Losing the love of BM?...

[Myrrmi]

I think it may be the matter of the armor-scaling bug, that make our pets extra squishy atm. It's easy to kill the pet and make the BM 40% less effective.

Previously I was really happy if I encountered someone stupid enough to atack Otso, my spiritbear, instead of me. Even as a ferocity he was like a self-healing tank, and if he had any troubles, I would just throw him a petheal every now and then. 15k hps in addition to his passive self healing from damage done - try to outdps that, mr. hordie, thank you very much.
Now to keep that rate of petheal I need to use all 3 of my major glyph slots, and I'm still 1 glyph slot short. And what about other glyphs I'd like to use, to enchance my pvp performance?

Also pet survivability droped, and it droped harsh. Yesterday I did my usual weekly MC run, with Otso as a tenacity. Except of his improved aoe-threat skills it was much the same as the run before the patch, when he was ferocity. I didn't have to heal him, only after the bosses to trigger the cleanse, but still I fear to think about the damage he'd be taking if I didn't respec him.

Oh, and one last funny thing: the silithid tank KoS is what I've experienced long before the patch. Nobody minded a shining blue bear or a shining blue crab nibbling at them, but the moment they saw a huge oh-so-easily-clickable silithid colosus... /eyeroll.

[Equeon]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I loved my Krilte, the silithid colossus... people would always attack him in PvP, and I would just throw a mend pet up. He was basically an invincible tank that distracted the enemy from noticing, oh, the hunter shooting them in the face.
I'm not so sure how well that strategy will work after the squishy pet nerf.

[Sar]

Is the armor scaling a bug, or intended?

I hope it's a bug.... 0_O

[Hilde]

I love it more than before now. I've never played anything else than BM( I only got my hunter up some months ago because I was bored, so no raiding or whatever) and I likve having beast cleave and feeling like my multi shot matters more now(not having serpent spread). And I have more cd's now, like murder of crows. Also, spirit beast blessing

[Shadow]

Honestly... I'm kinda like the player you said you hate. xD I play the "best" Hunter spec at whatever point in time. I was a BM hunter in BC (was never geared enough to go SV), I swapped between MM and SV this expansion... And I only bring a buff pet if we need it. Generally, my groups are so casual they don't care what pet I bring, so I just bring one of my beloved cats. But for progression or pushing, I always go track down, tame, and raid with whatever pet is needed :3

>.> I just like to look at my own damage meters, really.

[Meggers]

IDGI, why would swapping to the better DPS spec be a bad thing if a guild is working on progression? :/

[Lisaara]

IDGI, why would swapping to the better DPS spec be a bad thing if a guild is working on progression? :/

Because there usually is no real 'best spec'. It's just what people think it is and just cause it's considered the best spec doesn't mean people can perform it properly. I'm in a progression guild and most of our hunters are BM and they pull more than SV and MM hunters usually(before MoP changes, mind you. We're almost 6/8 heroic DS)

[Myrrmi]

@Jessi
Exactly
The fact that a spec performs better in simulation and calculators doesn't mean that it will boost the dps of a player that's unfamiliar with it. Sometimes it's better to just stick to your fav spec and master it to it's limits.

Been BM since I started playing (4.2, so nothing to brag about ) and after learning what that wow is all about and gearing up I never had troubles with my performance
Sure, I've never aimed for any top-tier or realm-firsts or whatnots. Maybe there, where everyone is playing their classes to their limits, the simulator performance of the specs matters. But for the other 99% of the players? I don't think so.

[Lisaara]

@Jessi
Exactly
The fact that a spec performs better in simulation and calculators doesn't mean that it will boost the dps of a player that's unfamiliar with it. Sometimes it's better to just stick to your fav spec and master it to it's limits.

Been BM since I started playing (4.2, so nothing to brag about ) and after learning what that wow is all about and gearing up I never had troubles with my performance
Sure, I've never aimed for any top-tier or realm-firsts or whatnots. Maybe there, where everyone is playing their classes to their limits, the simulator performance of the specs matters. But for the other 99% of the players? I don't think so.

