First off, I agree with everyone and I also don’t quite understand why this nerf is even being considered… However, I do have one theory and that is Power Infusion. PI is often being given to BM right now due to it being pretty good for us compared to other specs for single target.
If you look at warcraftlogs raid statistics for boss damage across many of single target encounters, you’ll see that BM is performing very well. BUT these statistics don’t filter external buffs… I urge you to look at the individual boss rankings and filter out logs with external buffs using the drop-down. BM is not over performing in ST damage without power infusion. It is in fact behind enhancement shaman and arcane mage. BM also has no viable way to deal good ST DMG when taking beast cleave. Thus, on these cleave fights BM boss DMG should be the highest as all other specs are foregoing boss DMG for cleave and/or are hitting other targets, which BM doesn’t have the luxury of doing. They have no other role within the raid.
TUNING SHOULD NOT BE ACCOUNTING FOR POWER INFUSION
You cannot just take BMs performance with PI as the normal and nerf it to a point where they are either middle of the pack in pure ST (no AOE) when getting PI or the worst ST dps in the game without PI.
If they’re balancing classes based on PI… someone needs to reconsider their line of work. And I nearly posted in another thread here to say “we need less hyperbole and overreacting” …
But seriously. That would be a career rearranging decision, to nerf an entire class or spec across all types of gameplay simply because they might get PI’d in a raid?
That seems to be what is happening here because BM is not top ST in sims or Raid fights unless they get PI. Enhance and Arcane are the best ST without PI.
Collar needs to be nerfed or removed to fix the AoE problem, which I agree on. However, this is a ~10% nerf in full ST build with no beast cleave or kill cleave and it’s even worse if you are specced into AoE.
This change would only make sense if:
Only the beast cleave or kill cleave was buffed, leaving ST untouched
The nerf to collar and buff to kill command resulted in a net 0 dps gain
BM currently overperforms right now because it is the best PI target, and 95% of mythic boss kill statistics have the BM hunter getting PI. This is the only data they have an abundance of that would drive a conclusion of BM single target overperforming and needing such a massive nerf. Look at individual boss statistics without external damage buffs and if you still find data that would support the decision for such a large nerf, please notify me.
New era I suppose? Mob mentality maybe? As much as I’d like to agree with you, there is no other conclusion lol. Everyone PIs BM and since they wont remove PI, they have no choice but to nerf the spec. BM single target is not overperforming in any way if you filter out external buffs on WCL. Especially if you consider that they lose a ton of damage by swapping targets and have zero ability to AoE if specced into ST. Taking that into account, id say it is quite fair that BM is among the top of boss damage stats without PI. I don’t know if they should be behind enhance or arcane mage, but among the top is acceptable. It does not warrant killing the spec and these changes do not alter BM AoE viability or performance in any way. We currently already lose over 10% ST damage by taking kill cleave.
Well BM wasn’t king of anything without power infusion being really strong for this particular iteration of BM nor are they nerfing us to the middle of the pack. Lol
I have a theory that if I stayed away from the forums I’d be a much happier player. Just play what I want without worrying about dps rankings.
BM hunters will still complete mythic+ and raids over the next few weeks, and then they’ll get that larger rework with the anniversary event. Sure it sucks now but I really feel people are completely overreacting.
That’s true, I don’t do anything in wow to a highly competitive level, but according to wowhead the anniversary stuff starts Oct 22nd, so if that’s true it’s just a couple weeks until the full rework. So it does suck, and yes it’s weird for them to add this part now, but we’ll all survive.
You’re telling people that play at a competitive level when the reality is that the spec is losing the only strength it has via a 9% single target loss. This hurts viability and most will probably have to go MM till the rework.
So yes you trying to tell people that raid at a mythic level they are over reacting in you commenting on content you don’t do.
I’m saying people are overreacting because this nerf is not all they’re doing, they’re also doing a larger rework with the anniversary event that most people (from what I’ve read) seem to think will be good, and that will be coming in a few weeks. So yes it’s weird to do this now, but people will survive for a couple weeks won’t they? I hope so at least.
And I’m saying because you don’t have any experience in high end you shouldn’t be assuming everyone is over reacting. Are some people over reacting because they won’t be viable in normal/heroic? Sure.