Preach on Current BM Hunter Gameplay

[Equeon]

I don't normally watch Preach's videos, but I found this one to be pretty useful in portraying his (admittedly biased) view of the Legion update for the Beastmaster spec.

Check it out here.
(Warning, some NSFW language)

He doesn't go too in-depth regarding the artifact talent tree, but you do get a good overview of how the new spec works.

What do you all think?


Personally, I find that Preach just echoes what many of us have been saying since the beta began. They took what little complexity the spec had and removed it entirely. Now it will be the laughingstock of Legion just as the "three-button Arms" was for much of WoD.

At the very least, I would like some more viable talents that add new abilities in the rotation, so it won't seem so dull. That way any players who prefer the simplicity, as well as those who would prefer a slightly more advanced playstyle, could all be somewhat satisfied.

[Bendak]

The spec is missing something... something I believe Blizzard originally intended for it, but it never made it in for whatever reason.

Go back to the original class blog from November:

Previously, Cobra Shot filled all of your free moments in combat, leaving no time for managing your pet, which should be a defining characteristic of Beast Masters.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/199112 ... -11-8-2015

What happened to this? It made sense... we no longer have to worry about utilizing every GCD to maximize the spec (button mashing), but now we have to do something with our pet instead. I think a lot of people associate pet management with moving the pet around physically, but it could have been something like Focus Fire or some other buff we had to manage. Who knows? Then again, it could have just been a misleading blog because whoever wrote it considered Dire Beast to be pet management.

For me it mostly comes down to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think BM on live is in a pretty good place -- it took two solid expansions to get it to this state -- so I do not understand starting from scratch in Legion. The whole Class Fantasy™ thing could have been achieved via Titanstrike/Hati and maybe some new talents. There's really no reason to change the core of the spec.

But it is what it is. Blizzard hasn't changed much mechanically even after overwhelming feedback, so I think they are sticking with it. After leveling with it a couple of times, it's honestly not as bad as some make it out to be. It has a lot of mediocre talents, and perhaps it is a little simple, but I didn't hate myself while playing it. I just think it sucks we're going to have to wait another expansion for it to get polished to the same level as it already was.

The best thing to come out of new BM for me is the dual wielding pets (especially with Essence Swapper). I just think it's damn cool to have two pets and I've always wanted it. Gameplay wise it needs some work.

[Wain]

What happened to this? It made sense... we no longer have to worry about utilizing every GCD to maximize the spec (button mashing), but now we have to do something with our pet instead. I think a lot of people associate pet management with moving the pet around physically, but it could have been something like Focus Fire or some other buff we had to manage. Who knows? Then again, it could have just been a misleading blog because whoever wrote it considered Dire Beast to be pet management.

This is interesting, but I suspect your latter suspicion may be correct - that whoever wrote the blog had this nebulous idea that we had plenty to do with our pets already, if only we were given the time to do it.

For me it mostly comes down to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think BM on live is in a pretty good place -- it took two solid expansions to get it to this state -- so I do not understand starting from scratch in Legion. The whole Class Fantasy™ thing could have been achieved via Titanstrike/Hati and maybe some new talents. There's really no reason to change the core of the spec.

Agree completely, and it seems to be the sentiment of a lot of posters on the Beta forum. But I wonder if they felt compelled to do something, that it would look bad for them if they didn't touch it, that people would complain that it was neglected, so they decided the risk of being accused of spec neglect was greater than the risk of screwing up a spec that worked. Cynical, I know, but it's the way a lot of business management (in all kinds of businesses) runs. It may be unfair to them and they may not have thought that way at all, but it's entirely plausible because it happens in business all the time. I've seen it in meetings plenty.

After leveling with it a couple of times, it's honestly not as bad as some make it out to be. It has a lot of mediocre talents, and perhaps it is a little simple, but I didn't hate myself while playing it. I just think it sucks we're going to have to wait another expansion for it to get polished to the same level as it already was.

Same, I don't find it awful or painful. It's just... a bit like bran flakes for breakfast every day. If they changed our class colour, it should be beige

The best thing to come out of new BM for me is the dual wielding pets (especially with Essence Swapper). I just think it's damn cool to have two pets and I've always wanted it. Gameplay wise it needs some work.

The Essence Swapper has been fun, but I find I'm still constantly pulling my hair out because Hati isn't behaving himself. I feign, my pet feigns (or is dead) and Hati just goes on chasing stuff, and bringing it back for it to AoE on top of my feigning corpse. I spend a lot of frustrating time wishing him dead. Literally, wishing he would hurry up and die so I can get up again.

[Bendak]

The Essence Swapper has been fun, but I find I'm still constantly pulling my hair out because Hati isn't behaving himself.

