Ghostcrawler on Beast Mastery Hunters

[Mania]

I wanted to draw your attention to an interesting thread about BM hunters posted on the official WoW forums, in which Ghostcrawler says:

In my opinion, players spend too much effort trying to compare their rotation to that of other classes or specs that they may not understand as well. Bad Arcane mages mash two buttons and bad BM hunters mash two buttons. You're not going to top charts as Arcane if that's all you do.

We don't want to buff the pet damage for BM any more for a couple of reasons. One is that it puts too much dependence on the pet. If the pet does 50% of your damage (which is an exaggeration) and the pet dies, then your dps just dropped by 50%. Even if you can get the pet back quickly, you've suffered a lot of damage loss. Secondly, the pet doesn't require that much babysitting. Few players are clicking their pet abilities on and off. As such, it just acts like a dot with cool art. When we talk about the risk of BM being too easy to play, we don't want to over-reward players for just doing Steady and having the pet attack. What I'm saying is that the more damage the pet does, the less the hunter player even has to pay attention. If the pet required more micro-management, then that would change. If pets built up combo points, or Kill Command acted like a Conflag, or something where the hunter had to react, then more pet damage wouldn't be so bad (though the risk of death doesn't go away).

We'd like to buff BM PvE damage, but we have to be careful not to buff it too much in PvP where it still has really high burst. This means we can't just do things like boost the Arcane Shot damage of Ferocious Inspiration or the like. The damage would have to be more of the slowly stacking / sustained variety, and that's harder to implement. (Technically, it's not hard to implement per se, but it's hard to get it feeling right without causing weird things to player behavior, the talent trees or causing other problems that lead to a two hour fix taking two weeks instead.)

Later in the same thread he clarified:

I meant micromanagement in terms of actually using the pet buttons instead of setting them all on autocast. I didn't mean micromanagement in the RTS sense. If you're just pointing out that pet behavior is unreliable because it's controlled by a dumb computer, then you're essentially agreeing with me that buffing pet damage is a risky thing to do.

[Saturo]

I'm going to have to agree with the crab on this one, he's telling the truth...

*Hides*

[Rhyela]

This is interesting to me because I like pet micro-management. In a very basic way, it makes it feel more RP to me because it's like I'm actually commanding my pet to do something, rather than just standing back while he madly flails away at whatever it is we're attacking.

I agree that BM could use a little bit of buffing, but I don't want it to be in such a way that it's suddenly grotesquely overpowered in PvP. It's like the never-ending effort in futility, balancing PvE and PvP. I don't think it will ever happen. But it would be nice if it was at least close.

[Adam-Savage]

Wow... GC actually has something intelligent to say for once about hunters. I'm shocked!

[Rikaku]

I don't think I could disagree more with Ghostcrawler in regards to the pet micromanagement. I mean...does he even understand the point of BM anymore?

I'm sorry, but keeping your pet alive in raids and boss fights, especially in heavy AoE, that is micromangement. There's no other way to look at that. If they didn't want Hunters to rely on pet attacks being auto-cast, then why did they overload our pets with so many abilities in the first place? Most BM hunters do have skills off auto-attack unless its Claw, Bite, or some other focus dump. The only way to even achieve top BM dps anymore is to have all your pet skills tied to BW when you trigger that. Why? Because Blizzard for some reason nerfed our strongest ability into 10 seconds. Everything has to be condensed into 10 seconds.

[rubybeam]

is this why he removed our beloved rino bowling so that we didn't have to depend on our pets anymore?? comon it's just knocking someone 10 yards back what harm will that do?? i want my rino bowling back now

[Saturo]

I think the bowling was removed because it was used in AB, AV and ganking to knock people off of cliffs, so they die and have to pay durability fees.

Shammies and Boomkin have this too, but hey, we're Hunters! Everybody loves when we get nerfed!

[Tahlian]

Having abilities that made hunter-pet teamwork more interactive would be nice...in all frank honesty, since they gave even hunter pets the 90% avoidance of AoE damage in PvE settings, it's not all that difficult to keep them alive in a raid anymore. Not that the sole challenge of a hunter's involvement in a fight should be the frantic spamming of Mend Pet to keep from losing 30% of your damage in 4 or 5 ticks from the boss. Instead of having to manually click, say, Bite and Monstrous Bite (using Clayburn as an example), I'd far prefer to have something like a proc off ranged crit that unlocked a different attack or two that I then "commanded" him to do...maybe a bleed debuff or something and a hard-hitting attack that might come into play not unlike Kill Shot. That way, it's not just "oh look, another two buttons in the rotation" but something you might have to pause your rotation for a moment or two to take advantage of.

