People in alpha, what's your opinion on BM?

[Rune]

I've been keeping an eye on the BM threads in the official alpha forums, and there seems to be an apocalyptic level of doom and gloom going on for the BM spec. I'm wondering how much of this is a side effect small sample sizes/different gameplay preferences/etc vs the spec actually being terrible, so as a longtime lurker I thought I'd ask here. Alpha players, is the wailing and gnashing of teeth justified?

[Wain]

Good question.

I've held off on commenting on this much because they're still balancing it and also it will be rebalanced around a certain gear level that I doubt I've achieved yet. Also, I'm not much of a class theorycrafter, I leave that to others more interested in it, and I usually just plod along and make do. Even if people complain about their spec, I usually don't find things too bad for what I need from it and I don't say much. But that should give you an idea of how bad I think things are right now that I'm taking the time to outline my experience.

I warn you it's going to be mostly negative, but please take into account that it's still in progress and also that other testers may have a completely different experience to me.

Right now I feel we're very weak. If you are fighting more than one standard, non-elite mob out in the zones, you can expect your pet to hurt a lot and for healing to do almost nothing. It's honestly two bob either way whether you even bother to hit the healing button or just keep dpsing till your pet dies, hit aspect of the turtle and resurrect it. Resurrecting your pet is almost part of standard rotation. Pets are currently weak. That may change. I believe it's essential that it change.

As for our rotation, I believe they have said that most abilities are now concrete. This was a general statement about classes and specs, so it may be different for BM, but if so they haven't said so. But I can say that our rotation really feels lackluster, our spec minimalist. They have concentrated on so few things, presumably to make it easier to balance, that it currently feels like a skeleton of our former class. If it doesn't change, we'll go into a new expansion feeling like we have lost so much. The game should be about feeling like you're advancing and currently BM in Legion is very much the opposite. We've also lost a lot of nice side utilities that added fun, including camouflage. Aspect of the Cheetah lasts for a very short time now with a few mins cool down. So it's just long enough for something important and to remind you just how slow you are the rest of the time. There are no traps. We can still stun enemies for taming purposes, though it won't be by freezing them. Aspect of the Turtle can be used while taming, at least, so even if a nasty mob reaches you, you should be able to complete taming without taking damage. That part is good and one of the few things I've currently enjoyed about the spec.

I believe they have over-emphasized the "beast" aspect of our spec in a one-dimensional caricature manner, in that we constantly call and summon Dire Beasts and Stampedes to defeat our enemies, far more than in the live game, which I find comical and hard to take seriously. It's like if we were an engineering class and they made us constantly throw spanners and screwdrivers. I guess that's not so bad in that it's a slightly comical game (not in a bad way) and you can look past it, I think.

From a practical standpoint, the most infuriating part for me right now is Dire Beast in a crowded area, and you will be using it a lot. To explain, the beast itself often spawns at a distance from battle and then runs in. It emits a very large aggro aoe when it spawns, but it seems to aoe at the position it *starts* at. So it's just as likely (in fact I'd say more likely) to pull in the neighbouring packs of mobs that you were being so careful to avoid. And given our pets can barely handle two-three mobs right now, it's pretty much over at that point. I've found it a really miserable liability in many places. In some cases I've had packs from down the stairs behind me run up and mob me because the Dire Beast somehow managed to aggro them! I don' t know how it can do that unless the limiting radius of the aggro is two-dimensional and the third dimension is very large. It sounds incredible but I've had it happen a bit.

Having said that, we can function perfectly well in the game world. You soon get used to your limitations and you don't try so hard. You get used to dying or feigning a lot, even in decent blues. And a side-effect of the level scaling system (which also has many benefits) is that you don't really feel like you're progressing much in the game world anyway, as the mobs progress with you. You would have to be running dungeons to notice you've achieved much at all.

Sorry it sounds so bleak, but essentially what I wanted to say that in this case I don't believe those people on the forums are exaggerating all that much. I know the posters on those forums often do turn on the dramatics and wail and gnash their teeth, but my own experiences make me think that this time their concerns are probably justified. Honestly I'm glad we're getting some cool new pets because that's currently the ONLY thing I can find to look forward to about this spec in Legion.

