Beast Mastery class fantasy? (good-natured, not a rant)

[Lasombria]

I've been looking at videos of BM in the alpha, and it looks like a lot of fun to play for someone like me, whose favorite class ever was the City of Heroes mastermind. But I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a fantasy of their hunter controlling every pet in the area, like Tarzan calling for help? Exhibit 1:



I've always thought of "hunter" in conjunction with one pet, or maybe 2-3 of a kind. But that's just me! Anyone out there going, "Yes, this is precisely what I always wanted"?

[Deleted]

I actually like the new BM a lot ^^ my hunter is a dwarf and it makes me feel like Hemet Nesingwary

[Lasombria]

OK, that's a really good way to look at it.

[bloodmoth13]

I like it, i just want a way to decide what our dire beast brings out, when its completely random its a little jarring, its nicer to know exactly whats coming out.

Also, this might just be me, but id really like to see the exotic beast thing from beast master removed, they dont need exotic beasts to distinguish themselves from otherwise identical specs, as survival is now melee and MM doesnt use pets anymore, so now all it does is stop survival from getting certain pets.

[Lasombria]

Huh. Y'know, I hadn't thought about that. But yes, it seems worth bringing up on the alpha forums.

With Tarzan yells, of course.

[Eapoe]

I like it, i just want a way to decide what our dire beast brings out, when its completely random its a little jarring, its nicer to know exactly whats coming out.

Also, this might just be me, but id really like to see the exotic beast thing from beast master removed, they dont need exotic beasts to distinguish themselves from otherwise identical specs, as survival is now melee and MM doesnt use pets anymore, so now all it does is stop survival from getting certain pets.

SV hunters have a bond with their pet, true, but BM is about the mastery over beasts and the deepest bonds that affinity forms. Leave them to BM, not really much to argue against.

[Drakilu]

BM seems to have 2 different interpretations.

The master of all beasts. Kills things for sport/trophies and commands large packs of nameless cannon fodder animals. Small amounts of damage from a lot of sources. Fox hunting with a swarm of dogs, master and minions kinda deal. Hemet Nesingwary, Houndmaster Braun, etc. Personally dislike this type of hunter fantasy but this is where it seems to be going with the recent changes.

Other direction is hunter and companion. Kind of druidy with the respect for nature/all animals thing. Single, named, absolutely vicious pet that makes up 50% of the overall damage. Rexxar and Misha. Greatly prefer this fantasy from ye olde vanilla hunter days. Easy to get attached to a single pet when they're such an essential part of the gameplay.

Game seems to be getting away from this idea to make it easier to play. Not having to micromanage your pet's skills, no pet skill trees, not having to keep up with happiness, makes very little impact when your pet dies, etc.

[Katchii]

I remember picking Hunter when WoW launched because of the pet fantasy; taming, feeding, happiness level, having to tame higher level beasts to learn higher pet skill levels... it was very cool. Being a good Hunter meant you had to put the work into it, which I didn't mind. This meant finding that perfect pet was also part of the fantasy, taking hours, days, even weeks to get that rare pet (mine was Humar the Pridelord) just gave your Hunter an identity, a gravity that playing other classes just didn't have.

Beast Mastery to me has always been about forging an incredibly deep bond with your pet, to the point where they're your companion, your best friend, your other half. Previously that was kind of forced because your pets happiness level would decrease and they could flat out leave you if you didn't use them, and IIRC their damage was lower at lower happiness levels.

I don't mind the extension of Beast Mastery to apply to multiple animals, I just pray they don't turn it into a menagerie where you're really just an effective trapper who has lots of animals trapped and usable to throw at your enemies, rather than a animal lover with lots of animal friends who willingly fight by your side.

[Doombringer]

I have personally played Beast Mastery as a hunter with a very strong connection to one companion beast, and the ability to call on other beasts as needed. They kind of hit this mark with Dire Beast and Stampede as auxiliary items while keeping Bestial Wrath and Kill Command focused on your main pet... and also your throwing out other shots/skills as well. A good balance of A) the hunter doing things and B) the beast(s) doing things.

However I can see why they would want to push the spec more toward the high-fantasy end, and have you possess this magical affinity with the natural world around you... waving your hands and calling in beasts from far and wide. The focus now will be what the beasts are doing and not so much what the hunter is firing off/initiating/commanding (even though we're still hitting the buttons).

