is BM really this shit?

[Regalosh]

Your version of "substantially lower" leaves alot to be desired. That's still half of your damage. And yes it is half, counting bestial wrath damage is a joke because it's literally just a button you hit on cooldown.

Hitting it on CD is not always true:

- Refreshing a 3 stacks of Frenzy is higher priority than not delaying BW for another GCD.

- Sometimes you also need to delay it to align it with cooldowns, like AoTW or Murder of the Crows (usually within 15-20 seconds)

- Frenzy management is can be confusing because, as on BM you usually lack free GCD-s due to bloated cd reductions (Serpent to KC, Barbed to BW), while not overcapping Focus still remains high priority. And the better your Barbed Shot management is, the more focus you will have, where I haven't even mentioned Chimera shot, which focus regen you shouldn't waste as well, yet you want to hit it on CD as much as possible.

And let's not forget about that many doesn't realize that a typical misplay on BM is actively losing damage and cd reduction by overspamming Serpent while KC is already under 2 seconds CD....

And as for frenzy, even if you're not min/maxing it a noob would be pushing it randomly and buffing attack speed of the pet.

That's literally true for every other specs.

Like I've said, the sims have been ran on "frenzy uptime maximization", it doesn't make nearly as much a difference as people think.

From min-maxing point of view:
- Does better Frenzy management will net you more dps? Yes.
- Will you lose dps from lower Frenzy uptime? Yes.

So your statement is simply irrelevant when we talk about min-maxing the dps of a spec.

But go on, keep thinking the spec is hard if you people want to argue the case so hard.

I don't think BM is the hardest spec. However I also don't think it would be as braindead as most ppl think on a casual level of thinking.

[Mavick]

This is truly entertaining. I love how you guys are really going at this argument, truly. It would be funner if you'd stop getting offtrack from what my argument actually is.

I never once denied the existence of these myriad little intricacies that can boost BM damage, and yes, I'm aware of all of them having played the spec for most of Legion and through to the first week of BoD, and at a decently high level. So you don't need to quote them to me like I'm ignorant of them.

MY POINT IS: even when you do all these things, the difference it makes on your damage outcome is FUCKING MINISCULE compared to doing all the intricacies of the other classes. When at least half of your damage is automatic, that doesn't leave much room for your personal play to have much effect. Azor (and I fucking hate bringing his name up on this but he's right) has commented on this time and time again yet it seems this is having a hard time sinking in with some of you. So when you look at "ease of play" which is just a joke argument really, it's more accurate to look at how punishing a spec is when you don't play it completely correctly. BM is not that.

So seriously, stop bringing up all this other dumb shit like it has anything to do with what I said just to make an argument. It won't work.

[Deaged]

I was curious, so I went and played optimally on the target dummy for 2 minutes. Got 17.0K dps, then I played pretty awfully (used things off CD) and got 13.7K dps. I'll take your point that BM is not punishing, but playing optimally is not rewarding and that is also a problem. You can play this spec perfectly and some person can play a few other unnamed specs like a braindead mongoloid and still match you, and you can see this by lining up the numbers at various percentiles. I've played plenty of specs in this game as well, the point is the issue goes both ways.

Quick example, champions of the light mythic, BM hunter is at 21.41K dps at the 95th percentile, a 75th percentile assassination rogue has the same DPS, slightly higher even at 21.78K dps. This same example applies to nearly every fight because the spec is simply bad.

It is not "easy" to play optimally, and it's neither punishing nor rewarding, but as others have pointed out, playing this spec optimally is no harder or easier than most specs.

[DotJun]

No matter how hard/easy a class is to play, what’s that even matter if all classes are so easy that you can purple parse them all?

[Tehterokkar]

Who the fuck cares about BM. WHY IS DEMONOLOGY SO LOW DOWN THE DAMN LIST! Demonology 4 life bro!

Demo is the best Lock spec right now, and #2 overall(Affli is #3 and Destro #5).

[Kaver]

No matter how hard/easy a class is to play, what’s that even matter if all classes are so easy that you can purple parse them all?

Parses doen't relate to how easy a spec is because parses are about BM vs BM or MM vs MM or Demo vs Demo. So you're competing with people playing the same spec. Your competition will therefore how the same conditions. Therefore, if you're playing the hardest spec in the world, your competition will also be playing the hardest spec in the world.

