BM hunters - Are you still playing BM? Mythic Raiding

[MisterBigglez]

So its been a couple weeks into mythic now and were starting to get some data on how well each spec is performing on certain fights. As it looks, BM is being crushed by almost every class if any sort of cleave or aoe is present. Granted its not bad on ST but its still not out performing the other two hunter specs.

So my question is, are you still playing BM? Have you been asked to swap to MM or even SV?

I rank pretty well overall as a BM hunter but when I compare my damage to other classes, they can do at least 300k more than me while being in the blue rankings. It has honestly demoralised me to even play BM anymore but I cannot stand the playstyle of MM which makes me feel like I am letting my team down because I choose to play a spec that is not doing so well in mythic at this time.

I got my 4pc in the first week so I was at least top 3 on every fight and not everyone has got their new sets because weve been a bit unlucky with what tokens are dropping, but my worry is that once everyone obtains their 4pc, my damage is really going to stick out like a sore thumb.

What are your thoughts? Do you think BM will be fine to play regardless? I know that having unlimited movement is a perk for BM but I don't think thats enough to justify the damage difference.

[Serpha]

All I see is BM hunters, they seem to only exist in rankings.

[Atraxxa]

So its been a couple weeks into mythic now and were starting to get some data on how well each spec is performing on certain fights. As it looks, BM is being crushed by almost every class if any sort of cleave or aoe is present. Granted its not bad on ST but its still not out performing the other two hunter specs.

So my question is, are you still playing BM? Have you been asked to swap to MM or even SV?

I rank pretty well overall as a BM hunter but when I compare my damage to other classes, they can do at least 300k more than me while being in the blue rankings. It has honestly demoralised me to even play BM anymore but I cannot stand the playstyle of MM which makes me feel like I am letting my team down because I choose to play a spec that is not doing so well in mythic at this time.

I got my 4pc in the first week so I was at least top 3 on every fight and not everyone has got their new sets because weve been a bit unlucky with what tokens are dropping, but my worry is that once everyone obtains their 4pc, my damage is really going to stick out like a sore thumb.

What are your thoughts? Do you think BM will be fine to play regardless? I know that having unlimited movement is a perk for BM but I don't think thats enough to justify the damage difference.

Idk man, we have 4 hunters in our core raid group, 3 of us are BM and consistently do more dmg then our marks hunter. I keep hearing that Mark is the superior spec, I have yet to see where this is true in a real raid setting. We are better in most fights do to mobility and being able to do mythic mechanics without penalty to our dps and with the beast cannon build are AoE is insane for add fights as well.

[ohgasauraus]

As a marks for AOE cleave fights I can easily top meters losing to only moonkins, as for ST fights with lots of movement, MM will tend to suffer a lot. For those fights i usually switch to BM and still top meters BM easily outdo other class when moving is mandatory.

Takes for example, Mistress, MM will easily top meters for those sweet sweet cleave. and for Sisters, BM will rock when you have to keep move in and out of arcane and shadow zone.

Both BM and MM have their niche, just go with which ever you can perform better with I guess.

[Trapstarz]

Swapped to MM after having SV and BM legos, got the useless Windburst back ... but if I can get boots or belt I swap to MM with no hesitation since SV got shat on by the dev this time (usually the community itself does it very well)

[Deleted]

As a marks for AOE cleave fights I can easily top meters losing to only moonkins, as for ST fights with lots of movement, MM will tend to suffer a lot. For those fights i usually switch to BM and still top meters BM easily outdo other class when moving is mandatory.

Takes for example, Mistress, MM will easily top meters for those sweet sweet cleave. and for Sisters, BM will rock when you have to keep move in and out of arcane and shadow zone.

Both BM and MM have their niche, just go with which ever you can perform better with I guess.