And the reason BW was cut in half was that an arena team that had something like 2 BM hunters and a shaman on it steamrolled through a tournament by stacking those 18 second BW/TBW with Bloodlust/Heroism, making the team pretty much unstoppable for those 18 seconds and allowing them to hit like Mack trucks to boot. Believe me, I was less than thrilled by the duration nerf...but being able to use BW like a PvP trinket that doesn't take up an item slot has been very, very nice.

[Nimizar]

Something else they want to avoid though is Kill Command mark 1 where it just ended up getting macro'ed in with every shot so it would be used as soon as it proc'ed (not that KCv2 is much better). So if the pet triggers something, it needs to be on the GCD to stop the macros from happening.

Lock and Load works because you want to drop in 3x Explosive Shot instead of your normal rotation (with the added trick of waiting 2 seconds between shots to let both ticks go off).

I think redesigning Kill Command again could work, but putting it back on the GCD and buffing the damage to place it above Steady Shot, but below Arcane Shot. They can't do it right now without messing with BM burst in PvP, but they could sort the balancing out in Cataclysm (or the health changes in Cata may deal with it naturally).

[Awenina]

Well, to tell you the truth, I feel that the whole point of being a BM is to have the pet as the main weapon. Otherwise choose Marks or Survival. What is wrong with that?

And I also would like micromanagement of the pet, it would add to the whole experience.

We are classed as dps as everyone else is, but are we nurfed? not seen any type of hunter as the main dps in a raid so far.

[Tahlian]

If "the point of being BM" was to have 90% of the damage come from our pet, our pet would have to be as durable and do as much damage as any other hunter's bow. You can imagine the screaming, flailing, and crying there would be from the PvP'ers if our pets were that durable and tough and hit that hard. And I will not "just choose Marks or Survival," thank you. I do not like the way those two specs play. I am a Beast Master, and I am a damned good one. And BM hunters have just as much right to be viable and competitive in raids as the other two trees do. Don't believe me? Look at death knights. All three of their trees are perfectly welcome in raids as viable and competitive DPS specs. The sole reason hunters have not to date gotten the same treatment is that Blizzard, for whatever reason, is leery about having different "rules" and ability functions in PvE and PvP...which makes balancing certain things a nightmare for them. And before it gets brought up...no, I do *not* want BM to be "the" raid spec. I don't think it should matter which spec a hunter brings to a raid. I want all three specs to be competitive within the class, so that when my spirit beast and devilsaur-using brethren show up to what would otherwise be "less tolerant" raids, they don't get told, "LOL, GTFO."

And in the thread that these GC quotes come from, there have been several very intelligent and fun suggestions given for how to give BM back a little of its damage before Cataclysm, even working within what Ghostcrawler said they were looking at, which was something with a ramp-up time to make it far less attractive for PvP.

There's ideas out there for how to address the problem...the only question is - will Blizzard be able to do something prior to 4.0? It would certainly be nice if they could. If they don't, though, I hold high hopes for seeing all three hunter specs be as equally welcome in raids come Cataclysm as Frost, Blood, and Unholy death knights are now.

[Rikaku]

If "the point of being BM" was to have 90% of the damage come from our pet, our pet would have to be as durable and do as much damage as any other hunter's bow. You can imagine the screaming, flailing, and crying there would be from the PvP'ers if our pets were that durable and tough and hit that hard. And I will not "just choose Marks or Survival," thank you. I do not like the way those two specs play. I am a Beast Master, and I am a damned good one. And BM hunters have just as much right to be viable and competitive in raids as the other two trees do.
....
And before it gets brought up...no, I do *not* want BM to be "the" raid spec. I don't think it should matter which spec a hunter brings to a raid. I want all three specs to be competitive within the class, so that when my spirit beast and devilsaur-using brethren show up to what would otherwise be "less tolerant" raids, they don't get told, "LOL, GTFO."

And in the thread that these GC quotes come from, there have been several very intelligent and fun suggestions given for how to give BM back a little of its damage before Cataclysm, even working within what Ghostcrawler said they were looking at, which was something with a ramp-up time to make it far less attractive for PvP.

There's ideas out there for how to address the problem...the only question is - will Blizzard be able to do something prior to 4.0? It would certainly be nice if they could. If they don't, though, I hold high hopes for seeing all three hunter specs be as equally welcome in raids come Cataclysm as Frost, Blood, and Unholy death knights are now.

