BM vs MM Performance

Classes Hunter
1

I went into BFA as a BM hunter and I’m pretty happy for the most part, although I am not a huge fan of SFE. I don’t raid at the moment, but I like doing M+ and I’ve been trying to push a few keys with my friends. They’ve been discussing how much stronger MM is and that perhaps I should consider swapping. Naturally I am considering it. However, I am Venthyr (LOL I know), I made this choice because of aesthetic reasons and am I very happy with the covenant outside of our Covenant ability. However, Flayed Shot is not good, and I am developing a little bit of resentment towards Blizz for not doing proper balancing; but this is besides the point.

I point blank refuse to swap covenants, I simply will not do it. As I understand NF is the reason MM is performing so well right now. So my question is, is there any meaningful reason to swap from BM to MM if I will stay Venthyr?

Thanks.

2

You understand incorrectly - MM is better than BM right now without any consideration for Covenant.

15 Likes
3

Marksman is performing much better than Beast Mastery right now.

Ultimately the Marksman Mastery will benefit more with Flayed Shot and in turn the Kill Shot procs compared to Beast Mastery.

In my honest opinion, do you - Have fun.

I play a Beast Mastery Necrolord Hunter. No Ragrets.

8 Likes
4

I hope I have made myself sufficiently clear. I am not merely asking whether or not MM is better than BM, regardless of covenant, I am also asking the degree to which it is better. If it’s only 1-2%, I’ll consider staying BM, but if it’s like 5% or something, then MM it is.

5

Its 25% better.

5 Likes
6

75th post in this thread has some numbers
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/bm-is-just-plain-sad/767046/76

7

I found this thread when Nok linked it, so I figure I would copy the numbers here since it specifically compares spec performance.

Normal Castle - 2 week span - 75th Percentile (warcraftlogs 12/22):

Fight BM SV MM BM Rank out of 24 specs MM Rank out of 24 specs BM/MM Dmg
Overall 2982 2935 3347 15 3 89.1%
Shriekwing 2357 2354 2784 15 4 84.7%
Huntsman 3506 3592 3946 20 7 88.8%
Destroyer 3020 2781 3399 11 1 88.8%
Sun King 2915 3123 3471 18 4 84.0%
Xy’mox 2871 2773 3159 12 5 90.9%
Darkvein 3206 3160 3565 18 6 89.9%
Council 2467 2350 2694 9 1 91.6%
Sludgefist 3796 3429 4314 9 2 88.0%
Generals 2678 2658 2919 16 7 91.7%
Denathrius 3020 3131 3215 18 9 93.9%

Strangely enough, SV is very close to BM, but MM is significantly higher that either of the other specs.

I’m actually not sure what the latest MM nerf does to these numbers. I might look at that next week after the numbers settle in.

1 Like
8

Night Fae has nothing to do with MM dominance.

BM is just undertuned

5 Likes
9

If you like BM - I’d cope and kept my hopes up for tuning. If you’re chasing higher performance - MM seems to be performing better in current raid tier, do be aware that MM is different from BM, you’ll have to be much more static to cast AiS and there’s often downtimes in rotation where you just spam Steady and Arcane shots as you wait for Aimed Shot charge.

1 Like
10

Middle of the pack (or lower) is hard to justify to most raid leaders when another Hunter in your group is topping the charts.

Even though my list showed MM at spots 4 and 5 for most fights, it’s performance is still significantly higher than most other specs, so the difference looks very severe in Details.

I’ve been using the “I prefer BM” argument for awhile, but I can see the writing on the wall, and I’ve been stashing my Soul Ash for the MM BiS Legendary. I don’t want to play MM, but I do want to play.

I’m not forging my legendary until after the Holidays. If it’s not tuned by then, I’m going to have to switch.

11

News flash: it almost certainly won’t be. Aside from the holidays being a thing even for Blizzard employees, they also swore they weren’t going to muck with the rankings of the covenants, and that also seems to have extended to anything that’s difficult to change (notably legendaries, and by extension, specs). This means that MM and Night Fae being the top is almost certainly going to remain the case until 9.1. They might buff some of the underperforming specs, legendaries, and covenants, and I seriously hope they do. But they very likely will not buff them enough to risk the “best” being supplanted, simply because their obsession with systems has made it nearly impossible to switch once you’re locked into one of them.

Like, I’ve put my Soul Ash into SST, in part based on this claim they’ve made that they won’t muck with the rankings. All of my anima and souls have gone into Night Fae. If they suddenly inverted it so that, say, BM + Necrolord + Qa’pla was the best, nearly all of my progress thus far in the Systems of Shadowlands will have been entirely reset.

