BM in BfA

[Deleted]

One thing i dont like about BM is the same exact playstyle from legion, rng on top of rng. brainless rotation

[elcapone]

So it's just good for ST.

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Interesting question. I've also been asking myself that ever since I got to know, that the Spirit Beasts heal got actually good. Allthough I'm not convinced that this is intended and not just a number tuning issue.

only reason iam interested in BM is the tuning of the pet abilities. if they are strong, I will be playing BM if not frost mage

[Mavick]

But...they don't. Only the auto attacks cleave afaik. Or am I at the wrong here?

You're very wrong. If only pet aa cleaved our aoe would be even more pitiful than it already is (in legion). In bfa our cleave is actually pretty solid again.

[Nythiz]

One thing i dont like about BM is the same exact playstyle from legion, rng on top of rng. brainless rotation

I thought BM was quite ok during legion.

There is a lot of RNG, but it's generally good RNG. When you get a proc it feels like you gain something, and yet it doesn't feel like you fall behind as much without them. (Only exception might be if you get like 0 procs for a long long time and your Dire Frenzy stacks fall off).

Unlike for example marksman AoE where if you don't get a marking targets proc you do 0 dps. That's horrible RNG.

----

As for the rotation. It's not much more brainless than most other stuff. It's not much more brainless than what a lot of other specs offer. I think the rng factors switch up the rotation enough that it's not extremely static. And with the Dire Frenzy mechanic "forced" upon us, we will have a buff to keep up. It's not hard, but if you just press stuff on cooldown you will lose the stacks and you drop dps. So it's a minor skill thing.

[Deleted]

Btw: Has "Thrill of the Hunt" been fixed already? Would be my go to talent for that row, but last time I checked it still didn't give crit the buff should give.

[Deleted]

BM has been a dull, horrible spec ever since serpent sting snap shotting was removed in 6.0.

[Deleted]

As for the rotation. It's not much more brainless than most other stuff. It's not much more brainless than what a lot of other specs offer.

I'd even go as far as saying it's much less brainless as a whole lot other specs now. The changes BM got may have been subtle, but they changed it quite a lot. I agree that in Legion there was no real rotation to BM, but with the changes to DF as a baseline and Cobra Shot reducing CD on KC there are quite a few things you can do wrong now, resulting in a much lower DPS. It's not just pressing buttons that light up like so many other specs, but more of a priority based rotation now.

On Beta I play the spec with Chimera Shot and I love it so much, because the lower secondary stats don't matter as much anymore since you have a much smoother and more reliable focus regenaration with CS.

[Millhi]

Btw: Has "Thrill of the Hunt" been fixed already? Would be my go to talent for that row, but last time I checked it still didn't give crit the buff should give.

It gives you the bonus crit, char tooltip just doesnt update.
the crit however isnt gained by your pet(s).

[Vellithe]

Anyone test the Worm pet for AOE? Also, how do you like the bm playstyle, just letting your pet do all the work and keep up barb shot?

I imagine it sucks and shouldn't be used.

On WoWHead, the damage from the Worm AoE is lower than Chimaera's breath damage (multiplier is about half of Breath's), and when I tested Chimaera's breath damage it was doing either three or four times less damage than common melee (in DPS). In theory, if you had a certain number of targets it'd outdps the basic attack, however, beast cleave causes the auto attacks to deal 75% aoe damage, which means it'll never really reach it. Unless your multishot button was broken, then I guess it's good on 4+ targets.

On one hand, this is good, because otherwise Chimaera would be mandatory DPS pet (worm is still Tenacity, but they updated Chimaeras to Ferocity), but on the other hand... why does the ability even exists if it sucks?

The BM playstyle feels pretty solid. The buttons are very responsive and the way you weave them feels comfortable. Could use a bit more complexity, but I prefer simple and working than complex and broken.

[Kwaai]

I imagine it sucks and shouldn't be used.