The warcraft logs show mostly the opposite of what you are saying. For example mostly MM on sisters, and mostly MM on Goroth (single target), and since we dont really know you, i hope u excuse us if we dont take your word

To say my opinion on this thread, I used to find myself in top 1 or 2 in dps meters, and always fighting 2-3 frostmages and occasionally winning them, until they nerfed the t19 set. Our frostmages are 95+ percentile so as you can imagine now it is not even a competition. Now that we are so bad, i feel the only reason i beat someone in dps its be cause they were slacking (not the mages warriors sps etc ofc but the rest). I am genuinely surprised by the"its too early, lets wait and see" atittude. I am not sure what you ppl expected, Dont you know that as people learn the encounters and start moving less and less and do more dps the gap will spread even more? Wait and see in 2-3 weeks. Whats worst is that the zoo stomp spec has allowed the lowest of skills of players to do dmg now with minimum effort, and you can see a lot of ppl on forums are happy. Speaking for myself i haven' been enjoying this and playing less and less. These games had always been driven by the majority of players and not really the hardcore. Too bad i dont have the legendaries on marksman, else i would have swapped already

[Blada]

I'm still playing BM for the majority of fights, but I'm looking at transitioning more into MM, especially on the AoE centric fights. No one is making me swap, other than just pure numbers and data right now.
Simply put, BM is considerably easier, and can move and do mechanics without any loss of damage while Marks can be a lot tougher to play, but has a higher top end damage.
BM, for me, right now is simming around 1.2mil dps on single target, while marks is simming around 1.3million. Actually hitting that number is a ton easier to do as BM than marks is, especially on high movement fights, but it does go to show that a well played MM should and will outperform a well played BM, and that is reflected on WarcraftLogs as well.
Bottom line though, is play what you want, unless you're in some hardcore progression guild that requires you to play the best spec. Especially from a more casual stand point, BM is a lot easier to play to max potential while doing mechanics.

[Aneri]

my goal is it to be able to play both BM and MM competitive. Unfortunately do not i have the boots on MM (i do have Soul Ring and Waist) and without the boots i dont see me in the "competitive game".

[Khrux]

For me its all about consistency.

MM definitely has the higher potential dps output, there is no question about that. However in my experience MM parses can wildly differ from pull to pull and mechanics can and do mess with your rotation.
As a BM main I'm already well geared and consistently hit and maintain 1.1 - 1.2mil dps on ST. My norm/hc parses are 99s across the board and my mythic kills are 94s. However now that I have all possible BM legendaries I have changed loot spec to MM and have stopped putting AP into BM(59 traits) so I can focus a few more traits into MM(currently 53traits)

BM will continue to be strong on progression as a general rule, for this tier this is especially true for Maiden and Avatar which are two considerable walls in ToS. However BM is a considerable dead weight for Host and Misstress if you look at raw numbers from logs.

In summary, its wise to have the option of both MM and BM for this tier. However considering even the top guilds in the world are swapping between specs for different fights, it isn't a major handicap to just stay BM if you want.

[Deleted]

For me its all about consistency.

MM definitely has the higher potential dps output, there is no question about that. However in my experience MM parses can wildly differ from pull to pull and mechanics can and do mess with your rotation.
As a BM main I'm already well geared and consistently hit and maintain 1.1 - 1.2mil dps on ST. My norm/hc parses are 99s across the board and my mythic kills are 94s. However now that I have all possible BM legendaries I have changed loot spec to MM and have stopped putting AP into BM(59 traits) so I can focus a few more traits into MM(currently 53traits)

BM will continue to be strong on progression as a general rule, for this tier this is especially true for Maiden and Avatar which are two considerable walls in ToS. However BM is a considerable dead weight for Host and Misstress if you look at raw numbers from logs.

In summary, its wise to have the option of both MM and BM for this tier. However considering even the top guilds in the world are swapping between specs for different fights, it isn't a major handicap to just stay BM if you want.

