Barbed Shot and Cobra Shot Feedback for Beast Mastery Hunter

In Development The War Within Patch 11.0.5 PTR
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I haven’t seen recent comments on the Barbed Shot and Cobra Shot changes for BM Hunter, so I figured I’d throw in my initial thoughts.

Barbed Shot

Potential Problem: The increased cooldown of Barbed Shot results in fewer applications of barbed shot, which has a direct negative impact on numerous (I count 5?) other talents that are activated only at the time that Barbed Shot is applied. For example, Stomp, Pack Coordination, Brutal Companion, Barbed Wrath, and War Orders are all activated when Barbed Shot is applied, and these talents are indirectly weakened substantially by the increased cooldown of Barbed Shot.

Potential Solutions: To compensate for fewer applications of Barbed Shot, consider:

  1. Increase the damage of Stomp, Pack Coordination, and Brutal Companion to compensate for fewer applications

  2. Increase the cooldown reduction benefit from Barbed Shot for Barbed Wrath

  3. Increase the % chance that Kill Command will be reset with the application of Barbed Shot for War Orders.

Cobra Shot

Personal Experience/Opinion: In the previous expansion, I found that I rarely used Cobra Shot and it was responsible for a very low percentage of my damage done (~1%). So, I removed my Cobra Shot key bind, replaced it with various BM Hunter utilities, and frankly had more fun. With the proposed changes in 11.0.5, it looks like the goal is to have Cobra Shot back on the menu, boys!

Given the changes to Black Arrow and Kill Shot for Dark Ranger, it looks to me like Cobra Shot changes will be more relevant for Pack Leader players. In regards to AoE/M+ builds, it also looks like the goal is have a genuine choice between the left side of the tree (Cobra Shot talents) and the right side of the tree (Kill Shot and Dire Beast-type talents, which synergize more with the new Dark Ranger talents quite nicely). The big challenge to developers is this: Make me want to press Cobra Shot again by making it both awesome and well-integrated with the offensive toolkit and fully competitive with the Kill Shot/Dire Beast/Huntmaster’s Call talents on the right side.

Potential Problems:

  1. A primary concern is that the Cobra Shot side of the tree (left side) will be quite weaker than the right side of the tree (Kill Shot/Dire Beast talents), particularly due to the awesome Huntmaster’s Call ability, which is essentially passive and very powerful.

  2. In addition, when also taking the middle-row AoE talents, taking more left-side Cobra Shot talents likely means not being able to path to Basilisk Collar, which is by far the strongest talent node for BM Hunters. With 5 dots rolling and 5% pet damage per talent point spent, you have a whopping 25% pet damage increase for 1 talent point, and two talent points can be invested for a total of 50% pet damage increase.

  3. Cobra Shot also needs to be better integrated with the offensive toolkit with more interactions and more opportunities to press Cobra Shot.

Potential Solutions:

  1. Consider having Barbed Scales also increase the duration of Beast Cleave by one second. This would reduce the number of Multi-Shots and slightly increase the number of Cobra Shots that we get to press. Pressing Cobra Shot would feel like a core part of the rotation, even in AoE situations.

  2. Serpentine Rhythm grants an occasional pet damage boost of 6% that lasts 10 seconds (and can be happen at the end of pack and be wasted) while Huntmaster’s Call grants a more permanent, but rotating benefit to either pet damage (8%) or haste (8%), which is much stronger. Consider substantially buffing Serpentine Rhythm to be more equivalent to Huntmaster’s Call to balance the left/right sides a bit more.

  3. Consider creating a choice node with Barrage with a talent that instead gives Cobra Shot an X% chance to either hit additional targets or passively apply Barrage. This would make Cobra Shot even more fun to push, help boost AoE a bit, and free up a key bind. Otherwise, Barrage just feels like a fish out of water in that spot.

  4. Consider changing the Cull the Herd talent in the Pack Leader tree to affect Cobra Shot instead of Kill Shot, or even both. With Kill Shot and Black Arrow merging and the various talent tree changes, Kill Shot is more of a Dark Ranger talent more than a Pack Leader talent.

  5. Consider lowering the power of Basilisk Collar by either 1) lowering the pet damage increase or capping it, 2) making this a one talent point node, or 3) reduce the number of DoTs that BM Hunter can apply.

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This is spot on, I’m trying really hard to give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume anything but it seems like the design philosophy for BM atm is incompatible with the current game. It’s all so slow and there are way too many abilities that only serve as a more interesting filler than cobra for 1 GCD every minute. This is terrible.

The class felt great in Season 3 Dragonflight, felt great in season 4, Then the pre-patch happened, and instead of understanding that with the changes they made, our set bonus was way too good, they panicked and over-nerfed the class. Now we are sitting here struggling to beat tank damage and blizzard says “I guess we can move some numbers around in a month or so.” I cancelled my sub, got 2 weeks left to play and I’ll do that, but until BM gets addressed, I’m not paying.

They finally fixed the eternal struggle specs and in the same move created 2 more. Glad for the fire mages they are at least getting some help.