Bestial Wrath Buff

[marjolaine]

Guess I'm in the minority who think BM isn't all that bad. Would of liked to seen more tuning done to some of the current talents as they are some weaker 1s in select tiers.

[xStevooo]

Guess I'm in the minority who think BM isn't all that bad. Would of liked to seen more tuning done to some of the current talents as they are some weaker 1s in select tiers.

It's performance is fine, it's the game play - boring and not immersive at all.

[Gaaz]

Currently, due to most people leveling BM as an AoE spec, MM outperforms BM single target. However, if we take complete artifact, all 54 traits into consideration, BM was doing more single target damage even before recent hotfixes. The difference was around 10k in 880 gear, so nothing stellar. But with these changes, it may well be possible for some to at least consider bringing BM to single target or heavy movement fights in the future. Overall, there is a nice numbers balance between these two specs imo. But BM badly needs something to solve pet movement problems, such as AI and Hati slo-mo run during combat. A simple buff to both pets run speed will solve a lot of the issues with that. Watching Hati crawl 100m from one end of the room to another is a pain.

[Dracodraco]

Currently, due to most people leveling BM as an AoE spec, MM outperforms BM single target. However, if we take complete artifact, all 54 traits into consideration, BM was doing more single target damage even before recent hotfixes. The difference was around 10k in 880 gear, so nothing stellar. But with these changes, it may well be possible for some to at least consider bringing BM to single target or heavy movement fights in the future. Overall, there is a nice numbers balance between these two specs imo. But BM badly needs something to solve pet movement problems, such as AI and Hati slo-mo run during combat. A simple buff to both pets run speed will solve a lot of the issues with that. Watching Hati crawl 100m from one end of the room to another is a pain.

First off, I find it hard to believe that an equally geared BM and MM hunter would see the BM hunter getting ahead due to artifact traits. Neither spec has anything that wildly improves DPS after getting to 28 traits for MM (which unlocks every single DPS improvement trait), and BM has one 3.3% cobra shot damage trait left before it has no more DPS increase talents. The end-talent is fairly equal for every dps - 5% increase from the initial point, .5% increase for every point after it.

I do think I might know WHY you might have seen the results you did though; When you say full 880, are you including the artifact weapon? BM and MM scale weights are fairly similiar - crit, mastery, haste and versatility are all very close, enough that neither should be able to "outscale" the other. On the other hand, Agility is significantly stronger for BM (a weight of 9.3 versus 7.68 according to Azor's pawn string), while for MM, weapon damage is LIGHT YEARS ahead of BM (with 23.01 vs 3.71). Obviously, when we're in full 880 gear from EN, our artifact weapon will be SIGNIFICANTLY stronger - just like it is right now. I'm guessing if you just threw 880 gear everywhere you'd indeed see BM outperform, because you're taking away the hardest scale factor MM has, and it's an entirely unrealistic scenario; Weapons will, in general, likely be 20-30 levels ahead of everything else.

Second, I don't think BM "needs" something to solve pet AI. You get to have 100% mobility as BM; This has to come at a cost somehow. It's simply not fair if you're 100% mobile with ZERO drawbacks. Pets needing to travel from point A to B (or forcing you to take blink strikes instead of a stronger talent) is a way to balance the fact that you can kite the fucking world without losing any DPS.

[Knifttar]

actually I was replying DIRECTLY to the previous 3 posts talking about BM being very easy to play, and someone else countering that MM is also easy to play.

[GT4]

A lot of the napkin maths here is off by the way.

E.g. reading things such as "BW has ~30% uptime so it's a ~1.5% damage buff" makes me facepalm. You have to look at a) how much of your total damage you do during BW (the way you're calculating things assumes that you do constant damage throughout the fight which is ridiculous) and b) how much DPS you actually gain during that time (with Bestial Fury and Unleash the Beast, it's way less than 5% total damage). Then you have to take into account that fights aren't patchwerk and buffing DPS cooldowns will in reality always be a bigger buff than the average for a patchwerk fight because DPS cooldowns can be used for important phases, keep cooling down during movement/transition, etc.

