The many problems of Beast Mastery

[splatomat]

For me, the "many problems" of Beast Mastery can be summarized as below.

New Aspect of Cheetah: Horrible. Revert to old Aspect of Cheetah.
New Mend Pet: Horrible. Revert to old Mend Pet.
New Self Heal: Horrible. Revert to Animal Bond.
New Pet Survivability: Horrible. Revert.
New Utility: What utility? Took traps away, gave nothing. Took Camo away, gave nothing. Forced a choice between a sap and a stun. At least bring back Scatter Shot, FFS.

[Sencha]

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Fully agree with you.

Glad to see people who thinks the same.

[Threndsa]

Bring back old aspect of cheetah and make Chimera baseline and i'd be happy.

That being said I don't hate BM right now. I love being able to hop around and do things like run the light in vault of the wardens. 100% dps efficiency while moving is nice. I'm not 100% thrilled with the amount of downtime but that's really just be being a hunter since BC and used to being GCD locked.

[Firebyrd]

Bring back old aspect of cheetah and make Chimera baseline and i'd be happy.

That being said I don't hate BM right now. I love being able to hop around and do things like run the light in vault of the wardens. 100% dps efficiency while moving is nice. I'm not 100% thrilled with the amount of downtime but that's really just be being a hunter since BC and used to being GCD locked.

Which is kind of the point. Completely changing the style of play of the class is awful. Classes with downtime versus those that are GCD capped play very differently and attract different kinds of players. Those that liked being GCD capped tried hunter and stuck with it. Those who didn't went and found something else to play that fit their needs and preferences better. Now Blizzard came and forced the slow, downtime style on the players who had self-selected for liking to be be GCD capped (and that's not even going into the making sv melee. I don't object to a melee hunter in principle, I just object to losing an established spec after they deliberately broke it during 6.2).

If they took all the dots away from shadow or aff, do you think the people who play those specs would be very happy? Because that's the equivalent of what they did to BM. As has been pointed out countless times, it's not even a good example of the slow playstyle, because there's nothing you build up to. You just sit around doing nothing for a while in order to hit the same button and then sit around some more. You don't build combo points or chi in order to be able to hit a really awesome move. You just...hit kill command again before going back to twiddling your thumbs.

[Threndsa]

If they took all the dots away from shadow or aff, do you think the people who play those specs would be very happy? Because that's the equivalent of what they did to BM. As has been pointed out countless times, it's not even a good example of the slow playstyle, because there's nothing you build up to. You just sit around doing nothing for a while in order to hit the same button and then sit around some more. You don't build combo points or chi in order to be able to hit a really awesome move. You just...hit kill command again before going back to twiddling your thumbs.

As someone who never liked being GCD capped the first half is a lost cause on me. As for the 2nd that's why I take killer cobra instead of stampede. I find the cobra-KS burst loop extremely satisfying, especially when AotW is up.

[Darsey]

The reason you ware GCD locked before was not because of a fun or interesting reason. SS* spam between focus dump was not really skillful or anything, it was effectively down time that also require you pressing something. Imagine you had to press a key each time you wanted to auto attack. It would not be fun or intersting and it will be a key you will just spam mindlessly. So the made auto shoot a thing. The thing is also true for SS* as a focus generator really, pressing SS was effectively a down time. It wasn't fun or anything.

[Cheze]

I don't think there's any need for every class to necessarily be GCD capped, but the amount of dead time that BM has seems excessive. Making chimera baseline would be a good solution (and would help a small amount with BM's cleave issues.)

[Trollragemore]

Problem is just that no one asked for it. Same goes for a melee hunter. Vast majority of hunters simply doesnt want to be in melee, hence they play a ranger class.

So i take it you never played D&D before(either the rpg or the mmo of it), cause Rangers there are both ranged and melee based on which path they choose(and that is also in the mmo too)... Also primitive hunter before the invention of the bow hunted with spear...

I enjoy survival, though I played it for that month or so before legion came out to get a better idea about the rotation.

[Deleted]

I don't think there's any need for every class to necessarily be GCD capped, but the amount of dead time that BM has seems excessive. Making chimera baseline would be a good solution (and would help a small amount with BM's cleave issues.)

There is not much downtime with BM if you take chimera shot.

I think many BM hunters make the mistake of spaming cobra shot when they shouldn't, you have to take into account your total focus to always use on cooldown killcommand. Spamming cobra shot is like enhancement shamans spaming lava lash and complaining they don't have enough maelstrom. Sure you can spam rockbiter to regenerate but thats not an efficient way of playing and it feels really braindead to smash one button like an hysteric person. Between cobra shot/steady shot every 3 seconds or dire beast, I rather see an improvement. I don't play hunter to cast 60% of the time unless its actually to do big damage,which focus generators are not

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Of course if you want to smash a button every 0.1 seconds all the time then BM is not the best spec for that but personally I don't see the enjoyment in that, its just tiring and not interesting at all

[Vankrys]

I don't think there's any need for every class to necessarily be GCD capped, but the amount of dead time that BM has seems excessive. Making chimera baseline would be a good solution (and would help a small amount with BM's cleave issues.)

according to simcraft (accurate or not, that's another debate), here's what they found



So roughly 40% downtime.

link to the simulation: http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

[Geran]

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).

