Changes to make BM more viable in PVP and RBGS

Classes Hunter
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Just throwing out a few ideas that could maybe improve the current state of Beast Mastery Hunters in PvP right now, and make them a viable options in Rated Battlegrounds again:

 Make Chimera shot viable again. Needs a 10-20% damage buff at the very least to be considered using over “One with the pack”. It would be nice to have another cooldown to use in the rotation that would improve damage.

 Boost pet leech to 15%

 Cobra shot could use a 5-10% damage buff

 5-10% damage buff to kill command

(Spirit Beats) 10-15% heal buff to Spirit Mend

(Spirit Beasts) Take “Spirit Shock” off Global cooldown

Make Roar of Sacrifice last 15-17 seconds

I’ll keep adding to this as I think of more ideas

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BM hunters and for that matter MM hunters need SO MUCH LOVE AND SO MANY CHANGES to make them viable…i am not sure Blizzard is even capable anymore of making hunters good at PvP.

I mean just look at Rogues (something Hunters SHOULD and USED TO be able to counter with relative ease) they are at the top of the PvP rankings as ALWAYS while Hunters are so weak and the devs so incredibly incompetent at buffing Hunters from their current zero tier PvP that they buffed MM a WHOPPING 5%…that was their big fix.

Just look at the arena charts for 2’s AND 3’s. Top 100 2’s teams…10 rogues, NOT A SINGLE HUNTER. Top 100 3’s teams…13 rogues (even HIGHER representation), NOT A SINGLE HUNTER.

NOTHING in either arena type. BM/MM Hunters need so many improvements at this point it’s not even worth pvp’ing with them. If you go further, ALMOST ALL of the “top” Hunters are Survival. In the devs zeal to make yet another melee spec. (which STILL ISN’T viable for top PvP) they have forgotten how to make the class playable in PvP.

I can appreciate your ideas and i think it is a good idea to at least throw them out there but we have had 100’s of pages of ideas and the devs have done ALMOST NOTHING to fix/improve hunters over the last 4 years. I mean Hunters were so bad in legion they went from being the MOST PLAYED class to now almost a ghost town with only really die hard’s playing them. Whoever did the design for Legion killed the class and it hasn’t recovered and i don’t see much changing in the near or intermediate term.

I mean come on, when they went live with BfA they added sniper shot which was supposed to be a thing then they made it the longest casting shot that hit for the LEAST DAMAGE…do you think these people have any idea wtf they are doing when it comes to hunters in PvP? BM is shoehorned into PvP’n with a handful of pets because it can’t survive ANY PRESSURE at all. MM is so incredibly bad because these same devs double punish a kiting class (even with the ridiculous amount of cc in the game) by making it not only hard cast but turret/immobile in order to do damage, don’t even get me started on lone wolf…10% LOL what a joke. Lock and Load…5%, what a joke. You can actually go not just arena games but ENTIRE BG’s with no proc that is how much of a joke it is.

All i am saying is don’t hold your breath. The devs are now and have been for a long time against hunters in PvP, Rogues and Mages can dominate season after season after season with no changes…but they redesign hunters and it’s ok to destroy them all so they can shoehorn in melee Surv. that no one asked for and very few play (because it’s not the fantasy of hunters). They are completely clueless as to what hunters need in PvP, they are stuck on this “highest sustained” damage, but you are never allowed to have the tools to actually do damage. Sure if you do scripted boss kills where you can turret all day long and never get focused because the tank holds aggro and oh boy you can pad those stats and make anything look great but in PvP, lol just absolute garbage. So definitely don’t hold your breath.

6 Likes
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Pretty much killed the game for me. I played less in Legion than in Warlords. Legion was a much better expansion content-wise, but for me Hunters were much more fun in WoD. Most of my Legion playtime was on other classes. All of my BfA playtime (what little there has been) has been on other classes.

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I stopped playing when WOD started, then came back after BFA was out for a while. Liked the class very briefly lol, then the boredom kicked in, large part due to pruning and stupid changes made to some abilities, on top of probably the worst talent trees of any class.

