Beast Mastey Best in MoP?

[Resperina]

With all of these new upcoming MoP spells and rumored spells tht look insanely awesome, I was curious if maybe, beast mastery new Top dps spec? Or at least up there with the other two. Stampede looks like a boss spell, along with murder of crows. Hmmm discuss. Go.

[Polio]

if im not mistaken BM always comes out of the gates strong in betas, then gets nerfed to death b4 or slightly after anything goes live.

[Dracodraco]

If it is, it'll not be on anything but patchwerk (ultraxion) style fights. Unless they give the pet AI a complete overhaul, that will forever and always gimp BM's dps utility, and make it the worst spec. It has all the flaws of melee, but there's no brain to control the "character" that dishes out the major damage.

[Drakoes]

Yeah, it is looking very promising, but I wouldn't get too overexcited, since they tend to find some way to screw it up a few "small" patches later.

I'm not against the spec or anything and I like how blizz is trying to make it more viable and all, but I just hope they keep their word and just give BM a bigger, realistic fighting chance in MoP...

[Zayniel]

If it is, it'll not be on anything but patchwerk (ultraxion) style fights. Unless they give the pet AI a complete overhaul, that will forever and always gimp BM's dps utility, and make it the worst spec. It has all the flaws of melee, but there's no brain to control the "character" that dishes out the major damage.

True. I really like what they did with Kill Command though (increasing range to 20 yards iirc), I think they should go ahead and do that for melee swings and bite/claw (atleast increase it to 15 or something?). Also Stampede and Beastcleave looks sick

[danko215]

If it is, it'll not be on anything but patchwerk (ultraxion) style fights. Unless they give the pet AI a complete overhaul, that will forever and always gimp BM's dps utility, and make it the worst spec. It has all the flaws of melee, but there's no brain to control the "character" that dishes out the major damage.

Your logic is false. How was it possible for BM to dominate all of BC then? Pet AI has actually increased for the better since that xpac.

[Puerto]

At the current moment... I believe it will be. With what has been shown to us. But there are a couple of things that can make me change my decision.

1. What will everything look like at 90.

2. Still a lot of beta testing to done between now and release. A lot can change.

[Kaeth]

True. I really like what they did with Kill Command though (increasing range to 20 yards iirc), I think they should go ahead and do that for melee swings and bite/claw (atleast increase it to 15 or something?).

Performance of melee swings and bite/claw/smack on a moving target will only appreciably be improved by AI adjustments or faster position updates from the server (the latter is unlikely because it would place a huge additional load on server bandwidth).

When a pet's target moves out of range, the pet's AI attempts to maneuver back into melee range of the target's current position. If the target continues to move, the pet and target get into a game of position-update leapfrog in which the pet keeps moving to the target's previously updated position just as the target has moved on to a new one. So the pet keeps moving just a tiny step behind the target, constantly out of range.

A human-controlled melee character avoids this problem simply by always being farther inside the target's hit box than he/she needs to be to be considered in range. The pet AI is unfortunately not this smart. It gets in range and is immediately content to stop moving and begin attempting to attack again. It needs to be improved always to prefer attacking from a closer range than its attacks require.

The Kill Command range increase is a band-aid fix to a greater problem. Pet AI still needs improvements.

[jmacphee9]

If it is, it'll not be on anything but patchwerk (ultraxion) style fights. Unless they give the pet AI a complete overhaul, that will forever and always gimp BM's dps utility, and make it the worst spec. It has all the flaws of melee, but there's no brain to control the "character" that dishes out the major damage.

kill command now has a huge range which will help alot..

but with that said, no one will know that for a very long time for several reasons

1) in cata beta BM hunters were one-shotting plate wearers in pvp for the first 2 weeks or so of the beta and they are what they are still to this day, which is 1/50th of that.

2) even after MoP is released blizz still does a bunch of tuning just like every other expansion, remember SV hunters at the beginning of cata and 2 weeks later SV was nerfed and MM was buffed to be even stronger then SV was, and then nerfed again right after(when blizz decided 80k aimed shots werent that cool for some reason...)

[Penguintamer]

It looks like it's getting ridiculous amounts of burst, from what they have so far.

20% pet damage from Bestial Wrath + 50% attack power from Rabid + 15% damage from Binding Shot + that fancy Lynx talent = A lot of damage.

But yea, they'll get nerfed to an unplayable status, per usual. They haven't failed to do it so far.

[clerkenwell]

It looks like it's getting ridiculous amounts of burst, from what they have so far.

20% pet damage from Bestial Wrath + 50% attack power from Rabid + 15% damage from Binding Shot + that fancy Lynx talent = A lot of damage.

But yea, they'll get nerfed to an unplayable status, per usual. They haven't failed to do it so far.

