Comprehensive BM Talent and Pet Revamp

Classes Hunter
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Bush’s Big BM and Pet Revamp

I’ve been working on this for a while and I tried to make it as clean and easy to read as possible. Thanks to Nishi, Jodax and others for creative help!

We all know BM and hunter in general is in a pretty sorry state. That’s why this is only one of many ideas proposed here. However I do think my proposed ideas really tackle the root cause of the problem, instead of just buffing numbers.

  • Pet system is lackluster and limits pet choice
  • BM talents are boring and most of them don’t even affect gameplay
  • Aspect of the Wild is currently one of the most boring “big” CDs, tied with Coordinated Assault…
  • The core of BM is actually in the best place of the 3 specs

With those things in mind, I created a new pet system that lets you choose any pet you like the aesthetics of, but added to the utility and depth of gameplay pets should provide. The BM talents were thoughtfully redone from the ground up, and some minor tweaks to existing abilities were made where needed.

Basics of the new Pet System:
Pet System

· Pet families no longer have unique abilities

· Pets are no longer tied to one specialization. Their spec is chosen in their talent page

· Each of your pets retains their own talent setup

· When you choose Pack Leader and have two pets out, the specialization passives don’t stack if they are the same. Eg; If both pets are Tenacity, you still only take 10% reduced damage. If one is Ferocity instead, you take 10% reduced damage AND gain 10% leech

· For clarity, the defensive, utility and group utility talents are not tied to which pet specialization you chose

The goal of the talent revamp is to make the talents more interesting, impactful and intuitive. This means less passives that just buff damage, which in turn means you have actual gameplay affecting decisions to make AND those decisions should be less mathy. IE taking an obvious single target talent should be the best choice for single target. I’m looking at you hunter covenant abilities >.>

Some talent examples:

Scent of Blood - Kill Command causes the target to bleed for 20% extra damage over 8 sec. You and your pet(s) gain 5% haste for each of your active bleeds.

A solid single target buff that also allows you to leverage extra targets for dps. Interacts with existing Barbed Shot and Bloodshed bleed effects.

Lynx Rush
1 min cooldown
Instant cast
Your pet(s) rapidly charge from target to target, attacking 9 times over 4 sec. The pets must be within 10 yards of the target to Lynx Rush.

A cool ability from back in MoP. Can be used against any number of targets, but rewards you for getting a must kill target alone.

Trample
30 yd range from Pet.
Instant 30 sec cooldown
You mark a location on the ground. Your pet(s) charge there, knocking down enemies in their path.

A new BM only CC/Defensive/Utility. Adds weight to the pet and reminds everyone you control a rampaging beast. Establishes that knockdowns are a BM hunter theme for later use in my revamped version of Stampede.

More detailed breakdowns for all talents can be seen in the next post below!

Bush’s Big BM and Pet Revamp

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Talents for reference

Explanations for Talent Designs

Tier 15

This tier has to be simple. At level 15 you don’t have many abilities to work with, and the ones you do have you haven’t played with long enough to know how you’d like to change them. For max level veteran players though, they should still be impactful choices.

Stomp is as it is on live; a generalist talent that leans AoE and helps with pet threat while soloing packs of mobs.

Dire Beasts is a single target sustain talent that aesthetically should appeal to people who miss the zoo build.

A Murder of Crows is the more advanced option though still relatively simple. It introduces the idea of longer CD damage abilities and leveraging additional targets. The slight change from live is that the damage ramps over time. This still rewards you for applying to targets that will die just before it ends, but getting the full benefit on a single entity should be a good consolation prize.

Tier 25

This is the resource economy tier. The resources being frenzy stacks and focus.

Dire Frenzy is a slightly reworked version of Scent of Blood on live. Scent of blood is amazing, actually too amazing especially compared to the alternatives. To make the role of the talent more defined and to remove the silly double barbed shot opener, Bestial Wrath now only grants 2 charges of barbed shot when you are already at 3 stacks of frenzy.

One with the Pack is extremely weak on live and almost not noticeable. To define its role as sustain and “more barbed shots” the proc chance has been increased as well as the duration of the barbed shot effects. This synergizes well with the new Scent of Blood talent later on, but is still RNG where Dire Frenzy is more deterministic.

