Simple fix give us back 100% cleave and and remove -35% penalty for making us take Animal Companion cause you gotta if you dont want to lose dps at all. Done. lol
3 Likes
The -35% is just a tooltip clarification. It was always there.
We shouldnt have to be reliant on a Flask. Its suppose to enhance, not have us be on par.
1 Like
You can try to weave in KC on the opener and fish for procs. My goal especially in AoE is to get my frenzy to 3 stacks as fast as possible. If you are trying to not waste potential procs on KC you would have to open with Multi-Shot>Kill Command>Barb-Shot>Kill Command ect ect.
The problem I see from this are a few. You are opening with Multi into a KC, your pets will be outside of melee until you hit KC so you are losing around a global on cleave anyways and sometimes the animal companion lags behind the main pet so it sometimes doesn’t register the KC on 2nd pet. I would have to test this on the dummies to confirm (it could make zero difference)
In a ST situation you might want to open fishing for KC but I also find you are losing up time on Chakram and again not getting to 3 frenzy stacks as soon as possible. I can test these variations real quick and give a more definitive answer.
EDIT:
In the end it has no difference in the overall DPS you are going to hit. You can hit higher burst in the opener by fishing for KC resets BUT it is hit or miss for things to proc. Sometimes they do and you can hit higher dps, sometimes you get no good procs and it is the same. Regardless your dps will settle into the average (we are a sustain spec after all) So it all comes down to personal preference.
I think most people will find it easier just to do the Barbx2>BW>Barb>Bloodshed>Chakram>KCx2>Dire Beast then settle into the priority system. I will say after the opener regardless of how you do it you should (if you have time) use KC before using the free Barb procs to fish for KC resets.
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I’m a nobody player on a mediocre toon and yesterday I switched to MM from BM just to give it a shot in 2 lower keys and some open world Elemental Primal stuff, and there’s a big difference.
First, I gave 4 run-throughs to 4million or so total damage each time on the dummies with BM, then switched to MM, got my rotation right and was doing 8k DPS more, same target dummy…which was single target and going AoE was WAY different. Maybe my gear is just better specced for MM? Oh, and this was WITH my pet out, because I am stupid.
Now the only thing I can think of with BM as a bonus is that I was mobile as heck, and that let me stay out of any M+ or raid damage (LFR, I’m a scrub), whereas with MM I do have to stand still a bit too much for my liking, but that’s the management part I deal with for the large DPS increase.
I noticed that a close-enough geared MM hunter was doing more damage than me (BM) in LFR, on the same single boss, and then tested it myself, and sure, it’s probably me or whatever, but my DPS went up with MM vs BM - same gear, same fights.
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This has been a lovely discussion, hilariously consisting lately of “I don’t play top content but BM is fine” and “dps is the cost for constant movement”
Just two things - one, if there is no fight that requires ranged to move constantly then being able to move constantly is not a positive. Short bursts of movement is how the fights are designed, and every class can do that.
Two - there are very few if any fights that all damage is avoidable only by movement, and would you look at that, BM(and hunters in general) are really really bad at dealing with unavoidable damage, some of the worst in the game.
How come “amazing defensive capabilities” aren’t part of a dps tax?
Is “running in circles while the aoe smushes you into a paste” the only metric by which anything is measured?
7 Likes
That used to be the hybrid tax. The ability to use healing or tanking abilities while DPS meant you did a small amount less DPS. Since the game is more PvE focused than PvP, the hybrid tax disappeared.
For DF, it seems like they had a team meeting and told all the class designers that there would be a lot of rot and unavoidable damage, so give everyone more self-sustain and defensives. They wanted to make sure it was very much a personal responsibility thing to stay alive. Unfortunately, the Hunter class designer was likely absent that day.
6 Likes
The bizarre thing is it seems the Hunter class designer is also the Shaman class designer (don’t quote me on this, I heard it from a Liquid Max stream), yet they didn’t make any of the same mistakes when designing Shamans.
6 Likes
No I think they definitely missed the boat with Shaman defensives. A lot of classes have healing baked into their DPS rotation while sham has to choose Damage or Heal to spend resources on. Defense-wise they had a lot more back in the day than they do now with shield, totems, wall. They lost a lot of their kit and never got it back. Their high burst I guess can make up for it but they still lack when it comes to just about every other class, IMO.
I mean look at rogues, good self healing on short CDs, answers to physical and magic damage and when the dice aren’t rolling in their favor they are the only class that gets to reset the fight completely and open up with the drop all over again.
I feel of all the classes it’s Hunter and Shaman that haven’t been brought to the current meta while seemingly every other class has multiple ways to soak, mitigate, evade and control the fight. Our kit isn’t up to par anymore since just about all of it has been negated over time with classes having all sorts of ways around it and if not around it, through it.
I’m thinking about switching from BM to MM for dungeons and raids. Is the MM rotation any less hectic or more forgiving? I find it annoying to juggle 3 stacks of barbed shot and/or the cleave since both are short durations. I have a history of frost mage and rogue, and neither was as annoying as BM is. I always fear I won’t put out good DPS if I drop the 3 stacks of barbed shot.
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There are a few buttons for sure, but it’s not overwhelming, and I can get overwhelmed easily with too many buttons.
also, I read they are removing Double Tap, which then would make it even less cumbersome (and probably less DPS)
So right now I count 13 buttons, but that’s with a macro I have for Serpent Sting, which isnt actually part of our rotation, but I macro it with and interrupt just to try something new. So it’s about 13 buttons according to Hekili (rotation helper). Some of them I don’t use on single pulls (multi shot) or some I use but the cooldown is longer so it’s not bad (Wailing Arrow)
I dont mind it at all, and that’s coming from a guy who finally tried Rogue and thought it had too many buttons 
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Make Beast Cleave 100% damage again instead of 75%, and lower Barb shot by 1 second.
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I’m suffering in M+ as BM doing 111k aoe while everyone else is doing 200k+
2 Likes
I think it is intended as BM counters high movement disengage classes. So we outright counter deviation evokers who can’t one shot us.
I was having fun but now I hate BM it’s horrible compared to what other people have.
All pure dps specs go through this odd cycle. One spec is always king, one is middle ground, and one is a dumpster fire. Then we get sudden changes either in a patch or xpack change and it rotates. BM was redesigned to be the heavy movement spec but the numbers just aren’t there for it atm.
Only if you have the Raszageth bow.
4 Likes
They screwed up yet again and balaced the class around tier sets. Not sure how long it will take for them to learn that this is not ok. I got 2 set and now its easy as can be to keep up 3 stacks. Dmg is still nothing compared to MM. Just play MM, its what blizz wants you to do apparently.
2 Likes
The big thing is buffing beast cleave back to 100% damage. That nerf from Shadowlands into DKragonfluight is extremely bad for the spec and it’s showing.
Also, BM is handcuffed right now by having an overpowered tier set bonus. Remove that and the damage is so bad it’s scary. Most people don’t actually have the tier bonus and that’s why nobody wants to bring hunters because they could be BM.
4pc is ok. Even with Barbed procs It’s still not huge since the procs are slow. A lot of BM “balance” is locked behind a bow barely anyone will get. It’s kinda a silly weapon if you think about it and wild to have so much of a boost locked behind it.
6 Likes