Patch 6.1: Stampede makes a come back

If you’ve been following the patch 6.1 news, I’m sure you saw the change to Stampede: It now lasts 40 seconds, up from 20 seconds. A Murder of Crows was so good that they needed to literally double it to make it competitive. From my initial testing, it seems they were successful.

However, there was a possibly unintended side effect because of an interesting relationship between Stampede and Lone Wolf. Whenever you have your standard pet out and use Stampede, it calls the remaining 4 pets. However, when you’re using Lone Wolf it calls out all 5 pets. One would think it should only be calling out 4 pets so that the talent has the same value regardless of your chosen level 100 talent, but this is not the case for marksmanship and survival. I’d like to think this is a bug or an oversight, but who knows for sure? It’s been around for a while, so maybe it is intended. I don’t understand why. Also see the bottom of this post for an important note on another Lone Wolf/Stampede bug.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the Stampede buff’s effect on all 3 specs.

Dire Beast / Barrage / Adaptation

Beast Mastery

I think it’s fitting that Stampede could be the strongest talent for BM in this tier. It fits thematically for me. If any spec should get a benefit from using more pets, it should be BM. AMOC is still really close though, and on a multi-target fight where you can be smart about resetting its cooldown I think you will get more mileage out of it. Also, Stampede is stronger on a 6 minute fight than it would be on a 10 minute fight because in both situations you can only use 2 Stampedes, but you can definitely use more AMOCs in the longer fight. Bump that up to 11 minutes and Stampede gets a third full cast though. The simulation above takes into account a variety of fight lengths.

Blink Strikes is predictably quite low for single target, as it has been all expansion. It’s still the talent you want to use where there will be a lot of Beast Cleave happening, but I think it would have to be quite a bit of AoE to make it worth it.

Verdict: Assuming nothing changes, Stampede may become the new go-to talent for BM outside of heavy AoE.

ToTH, Barrage, Focusing Shot / Lone Wolf
ToTH, Barrage, Focusing Shot / Lone Wolf

Survival

As you can see above, I did simulations with both Lone Wolf (LW) and Focusing Shot (FS) to illustrate how much stronger Stampede is when you’re using Lone Wolf because of that extra pet.

When using Focusing Shot, Stampede and AMOC are fairly close. It means you can choose what you prefer, which is great. But looking at Lone Wolf, the gap is getting quite large between the two talents. Considering AMOC requires extra focus management, I don’t think it should be that much lower (even taking into consideration its multi-target potential).

Basically, what I’m saying is I think Blizzard needs to fix this. I don’t think Lone Wolf should get an extra Stampede pet. Not only does it imbalance these talents, but it makes no damn sense! This is a talent where you abandon your pet, so why should you get an extra?

Verdict: Stampede is going to be a great single target DPS talent, regardless of your level 100 talent choice. Keep in mind it is stronger or weaker depending on fight length (as discussed in BM section).

ToTH, Barrage, Lone Wolf / Focusing Shot
ToTH, Barrage, Lone Wolf / Focusing Shot

Marksmanship

We basically have the same results as Survival here. When using Focusing Shot it’s basically a wash, but the gap with Lone Wolf is considerably larger.

Keep in mind my overall MM DPS is lower than the others because my gear isn’t really optimized for it, plus I still am stuck with a 660 weapon which hurts MM much more than the other specs. Just focus on the difference between talents.

Verdict: As with SV, Stampede is going to be a great single target DPS talent choice.

stampedeselfie

Always remember that this is PTR and subject to change. If there are any changes, I’ll be sure to update this post to reflect them.

Are you excited for the newly improved Stampede?

Warning — Lone Wolf / Stampede bug: This applies to the Stampede + Lone Wolf combo only. If any of your active pets are exotic, they will not spawn and they will NOT be duplicated by a non-exotic pet. So if you have 3 exotics + 2 non-exotics and use Stampede with Lone Wolf you will only get 2 pets! I was shocked to discover this in my testing, mainly because it has been around for this long and no one noticed. I guess no one was using Stampede! To avoid this, make sure all your active pets are non-exotic when using Lone Wolf. I’ve also reported the bug so hopefully it gets fixed.

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27 thoughts on “Patch 6.1: Stampede makes a come back”

  1. I think we should have seperate active stables for our two specs. It’s hard to have all the right buffs in your pocket when switching between BM and the other specs. Sure you could carry only non-exotic pets, but then you’re losing out on the extra abilities that exotic pets bring.

  2. Regarding the bug at the end, I think this might actually be intentional – which is why Glyph of Stampede was added. That said, it would be interesting to see how it reads “current pet” with Lone Wolf.

    1. I don’t think so, because it functions properly if you’re using Focusing Shot or Exotic Munitions. It has always replaced exotics with copies of a non-exotic pet in the past (when you’re not BM).

      1. Bendak, I noticed this issue long ago but found that by using Glyph of Stampede AND making sure that Pet Slot 1 was a non-exotic, the issue was resolved – all five pets that were summoned were indeed copies of whatever pet was in Pet Slot 1. If I had an exotic pet in Slot 1, nothing got summoned at all (with the Glyph). Without the Glyph, only non-exotics were summoned (leaving me at that time with only 3 pets that were called since I had 2 exotics in my personal stable). Seemed pretty weird that Blizzard really didn’t explain how Lone Wolf worked when choosing Stampede, but through trial and error I was able to figure out the formula. 🙂

          1. I thought if you were survival or MM your exotic pets wouldn’t show anyway for stampede? Because as BM why would you use lone wolf at all?

