Are MM/BM viable as range DPS in Legion?

[Zurtx01]

Hey guys,

Had a nice big long post written out but then page crashed and lost it all so Ill try and keep it brief.

In a Mythic raiding guild, one of two hunters. I don't have beta access, and those in guild that do don't play hunter.

Ive read all the doom and gloom posts, but I am hoping to stay on my hunter since we already have a few mages, and a couple each of locks/boomies/shammies, and the only other hunter already quit to play his shammy also in Legion.

Currently main priority add-killer as per most hunters, also deal with some boss/add mechanics as we all do, but from what Ive read this is no longer possible in Legion due to loss of deterrence/traps, and ramp up time with loss of kill shot and our abilities requiring debuffs/procs/stars aligning to do damage.

Do any of the higher end mythic raiders/theorycrafters (Azo etc) think we will still be worth a raid spot come Legion?

If we can still pull the numbers I can put up with the currently boring or clunky rotations, but if we have zero utility and shitty dps I may need to look at another option in order to pull my weight.

Thanks all in advance for opinions, please try and keep it relevant and on topic. I know its tempting to post how crap we are etc, but there are tons of those posts already.

[DeicideUH]

AFAIK, tuning pass hasn't happened yet, so it's hard to say what the final numbers will be.

[AdrianCC100]

This is what I think will happen.

Beast Master will be higher DPS than Marksman thanks to the Bestial Wrath damage boost. However, I think Survival will be better than Marksman and Beast Master. There is no way Blizzard allows their reworked Survival spec to be weak.

[Deleted]

This is what I think will happen.

Beast Master will be higher DPS than Marksman thanks to the Bestial Wrath damage boost. However, I think Survival will be better than Marksman and Beast Master. There is no way Blizzard allows their reworked Survival spec to be weak.

if bm is the highest dps spec then im out , worst boring spec in game sooooooo i hope mm and sv is highest

[l33t]

This is what I think will happen.

Beast Master will be higher DPS than Marksman thanks to the Bestial Wrath damage boost. However, I think Survival will be better than Marksman and Beast Master. There is no way Blizzard allows their reworked Survival spec to be weak.

Which is awesome, I'd totally love MM to die in a fire, forever and ever.

[Xarathan]

I just hope hunters will be good enough for my guild not requiring me to reroll :/

[Jobisi]

Right now on beta BM hunters are not all that terrible compared to the other ranged dps specs, definatly not worse the elemental shamans and their rotation is even more dull then any hunter spec. But ofc things are not tuned at all + Alot of dmg comes from bestial wrath which is kind of hard to test with crappy gear, because of low procs.

BM also keeps full mobility compared to MM and all other ranged that still needs to stand still and ''cast''. So yes most likely hunters will still keep their raid spot. And will be a breeze to play on fights with loads of movement or fire on the ground, you can litteraly run around like a headless chicken pressing 4 buttons and be ''top of your class''.

With 3 dps specs the chances of 1 being good is pretty high. I personally will continue to play BM hunter in Mythic during legion, because it is not all that bad as people make it out to be. Unless ofcourse the final tuning ends up to be horrible, can always go survival which is pretty fun.

[zenyatta]

If the final tuning ends up horrible for ranged hunters, something I don't even like having to say, I'm rerolling. I don't like melee. I'm just dropping my hunter completely if BM and MM are both so awful I can't pull my weight as either. I have a mage as backup.

[Deleted]

I doubt they will tune things so badly that an entire archetype won't be at least viable. It's probably going to frequently switch between BM and MM like in WoD, where tier 1 was dominated by SV, BRF by BM and HFC by MM.

Also, if I'd base my decision about what class to play on dps rankings ENTIRELY, I'd be switching mains with every patch regardless of what class I picked.

[Fullmetal89]

I certainly hope MM/BM are relevant. Otherwise Legion will be nothing but melee classes. It's already bad enough they gutted SV for yet another melee class (even though I find it very fun to play). I'm not in beta so I can only assume how the raids are going to be based on the history of the game. Unless they are going to tune raids to be more melee friendly; there's going to be a lot of issues with an overabundance of melee DPS. I suppose the only good thing about this is that ranged DPS will be on high demand.

[Deleted]

MM aint that bad really - all they need imo is to make AiS castable on the move like it was originally. I watched a few diff streams last night, danish terrace as example MM was taking the piss out of BM - though i did hear on the stream they had a few pugs in. Azo was topping them both as SV. That was scaling upto 898 if i heard correct.

[AdrianCC100]

MM aint that bad really - all they need imo is to make AiS castable on the move like it was originally. I watched a few diff streams last night, danish terrace as example MM was taking the piss out of BM - though i did hear on the stream they had a few pugs in. Azo was topping them both as SV. That was scaling upto 898 if i heard correct.

MM was doing more than BM? I guess I don't fully understand that statement lol..