Fervor is all about burst damage, but the weakest for sustain. This makes the spec less about ramping damage, and more like older iterations of the spec where it was all about burst. Synergizes well with Killer Cobra later on, but also any burst oriented build.

Tier 30

This is a defensive tier. This is about mitigating damage taken.

Born To Be Wild is extremely weak on live. I’ve made it similar to how old Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera used to work. This talent is about skillfully avoiding being damaged. Having charges means you can be more reactive to damage.

Spirit Bond returns! A simple, effective and sorely missed talent. This gives you and your pet the most health over time. Great for when you are taking spikey damage.

Exhilaration moves from baseline to talented. I know this is controversial to some, but taken in the context of all the changes I’ve made, it makes sense. Plus if you are already taking Natural Mending on live, then nothing changes since that talent is baked into the ability now.

Tier 35

This tier is about gameplay pacing. Scent of Blood is more drawn out and incentivises dealing damage evenly amongst targets. Killer Instinct is for rapid killing and moving on. Lynx Rush is about attacking when the moment is right.

Scent of Blood, not to be confused with the live version which is now Dire Frenzy. This talent rewards you for “multi-dotting” with Barbed Shot and Kill Command. Also synergizes with Gore and Bloodshed. Rewarding you with haste means it’s easier to keep up the more targets you have, but not so much as to scale infinitely. Haste also buffs your beastcleave.

Killer Instinct, I’m really happy with how this came together. It’s about killing… it’s in the name. KILL Shot, KILL Command. It buffs Kill Shot indirectly with pet damage via Kill Command. The instinct part is you don’t need to tell your pet what to do, it gets the idea when you Kill Shot…

Lynx Rush is an old favourite of mine from Mists of Pandaria (The 5.0 version, before it was gutted!) Although this works fine to just press on CD against any number of targets, it really shines when you can get a priority kill target alone, which is another theme BM should be pushing.

Tier 40

This tier is about freedom of movement, for you or your enemy.

Trailblazer has been moved down and buffed. We are supposed to be the kiting class yet most other classes have no problem keeping on top of us.

Posthaste is unchanged because it is already a staple talent pick. It should have some competition now though.

Trample is a new talent that replaces binding shot with something more BM flavoured. Can be used defensively or offensively and establishes knockdown as a BM theme. Reminds everyone you control a rampaging beast.

Tier 45

Another dps style tier but this time centred around Cobra Shot usage.

Thrill of the Hunt is a generalist talent. Cobra Shot extending Aspect of the Wild by 1 second may not seem like a lot, but that should extend the window to between 30 and 35 seconds. And with the way AotW works now, every second you are in the window means you are 2 seconds closer to your abilities being off CD, including AoTW.

Chimaera Shot harkens back to its Wrath of the Lich King iteration. It interacts with the other abilities in your kit. Special Abilities in Blizzard Speak as far as I know means buttons you press. Pet Basic Attacks are things like claw that are on autocast and spend pet focus. Pet melee attacks are everything your pet does. This is intended to be the worst single target, but allows you to cleave your Kill Command, Lynx Rush, Gore and Bloodshed, along with possible Intimidation balance allowing. Especially effective with no damage effects like Bloodshed’s damage buff, since you gain the full effect on both targets. Also synergizes with Scent of Blood yet again, letting you spread bleeds easier.

Kill Cobra is moved down a tier from live but is otherwise unchanged. What it gains are other supporting talents that mean you can effectively use it without being as focus starved.

Tier 50

This tier, the final tier is about playstyle defining cooldowns. We have a conditional medium CD talent good depending on how you use it. A long CD big AoE with utility, and a shorter CD reliable single target burst talent that synergizes well with most of the previous talents.

Gore is a new ability that seems complex but really isn’t. When used on more than one enemy it deals effective damage in a line. If you can make it hit just one target though, that target suffers intense bleed damage as well as a debilitating utility effect based on your pet’s specialization talent. Has some counterplay for PVP built in because if your kill target’s ally gets in the way, they only suffer the initial impact damage.

Stampede… I made it more like it’s namesake. No longer a skinny single file line of animals that may or may not hit targets in their path for piddly damage. This is now much wider, deals much more damage and has a periodic knockdown built in similar to Earthquake. Useful for interrupting big packs of caster adds, or zoning the enemy arena team to set up a perfect Lynx Rush.

Bloodshed is largely unchanged from live with the exception of a slightly lower CD. It is also now more defined in its role of reliable single target burst though because of changes to the rest of the tier.

