Enough is enough, BM hunters need help and they need it now

[Jin]

I still laugh at people that still think players that pick BM for pets are bad players, I have played WoW since vanilla, having a pet for me is being a hunter, it is THAT simple. Even more I think half of the bm if not more will be just as good as the next guy if they swap to MM, MM isnt hard, but to me its boring as hell. Even though it sims 180k higher then my BM.

[FrostyButt]

1.Do you have the necessary legendaries and set
2.what is the difference at raid?

I have class ring and boots for BM.

[Blackmist]

I think my favourite thing about BM right now is that pets have a solid chance of staying up on the ledges on Portal Keeper. So not are we fucked on AoE anyway, but I need to spend time dismissing and resummoning the stupid little fucker.

[Kirbypro]

I think my favourite thing about BM right now is that pets have a solid chance of staying up on the ledges on Portal Keeper. So not are we fucked on AoE anyway, but I need to spend time dismissing and resummoning the stupid little fucker.

Don't know if it still works or not...it used to. If you make a couple macros to switch pet stances and mash them really hard, your pet and hati and will 'teleport' back to you.

What I did was, I had a "come back u dumb pet" macro to make sure I didn't accidentally send my pet off to attack some mob 100 yards away.
/petpassive
/petfollow

Then I macroed the following to Kill Command so I can make it return to normal.
/petassist
/petattack

[Paulosio]

It's also just not a reason at all.

Affliction is the 2nd easiest ranged spec in the game after BM but is the #1 DPS spec. If difficulty affected intended DPS that would not be the case.

And on top of that affliction also has more survivability than any other ranged dps BY FAR. They can just stand still and ignore any mechanic on mythic that doesn't outright kill them because their self healing / absorb is ridiculous. Soul leech absorbs masses of the damage they take and drain soul heals up anything that gets through in a very short ammount of time... For example on mythic Kin'garoth while everyone else is dodging the green swirly's while killing the adds, affliction warlocks just stand there and take every single 1 to the face and there's still no danger of them ever dying. At least a rogue actually has to do something in the way of decision making and using 1 of it's many survivability buttons but an affliction lock gets all this survivability passively... And just in case that isn't enough they still have a standard on use damage reduction ability that many classes have.

[Sencha]

Agree that they should make the spec less braindead easy to play and THEN buff it.

[thunderdragon2]

Agree that they should make the spec less braindead easy to play and THEN buff it.

they wont do that mid teir never mind mid xpac, we shouldn't have to play for their stupidity, ill agree when affli locks get nerfed to the ground

[threads]

Any decent player that has played both of the specs probably gets good entertainment out of this thread, "why don't we do as much as aff it's just as easy!". Playing aff at a high level and BM is night and day, don't try to convince yourself otherwise. You're also talking full mobility vs arguably the lowest in the game for ST (Malefic Grasp is standard).

pretty sure none of these people even play aff

[Mirishka]

The 'BM is easy to play so it should suck' mentality, quite frankly, is fucking stupid.

Blizzard designs these specs, not us. So by BLIZZARD choosing to make BM a less complex spec, players who enjoy it (or at the very least, enjoy the idea of having a powerful pet) should be punished? "We made this spec simple. So if you choose to play it instead of the other 2 options, you should suck." The fuck kind of ass-backwards logic is that?

If we're going by the metric of complexity, Surv should be far and away the highest dps of the 3 because it has way more going on than either MM or BM.

And we, meaning players, never asked them for a simple BM spec. In fact some of us - myself included - have argued for more complexity, as far back as BC. And BM actually had some depth in Mists (who remembers that amazing opener?) and I'd give anything to have that version of it again. Alas it was one of the specs hit hardest by pruning. I've come to enjoy it, but it has definitely fallen behind post-Nighthold.

[Mavick]

pretty sure none of these people even play aff

I happen to be one of them, and this absurd comparison between BM and Affliction Lock is indeed highly entertaining, while at the same time a bit distressing at just how delusional some people are.

