Regarding Beast Mastery...

[aetti morkna]

All I had heard about prior to hitting 85 was how Beast Mastery was so terrible.

I haven't played my hunter since Burning Crusade, but the change to pets and focus over MP really kind of grabbed my attention, so I gave it another whirl, and fell in love with the class. I've always enjoyed Hunter for the pet aspect -- the ability to have several different pets to train and use for different situations. Anyway, before this becomes TL;DR, I present my topic:

Why do people slam BM so hard?

I hit 85 3 days ago, and i did a BH with a few friends, and came out third on DPS with around 13500 DPS. I don't find that too poor for being only 3 days removed from hitting 85!

In PvP, even with little resilience (500ish) I'm still holding my own against almost everything I fight against (with a few exceptions, of course.) With a chimaera pet, I feel I can endlessly kite, and while it is SLIGHTLY annoying having to micromanage the pet and keep it alive, I enjoy it more than MM.

I'm just wondering if maybe someone had any insight as to why I should not play BM. Perhaps it scales poorly? As I mentioned, I play Hunter because I enjoy the pet aspect of the class. And since Aimed Shot doesn't affect BM in any way, the hotfix to add 2000 AP to Aspect of the Hawk would stand to be a buff for BM as well.

[WaitingforSWTOR]

Im on your boat, MM is just boring and BM has the best hand on mobility

[Veyne]

Im on your boat, MM is just boring and BM has the best hand on mobility

Until your pet's never in melee range whenever you want to use Kill Command on high movement fights.

[Drakoes]

It might be a bit too early to say, but BM DPS will go up bigtime with the incoming Aspect buff, and this is very welcome since it is behind on MM by a lot. It's going to be pretty sweet.

[Dunee]

well spec what you like to play : ) this is a game it's supposed to be fun and if high dps doesn't matter as much to you then I envy you and wish you a continued happy play session, the fact that you enjoy the spec should be more than enough reason for you to stick to it, and yes BM is not THAT far behind dps wise.

[redsunrising15]

Until your pet's never in melee range whenever you want to use Kill Command on high movement fights.

It's called charge, not only does it instantly teleport your pet to the target, it gives it a damage buff too. If that on a 10 second cooldown isn't enough, we have Dash as well.

All I had heard about prior to hitting 85 was how Beast Mastery was so terrible.

Why do people slam BM so hard?

Honestly 90% of people who slam BM have never tried it.

Perhaps it scales poorly? As I mentioned, I play Hunter because I enjoy the pet aspect of the class. And since Aimed Shot doesn't affect BM in any way, the hotfix to add 2000 AP to Aspect of the Hawk would stand to be a buff for BM as well.

As of right now, BM has the highest attack power scaling of the three specs.

The only serious problem with BM is our pathetic AoE damage. We get pets with special AoE attacks but they are severely fail-prone. For instance, I was using a chimera on Corobus, and during the submerge phase my pet did nothing but froststorm breath, and it did maybe 1 tick of damage the whole time. I swapped back out for my spirit beast before the fight was over.

[phoenixbow]

Because 4.0.6 buffed BM pretty big and the upcoming hotfix is going to buff it even more. BM was piss poor at launch, but things change.

[morbidjbyrd]

What kind of haste rating are ull thinking about for BM?
There seems to be a sweet spot at about 560 haste rating for
KC, AS, CS, CS, AS....

Of course only 550 haste is near impossible it seems..even if you dont want it.

On the other hand,
KC, AS, CS, CS, CS.. requires 1912 haste BUT it caps focus, so it would have to used in conjunction with another set.

[r3nd]

It's called charge, not only does it instantly teleport your pet to the target, it gives it a damage buff too. If that on a 10 second cooldown isn't enough, we have Dash as well.



Honestly 90% of people who slam BM have never tried it.



As of right now, BM has the highest attack power scaling of the three specs.