Talents for reference

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Overhaul turned out great - wtb this in live! For people who aren’t as familiar with the spec or don’t have the time to think about its nuances as carefully as you have, it might be worth doing somewhat of a design blog explaining your intentions to clarify the specific problems you’re aiming to fix and how your changes improve the situation.

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Good idea. I’ll add explanations for each choice soon.

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Added detailed breakdowns of design decisions in the second post.

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bump /10char

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The following are nitpicks more than anything major, but I hope they may illustrate some larger points:

  • Why attach a 3-stacks requirement to Dire Frenzy (as compared to the objectively more powerful Scent of Blood? Such makes it far less applicable outside of sustained combat. This seems especially problematic alongside the buff to One with the Pack. I don’t feel the original effect would have been “too amazing” compared to what you have here; you’ve buffed OwtP, for instance, by more than 50%, after all.
  • Why not just have Lynx Rush rush to the primary target, just as it would with Kill Command, before bouncing about?
  • Pack Leader could get rather annoying in that you’d be obliged to ensure your pets are ordered or specialized (i.e., across Call Pet 1, Call Pet 2, Call Pet 3, etc.) such that no two in consecutive positions are given the same specialization… unless the second pet is to be called manually. The latter case requires an extra GCD upon swapping to BM, but that’s probably still better than it being done automatically while benefiting from both pets in a way that obliges strict pet-ordering. Alternatively, perhaps cause it to stack partially (15% movement speed increase for 2 Cunning pets, for instance)?
  • The clause appended to Chimaera Shot, allowing for a single additional target’s worth of Beast Cleave, feels… week. It makes Beast Cleave itself seem a bit more arbitrary or disjointed than it otherwise would.
    • I’m not sure if it’s worth revising Beast Cleave itself (e.g. such that your shots cause the enemy struck to take damage from pet attacks made within 8 yards), but something about it in its iteration (while functionally better than live, ofc) feels just a bit incomplete.
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All good man thanks for well thought out feedback!

So, you might be correct about this but I think it would require actual playtesting to be sure. I had a few considerations when making the change.

  • Live iteration is pretty much too good and basically removes the “ramp” gameplay
  • Having to dump Barbed Shot charges before BW, especially on the opener feels really bad (to me)
  • It has to fit between the “RNG” sustain of OwtP and burst focus of Fervor

So ya its possible it could need something else to compete, but I don’t think it should be quite the same as live.

It could easily do that, it just didn’t back when it existed in game. It does a mini 10y leap as part of its effect, but could easily have an initial range boost.

  • I intended it to be fully manual, no special pet order required.
  • The not stacking with the same specialization was a balance concern. If you could get 20% damage reduction that seems overpowered. Even if its just 15%, that removes the niche of Big Red Pet. BRP vs Pack Leader is supposed to be a choice between having the highest possible of one stat vs more overall and utility.

So this seems like an issue with my wording of the talent, which sucks because I’m not sure of a better way to word it without straight up listing the abilities it works with. I talked about it a bit in my second post, but…

For Reference

A two headed shot that deals physical damage to your target and nature to a second. Using while Beast Cleave is active causes your pets’ next special ability to hit another nearby target for 50% damage.

Special Abilities in Blizzard Speak as far as I know means buttons you press. Pet Basic Attacks are things like claw that are on autocast and spend pet focus. Pet melee attacks are everything your pet does. This is intended to be the worst single target, but allows you to cleave your Kill Command, Lynx Rush, Gore and Bloodshed, along with possible Intimidation balance allowing. Especially effective with debuff effects like Bloodshed’s damage buff, since you gain the full effect on both targets. Also synergizes with Scent of Blood yet again, letting you spread bleeds easier.

So basically you would be weaving in those abilities between cobra shots while Beast Cleave is active to become a 2-target cleave monster.

I did try revisiting Beast Cleave in this revamp and ended up just changing what you do between keeping beast cleave up rather than changing beast cleave itself. It’s possible I didn’t do enough though.

I even tried an idea with bringing back Sidewinders from Legion MM. In my version though it was going to refresh Barbed Shots on targets it hit. I liked it because it benefitted from BM’s mobility since the positioning of the hunter is integral to using Sidewinders effectively. I ended up dumping it because of basically balance concerns especially with Scent of Blood and probable focus gen problems.

