I am pretty jealous of Warlocks right now. Imagine playing a pure DPS class where all 3 of your specs are not only competitive, but chart topping in the current raid. Imagine having that kind of choice. Hunters are sort of the opposite.
Beast Mastery is far and away the worst spec (from a DPS perspective) in the BoD raid. Someone has to be at the bottom, but geez, do they don’t have to be in their own tier at the bottom like BM is currently? Survival can deal good damage on some fights, but melee spots are pretty competitive in Mythic raiding, and people who enjoy melee simply have better options. Survival brings nothing to the table other than its DPS. They don’t have the 9 lives of a rogue or the utility of other melee specs. Hell, even a windwalker monk or retribution paladin bring more. Then we have Marksmanship — the damage is pretty good (middle tier on the majority of bosses), but it is somewhat required to have the right traits to take it to the top level. Not a huge deal because you at least have something to strive for, and there are 2 really good class traits. But I really hate the “1 target or 3-6 clumped targets” damage profile and the loss of utility from Lone Wolf.
Update: Blizzard has announced some small BM buffs for 8.1.5.
“You can move and DPS, so you should do less damage”
I hate this argument against BM. I do agree it should do less theoretical top end damage, but I’m not looking at sims here. I’m looking at real world damage. Even with the advantage of full movement, BM still does trash DPS. The penalty is way too high.
On a fight with high movement like Rastakhan, BM should be on fire. That should be our moment to shine. Instead, it’s just one of the few times where we’re not literally last place.
If you were to buff BM’s total damage by even 10-15% (!), it still would not be top on its best fights like Rastakhan. We’d still be behind the Warlocks and Shadow Priests.
The Opulence problem
If you’ve ever taken a look at the Warcraft Logs statistics for Opulence (Heroic is shown above), you’ll see how bad BM is doing. This is definitely our worst fight, and part the reason is pretty silly.
The damage increasing buffs from the Opal and Emerald gems do not apply to our pets. The same goes for the “Tailwinds” damage buff that healers apply to us with their gems. This brings down the overall damage for the spec in statistics like this, since we can only really use the topaz or ruby, and the buff from healers does hardly anything. I’m fine with doing the “team player” topaz and ruby jobs, but it would be cool to be able to use the other gems and pop off some weeks.
Buffs like this not increasing pet damage is not a new thing in WoW. A good portion of the bugs I report in this game are to fix damage buffs not applying to pets. It took me literally years of bug reports to finally get Blizzard to make the Dwarf and Tauren racials apply to pets.
I just wish Blizzard would add pet damage to the generic aura they use on all of these buffs, so every time a designer forgets to check the “pet damage” box when they make a new spell, we don’t have to go through this over and over. Because that is exactly what has happened here.
Will they fix Opulence? Who knows. I’ve submitted bugs on the forums and in-game, that’s all I can do.
Edit: Blizzard has fixed the emerald and opal gems on Opulence via a hotfix, but they still haven’t fixed the Tailwinds buff. I updated the above image to show the gap has shrunk slightly.
Beast Mastery scaling
Scaling is mostly to blame here. At the start of Uldir, Blizzard was quick to give Beast Mastery a 5% nerf. As the weeks wore on and everyone got gear, Beast Mastery slowly sunk down the charts. The 5% nerf was premature.
There were improvements made to BM scaling in BFA like having pets benefit from increased weapon damage, but there are other factors. Marksmanship simply scales better with weapon upgrades (and in turn, with the Mastery stat on top of it). Weapon damage is worth nearly twice as much for Marksmanship, and secondary stats are also worth more on average (especially Mastery). This is where the scaling issue occurs.
However, the biggest issue may be Azerite Traits. The reason most classes and specs are outscaling BM is because they have more powerful traits, and with all these extra class traits on gear, it just widens the gap that was already there in Uldir.