The only serious problem with BM is our pathetic AoE damage. We get pets with special AoE attacks but they are severely fail-prone. For instance, I was using a chimera on Corobus, and during the submerge phase my pet did nothing but froststorm breath, and it did maybe 1 tick of damage the whole time. I swapped back out for my spirit beast before the fight was over.

Charge doesn't do anything, by the time they get there, your target will have moved elsewhere.

And where does it say BM scales best out of the three specs? I'd like to see that.

[Sim]

The only serious problem with BM is our pathetic AoE damage.

For fights I know there is going to be a lot of AE... I usually save my BW for that so I can pop it and chain gun Multi-Shot... Seems to do the trick...

[Gahlo]

Some people dislike having so much of their DPS tied to their pet. And face it, the pet AI can be very dumb at times :P Don't listen to the haters, because one day BM will be the HotM and they will all flood to BM and you can not miss a beat while everybody fumbles over equipment, glyphs, and rotation. =D

Sincerly,
-MM Hunter

[redsunrising15]

Charge doesn't do anything, by the time they get there, your target will have moved elsewhere.

And where does it say BM scales best out of the three specs? I'd like to see that.

"Roots the target in place..."

Kill command has an 76% AP scaling, highest of any signature ability.

I'd rather have a challenging, fun, and involving playstyle then spamming steady/aimed.

Sincerely, BM/SV (for aoe only) hunter.

[Apellosine]

the problem with BM is fights like magmaw where BM's aoe is crappy, Atramedes where they can't do anywhere near as much dps during the air phase. are two examples of the problems with BM.

[Antiseptic]

Arcane shot BM spec works just as well as KC, about 300-500 DPS off depending on your pet.

[redsunrising15]

the problem with BM is fights like magmaw where BM's aoe is crappy, Atramedes where they can't do anywhere near as much dps during the air phase. are two examples of the problems with BM.

And that's why you don't use those specs on those fights

Doesn't mean the spec is god-awful

[phoenixbow]

"Roots the target in place..."

You realize we're talking about raids, right?

[aetti morkna]

This thread has actually lifted my spirits about the spec.

I'm not knocking on MM or SV, both are very interesting specs. In fact, of many of the classes, Hunter might have three of the most interesting, defining trees of any. BM deals all with the pet, MM deals with pure damage and SV offers a lot of interesting elemental attacks.

I will admit that the stupid AI of the pets DOES get frustrating sometimes, and getting it to listen to me can cause headaches at time, but since BC the strides Blizzard has taken to increase the usefulness of pets... Back in that day, there were only a few viable pets. Now every pet has a DPS ability, some interesting utility and if you're a beast mastery hunter, the exotic pets offer a buff that a group may be lacking. In heroics, I like to use a chimera or a worm to do the AOE damage, and on bosses I'll swap to my devilsaur for the 5% crit and, well, ferocity talents.

[Viradiance]

Because 4.0.6 buffed BM pretty big and the upcoming hotfix is going to buff it even more. BM was piss poor at launch, but things change.

I remember Kill Command critting for 25k on resil'd targets for the last weeks of Wrath.

Terrible, terrible damage.

[Herecius]

BM is an astonishingly deep spec to play, very complicated with an obscene amount of micromanagement watching buffs and cooldowns while managing your pet as well to get the most out of it... though that said, I still dislike its playstyle quite a bit. I'm just not sure why.

Also, it's very obviously extremely weak on some fights, which is a drawback that I don't think can actually be resolved without a complete ground-up redesign of the spec.

---------- Post added 2011-02-20 at 08:17 PM ----------

I remember Kill Command critting for 25k on resil'd targets for the last weeks of Wrath.

Terrible, terrible damage.

I don't remember it ever doing that. I remember it doing that in the beta and never making it live.

[redsunrising15]

True the pet can really annoying when it bugs in arena. That's really the only problem I've ever had with the ai.

but I absolutely love its playstyle :3