Anyway, that was extremely long winded of me but I hope that addressed your concerns. Thanks for reading!

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Right, but the live iteration doesn’t make it far harder to drop stacks, and only increases Wild Call by 2/3s as much. Though those two things eventually become functionally redundant, you’ve given OwtP some huge buffs here.

I get ya, man. It’s why I wish OwtP were stronger. But that really just means they’re all sustained options to some degree.

As much as we might dislike the BS-dumping before BW, especially if BW is fully refreshed already (e.g. at a cold open with CDs ready), that obligation kind of does that already, at least in terms of pacing.

Moreover, I’d offer that if you want to make them all fit nearer each other, the outlier isn’t the former Scent of Blood concept, but One with the Pack. If you want it to fit more solidly against them (especially in terms of timing), then you’d want it to give some burstier way to increase its chance, such as by giving the Barbed Shot initial hit, itself, a chance to refresh Barbed Shot (with the general chance increase being reduced, perhaps back to 20%, to compensate).

Big Red Pet will still have its niche in regards to its own eHP, etc. I’d argue it might be better to step on some toes or blur the lines here than to wholly exclude an otherwise situational choice (“double-Speccing” at lower efficiency).

No, no, you worded it very understandably from the start.

My issue was more that this Chimaera makes Beast Cleave sound like it revolves around targets being hit by your skills while in all other cases Beast Cleave instead has to do with having simply used a particular skill (without regard to how many enemies were hit). It feels like a mixed message that, in turn, makes the mechanic feel a little half-assed. (Not your fault; you’re objectively making it better, and even more intuitive from a “press button; get effect” standpoint by adding this interaction to Chimaera. Just a pet peeve, probably.)

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So just gonna touch on the barbed shot tier and Chimaera Shot here.

Barbed Shot Tier

The barbed shot tier I feel depends on numerical balance. If BM is balanced around basically 100% uptime of max frenzy. If not and max frenzy is more of a bonus that changes things.

I designed it with the current near 100% uptime in mind. With some more haste mixed into the spec from the changed AoTW and new Scent of Blood, I figured Dire Frenzy even a bit nerfed would be about the same power level. OwtP was supposed to give you MORE than you need single target, and allow some multidotting on more than one target. It is RNG though so not as reliable. Then Fervor is its own thing for when you don’t need to sustain, and it synergizes well with Killer Cobra which needed some love anyway.

Just to put Dire Frenzy in a raid setting. Your opener would be AoTW, BW, then rotation. AoTW, BW and Barbed Shot all have effectively halved cooldowns during the opener, so you won’t have a problem reaching and keeping max frenzy during that time. Also, your second BW window will come sooner and at that point, as long as you don’t let Frenzy drop, nothing will feel different from live.

Chimaera Shot

I’ll agree it does sound a little half-assed mechanically and I’m not happy about that. I iterated on this a lot. I added the “while beast cleave is active” requirement because I figured doing a single target rotation into two targets wouldn’t add much to the gameplay but would be pretty broken dps wise. At least if you have to keep Beast Cleave up, which we do on live even with 2 targets, it feels like more to manage in return for big damage.

I do feel like the damage is warranted though. BM is limited by pet positioning to basically single or clumped targets. It doesn’t make sense for use to do spread cleave for example, which is part of the reason I ditched my Sidewinders idea.

Related, I feel like any talent that would change how beast cleave functions itself should be an active skill that replaces Multi-shot and it should probably have a different strength than prolonged clumped AoE. I just couldn’t think of anything that fit.

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Right, but many a player will never touch raids. They will, however, be doing things like leveling, M+, and PvP, where Frenzy may be near but not quite enough to last into a BW that refreshes during downtime. Given the benefit offered, it’d be incredibly frustrating to be a Barbed Shot off from meeting a requirement that feels painfully arbitrary (and, as we’ve discussed, redundant in any raid setting).

Equally, though, I feel it robs us of an at least somewhat meaningful choice. Let’s revisit that raid premise:

  • Previously, if Barbed Shots came up just as BW did, and we had Scent of Blood, we had two choices: spend all, then pop the CD, or just rush out the CD (i.e., if we have plentiful Focus anyways and the Barbed Shot on our only enemy is already fresh).
  • Now, our choices from no stacks are to spend our Barbed Shots, hope for a third before they wear off, and use the third to the point that we’ve wasted 3 shots’ worth of CDR, just so we can get 2 free shots… or ignore our talent completely.

