It seems like a very underwhelming change that will serve as more of a QoL benefit than a genuine DPS increase. Objectively speaking it doesn’t really improve AoE, it improves our focus ST while we do AoE, which isn’t awful, but it’s not really what BM needed. When you spend the proc on MS, you’re losing out on a lot of damage by not spending it on Cobra, so you have to make up for that wasted damage with a few extra globals offered by the longer Beast Cleave. Just meh.
If this is what they choose to do then the empowered Beast Cleave should also to do something like 10% increased damage. Just having 6 more seconds means we save some focus on casting beast cleave which helps our damage a bit but not enough that it will really be noticeable. It mainly just increases the value of stats like Mastery, Crit and Vers on aoe over Haste due to the focus savings.
What an underwhelming fix to BM’s AOE damage. If you were already keeping beast cleave up in AoE all this does is allow for a few extra cobra shots throughout the fight, giving maybe a 300 dps increase or so on a pack? Hardly worth it when other ranged are sitting comfortably 2000+ dps ahead.
The set bonuses overly prioritize the CS/KC combo - so much so that weaving in Multi-Shot for Beast Cleave in AoE situations negatively affected our damage in favor of hitting more targets. This change just makes it hurt less. Doesn’t actually add any real value at all.
Hey Blizzard, you can’t just say things like “We have read your posts outlining some issues you have with your upcoming Set Bonuses with regards to AoE damage”, and then release a set update that is so completely tone-deaf that we are all pretty sure you just don’t play World of WarCraft…
Multishot weaving isn’t a thing we don’t enjoy. Doing small damage in a raid environment is a thing we don’t enjoy. So perhaps rather than flirting with QoL things that, if you think the class needd, should be baseline - how about you consider doing some rolling buffs to the class itself?
If you weren’t planning on buffing AoE damage you could have just said so.
I honestly laughed when I read this “buff” a slight buff to beast cleave maintenance is not an aoe dps buff.
So it fails to solve
the tier interaction with covenant abilities that aren’t night fae(or necro but there’s also a severe lack of damage therE)
The lack of solid sustained single target damage
the lack of reasonable cleave damage
Empowered cobra shots can cleave
Empowered cobra shots add a DoT
Kill command crits now cleave
Empowered cobra shots makes the next barbed shot apply to multiple targets
any of these would be a measurable boost to aoe, tuneable to not make them outlandish.
Combine that with the easy fix of just reverting the 40% to the accidental 100% of early PTR and the spec is in a solid position.
This is just confusing, especially from the standpoint of “We heard your issues with lack of aoe damage and have responded with a buff that doesnt increase aoe damage”
The increased communication is appreciated, I’m not going to call this a bait and switch but it’s definitely an odd decision by devs, which speaks to a lack of experience with the class.
If you’re looking for QOL changes now there’s still the matter of animal companion nerfing everything from Mikanikos Bronn to our own Murder of Crows damage.
Multi-Shot is just a vessel that starts our AoE. There should almost never be a situation where you make a set that increases Multi-Shot damage, unless it is changing the dynamic of the damage throughput to be almost exclusively Multi-Shot damage. I think this change was rushed by someone who just looked for an ability that was labelled as a Hunter AoE button.
I think the issue that’s prompting the feedback that you’re getting here isn’t necessarily a problem with how this ability is simming under whatever aoe condition you’ve targeted for a buff internally, but rather with how the set feels as a player.
This is almost certainly a nice damage buff under many aoe conditions simply by virtue of the fact that it allows you to replace a low damage ability (multishot) with a high damage ability (kill command). The issue is that its pretty convoluted, mentally, to think “yes I’m not doing more aoe damage, but this is giving me a dps increase in aoe situations that is in line with other sets because the increase in single target damage that I do is large enough to equalize with the increase in aoe that other sets provide.” That’s easy logic to understand when you’re looking at the game as a spreadsheet but its hard for a player, who just wants to see their aoe ability hit harder, to understand.
And that’s ultimately the issue here: I’m sure this sims fine but it still feels bad. What people were expecting was something that felt like it was making their aoe hit harder. IE, people wanted something like “… causes your kill command to deal X% of its damage to all nearby enemies” or “… causes your beast cleave to have an X% chance to deal damage twice for X seconds.” Something like that is transparent in buffing AoE damage and because of that transparency feels fun. Conversely, it isn’t fun for most people to only be able to see the aoe increase when they have to really understand the math behind how this is functioning to understand what’s going on.
I appreciate you are adding a AoE aspect to the tier set however this change does not improve our AoE damage. Outside of Wild Sprits with the Covenant legendary the AoE damage is pretty sad. Adding a cleave to Kill Command is really what is needed, even just during Bestial Wrath would be an improvement. Take away our Covenant ability and we offer nothing in AoE situations aside from basically Auto Attack cleaves.
First of all, this little “or” is what the heck? So this USELESS extended timer isn’t even 100% guaranteed or what?.. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Secondly, this is NOT a “buff” and might even be a slight nerf to our damage since even tho Multi Shot itself hits like a wet noodle, it still does “some” damage. Now we will cast it less frequently and only thing we saving is a GCD?
Here’s a FREE advice. STOP TRYING your best worst to “fix” BM Hunters since it’s very clear by now that none of the devs actually play the spec. First, have at least ONE of the devs start playing this spec, learn and understand it and ONLY THEN come back with some proper ideas how to fix this.