I like hunter, it has been my main since release, i like BM, i appreciate MM, SV was meh for me.
I DON´T LIKE current iteration of hunter:

- BM feels completely out of fantasy role, i summon plenty of beasts who have no relation to me (am I controlling them? why they obey me?, from where do they spawn?) I have two shots (or three if you count chimaera) cobra and auto in single rotation (with this, am i really a ranged class? it feels my pet is doing all the job in melee and i am just watching a show from far)
I suppose i could choose dire frenzy to not summon other beasts, but it is so far from optimal numbers, it is not an option (and the sinergy from other talents makes it a no go)
Mechanical issues, why do I have to have dead times? (if u do not you go focus starve SO MUCH and you are forced to dead time), or choose chimaera shot and go suboptimal (very).

- MM feels for like no hunter at all, just a archer(or sniper), hunter class was meant to have a PET around him, if this what people wanted i think blizzard should make them that class, for all we know they dont like hunters, so they could erase it.
The best optimal talent choice makes this spec lose arcane and muti shot to sidewinders, HOW does sidewinders feels right to a sniper spec? and losing 2 shots?

- SV, no no no, hunter is a ranged class, even in vanilla (when we had more melee skills) SV was never a melee spec (certainly it had more strong and better capabilities than the other 2 in melee) what we had then, was for ESCAPING melee range.
Current iteration of melee it is not liked by at least 90% of hunter base (i mean people who main a hunter).
WoW is pretty dominant in melee classes (they usually have good numbers and tanks must be in melee), so adding a new one (and including new DH class) to that range is not gonna make easier to get a spot in a raid.

[fishoa]

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.

Same. I haven't played my Hunter since ICC, found out I don't need to stop for autos anymore and I'm now loving it, especially BM. It's a simple spec that fulfills my class fantasy (Dire Beast is awesome) and it does good in Dungeons. If I could, I'd only buff Blink Strikes to affect Hati and tweak the numbers a bit.

Not interested in MM because if I wanted to play a caster, I'd just play a Mage.

[Kirbypro]

I wish Dire Beast was a more interesting skill that interacted with other spells. There was a post somewhere that mentioned the initial "landing" dmg of the dire beast did more dmg than the beast does over its duration. The pure rng reset to Dire Beast is retarded. I wish there was some spell interaction so that spec is still super simple but some of us can push maybe an extra 10% dmg based on correct play.

[Deleted]

I wish Dire Beast was a more interesting skill that interacted with other spells. There was a post somewhere that mentioned the initial "landing" dmg of the dire beast did more dmg than the beast does over its duration. The pure rng reset to Dire Beast is retarded. I wish there was some spell interaction so that spec is still super simple but some of us can push maybe an extra 10% dmg based on correct play.

Yeah, Dire Beast is really boring and I actually hoped that I could use them as "additional pets". It's also somewhat disappointing that you rarely have more than 1, at most 2, up at the same time. Even though there is still a long time until T19. The set bonus that buffs Direbeast damage by 20% is so weird, it's almost as if they wanted to extend the direbeast duration with something... and now after writing that, they did during alpha/beta...? I remember something like "X increase the duration of current direbeasts by Ys"

[Phototropic]

Well, there was 2 piece from T18: Cobra Shot and Multi-Shot increase the duration of your next Dire Beast by 0.5 sec.

[Huntermyth]

only thing i miss is spirit bond because i liked the way it worked ( will not mention eyes of the beast because it is and always will be in my heart )

i like bm hunter and no matter what i will always play as bm. sue me if you want

[Vankrys]

I haven't played my Hunter since ICC, found out I don't need to stop for autos anymore and I'm now loving it.

man, that's so old school, bring memories back. i was practicing to make micro movement in between auto shot, only managed it on target dummy though.

[oplawlz]

Bm and arms are the specs bliz set aside for people who are lazy or bad at video games - I'm afraid we're all just going to have to deal with that and move on.

[sayne9]

hahaha...oh the irony

BM is, in terms of playstyle and difficulty pretty much the same as it was in recent years.

What? BM hunter went from a zero downtime class that should always be casting something be it kc, as, or cs. If your gcd was down and you weren't doing anything you were losing dps, exception to kc coming off cd in the next second. Your downtime was near zero. Now BM has a downtime of around 50%. That is a huge playstyle change.

I don't mind the new BM. I find it relaxing not having to constantly mash buttons. That isn't everyone's cup of tea though and that is fine. To say that the current BM is roughly the same playstyle as the old BM is idiotic. The playstyle concept of the class drastically changed with the focus change.

[SL1200]

I'm playing marks and the class just feels bad. All those iconic hunter abilities we've always had... gone. I really miss my traps and having a cast time on the crowd control sucks. I don't think the hunter has ever been so shitty.