Taking all of that into consideration, what I take from it is that BM (at least with currently available traits) will still be outclassed by MM in raids because ultimately this isn't a huge buff and BM was significantly lacking behind. However, especially since MM's AoE/cleave was significantly affected by the Volley nerf, this might be the final straw to enforce BM over MM for any Mythic+ situation.

[Dracodraco]

A lot of the napkin maths here is off by the way.

E.g. reading things such as "BW has ~30% uptime so it's a ~1.5% damage buff" makes me facepalm. You have to look at a) how much of your total damage you do during BW (the way you're calculating things assumes that you do constant damage throughout the fight which is ridiculous) and b) how much DPS you actually gain during that time (with Bestial Fury and Unleash the Beast, it's way less than 5% total damage). Then you have to take into account that fights aren't patchwerk and buffing DPS cooldowns will in reality always be a bigger buff than the average for a patchwerk fight because DPS cooldowns can be used for important phases, keep cooling down during movement/transition, etc.

Taking all of that into consideration, what I take from it is that BM (at least with currently available traits) will still be outclassed by MM in raids because ultimately this isn't a huge buff and BM was significantly lacking behind. However, especially since MM's AoE/cleave was significantly affected by the Volley nerf, this might be the final straw to enforce BM over MM for any Mythic+ situation.

I was using uptimes gotten from my mythic+ dungeon runs last night, which assumes a fairly consistent amount of damage (there's not really any "bursty" moments in dungeons apart from Stampeding big packs - it's all fairly consistent Beastcleave AOE, and it will remain fairly consistent over the duration of the run). You're correct that with singletarget focused talents, you may be able to localise a bigger amount of burst into the BW window, and getting slightly more out of it - but as I've only played it for dungeons, I've only got experience with that. Likewise, there's no way you'd ever actually SIT on BW for more than 10 seconds at a time; You HAVE to press the button before your next DB becomes available, or lose out on a -10% CDreduction of the ability. Likewise, you can't sit on DB as it does a huge amount of damage, is a big chunk of your focus, and may reset at any moment and waste a use. BW is not as much a "DPS cd" anymore as it is rotational.

[GT4]

I was using uptimes gotten from my mythic+ dungeon runs last night, which assumes a fairly consistent amount of damage (there's not really any "bursty" moments in dungeons apart from Stampeding big packs - it's all fairly consistent Beastcleave AOE, and it will remain fairly consistent over the duration of the run). You're correct that with singletarget focused talents, you may be able to localise a bigger amount of burst into the BW window, and getting slightly more out of it - but as I've only played it for dungeons, I've only got experience with that. Likewise, there's no way you'd ever actually SIT on BW for more than 10 seconds at a time; You HAVE to press the button before your next DB becomes available, or lose out on a -10% CDreduction of the ability. Likewise, you can't sit on DB as it does a huge amount of damage, is a big chunk of your focus, and may reset at any moment and waste a use. BW is not as much a "DPS cd" anymore as it is rotational.

The idea is that your cooldowns also go down when you can't attack (e.g. during helya transition) so you get a higher effective uptime (uptime while you actually DPS) compared to the absolute uptime (uptime for the overall run/fight).

As for the other part: First off, BW's own damage increase already causes you to have significant bursts during BW so you'd have to take that into account if you use relative damage increase. Then you have other CDs such as AMoC, Blood Fury, Aspect of the Wild, Stampede, etc. which you also want to use during BW so those will by far have higher uptime during BW than outside, further shifting damage into BW.

[Gaaz]

First off, I find it hard to believe that an equally geared BM and MM hunter would see the BM hunter getting ahead due to artifact traits. Neither spec has anything that wildly improves DPS after getting to 28 traits for MM (which unlocks every single DPS improvement trait), and BM has one 3.3% cobra shot damage trait left before it has no more DPS increase talents. The end-talent is fairly equal for every dps - 5% increase from the initial point, .5% increase for every point after it.