I played a kitty druid back in wrath. Can you imagine how many people bitched and laughed at me? Lots. But I proved their butts wrong. I worked hard and became the one in the top 5 DPS. My (current) RL? That's how a met her. she was BM back then. She also was in the top 5, usually above me. BM back then was laughable. But again she proved them wrong.

[Meggers]

Sometimes specs can push out more for people than what it was that they had, being able to suck it up and at least try it out to see if they can perform better that way shouldn't be laughed at.

[Lisaara]

Thing is Meggers....most dont do it to try it. They do it cause people tell them to. They do it cause a website told them to.

[Akycha]

To a certain extent no best spec is true; however, their are worse specs. Yes, I pulled my weight as dps in wrath being BM, but I could feel how crippled I was dps wise. If I had switched to MM or SV, there would of been a noticeable hike in my dps despite my skill at BM. The difference was that great back then, fortunately my guild was fine with me running BM because my skill was good enough that I was middle/high end of the dps. In Cata, I could trounce the average MM or SV spec'd hunter. The specs were balanced much better in cata such that skill could more than make up the slight differences.

That being said, I don't begrudge people switching spec's to what they view as the better specs. If nothing else, it gets them to experience the variety of specs. Besides there is plenty of room out there for more BM hunters!

[Meggers]

Thing is Meggers....most dont do it to try it. They do it cause people tell them to. They do it cause a website told them to.

I do the same thing, and if it doesn't work out for me i swap back. If I see a site piping about how this spec is supposed to eb better, or people...I try it out. I just don't see the issue overall.

[Tahlian]

For me? The issue is that if I swap out of BM, I don't have fun. And if I'm not having fun...why am I playing at all? So I've made damn certain that I've spent my 7 or 8 years of WoW being the best beast master I can be, to prove the ones parroting that BM sucks are wrong.

I have one lone Survival specced hunter...I finally have gotten him to 80. But playing him is a lot less fun than playing on any of my BM hunters.

[Lisaara]

Thing is Meggers....most dont do it to try it. They do it cause people tell them to. They do it cause a website told them to.

I do the same thing, and if it doesn't work out for me i swap back. If I see a site piping about how this spec is supposed to eb better, or people...I try it out. I just don't see the issue overall.

But that's not really trying it out on your own. You're just using it cause some site said "This one is best for DPS Hardcore!" rather than "Hey this spec looks interesting and fun".

I've met many hunters who played MM or SV in cata and HATED it but they only kept playing it cause it was 'the best spec' or their guild forced them to.

[Sesamee]

I have to disagree that there is no "best spec". There can be a spec that both sims and performs better than the others. Hands down it was Survival for Dragon Soul both because mathematically it just performed better and the mechanics of DS favored it.

Yes, a skilled player can usually do better than most even in a poor performing spec but in the more hardcore raiding guilds where a few dps % points matter you will see most people choose the better spec. For the same reason most progression raiders don't have gathering specs...a small amount of dps added up over the entire raid can make the difference between a wipe and a kill.

The rankings shown below clearly show that there is a best spec for a class. Sure, some of the difference in the performance of the specs can be attributed to the better players favoring one class but they do so because mathematically it is better.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Score/2 ... 0/default/

[Lisaara]

Only issue I've got with graphs and such like that is the same reason I don't like people showing rankings. Less people play BM, therefore less data on it and most BM hunters I have run into kick the tail off of any MM or SV hunter. But meh....I've said my piece on it. I'm in a progression raiding guild myself and any BM hunter we've had is always in the top 5 dps. DPS is never a problem with us. Just a matter of overcoming mechanics.

[Sesamee]

Fewer top raiders played BM in DS because it was inferior. Mechanics are a huge part of how a spec performs. A BM hunter out performing MM or esp SV in DS means the MM and SV hunters were bad. It's that simple.

[Kalliope]

There are loads more BM hunters in battlegrounds these days. I don't like graphics like that because they're PvE biased.

[Sesamee]

Well it's a graph of DS performance across specs so it's clearly pve oriented which is what the conversation was about. I've always loved and played BM for PVP even though for the entire time I've been playing WoW it has been terrible for PVE.