The many problems of Beast Mastery

[Firebyrd]

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.

/You/ didn't find pushing a focus generator fun. I did. It made me feel as if I was in control of my resource as opposed to being at the mercy of time. Pushing cobra mindlessly as BM meant you were playing it wrong. You had to be preparing properly for KC and BW while reacting to surprise influxes of focus from your pet's crits to avoid capping. You also had to adjust to the difference in focus you had whether or not you had focus fire up. There was nothing mindless about it in BM the past two expansions. You could get into a pretty good pattern over several KC cds at a certain haste point during Firelands where you could do quite well without paying as much attention, but the pattern broke after getting T13 with the increased focus gains and the changes to the spec in MoP made things far less predictable.

I've never suggested that every class and spec should be GCD capped. However, to change a spec that was GCD capped to what is quite likely the slowest spec in the game is awful. Even if being GCD capped wasn't to your liking, can't you see how terribly jarring that is to people who liked it? How that would make them upset if that was something they liked? How would you like it if a spec you enjoyed was changed so fundamentally?

[Deleted]

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.

Both styles were all about using the abilities on cooldowns, nothing changed other than spamming 1 (or whatever you binded Cobra on) between that. To say it changed drastically just because of that is hilarious and sad.
You could argue that you feel bored now, because you are missing something. Cobra didn't really add anything other than having 0 "downtime" on using GCDs. The only addition it had was steady focus, which was nice and I'd love to have something similar again. They could even use the same skill now. It would add some proper Focus management and shift priorities.

Compare that to SW MM and WoD MM, and you'll see a much bigger difference.

[threads]

bm has always been the most boring spec. it's only becoming more apparent now that we only have 2 specs to choose from and everything interesting about pets was removed.

[Deleted]

MM seems even more boring to me, it feels so robotic to play with the vulnerable/market shot rotation...so much RNG, its actually worse than destruction warlock

[Deleted]

I've been playing hunter as my main since BC and have always enjoyed it I just enjoy it now more than ever. I have 3 hunters my MM main, a BM alt hunter and a SV gnome one. It's funny how you complain people liking it can't point out why, yet it's ok for the haters to just say "it's boring" or "it's awful" and you seem to have no problem with that. I don't find either of the specs boring or awful. I find all 3 fun and engaging in different ways to be sure. If you are actually only using 2 buttons for BM you can take different talents so you have more buttons to hit.

- - - Updated - - -

except some people did ask for it, there's been a vocal group asking for a melee hunter since I started playing in BC and they seemed to get louder after Cata when you could no longer "fake it" because Blizz made the change to ranged weapons being Main hand so you could no longer equip both a melee and range weapon.

get your head straight. they didnt ask for a melee hunter, they asked for melee ABILITIES for hunters to deal with certain situation. and how many of those morons asking for a melee hunter are still playing? ye right..

bm is as enjoyable as you want it to be. (if you can ignore the pet bugs frequently >.>) MM is made complicated for the sake of complication. its a horrible spec with a terrible gameplay. the worst of all of this is that they put the most time in developing the survival spec.. that should be telling. they didnt even bother to create a new baseline spell for bm hunters and swapped chimaera to BM. so much tinkering and development for hunters, i am in awe..

[Fang7986]

get your head straight. they didnt ask for a melee hunter, they asked for melee ABILITIES for hunters to deal with certain situation. and how many of those morons asking for a melee hunter are still playing? ye right..

bm is as enjoyable as you want it to be. (if you can ignore the pet bugs frequently >.>) MM is made complicated for the sake of complication. its a horrible spec with a terrible gameplay. the worst of all of this is that they put the most time in developing the survival spec.. that should be telling. they didnt even bother to create a new baseline spell for bm hunters and swapped chimaera to BM. so much tinkering and development for hunters, i am in awe..

MM isn't complicated at all and it's gameplay is fun. Just because you didn't ask for melee hunters doesn't make the people who did ask for melee hunters not exist. All 3 hunter specs are improved in my opinion, sorry if you don't like it, but many many hunters I know and talk to do.

[Alvarie]

I just feel so bored playing all 3 specs now... i think its more so to do with them removing focus generating cast-time shots (I.e Cobra Shot) as i've been mindlessly hitting that constantly for the past like... 6 years? And before that was Steady Shot.

The new stampede is terrible... and i like how they use every out-dated beast model they could find for it... might as well call it 8-bit stampede.

It feels so boring waiting for focus and its the main reasoning behind me not picking up my rogue in the past few years.