Ideally, I would like to see the "new BM" as having a design where the hunter's abilities (read: shots) have a base effect/damage/etc. that can then subsequently call in a drive-by from a beast or beasts as a secondary effect (visually and functionally). That way, the beasts are there but they're secondary, they're flavor/fantasy and not just a bunch of AI bots contributing damage to us.

[Deleted]

One thing I've loved greatly with Beast Mastery is Bestial Wrath. It's like you gather up the rage of your pet, and release it all at a critical moment - after carefully planning your actions. Now it looks like it barely has a cooldown, since whenever you use Dire Beast it will reduce it by 10 seconds. It was pretty cool at a first glance, but... in the end it kind of negates that feeling of carefully planning.

Of course, I've not played in the Alpha, but that's what it looks like. They have added a new big cooldown though, namely Aspect of the Wild. It has a 2 minute cooldown and increases the crits and focus gain of you and your pet. It's visual is a leaf above your head for a few seconds.
I'm just thinking... shouldn't they switch the two around? I think it's way more fitting for a spell with 2 a minute cd to have the cool visual effect of Bestial Wrath, and Aspect of the Wild could be kind of like Focus Fire.

When it comes to the entirety of the fantasy, I like having the focus being around one main pet but being able to summon any at your command in some circumstances. Stampede looks awesome, for example. Wild Beast on the other hand, I don't like as much... but I'm not entirely sure either, since I haven't played it yet. They should at least allow you to customize it a lot, like choosing exactly what kinds of pets you summon. Maybe they could even make that a mechanic instead of just visuals, summoning the right beast at the right moment kind of thing. That could spice up the core mechanic of BM Hunter a bit.

Anyway, it seems like the only interaction with your pet is through Kill Command, Bestial Wrath, and maybe some passives like Beast Cleave. So you tell it to ruthlessly kill your target, you make it angry, and you exploit whatever advantages you get from it. I think it'd be better if you had a better bond with your pet. Your pet is as important as yourself as a Beast Mastery hunter, so why not involve it in the story a bit perhaps? Shouldn't the best pet in the world, your pet, have a part to play in the story? Maybe they could add Pet Reputation? The more time you spend with specific pets, the more reputation you get with them. With reputation, you could get rewards and extra abilities and unlock quest lines and get pet titles and... hey, they might as well make your pet a follower! Like, come on! It should have more significance than just auto attacking/kill command!

A last thing... as an engineer (not irl of course), I love the idea of having Mechanical pets. Even though this might not match everyone's fantasy of a Beast Mastery Hunter, and even though it kind of contradicts my last point, (well, you could have a masterpiece machine that you love too!) I'd love it if you could have an option for Wild Beast/Stampede to just summon Mechanical beasts. Maybe some item you can make with engineering? Though, since Mechanical probably isn't going to be an exotic family, I'm a bit worried they won't have exotic abilities and therefore being a bit worse if you're playing BM... but we'll have to see, I guess.

[Lasombria]

I also love the idea of mechanical pets. I've been wanting that all along!

[threads]

It seems like their problem was trying to bring the warcraft 3 beastmaster into the game but they mixed it up into survival and BM so now they're both mediocre designs that people aren't really happy with.

You get BM summoning wild beasts and stampedes like wc3 but it's getting some robot's gun? Mixed design.

Then you get survival which is melee + pet but half the talents look like a rexxar inspired pet guy, then half are traps and grenades. Like who the fuck would throw a grenade if they're in melee?

Idk looks like they just didn't really know what they were doing.

Could have easily made BM the melee beast summoner and left survival as the generic WoW hunter that people still want to play.

[Rizendragon]

BM seems to have 2 different interpretations.

The master of all beasts. Kills things for sport/trophies and commands large packs of nameless cannon fodder animals. Small amounts of damage from a lot of sources. Fox hunting with a swarm of dogs, master and minions kinda deal. Hemet Nesingwary, Houndmaster Braun, etc. Personally dislike this type of hunter fantasy but this is where it seems to be going with the recent changes.

Other direction is hunter and companion. Kind of druidy with the respect for nature/all animals thing. Single, named, absolutely vicious pet that makes up 50% of the overall damage. Rexxar and Misha. Greatly prefer this fantasy from ye olde vanilla hunter days. Easy to get attached to a single pet when they're such an essential part of the gameplay.

Game seems to be getting away from this idea to make it easier to play. Not having to micromanage your pet's skills, no pet skill trees, not having to keep up with happiness, makes very little impact when your pet dies, etc.

Rexxar has been displayed as both a BM hunter and a Surv hunter through out WoW's history. It seems that he'd be more Surv than BM now though.