No thematic balance in the niches between talents is worth that.

If it ever comes to a point where you can’t balance the numbers of the uninhibited version, buff the other two talents (creating an absurdly strong row if that’s what it takes) and siphon the difference from the class aura if that’s what it takes, but don’t apply to it a weakness that means nothing in X situations and makes the talent useless in Y situations, especially given that those situations are driven by RNG.

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Worst case scenario I would revert it to the live version, which again I don’t even dislike. I just dislike the opener it creates. There are other options though.

You could put the “barbed shot effects last 2 seconds longer” on Dire Frenzy instead of OwtP. This would make it the methodical rotation talent where you will always be able to keep it up. That does move the multidotting idea to a weird place though since without the duration increase I think OwtP would be worse than Dire Frenzy at that and it loses its purpose.

Another option is just up the base duration of Barbed Shot effects from 8 to 9 seconds, and OtwP only increases that by 1 second.

There lots of options, I just think it would require playtesting to really determine what is best. We didn’t have BW giving us barbed shot charges in BFA and we survived, but it does feel way better now.

EDIT: Just reminded myself of another option. Could increase the Barbed Shot charge max to 3 with one of the talents. Probably OwtP.

EDIT 2: Another one that I like a bit less but still fits the theme of the talent well. Could effectively lower the CD of BW either by just reducing the CD by some nominal amount or having barbed shot reduce its remaining CD by 15sec instead of 12 or something.

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If you suspect most will hate the opener as much as you do (and I, too, dislike it from cold open so that’s at least a possibly very skewed sample size of two), you could look at replacing the concept (and likely its name) entirely.

For instance, you could bring back the Legion talent by which Bestial Wrath’s damage modifier was increased, or cause it to give a burst of Haste, fading over BNW’s duration.

  • Such would unfortunately make RPF’s finally outperforming SFE in single-target come from an indirect source, but that’s no so horrible (especially compared to SFE remaining at the time for all circumstances).

Edit: Your two ideas in the Edits above aren’t too bad, either.

Again, we just need a decently fit talent. Personally, I both really like (outside of opening with both charges and BW ready) and dislike (in said scenario) the live Scent of Blood, but the possibilities are many; we don’t have to harken back to anything from before.

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I def wouldn’t want to abandon the concept. I like how the spec flows with it.

K here is what I’m thinking changes would look like:

Dire Frenzy
While your pet(s) have 3 stacks of frenzy, activating Bestial Wrath grants 2 charges of Barbed Shot.
Barbed Shot reduces the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by an additional 3 seconds.

One with the Pack
Wild Call has a 30% increased chance to reset the cooldown of Barbed Shot and your maximum charges of Barbed Shot are increased by 1.

I did want the duration of Barbed Shot effect increased somewhere in the kit since we won’t always have a legendary or something to do that. It could possibly be added to Thrill of the Hunt farther down.

Thrill of the Hunt
Cobra Shot extends the duration of Aspect of the Wild by 1 second.
Barbed Shot’s effects last 2 seconds longer.

Any thoughts on the Beast Cleave stuff earlier or my Sidewinders Idea?

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What about providing some other reason to reach 3 stacks before using BW, rather than having the talent literally do nothing otherwise? For instance, you could have BW double the effect of Frenzy stacks present at time of activation.

Tbh, Legion MM will undoubtedly bias me away from Sidewinders here, but even more than that, I’m just not a big fan of over-the-top animations. Cobra Shot feels like enough of a nature vibe, passable in that it can be a flashy name to what is really just a poisoned arrow. Multi-Shot seems a conical AoE enough.

As for Beast Cleave, I’m not sure. We could just write out the passive as something like:
“Your multi-target ranged attacks cause your pet to, for 4 seconds, cleave as many enemies nearby as your ranged attack hit beyond their first target struck.”

I guess?

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I mean, there is already incentive to reach 3 stacks of frenzy. Having 3 stacks of frenzy is 90% faster attack speed for your pet. That is the reason I ditched the old Thrill of the Hunt that literally just added to that incentive.

I had thought about talents that say, let your Frenzy stack higher, but I figured 90% is already quite high and feels bad to lose. Imagine losing 150%.