Marksmanship has two class traits (Unerring Vision and In the Rhythm) that perform and stack extremely well. BM has Primal Instincts, which is good, but not on that level. No other BM class traits are in the same league as Primal Instincts either. See the image above to see what I mean.
When you combine the following:
- Early 5% Uldir nerf
- Reduced weapon damage scaling (about half of MM and melee specs)
- Lack of powerful class traits
- Opulence problems
Then you have the recipe for BM’s current state.
The thing I can’t figure out is why Blizzard refuses to do anything about it.
What each spec needs (IMO)
Beast Mastery
- 5% total damage buff. This reverts the premature Uldir nerf and would put BM in the middle of some fights, but still lower-bottom tier overall — nowhere close to the top on any fight. It’s a completely reasonable number when looking at the current data. In fact it should probably be more like 8-10%, but I must be at the “bargaining” stage. 😕
- Alternatively, focus on single target spells only. Something like a 20-25% buff to Kill Command alone would be a nice surgical change since it doesn’t affect BM in Mythic+ all that much but would have a nice effect on raid performance. BM is pretty decent in M+ (especially great for dealing with Reaping waves thanks to Rapid Reload + Primal Instincts) so it makes sense to focus on single target only.
- More buffs to Azerite traits:
- Actually implement the originally announced 40% hotfix buff to Serrated Jaws (it never went live, see Jan 29 hotfixes) so that pieces with this trait as the only option on a ring aren’t completely dead.
- Small 10-20% buffs to Haze of Rage, Dire Consequences, Dance of Death, and Feeding Frenzy (yes, I’m aware some of these were just buffed — they’re still low compared to traits for many other classes, and this would help BM’s scaling.
- Fix the Opulence pet damage (update — this has been partially fixed)
Marksmanship
- Allow Trick Shots to activate on 2 targets, and/or increase the 6 target cap
- Fix Steady Aim so it’s not a dead trait
- Maybe a little something extra from Lone Wolf (5% health?)
Survival
- Some sort of useful group utility. A reason to say “Hmm, it would be really cool to have a survival hunter here.” Right now, there is no reason.
- I’m sure SV hunters have other things they want, this is just what I see from an outside perspective.
What I expect
Nothing, sadly. 🙁
It’s been a while since they’ve done any tuning hotfixes, they seem happy with the current balance. I think Blizzard is on some kind of mission to get people to stop playing Beast Mastery. I just wish they’d come out and say it, like they did for demo locks a while back. Then we’d at least know their intentions.
Also, I just wanted to say one last thing because usually at least a couple of people comment “I’m BM and I do great damage in my raid, I’m usually on top.” That’s because the rest of your raiders aren’t very good, no offense. That’s a normal occurrence in many normal/heroic guilds, but also in some Mythic guilds.
Take a fight like Grong for example. A 60th percentile Warlock will do more damage than a 95th percentile Beast Mastery Hunter. The Warlock is an average player, and the Hunter is playing pretty close to the top of their game in that case. I could cherry pick much worse results if I wanted… that is one of the tamer comparisons.
Just because Method used a BM hunter for world first Jaina doesn’t mean the class is in a good spot either. Gingi said himself he didn’t practice MM at all, and it’s likely he didn’t have the best Azerite for MM at the time either. Gingi is also a great player who squeezes everything out of a class and had some important jobs. The rest of his raid could make up for any lost DPS. You cannot solely judge a spec based on how someone from the best guild in the world plays it. Besides all that, he switched to MM for raiding afterwards anyway.
Hunters in BoD definitely don’t improve my feelings about the game (see my previous post). I guess I’m slowly just starting to care less and less about anything WoW. I had to force myself to write this thing and almost stopped a couple of times because honestly, why does it matter? Is this really a big deal? I guess when the game is in the dumps, your class being in the dumps doesn’t mean much.
Oh well, maybe I’ll make another post in a few months. 😆
On a positive note, the return of Hati in 8.1.5 looks really cool. We can even mount him! Be sure to check out Petopia’s guide.
