BM in the final season of BFA was in the top 5 for both raids and M+. WCL really only shows the last two weeks of a season, which is questionable at best.
BM being good at the end of BfA had nothing to do with cheesing mechanics either. It was due to lazy design of Azerite armor and how BM could stack certain abilities for greater benefit than other specs. Much the same way SV went from rock bottom to superstar at the end of SL thanks to the tier set. In both cases, Blizzard just opted not to fix broken interactions and both specs got to enjoy the benefits.
Despite the doom and gloom posts from some, BM doesn’t need a “buff”. It needs certain talent tree interactions fixed, pathing improved, and the Beast Cleave window increased. Out of all of those, just doubling the Beast Cleave duration would put BM firmly in the middle of M+ logs without changing our position in raids.
Dual Primal Instincts and… I forget the other one. I do distinctly remember CRIT being valued at more the 2 times AGI when I ran SIMC. That was pretty broken.
Agree to an extent. In a perfect world, I would make Multi-Shot baseline and add a node to extend beast cleave to 10 seconds in it’s place. Even with that, I think the value of Beast Cleave should go up slightly to maybe 60 percent or so.
That isn’t likely to happen. They moved pretty much everyone’s baseline abilities to talents to flesh them out and make them appear to contain more options. They aren’t going to make an exception for us.
In my opinion, they just need to reduce the number of talents required for a Dire Beast build, so taking Multi-Shot and Beast Cleave/Kill Cleave doesn’t neuter that path. Hell, six total talent points AFTER the 20 point requirement for a Dire Beast build is just ridiculous. The other two capstones only require three points after the 20-line.
They also loaded the majority of our AoE into Kill Cleave, but the duration of Beast Cleave being so short means very few Kill Commands while it’s up. That seems like an obvious oversight. Literally just extending the duration by 4-6 seconds would help tremendously.
Absolutely, I’m just not sure it would be enough. May need a slight (and I do mean slight) numbers buff somewhere. It could be on Stomp, Beast Cleave, or Kill Cleave. If the small buff was to Kill Cleave and Stomp, it would give us a mini AoE burst if we saved up 2 Barbed Shots and Kill Commands from the end of the last pull. That would give it some player agency.
Or maybe a xx% increase to the first Stomp and Kill Cleave to hit a new target. You would have to balance risk vs reward in the “Who’s the Tank” game.
They don’t balance from Normal to Heroic, just Mythic and I’m not sure that’s only 1%, it may be 1% first week to a month but not long. If a Mythic Raid, jumped down and started doing Normal and Heroics it would be a laughable result and skew the point you’re trying to make.
Again, behind Warlocks and mages who were nuking the tendrils w.e they were called. It wasn’t a ST fight.
Did you do mythic Ny?
4 piece in M+s right now are worth somewhere between 10-15k, being conservative. Depending on groups of 2 or 3+, that number can swing wildly. The Heroic bosses I just plugged with on ST 4pc I was consistently 3-6k under. It’s a major increase for simply equipping what RNG has allowed. /shrug
^ This is why I’m convinced you weren’t there doing Mythic Raiding.
I was BM during that time. I can tell you to great certainty that BM had very few advantages over other classes. I’m trying to be nice to you, because I’m just “guessing” you didn’t do these fights… IF you had to been, you would understand that PARSING in the beginning of a tier is WAY DIFFERENT towards the end…
Example… Wrathion if you were selected to do the mechanic instead of Demon hunters to rush to boss for w.e phase I can’t remember, you would tank your DPS. DPS on where those spines lined up… OR you skipped that phase all together (WHICH HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE TIER) means you had more uptime on boss instead of running away to the edge to avoid the fire.
There are so many variables when looking at those logs you’re not accounting for. You simply DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Maybe you came in at the end or something I don’t know.
