Thoughts on the new BM spec

[Sukurachi]

OK, I've been playing my hunter, BM specced from the very beginning, and decided that I may as well try to learn the new paradigm.

And the very first thing that comes to mind now, after days of playing my BM specced hunters, is that Blizzard has really damaged the specialty of what it is to be a BM hunter.

My pets have died more times over the last week-end than over the last 10 years. I am not kidding. I am so obsessive about keeping my pet alive that usually when *I* die, my pet is still alive.

However, with the new state of pet healing, and the squishiness of our pets since the changes, it's become an almost hopeless cause to try and keep my pet alive. The only way I've managed is by pulling him from fights... which isn't exactly efficient.

And what does all this lead to?

Well, I've grown accustomed over the last few days to my pet dying... in other words, Blizzard has made my pet "expendable", a "resource" like any other, rather than a "companion in combat" who fights at my side.

I honestly think this is the very worst thing they could have done. It has robbed the class of that particular affinity that we could have with our hunter pets.

Why did I tame the rare spirit beast that I did? because I felt something for that beast, because there was a connection.
Don't suggest I switch to another spec, that is entirely pointless and useless as a suggestion.
I play BM because of the connection to my pets, and the particularly special pets I can tame.

So as far as I'm concerned, Blizz's developers screwed the pooch on our artifact weapon and its lore, and then they also screwed up with the redesign of BM hunters and their abilities. The lore makes our pets our constant companions. Not a disposable resource. THIS is a serious error on their part.

By the way, already a couple of guild members have left the game because of the way Blizz screwed up their classes. When the pleasure is gone, there's no interest in playing anymore.

[Sukurachi]

I'd add as well that the Dire Beast you call up just zooms in to attack, you don't get a real chance to see it, or even know if the spell worked or not. It just adds to the "disposability" problem.

[Rhyela]

I'm just hoping that they fix pets' squishiness. Like you mentioned in another post, I've noticed that my pets die pretty quickly in the invasions. Against a single-target mob in PvE, they do just fine, but if there's any kind of AoE going on, they're toast. I know they shouldn't be indestructible because that'd be unfair in PvP, but at the same time, I hate when PvE is balanced around PvP. If pet health is a concern in PvP, then perhaps they could do reverse scaling (instead of leveling or tuning the players and pets up, just tune the pets down). I dunno, but they are pretty flimsy at the moment and that worries me in raids, especially for BM since such a huge part of their damage comes from the pet. If Fluffy hits the dirt in the first 10 seconds of a two-minute fight, okay Heart of the Phoenix is great but you only get it once. Sure, you can keep spamming Revive Pet, but that's time wasted since you're not pew-pewing the boss. I dunno, I suppose I'm not too torn up when changes or tweaks are small, but they went from beefy in WoD to crumpled bags in Legion.

[Nachtwulf]

I actually haven't felt that my pet is particularly smooshy but then I'm really consistent about keeping them in Tenacity. Also, invasions, like other people have mentioned, are a bad ruler to judge your results by. You see, the mobs (especially the big final boss guy) scale in hp and damage output with however many people are hitting him. Since everyone is farming charity gear now, there are a RIDICULOUS number of people on that boss at any given time. I cannot TELL you how many times my actual characters with actual armor have died from being one shot just by the AOE they put out. The fact that your pet vaporizes honestly doesn't surprise me.

I do think they wanted to make things slightly less EZ mode for soloing so they slightly nerfed the durability of pets in Tenac and greatly nerfed them in the non-tank specs, but we knew that. Still, it's easy to change so that doesn't honestly bother me. And I also think that the lack of being actually-in-a-raid when fighting the invasions means your pet blows up super easy on the big bosses because of scaling and a lack of raid mechanics.

I don't, however, know if their resistance to raid mechanics remains in actual real raiding since I haven't touched anything that wasn't ancient farming content since the patch. Maybe I'll run a LFR and see.

[Sukurachi]

While Blizzard seems hellbent on tuning classes for PvP and for raiding, it's important to remember that World of Warcraft is, first and foremost, an RPG game. It is not a MOBA.

If they make changes that destroy the RPG element then they fail miserably.

There are MANY people who have been playing WoW since the beginning who love it for the time invested into their characters, for the quest lines, for the lore, for the escape into another world.

[Tsiya]

Agreed. I used to have 2 runes devoted to improving mend pet, and there is nothing to replace them. I'm having to hit mend on cooldown from the start of the fight even using a tenacity exotic with a defensive skill. Poor Chip the shale spider has been biting the dust way too much lately even outside of invasions.