But it's still Alpha and we're still months from release.

[Lisaara]

Thanks for the info Wain and damn that breaks my heart cause I'm a heavy BM lover.

As you said, it's still Alpha so nothing is set in stone. I think they announced they're now starting to do tweaks.

[zedxrgal]

Thanks for the info Wain and damn that breaks my heart cause I'm a heavy BM lover.

As you said, it's still Alpha so nothing is set in stone. I think they announced they're now starting to do tweaks.

This for me too

[Xota]

Is it just the [bugged] stomp talent that's pulling the adds? With Chimaera shot, do they still aggro everything? If so, then I guess Dire Frenzy will be effectively mandatory.

As far as feeling like you're progressively getting better, maybe there should be a little buff for when you've finished the quests in a zone.

[Dewclaw]

Thanks for the info Wain and damn that breaks my heart cause I'm a heavy BM lover.

As you said, it's still Alpha so nothing is set in stone. I think they announced they're now starting to do tweaks.

This for me too

This. I'm BM and *only* BM.

I hope Blizz reads your post. I found it very insightful.

[Vephriel]

Oof, that's very disheartening to hear Wain. I dabble in the other specs on alts but I'll always stick with BM for my main character. The current direction they seem to be taking it in really has me anxious because it would feel awful to not enjoy the playstyle of my main spec any more. But there's no way I could switch, my exotic pets are far too important to me and Veph. I've been through all of BM's ups and downs and I just hope they spend some more time tweaking it in beta.

[Rikaku]

Thank you for your input Wain, though I wish it was much better news.

It's very disheartening to read that sort of feedback. I'm also a bit annoyed too, admittedly. I know its "still Alpha", but I'm not sure how true that holds now. Legion comes out Aug 30, which means likely the pre-patch will be around July 30th, as the pre-patches usually come about a month before the expansion release. So we have like 2.5 months left of testing before we can look at the pre-patch and all it's expansion-changes being implemented.

To me, it's no longer Alpha. We're less than 3 months away from the likely pre-expansion patch. Even if we started Beta today, none of the past expansions' betas were this short. And that's very concerning to me because I feel in prior expansion betas, we were further along in getting things tuned and working and 'feeling' right. Maybe it's because I'm not in Legion's alpha, but I was in the prior expansions betas and I don't recall feeling so... 'doomed' before.

I feel I can no longer use the phrase "it's still Alpha". If anything, this is taking the place of Beta due to the timeline this expansion is now operating on. And regardless of what Blizzard wants to call this particular phase of testing, I just feel it should be in better shape than it currently seems to be.

I'm sorry if this comes off doom and gloom, but it's aimed at my frustration with Blizzard in regard to what is my favorite, and truly only enjoyable, spec and class. And I really don't want to go through 2 expansions in a row of lackluster Beastmastery.

[Albain]

I have from a Very Reliable Source that pets in Legion are not scaling properly with hunter stats the way they should be, and that should get fixed before live. After reading forums and complaints elsewhere, I suspect it might directly involve legion and ITS flexible scaling, as pets tamed outside Legion are generally tougher/longer lasting and don't die quite as easy.

Edit: sadly that doesn't fix all the other problems I've heard about my favorite spec going forward. Hatii being fragile, tending to aggro things and being unable to be rezzed right away, the mindlessness of the rotation, etc..

[zedxrgal]

I suspect it might directly involve legion and ITS flexible scaling, as pets tamed outside Legion are generally tougher/longer lasting and don't die quite as easy.

I'm not sure it's a Legion pet scaling issue. Because the last two expansions I've had quite a few problems where pets tamed in the current expansion were very squishy compared my vanilla, BC, LK etc pets. It has been so bad I submitted tickets on which I always got the answer "We're aware of the problem, we're working on it" blah blah blah. It's been bad enough most of my hunters don't have WoD pets.

If it's this bad for me now I'll be super upset come legion and my new pets are practically useless.

[Sukurachi]

It's strange.
I've been playing WoW since vanilla, and have always scoffed at people who bitch and moan and say they'll quit the game if X change comes into effect with an expansion.

Well, this is the first time I've really felt that Blizzard risks losing me as a customer.

