7.1.5 BM Nerfs

[Deleted]

So Chimera shot.

Worthwhile now?

[Deleted]

Highly unlikely that Chimera will ever really outperform Stomp, if you ask me :P
Currently my chim hits for 65k, in 715 it will hit for 99k. Stomp is 248k, yes armor gets applied but that wont remove more than half its damage.

[Fyff]

Chimera also gives you 10 focus which can possibly give you more kill commands or cobra shots per fight. I'm not saying it will equal out but it's something else to consider.

[jaimelannister]

Chimera also gives you 10 focus which can possibly give you more kill commands or cobra shots per fight. I'm not saying it will equal out but it's something else to consider.

It shouldn't allow for more Kill Commands, because you should never not have focus saved for that in any circumstance. It may allow for more Cobra Shots, sure, but it would have to be quite a few for it to make up the damage difference I think.

[Darsey]

It shouldn't allow for more Kill Commands, because you should never not have focus saved for that in any circumstance. It may allow for more Cobra Shots, sure, but it would have to be quite a few for it to make up the damage difference I think.

Unless you take Killing Cobra.

[Deleted]

Unless you take Killing Cobra.

I always run with Killer Cobra and outside of bloodlust you can really do with more focus for CS,KC spam. Or the belt could drop for me and that would be nice kkthx.

[Asasyn]

How do you evaluate One with the pack after buffs? Would it be worth taking under certain conditions? (i.e stacked crit)

[Deleted]

Testing on ptr shoulders with 2 charges, One with the pack and Dire Frenzy seems like fun and nice combo, i think pretty good dmg aswell. Need to wait for some theorycrafter to sim it out

2 charges should be baseline now need to pray to God of RNG to get one finally. Hope so this is gonna be way to go with this legendary because its fun foolks to try to keep up atack speed buff on pet as long as you can.

[BendakWoW]

How do you evaluate One with the pack after buffs? Would it be worth taking under certain conditions? (i.e stacked crit)

It'll probably sim a lot better because that's averaging out thousands of fights, but Wild Call is so RNG you won't be able to rely on it. Now, if Dire Beast charges were baseline (or you had the new legendary) it would be a lot more attractive because then you'd know that none of those extra procs would be wasted procs (i.e. proccing when the cooldown only has like 2 sec left -- f that crap).

I don't think the Chimaera Shot buff is enough vs. Stomp. Needs to be more like 400+% weapon damage to be a clear cut single target winner IMO.

Blink Strikes buff is nice, now they just need to make Hati blink with main pet. And fix all the other Hati problems.

As others have said, we're currently doing a lot less DPS on PTR (so are other classes I gather) because of the stat nerfs. It looks like I lost about 10% overall damage from stat nerfs alone. So right now all I really have to look forward to in 7.1.5 is doing less damage and getting traps back. At this point I'm pretty sure my talents aren't changing either.

WTB some BM love...

[Kirbypro]

I always run with Killer Cobra and outside of bloodlust you can really do with more focus for CS,KC spam. Or the belt could drop for me and that would be nice kkthx.

I have the belt and run killer cobra. With AotW and lust, i have to spam really hard to not focus cap during BW. With just AotW, my focus will slowly go down, with a lucky DB proc i will run out just about when BW ends. With a naked BW, I am focus starved and I miss a lot of potential KCs, not sure exact number.

[riksal]

As others have said, we're currently doing a lot less DPS on PTR (so are other classes I gather) because of the stat nerfs. It looks like I lost about 10% overall damage from stat nerfs alone. So right now all I really have to look forward to in 7.1.5 is doing less damage and getting traps back. At this point I'm pretty sure my talents aren't changing either.

Do I remember correctly but didn´t Ion say in the Q&A on Twitch that they are nerfing secondary stats that much higher ilevel item should always be better regardless of its stats but that this wouldnt affect player power levels?

[BendakWoW]

Do I remember correctly but didn´t Ion say in the Q&A on Twitch that they are nerfing secondary stats that much higher ilevel item should always be better regardless of its stats but that this wouldnt affect player power levels?

That was referring to rings and necks only I think. The stats on those did get buffed, but the conversion rates were nerfed even more. Add another 50 item levels and things might balance out though... but as they are today, it results in a rather large nerf (10%).

[Deleted]

Ion says a great mny things and is full of shit on most

[Bepples]

I always felt MM was the "raiding spec" and anything else is just subpar. When you look at data, however, BM is equal if not higher than MM, until you reach a certain percentile/item level. I'm currently 875-ish, and I don't do Mythic raids, but I sim way higher as BM than MM, and the logs are proving it.

Out of the 10 current raid bosses we have available (7 for EN, 3 for ToV), MM is only dominant on half of them: Dragons, Elerethe, Il'gynoth, Xavius and Helya. The other 5 bosses, BM is either ahead or within ~3% of MM. I am talking about heroic parses of course, because that is all my guild does, but it does need to be stated what content you're doing for your target audience.

For the record, I did just look at 75th percentile logs for even Mythic EN, its pretty much the same. If you take out the damage padding on Il'gynoth and Xavius, MM isn't that far ahead, if not lower than BM in some cases.

I think outside of those few fights, it comes down to which spec you're better at. "Marksmanship is the raiding spec and anything else is only hurting your raid team" is a phrase of the past, and people need to get used to it. Most people who've put all their Artifact Power into MM don't want to hear it, or are just in plain denial. I used to be in your shoes, and after 7.1.5, I'll probably go back to playing MM full time, but for now, I'm enjoying the mobility of BM.

The difference between MM and the other two specs is not to the same degree as the utter retardation that was 6.2, but there are fights like Il'gynoth where it's still very significant. It's still a detriment to your raid to play the weaker spec, but not nearly as badly as it was in HFC.