- - - Updated - - -

And on top of that affliction also has more survivability than any other ranged dps BY FAR. They can just stand still and ignore any mechanic on mythic that doesn't outright kill them because their self healing / absorb is ridiculous. Soul leech absorbs masses of the damage they take and drain soul heals up anything that gets through in a very short ammount of time... For example on mythic Kin'garoth while everyone else is dodging the green swirly's while killing the adds, affliction warlocks just stand there and take every single 1 to the face and there's still no danger of them ever dying. At least a rogue actually has to do something in the way of decision making and using 1 of it's many survivability buttons but an affliction lock gets all this survivability passively... And just in case that isn't enough they still have a standard on use damage reduction ability that many classes have.

I'll preface this by saying: you're not wrong, affliction lock is by far the most survivable ranged class there is, that is unequivocal fact.

However, let's not confuse survivability with dps balance or skill cap. While it may have been "the final straw" so to speak in me main swapping, it certainly wasn't the only reason, as affliction lock is also one of the specs that actually scales well enough to shed any dependence on old gear. My main issue with hunter, all around for both ranged specs, is the lack of scaling and/or dependence on old tier bonuses to remain relevant in dps. I, and I'm sure many others bitched and moaned at Blizzard non-stop about this going all the way back to early ToS. And it's particularly awful for BM. It annoys me no end to get titanforged 960+ items from heroic alt runs or mythic caches just to sit in my inventory that caster equivalent pieces would probably be an upgrade on my lock just maintaining 4pc t21. This dependence on old tier gear (again, particularly for BM hunter) leads to smaller health pools which leads to unavoidable raid wide damage mechanics being much more detrimental for classes like hunter who only has a reactionary heal and a 3 minute immunity for defensive cooldowns.

This, imo, was blizzard's biggest failing. Prior to getting to the last two bosses in mythic (where damage checks actually become a thing), the somewhat lacking dps can be argued with the tired fucking meme of "bm is fine". But once you get there, that lack of damage combined with overall shitty hunter survivability just lands the entire class into a shitfield. And blizzard should have known better, lord knows they got feedback telling them so, and yet they dropped the ball.

Shame on them.

[andreasels]

What I don't really understand about the "BM is braindead" meme is that people tend to praise HFC MM on these forums quite a bit (how fun it was) on the other hand.
I didn't play during WoD, so correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't hfc MM even easier than BM nowadays ? Because that's the impression I get from guides I read/watched)
I am not saying that BM is really complex, but this "hypocricy" always bugged me.
I for one have fun with BM as it is, even though I enjoyed the slightly more challenging playstyle in Nighthold (DF build)

[Mavick]

The "bm is braindead" meme is just as braindead as the spec itself (go ahead and come in and say something as thought provoking as watching you die several times in Limit's progression Dossou, I dare you). In short: it's not the player's fault, and it's pretty fucking stupid to pin that blame on anyone picking BM to play prior to this tier for whatever reason. I know myself and many others would have welcomed some diversity to the rotation and additions allowing for some modicum of skill to shine. But it just never happened, along with many other things that really needed to happen for the spec, sadly.

[Aesde]

What I don't really understand about the "BM is braindead" meme is that people tend to praise HFC MM on these forums quite a bit (how fun it was) on the other hand.
I didn't play during WoD, so correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't hfc MM even easier than BM nowadays ? Because that's the impression I get from guides I read/watched)
I am not saying that BM is really complex, but this "hypocricy" always bugged me.
I for one have fun with BM as it is, even though I enjoyed the slightly more challenging playstyle in Nighthold (DF build)

Funny thing, that's current BM hunter can't comprehend WOD MM hunter.
Yes, you are wrong.
WOD MM was far more complex then BM nowdays.
1 sec. GCD, can't run all day long, should focus targets with more then 80% hp or less then 35%, cast chimera shot at 2 targets as much as possible.

But it doesn't matter, because we at Legion now and we can't even compare MM and BM in terms of spec complexity.

[andreasels]

Funny thing, that's current BM hunter can't comprehend WOD MM hunter.
Yes, you are wrong.
WOD MM was far more complex then BM nowdays.
1 sec. GCD, can't run all day long, should focus targets with more then 80% hp or less then 35%, cast chimera shot at 2 targets as much as possible.

But it doesn't matter, because we at Legion now and we can't even compare MM and BM in terms of spec complexity.