Wrathion, Maut, Skitra*, Xanesh, Hivemind**, Carapace, Nzoth fights ALL COULD SWING WILDLY depending on what group you were in or the mechanic you had to handle. Most instances of people “pumping” isn’t because they smashed their buttons harder, it’s because they simply avoided the mechanics all together or was able to hit an aspect of the fight that there was an increased damage to certain mobs much like Nzoth.
Let me give you one last example, because I’m really tired of a conversation that neither of us can prove without everyone being at the same ilvl, 4p, BIS, AGAIN, all things that need to be considered and I simply don’t have that info and telling you that they won’t change it till later… Hivemind I parsed orange, I didn’t do so because I was doing something amazing, a lot of the stronger AOE classes had died, leaving me with an amazing amount to cleave. Just like a well, there is only a certain amount you can take out of it. 3 people hitting 20 mobs vs 1 person hitting 20 mobs (caveat target cap) you will get wildly different DPS results.
I’m leaving it here… I don’t see BM in PVE being far off MM, the upcoming DT and the 10% reduction to casts are laughable. It will not make up the difference for change. Adding to that, how it affects the PVP community will really tank MM as a class. I don’t see BM being the problem, just more people on the MM hype train atm for the flavor of the month and would say (Despite me NEVER agreeing with what I’m about to say) Blizzard should wait to see on the changes over the next 4-6weeks as more players/classes are being represented. Blizzard has never been swayed by logs and that’s grossly apparent in the decade of logs of information. I’m not disagreeing that BM may need a buff, I’m merely telling you there isn’t enough info and frankly not sure enough people to gauge what is needed in the first place.
TBH, looking at what Blizz is doing to MM, hard cast times for Aimed Shot/Wailing arrow in conjunction of messing with the MM tree, losing Serpentstalker Trickery due to Tactical reload (feckless change resulting in a dps loss), GCD of Salvo (which I’m confused because I thought it was going to have a “button” (which maybe makes it better for more control WHEN you want salvo, but if it stays tied to a passive will be as it is now which is “bad”)… All of that there is a compelling reason to pick up BM to have more uptime with the hard movements of M+ and raids. Again, going back to my original statement, Movement+100% Uptime DPS > Lack of Movement+75% Uptime DPS may be better in practice than paper.
Simply put, I disagree with you. We’ll see what blizzard decides and act accordingly and that is hunter 101.
This is where I take issue with the game’s dated design of specs that force you to move points into and out of AOE on classes. It’s a relic when you were forced to stick with a single spec to be good at ST and AOE with drawbacks of speccing to do both.
With the ability to tweak specs per encounter it serves no other purpose but to be an annoyance to select a spec from a dropdown to perform optimally for the encounter for your class. There’s no drawback to swapping before a pull - it’s just an annoyance and a relic of dated design.
Like say you now have to dump x points across y nodes for AOE, limiting single target and vice versa. It’s difficult to balance either if you can flat out ignore one to favor the other on a whim with no penalty before an encounter.
Classes should have access to both and skill trees really should come down to flavor and utility. Like AC is mandatory for BM but it’s still a choice node without an equal alternative if you choose not to take it - you’re going to lose out.
Back to AOE classes should not have to sacrifice ST or vice versa - making it easier to manage balancing if you know classes have access to both at any time.
While I love the modern game it clutches to old hat design that has no place in today’s Meta. I’m fairly casual but the dev in me sees that the design intent is all over the place with this game. It’s as if it’s made by teams that don’t talk to one another to keep things within an acceptable margin and just let things rip without much consideration for the macro because they are only allowed to touch the micro.
No even sure what point you are trying to make here. You seem to think that balance only applies to Mythic Raiders. I’m guessing that Blizz doesn’t agree for a very simple reason. The 1% don’t keep the lights on down in Santa Monica.
Ny’alotha is not one fight. It’s an entire raid. N’Zoth was a fight.
Top 4 or 5 is doing very well, especially when there is an obvious drop from the group BM was in (call them the outliers) and everyone else.