You can't have perfect equality between two specs, let alone three. There will always be a best and a worst. However, you CAN minimise the difference. In 5.4, all three specs were relatively close. MM was usually behind, but not by a significant amount (depends on your own standards of "significant" but you could certainly get away with playing it in raids, just like you can play Survival now). On the opposite end of the spectrum, 6.2 literally barred raiding hunters from playing anything other than BM. The tuning was just madness. Survival was gutted and has NEVER recovered. BM could only come close on like two fights. Picking SV or BM then was a HUGE nerf to your whole raid group, especially given the high dependence on priority add burst. Having a hunter going SV instead of MM could easily be the difference between killing an add in time or being too slow. Sadly, Blizzard and their dedicated fans refused to admit that there was no choice in HFC.

Also, it would be imbalanced to have BM do more than MM at this point because BM has more mobility. There has to be a trade off between mobility and damage. Hunters have known this for years: since Cataclysm hunters have typically done less damage than other classes but had far more mobility to make up for it. That's actually good design; that's actually "class fantasy". Too bad Blizzard has taken a sharp turn away from it. So has Square Enix, in fact (Final Fantasy 14 Bard class used to be fully mobile, but they added a RIDICULOUS casting stance ironically called "Wanderer's Minuet" under the guise of being optional....before promptly making it completely mandatory through atrocious tuning and making all new abilities exclusive to that stance). I worry that the whole "mobile, low-damage ranged" template will disappear from MMOs entirely and EVERY ranged class and spec will just be a generic caster, just like WoW had it before Cataclysm.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think the Chimaera Shot buff is enough vs. Stomp. Needs to be more like 400+% weapon damage to be a clear cut single target winner IMO.

Chimera Shot's problems go beyond that. Since it's not pet damage, it doesn't scale with mastery. The other two talents do. You'll be getting more and more mastery over the expansion, so regardless of Chimera Shot's tuning it will continue to become less and less viable as you get more gear.

Not to mention legendaries. Pretty much all the legendaries buff Kill Command and Dire Beast usage in one way or another. So using those spells just becomes more and more important while Chimera Shot gets less and less priority. It gives 10 focus (20 on cleave), but that doesn't mean much when we will after 7.1.5 have THREE legendaries which help focus in some way (-20% focus during BW, -50% colldown on Aspect of the Wild, 2 charges on Dire Beast). I really don't see Chimera Shot being very viable at any point without a major redesign.

[zoned]

I feel like the changes especially to blink strikes forces BM to run a cleave build for maximum efficiency in M+. Blizzard is leaving BM in the dust as bottom tier single target DPS, the direction for the spec seems very clear now (dumpster status). MM is currently and will remain king for mythic raiding and is also now the clear cut winner for M+. MM will do significantly higher single target dps while also having superior burst cleave not to mention it scales infinitely better. It's time to fold the BM hand, not worth playing or investing anymore AP into.
I was hoping for some BM single target buffs, that is clearly not going to happen, it's officially time to swap MM even for M+.
The only thing that would make BM viable for anything is if they make the new Blinkstrikes BASELINE and give you 2 charges of DB. This would maybe bring BM to mid tier levels and give it some viable raid cleave. Still would not get anywhere near top specs but at least it wont be a complete joke.

[Kirbypro]

I feel like the changes especially to blink strikes forces BM to run a cleave build for maximum efficiency for least in M+. Blizzard is leaving BM in the dust as bottom tier single target DPS, the direction for the spec seems very clear now (dumpster status). MM is currently and will remain king for mythic raiding and is also now the clear cut winner for M+. MM will do significantly higher single target dps while also having superior burst cleave not to mention it scales infinitely better. It's time to fold the BM hand, not worth playing or investing anymore AP into.
I was hoping for some BM single target buffs that is clearly not going to happen so it's time to officially swap to MM for even for M+.
The only thing that would make BM viable for anything is if they make the new Blinkstrikes BASELINE and give you 2 charges of DB. This would maybe bring BM to mid tier levels and give it some viable raid cleave. Still would not get anywhere near top specs but at least it would be some what viable.

Whatever man, its not that BM's not getting left in the dust, its that other specs are pretty broken and needs complete reworks to be fair...Affli locks pushing 800k dps on heroic dragons...lol op. So many specs can easily push 500k+ single target dps while as BM i struggle so damn hard to break 400k.

BM just needs some minor quality of life tweaks and number buffs. I wouldn't mind them extending beast cleave a little to 5 or 6 seconds. That would help us be more competitive in 2 target cleave.

[zoned]

Whatever man, its not that BM's not getting left in the dust, its that other specs are pretty broken and needs complete reworks to be fair...Affli locks pushing 800k dps on heroic dragons...lol op. So many specs can easily push 500k+ single target dps while as BM i struggle so damn hard to break 400k.

BM just needs some minor quality of life tweaks and number buffs. I wouldn't mind them extending beast cleave a little to 5 or 6 seconds. That would help us be more competitive in 2 target cleave.

You could have beast cleave be 100% up time passive buff and the spec would still be trash for raiding.

[Sastank]

Meh, BM is more entertaining than your wit, at least.

Aww I upset some random BM player on the internet so he feels the need to whiteknight the shit spec with personal attacks on someone he doesn't know online? Aww so adorable.

[Zeth Hawkins]

Aww so adorable.

Sorry, man. I don't swing that way, but thank you for the compliment.

whiteknight the shit spec

Placing it above you isn't exactly singing its praises, unless you think that highly of yourself.

[Deleted]

Im consistently beating most/all competition as BM, donno. BM isn't great with its toolkit for raiding, but its definitively not a low dps spec as many seem to make it out to be.