Hunter Trictagon from US-Kel’Thuzad recently put out a video showing off their melee hunter build, pulling off 300k DPS against Kor’kron Dark Shaman in flex mode with beast mastery spec.
With an average item level of 578 and two 574 daggers, the vast majority of the damage was done by the pet. Only about 5% of the damage actually came from melee attacks. If there was ever a showcase for how insanely out of control BM passive damage is, it’s this. The only active abilities cast were Kill Command, Dire Beast, and Glaive Toss (which doesn’t require a ranged weapon). Explosive and Snake traps added a little bit of damage, but most of it was procs and pets. Trictagon claimed to be losing about 30% DPS by not using a ranged weapon.
Check out the video below, but don’t think this means you can start rolling on melee weapons…
Nice choice of background music! 🙂
But melee hunter is just crazy!!! 30% loss is a lot.
What do you mean ” BM passive damage is insanely out of control”? First: The pet does 66% of the hunter’s DPS, the hunter himself 33%. Seems about right to me.
Secondly and more importantly: How much of that damage is done by Kill Command, Dire Beast, and Glaive Toss and how much is actually the pet’s auto attacks aka its passive damage?
I’m fine with the idea of the pet doing the lions share of the damage flavor-wise, but not with so little player interaction.
Consider that not only did this person not use a ranged weapon, but they were able to 100% ignore the hunter’s resource mechanic (focus management) as well. When you ignore the fundamentals of a class there should be more than a 30% penalty IMO. Aspect of the Hawk didn’t help matters either. At least 20% of hunter damage is tied up in just having that toggled. Thankfully it looks like hawk is going. All just one hunter’s opinion of course. 🙂
I thing you’re right that 30% is a too small penalty for ignoring fundamentals, but:
1.) Again, we do not know how much of the overall DPS were done by Kill Command, Dire Beast, and Glaive Toss.
2.) How much DPS would MM and SV do if they only used Auto attack, their ‘Kill Command’, Dire Bast and Glaive Toss?
3.) How big would the penalty be for other classes doing this?
1. About 35% of that 300k. The rest is passive damage and procs, and a couple percent from traps.
2. A similar amount probably. I think hunter passive damage in general is a little high, I just used BM as an example because it is a little worse than the others.
3. Hard to say since melee classes can’t equip a ranged weapon that would prevent them from using their abilities. But the fact there’s no pet probably means a whole lot worse of a penalty.
I think the removal of hawk is going to help somewhat (since that damage will be transferred from hawk into our active abilities, presumably). I would just prefer if more hunter damage was baked into active abilities. I believe part of the reason we have so much passive dps is because of burst issues in PvP. Hunters are a delicate balance there.
1. So approximately 65% of a BM’s damage is active, 35% is passive doesn’t seem that bad.
2. Yes, I think you’re right. white damage just feels so out of date. Not just for hunters but for all classes.
3. Well, it prevented Trictagon only from using half his abilities. I’m not so sure about the pet part. I don’t know how high auto attacks are. Is our auto attack 100% of other classes’ auto attack, or is our auto attack only 70% of that and our pet’s make for the other 30%?
But is hawk’s damage transferred to the actually abilities? Maybe they just transform hawk into a passive that increases ranged attack power.
After looting Thori’dal recently, I accidentally left it equipped and accepted a LFR invite. Got 3/4 of the way through TES before I noticed. Interestingly, my dps was only ~20% lower than it normally is (running BM as well) and my overall position as reported by Skada/Recount was around 5-6 from the top which is where I usually fall. I remember being shocked at how little my weapon damage actually factored in to my overall dps. Maybe I should give the melee huntering one last go before all the aspects go the way of the viper.
I agree the fact that he has enough passive focus regen to hit every kill command and glaive toss seems wrong. I also think he is underestimating the dps loss from not equipping a ranged weapon. Part of our job on that fight is dealing with the slimes with multishot and splash damage from beast cleave. The main thing his video demonstrates is how bad a mechanic arcane shot is for BM. It’s boring, spammy and really doesn’t add much to the rotation.