The many problems of Beast Mastery

[Barnabas]

I like not always having to press something. Making the titan relic spell baseline will just create another focus dump in an already focus limited space. If dire beast returned focus at a faster rate and they buffed it slightly you could maybe get in another cobra shot. That would be fine with me.

[Feel The Power]

I also feel really slow with the loss of cheetah, but whatever. But why....WHY take camo from us? Everything fun as a class is gone.

The basic loss of cheetah and the complete loss of camo are my biggest gripes. Blizz said they wanted classes to be more lore-oriented (or however they worded it)... but what exactly is the lore behind a hunter not being able to be stealthy? Besides being a good shot, that's like the 2nd biggest part about being an actual good hunter, being able to be stealthy and undetected by your prey. A hunter is supposed to pop out of nowhere and take their shot, not run up to it and stand 20 meters away in full view. As a bm player through thick and thin for 8-9 years, the class has become a lot more boring now in my opinion for sure. Good damage, but missing cheetah and camo...ugh, it's like missing some fingers.

[spinner981]

hahaha...oh the irony

BM is, in terms of playstyle and difficulty pretty much the same as it was in recent years. Nothing really changed (in terms of making decisions) aside from Focus Fire popping right before you start glowing or need burst.
MM however is a lot better now due to damage windows, proper debuff and cooldown/skill availability management. On top of that, positioning and planning is so much more important than it was before and that is a good thing for class that could brain-afk through most of the content and still do extremely well in recent years, imho.

I like the SV-Melee approach too, because it gives us options, currently however, it doesn't have enough AoE. Otherwise, I'd pick it for M+ and easy content farming in an instant.

Gameplay wise, Hunter is more than fine. The talent choices however are pretty much non-existent and that's the only real problem here.

Have you played a hunter? Playstyle has felt a radical shift going from focus fire to dire beast alone. That doesn't include the radical change to stampede, the removal of BW's focus cost reduction and cobra shot becoming absolutely nothing but a filler shot designed to make sure the hunter doesn't cap focus. As far as difficulty goes, it is insanely simple right now. You just hit everything on cooldown and cobra shot to not focus cap. Ya, there are areas where you could slightly delay BW for a slight increase to damage, but that existed in a much more extreme fashion before and it is a total no-brainer to pop BW if it is off cooldown if dire beast is also off cooldown.

MM is in no better a spot than BM. The current design absolutely hinges on auto-shot RNG, and taking sidewinders destroys the spec identity by introducing cobra-shot tornados to the mix, and even with sidewinders the spec is still extremely one note, going from completely predictable rotation to waiting on hunter's mark procs and back. The nature of patient sniper removes any and all debuff managing and replaces it with simply screwing the hunter over if they are required to move in any fashion during the few moments they have to get aimed shot off to take advantage of the 150% increased damage.

Concerning SV. We HAD options for going melee, it is called changing classes, and the reason people played hunter was primarily because of ranged weapons and/or pets. I see very few SV hunters, be it on the forums or in game, and it doesn't feel like a hunter spec at all. It feels like a warrior spec with the added pet, and goes the extra mile in butchering the hunter class by taking away traps from BM and MM as well.

And oh ya, we have some of the worst survivability in the game right, despite having a spec called 'survival'. In fact, anyone who wants to play hunter the way it has been played for a decade is simply out of luck? Ranged weapon with a single companion pet? The only way to do it is to roll MM and take one of the tier 1 talents that are simply inferior to lone wolf in pretty much all instances. Other than that either MM has no pet. You have bunches of pets in BM, or you have no ranged weapon in SV. Blizzard is hurling out all these 'class fantasies' that maybe 1% of the hunter community asked for, at the cost of taking what the hunter class has been and either removing it or making it inferior to these new 'class fantasies'.

Anyone who says the hunter class design is good right now immediately makes me question whether or not they actually main the class or ever mained the class. It is hard to think that you aren't just some troll trying to throw in completely invalid opinions just to give blizzard the false sense that their changes were actually good and not virtually universally hated like they actually are.