I don't think you could've summed up my feelings any better. Seriously, you saved me alot of typing lol. ^THIS

Furthermore, what burst is GC referring to that BM still has? I PvP with my BM, and I can assure you, there isn't a "burst". Unless you mean that BW button, but that hardly seems "burst" given BM's overall dps output.

What needs to be done right now is pet scaling. That needs to happen right this second. BM is in such a low dps point in comparison to it's sibling specs that it's absolutely ridiculous. Pet scaling is a step in the right direction, and it doesn't empower just the pet as much as it does the BM hunter as well. BM hunters moving from AP to AGI will cause a big difference too. I really don't want to wait til 4.0 for such a change to be implemented.

And, I'm gonna end by using Blizzard's own theory. If they suddenly want me to 'micromanage' my pet, say pressing the button for Claw and Spirit Strike and use it in my normal rotation; I will. But then BM will have such a seriously hard rotation, that our overall DPS better increase ("We want to reward harder playstyles"). And no, I am not in favor of BM being top dps spec, I'm just using Blizzard's logic here. @_@

[Duggrim]

i personally am getting tired of everyone comparing Bm to everyone else. i wish we could all just play what we want and not get discriminated against due to my class/spec choice. blizz should get off their but and stop listening to griefers due to pvp.\and the whole "well so and so can do this and it isn't fair...gimme that or nerf it. i swear sometimes people sound like spoiled little whiney brats. allthough i do undrstand rtop raiding guilds require a certain amount of dps and or abilities but would it be too hard to make each classes spec offer something different to a group/raid?in all honesty cataclysm will be my last exapnsion/hope for wow, they can either fix bm hunters or watch me ride off into the sunset and take my money elsewhere. we are hunters , hear us roar ok so hear my pet roar he's more pissed off than i am. that nerf bat hurts

[Adam-Savage]

They need to have a spec solely for PVP. They are totally idiots trying to balance both pve and pvp. It's like trying to make a station wagon be more like a racecar. Sure it may go fast to some degree but it's not meant to be a race car.

[Kalliope]

Furthermore, what burst is GC referring to that BM still has? I PvP with my BM, and I can assure you, there isn't a "burst". Unless you mean that BW button, but that hardly seems "burst" given BM's overall dps output.

What's your gear like in relation to the people you're fighting? At high gear levels, it's pretty damned brutal.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Burst. Burst? Really? You think we have burst? I am sorry, but I HAVE classes that can burst, and my BM isn't one of'em. Our 'burst' comes down to a ten second window wherein we personally deal 10% more damage and our pets, which on the overall don't deal in big numbers anyway, deal 50% more damage. Where our 'burst' comes into play is when it's combined with other classes abilities, in this case mainly heroism, coupled with BW and TBW's inability to be CC'd. So you get that full seconds of unhindered time to unload on some poor clothie, which can be made worse by popping EVERYTHING at once, including Kill Command and Rapid fire.

[Kalliope]

Where our 'burst' comes into play is when it's combined with other classes abilities, in this case mainly heroism, coupled with BW and TBW's inability to be CC'd.

And this is likely what's being balanced around, right or wrong.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

It is absolutely wrong. It got BW knocked in pretty much half, which destroyed short fights for hunters, and it even got enhancement nerfed. And that was even AFTER we'd been nerfed straight to oblivion. What's really ticking me off is that we are seeing changes to frost mages, to destruction and demonology warlocks, to DK's, to Sub rogues, and we Bm have gotten next to nothing. They keep talking about it, about what can be done, but they haven't done anything to actually alleviate the problem. If I had to wager, I'd say they are waiting until Cataclysm to make any big sweeping changes((Which is arguably what we need)), which means in the mean time that those of us who want to play the spec, have to settle with being at the bottom of barrel. But at least they seem to be brain storming. I kind of like the pet combo point idea.....

[Tahlian]

I knew better than to post in that thread on the official forums, I really did. But I did it anyway. >.<

Can someone explain to me how in the world suddenly turning beast mastery hunters into a tanking spec would make BM hunters more welcome in raids than they currently are? Seems to me most established raids are pretty well set for tanks as it is, and any new raid that had a hunter pet tanking would have to be pretty damned desperate to go.

The "making BM the tank spec! It'll fix everything!" crowd must not want even tolerant raids to allow BM hunters.

/sigh...the whole thing is just really starting to frustrate me.

[Sukurachi]

Wait a second, GhostCrawler .. isn't that the same guy who said that no one needs 10 character slots, because NO ONE plays that many characters on a single server? Isn't he the same person who heavily implied that only a level 80 toon was a "legitimate" toon?