Yeah, may be worth putting in some suggestions that the new Play Dead ability also works on Hati. I'd also like to see Revive Pet work on Hati. I see no reason why it shouldn't, even in PvP. The 2 min cooldown is especially annoying because you don't have a unit frame for Hati to watch, though I suspect someone will make an addon for that (or existing unit frame addons will support showing Hati for Hunters).

[Wain]

The Essence Swapper has been fun, but I find I'm still constantly pulling my hair out because Hati isn't behaving himself.

Yeah, may be worth putting in some suggestions that the new Play Dead ability also works on Hati..

Yeah, I posted that exact request in the Legion BM thread some time ago. Maybe a month. No change yet :/

[SpiritBinder]

I see no reason why it shouldn't, even in PvP. The 2 min cooldown is especially annoying because you don't have a unit frame for Hati to watch, though I suspect someone will make an addon for that (or existing unit frame addons will support showing Hati for Hunters).

This!

Is there any other artifact that has this kind of penalty to your DPS?? The fact that ones artifact bonus DPS can literally be disabled for 2 minutes, it's quite absurd. Just have revive pet revive any pet that is dead. It still costs you time and focus to use, thats enough of a penalty in PVP as it is, just mind boggling.

Yeah, I posted that exact request in the Legion BM thread some time ago. Maybe a month. No change yet :/

I've seen so many people post about this too, patch after patch, and a plethora of interesting ways to work around/fix it. But yeah, nothing has been mentioned regarding it, so who knows ???

[Wain]

Play Dead is quite buggy right now. It's not too uncommon to use it and be unable to wake your pet up again until the buff wears off (~ 6 min). So maybe they'll see to the Hati thing at the same time as they fix that.

[Albain]

I have found putting my fishing pole and titanstrike on my hotbar and equipping my fishing pole when I feign death (it's stupid ok) neatly gets rid of Hatii too. It's not the best but it can probably be macro'd somehow to make it a little easier.

I find Preach's video depressing. Hunters have been making suggestions and providing detailed feedback since it came out and the ONLY things Blizzard has adjusted are cosmetic effects, and Dire Frenzy as an alternative to Direbeast. No gameplay changes at all otherwise. Nothing. It's the exact same thing, with minor damage tweaks here and there, that they released when BM first went live. It has felt for a long time that hunters are an afterthought for Blizzard, and this ... kind of proves it. We don't even get feedback from Blizzard as to WHY nothing's changed. It's like we're invisible, or our commentary isn't being noticed.

[Xota]

If Hati's summon was an on-use, instead of on-equip, the player would be able to summon and dismiss, as a manual override for all the things that aren't thought of for Hati's AI. Not just feigning death, but any pathing or fight mechanics problems, or anything else as of yet undiscovered. Instead of hoping for there to a be a separate fix for every little problem with Hati, there'd be a built-in workaround in place of hating Hati while waiting for fixes that may never come.

[Bendak]

If Hati's summon was an on-use, instead of on-equip, the player would be able to summon and dismiss, as a manual override for all the things that aren't thought of for Hati's AI. Not just feigning death, but any pathing or fight mechanics problems, or anything else as of yet undiscovered. Instead of hoping for there to a be a separate fix for every little problem with Hati, there'd be a built-in workaround in place of hating Hati while waiting for fixes that may never come.

Well, Hati is already summoned/dismissed with your main pet, which I think solves most of that. If one pet is going to have some kind of pathing problem/jumping off a ledge/etc. then both would I think.

[13thmaiden]

The most annoying part of it all is it feels alot like they just said 'HEY! Um, yeah we gave all the good stuff to the other classes....so um...HERE HAVE ANOTHER SPARKLY PET!' *throws and expects us to fetch*

We've wanted dual pets for awhile, but not at the cost of the whole playstyle of the class. As Wain said, we've become beige.

WE ARE THE BEIGE LEGION!!!!!

I like Hati, but he feels so buggy, and they haven't smashed them all out yet. And for their answer to making us 'different' they made us throw more animals at problems.

What do I look like Flintlocke?? I've shot chipmunks and squirrels out of my gun sure, but I don't think throwing animals at everything works. It definitely makes us horribly bland and almost one-key wonders. It just feels so.....like they went to scratch and stopped half way saying 'furk it'....it was just weird.

And that they won't listen to us makes it all the more disheartening, since alot of BMs have given great ideas to fix bugs and make us more 'distinct' like Marks and Surv.

Welcome to the beige legion my friends.

(I feel sorry for Shem, he seems to really be trying to help us out but everyone else in that group is all just 'Meh, whatevers.' ))

[Xota]

If Hati's summon was an on-use, instead of on-equip, the player would be able to summon and dismiss, as a manual override for all the things that aren't thought of for Hati's AI. Not just feigning death, but any pathing or fight mechanics problems, or anything else as of yet undiscovered. Instead of hoping for there to a be a separate fix for every little problem with Hati, there'd be a built-in workaround in place of hating Hati while waiting for fixes that may never come.