[Keyimin]

MM was doing more than BM? I guess I don't fully understand that statement lol..

Surprisingly, in the raids I watched, yes. But we know nothing about those hunters (they weren't people I recognize), so who knows if that was purely skill-based, a result of the fight mechanics (pet AI/delay for BM), or genuinely true. Not surprisingly to me, BM topped MM early in the fight and then fell off quite a bit later in the fight (MM ramp-up vs. BM weak sustained ST).

[Dileth]

SimC currently has SV>MM>BM SV is doing quite a bit more damage, but, they haven't done the number pass yet. I honestly think SV will get the higher damage in the end, otherwise why go melee? Not that I will. MM is very close to BM but does out dps it. I think they will have BM be the lowest since it will have complete freedom of movement. It wouldn't make sense to have the one ranged spec that has to plan movement and rotation be punished with lower dps as well, but we don't know what the devs are thinking other then "class fantasy" BS.
So yeah, what you are seeing in raid streams holds true to the math.

[AdrianCC100]

SimC currently has SV>MM>BM SV is doing quite a bit more damage, but, they haven't done the number pass yet. I honestly think SV will get the higher damage in the end, otherwise why go melee? Not that I will. MM is very close to BM but does out dps it. I think they will have BM be the lowest since it will have complete freedom of movement. It wouldn't make sense to have the one ranged spec that has to plan movement and rotation be punished with lower dps as well, but we don't know what the devs are thinking other then "class fantasy" BS.
So yeah, what you are seeing in raid streams holds true to the math.

This is sad news. I get numbers are not final yet.. But if it stands to be SV>MM>BM.... I don't think I can handle another year as MM and I didn't pick Hunter to play melee, so I probably won't be doing Survival...

[Deleted]

Surprisingly, in the raids I watched, yes. But we know nothing about those hunters (they weren't people I recognize), so who knows if that was purely skill-based, a result of the fight mechanics (pet AI/delay for BM), or genuinely true. Not surprisingly to me, BM topped MM early in the fight and then fell off quite a bit later in the fight (MM ramp-up vs. BM weak sustained ST).

They may not be players you recognise, but the guilds that were streaming would give a small indication there is a high chance no scrubs. Atleast the streams I watched and MM dicked all over BM. But guess we got a good few weeks yet before the picture is almost painted.

[Deleted]

MM was doing more than BM? I guess I don't fully understand that statement lol..

It's quite hard to go on what's best, when literally the balancing that has been done so far, was more in line to fix certain and very broken abilities from skewing raid data way too hard. I don't think we'll see a big balance patch anytime soon, probably after all the mythic testing is done.

I do hope MM and SV will be on top, because BM I'm not really found of pets and their shitty AI, not to mention the slowpoke playstyle is suicide worthy. MM and SV feel to me, that they are the most engaging hunter specs, you actually need to micromanage a bit to not screw up your damage a lot.

- - - Updated - - -

This is what I think will happen.

Beast Master will be higher DPS than Marksman thanks to the Bestial Wrath damage boost. However, I think Survival will be better than Marksman and Beast Master. There is no way Blizzard allows their reworked Survival spec to be weak.

There's no way that blizzard will make SV higher tuned than BM or MM, because they know how much tension that would create in guilds and the awkward position they would put hunters in because of that. Most guilds run with 3 hunters, and having them all go melee because the spec is going to be better, is just going to ruin the fun for a lot of people.

[Keyimin]

They may not be players you recognise, but the guilds that were streaming would give a small indication there is a high chance no scrubs.

Several guilds were pugging a number of people to get a full group, so I don't consider that a safe assumption.

[s0ul]

Survival should have been a range and melee hybrid class that uses traps and poison for damage... Special harpoon that can also be thrown so you're not forced to be in melee vicinity of classes like warriors, shamans and rogues. If you're really going by the "lore" survival sure doesn't seem like you want to survive. I bet Blizzard ran out of ways to make the spec unique from MM/BM and went with "oh shit! Vanilla melee hunters nostalgia gais!!".

Like many others, I didn't pick hunter to play a melee class. If I want to melee, I'd play a real melee class like my warrior.

I'm going to stay MM/BM.

[Keyimin]

There's no way that blizzard will make SV higher tuned than BM or MM, because they know how much tension that would create in guilds and the awkward position they would put hunters in because of that. Most guilds run with 3 hunters, and having them all go melee because the spec is going to be better, is just going to ruin the fun for a lot of people.

Hahahahaha, that's cute. BM hasn't seen any iteration since it dropped into alpha, and you think the devs are concerned with putting raid hunters into an "awkward position"?

I mean, I could argue that SV and BM will almost certainly be tops at the start of the xpac since they were mostly shat on since HFC, and SV will be tops because they want people to buy in to the major redesign, else watch SV be a total flop.

If I were wildly speculating with no basis to do so, that is.