I’m surprised you’re still playing.. everyone including myself have stopped.. 14year player since vanilla who stuck through expacs that had me in empty guilds for months..
It’s kind of like a change of diet or maybe even like going through rehab and dropping some drug.. Find time to do real things, Play games that require less grind to be satisfying. All that can be yours 🙂 Take my hand…
Like I said in the post, I appear to be at stage 3 – Bargaining. Only 2 stages to go, my dude.
So still no reason to come back to this game? Guess I’ll keep on enjoying my life
I am still playing. As a BM hunter. But I mostly just solo, and rarely instance. Sad that BM is in the dumps.
I’m still playing, still raiding heroic, we have 5 hunters, three of which are BM, the other two are marks and duking it out over Hunter’s Mark. We’re eeking out dmg and I keep hoping against hope they fix us. I’ve stopped comparing my logs to other dps bc I can’t afford that many bottles wine to drown in.
I just got The Witcher 3 GOTY edition with full DLC’s included for just 14€ (still on sale on Steam). 19 hours into it and I’m still level 7. Man you should really consider rehab and leave WoW for a while, they’re murdering the game. Time to take a hiatus and see other stuff. If you never put your hands on TW3 I’d strongly suggest to get it now. It’s an absolute blast.
Thanks, Bendak, always great to hear from you. I appreciate the breakdown, and will continue to hope that someone at Blizzard will take note and act on your excellent suggestions. In the meantime, well, back to pet battles.
You have probably broken down in detail what I have experienced in-game but written off as ‘imagining things’. Slowly but surely I saw my dps and general performance drop compared to my equal-level, other-class guildies but I sort of resigned myself to the idea that they must be getting better at the game while I was stagnating. I am both sad and relieved to see that isn’t what’s happening; sad in particular because it feels, like you said, as if the BM is being deliberately left behind. I don’t understand why that is; there are tonnes of players who thoroughly enjoy the class even in its current state. Too many, perhaps? I’ve never seen any statistics of how many play which classes so I couldn’t tell.
One thing is for certain, though, and that is that my main will always be BM. I play other classes, too, but riding my wolfhawk with one of my pets closely trailing behind feels like home.
Why do you say Warlocks are topping the chart in damage when the first chart shows all three Warlock specializations as being at the very bottom right alongside the Hunter?
That chart is just the Opulence fight, which just happens to be their worst fight too, at least on heroic. You can browse other bosses here https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21#dataset=95 (where it says “all bosses” you can select individual bosses and also difficulties).
I only showed that to ilustrate the bugs causing BM to be in its own little tier at the bottom. If the bugs were fixed, we’d still be at the bottom there, just not 5k below everyone else.
This is one of the main reasons why I stopped playing WoW: they nerf/buff rollercoaster never stops and sometimes you find yourself with a broken main toon. Now it’s our turn. Just like when you get a decent trait and it gets chopped one month later “sorry it was too powerful”. The sense of progression gets completely destroyed.
Take a look at these two charts and you’ll see. He is absolutely correct. BM is simply broken right now.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21#
and
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21#aggregate=amount
I am so glad you made this post… because it’s great to hear from you AGAIN even if the news is bad. Honestly, if you give up that will be the final nail in the coffin for me. I wondered what in hell was going on with my damage in BoD and your post was illuminating. My question is…. is there anything the rest of us can do to get their attention? I’d like to copy this and send it to someone, but who? I know a lot of your frustration has been because you are sick of trying, perhaps a mass effort from those of us left would help.
