Hate the state of SV vs BM

[Jadora]

a twisted sense of duty?

its more like, if you want to be competitive as a group (and not waste your/others time), you have to be competitive as an individual.

My point being a person who is good at pve and is part of a progression guild can have just as much fun as someone who is part of a more casual or less pve progress oriented guild. I was just pointing out that the attitude from the post I quoted is pretty common among the more casual playerbase that "hardcores" don't have fun doing what they do, and only people who aren't competitive in pve/pvp are really having fun.

[The Doctor]

IMO as a good Hunter you will play whatever spec is top atm

This. At the beginning of tbc i was MM, at the end of tbc i was BM, at the beginning of wotlk i was surv, at the end of wotlk i was mm, at the begnning of cata im surv. I play to do the most damage that can be done and enjoy all three specs. if you're choosing to do BM in a pve instance/raid you're basically not giving the rest of the group your 100%. all three specs will never be balanced, that's just the way it is.


personally, i feel like MM needs more buffs though, it's no where close to the other two. bring armpen back.

[Deleted]

Drop steady entirely for cobra, leave arcane out of your rotation in 99% of all situations, and you'll find that there's actually less to keep yourself concerned with than BM is. On top of that, when the pet dies as BM, your're absolutely forced to rez it to continue being effective at all. SV, not so much.

Can't actually say how much a BM hunter needs to be concerned about because I frankly don't like that spec so I don't play it.
BM also drops steady completely for cobra shot so no point in saying that.
What I see about the SV rotation is not leaving arcane shot out 99% but trying to fit it in as much as you can without making you wait on focus for explosive shot.

And the pet is most important as a BM hunter I don't argue with that but its important for any hunter, as SV and my pet is dead I see myself lose atleast 3k in dps.

And OP if you're doing it with 4 buttons you could probably boost your dps alot more if you put in arcane shot here and there, use multishot even if its just 2-3 mobs (puts Serpent on all targets with a talent). I boosted my dps quite abit when I started doing that, sure it might be an easy spec to use but using it to maximum is another question. I find myself finding new ways to use my focus and cooldowns more effectivly all the time.

Always been and will always be a Survival Huntard.

[Malkavier]

I swapped away from Survival, to Marks during LK, now to BM, and I find that I prefer BM to the other two simply for the fact that I get to sit there, decide which Pokeball to throw out, and make Cookie Monster sounds in Vent when my Pokemon decides to smash something squishy. Also, I get to put on Aspect of the Fox and /dance between Cobra Shots.

[insmek]

Beast Mastery is a bit of an anomaly among WoW specs. No matter what the state of it is, no matter how little DPS it is doing in PVE/PVP/whatever, there will always be people out there valiantly plucking away with it. Even at the end of Wrath, when it was completely borked, there were still Hunters out there raiding every piece of content the best way they knew how: Specced BM.

Love them or hate them, you've got to admit that the Beast Mastery lovers are a dedicated bunch. I doubt Survival or Marksmanship can claim the same thing.

[Fradrok]

The needs of the "team" in PvE is not always max DPS. (pausing for /gasps) Knowing your class, playing that Wyvern Sting or Scatter Shot at just the right moment, is for the benefit of the team's success - not the speed at which it was done. As a team member, are you watching your healers and placing appropriate traps down when needed to keep them alive? Or are you competing with the uber Feral Druid for top spot on the Recount chart?

It certainly feels good to be on the top (I'm approaching 20K DPS on boss fights as SV when I can stand still at the time of this post), but I like it better when my tank isn't crushed by an wild (broken CC) mob, or when my healer can have a moment to toss a heal on my wolf (who's name is Perrin - yes, he's that leet). And let's face is - who hasn't misdirected (oops, my bad) to the rogue?

BM, MM, or SV - we are utility DPS. We get the job done with style people ... and if you're #3 on the chart? Go to bed smiling, because you got #3 while keeping the raid alive.