[Mozag]

I wasn't actually too irritated by the squishiness and the lack of tanking abilities of my pets until recently. I was quite shocked, I admit, when I took out my tenacity specced pet and realised that if I pulled more than 3 mobs in Tanaan, the pet would likely die, or I'd at least spend as much time as possible healing him. I was more bothered by how the pet doesn't AoE tank. Mobs are hitting me constantly now, and I have to manually send my pet on each one to try and establish aggro, and even that isn't enough sometimes. I understand this happening in Survival or MM, but BM? I thought our pets were supposed to be strong, powerful and doing more damage than me? Well anyway, I got over it and got used to pulling less and accepting that this is how it's going to be. Until...I started playing my Affliction warlock. Now, she's only in Northrend at the moment, but her voidie takes virtually no damage - as in I can easily have him tanking 7-8 mobs at a time without worrying too much or using a single heal, and to add salt on my hunters' wounds, the voidie AoE tanks without any issues. I don't get hit by mobs, ever. Every mob in the vicinity is on my voidie - why are their tanks capable of this, but my hunter pets aren't? It's really pissing me off...

[Teigan]

I agree. Pets are not toilet paper and shouldn't be treated as such. Though really, toliet paper probably hold up better than our poor pets now. I've always been the type of hunter that will (foolishly probably) sacrifice myself to keep my pet from dying. I know, it's silly. But that's just how I (used to) play. But as much as they die now, it doesn't really work out too well. I hate that they made them so expendable.
I can't rely on tank pets (or any pets) to stay alive, and they can't rely on me to heal them.

[Nachtwulf]

Maybe they're -expecting- you to MD to your pet? I do out of habit, so I haven't noticed any issues... my problem mostly stems from the change to Assist which appears to no longer contain the functionality of Defensive. It used to be where if something ran up and took a bite out of you while you were paying attention to something else, your pet would notice and taunt it off of you.

This no longer happens. In fact, a pet seems not to even bother to defend itself if a mob runs up and you're not attacking it. It just stands there blithely unaware until you actually shoot at whatever is causing the trouble, even if the mob is biting the pet! And again, if you get aggro from an additional mob while your pet is otherwise engaged, it will completely ignore the new add until you MD it onto it.

[Vephriel]

I'm finally getting around to playing now and I have to say, I'm really missing our pet's survivability. I'm also REALLY feeling the loss of Spirit Bond. Ugh. It's nice having an actual heal finally but man do I miss the passive regen.

I was looking forward to some of the dire beast glyphs, but honestly I haven't even had a glimpse of the dire beasts I summon yet. Granted, all I've been doing are invasions which are busy and crowded, but I still don't find dire beast very...noticeable.

I also really miss kill shot.

On the plus side, the rotation feels alright for me, at least I'm adjusting to it more fluidly than I expected, and it doesn't feel terrible. And the resource management seems good. I really would like something to be done about our pets though, BM tanking and soloing and survivability has always been one of the big draws of the class/spec for me.

[Tankperson]

I've tired very very hard to play all three spec's. Suv I do alright as but I miss having a bow on my hunter so I've been trying out MM and BM. LIke another has posted med pet is constantly being hit right off the bat I'm only pulling two mobs at max at a time and it's really slowed down stuff when I'm farming. the rotation I like I enjoy that part of it but I really do miss spirit bond and Glyph of MD that glyph alone is a life saver when you get aggro on you. I am currently looking at holding off on my hunter for a bit and choosing between a pally or a lock to main which hurts as I have mained my hunter since the end of BC there are only three reps that aren't exalted (other can't get there), I have so much gear unlocked so many good fond memories of the toon though it's many incarnations.

[Makoes]

When mend pet is a priority on CD part of my rotation, I know there's a problem. Considering our pets are a big part of our spec and damage, this is not good. Pretty much found that my pet needs to be in tank spec to survive most multimob pulls. Of course then my dps suffers but it also suffers when my pet dies and when I need to cast revive.

As for the rest of the spec, rotation is ok though I really miss kill shot. Volley is, I missed it. But I find it randomly toggles off so I have to keep making sure it is still active.
Stampede change is absolutely terrible. I ended up making a /s macro to announce stampede and ask for (%t) to be kept in the path...

[Tankperson]

As for the rest of the spec, rotation is ok though I really miss kill shot. Volley is, I missed it. But I find it randomly toggles off so I have to keep making sure it is still active.
Stampede change is absolutely terrible. I ended up making a /s macro to announce stampede and ask for (%t) to be kept in the path...

That change to Stampede is the reason why I take Murder of Crows I don't have to worry about the mob moving on it. I don't use Volley either it's neat but it's not the Volley I remember.

[zedxrgal]

Recently, like day before yesterday, I was asked to change to BM in a raid after a wipe to help down the boss. I thought it odd because as SV I was top five in dps.
I did as requested.
And ugh.
The BOREDOM (to me)! I sat there numbly hitting my three or four buttons in my rotation wondering why I was asked to change. I understand Archimonde can be a tough one but not sure an under powered class is truly helpful. I did not have a exotic nor SB with me since I haven't touched BM in forever. My trusty croc Gorebite would have to do. We downed him. However I sank down to 11th in the dps.