- - - Updated - - -

It seems like their problem was trying to bring the warcraft 3 beastmaster into the game but they mixed it up into survival and BM so now they're both mediocre designs that people aren't really happy with.

You get BM summoning wild beasts and stampedes like wc3 but it's getting some robot's gun? Mixed design.

Then you get survival which is melee + pet but half the talents look like a rexxar inspired pet guy, then half are traps and grenades. Like who the fuck would throw a grenade if they're in melee?

Idk looks like they just didn't really know what they were doing.

Could have easily made BM the melee beast summoner and left survival as the generic WoW hunter that people still want to play.

The Surv Hunter design is heavily D3 influenced. Caltrops, mini grenades, etc are all from D3. I love that they're bringing this in.

[Bullerick]

I am not happy with beastmastery hunters in the alpha. I try to not be serious about it because in the end it's just a game, but I really like hunters at the moment. Beastmastery looks bad in design of class fantasy in my opinion. I 100% want beast mastery to be more about the one main pet you have, your best companion who has aided you your whole life as a hunter. I watched a video of BellularGaming a couple of days ago where he posted the spec in Legion alpha and the artifact actually lets you have a second pet with you at all times which isn't cool because it isn't an intelligent pet that you can control (sticking your pet on passive, the other artifact pet continues attacking) and also it just doesn't suit the fantasy.. I want to keep my 1 pet as my one loyal companion. I also don't like the whole dire beast pack thing they've got going. I would rather have procs that cause my pet to do something awesome.

I like the idea of the current multishot where you shoot multishot and your pet uses a cleave attack for a few seconds. There should be more things like that in this spec instead of random dire beasts coming out of nowhere to kill whatever you are killing. You haven't tamed these beasts, you haven't met any of these beasts before and if you start killing a beast, say, a raptor, then you call a dire beast and it randomly happens to be an identical raptor, then it would look weird, it's like this one raptor out of its whole pack just decides to become some enraged psychopath mass murderer. Not to mention if you're in a dungeon somewhere, say Skyreach... How the heck did the beast manage to get up there? These beasts also don't and shouldn't care about whatever you are killing, it's none of their business, instinctively. I know that anything can happen in a game, but I still think this is kinda bad design and in my opinion does not suit the hunter fantasy.

Instead, I'd like to see something along the lines of this:

-Arcane Shot removed (why do hunters shoot arcane?) and replaced with an attack command to your pet (similar to kill shot, but weak, no cooldown (just GCD) as filler skill)

-Kill Shot removed.

-Kill Command now works like Kill Shot, as an execute with same cooldown and no cost, but your pet does it instead.

-Pinning Shot is now your new strong attack with a 6 second cooldown. It slows the target's movement speed by 50% for 8 sec and does high damage (equal to old Kill Command). (This is not overpowered, take a look at the current Concussive Shot and the Exotic Munitions talent)

-Concussive Shot removed (since we're pruning everything anyway by the looks of things)

-Multishot, the shot works the same, but the pet's reaction is that it AoE charges nearby enemies for a few seconds (like the Demon Hunter's aoe charge) and dodges all melee attacks during this time being.

-Bestial Wrath stay as it is with no cooldown reset like current alpha design. Don't tune this spec according to bestial wrath.. If bestial wrath cooldown gets reset via a proc, it means that unless we always active bestial wrath as soon as it comes on, we will lose DPS. We're not constantly angry, we don't want to be red all the time or increased in size, this is not going to be Savage Roar or Slice and Dice or Enrage, just leave it as a really awesome cooldown where we get some kind of adrenaline rush in battle and use all we have in us ("us" being hunter and pet) to defeat our enemy.

-Dire Beast... No packs of beasts please.. This works for demonology with imps and etc because they are awesome and chaotic and summon imp armies etc, but I am not a fan of the packs of beasts we get to see from hunters. In current alpha, Dire Beast cooldown gets reset via a proc, but really just keep it the way it is.

I'm not talking for everybody of course but I hope that you agree. Cheers for reading and respect.

[Glowbear]

At least it looks like there will be an option to summon already tamed pets as opposed to random animals with Dire Beast: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742444486#9

Mystified by the suggestion of replacing DB with a shot as a talent, though. It seems a very simplistic and inadequate response to concerns that not enough damage comes from the hunter any more. Much better IMO to add a new baseline ability/shot (or just make Chimaera baseline, and come up with something interesting to replace it in the tier...)

