BM Talent and Pet System Revamp

[Bushsbaddie]

From the WoW forums, thread here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...evamp/894433/1

[Easy to read infographic]---->(https://imgur.com/a/14nT0HX)<------


I've been working on this for a while and I tried to make it as clean and easy to read as possible. Thanks to Nishi, Jodax and others for creative help!

We all know BM and hunter in general is in a pretty sorry state. That's why this is only one of many ideas proposed here. However I do think my proposed ideas really tackle the root cause of the problem, instead of just buffing numbers.

* Pet system is lackluster and limits pet choice
* BM talents are boring and most of them don't even affect gameplay
* Aspect of the Wild is currently one of the most boring "big" CDs, tied with Coordinated Assault...
* The core of BM is actually in the best place of the 3 specs

With those things in mind, I created a new pet system that lets you choose any pet you like the aesthetics of, but added to the utility and depth of gameplay pets should provide. The BM talents were thoughtfully redone from the ground up, and some minor tweaks to existing abilities were made where needed.

Basics of the new Pet System:

Pet System

· Pet families no longer have unique abilities

· Pets are no longer tied to one specialization. Their spec is chosen in their talent page

· Each of your pets retains their own talent setup

· When you choose Pack Leader and have two pets out, the specialization passives don’t stack if they are the same. Eg; If both pets are Tenacity, you still only take 10% reduced damage. If one is Ferocity instead, you take 10% reduced damage AND gain 10% leech

· For clarity, the defensive, utility and group utility talents are not tied to which pet specialization you chose
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The goal of the talent revamp is to make the talents more interesting, impactful and intuitive. This means less passives that just buff damage, which in turn means you have actual gameplay affecting decisions to make AND those decisions should be less mathy. IE taking an obvious single target talent should be the best choice for single target. I'm looking at you hunter covenant abilities >.>


[Talents for reference](https://imgur.com/a/14nT0HX)

Explanations for Talent Designs

Tier 15

This tier has to be simple. At level 15 you don’t have many abilities to work with, and the ones you do have you haven’t played with long enough to know how you’d like to change them. For max level veteran players though, they should still be impactful choices.

Stomp is as it is on live; a generalist talent that leans AoE and helps with pet threat while soloing packs of mobs.

Dire Beasts is a single target sustain talent that aesthetically should appeal to people who miss the zoo build.

A Murder of Crows is the more advanced option though still relatively simple. It introduces the idea of longer CD damage abilities and leveraging additional targets. The slight change from live is that the damage ramps over time. This still rewards you for applying to targets that will die just before it ends, but getting the full benefit on a single entity should be a good consolation prize.

Tier 25

This is the resource economy tier. The resources being frenzy stacks and focus.

Dire Frenzy is a slightly reworked version of Scent of Blood on live. Scent of blood is amazing, actually too amazing especially compared to the alternatives. To make the role of the talent more defined and to remove the silly double barbed shot opener, Bestial Wrath now only grants 2 charges of barbed shot when you are already at 3 stacks of frenzy.

One with the Pack is extremely weak on live and almost not noticeable. To define its role as sustain and “more barbed shots” the proc chance has been increased as well as the duration of the barbed shot effects. This synergizes well with the new Scent of Blood talent later on, but is still RNG where Dire Frenzy is more deterministic.

Fervor is all about burst damage, but the weakest for sustain. This makes the spec less about ramping damage, and more like older iterations of the spec where it was all about burst. Synergizes well with Killer Cobra later on, but also any burst oriented build.

Tier 30

This is a defensive tier. This is about mitigating damage taken.

Born To Be Wild is extremely weak on live. I’ve made it similar to how old Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera used to work. This talent is about skillfully avoiding being damaged. Having charges means you can be more reactive to damage.

Spirit Bond returns! A simple, effective and sorely missed talent. This gives you and your pet the most health over time. Great for when you are taking spikey damage.

Exhilaration moves from baseline to talented. I know this is controversial to some, but taken in the context of all the changes I’ve made, it makes sense. Plus if you are already taking Natural Mending on live, then nothing changes since that talent is baked into the ability now.

Tier 35

This tier is about gameplay pacing. Scent of Blood is more drawn out and incentivises dealing damage evenly amongst targets. Killer Instinct is for rapid killing and moving on. Lynx Rush is about attacking when the moment is right.

Scent of Blood, not to be confused with the live version which is now Dire Frenzy. This talent rewards you for “multi-dotting” with Barbed Shot and Kill Command. Also synergizes with Gore and Bloodshed. Rewarding you with haste means it's easier to keep up the more targets you have, but not so much as to scale infinitely. Haste also buffs your beastcleave.

Killer Instinct, I’m really happy with how this came together. It’s about killing… it's in the name. KILL Shot, KILL Command. It buffs Kill Shot indirectly with pet damage via Kill Command. The instinct part is you don’t need to tell your pet what to do, it gets the idea when you Kill Shot…

Lynx Rush is an old favourite of mine from Mists of Pandaria (The 5.0 version, before it was gutted!) Although this works fine to just press on CD against any number of targets, it really shines when you can get a priority kill target alone, which is another theme BM should be pushing.

Tier 40

This tier is about freedom of movement, for you or your enemy.

Trailblazer has been moved down and buffed. We are supposed to be the kiting class yet most other classes have no problem keeping on top of us.

Posthaste is unchanged because it is already a staple talent pick. It should have some competition now though.

Trample is a new talent that replaces binding shot with something more BM flavoured. Can be used defensively or offensively and establishes knockdown as a BM theme. Reminds everyone you control a rampaging beast.

Tier 45

Another dps style tier but this time centred around Cobra Shot usage.