I did not, but I can read the logs. Tell me, how many fights in Mythic Ny’alotha were there where killing the adds wasn’t necessary? Where you could just let them run around and do their thing?
Not even close to true. You did see the part where I have the 4 set, ya?
You can leave it wherever you like, that doesn’t make you correct. Reading into all the 10.5 changes (for all classes), they all seem to be aimed towards being total DPS agnostic in PvE. For instance (as you brought it up) they are moving some of MM’s burst into sustained. In the end, for total DPS, it’s probably a wash. Likely it means that Blizz thinks that MM’s burst lets raids (I can’t believe I’m saying this) ‘Cheese’ mechanics. Bursting down high threat add phases too fast, thus making content too easy. I do agree that it is a straight nerf in PvP, but Blizz may see the PvP nerf with a PvE wash for total damage as a win/win.
I disagree with this. Blizzard has been swayed by their logs. And very often, the need for changes they made were apparent in the logs we can see at WCL, long before they pulled the trigger. Heck, Blizzard has at some points seemingly been swayed by individual youtube videos of one player or another doing something outside of the box crazy. That tradition goes back to Vanilla and the 3 man Onyxia video.
edit My bad, 4 man Ony. 3 man was just after BC release.
I’m aware of you “not getting it”. They tune the raids to Mythic. Don’t take my word for it, go ask a mythic raider… Do you think they tweek LFR? Since Mythic Raiding became a thing it’s been this way.
/facepalm
Logs won’t tell you mechanics… won’t tell you who was AOE the tendrils or who was kicking a ball of light… or who was baiting an arm out of range from the encounter… I mean, go youtube an encounter, be apart of a mythic raid where your parse does not equal a boss kill. You are almost NEVER in a position to be like, oh I’m just going to parse here.
You could literally wipe the raid on Nzoth by focusing a target, that buffed your damage and cause it to die to quick… It’s been a while, I just don’t have it in me to walk you through fights you know nothing about. Not being mean, but this is exactly what I predicted and I didn’t even have to look at your progress. I was there, I did the fights, I KNOW what I’m talking about if nothing else, about the fights. I’m sure somebody could do a better job. Normal and Heroic Raids are LFR with extra steps. Mythic you have hard caps and almost never room for 1 person failing. Ask anyone who had to play soccer…
No offense, but if you’re not pulling numbers with a 4 piece, that’s more on you then it is what I said. Again, not being rude, but I don’t know you’re skill cap or know your experience. It’s a game as far as I’m concerned, I’ve just been sitting here realizing I’m arguing with somebody who feels strongly about their opinion with nothing really factual or based from experience.
At the risk of sounding like an elite moron (and again, I wish all of this didn’t sound pointed because you not knowing or having a difference of opinion I really wouldn’t offend), however, since you want to continue this down to a grain of salt and perpetuate this conversation I decided to see what level xp you had on raider.io and warcraft logs…
Your Raider IO is 1223
Raid Prog 4/8 Heroic and 10/11N
My IO is 2156
Raid Prog 2/8 Heroic and 0/11N
Now that alone isn’t a lot of ways to compare, nor can I definitively say who is better than who. I didn’t bother to even pug a raid till yesterday and you may be like me but just feel the opposite way M+ vs Raiding. However, if I had a 4 piece my IO would certainly be higher and comparing your Terros Kill and my Terros Kill to our own respective spec, you were ranked 48% to other BM hunters, whereas I was 70% of MM hunters and I’m competing with people who have a 4pc.
^ All of that garbage I had to type out just shows that MAYBE, just maybe, you really can’t say what your 4pc is doing because my assumption is your aptitude and experience. Again, it’s a game, if I knew you in guild I’d be going with you to help you fix your spec or rotation.
It’s not. Movement 100% dps > lack of movement 75% (being generous) does not. It’s your lack of experience and you insisting what is annoying. Not your opinion. I don’t know 100% either. Just from my experience, years of playing and reading forums and blue posts I just side with my opinion. There are people on these forums that are well beyond me, so please don’t take it as you are absolutely wrong… just mostly.
and the world will keep on spinning.