[Deleted]

So, I've been playing WoW for about 6 years now. Started playing on Dec 1st of 2004. I've been a BM hunter since the moment my first character hit level 10 and have never even tried another spec. I love the playstyle, I love micromanaging my pet, I love managing cooldowns, I love the changes they made on Cata.
Here I am plugging away merrily at my 12k+ DPS as BM, enjoying my runs, doing a little raiding here and there, when I happen upon another hunter with gear probably about 4-7 ilvls lower than mine topping the damage meters by a rather significant amount in one of Argaloth runs I find myself in. Check spec, SV of course. So, just for shits and giggles I pick up SV as my secondary spec and, without even bothering with the target dummy, I jump right into a random heroic. From here I start doing 14k-17k DPS per pull, bosses and all, with a rotation of four buttons. FOUR BUTTONS.

May i say i have been survival since vanilla.
And we top the dps meters now with only 4 buttons woooot ^^
I can remember the days that BM almost top them with steady shot kill command macro's BY simply making 1 macro
And I was still survival to boost my raid and had myself shit dps cause of it my specc was build to boost the raid.

Stop your whining and start playing^^

Just play on whatever specc u like to play ppl have been calling me a huntard and a idiot for beeing survival in TBC and WOTLK that the MM hunters topped the DPS and i just boosted the raid i was in i dont care.

[Kibu]

a twisted sense of duty?

its more like, if you want to be competitive as a group (and not waste your/others time), you have to be competitive as an individual.

This is very true. You rely on 24 others to be as dedicated, prepared and playing at their best and once you can trust them, you become a better player yourself.

[Deleted]

playing since tbc but i loved bm from the moment i dinged lvl 10....pet keeps aggro and soon as i dinged 60 i got a corehound...wouw that was awesome! then @ 80 i finaly got loque nahak and now i got ghostcrawler with it to i love bm but i play surv cuz its just the best spec atm for pvp wise ....(i play pvp so..:P) i tried bm and it worked out good but like in arena when my pet buggs i am screwed...my dmg self sucks and my pet has to do the dmg...so if he is dead or bugged i am fucked thats it so i changed to surv spec

[redsunrising15]

BM is on-par with MM right now, but SV is quit a bit higher than either of those 2 specs.

BM is an epic pvp spec with great burst and some awesome talents and abilities like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera, + intimidation and BW.

SV might pull fairly good dps in raids, but in pvp it's focus starved when it can't get off those cobra shots.

I absolutely destroy other hunters in arena by fighting them in melee range as BM, they can't hit me with their hard hitters while my pet just takes them down.

Of course when your pet bugs (seems to only happen in the arena that has you ride up the elevator first), it's bad news.

[w00t692]

So, I've been playing WoW for about 6 years now. Started playing on Dec 1st of 2004. I've been a BM hunter since the moment my first character hit level 10 and have never even tried another spec. I love the playstyle, I love micromanaging my pet, I love managing cooldowns, I love the changes they made on Cata.
Here I am plugging away merrily at my 12k+ DPS as BM, enjoying my runs, doing a little raiding here and there, when I happen upon another hunter with gear probably about 4-7 ilvls lower than mine topping the damage meters by a rather significant amount in one of Argaloth runs I find myself in. Check spec, SV of course. So, just for shits and giggles I pick up SV as my secondary spec and, without even bothering with the target dummy, I jump right into a random heroic. From here I start doing 14k-17k DPS per pull, bosses and all, with a rotation of four buttons. FOUR BUTTONS.
People often scoff at BM hunters as "the easiest spec in the entire game", but I find myself a bit appalled by the simplicity and boring nature of SV. I know it's a gripe heard a thousand times: "why cant the spec I play top the damage meters?" I'll admit, of course it would be nice to be on top, but honestly I'd be content to just be competitieve playing the spec I've grown to love since day 7 of release.