On WoWHead, the damage from the Worm AoE is lower than Chimaera's breath damage (multiplier is about half of Breath's), and when I tested Chimaera's breath damage it was doing either three or four times less damage than common melee (in DPS). In theory, if you had a certain number of targets it'd outdps the basic attack, however, beast cleave causes the auto attacks to deal 75% aoe damage, which means it'll never really reach it. Unless your multishot button was broken, then I guess it's good on 4+ targets.

On one hand, this is good, because otherwise Chimaera would be mandatory DPS pet (worm is still Tenacity, but they updated Chimaeras to Ferocity), but on the other hand... why does the ability even exists if it sucks?

The BM playstyle feels pretty solid. The buttons are very responsive and the way you weave them feels comfortable. Could use a bit more complexity, but I prefer simple and working than complex and broken.

Beast Cleave works on Basic Attacks (Bite, Claw, Smack), not auto attacks. Worm is still probably hot garbage, though.

[Cytraz]

I'd even go as far as saying it's much less brainless as a whole lot other specs now. The changes BM got may have been subtle, but they changed it quite a lot. I agree that in Legion there was no real rotation to BM, but with the changes to DF as a baseline and Cobra Shot reducing CD on KC there are quite a few things you can do wrong now, resulting in a much lower DPS. It's not just pressing buttons that light up like so many other specs, but more of a priority based rotation now.

On Beta I play the spec with Chimera Shot and I love it so much, because the lower secondary stats don't matter as much anymore since you have a much smoother and more reliable focus regenaration with CS.

Can you tell me exactly what kind of things you can do wrong as BM resulting in a much lower DPS besides making sure Barbed Shot x3 is up?

[Mavick]

Beast Cleave works on Basic Attacks (Bite, Claw, Smack), not auto attacks. Worm is still probably hot garbage, though.

It actually works on both, this was pretty apparent when AC pet started getting cleave in latest build, but since it only autos (no basics) its cleave is much lower.

Also, as for the worm pet, I don't remember if that's a channeled ability like the chimaera aoe attack, but anything channeled by the pet is going to be a harsh dps loss because while channeling they cannot basic attack, and that's far more important dps-wise.

[Vellithe]

It actually works on both, this was pretty apparent when AC pet started getting cleave in latest build, but since it only autos (no basics) its cleave is much lower.

Also, as for the worm pet, I don't remember if that's a channeled ability like the chimaera aoe attack, but anything channeled by the pet is going to be a harsh dps loss because while channeling they cannot basic attack, and that's far more important dps-wise.

It also started stomping and going with kill command on last build, which is reasonable since the description mentions kill command, but this kind of synergy makes me think that there's no way for the other two talents to compete. WoWhead lists Animal Command as reducing overall pet damage by 40%, so you get about 120% overall damage for KC and Stomp, and Stomp is particularly good at many things, specially with the Thrill build that spams that thing.

120% damage on KC all the time means 4.34% extra KC DPS in comparison with Execute talent, which is 150% damage on technically 30% of a fight, but in reality execute phases go even faster than the rest of the fight, so those 4.34% are easily going to be much, much more. And we're not even accounting for the 20% gain on stomp. But also not accounting for the 40% loss to the pet special abilities... I'll check these out tomorrow and compare pet damage.

The 40% less pet damage thing definitely should be mentioned in the talent, too. I only just found out about it thanks to wowhead, I was legit thinking it gave 100% extra KC damage and certain that it also doing stomp must have been a bug.

I hope AC remains competitive even if it gets nerfed, it's just too fun having two petts of my own choice.

EDIT:

From testing, Smack's DPS is roughly 20% higher than Melee's DPS, and KC's DPS seems to be about the same a Smack's, while Stomp's DPS seems to be 40% of Melee's DPS.

So we can divide pet damage as Stomp: 4, Melee: 10, KC: 12, Smack: 12 and say final pet damage (without AC) is 38 Pet Damages.