Yes and if we are going to beat a dead horse, fine… The people playing after 2 or 3 weeks of raiding is not enough data that Blizzard is going to rush in. You know when they rush in? When something like average dps is like 50k and (for example) ret pali is hitting 100k because of how their abilities hit mob/boss… Recap, NO RUSH when the community needs a buff, RUSH is if something is above what is intended. If you spend enough time on these forums the community normally calls it “Blizzard nerfing fun” or something like that.
Exploit vs normal conditions are two different animals and really has nothing to do with what we are talking about.
Again, not saying Hunters, BM, MM, SV all won’t need some adjustments to some of the melee (especially since the community seems to all have gone melee), but I’m not saying it’s all doom and gloom.
*** Finally, hopefully I can make you understand Community Gripes vs In Game Reality… All three specs were given a “F” as far as the class ranked, you know, S, A, B etc, when the game went live, MM was really hard to beat. I honestly felt we were a bit OP going into it and expected a slight nerf. As I have seen other classes come up, I felt it was much closer and therefore felt “better”. However, I caught covid and was out of it for a few days and everyone coming up with a 2 and 4pc seems way off. Definitely worth a good 10 ilvl or better. Good news if you run alts through LFR, bad news if you don’t run raids at all. The point of all that is, they shouldn’t adjust anything until there is an average of players with BIS, 4pc etc.
This is the illusion of “choice” and a lofty use of the skill tree. Again, and I’m not sure how blizzard says one thing and it turns out the complete opposite.
I don’t know how to solve it, they force a point or 2 to get to the skill you want and subsequently lose the ability to get something you need. Personally, unless they are going to sit there with a calculator and give each ability the same value, there will never be a unique spec per person. Everyone will optimize (anyone who is playing the game on a certain level I guess) for the best DPS/HPS w.e…
Personally, I’m waiting for it all to become cosmetic… I.e. Arcane shot look like ice, fire, arc etc… I don’t think Blizzard knows what to do even.
I do understand that Blizzard tunes raids for Mythic for about the first 4-5 weeks of a season (for the World first Race). Raid tuning does not necessarily = class/spec tuning. For instance, this race was decided by the timing of a nerf that had nothing to do with classes or specs. After the world first is complete, they mostly just nerf the hell out of Mythic till people other than top 20 guilds can make some progress.
This is the rub. My impression is that you think the game should only be balanced for people who compete in the world first race or the MDI. I disagree.
I would point out that, as we are talking mainly about AoE for BM, on my first H Primal Council kill, I parsed at 99% for my iLvL. As an aside, I got my 4 set on the Sen kill before that, so new to the set, and not enchanted. Now, I understand that Mythic is a different world, but it seems I might know a thing or 2 about how to AoE? There were people in the raid who were 10 iLvLs above me, and also had a 4 set, who parsed in the 50’s for their iLvL, and beat me in total DPS. That seems to indicate that just maybe BM AoE is not where it should be.
And to clarify parsed 67% for my iLvL on my first Terros kill. Not great, but it was only the second time I used the ST spec. I wasn’t the best at hitting the short CD’s. Need to practice that.
The wash here is a guess on my part, but it seems to be Blizzard’s intent. Time will tell I suppose.
This is a valid statement in regard to Mythic raiding as it currently stands. There are not enough parses at that level to justify change, and right now, the top 20ish guilds performance is front and center for Blizz because of how public the world first race has become. I’m advocating for future changes based on Heroic raiding, not immediate changes for Mythic balance. I don’t see a problem with that. There is definitely enough data available to Blizzard (every single logged event to ever take place) to make some conclusions about that level of play. I don’t see ignoring the perception of all players other than top shelf Mythic raiders as a healthy strategy in the long run for an entire tier.