After playing a lot of BFA on my hunter, I agree that chimera needs a revamp, it’s just weak sauce and boring. Cobra could use a damage boost, orna additional effect to make it even remotely interesting. I’ve also felt like KC could and should get a decent boost in damage. With some proper tuning I think BM could get a lot better.

For those who like MM, they have quite a bit to do to clean up that disaster they’ve created. I usually play MM in PVP however as I like having more burst and spec is a mess, but I do enjoy sniper shot and being able to open up so far away.

MM used to be my favorite PVE spec years past and BM I did most of my PVP on. Today’s Wow it’s the opposite, I enjoy pve much more as BM and PVP about as equal as MM. The one big reason I trended to MM for PVP in BFA was the bigger burst, which the difference seemed much more noticeable at lower ilvl. However as I’ve gotten much better gear, I seem to do equally as good and in some cases better running BM in PVP. Guess it depends on the BG or environment I’m in too, some are better suited for BM or MM.

As far as BM, its needs some work for sure to make it fun again. I know all classes are boring as heck in todsysbWow, very sad. However you can only take so much of crapoy cobra, boring and animation sucks. Barbed is burning at least it gives frenzy and makes it purposeful to use. Kill command is boring, again least to me animation blows and it’s damage is a bit lackluster.

Unfortunately I feel like many Blizz doesn’t have a clue with hunters. They’ll never bump us up on a priority list, they have totally effed up the class and each spec. I’ve never seen a company have things in a decent spot then completely butcher them like they’ve done to hunters, its mind boggling especially with all the player feedback they get. They’d rather push horrible changes no one asked for, than to work with what players enjoy and continue to build up. There is really no excuse for that

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bm is in a good spot it just lacks something like a kill shot an execute if you will.

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During the BfA pre-patch, BM Hunters were really strong in PVE and PVP and people complained and cried OH THAT SPEC IS BROKEN!!!

And Blizz nerfed the living hell out of BM’s pet damage and Spirit Beasts heal. At least the spec has recovered somewhat for PVE but its clearly not there for PvP.

I would love to see Kill Command not require LoS anymore. It was great to sick my pet on someone, have it chase that person around a pillar and still be able to use Kill Command on the target.

Spirit Shock is just one of 7 or 8 similar pet abilities that all work identically: strip a magic/enrage buff from a target. I’m fine with it being on my gcd but there are times when I want to cast it and it should be castable but it isn’t. Not sure if its because the pet’s resources are too low or if something else is at play.

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In shadowlands we are getting kill shot back which is good as it will round our spec out well. if we get a buff to kill command or make frenzy affect both hunter and pet we should be good on damage.

my biggest pvp concern will us still having the inability to kite properly. melee has too much mobility and faster defenses. we need to have explosive trap knockback baseline scattershot and tranq shot back or lower cd of freezing trap

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Most likely, it fails to cast because the pet is not in range of the target.

Spirit Shock requires melee range to be used. Sadly, contrary to most “melee-abilities”, Spirit Shock seems to basically require the pet to be hugging the target or you won’t be able to cast the ability.

Atm, you basically need to spam-click the ability until the intended buff has been dispelled. A tip here would be to have a pop-up in the middle of your screen which shows when you’ve dispelled something from the target.
Makes it easier to manage the ability.

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Undo the early expansion pvp nerfs, or buff cobra shot/KC by a significant amount in pvp (At least 25%). Minimum they can do is un-nerfing basilik and hawk, these two pvp abilities are absolutely meaningless in pvp in their current state.

I’d like to see RoS making our pet soak the 20% dmg for us again, given how crit is useless in pvp rn (Except for mages).

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None of these changes are really what will help BM. You’ll just land yourself in a spot where people are complaining again and we get nerfed into the ground.

I think one thing that needs to be made apparent is that kill command is a BM ability, NOT a hunter ability, and SV should have a less significant version.

1 way to do this I can think of would be to change BM’s kill command to nature damage; not physical. So it ignores armour, maybe a slight buff also. This will make our rotation more satisfying/rewarding and seperate us from SV.