- - - Updated - - -

I was curious, so I went and played optimally on the target dummy for 2 minutes. Got 17.0K dps, then I played pretty awfully (used things off CD) and got 13.7K dps. I'll take your point that BM is not punishing, but playing optimally is not rewarding and that is also a problem. You can play this spec perfectly and some person can play a few other unnamed specs like a braindead mongoloid and still match you, and you can see this by lining up the numbers at various percentiles. I've played plenty of specs in this game as well, the point is the issue goes both ways.

Quick example, champions of the light mythic, BM hunter is at 21.41K dps at the 95th percentile, a 75th percentile assassination rogue has the same DPS, slightly higher even at 21.78K dps. This same example applies to nearly every fight because the spec is simply bad.

It is not "easy" to play optimally, and it's neither punishing nor rewarding, but as others have pointed out, playing this spec optimally is no harder or easier than most specs.

The thing is that the huge advantage of BM is not seen on a Target Dummie. The potential of having 100 % uptime on a boss is great with BM because you can attack at all time. You can also move at all time which makes "ranged mechanics" much easier. A BM hunter should in theory always be the last to die in a raid because it is so easy to survive when you can move around as you please. Remember, dead players do no damage. This is also why top guilds bring BM hunters no matter how they perform in terms of simulated dps or on a target dummie.

When bosses are on farm and everyone know how to play the bosses perfectly, then BM will become less desirable. But during progression BM is worth gold because it is the least restricted spec in the game. And progression is what really matters. Who cares how much dps you can do the 10th time you kill a boss... that doesn't matter.

[Poppincaps]

This is truly entertaining. I love how you guys are really going at this argument, truly. It would be funner if you'd stop getting offtrack from what my argument actually is.

I never once denied the existence of these myriad little intricacies that can boost BM damage, and yes, I'm aware of all of them having played the spec for most of Legion and through to the first week of BoD, and at a decently high level. So you don't need to quote them to me like I'm ignorant of them.

MY POINT IS: even when you do all these things, the difference it makes on your damage outcome is FUCKING MINISCULE compared to doing all the intricacies of the other classes. When at least half of your damage is automatic, that doesn't leave much room for your personal play to have much effect. Azor (and I fucking hate bringing his name up on this but he's right) has commented on this time and time again yet it seems this is having a hard time sinking in with some of you. So when you look at "ease of play" which is just a joke argument really, it's more accurate to look at how punishing a spec is when you don't play it completely correctly. BM is not that.

So seriously, stop bringing up all this other dumb shit like it has anything to do with what I said just to make an argument. It won't work.

I think it's funny that you're bringing up this dumb shit like it has anything to do with Blizzard's stated philosophy. Blizzard has stated, they want every spec to perform decently at everything, and excel at one thing. BM's supposed niche is high movement. Even on Rastakhan, which has the most movement in BoD, BM is middle of the pack. According the Blizzard's own philosphy we should be #1 on that fight.

I could argue with you about BM's ease of play or how much dps you lose when playing incorrectly, but all of that is irrelevant, because it has nothing to do with Blizzard's thoughts on the matter. The reality is that according to Blizzard they have failed BM. BM is last on most fights, and middle of the pack on the fight that it should excel at. That is incredibly poor balance. Every other argument is irrelevant.

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Parses doen't relate to how easy a spec is because parses are about BM vs BM or MM vs MM or Demo vs Demo. So you're competing with people playing the same spec. Your competition will therefore how the same conditions. Therefore, if you're playing the hardest spec in the world, your competition will also be playing the hardest spec in the world.

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The thing is that the huge advantage of BM is not seen on a Target Dummie. The potential of having 100 % uptime on a boss is great with BM because you can attack at all time. You can also move at all time which makes "ranged mechanics" much easier. A BM hunter should in theory always be the last to die in a raid because it is so easy to survive when you can move around as you please. Remember, dead players do no damage. This is also why top guilds bring BM hunters no matter how they perform in terms of simulated dps or on a target dummie.

When bosses are on farm and everyone know how to play the bosses perfectly, then BM will become less desirable. But during progression BM is worth gold because it is the least restricted spec in the game. And progression is what really matters. Who cares how much dps you can do the 10th time you kill a boss... that doesn't matter.