To be honest, they don’t really listen to the community for things like this. They sometimes do for gameplay issues, but not the balancing issues. It still doesn’t hurt to send tweets to @WarcraftDevs and stuff like that, but don’t pour a ton of energy into it. I think what they’re doing with BM in particular is fully deliberate. They can see the data just as well as we can. If they’ve chosen to dismiss it, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Interesting Bendak, I enjoy your posts, I can’t help but think in light of the recent layoffs at Blizzard that maybe, just possibly, the developers might be a little more motivated to take some feedback from the community. Ignoring your customer base for any period of time is bad for business…
Unfortunately, devs rarely have any say in that sort of thing. Changes, additions, new features; sure you can suggest them but as a developer you have neither the executive power to decide to implement them nor the authority to add them to the development timeline. These things are decided on an entirely different level and must be accepted by the ‘business’ side. And if they deem that, say, a refactoring of the Auction House code doesn’t render enough profit, then it won’t be part the next development sprint. No matter how much you, as a developer, are itching to dig your fingers into it and fix that ancient mess of spaghetti code.
Yup, I’m a developer and this has been my life for the last 18 years. We love to make new, exciting stuff but there is often a great divide between our idea of what could be neat and that of the business side ;_;
dracuella, thanks for participating in the discussion, I appreciate your perspective, as a business owner myself I can’t help but think that if you’re not listening carefully to your team and your customers you are doomed to fail somewhere. As a software firm, your product is your business, there should be no separation of good product and good business, IMHO.
I agree wholeheartedly and do wish the communication channel to people who make decisions was not just shorter but also accompanied by someone who could translate the players’ woes into why “this is a big deal”. Sure, money/revenue/cost-effectiveness is important but It’s as if they forget where the money comes from in the first place. If someone who pays for something has taken the time to write a bug report about it, they can be certain that person has reached a level of annoyance high enough to stop playing and start complaining about it. That sort of annoyance needs to be dealt with. Perhaps in WoW 2.0?
I have never understood why Blizz created a spec that is almost completely dependent on pet damage, then proceeds to pretty much ignore that aspect of the spec as they go about designing new gear and content and twiddling with secondary spec math. The Opulence fight is a perfect example. It is either incompetent design or — as you opine — a deliberate move to discourage BM as a spec choice. If there is even a grain of truth in the latter explanation, I suspect Blizz may think they have painted themselves into a corner with BM and pet damage design, and the only way out they think they have is to pull a WoD-SV move, basically abandoning the spec completely mid-expansion and doing a drastic redesign (some would say deletion) of the spec for the next expansion.
One thing I have noted in dev (especially Ion’s) comments over the past couple of years is a strong undertone of considering BM to be the kindergarten spec, the one you select if you like fluffy little pets and are a brand new player or just a player not interested in “real” end game activities. If you are Blizz and that is indeed your concept of BM, then why would you go to great lengths to tweak fights like Opulence — real players don’t play BM in raids anyway….. This could explain their puzzling refusal to scale pet damage properly. That is, it’s fine for baby players to let their pet do damage while bopping about the world, but not healthy for the game to allow such a design to progress in power to the same degree as “serious” players.
As a former SV hunter who still feels stung by Blizz’s shabby treatment of that spec, I am worried because I see some of the same pattern emerging for BM.
Well, the funniest thing about Ion and BM is that his anecdotal experiences with it are based on his own guild. His guild’s logs are public (Elitist Jerks, on US Mal’Ganis) and get this…. the BM Hunter in his guild is the only one who regularly gets 95th+ percentile ranks. So he is seeing average (sometimes mediocre) players of other classes vs. a BM player who can pump most of the time.
Do I trust him to be objective enough to look at the big picture and not just what he sees in this guild? At this point, no I do not.
Nice to see you’re still hanging on Bendak(and you others as well). Still playing myself, still raiding and focusing on mythic.
When it comes to BM hunters, as soon as it’s NOT about damage but more towards utility and things you can help out with. I enjoy the state we are in. I’m gonna break my fingers soon as I keep crossing them, hoping we won’t see a giant nerf to Spirit Beasts(Spirit Mend for example). Lost count of the number of times it has seen it’s use in PvE(amongst other things).