Stampeded just sucks. Has to be the worst talent regardless of the supposed dps boost it's supposed to provide. On high movement boss fights it's completely useless. Even in invasions I have seen many a frustrated hunters because the end stage bosses do no sit still.

Pet healing is just not there. I've started carrying a lot of food to help offset what mend pet should be doing.

At this point I don't see me returning to BM unless major changes are made or the artifact make it amazing I'll be staying SV.

[Nachtwulf]

I love the feel of SV, although the pain of being melee and not a plate wearer is also making itself very known to me. (I don't wanna talk about how many times I croak to random aoe on those invasion bosses...)

But according to IV, Surv also has the lowest numbers, so that's probably why you were asked to switch. I know it underperforms on dummies but that doesn't honestly say too much about how it functions on live. I wish they'd give SV a dps boost, because it's currently the most complex/skill-requiring spec we have and yet even with proper application, is way undertuned.

[zedxrgal]

I see what you're saying Nacht. I just really haven't encountered (so far) a bm hunter being top in the charts. Not saying it's not possible, not even remotely. Just so far I've not seen it. In raids /PuG's lot of hunters complaining about submitting tickets about BM and it's not fixed.
I am by no means LEET when it comes playing a hunter. So a BM hunter in end game gear with all the bells and whistles would probably wipe the floor with me.

I just. Yeah. BM for me feels almost like a lost cause. I'm not expecting patches or fixes to come. Least not till well after Legion launch which really really sucks. But it is what it is. I either suck it up and play BM and deal with it or just play a different spec /class.

[Nachtwulf]

Honestly, all the hunter specs are pretty broken right now. Marks is slow and boring, BM has similar issues, SV is fun but limp in the output category. I SUSPECT they're gonna wait until they see people well into their artifacts before they touch anything though. That's my biggest argument against the damn things tbh... they're so integral to everything that they had to build the entire classes' function around them which means for 100 levels of the game, your everything is borked.

[Teigan]

Maybe it's just Blizzards way of selling more character boosts.

[Rhyela]

I tried BM tonight and it's very...meh. It's not as god-awful as I feared, but it's certainly not what I consider fun. I feel like there's no real rhyme or reason to what I'm pressing or when. Obviously, Cobra Shot is a focus dump and Kill Command probably takes priority over that. Other than that? I dunno, it just seems pretty dull. And I don't like that you have to sheathe your weapon to use some of the abilities, because then you have to go through the animation of pulling it back out to do another auto-shot. I think that's one of the things that bugs me more than anything. Put the weapon away mid-combat, take it back out. Yell about something, put the weapon away, then take it back out again. It's just weird, and it breaks the immersion for me. And there does seem to be a lot of waiting between button presses. VERY different from SV where I'm always pressing something, doing something, winging traps everywhere.....but unfortunately SV's damage output blows right now.

Granted, adding Chimera Shot helped fill in some of those slow periods, but I feel like that's a problem in itself. I've heard a lot of people say that Chimera Shot should be baseline, and I'm now adding my voice to theirs. The rotation feels limp and incomplete without it (well, more so). I would really like to take Dire Frenzy so that I don't have random animals flying out of the Nether for a few seconds, but Chimera Shot just feels so necessary. I mean, BM isn't bad (to me), it just isn't fun either. It's like the white bread in the grocery store. It suffices, but it's certainly not cinnamon swirl bread.

All that said, however, it is nice seeing this big guy again. (And he must be good luck because I finally got my Pocket Fel Spreader while using him!)



But, at the end of the day, I think I'll stick with SV despite its cruddy numbers. I'm one of those people that prefers fun over numbers, regardless of the spec. Sadly, BM used to be the most fun to me, but now it just isn't.

[Wain]

Agreed. I think it's not awful, just like it's had the life sucked out of it. I think they cannibalized their own classes to make a space for artifacts because the class designers responsible simply couldn't do any better. And they really should have done better or simply left it as it was, but I doubt the management plan for Legion left them much choice. I'm not saying all classes/specs are in this position but I think Hunters definitely are. And if I pretended any differently simply because I now run a fan site or have connexions in the company (who I think are amazing people and not responsible for this insane redesign) then I'd be dishonest and self-interested. I'm not going to pretend to manic levels of hype simply to hope my back is scratched in return. There are many great things in Legion, but I think the class-wide redesign, which is sadly part of the core of Legion but hopefully they'll eventually fix, is contrary to those things. Hopefully people will love the expansion regardless, as there are many awesome things in it.