this, my emphasis:
In 3.3.3, Ferocious Inspiration rank 3 says:
All party and raid members have all damage increased by 3% within 100 yards of your pet. In addition, increases the damage dealt by Arcane Shot **AND** Steady Shot by 9%.
Correct. Since the 3% damage already is part of FI, and the arcane damage is already part of FI, the only difference is the 9% buff to Steady Shot. This translates to about a 1.5% overall dps boost.
Ya know frost even after listening regularly to your podcast and the many concrete observations based off real numbers and not feelings (uncommonly goo… sry I cant say the rest, LOL) and seeing the Blizz DEV team do what they do I now finally know the answer to it all.
It is what is is… nothing more.
I was a big BM player in BC and my 3 “iced” spirit beasts are a poke in the side everytime I switch from crab to wolf. I mean even with 1344/1400 ArP and hitting the dummy for over an hour yesterday just to see how much I could pull in my reasonably good gear full ArP and best Spreadsheeted BM spec… (near 3k+ diff on best self proc’s and such) I don’t even see 3.3.3 changes closing that huge of a gap. Like I said it is what it is and I’d agree that blizz won’t do anything major till Cat for some unknown reason.
and wow at Chimy’s astute observation… just wow (anyone have s spare pillow they aren’t currently using to smother somone with?)
thanks as always Frost since I abuse the piss out of your site. (and BTW after playing BM again for a cpl hours I felt that I kept missing something like a shot or cd or something until I realized I wasnt… was it always so mindless?)
Mulisha-Gorefiend(horde)
One of the rules of the interwebz is that whenever you begin a sentence with something like “Not to be rude, but.. “, “I’m not a racist/ nazi/ bigot, but…”, etc, they always end up being exactly what they profess to not being.