            1. Correct, but what I was referring to was using Survival or Marksmanship since Lone Wolf isn’t an option when using Beast Mastery.

              While using SV or MM without the Glyph of Stampede, if you have any Exotic Pets in your Personal Stable, they will not be summoned, but your non-exotic pets will be – this reduces the amount of pets summoned with Stampede (thus lowering your damage from Stampede).

              However, if you use Glyph of Stampede AND you make 100% sure that the pet in “Pet Slot 1” is a non-exotic pet, it will not matter if you have Exotic pets in your other Pet Slots – since with that Glyph and having a non-exotic pet in slot one it will simply summon that pet in “Pet Slot 1” and make copies of it. This way you get all 5 pets summoned (as you should) and your damage by using Stampede will not be reduced (since you will have 5 pets summoned and attacking for the full duration of Stampede).

              1. What you are describing only happens with Lone Wolf. Or, to be more accurate, only happens if you cast Stampede without having a pet already summoned.

                http://i.imgur.com/y12one8.jpg

                I have 3 exotics equipped as Survival spec + Focusing Shot and this is what my stampede looks like. Notice no glyph of stampede being used. It made 3 extra copies of the dragonhawk, but also kept my oil wolf for a full 5 pets without the glyph.

                We might be on different pages, but my original point with the bug is it’s something that should only occur if you’re using Lone Wolf. If you’re playing MM or SV and are using a pet, you should always get 5 pets with your Stampede, even if your other 4 pets were exotic – glyph of stampede or not.

                1. Yep exactly. My post was meant as a response to Seren – I was also referring to Lone Wolf being the issue. No other talent at 100 seems to cause this glitch (intended or not).

  3. Haha, are you also previewing the “selfie” feature as well?

    I like this, nice write up Bendak. With Stampede, as BM, do you still benefit from the cleave from the other pets? Say for instance you unleash the beasts in a clump of mobs stacked together…

  4. i hate to say it but ive actually grown to like playing lw in raids/dungeons. i do enjoy stampede and am looking forward to it coming back. brings a actual cd for survival.

    to me its like, hey im a hunter and here is my herd of pet coming to bull rush you.

  5. Hello everyone! -claptrap voice-

    Wondering:
    – For BM will it worth to wait 5 Focus Fire buff to use Stampede?
    – Also, is 10% BW damage bonus impacting Stampede damage?
    – Finally, is BM Mastery working on both Stampede and AMOC? (obviously it is working for Blink Strikes xD)

    Thanks for sharing your experiences!

    1. 1. If you can line them up, absolutely, but it’s not always so simple. In the end you want to maximize the number Stampedes and Focus Fires, so if you wait too long for either, there’s a chance you will miss out on potential uses of both abilities.

      The good thing is because Stampede is so damn long now at 40 sec you have lots of opportunity. Focus Fire only lasts 20 seconds, so one thing you could do is cast Stampede on cooldown and if Focus Fire isn’t up to 5 stacks by the time Stampede is half finished, you can cast it anyway to at least get some of the buff active for the final 20 seconds of Stampede.

      The other possibility is to use Focus Fire at the same time as Stampede, regardless of stacks, and then using it again as soon as possible (again, regardless of stacks) so you get two full Focus Fires during Stampede, even if they both aren’t at max stacks.

      Stampede will also be nice for lining up with on use trinkets.

      That is my thinking anyway. The more hardcore theorycrafters will have a better answer. I’m sure we’ll definitely be talking about the implications of the Stampede buff on the next podcast.

      2. Bestial Wrath only affects your primary pet

      3. Yes

  6. Hey all!

    – Do we know how these recent buffs will play out once we get our T17 set bonuses? It seems that this will make BM ideal for those encounters that need a lot of burst.
    – Also, I am a bit concerned how the new stampede duration will affect PVP. It might result in Blizz pulling the duration back a bit or scale down dmg.

    1. I haven’t played with those set bonuses too much, but so far the BM ones look pretty cool. If you take Stampede and Dire Beast, there will be times when you have 7 pets attacking your target (with 4 piece bonus). That just sounds awesome to me.

      As for PvP stampede, yeah I’m not sure. Extending the duration is certainly better for than doubling the damage from a PvP perspective, but 40 seconds is a really long time. I guess we’ll see what happens. The other thing they could do for Stampede is keep it at 20 seconds but reduce the cooldown to 2.5 minutes.

      1. Personally, I’d rather they left the CD at 5 minutes (so it resets on a raid wipe or kill). If the duration really is an issue in PvP, then simply do same thing they did for the damage in PvP – simply make it a different duration in PvP (aka: 20 seconds or whatever).

    1. hi,

      i noticed this bug yesterday on hc bh, i have the 4th bonus and im on lw-stampede talents.

      At the opener burst when i popped up the stampede, the lw bug is gone. After the stampede ended, the buff come back. This happened 2 times in 18 try. Without lw buff the opener burst is bullsh*t. I am using non exotic pets, and glyphed stampede. Other mates didnt experience this.

      Anyone experienced it yet?

      thanks

  7. I find your section on survival to be fairly confusing. You said you were trying to show how much stronger lone wolf is with stampede, but the numbers show focusing shot and stampede doing 1000 more dps than lone wolf and stampede. Was that a typo?

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