Ok so you could be right, but you obviously haven't looked at the data. We're still early on in the tier, so a lot of guilds are still progressing. In Mythic BoD, BM is dead last, with a whooping 20% difference from the top (Spriest). So theoretically, sure BM can attack 100% of the time, but if other specs can attack 80% of the time or 90% of the time, while BM is attacking 100% of the time, and BM is still doing less damage, don't you think there's a problem there?

[kail]

Which is what confuses me the most..

These mythic guilds care enough to faction/race change the entire guild for minor stat increases.. Yet they allow their members to play sub-par speccs.

It just dosen't make sense to me, If that guy was MM instead of BM, it would probably be a bigger dps increase than to race change to troll.

Because Mythic raiding tends to dial the mechanics up a notch or two, having a DPS that can work the mechanics easily like BM is an asset. Consider this stat how you will be there are plenty of BM mythic parses compared to other specs, over the current range of 2 weeks its around 26k parses over others that rarely even make 10k. It is a popular spec even in Mythic raiding.

[Poppincaps]

Because Mythic raiding tends to dial the mechanics up a notch or two, having a DPS that can work the mechanics easily like BM is an asset. Consider this stat how you will be there are plenty of BM mythic parses compared to other specs, over the current range of 2 weeks its around 26k parses over others that rarely even make 10k. It is a popular spec even in Mythic raiding.

It is a popular spec because hunters are one of the most popular classes. Because there are more hunters than a lot of classes, that also means there are a larger amount of high level players that also play Hunter. Most guilds don't have the luxury of picking what classes their players play and will settle for players who are simply good at the game. Just because hunters are played at the highest levels, doesn't mean they are balanced well.

[TOM_RUS]

Number of BM parses is declining very fast. If you look at warcraftlogs (BfD Mythic), BM has top 5 number of parses as of last 2 weeks, but if you take last week, it's already at top 6 number of parses. By next week it will be top 7 or worse. BM players are either switching to MM or quitting en masse.

[Mavick]

I think it's funny that you're bringing up this dumb shit like it has anything to do with Blizzard's stated philosophy. Blizzard has stated, they want every spec to perform decently at everything, and excel at one thing. BM's supposed niche is high movement. Even on Rastakhan, which has the most movement in BoD, BM is middle of the pack. According the Blizzard's own philosphy we should be #1 on that fight.

I could argue with you about BM's ease of play or how much dps you lose when playing incorrectly, but all of that is irrelevant, because it has nothing to do with Blizzard's thoughts on the matter. The reality is that according to Blizzard they have failed BM. BM is last on most fights, and middle of the pack on the fight that it should excel at. That is incredibly poor balance. Every other argument is irrelevant.

You sound like that shitty CW Green Arrow character "YOU HAVE FAILED THIS SPEC!"

Anyway, I don't even know why you quoted me on that. Sounds like you just didn't like what I was saying, quoted me, then talked about something completely tangential to what I was discussing. You could have just made your own point and left me out of it if you weren't going to bother refuting it and instead just tell me "it's irrelevant", when it's actually not.

[Poppincaps]

You sound like that shitty CW Green Arrow character "YOU HAVE FAILED THIS SPEC!"

Anyway, I don't even know why you quoted me on that. Sounds like you just didn't like what I was saying, quoted me, then talked about something completely tangential to what I was discussing. You could have just made your own point and left me out of it if you weren't going to bother refuting it and instead just tell me "it's irrelevant", when it's actually not.

Why would I refute your points when your points aren't factored into how Blizzard balances the specs? Seems like you're not here for any kind of constructive conversation honestly.

[Mavick]

Why would I refute your points when your points aren't factored into how Blizzard balances the specs? Seems like you're not here for any kind of constructive conversation honestly.

I do so love when people speak for Blizzard on these forums and decide to inject their own way of thinking into how a class is balanced. That's not even what I was talking about anyway so quoting me on what you felt was "the important talking point of the day" just made no sense.

I'll lay it out simply for you:

- The thread's original point is "is BM really this shit?" the answer to that quite simply is: yes

- Insert the obligatory "I hate the argument that BM is easy, it's really not and others are easier" (fast forward to listing all the intricacies of a wow rotation)

- I say the argument isn't really about "easy" but "punishing" and list the valid reasons that BM is not a punishing spec

Then for some reason you want to tag my post yet talk about how bad Blizzard is at balancing specs, as if we don't all already know.