Please if you don't main hunter, don't bother commenting and trying to claim that the hunter class is fine in the face of the vast majority of hunter mains vehemently disagreeing.

[Snackwiches]

Pretty much. So much about hunter this time around is just awful awful awful.

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People who actually enjoyed the way hunter played, by and large, do not like the new changes. The only people I see who actually like them are people who don't main hunter or who simply don't play hunter. Furthermore, none of them can point out positive qualities of the new hunter class apart from "I like it."

Boohoo, I've had a Hunter as a main since 2006. Current BM is like a more interesting version of how it was during TBC.

Dont like it? Dont play it, feel free to leave, but your opinion does not matter more than his.

[Deleted]

i hope they implement a double charge system for dire beast. Its retarded to let reset the cooldown if is has 2 second left. Let those store some beasts.

[Kjarl Grimblood]

Everything about BM is boring, from rotation to artifact. Just compare the BM artifact to the MM one. Such great traits as the misdirection one. Instead of reducing the damage, it should increase the damage to give us something to use. Etc pp.

Only good about BM is the 24 7 cleave for mythic dungeons.

I assume BM will be buffed/changed in 7.1

And MM is not boring? Dude, what planet you are living on ?

[Deleted]

So far, from all the Mythics and Dungeons I've done with mages/dhs/whatever have you, I seem to compete with them, usually lose (not by much) in heroics and usually win in Mythics. Fight length increase greatly helps BM as we're very consistent, as opposed to the uber bursty champs.

Just last night I had the fortune of playing with another hunter that kept swapping specs MM/BM and I decided I would too, we quite literally did identical numbers throughout trash & bosses, as both specs. I feel people stare too much at sims, and far too little at how you play something. A spec that can do mad damage, but you don't enjoy playing and as such perform subpar, will yield less deepz!

[Deleted]

snip

The only reason why you even doubt that someone else is maining hunter is because you are so biased to your own negative opinion, that you can't even see the improvements.
I agree on the talent choice part, I even said so myself. Yet Sidewinders MM is probably the most engaging rotation we ever had since release (I didn't play Cata though). It's the first time we didn't just smash buttons when they come off cooldown and we always think 5-10 seconds ahead.

Saying stuff like

Playstyle has felt a radical shift going from focus fire to dire beast alone. That doesn't include the radical change to stampede, the removal of BW's focus cost reduction and cobra shot becoming absolutely nothing but a filler shot designed to make sure the hunter doesn't cap focus.

however, makes me doubt that you actually know what you are talking about.
How the *fuck* is that "radical"? And how the fuck was Cobra Shot not a filler shot? You are giving the old BM too much credit, right now. BM is and was the "I can drink and watch TV, while doing raid encounters 100% perfectly fine"-spec.... aside from very minor fuckups, it's absolutely not punishing in any way. That's basically how Hunter was since TBC (whether it was BM/MM/SV, they were all like that.)
The playstyle changed, but marginally (mostly due to skill changes). It's still a 100%-movement-press-buttons-when-off-cooldown-spec.

Whether Stampede is a X minute cooldown fire and forget without having to aim, or a X minute cooldown "skillshot" that does AoE... how and why does it change BM in any way?

[Hestene]

And how the fuck was Cobra Shot not a filler shot? You are giving the old BM too much credit, right now...

I've been a BM hunter main since mid pandaland. Cobra Shot was never a filler, Arcane Shot was. Cobra Shot was for maintaining Serpent Sting and focus regen.

The old BM (back from Pandaria) was in my opinion way more fun than it currently is. The pace of the spec was spammy, and more or less came down to the player's ability to keep Kill Command on a constant cooldown, while never focus capping/starving, switching between Cobra Shots to regenerate focus, and Arcane Shot/Multi-Shot to dumb it. Now it's just.. Press Kill Command when it's ready, fire some Cobra Shots and then wait 'till Kill Command is ready. The mere fact that a spec has downtime is ludicrous, imo.

EDIT: Not to talk about Glaive Toss. Man, how I miss Glaive Toss.

[Deleted]

I've been a BM hunter main since mid pandaland. Cobra Shot was never a filler, Arcane Shot was. Cobra Shot was for maintaining Serpent Sting and focus regen.