With AC, every Pet damage that is not smack is increased by 20%, but smack itself is reduced by 40% by the talent. End result:
((38 - 12) * 1.2) + (12 * 0.6) = 38,4

AC is therefore worth a 1% increase to Pet Damage and now I'm sad.

On AoE, everything except KC gets 75% cleave. Cleave portion of pet's damage: 26. This time AC is just ((14 * 1.2) + (12 * 0.6)), which becomes 24, meaning that even with stomps cloning, AC is a loss on AoE potential. A LOSS. Now I'm double sad.

With Killer Instinct, KC damage is increased by 150% on 35% of the time, so we can treat KC as ((12 * 35 * 1.5) + (12 * 65))/100, which is 14.1. So for single targets, assuming fight duration is spread evenly on percentage, Killer Instinct makes the pet worth 40.1, which is considerably stronger than AC.

Dire Beast averages to about 4% extra haste, but just for the hunter. We can roughly say this means 4% more Stomps and 4% more KCs. I won't even calculate that because it's too low to make a dent, but it'll certainly end up being very low. Dire Beast's DPS appears to be the same as a Melee - if being cast on CD - so worth 10 points. So we can say that single target Dire Beast is worth about (4 * 1.04) + (12 * 1.04) + 32 = 48,64, which is considerably stronger than both other options even without considering the haste benefits. It improves AoE a little, as well.

Considering execute phase moves faster rather than slower, KI's DPS is certainly going to be lower, but even during <35% it'd just be 26 + (12 * 1.5) = 44, WHICH IS STILL LOWER THAN DIRE BEAST WITHOUT CONSIDERING HASTE BENEFITS.

From this napkin math, we can tell that Dire Beast is better than the other two options for every single situation, even considering fights that are EXCLUSIVELY with low health monsters (where KI was supposed to shine). For AC to be competitive, the 40% damage lost should be reduced to, let's see... At 25% less pet damage, rather than 40% less, AC becomes worth 48 points in single target and 30 points in AoE, so I think putting the debuff at anywhere between 25 and 30 would make it on-par with Dire Beast (minus haste buff, which might be substantial, but can only be truly measured with SimulationCraft).

Now for KI, again assuming fights with equal length spent per percentage, KI would be worth 48.5 points if the damage was increased by 250% rather than 50%. So KI would only be comparable to Dire Beast if it was literally 5 times stronger. At 100% extra damage, KI becomes worth 50 points during execute phase. So even if fights were literally only <35% health mobs, KI would need to be TWICE as strong to even compete with dire beast. Considering execute phases are shorter, even at the 250% increased damage (for a total of 350% KC damage during execute), KI would still be weaker than DB.

I feel like my innocence has been shattered. I was so happy that all three talents looked similar in power, but it wasn't so. Blizzard sits on a throne of lies. My smile and optimism: gone.

TL;DR:
Single Target:
Nothing: 38 Pet Damage
AC: 38.4 Pet Damage
KI: 40.1 for fights with equal length spent per health percentage, but KI is worth 44 Pet Damage during execute phases
Dire Beast: 48.64 Pet Damage plus haste benefits not measured, miles ahead of the others.


AoE:
KI/Dire Beast/Nothing: 26
AC: 24, so AC is a DPS loss on AoE even being compared against nothing.

Final edit:
On current beta SimulationCraft, results are pretty in line with the predictions above, so I guess the rough estimates were close enough after all. Thrill of the Hunt can't compete with AMoC, OwtP can't compete with Chimaera Shot, and AC can't compete with Dire Beast. AC/OwtP/Thrill brings a ~5% DPS loss against DB/Chimaera/AMoC.