Plus Readiness to do it all over again. BM is going to be downright terrifying in PVP if this current set of abilities goes live.

[Zanzz]

Watch BW get a cooldown increase and a damage reduction. Right now as it is, BM is too good to be true.

[Aigilas]

BM will be nerfed, but BM starts out competitive but as each tier of raiding goes on it falls further and further behind happened in both wrath and cata (i am conveniently ignoring it's awesomeness in BC and it's joke value for vanilla)

[Jaux]

I think not! To much that BM depend on has either been changed or removed! Fervor and CTHC for example. Without fervor as a valid spec choice BM will be focus starved during nuke and recovery and therefor be rendered useless. Same with CTHC, It's way to strong if you know how to use it (when to get it and when not to etc) to be replaced with a flat CD reduction.
Giving Arcane shot the concussive effect will also affect our DPS and overall damage in PVP, as we have to waste focus and globals to CC.
I'd say we be useless in PVP like we are now and mediocre at best in Pve.

[Sre]

I may be delusional but I believe I also read somewhere that Kill Command's range was increased and would cause the pet to charge to the target? Wishful thinking or truth?

[Aigilas]

have not heard about that one, but that does not mean it is not true

[Vongimi]

I may be delusional but I believe I also read somewhere that Kill Command's range was increased and would cause the pet to charge to the target? Wishful thinking or truth?

Not sure about pet charging the target, but yes the range was definitely increased. Charging the target would make it make sense!

EDIT: http://www.wowdb.com/spells/83381-kill-command

[hellboyy]

Kill Command has a 25 yard range in MoP.

[Dracodraco]

Your logic is false. How was it possible for BM to dominate all of BC then? Pet AI has actually increased for the better since that xpac.

Uh. What? A spec being way overpowered due to simplified mechanics (spin to win, anyone?) and insane scaling doesn't mean the pet AI has ever been or is now "good".

Beast mastery is still going to depend on a huge chunk (all melee dmg from the pet) of their DPS, comming from a "clunky to control"-source. I mean, take this tier as an example -

Zon'ozz: Burst on tentacles is reliable on pet moving from each tentacle to do any dps, or let it sit on the boss and (during progress) do useless dps.
Yorsahj: Switching onto oozes, again, downtime of a melee due to pet.
Blackhorn: Much lower uptime on drakes than the other two specs due to not being able to be in range.
Spine: Pet being clunky and not wanting to attack/apply debuffs to the tendon.
Madness: Pet not wanting to attack targets, switching, dying to the parasite landing.

And thats just the major issues with this tier. Looking at the entire expansion, we've had fights like Nefarian and Atramedes where the dragons fly out of melee range, we've had fights like ODS where the pet is constantly switching targets, fights like rhyolith where switching targets ASAP is essential to sterring him correct, the list goes on really. The AI is clunky, the fact that the spec was best for TBC doesn't mean that it isn't.

25 yard range on Kill command will help - but that still doesn't change the fact that the pets are restricted by melee-dps downtimes, and aren't "getting" anything to make up for it atm.

[lazypeon100]

I think not! To much that BM depend on has either been changed or removed! Fervor and CTHC for example. Without fervor as a valid spec choice BM will be focus starved during nuke and recovery and therefor be rendered useless. Same with CTHC, It's way to strong if you know how to use it (when to get it and when not to etc) to be replaced with a flat CD reduction.
Giving Arcane shot the concussive effect will also affect our DPS and overall damage in PVP, as we have to waste focus and globals to CC.
I'd say we be useless in PVP like we are now and mediocre at best in Pve.

I have a strong urge to argue against this post. I'll start with Fervor, (talking from a PVE stand point atm btw), of the 3 choices you can get talent wise Fervor is probably the weakest one due to the fact that it's just a focus regen for a spec that honestly, doesn't have too many focus issues (CS a few times to get near full focus, then BW and KC/AC spam). CTHC isn't necessary at all for PVE (spirit bond has been a better choice in cata, and will likely remain a better choice). For PVP Fervor is worthless compared to readiness (readiness being one of the main reasons why top end PVP hunters are MM, along with silencing shot which we can also get), arcane shot with concussive shot is a massive buff if you think about it. We were stuck with too many keybinds/abilities as it was, and concussive shot ate a GCD. Having it attached to arcane shot is great for BM pvp so you wont have to waste a GCD during BW to keep your target slowed (aka, not use it as the damage is generally more important during BW).

As far as the slows go for MoP, it wont be as important sense we will have min range to shoot from in MoP as well as other ways to force people back (explosive trap glyph for one). I'd honestly be more worried about the loss of the melee weapon in MoP than the concerns about BM pvp wise. Full disarms </3.