Damage-wise…yeah most have been said above already…
To expand a little on BM in itself, with BfA we saw a few changes for the spec, some were ok while others…less so.
Looking at our talent tree BMs now have the option to spec for 6 different Stand-Alone abilities, with the capability of 5 of those chosen at once.
I’m referring to:
Dire Beast
Chimaera Shot
A Murder of Crows
Stampede and/or Barrage
Spitting Cobra
I get that some wants to fill up their action bars with lots of buttons, but…most of the abilities we got are fairly uninteresting. They don’t really do anything. Press-when-ready. All there is to it.
The change we got with BfA where they removed the choice between Dire Beast vs Dire Frenzy. This was horrendous imo. Why? I’m not much into theorycrafting but…was it hard to balance the two? As someone who loves pets(that can join me in combat), preferably many of them. Being forced into the Frenzy-style was not a positive for me.
Keep these talents in place, fine. But…
Add in these changes to them:
Dire Beast – keep it’s current effect + give it a secondary effect where you get another ability that replaces Barbed Shot. Name it “Call Wild Beast” (or w/e you prefer). Call Wild Beast would work exactly like the Legion-Dire Beast did. Each wild beast called would increase the damage done by as well as the duration of the next Dire Beast you summon.
Chimaera Shot – could essentially stay as it is with the change of it always doing damage equal to hitting 2 targets. The damage would just split in two if cleaved.
A Murder of Crows – sort of happy with this talent as well, giving it some interaction with for example Kill Command wouldn’t hurt though. For example, if you Kill Command a target affected by AMoC, AMoC’s duration is extended by X seconds for each Kill Command used.
Stampede – yeah, just give me the old Stampede back, thx. A name change though would be justified. The current tunnel/cone mechanic is flat out, horrible. With the addition of, all summoned extra pets are affected by the Frenzy-buff from your main pet(Pack Alpha and all that). And attacks from those extra pets have a small chance to give you the Wild Call-proc(a charge of Barbed Shot).
Barrage – why do BM even have an ability such as this one? Forget the fact that it makes no sense for why this would be part of the BM playstyle. It does not fit with the nature of the game at all if you ask me. Replace this talent with one that if picked causes Kill Command to be affected by Beast Cleave.
Spitting Cobra – begone pest! There HAS to be something more interesting than this for the top talent row.
There are more things I would love to bring up but, I’ll settle for this for now.
Take care!
Thanks for staying with us. I know it’s really not feeling good right now. Especially with everything that is happening in the world, and it seems BlizzardActivision too. Always look forward to your perspectives!
This isn’t the first expansion that BM has been bottom of the barrel and it won’t be the last. With the way our damage relies on our pets depending on the expansion’s mechanics we are always either really good or really bad to the best of my memory, no in between and no denying it. Now I’m not a serious raider, never have been and probably never will be, which my might be why I can be so lax about this DPS issue.
However we did always have one thing we excelled at, and that is soloing and leveling…or rather that is what it used to be. I noticed this leveling a new hunter after returning from a 3 year hiatus from WoW: BM is no longer able to excel at what it used to be the best traits about the spec.
First off our pets are weak, REALLY WEAK. Not just from a DPS perspective but they are softer than an under-geared mage, they can’t take hits at all! While leveling my pets would die all the time and Mend Pet couldn’t heal them well enough! After finally hitting max level and starting world quests I really struggled to keep my pet and myself alive if we accidentally pulled additional mobs and would actually pop Camouflage to help heal between tough fights! I can tolerate low DPS but not being as soft as a clothie! Now I don’t know if this will get mitigated as I get geared up but our pets are as threatening as teddy bears rn.
Secondly our rotation and abilities are clunky and awkward. I can’t imagine a new player picking up BM and having fun unless they like juggling broken bottles when offline. BM is so bad rn, I was having a better time leveling as MM for a while. Let that sink in: MM FEELS BETTER WHILE LEVELING THAN BM. Also Blizz is showing their SV bias by giving them the better version of abilities that overlap between BM and SV. SV Kill Command generates Focus? WHY DON’T WE HAVE THAT!?
