I think I have an idea...

[Tahlian]

...but I'm not about to throw it to the shark tank that is the official forums without giving it a good vet-out first. The thread referenced in our Game News forum was started with the intent of requesting that the beast mastery spec be given some sort of damage fix so that it wasn't lagging quite so far behind the other two, at least until Cataclysm when the whole class gets an overhaul. Several valid points were brought up, both by players and by blues.

I had an idea today that might be the fix the beast masters need...a sort of bandaid, if you will. There's already a mechanic in place in the game for it; the question is, can it be tweaked for hunters?

There's a talent in the priest shadow tree called Shadow Weaving. It's a 3 point talent. When maxed out, the priest's shadow damage spells have a 99% chance to apply a buff to the priest called Shadow Weaving. The buff stacks up to 5 times and lasts 14 seconds, no matter how many stacks are up. When fully stacked and active, Shadow Weaving increases the priest's spell damage by 6%.

Could this talent be baked into one of the deep BM talents to help us out with dps? Say, make it stack off of Steady Shot and be refreshed by same, and make the damage increase only apply to the hunter's damage, not his pet's. When I play my priest, I will spam Mind Flay to get the 5 stacks up, then go into my normal spell rotation to get the benefit of the extra damage. So a hunter doing the same thing to get the buff up (call it Wild Fury or something like that since we're talking hunters here) wouldn't be too bad, and the Steady Shot in our normal rotation should keep the buff going through the fight. And a hunter just constant-spamming Steady Shot throughout the fight isn't going to do terribly good damage anyway. They'll have to go back to the normal shot rotation to get the most benefit of the buff on them.

Given how mobile PvP is, I don't think doing this would make BM hunters too powerful there and it's definitely not bursty...it has ramp-up time, which is one of the things the blues said they wanted. And 6% more damage wouldn't put us neck-and-neck with the other two specs...but it would sure help. And because the mechanics for the buff are already in the game, chances are good the bugginess of integrating it would be minimal.

Thoughts? Improvements?

[Kalliope]

I think it would depend very heavily on how fast the stacks could build with, say, rapid fire and heroism/bloodlust. Of course, you could always charge it up before that....hrm.

I think this idea has real merit.

[Ryno]

Sounds like it could work. Linking it to steady shot would certainly be a good idea.

[Sarayana]

I think it's a great idea! Linking it with steady, as you said, is a great way to limit it's benefit in pvp, which should satisfy the nay-sayers.

If you post it on the forums, could you link the post here?

[Saturo]

That sounds very nice. I like this idea. Might finally allow me to bring back Snarls, my devilsaur. But that would mean putting away Direhowl (Grimtotem spirit guide).

[Rhyela]

I think it's a great idea!!! Especially if it was something that didn't buff the pet and buffed the hunter instead. They already seem so paranoid about hunters relying too much on their pets (which must be made of glass the way they describe them sometimes, lol), so something like this would definitely be a great first step!!! They could even give it a snazzy name like...Heart of the Beast, or Wild Instincts...hehe.

Your idea has got two thumbs-up from me!

[Epicfail]

Its a cool idea and definitely buffs PVE overall dps over PVP bursty....

Would it be better for the hunter's SS to lay down the debuff or the pet? Should it be a chance on proc or the SS would be kinda like a sunder effect.

Actually, given the arp thing, giving BM (and the pet) a serious Arp effect would be awesome. Maybe make it a smaller effect that promotes all physical damage in the raid. Since Arp is going to become "mastery" it would put BM ahead of the curve when things change.

[Tahlian]

Well, I was trying to keep the coding as close as possible to the original shadow priest talent. It might be interesting to have the pet's damage apply the buff, but I suggested Steady Shot because it would allow the slower ramp-up time instead of a fast ramp-up which might be "too much."

If this idea winds up "having legs," as the saying goes, it would certainly be up to the devs to determine exactly which source of damage triggered the buff application.