- 1s GCD adds nothing to complexity, just a bit more button mashing (pressing my buttons several times per second on current BM anyway).
- Chimaera Shot was always used on CD as much as possible, same as KC with BM now
- Focusing Targets above 80% hp isn't hard and only applies to add bosses anyway
- You could use everything on the move, same as BM now (Aimed Shot = Instant with set and Steady shot castable while moving), so you only lost a bit of dps cause of mastery if you ran around all the time, but since there is no need to always run, it doesn't make it any harder to use.

Basicly it's the same as BM now: use everything important on cd and don't focus cap, if possible. BM now has some slight management of skills (not using DB if BW about to come off, use Titan's Tunder only after DB, Dump all focus during BW and conserver otherwise) and HFC MM had slightly different skill priority dependent on Mob HP.

I don't see anything which qualifies HFC MM as being "more complex" than current BM.

[ydraw]

Funny thing, that's current BM hunter can't comprehend WOD MM hunter.
Yes, you are wrong.
WOD MM was far more complex then BM nowdays.

A lot of MM hunters are massively deluded. HFC MM was no harder than BM is now. Neither was WoD survival for that matter.

p.s. MM is still the 2nd easiest ranged spec in the game. So, according to their own logic, it should be the 2nd worst DPS in the game.

[Kaver]

BM hunters dps on single target fights are fine. They are often seen on the top. I know the max parses of other classes can be higher but this is also RNG related.

BM hunters need better spread AOE. This is true. When enemies do not stack, it sucks to be BM.

But BM hunters also need their movement nerfed (I'm not talking about movement abilities like aspect of the Cheetah etc.). No class should be able to move ALWAYS. "Fire" and other ground effects get totally redundant when you never have to stand still.

[jaimelannister]

BM hunters dps on single target fights are fine. They are often seen on the top. I know the max parses of other classes can be higher but this is also RNG related.

That's not how statistics work. Other specs being way higher than BM on single target has nothing to do with RNG; they simply output far more DPS than BM does.

[Stormmantis]

Lets face it no single class is overly complicated to play, ease of play should not taken as prio over offering choice when working out damage numbers. Fury, havoc neither of them are exactly hard specs to play yet they both rank high - BM is due a buff and no i'm not expecting it to rank as #1 in one patch but its been consistently low through out Legion.

[ryjkur]

BM aoe is so bad considering how hard it is. You have to manage your pets so they hit all targets and on top of that you have to keep AotB dot on as many targets as possible. All this while keeping Beast Cleave buff up and filling Dire Beasts between.

For many other classes it's just spam 1 or 2 buttons.

[Nythiz]

If u would look at each bosses not overall, there is only two bosses where bm is at very bottom. Aloso if u check best bm hunters they are not very far from rest 200-400k, i agree tho that gap beetwen avarage bm player and those rly good one is huge,

I personally don't mind being at the bottom now and then, what I do mind is that:
a) When we're at the bottom, we're usually at the bottom by a large margin to the average dps.
b) We're nearly always at or near the bottom without having any fight where we stand out a bit more. E.g. Balance druids do so-so to poor on single target bosses, but they really stand out on the bosses with a bit of AoE.

Next you say we're not far from the rest with a 200-400k margin. That is a pretty ffin great margin; I mean that's a 10-25% DPS deficit !!!
If you think being 10% behind the average DPS and being 25% behind the top DPS is "not far" than I don't get what you would find far enough.

And if the gap between the average BM and the top BM hunter is really really great. Than either the spec apparently has a high skillcap meaning that BM is not "easiest spec in the game, everyone can do top dps" after all ?

BM aoe is so bad considering how hard it is. You have to manage your pets so they hit all targets and on top of that you have to keep AotB dot on as many targets as possible. All this while keeping Beast Cleave buff up and filling Dire Beasts between.

For many other classes it's just spam 1 or 2 buttons.

It's not really hard though.

Pet positioning is hardly ever a big thing. The cleave range is pretty generous, so unless mobs are quite spread this will not be a major thing to consider. Even if they are, you simply target the one you know will be near the center.

AotB dot spreading is something I really never heard about before. It seems rather pointless as the DoT only lasts 6 seconds, so there is very little to spread with KC having a >6 sec cooldown generally. The DoT might also be a rolling DoT meaning that spreading is pointless even.

So I mean it's not really very hard. I guess you're mostly pressing 3-4 buttons, but I think most other classes are pretty close to that number as well. Some might be 1-2 buttons, but I don't think they're that common.