I think BM could be made viable in PvP by 2 simple changes.
Kill Command damage increased. Not only does this increase damage but also makes Qa’pla, Eredun War Order more viable.
Kill Shot damage increase to give hunters more of a punch in execute range.
Basically, if the skill has “kill” in it, shouldn’t it be a threat!
What’s a lowest-cost skill on a 10-second cooldown or so that you feel packs a lot of punch (among other specs)?
Personally, dealing the Attack Power of a Templar’s Verdict (an up to per-3 GCD spender) or a 30-Rage Execute (about 4.3 seconds of autoattack time) via an instant ranged attack as the lowest of all Focus spenders doesn’t seem particularly weak. We’re talking one and a half Pyroblasts here, albeit as physical damage.
Now, if we wanted to just up both the damage and the cost, that’d seem pretty reasonable, but otherwise the damage buff ought to be fairly small (if not merely part of a broader aura buff).
The problem is, as a BM Hunter Kill Shot damage can only be increased by Vers, maybe if they allowed Mastery to increase Kill Shot damage. I think Kill Shot is fine for MM and SV.
BM mastery could get changed to be similar to Survival mastery, giving a boost to all abilities from hunter and pet, or make a pet version of Kill Shot so it does benefit (“Rip and Tear”?)
I don’t think we’ll see these changes not because of an unwillingness to change the spec, but because people who don’t play BM always seem to complain when its a “good” spec. There are a lot of stigmas behind hunters, and BM is historically disliked when its strong because pets are deemed annoying AF (in PVP). If I recall, a lot of nerfs BM has gotten in more recent memory are because of or likely because of PVP, which is interesting considering we ended 8.3 as one of the weakest specs for PVP.
And Crit and Haste. You may as well complain about Blade of Justice not being affected by Ret’s Mastery, or Ambush and Shadowstrike not being affected by Subtlety’s (and the latter is far more vital).
The larger issue to me is the excessively all-encompassing Animal Companion aura debuff, which excludes otherwise clutch, mastery-affected tools that could compensate for Kill Shot not being affected by our mastery—such as Spitting Cobra (if it was changed to be more immediately usable) or Murder of Crows.
As a master of beasts, I don’t need to be able to shoot a kill shot like a Marksman. But I do need to be able to kill things… via my beasts.
But they are tuned to do more damage because of that which is what said needs to happen. Increase the damage of Kill Shot for BM hunters so it does comparable damage to SV and MM.
Also, not a direct comparison because BoJ isn’t casted by Holy and Prot Paladins, so nothing to compare it to.
i didnt paste them all here, that is just the link for the post it picks up the 1st post, and the 1st post contains all the suggestions
To do so, the “Master of Beasts” specs would need to have higher baseline damage on… Kill Shot… than the actual “Marksman” spec.
It’s a element about which Mastery does not scale. The difference is that BoJ is actually core to Ret playflow while Kill Shot is not core to BM’s playflow.
But if you like, make instead the obvious distinction that HoW scales with Ret Mastery, but not with Holy or Prot’s. Oddly enough, a Healer being unable to scale its execute via Mastery is no less relevant than, say, a DPS (notably, one that already gives greater dps per point increase than the meta builds of all but 5 other DPS specs) themed around its portion of damage opposite that execute.
If you want Kill Shot to be as significant as it is on MM and SV, despite a theme that has nothing to do with Kill Shot, do so via procs, such as by having it add a charge to and empower your next Kill Command. You know, make it have something to actually do with BM.
Another change that would be nice is to make The Beast Within PvP Talent baseline (Bestial Wrath makes you immune to Fear and Horror) and add that it breaks those effects upon use. You can currently use Bestial Wrath while feared but it won’t break it even with the talent. Interestingly, Bestial Wrath in Classic currently does make your pet immune to fear i believe.
It does, and Beast Within then shares that property with you, the hunter.
I still have my wishes of them basically buffing pets like they used to be with unique and individual perks per Family. With that, it’d be nice for them to fix Animal Companion’s bugs since I’ve seen 2-3 dead Loques in a single day because of it.
Not quite, currently, Bestial Wrath does not make your pet immune to fear without the pvp talent.
You said in Classic. I answered in Classic, although the Beast Within part would require TBC.
Actually, a nice change to The Beast Within if they fix how it works, would to make your PET immune and break all cc during the duration. If your pet gets cc’d, you cant break it (dismiss takes too long, and manual control to avoid it is inefficient and unlikely). Just a thought to give BM some more countermeasures to bring it up to the average class.
Sure, but in that case, what else would you want to be posted, other than the suggestions I’ve already posted in there.
How about removing Kill Shot from BM all together and tie a Kill Shot like ability to pet damage that way it scales with gear. I would say call it Kill Command but we have that. Maybe Execute Command or some crap. That way the ability will scale with Mastery.
Sure. Nothing wrong with unbloating.
But again, you don’t need all damage sources to scale with Mastery.
I agree, but Kill Shot seems like it should be DEADLY. There is no “go” from a BM Hunter where the opposing team truly needs to match it with a defensive CD.
Again, it is. For its cost and cooldown.
If you want it to force CDs, you need to at least to triple each of those.
AMoC is a CD. BW is a CD. Kill Shot is 10-Focus, 10-second conditional rotational skill.
Execute doesn’t need to necessarily instantly kill. Final Verdict needn’t necessarily be final. They’re all just names.