[Deleted]

Can you tell me exactly what kind of things you can do wrong as BM resulting in a much lower DPS besides making sure Barbed Shot x3 is up?

eh, bm is rather fast paced compared to a lot of other specs currently in BFA, having played 4 different classes in beta so far. BM was not the most braindead of them. Frost DK, Fury warrior, fire mage, all of them seemed more "braindead" to me. BM might have to use less skills than other classes, but the interaction between the skills is much higher in comparison. You need a decent level of precision and care to use all the small CDR's to your full advantage. You could for example, overspam cobra shot before the next burst phase, so you can get BW ready for it, and dont use a charge of barbed shot right before BW, and stuff like that.

Its not rocket science, but which spec in wow, really requires a high amount of skills in these days? BM just has a very bad rep, but its not like other classes or even hunter choices (MM) are harder to play... at all.

[Rhokz]

mm is more braindead. sad but true.

[Cytraz]

eh, bm is rather fast paced compared to a lot of other specs currently in BFA, having played 4 different classes in beta so far. BM was not the most braindead of them. Frost DK, Fury warrior, fire mage, all of them seemed more "braindead" to me. BM might have to use less skills than other classes, but the interaction between the skills is much higher in comparison. You need a decent level of precision and care to use all the small CDR's to your full advantage. You could for example, overspam cobra shot before the next burst phase, so you can get BW ready for it, and dont use a charge of barbed shot right before BW, and stuff like that.

Its not rocket science, but which spec in wow, really requires a high amount of skills in these days? BM just has a very bad rep, but its not like other classes or even hunter choices (MM) are harder to play... at all.

I was assuming that the things you mentioned was basic knowledge. And in case you forgot, Cobra Shot lowers the CD of KC, not BW.

Assuming that keeping x3 Barbed Shot stacks up, I really don't see anything complex about the BM rotation. You make sure to use Barbed Shot everytime the stacks are about to expire. Then you basically spam TBW -> KC -> Cobra as a filler. Rinse and repeat. If you take Chimera Shot, you can use that in your rotation too.

You mentioned Fury Warriors. I think Fury Warrior is a bit more complex to play. You have lots of different procs going on, and you need to make sure to keep up your Enrage uptime, which can be a bit tricky due to random RNG, so you must be able to think on your feet. Besides that, Fury Warriors have a larger arsenal of spells to press in their basic rotation compared to BM Hunter.

[Vellithe]

I was assuming that the things you mentioned was basic knowledge. And in case you forgot, Cobra Shot lowers the CD of KC, not BW.

Assuming that keeping x3 Barbed Shot stacks up, I really don't see anything complex about the BM rotation. You make sure to use Barbed Shot everytime the stacks are about to expire. Then you basically spam TBW -> KC -> Cobra as a filler. Rinse and repeat. If you take Chimera Shot, you can use that in your rotation too.

You mentioned Fury Warriors. I think Fury Warrior is a bit more complex to play. You have lots of different procs going on, and you need to make sure to keep up your Enrage uptime, which can be a bit tricky due to random RNG, so you must be able to think on your feet. Besides that, Fury Warriors have a larger arsenal of spells to press in their basic rotation compared to BM Hunter.

From the SimulationCraft beta available, right now, the best priority for BM hunters are:

1. A Murder of Crows, if bestial wrath's cooldown is less than 3 seconds OR target wil die in less than 15 seconds
2. Bestial Wrath
3. Barbed Shot, IF you have two charges
4. Aspect of the Wild
5. Kill Command
6. Barbed Shot, IF bestial wrath's cooldown is betwen 9 and 12 seconds
7. Chimaera Shot
8. Dire Beast
9. Barbed Shot last charge, IF bestial wrath's cooldown is over 5 seconds
10. Cobra Shot, IF you will have enough focus in one GCD to cast KC afterwrads, and KC's cooldown must be over 2.75 seconds
11. Cobra Shot, if focus > 80 and kill command's cooldown > global cooldown
12. Cobra Shot if you'll focus cap in one GCD

This is the top performing priority list that I have found. Mesing with the numbers used usually results in 0.5% DPS loss each. Messing with the order can easily lead to DPS loss in multiple percentages. I didn't test it with a priority list optimized for Thrill of the Hunt, but Thrill of the Hunt was underperforming badly with the default priority list. Either that or Chimaera Shot is far too good. Spamming Cobra Shot is a way of losing multiple percent DPS, btw.