I agree with what you are saying about the bosses and the mechanical requirements, however i have to say that doing 99 percentile amongst bms, doesnt prove you are a good dps in the raid. It tells me that for a bad dps class (BM) you are doing good, and that you have optimized gear. If your raid has 90 95 percentiles you are prolly at the bottom of the dmg meters for sure. One thing to keep in mind is that we were forced to change stat weight recently and people who had optimized gear might not have any more, as the crit has become pretty major and it was a low weight stat. This has resulted in some ppl who used to get good percentiles now to drop, so it has been a re-shuffle basically, which will take a while to get fixxed. Also we are talking about stomp build.. compared to frenzy i find it more RNG, so i am a little skeptical of its consistency

[Deleted]

Idk man, we have 4 hunters in our core raid group, 3 of us are BM and consistently do more dmg then our marks hunter. I keep hearing that Mark is the superior spec, I have yet to see where this is true in a real raid setting. We are better in most fights do to mobility and being able to do mythic mechanics without penalty to our dps and with the beast cannon build are AoE is insane for add fights as well.

Anecdotal evidence, nothing more. MM is factually parsing higher on Mythic logs. On every fight. Your MM hunter needs to step up. It simply means that you guys play BM better than he plays MM, but it says nothing about the spec.

BM is in a good place, and I will continue playing it in Mythic until I get my MM gloves due to how the lack of a real movement penalty aids in learning fights, but I do acknowledge that MM is superior to BM in output.

BM only gets on par with MM at the 50th percentile because your own impact on your performance is obviously bigger as an MM player than BM. I have seen logs of BM players who clearly make mistakes (like casting several cobra shots in a row at low focus) and still rank in the 80+ percentile. An MM who makes similar basic mistakes will likely drop more significantly in rankings.

Simply put: if you are an average player you are probably better off playing BM due to the consistency of the spec. If you are able to play in the upper ranks of your bracket, playing MM will consistently give you a better performance. The variance between max ranks and 70-90 percentile ranks isn't so massive either, which means that the spec doesn't suffer from high maximums and low minimums skewing averages.

[andreasels]

I agree with what you are saying about the bosses and the mechanical requirements, however i have to say that doing 99 percentile amongst bms, doesnt prove you are a good dps in the raid. It tells me that for a bad dps class (BM) you are doing good, and that you have optimized gear. If your raid has 90 95 percentiles you are prolly at the bottom of the dmg meters for sure. One thing to keep in mind is that we were forced to change stat weight recently and people who had optimized gear might not have any more, as the crit has become pretty major and it was a low weight stat. This has resulted in some ppl who used to get good percentiles now to drop, so it has been a re-shuffle basically, which will take a while to get fixxed. Also we are talking about stomp build.. compared to frenzy it requires less skill and has more RNG.

If parsing 99th percentile isn't any indicator for being a good dps (at least numberswise) anymore, what is?
Of course there is some luck involved with getting the correct gear, but if someone is a bad dps, he won't parse at 99th percentile, even if he has really good gear. Even on a spec with quite easy mechanics like BM, there are huge gaps between players, even if they have around the same simdps.

Some examples of Goroth Heroic (basicly patchwerk fight) to compare BM and MM in different percentiles.

50th percentile
BM 862k
MM 824k

75th percentile
BM 965k
MM 957k

95th percentile
BM 1097k
MM 1139k

99th percentile
BM 1188k
MM 1266k

BM dps increases by 38% from 50th to 99th percentile, while MMs dps increases by 54%. So while BM has a higher skill floor and a lower skill cap than MM, there is still a HUGE difference between bad and good players for BM.

To rule out gear differences a bit, you can check the difference between percentiles for certain ilvl ranges. For example at ilvl 919-921:

50th percentile
BM 997k
MM 1000k

99th percentile
BM 1211k
MM 1297k

BM dps increases by 21% from 50th to 99th percentile, while MMs dps increases by 30%.

Since just having different stats on same ilvl gear won't ever account for such a huge difference, you can't really be a bad player, if you parse at like 95th percentile or higher all the time.