That's a filler, you use it whenever you can't cast the other shit. You use it to "fill" downtime. Right *now* Cobra is not a filler, but a spender. BM has no filler right now because Cobra can't fill 100% of all the GCDs not used by other skills.
Arcane shot, if it's limited in use by any means, was/is not a filler.

Arcane shot as MM right now, is. You can *always* cast it whenever higher priority skills aren't useable.

[Deleted]

Have you played a hunter? Playstyle has felt a radical shift going from focus fire to dire beast alone. That doesn't include the radical change to stampede, the removal of BW's focus cost reduction and cobra shot becoming absolutely nothing but a filler shot designed to make sure the hunter doesn't cap focus. As far as difficulty goes, it is insanely simple right now. You just hit everything on cooldown and cobra shot to not focus cap. Ya, there are areas where you could slightly delay BW for a slight increase to damage, but that existed in a much more extreme fashion before and it is a total no-brainer to pop BW if it is off cooldown if dire beast is also off cooldown.

MM is in no better a spot than BM. The current design absolutely hinges on auto-shot RNG, and taking sidewinders destroys the spec identity by introducing cobra-shot tornados to the mix, and even with sidewinders the spec is still extremely one note, going from completely predictable rotation to waiting on hunter's mark procs and back. The nature of patient sniper removes any and all debuff managing and replaces it with simply screwing the hunter over if they are required to move in any fashion during the few moments they have to get aimed shot off to take advantage of the 150% increased damage.

Concerning SV. We HAD options for going melee, it is called changing classes, and the reason people played hunter was primarily because of ranged weapons and/or pets. I see very few SV hunters, be it on the forums or in game, and it doesn't feel like a hunter spec at all. It feels like a warrior spec with the added pet, and goes the extra mile in butchering the hunter class by taking away traps from BM and MM as well.

And oh ya, we have some of the worst survivability in the game right, despite having a spec called 'survival'. In fact, anyone who wants to play hunter the way it has been played for a decade is simply out of luck? Ranged weapon with a single companion pet? The only way to do it is to roll MM and take one of the tier 1 talents that are simply inferior to lone wolf in pretty much all instances. Other than that either MM has no pet. You have bunches of pets in BM, or you have no ranged weapon in SV. Blizzard is hurling out all these 'class fantasies' that maybe 1% of the hunter community asked for, at the cost of taking what the hunter class has been and either removing it or making it inferior to these new 'class fantasies'.

Anyone who says the hunter class design is good right now immediately makes me question whether or not they actually main the class or ever mained the class. It is hard to think that you aren't just some troll trying to throw in completely invalid opinions just to give blizzard the false sense that their changes were actually good and not virtually universally hated like they actually are.

Please if you don't main hunter, don't bother commenting and trying to claim that the hunter class is fine in the face of the vast majority of hunter mains vehemently disagreeing.

I main a hunter and I think its just fine.
Could it be better, ofcourse but you could say that for every fucking class in this game and someone will always hate it.

Also please show me the proof were the vast majority of the hunters agree with your shit because all I see is forums being spammed by a few hundred people on a daily basis while we have a couple of hundred thousand people playing the hunter class.

[Deleted]

I agree with spinner981, the current state of Hunters is a joke.

Maybe most of the problems are solved when all the artifact talents/traits are unlocked and with some minor tweaks in the next patch.
But I doubt it, as they changed hunters so drastically just for the sake of changing something, that it's nearly unsolvable.

BM & MM are lackluster, they have downtime at certain points.
Survival was perfectly fine in the past (MoP) so why completely scrap it and make it another melee? If i wanted to play melee I'd pick a melee class / spec.

and yes, I do play melee alts, I actually favor them over casters (which is a reason why I dislike the current state of MM).

[Hestene]

That's a filler, you use it whenever you can't cast the other shit. You use it to "fill" downtime. Right *now* Cobra is not a filler, but a spender. BM has no filler right now because Cobra can't fill 100% of all the GCDs not used by other skills.
Arcane shot, if it's limited in use by any means, was/is not a filler.