[mindw0rk]

-Arcane Shot removed (why do hunters shoot arcane?) and replaced with an attack command to your pet (similar to kill shot, but weak, no cooldown (just GCD) as filler skill)

-Kill Shot removed.

-Kill Command now works like Kill Shot, as an execute with same cooldown and no cost, but your pet does it instead.

-Pinning Shot is now your new strong attack with a 6 second cooldown. It slows the target's movement speed by 50% for 8 sec and does high damage (equal to old Kill Command). (This is not overpowered, take a look at the current Concussive Shot and the Exotic Munitions talent)

-Concussive Shot removed (since we're pruning everything anyway by the looks of things)

-Multishot, the shot works the same, but the pet's reaction is that it AoE charges nearby enemies for a few seconds (like the Demon Hunter's aoe charge) and dodges all melee attacks during this time being.

-Bestial Wrath stay as it is with no cooldown reset like current alpha design. Don't tune this spec according to bestial wrath.. If bestial wrath cooldown gets reset via a proc, it means that unless we always active bestial wrath as soon as it comes on, we will lose DPS. We're not constantly angry, we don't want to be red all the time or increased in size, this is not going to be Savage Roar or Slice and Dice or Enrage, just leave it as a really awesome cooldown where we get some kind of adrenaline rush in battle and use all we have in us ("us" being hunter and pet) to defeat our enemy.

BM doesnt have arcane shot or kill shot. Maybe you mean cobra shot and kill command? Cobra shot fits fantasy as poisonous shot.
Tbh other then this spammable pet dmg ability u suggest benefiting from mastery, I dont see how it is any different from cobra shot.
You suggest removing concussive shot and then ask to add shot that slows (what conc shot actually does) with bonus dmg.
Multishot in Alpha already causing pets to cleave for AoE.
Bestial Wrath with no resets? Why would you want to have our strongest cd to proc less and have 0 interaction with other skills?

[Bullerick]

BM doesnt have arcane shot or kill shot. Maybe you mean cobra shot and kill command? Cobra shot fits fantasy as poisonous shot.
Tbh other then this spammable pet dmg ability u suggest benefiting from mastery, I dont see how it is any different from cobra shot.
You suggest removing concussive shot and then ask to add shot that slows (what conc shot actually does) with bonus dmg.
Multishot in Alpha already causing pets to cleave for AoE.
Bestial Wrath with no resets? Why would you want to have our strongest cd to proc less and have 0 interaction with other skills?

Because the spec will be tuned around bestial wrath! In order to have equal DPS to other hunter specs and all other classes you must keep bestial wrath up at all times. You won't be more powerful with bestial wrath always active, you will only be less powerful with it inactive. Look at rogues' slice and dice and druids' savage roar. If you don't keep them up, then your dps is worthless. That is my problem with constantly active bestial wrath. Not to mention that it will look weird because you'll always be red and giant in size when it's always active.

- - - Updated - - -

At least it looks like there will be an option to summon already tamed pets as opposed to random animals with Dire Beast: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742444486#9

Mystified by the suggestion of replacing DB with a shot as a talent, though. It seems a very simplistic and inadequate response to concerns that not enough damage comes from the hunter any more. Much better IMO to add a new baseline ability/shot (or just make Chimaera baseline, and come up with something interesting to replace it in the tier...)

Yeah I agree with you to be honest, but I'd prefer the new shot instead of the dire beast idea because I prefer the idea of your one pet, your trusty companion for life, rather than all these random beasts from the wild attacking what you're attacking. Beasts that you've never met and never tamed but are helping you to kill something even though they have no clue why they even should kill your target. It's weird.

[threads]

Yeah I agree with you to be honest, but I'd prefer the new shot instead of the dire beast idea because I prefer the idea of your one pet, your trusty companion for life, rather than all these random beasts from the wild attacking what you're attacking. Beasts that you've never met and never tamed but are helping you to kill something even though they have no clue why they even should kill your target. It's weird.

i really don't get this weird fixation on 1 pet. every hunter spec has always had their 1 main pet. i think a master of beasts should be able to call out for other animals to assist him or her.

[Pwnyride]

Give me kodo and podo, and I'll be a happy camper.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I DON'T like the "fantasy" around summoning a heap of pets that are completely random and have no affiliation with me. I have NEVER been running around with normal tigers, for example, since I hate how they look in-game. The pets summoned should be ones that are from your stable, nothing else! And the Artifact wolf is a letdown. I was sure it'd look more like that wolf boss in one of the dungeons.