[Eapoe]

I didn't mean to put "pet" in there, but even still, it should be obvious what I was getting at. My point still stands. Yours is still stupid.

Also, I didn't move any goalposts. I said from the outset that arguing over which spec is easiest is fucking stupid when you're including one that's so heavily tilted towards automatic damage like BM and the differences between a min/max performance and a mediocre one is fucking tiny. You're just completely blinded and handicapped from playing the spec, apparently, that you can't delineate the difference between playing a spec with mostly pet damage on auto-casts with a low bearing on how you're hitting your buttons vs one that is entirely about your ability management. The latter is obviously going to be more punishing when you fuck up, as opposed to the former. Common. Fucking. Sense.

BM is also about ability management. I don’t even get your arguement anymore. You’re trying to say that if one spec messes up ability management then it’s dps is shit, it that holds true for BM as well.
As stated: BM is easy. Min/max is not as easy as people make it out to be to play the spec to it’s full potential.
You argue: no, it’s easy because auto attack damage makes out most of your damage.
1st off: that doesn’t even begin to argue against what I stated.
2nd: that is such a wtf arguement. With that statement you are implying that I could just auto attack a boss and won’t see that big of a drop off if I throw in CS as opposed to actually playing correctly and attempt to min/max.

You are now stating that the difference between min/max and mediocre (whixh for the sake of hoping you aren’t an idiot just means using BS on CD) is very small. Something I’ve never once argued against. You are quite literally arguing point C and haven’t done anything to try and refute point A.
Just to recap, point A is simply that to min/max damage as a Hunter isn’t brain dead infant play level easy as people make it out to be.
Now you’re also trying to include in your arguement that I’m trying to point out BM is hard, something I’ve never once stated and have actually pointed out the opposite numerous times in many different posts. I’ve stated many times BM is easy, but I’ve also pointed out numerous other specs are just as, if not more, easy than BM. A point that you are overlooking to try and, again to drive the point home, make up arguements against something I never once stated.
At this point, I’m done with you because it’s like arguing with a person who is so determined to be right about something they don’t even realize they are arguing against something a person never said.

[Mavick]

BM is also about ability management. I don’t even get your arguement anymore. You’re trying to say that if one spec messes up ability management then it’s dps is shit, it that holds true for BM as well.
As stated: BM is easy. Min/max is not as easy as people make it out to be to play the spec to it’s full potential.
You argue: no, it’s easy because auto attack damage makes out most of your damage.
1st off: that doesn’t even begin to argue against what I stated.
2nd: that is such a wtf arguement. With that statement you are implying that I could just auto attack a boss and won’t see that big of a drop off if I throw in CS as opposed to actually playing correctly and attempt to min/max.

You are now stating that the difference between min/max and mediocre (whixh for the sake of hoping you aren’t an idiot just means using BS on CD) is very small. Something I’ve never once argued against. You are quite literally arguing point C and haven’t done anything to try and refute point A.
Just to recap, point A is simply that to min/max damage as a Hunter isn’t brain dead infant play level easy as people make it out to be.
Now you’re also trying to include in your arguement that I’m trying to point out BM is hard, something I’ve never once stated and have actually pointed out the opposite numerous times in many different posts. I’ve stated many times BM is easy, but I’ve also pointed out numerous other specs are just as, if not more, easy than BM. A point that you are overlooking to try and, again to drive the point home, make up arguements against something I never once stated.
At this point, I’m done with you because it’s like arguing with a person who is so determined to be right about something they don’t even realize they are arguing against something a person never said.

I'm not "determined" to be right, I just am.

I didn't argue "Point A" because that's not what my argument is with. Tho I would say that even talking about the complexity of ANY spec in wow atm is just ludicrous and pointless, all on top of being completely subjective anyway. I think for the most part you're just not happy with seeing what I'm saying about how cushioned a spec BM really is and are just arguing for the sake of it while deliberately mis-reading/mis-interpreting what it is that I'm actually saying. You can't figure out a logical counter-argument to the hard facts of over half of your damage being automatic which would therefor reduce the impact of the direct actions you take on overall damage so the best you can do is segue back to the meaningless point of "well yeah but it's not less hard to push buttons in a certain order than any other class!"