Agree, BM is mediocre, not terrible. It’s huge weakness is AoE, especially burst AoE. It doesn’t need to keep up with other specs in that regard, but it also shouldn’t be 40% behind the leading AoE damage. That gap is to large in my opinion. But that’s just my opinion.
Our ST is pretty decent tbh it’s when AoE fights come in that we really fall behind. Our AoE talent and overall design is just flat out bad. There is a video of a Heroic Raz kill where the BM on P1 is pumping, topping the meters then intermission hits and he falls off a cliff, like not even top 7 or however many was shown on the meters. Through P2/3 he inches his way back up to the 2 spot.
This was me on normal Raz. Went single target spec cause P3 is the money (after asking the raid leader what they wanted). Was right up there till the 1st intermission, than nothing. It’s a hard choice between AoE and ST. You have to drop Multishot to go all in on ST. It can get you thorough P3, but the intermissions feel bad.
Meanwhile you have spec like Fury War. If they need to AoE they stay in their ST spec and… have to hit WW every 3rd button press? And… umm… ya. That’s about it really.
After ww the next 5 attacks cleave. In reality what separates fury single target and AoE is literally 2 talent points. Even in AoE spec they are just losing some execute damage.
BM is far too easy to play to give that much burst damage. There has to be a downside to playing BM. They don’t have the burst of MM but they got better-sustained damage in a heavy-movement fight. That would have to be removed for more burst. It would not be fair for BM to have higher burst AND sustained damage than MM AND better mobility. That’s not how it works or should work.
Why this dumb ish always being spouted? Yes MM has such a hard rotation /s.
To clarify I don’t care about burst honestly. MM can have it’s burst, BM does just fine in ST. It’s AoE for BM that needs a rework. Moreover it’s 2023, stop acting like MM is hard or takes some kinda extra skill to play. I switch back and fourth and it’s all easy.
It’s what I had as far as I could compare I don’t know what my parse was and mainly AOe spec for both or one. Not sure, was trying to point out the relevance of a 4pc.
I see 44% on Terros only, but sure. It was an epeen matchup, the point was again, 4pc… Maybe more my problem then anything else in this post. Also, my first time, in a pug, screwing around with a M+ setup. (may have went ST, don’t remember it on first few attempts.
That was my only point. It’s going to take time. Playing all these years, I have had problems with X, Y, Z. On the rare occasion, I was right, nobody listened, I was heavily flamed and all I did was extrapolate the numbers out from out from play testing numbers. The point isn’t me being right, but more the I can count on one hand that I sat down, did the math and came reality that they don’t care. They would rather a class under perform, then to overperform. That’s their doctrine. I’ve watched warriors, shamans, warlocks, s priests really languish because NOBODY even addresses problems with the spec, gear, tree etc. I was convinced from Vanilla - pre WOTLK that they (devs) all played Palis and Mages right up to w.e expansion.
I don’r see that so much in M+ but of course I don’t see many BM, nor have I raided much this XP.
Derp… I think the DH has the least amount, there is a cavalcade of actions you must perform from group to group during a M+. Trust me, I’m familiar with each class…
Now it’s a mish mash of 50’s, 60’s and like 8 70s waiting on M+ to come out. Trust me, a hunter isn’t the hardest, but certainly not like a Melee who basically mongo’s from the tank position.
The entire argument about what specs are easy is entirely subjective. I’ve played most classes at a decently high level over the last couple expansions. I don’t think BM is hard by any stretch of the imagination, but micromanaging Frenzy stacks and pets is certainly more difficult than half of them. Of the Hunter specs, I find MM to be the easiest, BM second and SV slightly more difficult.
As to your other points about sustained vs burst, that is one of the issues many of us have. They gave us a burst path that would drastically reduce our sustained damage, but then undertuned those burst talents. Call of the Wild was supposed to be our big 3 minute cooldown, but it’s bugged in multiple ways and tuned so the burst doesn’t make up for the loss of sustained DPS.