I play almost only hunters, and only Beast Mastery. I left Final Fantasy XI so I could play a BM Hunter.

Bu the changes they're bringing about this expansion seem so ill-thought out and haphazard. It's looking like a real turn-off for me.

[Wain]

I may have been too alarmist in my post last night. It was about 3 am when I wrote it and I could probably have worded it more carefully.

But what I said was honest and sincere. Those are my experiences in the Alpha, and BM is a fairly sparse spec at the moment. And I really feel that people posting on the official forums have valid concerns.

Tweaking will hopefully fix a lot of it. Most of the rest we can probably get used to. We were never going to keep all we had before. I think that they're making the wrong decision and that it's years too late to undo all the things we've been given over time without a seriously negative reaction from players (see flying in Draenor). But that is their decision.

Honestly I think they bit off more than they can chew with so many class restructures at once, and I think now they're at that panic point that everyone gets to in a project where you decide to abandon all the fancy dreams you had at the start, and suddenly whatever will get you to the finish line seems attractive. I'm sure by release we'll be playable, but people need to keep up with the concerns or they'll assume they've done enough to pass acceptability when they clearly have not.

[Kalliope]

I have no idea what sort of gear you're testing in, but historically, the early expansion gear tends to not do most classes/specs any favors when it comes to power.

It might not make a difference either way, but I figured I'd throw that variable into the mix for the sake of argument.

[Wain]

Mostly world quest blues at the moment. 810-825 range. Plus the freebie legendary item you can pick up from the Flaskataur vendor (during Alpha testing only).

[Wain]

Actually, Bendak has a MUCH better assessment of it here:
http://eyesofthebeast.com/2016/05/legio ... r-hunters/

He covers all the gains in the newest build, most of which I haven't really played with yet. Maybe it's been a better tune up than I thought.

[WerebearGuy]

It could just have the Fury Warrior syndrome, and be bad until you have gear from the last raid in the expansion. I mean, I doubt we'll get another Shadow Priest situation (worst spec to suddenly better than most), and I don't expect it to be as absurdly overpowered as Live Marksman, but there's no way they'd INTENTIONALLY make a spec so...bad.

[Albain]

My concerns with BM mostly revolve around having gotten used to running over basically any mob I came across, including elites, all on my own. I took my hunter exploring as soon as WOD launched, and as a fresh 90 was able to tackle and survive every single location I explored, even if it was sometimes sending my pet and running the other way while it kept attention from the enemies. Sometimes it was a real challenge with positioning and watching what I was doing and what skills were happening, but it was POSSIBLE.
With our healing to our pets significantly nerfed, and no longer having a misdirect that can reset CD based on using it on a pet, I am very concerned suddenly BM will be like all those other, lesser classes who can't solo everything they come across. I take a lot of pride in my survivability, and my ability to help out other people who are struggling just by myself, without having to wait for a tank class or healer to come along.. I don't want to be those other classes. I want to be a hunter.

[Kalliope]

Mostly world quest blues at the moment. 810-825 range. Plus the freebie legendary item you can pick up from the Flaskataur vendor (during Alpha testing only).

That's about what I figured. Hopefully it'll balance out a bit better in the long run.

[Xota]

Edit: sadly that doesn't fix all the other problems I've heard about my favorite spec going forward. Hatii being fragile, tending to aggro things and being unable to be rezzed right away, the mindlessness of the rotation, etc..

Hati aggroing adds just like every other guardian is what I feared from the very beginning.

[Wain]

There are a couple of issues with Hati, but usually he's not too bad.

The most trouble I have right now is when my pet dies and I feign death. Hati just keeps on fighting. And if there are mobs on him that weren't directly targetted (like ones I only hit with barrage) then he refuses to fight back and just drags them back to your fake corpse and waits till he dies, so you end up just wishing him dead and hoping the mobs and don't aoe you to death.

The other issue is if I'm trying to do a tame quickly. I dismiss my pet and hit tame, but Hati hasn't been programmed to go immediately. He dismisses several seconds later for some strange reason. So if you're racing to tame you'll suddenly realize he's still there and races in to attack your tame and draw aggro.

Most of the rest of the time they have him coded pretty well.