I really hope they make community based decisions for hunters in 7.1, but i can't say i am too hopeful.

[Gaaz]

MM isn't complicated at all and it's gameplay is fun. Just because you didn't ask for melee hunters doesn't make the people who did ask for melee hunters not exist. All 3 hunter specs are improved in my opinion, sorry if you don't like it, but many many hunters I know and talk to do.

Yeah... Out of 0.7% hunter population that actually plays survival, you can probably subtract half to those that do it due to early (and incorrect due to a bug) simulationcraft estimate of their damage. So basically a large portion of the almost nonexistant survival hunter population does it due to a mistake made early in their progression. And it is kind of difficult to change now, once you have dedicated 3 weeks to leveling it.
And I agree with some of the posts here. People were probably asking some of the melee abilities back, not a complete class overhaul. Now, after a major f..k up with melee survival, some people restart the old tune but with a different sauce - that it should have been BM to go full melee, and survival still ranged. As if even if Blizz were to make the same dung and named it Beast Mastery instead of Survival, it would change anything except that it would be BM totally forgotten.
Hunters were the most popular class starting from vanilla and through warlords of draenor. Now, fire mage or havoc demon hunter population alone accounts to more than all 3 specs of hunters put together.

[Deleted]

Hunters were the most popular class starting from vanilla and through warlords of draenor. Now, fire mage or havoc demon hunter population alone accounts to more than all 3 specs of hunters put together.

Honestly i prefer hunters to be least played class. Too much ppl sucks as hunters and ruin our reputation.

[Kantoro]

So, to sum up the thread:

1. Hunter is horrible and if you don't agree with me, you are horrible. Also life is horrible.
2. Hunter is fine, I am enjoying it. I enjoy life. Also, life is good.

[pkm]

Honestly i prefer hunters to be least played class. Too much ppl sucks as hunters and ruin our reputation.

How does one suck at playing bm?

[PuppetShowJustice]

How does one suck at playing bm?

Leave pet in wrong spec, leave taunt on. Not know when it's appropriate to dismiss pets before moving (say, jumping down a ledge in an instance). Taking talents that have no synergy. Using Barrage like an idiot.

Trust me, people can find ways to suck at anything.

[pkm]

Leave pet in wrong spec, leave taunt on. Not know when it's appropriate to dismiss pets before moving (say, jumping down a ledge in an instance). Taking talents that have no synergy. Using Barrage like an idiot.

Trust me, people can find ways to suck at anything.

Right but that's just general hunter nonsense that any spec can do. In regards to dps, it's pretty difficult to mess up as bm.

[JadeDragon]

You want reasons why I like BM Hunter?

1. I am not pressing buttons just because they are there. I would rather have core abilities with down time than have Blizz reduce the damage of one ability so they can add another one I press because "it is something to press". I come from FFXI where you press very few buttons unless you are a caster. As most classes, I feel like I am only pressing something because I can and they could have easily removed that and buffed something else instead of giving me another button because hey, gotta press more buttons.

2. I feel like I get to experience the game better. I am not constantly staring at my hotbar and resources, but watching what is happening in the battlefield. I have fought a boss as a Prot Pally, then fought it again as BM hunter and realized that I am just now noticing how it look because I don't spend all fight looking at my CD's and resources and watching the boss cast bar.

3. I like having Hati with the gun. Once you get into the talent tree for BM he starts getting even better. The best part of it is that the trait is within the first 13 points of your artifact so you don't have to grind endlessly to get the trait that makes the class shine even if you go for the kill command heal.

4. Some of the talent choices are pretty cool. Focused aoe, moving aoe, or single target. I'll admit BM isn't number one for single target, but adjusting your skills, you can get better. Along with that no class is perfect for everything.

5. Not so much something new, but people complain about the lack of survivability of the pet, but in tank spec it does pretty well. I can do WQ's and pull 2-3 mobs and MD another 2-3 mobs and have my pet be fine. Granted I can't solo current level instances, but I don't often have my pet die in dungeons with a proper tank. The damage increase vs survivability is actually not worth it for solo.

6. Less buttons make me need to focus on my rotation less. This means I am even better for the odd jobs. I love doing the odd jobs. I can take the light in BRH and be a puddle janitor. I can still hit my few buttons while doing the odd jobs, too and not worry so much about pressing a button every second. I am even MORE mobile during a fight. Add on the disengage speed boost and I can be superior to DH in fight mobility while maintaining dps.

My only few problems with the spec are long running issues with hunters.