I would not be surprised if Blizz is doing this on purpose to discourage BM players after the Demolocks, but I wish they would just admit it. I might drop Hunter for the first time ever, only holding on to unlock Allied Races since that shit isn’t account wide.
Theriomancer, as a quick fix to carry you over, you should get a clefthoof. When I’m soloing stuff with my hunter, I always have my clefthoof pet out. It is durable, has Blood of the Rhino (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=280069/blood-of-the-rhino) Thick Hide (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=160057/thick-hide) and because it is a ferocity pet, it also has Predator’s Thirst (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=264663/predators-thirst), all things which when combined makes for a great PvE pet.
PS: I forgot to mention that in Legion many of the mechanics we could survive earlier will now one-shot our pets. This is particularly prominent on Argus, for some reason. It was caused by the stat squish around BFA and wasn’t fixed last I checked a few weeks ago. So yes, it is pet-related but I think it’s a general oversigt and not a deliberate pet downgrade.
I’d also highly recommend a Scalehide pet. I had no problem soloing 3 and 5 man objectives with one.
I can only speak from my own experience ofc but while leveling up from 110-120 and after at max level with WQs and other solo stuff. I’ve had pretty much zero issues with my pet. Only thing I haven’t been able to do solo is the “weekly” world bosses meant for raids. The lesser WQ-bosses with around 1.3-2.1 million health have never been a problem, not even when newly dinged 120.
While leveling from 110-116 I had the legendary Apex ring from Legion which was really useful for my pets survivability. It allowed me to use a Spirit Beast for it’s special abilities(like Spirit Mend for a strong on-demand heal), and due to the ring it still had the passive leech you usually get from a ferocity pet.
After 116(when the equip effects on the ring stopped working) I thought that I had to switch to a ferocity pet for that passive healing. But it turned out that it was not needed. I kept pulling mobs like normal with my spirit beast. Usually between 2-4 mobs each pull(when possible, they weren’t always grouped up).
Since hitting 120 I’ve used a Spirit Beast(Tenacity) 100% of the time for everything I do really. Only bring the ferocity pet for the moments when a group I’m in need Primal Rage(Bloodlust).
Thank you everyone for all your input! I have switched to Clefthoof and the difference is enormous! Before when I struggled to survive 3 mob pulls I am now able to do up to six before dying, still not trying to do it on purpose but it means I am not as paranoid about extra pulls than before!
Also I think I needed to add something for context. BfA is the great dinosaur expansion for Horde Hunters and what was the group that got the most new looks? Raptors! So I was trying to use Raptors while leveling and not seeing the obvious source of my problem. So really it was my own fault for doing so bad before. I did switch to Krolusks upon entering Voldun but they only did marginally better. After testing some more pets this is what I got as results based on my experiences:
Clefthoof > Scalehide > Spirit Beast > Ferocity Pets > Krolusks > Bears > Tenacity Pets > Cunning Pets
Predator’s Thirst makes a HUGE difference, especially as you get geared up. Ferocity Pets could even potentially edge out Spirit Beasts with as your gear progresses! I could even use my Wolf sometimes when it was too close quarters for my Clefthoof like on ships and do just fine! It is sad that it seems that we have returned to the time of “bad” pets but it appears to be the case.
The difference is night and day with some of these pets. Glad it’s working for you now! Though disappointed (as you are) to be locked into a specific pet.
Theriomancer, I know, right? Having a clefthoof makes such a huge difference and means that we can even tank some of the world rares when we’re lacking a proper tank (people will be doubtful at first but after they see you’re not insta-dying, they’ll join the fight xD). Just be aware that his stats/abilities are less suited for other scenarios and you’ll most likely find different pets better for dungeons/pvp/etc.