It's not so simple as just maintaining Thrill stacks, though. There is an inherent risk to holding a Barbed Shot charge: the longer you hold, the more you have to lose by not casing it. iirc, in legion's dire frenzy, you'd want to cast it regardless of frenzy duration if you ever reached <5 seconds in the second charge cooldown, since by then you'd have nearly a full frenzy to lose if you got a proc.Gambling means osmetimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if the risk is calculated you can be winning most of the time.

Warriors enrage is irrelevant. It either happens or it doesn't and you just roll with it. Last time I checked, BfA Fury warriors had nothing that required enrage to cast, so you don't even need to track it, just let it happen and be happy for it. Or did they change something? BfA's fury difficulty appears to come from having you press buttons very, very fast, but the only conditional priority I've seen is the thing with the two charges, everything else you just use as soon as it's castable.

[Cytraz]

From the SimulationCraft beta available, right now, the best priority for BM hunters are:

1. A Murder of Crows, if bestial wrath's cooldown is less than 3 seconds OR target wil die in less than 15 seconds
2. Bestial Wrath
3. Barbed Shot, IF you have two charges
4. Aspect of the Wild
5. Kill Command
6. Barbed Shot, IF bestial wrath's cooldown is betwen 9 and 12 seconds
7. Chimaera Shot
8. Dire Beast
9. Barbed Shot last charge, IF bestial wrath's cooldown is over 5 seconds
10. Cobra Shot, IF you will have enough focus in one GCD to cast KC afterwrads, and KC's cooldown must be over 2.75 seconds
11. Cobra Shot, if focus > 80 and kill command's cooldown > global cooldown
12. Cobra Shot if you'll focus cap in one GCD

This is the top performing priority list that I have found. Mesing with the numbers used usually results in 0.5% DPS loss each. Messing with the order can easily lead to DPS loss in multiple percentages. I didn't test it with a priority list optimized for Thrill of the Hunt, but Thrill of the Hunt was underperforming badly with the default priority list. Either that or Chimaera Shot is far too good. Spamming Cobra Shot is a way of losing multiple percent DPS, btw.

It's not so simple as just maintaining Thrill stacks, though. There is an inherent risk to holding a Barbed Shot charge: the longer you hold, the more you have to lose by not casing it. iirc, in legion's dire frenzy, you'd want to cast it regardless of frenzy duration if you ever reached <5 seconds in the second charge cooldown, since by then you'd have nearly a full frenzy to lose if you got a proc.Gambling means osmetimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if the risk is calculated you can be winning most of the time.

Warriors enrage is irrelevant. It either happens or it doesn't and you just roll with it. Last time I checked, BfA Fury warriors had nothing that required enrage to cast, so you don't even need to track it, just let it happen and be happy for it. Or did they change something? BfA's fury difficulty appears to come from having you press buttons very, very fast, but the only conditional priority I've seen is the thing with the two charges, everything else you just use as soon as it's castable.

Using Dire Beast and Chimera Shot talents makes the rotation a bit more interesting, simply because you now have more than 3 basic spells to press (CS, KC and BS). Other than that, I dont think it looks too complicated. In practise, you will get the hang of it very quickly. Besides popping BW, KC, Chimera etc. on CD, the biggest difference to the BM spec compared to other specs is still keeping up Barbed Shot x3. Outside that it really is quite similar to other classes. Use certain spells on CD, manage your resource (focus, rage...) etc.