I mean, if you really, really, really, really only want to discuss how hard it is to push buttons in relation to another spec and pretend that adds any kind of thoughtful insight to anything on this topic, go ahead. It's not like it hasn't been done thousands of times already on these boards and literally every other wow/hunter-related forum out there. Just don't get mad at me when I point out the futility of it.

[Deaged]

Parses doen't relate to how easy a spec is because parses are about BM vs BM or MM vs MM or Demo vs Demo. So you're competing with people playing the same spec. Your competition will therefore how the same conditions. Therefore, if you're playing the hardest spec in the world, your competition will also be playing the hardest spec in the world.

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The thing is that the huge advantage of BM is not seen on a Target Dummie. The potential of having 100 % uptime on a boss is great with BM because you can attack at all time. You can also move at all time which makes "ranged mechanics" much easier. A BM hunter should in theory always be the last to die in a raid because it is so easy to survive when you can move around as you please. Remember, dead players do no damage. This is also why top guilds bring BM hunters no matter how they perform in terms of simulated dps or on a target dummie.

When bosses are on farm and everyone know how to play the bosses perfectly, then BM will become less desirable. But during progression BM is worth gold because it is the least restricted spec in the game. And progression is what really matters. Who cares how much dps you can do the 10th time you kill a boss... that doesn't matter.

Ok you totally missed the entire point of my post. That's ok though.I was demonstrating how punishing it is to play optimally vs non optimally. The fact that BM still lags behind every other class despite it's movement on nearly EVERY encounter in the raid is proof that the spec is garbage.

For some reason everyone seems hung up on the fact that BM hunters are mobile. Yes, and despite their mobility, the logs, which are not hypothetical but things that actually exist, show that the advantage of being 'mobile' means nothing because they are still at the bottom of the charts at wide ranges of percentiles even on fights requiring high mobility. Stop defending this trash spec, the only thing it's OK for right now, not raiding, not PVP but it's just barely OK at Mythic+, which among other things at high key levels requires literal NONSTOP movement. But even then, Balance, Rogue, DH, Frost, WW are all better specs.

[s_bushido]

Ok so you could be right, but you obviously haven't looked at the data. We're still early on in the tier, so a lot of guilds are still progressing. In Mythic BoD, BM is dead last, with a whooping 20% difference from the top (Spriest).

I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the better players swapping to the FotM spec and parsing on MM instead of BM.

I'll never understand why people get so worked up over this crap. The race is over. Unless you're somehow wiping to berserk mechanics, why does this even matter?

[Deaged]

because not everybody is progressing as part of the race, many progress with their guild in order to just try to get CE at some point... and not everybody can willy nilly swap to MM unless they have the correct traits because they still need to help their guild progress through mythic, this game shoestrings you into playing a spec and sticking with it w/ the azerite system, despite the positive changes they've made.

[Nightheart]

Demo is the best Lock spec right now, and #2 overall(Affli is #3 and Destro #5).

Then this bros thread is completely wrong. Demo 4 life! xD

[DotJun]

Parses doen't relate to how easy a spec is because parses are about BM vs BM or MM vs MM or Demo vs Demo. So you're competing with people playing the same spec. Your competition will therefore how the same conditions. Therefore, if you're playing the hardest spec in the world, your competition will also be playing the hardest spec in the world.

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The thing is that the huge advantage of BM is not seen on a Target Dummie. The potential of having 100 % uptime on a boss is great with BM because you can attack at all time. You can also move at all time which makes "ranged mechanics" much easier. A BM hunter should in theory always be the last to die in a raid because it is so easy to survive when you can move around as you please. Remember, dead players do no damage. This is also why top guilds bring BM hunters no matter how they perform in terms of simulated dps or on a target dummie.

When bosses are on farm and everyone know how to play the bosses perfectly, then BM will become less desirable. But during progression BM is worth gold because it is the least restricted spec in the game. And progression is what really matters. Who cares how much dps you can do the 10th time you kill a boss... that doesn't matter.

I understand how parses work. My point was that all classes are easy enough to purple parse on so in the end who cares how easy one class is over the other when they are all brain dead easy?