The issue is that the first alpha/beta access is given to big streamers to promote the hype. The problem with that is streamers are not well played in all specs/classes. Listening to some of the streamers mispronounce abilities or just have no clue what they are talking about is frustrating. These are the people that are testing the game for everyone…let that sink in.
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I would like to think that this 5% is a blessing and not a slap in the face. Why I say that is simple. They want to evaluate where the class is at BEFORE they nerfed it with 5% during the Shadowlands prepatch. If this is the case I have no problem being patient. Whats likely the case though is they have no idea how to approach hunter class design anymore and are just trying to give flat percentage bonuses until they are middle of the pact.
Except even in the alpha it was not just the streamers who were allowed in. Yes big content creators almost universally got into the alpha, but there were a lot of non-content creators that were allowed into the alpha as well.
First wave of alpha/beta is saturated with streamers. Im not saying other people dont get in, I’m saying from a testing point of view there are literally so many better candidates to select for testing purposes. There’s a good chunk of streamers that are not even that good and are not masters of their own classes.
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Saturated how? There are what? a few hundred big/medium content creators when it comes to wow? That’s not even enough to have a proper test. I would be willing to bet there were far, far more players that don’t stream/make videos that were in the alpha than streamers in the alpha. You just don’t see them because shockingly, they’re not making videos about it.
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Saturated might be a strong word, but I know what you mean. They seem to all get it automatically and use their voices to shift Blizzard into directions that don’t suit the majority of players.
Even though the official stance from Blizzard is that they don’t take queues from content creators, there have been too many times that changes have been made right after one of them suggests them publicly. Just a couple weeks ago, after Preach made a video about certain aspects of Castle Nathria, nearly every single change he suggested was made a few days later. I’ve seen this with Asmongold and Bellular as well. It’s happened too many times to be written off as a coincidence in my opinion.
Before Shadowlands, several of those creators were saying they wanted loot to be more meaningful and more of a big deal when you get an upgrade. Lo and behold, loot scarcity in SL became a thing - modeled eerily similar to how many of those creators suggested. BM being at the bottom right now can be traced back to those creators as well. Most of them went on and on about how BM is fine and doesn’t need a change - how certain aspects of BM needed to be nerfed - etc, etc, etc. Look at us now. Four second revive was a direct response to streamers screaming about Hunters reviving our pets in arena. Survivability tanked, because they moaned about how hard it was to kill our pets.
All that being said, I think these creators are just trying to carve out their own niche by having unique opinions. Opinions that most people don’t agree with, but are taken seriously by Blizzard because they think those people influence the player base. I’m convinced Blizzard just doesn’t want to spend the money on a larger development team and taking queues from content creators as a form of free labor. Unfortunately, the actual player base is quickly alienated.
10 Likes
I suspect they are doing this buff because, for the moment anyway, it’s the easiest / quickest way for them to try to address class/spec balance.
if I were in charge of BM hunters, here are the changes I would make:
animal companion is the defacto choice for the level 15 talent row. when one choice is so dominant, you don’t really have a choice. I would like to make the other choices a bit more attractive
so I would change Killer Instinct
from: Kill Command deals 50% increased damage against enemies below 35% health
to: Kill command deals 50% increased damage against enemies above 70% and below 35% health
and change Dire Beast
from: Summons a powerful wild beast that attacks the target and roars, increasing your haste by 5% for 8 sec
to: Your kill command has a 20% chance to summon a powerful wild beast that attacks the target and roars, increasing your Haste by 5% for 8 sec.
similarly thrill of the hunt is more attractive than the alternatives so I would change Spitting Cobra
from: When Beastial Wrath ends, summon a Spitting Cobra to aid you in combat for 15 sec. Each Cobra Shot used during Beastial Wrath increases the damage this Spitting Cobra deals by 10%
to: When Beastial Wrath ends, summon a Spitting Cobra to aid you in combat for 15 sec. Each Cobra Shot used while Spitting Cobra is active extends the duration of Spitting Cobra by 1.5 sec and increases the damage this Spitting Cobra deals by 10%
and change A Murder of Crows
from: Summons a flock of crows to attack your target, dealing 8,529 Physical damage over 15 sec. If the target dies while under attack, A Murder Of Crows cooldown is reset (1 minute cooldown)
to: Summons a flock of crows to attack your target, dealing 8,529 Physical damage over 15 sec. While target is below 20% health, can be cast again to command your crows to peck the enemy, dealing 3,325 Physical Damage. If the target dies while under attack, A Murder Of Crows cooldown is reset (30 second cooldown) (replaces kill shot)
posthaste is incredibly useful, and so likewise, I want to make some changes to the other talents to make them more competitive while clearly designating the level 40 row of talents as the ‘movement’ talent row and the level 30 row of talents as the ‘defensive’ talent row. to this end, I am swapping the location of the level 30 talent ‘trailblazer’ and the level 40 talent ‘born to be wild’.
in addition I would like to change born to be wild
from: Reduces the cooldowns of Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Turtle by 20%
to: Your Aspects now have 2 charges
regarding row 25:
- Chimaera Shot now a passive ability: Wild Call now empowers your next Cobra Shot, causing it to cost no focus, deal 1256 additional Nature Damage, and deal 1256 Frost damage to another nearby target.
regarding row 45:
- barrage now only damages enemies you are already in combat with
- stampede now lasts 20 sec, up from 12 sec, and now automatically targets only enemies near the player, that the player is already in combat with
regarding row 50:
- bloodshed damage increased from 2626 over 18 sec to 5252 over 18 sec
general mechanics:
- barbed shot bleed effect can now stack on a single target, up to 3 stacks
Animal Companion is the de facto choice most of the time. However, if you use Rylakstalker’s Legendary, Killer Instinct with Aspect of the Beast parses a bit higher. Pretty sure the bonus crit damage only applies to first pet, so avoiding the 35% negative aura to have two pets is important.