Arcane shot as MM right now, is. You can *always* cast it whenever higher priority skills aren't useable.

I wouldn't argue that a generator is a filler, just like Shred for feral druids is a combo point generator. You're right that Arcane Shot for the old BM wasn't a filler but a spender, like Cobra Shot is now - however, I wouldn't exactly say that Cobra Shot was ever a filler though. I might be wrong though.

[Turtlewithnoshell]

Sadly, hunters are very boring atm. I don't mind it so much but my friend who has played a hunter since Vanilla has quit the game since Legion came out because he can't stand playing hunter. He's a very high level raider who is always almost perfect in his dps.

[zoned]

I think tier and full traits are going to make BM less boring. The problem with BM however is that it will never be a raiding spec with the current design. Some of the reasons being are BM has no execute, bad target switching and no efficient 2 target cleave. Here is a few ideas that could make BM raid viable;

1. Make kill command cleave 1 extra target at whatever % dmg.
2. Possibly have crows cleave x targets something like the hawk PvP talent.
3. Make the PvP talent "go for the throat" a baseline hunter skill which would give BM solid execute.
4. Make the blink portion of blink strikes a baseline hunter talent for target switching.

Obviously this would have to be balanced accordingly but it would make BM raid viable. As it stands MM is superior in every way to BM for raiding.

[Darsey]

The only thing that require change in BM is the pet AI and pathing. And the blink part of blinkstrike should be base line.

People complain about BM rotation but the only difference from what it was is that you don't spam cobra shot mindlessly between kill commands.

I prefare down time on spamming one ability just because.

I rather have decision making and evaluating and reevaluating my cd and focus use rather then spamming keys with no real tought.

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Ah yea and one last thing: The Artifact feels more like a stat stick rather then something that let us do damage.
Give us some scaling with weapon damage somehow.

[Tsuya]

and the fact that most bosses (Or tanks) move out of the line, well there goes your "big" ability and it's so annoying.

Totally agree with this. The old version was much better - at least the pets would follow the target.

I'm also a little worried by the fact that some of our AOE relies on procs and we have no constantly castable AOE abilities. Multishot costs focus, dire beasts only do AOE if we took stomp (and have a cooldown anyway) and the electric explosion that the trait on titanstrike causes is a proc.

Sure, we can take barrage but with a 60 focus cost, and dire beasts only slowly regenerating our focus, its quite a high price to pay. Ive seen in alot of AOE fights my dps fluctuates considerably and is entirely based on how many procs i get of the lightning explostion. Sometimes its fairly constant, other times it doesnt seem to proc at all.

Edit: On a side note to that, due to some pathing issues with pets if pet doesnt agro a pack of mobs due to taking some strange ass route to you, if you do multishot before it arrives and it does proc that explosion then it agros the packs >.<

[DocSavageFan]

BM seems to INTENTIONALLY be a "simple" spec with low ceiling. Like Frost DK (only BM is better balanced).

I really do not see why everyone NEEDS every spec to be a high concentration high skill ceiling spec. Play MM or Survival if you want higher skill ceilings. Or go play a Mage / Lock.

The simplicity is exactly why I like playing BM...I feel that I can now spend a little more time focusing on fight mechanics and what's going on around me rather than obsessing over my rotation...this makes the game more fun for me.

[Skul]

The simplicity is exactly why I like playing BM...I feel that I can now spend a little more time focusing on fight mechanics and what's going on around me rather than obsessing over my rotation...this makes the game more fun for me.

Fully agreed. Raid leading as a BM is a lot easier than raid leading as a MM. Sometimes it is nice to sit down, have a beer, get wasted, and still be able to semi-perform on WoW.

[Pull My Finger]

People who actually enjoyed the way hunter played, by and large, do not like the new changes. The only people I see who actually like them are people who don't main hunter or who simply don't play hunter. Furthermore, none of them can point out positive qualities of the new hunter class apart from "I like it."

LOL, you basically just divided players into those who have the "right" to have their preference and those who have the wrong one. What a load of ridiculous BS.

Quit your whining!