That’s not a position they want to put players in, because now those players are looking at a weeks long grind just to catch up, entirely due to factors out of that player’s control and ability to predict (especially since Blizzard explicitly promised not to do that). That’s how you drive players away from your game.

4 Likes
12

Here’s the issue, however…

MM scales very well off of weapon ilvl (weapon dmg).
Because of this, any MM that got a wep is going to be doing a lot of damage.
Because that person is doing a lot of damage, they are going to get Power Infusion on cooldown.
Due to Power Infusion on cooldown, the logs are even more inflated.

I looked at some top MM parses yesterday, and a lot had > 60% uptime on Power Infusion. That’s literally like a permanent lust. I witnessed with my own eyes a hunter go from parsing 4.7k (on H Sludge) to pulling 5.6k consistently after Power Infusion. It is a tremendous increase in dps. Because of Power Infusion, numbers are skewed - and BM looks worse than it is because, quite literally, there isn’t a BM hunter out there getting Power Infusion (or at least there shouldn’t be).

13

It wouldn’t be the first time they have done something like this.

The worst as far as I am concerned was being told mage tower transmogs were never going to be class wide. Now they are. Screwing everyone who took what they said at face value and didn’t grind them out for specs they knew they would never play.

14

I’m actually not sure what you’re talking about here. Night Fae and Kyrian are very close for both specs. Not sure why anybody would need to change Covenants just because MM or BM got closer.

That’s what I mean when I say I’m waiting for tuning changes. If it gets closer to MM, I’m going to be very happy. A couple 5% buffs or nerfs in the right places would put MM and BM on a similar footing, and allow people to play the spec they enjoy. It only needs to be competitive with MM. It doesn’t have to be the best spec by any means.

This does not matter. They say a lot of things, but then they do something else entirely. Last week, Ion said that they were only considering small nerfs to rogues, but they did pretty big nerfs a few hours later. I’m sure you can think on MANY similar situations. Ion either doesn’t know what’s going on, or he is willing to say what people want to hear whether it’s true or not.

15

I would like to see some buffs to BM legendaries. They are REALLY bad.

2 Likes
16

Buff to BM leggos and maybe in some cases a rewrite/deletion/addition.

17

Blizzard is not listening.

18

They never do or they wouldn’t have nerfed BM 5% because of prepatch balance when they were told that BM would be inline with other specs and had number to show it.

2 Likes
19

They crushed BM Hunter in every way possible. Pets squishy, 4 sec res time, limit multishot to 5 targets, 5% overall damage nerf, spirit mend barely heals at all, terrible legendaries. This is to what I believe is the most popular class and spec in the game. Not a smart way to keep your customers happy.

11 Likes
20

Yep. My raid has 4-5 hunters, but I’m the only one of them that’s MM (everyone else just insisted on BM for reasons). When we got to Sludgefist, it was very clear I should be the one getting PI. It’s ridiculous burst. I peaked at 30k on the first vulnerability, with PI + lust.

Wait, did they ever say that? I don’t recall it, if so. They definitely said they weren’t going to come back in another form later, but I don’t recall any insistence they wouldn’t be class-wide. Or a reason for them not to be class-wide for that matter.

NF and Kyrian are reasonably close for MM, but NF still wins that battle, and Kyrian lost more ground with the recent Aimed/Arcane nerf than NF, since it Resonating Arrow depends directly on the damage of our abilities.

But the key here is, Wild Spirits and Resonating Arrow are AoE, the other two aren’t. If they muck with the rankings for AoE, they could easily invert them for single target. Same for many of the balance questions.

Like, I’m not saying that there’s a problem with them being closer. I explicitly said, in fact, that I very much hope they bring up some of the underperformers. I’m just saying they seem to be sticking to their guns on not upsetting the balance, and that that also seems to apply to legendaries and by extension specs now as well. And that they appear to prefer to err on the side of there being a larger than usual balance gap, to avoid inadvertent flips.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing. I’m not passing judgment on it either way. I’m predicting what will happen, not expressing preference.

Sure, but they seem to actually be sticking to their guns on it so far. All of the changes have been quite restrained, falling far short of the point where it risks inverting the rankings.

In many cases, they say things they don’t mean, or change their minds rapidly. I’m just saying that evidence thus far supports the notion that this might not be one of those things, that this might be one of those promises they actually mean to keep.