Your ideas for others talents are as good as most others I’ve seen. I particularly like the stacking Barbed Shot idea. I’ve thought that should be a thing for as long as it has existed.
Level 15;
- Killer Instinct is too situational overall with exceptions listed above. I think it should be 30% extra damage all the time.
- Animal Companion has a -35% aura, which means two pets would be 65+65, so 130%. That would be on par with Killer Instinct have 30% permanent damage buff to one pet.
- Dire Beast is garbage. The pet needs to do significantly more damage and the 5% haste needs to be permanent.
Level 25;
- Chimaera Shot disrupts our rotation for a minor cleave. Needs to be replaced with something else. Perhaps something AoE oriented, like a 1 min cooldown to apply your next Barbed Shot to up to 5 targets.
- Scent of Blood should automatically give our pet(s) three stacks of Frenzy at the start of Bestial Wrath. Would make BW more bursty, as we’re not wasting GCDs getting stacks up.
- One with the Pack should grant a 20% chance for Barbed Shot to add two stacks of Frenzy instead of one.
Level 30;
- Trailblazer should be 10% movement speed in combat - 30% out of combat.
- Natural Mending should reduce the cooldown on Exhilaration up front in addition to the 1 sec reduction per 30 focus spent.
- Camouflage is fine to be honest, but I do think as a quality of life improvement, the duration should only start counting down after you move. That way it can be used as a permanent invis if you need to AFK, but only lasts a min if you move. The permanent invis part should probably not be allowed in PvP though.
Level 35;
- Burst; Murder of Crows does jack all damage for a 15 sec DoT. At the very least, it should do half of it’s damage up front and then apply a DoT.
- Boss Fights; Spitting Cobra is just a dumb talent. I think it should be replaced with a pet bleed.
- General; Thrill of the Hunt is fine as it sits, as the extra crit is a great general purpose talent.
Level 40;
- Posthaste is fine as it is.
- Born to be Wild should simply allow us to attack while under Aspect of the Turtle.
- Binding Shot is situational, so probably fine as it is.
Level 45;
- Stomp needs it’s damage increased, since we’re capped at 5 targets.
- Barrage should cost less focus or do more damage. It’s not efficient enough for use.
- Stampede is buggy as hell and needs to be fixed. They often spawn at a weird angle and complete miss the target. Rather than a straight line stampede, it should just be a frenzy of pets attacking your target(s).
Level 50;
- Aspect of the Beast is fine for the most part.
- Killer Cobra is another talent that throws off the rotation and makes it inefficient. It should be more like Flamewalker’s Cobra Sting and simply proc a no-focus Kill Command 25% of the time when using Cobra Shot.
- Bloodshed, I’m in total agreement with your idea. For a burst-centric, non-passive talent, it does surprisingly little damage. The bleed and bonus damage should be doubled.
2 Likes
I very much agree pets, mainly for BM spec, are in a bad state (when have they ever not been, heh). Although this 5% buff has me laughing since was it not long ago hunters were all nodding sagely as they nerfed the 5% from Hunter’s Mark?
Now we have it back.
You put your 5% in, you put your 5% out, you put your 5% in and shake it all about…
2 Likes
I am ok with the 5% for now. I assume they might make some changes after to specific under-performing talents after this if needed, but the 5% is fine for me. I am not raiding and mythic though. I have to be casual for a little bit longer while work gets in the way.
I think they may have forgotten to add the 5%. I did parses on the training dummy over the hour before reset and again after they came back up. Parses seem to be dead even. After reset parses are less than 1% higher.
Also took screenshots of what the tooltip says for each ability and they all show the exact same amount as pre-maintenance.
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Same I’m noticing no difference in dps numbers and I did the same tool tips showing the same after the supposed patch.
That’s because the buff really did nothing. It’s an attempt to make it seem like they care while circumventing the problem
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We didn’t receive the buff. Wars didn’t receive the master and commander change either. So I don’t think it’s live
Seem like this nerf back in November should have never happened…
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I wanted to check out this statement so I checked it on my Hunter. It seems your claim is incorrect. I set up my talents to have Killer Instinct and Aspect of the Beast then compared it to all the other options. It turns out even with Rylakstalkers, Animal Companion and Bloodshed are the best choice.
This is extremely unfortunately because I hate having two beasts and I really wanted this to work.
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I find simulators to be unreliable. I swapped back and forth between KI and AC multiple times and did dozens of parses. KI always came out 2-3% higher in use, despite sims saying it should be otherwise.
That aged well
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I did seething shores as BM and when I dropped I died and accomplished nothing because my pet stayed on the boat. Yay.
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All of my tooltips on Survival are higher.