I know, don't complain unless you have a plan to fix the problem. I could make a few suggestions, such as improving the haste from FF, restoring BW/TBW to it's former state (sans CC immunity, to save the PvP imbalance), buffing KC damage (more than the 12% it got) or adding a DoT/debuff to it depending on the pet talent tree (shamelessly stolen from another thread), but I don't PvP at all, so I don't think any of my suggestions would truly take into account all possible balance issues. I'll leave that to more thoughtful minds than myself.

Thanks for taking a minute or two to read this, I'm just venting a little, but I'm sure some folks out there share my pain.

It didn't get a 12% buff it got a 20% buff.

[Kalcheus]

4.0.6 says Hello:

Kill Command's damage has been increased by 20%.
Chimera Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 20%.
Aimed Shot weapon damage has been increased to 200%.
Into the Wilderness has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.

Here's what I think happened: Blizzard gave Survival a DPS boost to compensate for the extra CC (specifically Wyvern Sting) abilities they can bring; I think they envisioned Survival as the prime Utility spec. Then people realized that with all the extra damage they bring, why bother with CC, just put down a trap and then Pew-Pew-PEW. And now people are starting to outgear heroics so even the trap is falling by the wayside (although I tell people when I plan on putting it down just to proc LnL and not to worry about breaking it).

I believe Blizzard does want the three specs to be roughly equivalent in dps but overstated the importance of CC in their design. While the buffs/nerfs above probably won't solve the issue (look for KC to play a larger role in the Survival and Marks rotation), it's probably a good first step.

And BM hunters should be thankful it's not Cobra Shot that's being nerfed, because that's where Survival is getting their biggest boost. I was actually shocked to see that it's not being changed in 4.0.6.

[w00t692]

Can't actually say how much a BM hunter needs to be concerned about because I frankly don't like that spec so I don't play it.
BM also drops steady completely for cobra shot so no point in saying that.
What I see about the SV rotation is not leaving arcane shot out 99% but trying to fit it in as much as you can without making you wait on focus for explosive shot.

And the pet is most important as a BM hunter I don't argue with that but its important for any hunter, as SV and my pet is dead I see myself lose atleast 3k in dps.

And OP if you're doing it with 4 buttons you could probably boost your dps alot more if you put in arcane shot here and there, use multishot even if its just 2-3 mobs (puts Serpent on all targets with a talent). I boosted my dps quite abit when I started doing that, sure it might be an easy spec to use but using it to maximum is another question. I find myself finding new ways to use my focus and cooldowns more effectivly all the time.

Always been and will always be a Survival Huntard.

you're not losing 3k dps with a dead pet as survival. As survival a ferocity pet does about 2000 dps... that's it.

The only way you're losing 3k is if you lose an important buff he's giving you (in a raid this isn't going to be the case)

[Kripparrian]

my pet is doing around 2800 on normalized fights, Not to mention the almost 3% boost the hunter damage, and call of the wild.

[harky]

Likewise. My pet alone puts out 2700-2900 DPS as SV. Culling of the Herd is another 450+ DPS easily. That alone puts my pet as SV at around 3.2k DPS. SV's top damage: Explosive > Cobra > Auto-Shot = Pet. Giving up 15% of your damage? GG.

[additionalpylons]

Oh, without a doubt SV is by far and away the most effective spec for a hunter at the moment. You are correct in your assertion that any hunter in a raiding guild that favors min-maxed characters over personal enjoyment would be best served by speccing Survival before anythine else. My question is why? Why aren't there three equally effective damage dealing specs for hunters?
Many people seem content to switch their playstyle to match whatever happens to be the most powerful spec at the time. Wouldn't it be just as reasonable to not have to roll the dice every patch and keep playing what you enjoy?