[Deleted]

Good post Andreasels, also worth pointing out is the small difference between the 2 at a similar percentile.

In short: BM is just fine, MM performs better but not in such a way that it warrants benching BM or forcing them to play MM.

[Rexxgrim]

I have been playing BM for the entirety of Legion (With exception of Helya Mythic where I played MM) and I am still rocking with it.

To me BM is just more fun to play, MM has been a boring, easy and tripe spec since Legion launched and with the current optimal talents and decent gear, you essentially only spam Aimed shot without a care in the world for anything else and it just comes across as boring and easy - No fun at all. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that BM is in any way hard, MM and BM is most likely the two easiest and most boring specs of Legion but BM tops MM on rotation and the fun you get out of the spec in my book.

As for how they compare, the sims, logs and biased Hunters who hates BM since it has a pet and ergo is a shit spec for some reason: All tells you that BM is shit. Yet just look at some of the recent Mythic top kills, there was BMs there and it was not just for the mobility, but the pure ST Damage. MM will always rock BMs ass on AoE - Sure, yet BM can burst AoE with the Stomp build. I will not say that BM can compare to MM in any way on AoE however, yet when it comes to pure single target, single target with little add focus and adds that needs to die instantly; BM remains a solid option.

What I also like about BM is how it has opened for different "play styles" now. With having Mantle + Chest and 4P T20 sim just as close to Roar + Ring and 4P T20 + 2P T19 (And added their different stat priorities and talent choices accordingly) Has just made BM more attractive in my eyes, as a MM just still just spam Aimed, that's it. Some Marked for AoE and you're done, you're standing there like a turret. No fun.

BM also holds a special place for me due to the mobility, in raids just like when you are out driving in traffic; you gotta assume that anyone and everyone is an idiot - And for me then to have an immunity and unlimited mobility; allows for me to take on jobs in raids that while: Maybe lowering my DPS - brings more fun into play since I dont JUST DPS, I can also take upon other tasks.

BM Overall is fine, while MM wins on AoE and on paper, BM still wrecks on single target and fights with little focus on adds, we can move around all the time and we can take upon jobs that other classes will have a hard time doing. We will always be shit upon by the "high up" since we are the "lame ass pet spec" and we will always have a bad light upon due to how biased the higher community is toward it, but non-the less I will keep on playing BM as it's working and is way more fun with a more detailed and timing managed rotation than that of MM.

[Deleted]

Deleting posts while I am writing a reply is not cool, just saying :x

[Rexxgrim]

(Seems my comment vanished as I edited it, if this appears twice to someone - Sorry)

I have been playing BM for the entirety of Legion (With exception of Helya Mythic where I played MM) and I am still rocking with it.

To me BM is just more fun to play, MM has been a boring, easy and tripe spec since Legion launched and with the current optimal talents and decent gear, you essentially only spam Aimed shot without a care in the world for anything else and it just comes across as boring and easy - No fun at all. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that BM is in any way hard, MM and BM is most likely the two easiest and most boring specs of Legion but BM tops MM on rotation and the fun you get out of the spec in my book.

As for how they compare, the sims, logs and biased Hunters who hates BM since it has a pet and ergo is a shit spec for some reason: All tells you that BM is shit. Yet just look at some of the recent Mythic top kills, there was BMs there and it was not just for the mobility, but the pure ST Damage. MM will always rock BMs ass on AoE - Sure, yet BM can burst AoE with the Stomp build. I will not say that BM can compare to MM in any way on AoE however, yet when it comes to pure single target, single target with little add focus and adds that needs to die instantly; BM remains a solid option.

What I also like about BM is how it has opened for different "play styles" now. With having Mantle + Chest and 4P T20 sim just as close to Roar + Ring and 4P T20 + 2P T19 (And added their different stat priorities and talent choices accordingly) Has just made BM more attractive in my eyes, as a MM just spams Aimed with little changes and options like the ones mentioned above. Ofc some Marked shots for AoE and you're done, but in the end you're standing there like a turret as MM. No fun.