1. Pet pathing. I jump off even a 5 foot ledge and my pet needs to run all the way around unless there is no path down. Really annoying, but has existed since Vanilla. Often times I have even had my pet get stuck on top of just a small rock that I wouldn't even have to jump over to cross. But that has come up a lot this xpac. I find even my character getting caught on things that I would never have thought would stop me before.

2. The artifact gun model. I am not impressed with it. The prot pally sword and shield is gorgeous. The BM hunter one looks like some green drop that has me want to go buy the nessingwary 4000 for the mog.

3. I miss the old movement speed buff for aspect of the cheetah. I feel like every class is faster than me unless I take the speed buff for disengage and always spin around to cast it.

4. I miss the traps, but I am getting used to it. Wyvern sting helps with that and a very strong IF. If the tank really needs some relief, I can change my pet to tank and it can handle a mob. Less damage, but then I become great utility. I can heal my pet and the mob is effectively CC'd, but can still be hit by aoe's and not "break CC".

5. Miss improved mend pet, but with the tank spec getting more healing baseline, it makes a dps pet less able to tank (logical).

Most of my problems are either problems that have existed for a while or changes to which I just need to adjust.

I really enjoy my new BM hunter.

[Doombringer]

What really hurts my heart, when it comes to BM, is how very little "Beast Mastery" is involved.

Titanstrike's quest had us playing mini-games in a tomb and again with Mimiron. Beasts weren't even a secondary thing.

We didn't use our pet to navigate into a place we ourselves couldn't reach. We didn't form a bond with other kinds of beasts or critters to push a button behind a locked door or fetch us keys to a cell door, or retrieve a weapon we were separated from. We didn't soothe a wild beast to prevent it from mauling someone innocent, or ourselves...

You know, Beast Mastery things. Things you'd see the Beastmaster doing, or Tarzan.

Hati comes in at the very END of the artifact quest, and that is supposed to be sufficient Beast Mastery "flavor" ... but really, it wasn't. Farthest from it. We should have had Hati at or nearly at the start of the quest chain. We should have hunted with Hati and Thorim. Can you imagine going on a "fox hunt" with a lightning god? "You! I remember you. Come, hunt with me. I want you to try this rifle, it is one of Mimiron's latest creations..."

These are completely rando ideas... and more flavorful than what we got.

Instead of Flare, why don't we call in an owl to circle an area and spot stealthers?

Instead of Conc Shot, why can't we summon a trio of angry weasels or snakes to tangle up an enemy's feet?

Why isn't Stampede baseline *and* pulling from our stabled pets? How is Aspect of the Wild a more interesting and flavorful cooldown than Stampede?

So many players miss Freezing Trap ... why can't we get a baseline CC back? And why can't it be a wolf or a raptor that actually pounces and pins our CC target down to immobilize them for 30 seconds?

Some of the later PVP talents do kind of touch on these things, these ad-hoc beast summons... the zoning effect of the circling hawks or the big-hitting slow-moving basilisk. There needs to be more of it throughout the spec.

[Kirbypro]

Your points are all pretty good. But the hunter team spent all their time making the new Survival.

[JadeDragon]

Those are actually some really cool ideas for incorporating more animals.

I like the idea of a snake wrapping up an opponent or a riverbeast pinning someone.

Also a circling owl or eagle.

[Cobaltius]

Maybe I am doing it wrong but what I find the worst is pets take way to much damage. When I am questing mend pet has to be in my rotation and I have to fire it off every time it is off CD just to keep a pet alive, especially if I pull more than one mob.

[Deleted]

Maybe I am doing it wrong but what I find the worst is pets take way to much damage. When I am questing mend pet has to be in my rotation and I have to fire it off every time it is off CD just to keep a pet alive, especially if I pull more than one mob.

You are obviously playing with your pet in Ferocity spec. Switch to Tenacity. Make sure Growl is on. Grab a spirit pet (any of the mana sabers in Suramar wll do), take Spirit Mend off auto-cast, macro it so you can use with Mend Pet as an extra heal for the pet or using it on yourself as a crutch heal.

[MrTharne]

You are obviously playing with your pet in Ferocity spec. Switch to Tenacity. Make sure Growl is on. Grab a spirit pet (any of the mana sabers in Suramar wll do), take Spirit Mend off auto-cast, macro it so you can use with Mend Pet as an extra heal for the pet or using it on yourself as a crutch heal.

Doesn't change the fact that if you fight the Razorclaw captain (Feral) on top of the tower for a PvP world quest, your pet is really getting shred.