You see the problem of this thread started when Kripparrian entered it. It all began in BC. The game was new and exciting! You could be pretty much any spec and have a good time! There were feral druids and pallys tanking for the first time, priests doing dps as shadow, cats and dogs living together. It was madness. But soon it was found that Beast Mastery could top damage meters with poor gear by spamming a steady shot macro. The survival hunters never got over this and to this day hate fluffy Beast Masters with a burning pasion. They tried to help by stacking agi and giving buffs to the raid but you couldn't compete with those numbers. They raged and raged and raged and blizzard gave them what they wanted. WotLK was a giant fuck BM fest. Oh and how they loved it. You couldn't even post a picture of your spirit beast without those psychos jumping down your throat.

Just remember... it's not about the DPS. It was NEVER about the DPS. It's a deep seeded hatred that the Survival Hunters have for us. It will NEVER go away. Even if they nerf SV into the ground and buff us, it will just be about how blizzard screwed their class and made it an easy one button fest for us furry rping bastards.

Just leave the argument while you can. Find a guild that will let you dps as BM. They are out there. The damage different is not that huge. It will never be balanced because unlike other classes crying for nerfs in other classes, we have fighting in our own fucking class.

[harky]

What the hell? Hah. That's a lot of swearing right thar.

No one hates BM, it's just hard to balance while keeping it interesting and viable. It always has been. The only place BM has been consistently decent is PVP. Vanilla? Decent in PVP, useless otherwise. TBC? Decent in PVP, completely over-powered in PVE. PVP throughout Wrath? Pretty good. PVE? Depends on the tier. Too strong in T7. Too weak in T8-9. Pretty-okay in T10, but back to Steady Shot spam. No one liked mouse-wheel spinning to DPS with macros. BM is a lot like Frost Mages. Either too weak, or too strong in PVE, but pretty cool for leveling and PVP. Once in a while they find a decent balance, but it rarely lasts.

It's absolutely about the DPS. Being BM in Naxx, being BM in TBC... that was about DPS too. It was higher DPS, so people were BM. Ulduar? SV was higher DPS, so people were SV. ICC? MM was higher DPS, so people were MM. Post 4.0? SV is higher DPS, so people are SV. If in 4.0.6 BM, or MM is better than SV, then people will be MM, or BM.

[taekvideo]

Didn't read the whole thread but if nobody pointed this out... surv is being nerfed in the next patch (4.0.6) and mm/bm are being buffed, so wait until then to see if it's balanced better.

It's quite easy for them to bring BM in line with SV. They can tweak BM's Focus Fire, for example, without impacting PvP TOO drastically. The current plan they're going to try of buffing kill command is going to make for an awful lot of complaining in PvP situations, just as it used to (trinkets + BW + KC = huge burst).

They could modify Ferocious Inspiration or better yet, Invigoration, which is far enough down the tree to not really alter the other specs.

Given the cd and short stun time, they could tweak Intimidate to maybe make it a bit more useful, giving BM some more control. (glyph?)



Drop steady entirely for cobra, leave arcane out of your rotation in 99% of all situations, and you'll find that there's actually less to keep yourself concerned with than BM is. On top of that, when the pet dies as BM, your're absolutely forced to rez it to continue being effective at all. SV, not so much.

I dunno.. I love playing BM, but I also like SV quite a bit. SV also feels far more suited to me as an effective pvp spec.

I drop about 4-5k dps as surv without my pet so... unless the boss is almost dead I'm going to res it :P

[Kalcheus]

I ran the numbers in femaledwarf because I didn't believe the 2k assertion, but as survival, losing a pet only costs me 1.8k DPS out of 13k. Remember that it was qualified with the comment that another member was bringing the buff, so if you use cat for example, you have to ignore its Agi buff to compare.

[Jeggy]

seems this topic is someone complaining why blizzard can not make 3 specs indentical dps in pve situation.
Just keep in mind..when you mean balance, blizzard have to consider pve and pvp, I dont think this is about why they are not willing to, but its very difficult to balance pve and pvp with 3 specs. Read the PTR notes, they are trying to buff BM and MM now already.