I do think I might know WHY you might have seen the results you did though; When you say full 880, are you including the artifact weapon? BM and MM scale weights are fairly similiar - crit, mastery, haste and versatility are all very close, enough that neither should be able to "outscale" the other. On the other hand, Agility is significantly stronger for BM (a weight of 9.3 versus 7.68 according to Azor's pawn string), while for MM, weapon damage is LIGHT YEARS ahead of BM (with 23.01 vs 3.71). Obviously, when we're in full 880 gear from EN, our artifact weapon will be SIGNIFICANTLY stronger - just like it is right now. I'm guessing if you just threw 880 gear everywhere you'd indeed see BM outperform, because you're taking away the hardest scale factor MM has, and it's an entirely unrealistic scenario; Weapons will, in general, likely be 20-30 levels ahead of everything else.

Second, I don't think BM "needs" something to solve pet AI. You get to have 100% mobility as BM; This has to come at a cost somehow. It's simply not fair if you're 100% mobile with ZERO drawbacks. Pets needing to travel from point A to B (or forcing you to take blink strikes instead of a stronger talent) is a way to balance the fact that you can kite the fucking world without losing any DPS.

I based my assumption on current (16th of september edition) simulationcraft model. In equal ilvl gear BM does more single target than MM with full artifact. Unless there is a mistake in the simulationcraft engine or APL, I sincerely doubt that this situation is changed to be the opposite after the main go to talent for MM was nerfed, and the main BM ability buffed.
With Mastery / Haste gear MM stands at 374k vs BM's 387k
That is with 880ilvl gear and relics inserted into the weapon for both specs.
I checked, and I indeed made an incorrect assumption that this was for 54th level artifact. It was for 34th level artifact. My bad here, I apologise if anyone was misled by this information.
However, if we take current damage distribution, we can see that MM lost just over 3% of overall damage with this 20% barrage nerf. BM gained something close to 1.5%. As it is, BM with 34 artifact points should be in the 393k range and MM should drop to 362k. How will this situation change with paragon levels, set bonuses etc, I do not know. But it looks like that single target fights will be very viable for BM even if we do not complicate them with movement.
Also, BM really "needs" something to solve pet AI. BMs drawbacks are more than apparent if we compare it to MM. It can not cleave while maintaining single target damage, it does not have the same area of AoE, it does not have execute phase, it's main source of damage can be killed by mobs and bosses (and Hati can not even be resurected), and so on, and so forth. Last thing BM needs is an artificial problem due to programmers laziness, that causes pets to be stuck, unable to attack the boss or move, or even dissapear entirely when they think that instead of jumping off of a platform they better run to the other side of the dungeon for a shortcut, agroing everything along the way. Even worse is when pets stay on this platform, unable to get down (they do not know how to jump), unable to attack, move and forcing you to dismiss your pet in the middle of a fight just to call it again. And even if you do that, you still have to wait a few seconds for hati to dissapear as well. Otherwise, when you call your main pet, Hati will still be stuck somewhere. This is just bad design and lazy AI. Oh, and by the way, blink strikes still do not affect Hati, just like any other movement talent main pet has.

[Boogums]

• Beast Mastery
o Bestial Wrath damage bonus increased to 25%.

Dope... so now it'll do 60% bonus damage if I understand that right?

to =/= by

/10 char

[Beet]

Just want to say, no rotation is hard in Legion. Also, if you read the other class forums, every class is the worst in the game.

But some are harder than others. It's not even an argument. BM, Havoc DH, Frost DK, ele shaman etc are totally easy mode. Then you have survival, feral etc which are definitely more difficult to play and do well on. Just because a spec is easy doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Hell I think it's a good thing some classes and specs are far easier to play than others. Gives variety for people.