You post a lot of words to essentially say “Trust me. I know.” Until you offer some actual evidence for your claims, nobody is going to give then any credence. Especially when much of what you say is in direct contradiction to things the developers have said. It seems like you’ve just created this idea in your head and are trying to support it with your own made up memories.
I apologize for being lofty and substandard public schools these days are only serving digestible content for the meme generation. Sometimes they are just responses to somebody, sometimes I need to go in-depth to address why I think what I’m saying. You want me to offer up information and not say what you’re missing. You’re a contradiction upon yourself. Sorry, there are no one-word answers for you 0-effort question. I read and write between keys… bored…
Never said that. In fact, on quite a few occasions I’ve stressed, I don’t know how Blizzard arrives at their conclusions and to be clear, nobody is coming to me for the answers over there.
Want my opinion? I can give it to you. You don’t think BM is performing well. Blizzard hasn’t mention any changes in the upcoming patch. There… That’s your answer from the people in charge, you’re wrong. I have maintained through every response that there is very little data to be gleaned from a 2 or 3 weeks of raids and I’m guessing that their internal information is an easy assumption there won’t be a change till post 6 weeks. Don’t like that answer? Sorry, but if it’s not in this upcoming patch, then you’re definitely waiting longer then that.
Really? Show me where. The last time you had a LEAD DESIGN talk to the general public was circa Ghostcrawler. Last time I’ve seen ANYONE respond to forums was around the Shaman community and that’s because one of the people PLAYED a Shaman. It was definitely do for an overhaul.
Lol, alright man. I get it, you disagree, you think I’m wrong and you have a narrative that what, Blizzard agrees with BM is in a bad place? My opinion, don’t hold your breath. Oh, don’t take my word for it, go read the patch notes… pay attention to the only hunter news… I hope they buff you guys WAY up out of control, I’ll happily switch. You’re ridiculous.
HUNTER
Marksmanship
Salvo has been redesigned – Your next Multi-Shot or Volley now also applies Explosive Shot to up to 2 targets hit. 45 second cooldown, does not incur the global cooldown.
Double Tap has been removed and has been replaced by Tactical Reload in the Talent tree.
New Talent: Tactical Reload – Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire cooldown reduced by 10%.
Tactical Reload and Steady Focus have swapped positions in the Talent tree.
Calling the Shots now reduces the cooldown of Trueshot by 2.5 seconds per 50 Focus spent (was 1.5 seconds).
You really are delusional. It’s the holidays. They have been essentially radio silent for over a week now. Lack of communication between Christmas and New Year’s is hardly damning. lol
Um, what? Now we’re moving the goalpost? By general public, you mean answering questions from random people in the forums? Maybe. However, they do rounds of interviews before most content patches and a lot of them before expansion releases. They have repeatedly made statements that contradict some of the stuff you have claimed earlier in this thread.
Damn. You’re really stretching. Pretty much everything I’ve said in this thread is to point out issues with the spec that I think need addressed. I never claimed that Blizzard agrees with me on that topic. This argument is about you claiming Blizzard intends for BM to be a bottom tier DPS spec because you think it’s an easy spec. Blizzard has never said that, and if you’re going to make that claim, you need to back it up with some evidence.
On the contrary, when Devs were interviewed by people like Preach and Asmongold, they specifically said they don’t balance classes that way.
At the beginning of Shadowlands, Asmongold jokingly asked if they were going to nerf Balance Druids, because it was far too easy to do that much damage. The Dev in the interview straight up said ease of play is a subjective metric and they try to balance the specs as close as possible.
When Preach interviewed a Dev, the question of hybrid tax came up and they made it clear there was no hybrid tax - followed by a statement that they strive to keep all DPS specs in the same general window, though every spec should have it’s strengths and weaknesses.
These are the messages we are getting from the actual developers of the game, yet you seem to have some obscure source from those same developers saying otherwise? You made the claim first. Let’s see those links.