If you guys aren’t already, stack vers in PvP, not crit. Crit doesn’t synergise with BM well in PvP like it does in PvE, and try and aim for bleed, haze and primal traits to maximise burst and consistent pressure.

I was one of 4 BM hunters above 2.4 last season in arena and have spent countless hours with Hogx (highest BM NA) attempting to tweak and learn what is best for BM in the current meta, for it to work.

I’ll be streaming consistently soon and streaming 2’s games, I haven’t had the chance to push rating yet this season so I’m only around 2200 mmr but feel free to jump on and say hey and discuss ideas. I’ll be live this Saturday morning (which for USA is Friday night) streaming 2’s with my Rdruid who is a season 3 Glad. Might get a chance to finally push some rating too!

I’m still learning, especially with corruption and a more speedy meta what’s going to work best in regards to traits, stat priority, essences and gameplay. So would eventually like a couple hunters to chat with.

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I find the overall toolkit of the spec satisfying, I think it really suffers from sheer undertuning right now. I think that we can all agree on buffing kill command one way or another, right now I indeed feel like it’s a more crucial button for the SV rotation than for the BM one :sweat_smile:

I also find some of our pvp talents kinda lackluster, whether it is the utility or the damage ones.
I don’t think that buffing basilik would make us OP or anything, but there’s no way justifying it doing almost the same damage as in S1, while health pools have been multiplied by 4 lol.

I’ve played it to 2300 while trolling with my hpriest friend, but without corruptions and essences I’m not sure the spec would be viable at all. It’s frustrating to do some nice cc chains to no avail against classes like rogue or DH’s that have the slightest idea of what to do :frowning:

I’ve tried surv lately and it’s crazy how much additional pressure it does compared to BM, against plates mostly.

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Pet’s gcd maybe?

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MM would be great if Binding shot and scatter shot was baseline and had their HP increased a little.

BM shouldn’t be a pvp spec… lol
BM is okay right now.

I think BM and MM should have the SV heal as well.

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The ability does a “GCD swipe” on the action bar button where its unavailable for a split second but its not matching my GCD, so its probably this although I didn’t think pets had their own separate gcd.

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For me, the problem isn’t damage. It’s that my opponent can easily out-heal and/or mitigate my damage while my ability to do the same with their’s doesn’t even come close. Our Hunter defensives are a joke.

Also, it is way easier for my opponent to stay in melee then it is for me to keep them at range and they have way more CC/interrupts than I do.

That is the problem with Hunter PVP in my opinion.

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Hoping they make hunters viable in RBGs again before the next xpac. Hunters easily get passed on for a fire mage/lock/rogue/dk/boomy/dh

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That’s because…

unfortunately.

Hunter PvP dps is absolutely terrible for multiple reasons and the devs don’t seem to be able to get past having Rogue/Mage be forever the best at almost everything PvP.

Can’t have a functional kiting class that is FORCED TO HARD CAST AND TURRET…those design choices don’t work for a class that is supposed to kite by definition. Everyone has MULTIPLE gap closers and what little you can do with CC is almost useless against how sticky melee can be and how often range can just sit on you, traps are on a super long cd, there is no survivability.

It’s kind of funny because when i PvE in my PvP gear i can do great at dps…step into PvP and just do garbage dps compared to comparatively geared DH/Warrior/Paladin, just really bad.

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Imo 2225 cr bm last season. I have tested spirit beast and Ms raptors with freedom pets. Mortal strike masters call feels better and is the go to 99% of games. But that being said the games I’ve played with spirit beast feel really good because the tankiness feels nearly correct.

Now before I finish my last point let me back track…survival hunter can use a mortal strike freedom pet yet bm is supposed to have stronger exotic pets…in pvp ur forced in the mortal strike pet with masters call. So once again survival gets all the benefits bm hunters are supposed to have…

So to conclude…I think bm should have exotic pets have spirit mend, spirit shock, survival of the fittest, mortal strike, and masters call. If all exotic pets had this then bm would have all the defensives to feel like a class again without it feeling overtuned. Maybe the kill command being nature damage

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Really unlikely since it is your pet physically attacking the target.

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So infected bite missing the point

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