Well, Hati is already summoned/dismissed with your main pet, which I think solves most of that. If one pet is going to have some kind of pathing problem/jumping off a ledge/etc. then both would I think.

A chaining attack mechanic could be a problem too. Does Hati blinkstrike? Does Hati prowl? Does Hati follow your real pet when you give a "goto" command? Sometimes you'd want that. Sometimes you wouldn't. Pets moving from front (tanking) to back (dps) of a mob could get hung up on stuff differently. And like I said, "anything else as of yet undiscovered". Plus screenshots, not everyone wants a third wheel following them everywhere, not everyone has wanted dual pets for any length of time. An on-use to summon/dismiss Hati wouldn't inconvenience anyone. A manual override would do better than just fix "most" of that.

[Bendak]

If it were up to me, Hati would have a unit frame, his own pet bar (for attack/follow/go to and stances), the whole nine yards... but I'm not sure what we're going to get at this point. I'm not against more buttons, I'm just looking at it from Blizzard's perspective and the direction they seem to be taking this game.

[Sukurachi]

since we're getting so fewer abilities (ie: clearing out our action bars), I see no problem with adding some to control the 2nd pet.

At least it will give us something more to do than yell and press the same 2 buttons over and over.

[Tirelth]

I don't even hate Hati. I hate that I feel like I'm sitting around for six seconds after pushing a couple of buttons, and I hate feeling like I have to eschew Dire Beast (the idea of which I rather liked) in order to have competitive dps. I don't even concern myself over being "3-Button Arms" if I actually felt like those three buttons did anything meaningful. But with about 70-80% of my damage being put out by my pets, I feel like they gave us a couple of buttons to push every now and then just so we'd feel like our character wasn't actually the pet. Right now, I feel like Hati and Howlback are co-owners of a slightly deranged little Pandaren. >.>;

[13thmaiden]

I could go with a summon/dismiss for Hati, I would prefer the choice of him having his own pet bar and all, but yeah, a summon/dismiss would be best at this point.

[Wain]

If they gave us back more pet-sourced abilities maybe we'd have more to do.

Have they actually made any comments on re-doing pet powers? Mana Sabers don't even have an exotic one yet. I was presuming they were going to add something at the same time that they revisited all pet powers, but time is running short now, and they reckon they're pretty much done with class powers. I'm really curious if they've said anything about this, because I've seen nothing.

[SpiritBinder]

I know it's never going to happen, but even a second resource of some sort would make the WORLD of difference. Nothing particularly complicated, but maybe something like focus fire but with a little more thought/choice attached.

• Savagery - Every time your Kill command crits you gain a charge of savagery to a maximum of 3. Number of charges used amplifies the damage done by associated abilities.
  
  Thirst for Blood - Your pet attacks its target, doing 30% extra damage on targets below 20%
  Fierce Shot - You shoot a harsh shot into the target cause it to bleed for the next 15 seconds

Technically it would give you two more abilities, but you could then choose which one to use, making an actual gameplay decision.

[13thmaiden]

I know it's never going to happen, but even a second resource of some sort would make the WORLD of difference. Nothing particularly complicated, but maybe something like focus fire but with a little more thought/choice attached.

• Savagery - Every time your Kill command crits you gain a charge of savagery to a maximum of 3. Number of charges used amplifies the damage done by associated abilities.
  
  Thirst for Blood - Your pet attacks its target, doing 30% extra damage on targets below 20%
  Fierce Shot - You shoot a harsh shot into the target cause it to bleed for the next 15 seconds

Technically it would give you two more abilities, but you could then choose which one to use, making an actual gameplay decision.

Ohhh I like that. Though again, we've offered tons of ideas and no-one's done crap. *sigh* as I said before, welcome to the beige legion.

[Bendak]

If they gave us back more pet-sourced abilities maybe we'd have more to do.

Have they actually made any comments on re-doing pet powers? Mana Sabers don't even have an exotic one yet. I was presuming they were going to add something at the same time that they revisited all pet powers, but time is running short now, and they reckon they're pretty much done with class powers. I'm really curious if they've said anything about this, because I've seen nothing.

Yeah, they really need to do something about pet abilities. It's so inconsistent right now. I hope it's on their list. You have stuff like a turtle with a powerful ability then something like a wolf with absolutely nothing. Either give all pets something, or take it away from non-exotic pets and only make it so exotics have something. I'd hope the former or else you're kinda shoehorned into exotics as BM. For mana sabers, it probably would have been easier for them to just make those spirit beasts or cats since there's only, what, 2 tameable colors right now?