They are being very hesitant to add new stuff to the game… Having a talent there instead that gave us DR after using exhil would be at least be new. All the “new things” seem to be recycled content. This is usually fine if they are also adding new abilities and interactions, which at the moment seems very limited.
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Yea, if they would have added a new effect, cool. But instead they just broke it apart and forced us to spend twice amount of points for the same thing. Thats not ok.
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Not only that but in the same post they basically shrugged off the pet pathing AI issues they also - finally, four years after it was first reported in BFA - confirmed that animal companion applies a flat damage done debuff to all other pets summoned by the hunter including dire beasts.
While mentioning Animal Companion, there’s a known issue that taking this talent reduces the damage of all of your pets and other summoned units instead of just reducing the damage of your second pet. We plan on keeping Animal Companion around, and this is something we have plans to resolve so getting other abilities that summon pets no longer creates bad synergies, but I can’t give a guaranteed timeline on a change.
Looking forward to 10.0 BM hunter! We’re gonna hit so hard with our army of weakened pets.
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Right? Out of all the talents they brought back they chose the one that DOESNT work. Lol
Incompetence.
Both Animal Companion and Lone Wolf honestly need to be optional nodes at the end of a path instead of ones leading to another talent.
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To be fair, you also have this topic in the CC forum: Fluffy and You: Hunter Pets
The response left some things to desire ofc. But at least it’s a genuine discussion regarding the pets, that also links over to the hunter forum.
Hopefully they reconsider the current design that is meant to increase throughput. I hope that they make it so thay we’re allowed to manually call out two pets at once, and if we do, the Animal Companion acts as a passive aura that reduces the damage dealt by your two main pets by 50%, allowing the total to remain at 100% still. Similar to how Lone Wolf automatically takes effect when you dismiss your pet as MM, just with a different effect, and trigger.
Granted that if we spend 2 points on Natural Mending, it will now be every 12 Focus spent, down from every 30 Focus spent, like on live atm. This obv equates to it coming off CD faster. That aside, I would love it if, like you said, the pet heal effect would be brought back to being the default, and the Improved Exhil would simply give us the additional HoT effect that we’ve used for a while now.
Yeah, considering the positive sides with the new talents, both in terms of mechanical functionality, but also the aesthetics of it all, I really hope they rework Animal Companion before it all goes live. Otherwise it would essentially all be wasted anyway…
I would argue that they shouldn’t serve as talents att all, but as baseline passive choices.
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I still unironically love the idea of a “Lone Wolf BM” hunter. I will die on this hill.
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I know, I know… But that would be the meme spec of all meme specs… and -if- it at all worked it would be even better!
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Pretty much. But…why?
Not sure what you mean with “worked”.
Updated the OP with some additional points, thoughts of my own, or things that have been mentioned by others. And some clarifications as well.
One positive I forgot to include at the start is how you can avoid having to take AoE talents like Multi-Shot, Beast Cleave, and Kill Cleave, if the fight doesn’t require AoE.
Though, I’m not sold on the position of the Stomp talent in the tree.
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Why would it be a meme spec? Or why would someone want to play it?
The meme spec is a BM hunter without the B. So that alone justifies the lulz.
The why would someone play it? Because after 17+ years Blizzard still hasn’t figured out pet AI and pathing. BM is also the only fully mobile ranged dps. So if you dropped the clunky pet and buffed the not pet based abilities. Then it would be… I dunno what it would be, but it would be something.
By worked I meant pulled decent numbers without a pet. Like I said. Fully mobile dps, no janky pet mechanics.
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You have something, tbh. Why mess with the complete garbage system that are pets and take on a pet “essence” which allows the hunter to do more dmg and summon non-controllable herds of animals to do its dmg?
Obviously blizz has zero idea what they are doing which is seen in their oblivious responses to our CC inquiries. Plus pushing a broken talent onto the tree without a fix in over 3 years.
I honestly dont think this is a laziness issue, i think its a either just CANT or WONT do it.
If only there existed a ranged Hunter spec that was highly mobile, focused on instants, and used (but didn’t depend on) a pet.
Too bad such a thing hasn’t existed since 2016.
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If only, my friend. If only.
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Why should BM be reworked to a meme spec(?)
There’s no justification to do this. Please keep memes far away from class design.
#[Updated for Dragonflight] Munitions - If RSV was to return
…and keep BM for those who want to play with a focus on the pets.
Anyway, I don’t want this topic to stray from discussions about Beast Mastery, or in some ways, their updates for the class tree, so I’ll leave it at that.
I never said it should. Just that if it became a thing it would be hilarious.
The ends always justify the memes.
Yeah. I feel like you may be taking my satire abit too seriously. Though this really does feel like it could be an all too real thing with Blizzard’s current dev team.
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Well. In all fairness, you did say this earlier( 
):
But yeah, I’ll leave this as is…
Oh yeah, yeah. I meant that. I would fully enjoy the ridiculousness of it. But that’s not the same as asking for it, to me anyway. Or even expecting it, cuz I don’t. I just mean that if it were to happen in some bizzaro monkey’s paw corrupt-a-wish way… (because it is Blizzard we’re talking about) after I picked myself up from laughter I would definitely try it.
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Fair enough(again, let’s hope not).
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I feel that the goal of the talent tree should exist to add, improve, or change the spec, not take things that were removed from the class and put them into a tree. It doesn’t feel great that I have to invest in places (that I could be spending my points on different things) just to get my class power back. You could run a spec without Countershot and Tranq, but what hunter would gut their already limited utility even more? Why did those abilities arbitrarily get removed from our baseline kit? And as a BM Hunter, seeing abilities like Multi-shot, Cobra Shot, Beast Cleave, and Bestial Wrath on the tree instead of in our spellbooks just feels like a really bad design choice.
The tree is meant to augment our spec/class, not feel like we’re just putting points into something to complete our spec/class. It feels like an artificial choice. The words are escaping me, but like you think you have a choice, but you really don’t.
Also other specs got 2, 3 if not all their Covenant abilities back. Why did we just get Death Chakram? The one ability that was the worst of the 4. I would have loved to see Flayed Shot return. It was such a fun ability to use, and it provided some interesting gameplay, especially with the Pouch of Razor Fragments. It just seems like they went the laziest approach to these talent tree instead of actually spending time in crafting a worthwhile lot of abilities.
Death Chakrams is also in an awkward spot that as a BM Hunter, I’d probably never take because other nodes seem more important. Steel Trap should be replaced with Flayed Shot, in my opinion. Steel Trap feels like a PvP ability.
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