About Fury: I havent raided as Fury Warrior, but since Enrage is so important for the spec, I would imagine that you would have to make some changes according to when Enrage is up and when it is not. Since Enrage gives you so much extra damage, it has to be the #1 priority to make sure you are enraged. So I imagine that if you use Bloodthirst and dont get an Enrage proc, you want to use Bloodthirst again, if you havea charge. And if you already were Enraged, I assume u wouldnt want to use Bloodthirst asap but rather wait until Enrage is about to expire? I am not sure, but these are some of the things I could imagine being important based on the situation. Basically, you have to think on your feet based on your Enraged procs.

[Vellithe]

Using Dire Beast and Chimera Shot talents makes the rotation a bit more interesting, simply because you now have more than 3 basic spells to press (CS, KC and BS). Other than that, I dont think it looks too complicated. In practise, you will get the hang of it very quickly. Besides popping BW, KC, Chimera etc. on CD, the biggest difference to the BM spec compared to other specs is still keeping up Barbed Shot x3. Outside that it really is quite similar to other classes. Use certain spells on CD, manage your resource (focus, rage...) etc.

About Fury: I havent raided as Fury Warrior, but since Enrage is so important for the spec, I would imagine that you would have to make some changes according to when Enrage is up and when it is not. Since Enrage gives you so much extra damage, it has to be the #1 priority to make sure you are enraged. So I imagine that if you use Bloodthirst and dont get an Enrage proc, you want to use Bloodthirst again, if you havea charge. And if you already were Enraged, I assume u wouldnt want to use Bloodthirst asap but rather wait until Enrage is about to expire? I am not sure, but these are some of the things I could imagine being important based on the situation. Basically, you have to think on your feet based on your Enraged procs.

On beta, Fury doesn't appear to have much control over enrage, and it doesn't really change anything other than "you become faster and stronger", you can't even make it more frequent with Crit. Maybe, maaaybe, you'd want to avoid using bloodthirst right after rampage, since that's a guaranteed enrage, but bloodthirst has a 5 sec CD that is affected by haste, so during enrage it'll pretty much be ~2 seconds long and you'll get to use it again soon enough. Disconsidering talents, Fury's priority list seems to be

1. Recklessness
2. Rampage
3. Bloodthirst if not enraged, sure, lets go with that
4. Execute
5. Raging blow if two charges
6. Furious Slash if fury's "Thrill of the Hunt" is dropping. This is a talent and it might not even be optimal, the other talents are passives and might be stronger.
7. Raging Blow with 1 charge
8. Bloodthirst, even if enraged
9. Furious Slash

Do note that some of this might be adding unnecessary "complexity" to the spec, but the SimulationCraft I have isn't working for Fury right now so I can't test it thoroughly. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't matter if you're enraged or not and that you'd want to cast Bloodthirst either way. Furious slash might be the only thoughtful addition to the spec, but since the other talents on its tier are pretty strong (Free Execute legendary and more raging blows), this increase to complexity will probably be avoided. Btw the two charges are on raging blow, which is a rage generator (12 vs Bloodthirt's 8).

Like with hunters, maybe there will be some sweet spot for when to use Bloodthirst even when enraged. I personally think that sweet spot will be "any time", because if it procs enrage, you get to do it again in 2 secs, if it doesn't, well, at least you get to try again earlier. You seem to stay enraged for most of the time.


As for BM, I've found BM with less buttons to be more active. The stupidly high proc rate on barbed shot makes you always run against the clock to not lose any procs, and the amount of barbed shot going around means you also have to really put the focus to use before you cap. With the talents for extra buttons, replacing One with the Pack and Thrill of the Hunt, you start getting downtime and get to put less though into what you do. Sure you have more buttons, but those buttons are pretty much on a "just press them, like, whenever your good stuff is down", which is uninspired.

[Kayagurcu]

anyone who has access to beta can answer these questions;

1) Which one is superior: animal companion versus dire beast ?
2) Is chimaera shot viable ?
3) Lvl 100 talent row: Aspect of the Beast versus Killer Cobra ?

Thanks.