I decided to try it out and it is such a breath of fresh air. It just feels good to play. I’m not staring at weakauras and thinking about priority lists the entire time. Im doing my rotation at paying attention to machines and the visuals of the game. I’m noticing really cool attack animations that I haven’t noticed before. It just feels nice to play.
It reminds me of combat before it was turned into the plate juggling, dice rolling, abomination that it is now.
I appreciate that there are complex specs for people that want them, but I wish there were more specs that felt as nice as BM.
Most of the hate stems from how well it’s able to do compared with classes that feel more complicated. It’s an indictment of Blizzard’s balancing of risk vs reward.
Why not tone down some of the complexity of the other classes? I feel like the complexity should be in the game mechanics more than the spec. Outlaw, enhance, and arcane feel like they require a PhD to be effective on.
There are a few of each type that you might enjoy.
Blood DK is a very relaxing tank. Self sustain, very fun and easy.
Bear Druid, swipe to shield yourself good party util.
Demonology Warlock. I used the ‘Easy Mode’ build for basically everything and arguably feels easier than BM but with easy raid invites and respect even though I have not pressed more than 3 buttons and 2 cooldowns (eclipse utility ofc).
Resto Shaman has a nearly full passive build that works incredibly well to late teens (but lacks throughput for the mid twenties imo).
There are 39(!) specs in the game. I think there is room for a range of gameplay experiences there, but I think that there maybe should be more payoff for complexity.
How you’d begin to parse complexity for this purpose has always been challenging and ultimately is rather subjective. This sort of thread has always drawn responses ranging from “every spec is easy lol!” to “BM is for bad players lol!”
But they do know that it is easier. A spec’s degree of mobility is a sliding scale they are very conscious of. Consider how they rolled back effectively all of the “cast while moving” talents after Mists.
When life on Azeroth gets to be a little too much with the day to day grind of life. I too like to take a nice relaxing, stress free vacation on a hunter as well. Nothing screams, “Nap whenever I want” like feign death, and you can bring your dog with you? It’s awesome.
I’m waiting for next expac when we’ll be able to duel wield bows. Rapid fire is going to be off the chain.
Most people that cap on BM really have no idea how to play it. Yes, to play it mediocre its very simple. To play it to its full potential is much more difficult than people realize. I’ve played with hunters with 3200 ios and 486 ilvl that get that hats handed to them by hunters with 2200 ios and 474 ilvls. The difference? Skill.
BM is weird, but not bad. I see how it does better than Marks (constant dps uptime vs TSA burst). I just tell people to play what you like, no matter the class and no matter the spec.
This is BM’s problem. BM doesn’t feel nice. Bm feels incomplete. It is missing several tools that both mm and surv get. Like MD. Until recently it has also been neglected. Many spells/ talents don’t work. Like owl, kill shot or arcane shot. Or wailing arrow. Which should be a great tool. But because of the cast and travel time, it’s not practical. So it’s not used. BM also can’t benefit from leech.
The entire right side of the spec tree was bugged and unplayable until this patch.
BM has gone through a series of aura nerfs/ buffs that have left these glaring holes in it’s tool kit for a while.
But instead of getting fixes. It gets posts like this. With one group of players, saying bm is great cause it’s easy. It’s not easy. Easy is code for it’s missing so much.
Then you have another group of players saying that because BM is easy, it should be bad.
I’m just hoping Packleader adds a bit of SV melee to it in a similar vein to Dark Ranger from MM… imagine an effect like: “Every mob hit by butchery/carve heals you% of damage dealt.”
Having to stop casing for mechanics feels bad. When everything is instant, the game is considerably easier to play. There’s no real payoff for more difficult playstyles, but there are plenty of drawbacks.
I am a jack of all trades master of none kinda of guy. I play every class while some specs I avoid just coz I don’t like it I think honestly most spec are pretty easy once you play it for a few hours.
Only expection is healer I will never ever play one seriously. Mainly due to the group expecting you to do everything, healing, dpsing, dispell, getting afflix done. I just can’t also also using heal addon so it feels liek I am not playing the game but with the color hp bars…
Other then healer the only other spec I have a bit of an issue is Sin rogue, ench shammy, , brew, alffi lock and fire and arcane mage. I am sure if I invest my time more into them it will fine but for Sin Rouge ench shammy brew there just too many buttons and you have to make snap descion right away. Alffi lock fire and arcane mage too much stuff and CD to look at but again not the hardest if I play a bit more.
As for BM hunter being OP their dps ranking is been steadily going down weekly. while a few other class are climbing up. I think BM hunter does have its own issue when I compare to my ret pally, HDH and warlock and to a degree even feral druid. I think hunter to be squishy and their self defense is lacking. For example on Volcoross after he does Flood of the Firelands and you have to soak it he then Coiling Flames I feel during that phase my hunter simply doesn’t have Def CD to deal with them while on my ret pally I always have a DEF CD everytime he does that and hardly take any damage, DH too, feral druid BS and I get instant cast regrown often enough is fine and please I have the skill to heal when I do ST damage (2min CD) AND IF need to shape into bear form frenzye regen, warlock I am a like a tank lol don’t have to worry about it.
So my BM in raiding and m+ seems to require more healing.
I was pugging heroic raid and this hunter who is lower ilvl (didn’t check till he complains) that me a higher ilvl level BM is doing less overall damage than he did So I kindly point out logs that duirng the Fyrakk fight he didn’t help grab the orbs, he drop the fire right behind us when he should drop them to the side, and a few more stuff he should be doing during other boss fight but he didn’t like switching to adds during Larodar etc etc. The group I ran with weekly is a farm raid and I get invite weekly so we pretty got it down who is doing what without even saying anything in discord and this new hunter comes along and complain lol. But he won’t be getting an invite again next time.
I remember a time in legion when BM was stone dead last on DPS but the fact it was 100% mobile was seen as ample justification, it still saw huge amounts of play in raids and dungeons (Though wasn’t m+ meta similar to today) and it’s playerbase according to log data was similarly enormous.
Personally I just don’t enjoy the playstyle of BM. Not really interested in having most of my damage come from my pet. I usually play marksman. But for those that enjoy it I am glad they find it fun.
I also like ‘easy class!’