Thrill of the Hunt is a generalist talent. Cobra Shot extending Aspect of the Wild by 1 second may not seem like a lot, but that should extend the window to between 30 and 35 seconds. And with the way AotW works now, every second you are in the window means you are 2 seconds closer to your abilities being off CD, including AoTW.

Chimaera Shot harkens back to its Wrath of the Lich King iteration. It interacts with the other abilities in your kit. Special Abilities in Blizzard Speak as far as I know means buttons you press. Pet Basic Attacks are things like claw that are on autocast and spend pet focus. Pet melee attacks are everything your pet does. This is intended to be the worst single target, but allows you to cleave your Kill Command, Lynx Rush, Gore and Bloodshed, along with possible Intimidation balance allowing. Especially effective with no damage effects like Bloodshed’s damage buff, since you gain the full effect on both targets. Also synergizes with Scent of Blood yet again, letting you spread bleeds easier.

Kill Cobra is moved down a tier from live but is otherwise unchanged. What it gains are other supporting talents that mean you can effectively use it without being as focus starved.

Tier 50

This tier, the final tier is about playstyle defining cooldowns. We have a conditional medium CD talent good depending on how you use it. A long CD big AoE with utility, and a shorter CD reliable single target burst talent that synergizes well with most of the previous talents.

Gore is a new ability that seems complex but really isn’t. When used on more than one enemy it deals effective damage in a line. If you can make it hit just one target though, that target suffers intense bleed damage as well as a debilitating utility effect based on your pet’s specialization talent. Has some counterplay for PVP built in because if your kill target’s ally gets in the way, they only suffer the initial impact damage.

Stampede… I made it more like it’s namesake. No longer a skinny single file line of animals that may or may not hit targets in their path for piddly damage. This is now much wider, deals much more damage and has a periodic knockdown built in similar to Earthquake. Useful for interrupting big packs of caster adds, or zoning the enemy arena team to set up a perfect Lynx Rush.

Bloodshed is largely unchanged from live with the exception of a slightly lower CD. It is also now more defined in its role of reliable single target burst though because of changes to the rest of the tier.

[Talents for reference](https://imgur.com/a/14nT0HX)

[MrKnubbles]

The talents are definitely a lot more interesting than what we currently have. My biggest issue is that my bars are already full of abilities and we have a lot of utility already. I wouldn't want to see these additions unless some other stuff gets cut as well.

[Bushsbaddie]

The talents are definitely a lot more interesting than what we currently have. My biggest issue is that my bars are already full of abilities and we have a lot of utility already. I wouldn't want to see these additions unless some other stuff gets cut as well.

When I was designing this I mathed out the button totals. I think my revamp had 1 or 2 less keybinds total if you took every active talent compared to live, but you were more likely to actually use active abilities. It should be about 5 more than the current cookie cutter build if you took every active, which you probably wouldn't.

It would be difficult to decide what to cut, but if you were going to it would probably have to come from the base hunter kit since that's where the bulk of bound abilities come from.

[Razion]

When it comes to pet utility trees like these, while interesting... like, I like them... personally I do like the trees more, but we know in actuality players just follow guides and pick BiS all the time, more-so nowadays.

We can't go back to more options or there's just more spread of options that aren't used, of wasted effort that has to be balanced, of mismanaged resources, of all these wasted cool concepts that could be baseline rather than options.

I think realistically, while I like talents and all, the more simplified everything is the better. People may have complained about homogenization around Mists before, but we have the data now to argue that players really don't use it when they get it. People don't care about the flavors or the options anymore, just what lets them win. It sucks, but this is the reality of the situation.

[MrKnubbles]

It would be difficult to decide what to cut, but if you were going to it would probably have to come from the base hunter kit since that's where the bulk of bound abilities come from.

Don't get me wrong, I love the utility we offer but feel like we have way more than a pure dps should. We could probably turn Concussive Shot and Hunter's Mark into PvP talents. I don't know, it would feel bad removing anything we're already used to like Tranq Shot and Binding Shot.

[Bushsbaddie]

Don't get me wrong, I love the utility we offer but feel like we have way more than a pure dps should. We could probably turn Concussive Shot and Hunter's Mark into PvP talents. I don't know, it would feel bad removing anything we're already used to like Tranq Shot and Binding Shot.

Ya Hunter's Mark for sure. Concussive Shot is probably too far.

[Sondrelk]

While I like the basic idea of the pet talent tree I think it might lead itself too much to cookie cutter builds.
The passive and active abilities currently out together I still think should be bundled together, if just for balancing purposes.

I also personally think you need the pet specs to be restrictive. My personal solution is to let you swap them, but only from pet trainers.

Great idea on the 1 or 2 pet talent though. Love the idea of balancing so that you can have both passive abilities without it being too OP.

[Bushsbaddie]

While I like the basic idea of the pet talent tree I think it might lead itself too much to cookie cutter builds.
The passive and active abilities currently out together I still think should be bundled together, if just for balancing purposes.

I also personally think you need the pet specs to be restrictive. My personal solution is to let you swap them, but only from pet trainers.

Great idea on the 1 or 2 pet talent though. Love the idea of balancing so that you can have both passive abilities without it being too OP.

I think any pet system that compromises between pet choice and restricted "meaningful choice" will end with a "best pet" situation. Right now most pets are pretty useless and Clefthoofs are the go to.

With my system there may be a "best build" but it would be situational. It wouldn't be one cookie cutter build for all occasions. It retains some depth, but you can still pick whatever pet skin you like. The only alternative system with merit to me would be one where every pet family has a niche and is thoughtfully designed. I actually made one but I decided to post this version instead since I know the vast majority of people just want pets to be an aesthetic choice, and Blizz isn't going to do what is required to give every family the love it needs.

Also yes, I think the Animal Companion tier might be the best idea to come out of all this lol.