BM also holds a special place for me due to the mobility, in raids just like when you are out driving in traffic; you gotta assume that anyone and everyone is an idiot - And for me then to have an immunity and unlimited mobility; allows for me to take on jobs in raids that while: Maybe lowering my DPS - brings more fun into play since I dont JUST DPS, I can also take upon other tasks.

BM Overall is fine, while MM wins on AoE and on paper, BM still wrecks on single target and fights with little focus on adds, we can move around all the time and we can take upon jobs that other classes will have a hard time doing. We will always be shit upon by the "high up" since we are the "lame ass pet spec" and we will always have a bad light upon due to how biased the higher community is toward it, but non-the less I will keep on playing BM as it's working and is way more fun with a more detailed and timing managed rotation than that of MM.

[Deleted]

(Seems my comment vanished as I edited it, if this appears twice to someone - Sorry)

I have been playing BM for the entirety of Legion (With exception of Helya Mythic where I played MM) and I am still rocking with it.

To me BM is just more fun to play, MM has been a boring, easy and tripe spec since Legion launched and with the current optimal talents and decent gear, you essentially only spam Aimed shot without a care in the world for anything else and it just comes across as boring and easy - No fun at all.

While I agree with most of what you say, and I also think BM is more fun than MM, claiming MM is just spamming AiS without a care for anything is just too far from the truth. 60% of your damage comes from AiS, true, but there's a lot more finesse in playing MM well than in playing BM well. The draw of MM is actually those small adjustments and in-the-moment decisions you need to make that actually impact your performance. BM largely plays itself and there's only a limited amount of things you can actually do significantly wrong.

[jaimelannister]

In short: BM is just fine

I'm not sure I would go this far. As the weeks go by in ToS, I think we will see that BM is anything but fine as it drops lower and lower on the overall charts. There are already a ton of specs doing far better than BM, and the trend is bad.

[Rexxgrim]

While I agree with most of what you say, and I also think BM is more fun than MM, claiming MM is just spamming AiS without a care for anything is just too far from the truth. 60% of your damage comes from AiS, true, but there's a lot more finesse in playing MM well than in playing BM well. The draw of MM is actually those small adjustments and in-the-moment decisions you need to make that actually impact your performance. BM largely plays itself and there's only a limited amount of things you can actually do significantly wrong.

Now I would agree to this in the Legion Pre-Patch where talenting into Patient Sniper (Which then made Vulnerable only last for 6 seconds) gave you SOME of that finesse as making sure to hold Vulnerable up as much as possible while slotting in Aimed Shots was the only challenge a MM had - And it was fine, until Legion launched and Windburst essentially filled in those last few seconds where Vulnerable otherwise would be down while Sidewinders kept cropping down your toolkit, making 2 buttons work as 1 to the pleasure of all MM Hunters.

Atm there is little MM can do to in any way, shape or form screw up, as mentioned - When you get some decent gear, the set bonuses and some leggos, focus management becomes non-existent and to have close to permanent up-time on Vulnerable is not even something you need to think about anymore. MM HAD that finesse but it is all but gone now, making the spec just as easy if not easier than BM with little to no in-the-moment decisions that currently would affect them.

[Skul]

Playing BM this tier exclusively. Currently 3/9M. I was one of the first to get 4pc in my guild. My total damage % for farm content is rapidly falling. As Mage / Lock / Warrior / Rogue learn the fights and get comfortable with positions they are surpassing my damage by larger and larger amounts. I am typically equal to or slightly better geared than them. Talking upward of 500k+ gaps for farm content.

I take solace in knowing that progression content is where I still show off. Easy movement, easy play style (currently using beast cannon / zoo), and semi-decent damage.

BM will never be a "parsing" spec compared to others. It pays off in true progression where all of the other classes still have to worry about and die to placement / mechanics / cast timings / things going sideways.