Also, once you get them, check out the pvp talents, there are some that add more survivability to your hunter as your pet can mitigate some of the damage against you or a friendly target.
PS: if you want a Clefthoof with a special backstory, try taming Coldstomp the Griever (https://www.wowhead.com/npc=77513/coldstomp-the-griever) in Frostfire Ridge. He wanders back and forth there, among his dead family, all alone. It completely broke my heart so I tamed him and took him with me and gave him a new family among all my pets >_>
5% damage buff,
Restore Dire Beast/Barbed Shot choice and gameplay impact.
For the love of god let Barbed Shot Crit.
Replace or change dead talents.
The spec would be playable if not fixed. Fixed would likely depend on talent changes.
As a side note I actually am coming to like most of the pet changes…can we get a ferocity exotic pet with purge please? More model variety?
Sadly, I think your 5% buff reversion idea is a tad bit conservative. I was crunching numbers of the first four Mythic Bosses (Warcraft logs Feb 15, 99th percentile, last 2 weeks) and BM hunters are significantly farther behind than most people realize. On Champions for example, a 5% increase brings us up from 23466 to 24639 which puts us still dead last on the damage table. On Grong, a 5% buff moves us from the bottom position to next to the bottom (just a little better than Unholy DKs). And in Jadefire, a 5% buff moves us up from dead last to a virtual tie with the other two hunter specs and unholy DKs, all at the bottom. Any azerite trait changes that would augment this buff would have to be on par with an additional 5-7% total damage increase to even bring us to middle of the pack in damage To bring us to the top to compete with shadow priests and warlocks, we would need a whopping 20% overall damage buff. I don’t see any of these buffs happening soon.
I did say that it should be more like 8-10%, but the 5% is the bare minimum needed. I don’t think they’re going to do anything though. I’m pretty convinced all this feedback falls on deaf ears.
The problem is only going to get worse in season 3 as well. If you can’t stand being bottom tier on the meters for the rest of the expansion, my advice is to either learn to love Marksmanship, play another class, or quit until 9.0.
The only silver lining is that BM is decent in M+. Not a meta spec, not top tier, but at least decent. Rapid Reload is really, really cool now that we have Reaping.
Yes, Rapid Reload has saved me from quitting the game altogether.
We appreciate you still trying Bendak, thank you. It was a sad day for the Hunter community when Frostheim called it quits. He did so much for us by actually speaking to Ghostcrawler (I miss him too) and getting things fixed. I have since looked to you for all things Hunter (even better that you favour BM). But as you said Ion and his crew seldom listen to the community anymore, so it feels like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. Your post made it to the forums and people are doing what they can to get the devs’ attention. Don’t abandon your pets just yet!
Another issue that lends to the BM problem (and Hunters in general) is the delay in pet attacks since BFA launched. Having to use macros to get something to work properly is not how the game should be played. Pet AI also feels like it’s gotten worse this expansion.
It’s very disheartening to read that BM is still not in a good place, it was my favorite DPS class all the way from Vanilla through WoD. Legion killed my love for my hunters with Hati, so I’m really none too pleased to see that he’s coming back, but I guess at least it’s optional (unlike in Legion). I tried MM for the time I was subbed in Legion, but it just wasn’t the same. I have been unsubbed for 7 months now and I don’t think any major changes are going to happen to classes until the next expansion. I don’t know if I’ll buy that one either.
You did it Bendak !!!!
Unleashed Rage (opal gem buff) and Earthen Roots (emerald gem buff) now also increase damage dealt by pets.
Almost did it. 🙂 Tailwinds wasn’t fixed, and that’s the only one that actually helps all the hunters assigned to ruby or topaz gems. But if you can use opal or emerald, you should see a nice boost on opulence.
Let’s see if these buffs next week really do anything……
The armor penetration is interesting but I’d rather it just be able to crit and be effected by stats like a real DOT.
Man, looks like having a ranged DoT spec would really be great in BoD. Remember when we had one of those?