Sentinel Owl - or at the very least Sentinel’s Wisdom - needs to be raid wide to be good. That’s obviously just my opinion, but lack of raid utility is still a concern.
4 Likes
Some Welcome changes.
Good AC is fixed. Will be great if tuning makes it an option not a Must take.
Would like to know their reasoning as to why Dev is reducing Wailing Arrow to a 3 second Silence for BM only not MM.
Qa’Pla now works. Good Now make it a 1 Point Talent. Same with Stomp. at the Very least… Plus 2 other 2 point Nodes reduced to singles.
I suggest One With the Pack and Scent of Blood.
Also Reduce Thrill of the Hunt OR Dire Command to 2 Point Nodes.
Binding shot Change will only make sense if the stun is Instant not movement related.
I also would have rather NtA have been replaced by another new Talent the Location of Serrated Shots was fine. I would have preferred Serrated Shots apply to Barbed Shot over Cobra Shot. It is starting to look like we will fire of far more BS over CS Shots.
It’s new location does however allow Steel trap to be a Lower cost Bleed uptick alternative {3 Points} As opposed to the 4 point investment to fully Acquire a poison based Cobra Shot centric Serpent Sting. Via Master Marksman and Latent Poison Injectors.
These further emphasizes Taking AC then Flamewalker’s Cobra Sting to increase CS base damage.
All the above however remain ST focused. There is No way provided to spread either the Bleed or Poison in an AOE format other than Target Swapping.
This would have been a good opportunity to reintroduce a Lynx Rush or Arrow/shot splash type talent to spread either a bleed or Poison to other Targets similar to SV.
Sentinel Owl is still lackluster for most raid and party scenarios. Plus still gated by 2 point BtbW talent.
Same goes for the new Entrapment Talent. would have much preferred it be a Tar trap radius increase passive.
2 Likes
MM is also getting the Wailing Arrow nerf.
A 1pt Qa’pla becomes mandatory, it may be already at 2 with One with the Pack, and one of the most impactful single points in the tree. Stomp is kinda up there too so I don’t see the need to reduce their costs.
Thrill needs to come down, and so does the fire beast lower stuff (remove all 3 pointers).
If you trimmed out as many points as you suggest then you would have nearly the entire tree. There’s no choice left at that point.
3 Likes
Onostoolan suggested 4, you seem to be at 4. Over in beta thread suggested Kindred rolled into Pack Tactics (2) and reduce Thrill (1). And here, that there should be no 3 point nodes, so 1 more via DC.
Seems to me you two concur on points to lose, with difference being which nodes.
As to new talents, I’d really be shocked if Blizzard added any new nodes to BM tree. They have a solid tree, just needs some cost reduction.
2 Likes
While I agree that it’s becoming less and less likely that they’ll proceed to add more/new talents to the BM tree, I would sort of disagree with the rest.
First off, the BM tree does have a semi-decent base, and it is possible to make a build to achieve what our base is on live. The main issue, like others here have said, is how the BM tree is too expensive, point-wise. It’s one of the most expensive trees of all. This, considering how it only consists of 35 talent nodes, compared to many other trees which come in at 40+, severely limits the ability to achieve build “depth”, and it lends itself to promote thoughts of how your points feel less valuable(and no, I’m not necessarily talking about what can be achieved in terms of throughput).
On top of this, lookin at pathing structure/layout, I’m skeptical to certain decisions. For one, the entire top right section of the tree has only 1 way in, and one way out. Going in through Barbed Shot, and proceeding to exit through Qa’pla. I also find the placement of Qa’pla itself to be a bit odd.
If you’re making a single-target build, the only way for you to get to Bestial Wrath is through Thrill of the Hunt. You have 2 different AoE talents, both connecting/pathing down to Bestial Wrath. This removes some accessibility options. Ideally, especially since both the AoE nodes(Beast Cleave and Kill Cleave) build on one another, there should be more pathing options leading to Bestial Wrath, from different sections of the tree.
Considering how important Wild Call is for the playflow of the spec, I find it odd how they chose to put it so far down the tree, rather than further up, in a central position/crosspoint.
Call of the Wild, realistically, now only has one viable path, going through Wild Call + OwtP. It’s a single-target cooldown, and I can’t imagine that you’d ever want to make your way down to it by going through the reworked Aspect of the Wild. At least not in a pure ST scenario.
TLDR:
For me, if they were to make several point reductions to individual talents, around 6-7 points in total, and then added in several more(5-6) talents to allow for more choices/variety, and generally made some changes to allow for more accessibility to certain key functions that are more fundamental to how we play…
…then I would call it a solid tree. Right now, it still feels like a tree that is in the mid-alpha stages of development. Based on what their goals are with these reworks for Dragonflight, and how they’ve realised this for other specs.
Side-note, we will find out with the next build, but they seem to have fixed the issues with the deficit aura of Animal Companion, the implementation. That’s good ofc, but I find that this talent, now, is in a similar position for BM as Lone Wolf is for MM. Some players really do like playing with 2 pets, while others do not. Making it a choice of throughput, rather than purely a baseline choice of aesthetic preferences, I find to be the inferior one.
1 Like
In my opinion, it looks strong compared to current Live. However, when compared to what other classes/specs are getting, it’s not looking so hot. I foresee a lot of complaints coming when they settle on a final talent tree, because I agree that it’s unlikely they will add more talent options.
2 Likes
I didn’t suggest 4, no one is going to pick Kindred the entire expansion. Kindred is a QOL node that serves no real purpose and can now be pathed around. You don’t pick a very minor QOL node in a sea of throughput if you don’t have to. What I actually suggested is removing the DOA/trap node (there’s a few in the tree but Kindred cannot get tuned up to be good like the others can) and trimming 2 more points.
Ultimately what I suggested is 2, the 3 point nodes. He’s suggesting to drop 2 more points from already powerful nodes, Qa’pla and Stomp. Of the 4 nodes he suggested, 3 of the nodes will be used in almost every build in the current tree. The only way you can realistically drop 4 high value points in a tree as light in nodes as ours is if you add several high value nodes to go along with it, I do think we need around 5-10 more good nodes. If they did add those then I could agree with cutting those additional 2 points down, and more if they went as high as 10 new nodes.
With just 3 more points you basically pick up every good node while avoiding the Cobra Shot ones. Your build becomes the same for ST and AE which is bad; even though I believe you are going to run an AE build in 90%+ of all content you still want 2 distinct setups.
Right now everything related to Cobra Shot is a dead node, we’re just not casting it any more. You think the BM 3 button memes are bad now? We’re about to become a 2 button rotation (Kill Command and Barbed Shot) with no major CD (unless they tune CotW way up) and a bunch of middle of the pack short CD buttons (Death Chakram, Explosive Shot/Steel Trap, Bestial Wrath, and sometimes Bloodshed).
CotW is a bad button except if you take Wild Instincts. With Wild Instincts it feeds you a TON of Barbed Shot casts, it seems to be giving you casts based on pet focus spent which is really high during the CD thanks to Brutal Companion.
2 Likes
Thank you for clarifying position on node costs.
If no BM hunter should take Kindred, does your opinion change if it is a one point node?
Cobra shot is supposed to be a filler, not sure why they made AotW only about Cobra shot, maybe an attempt to improve filler or some burst on 2 target cleave???
That CotW/Wild Instincts interaction is really bad blow a 3 minute cooldown to use a 2 minute cooldown.
You have good points, have you posted these over in Beta thread? (yes I am too lazy to go look thru entire thread)
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Ghorak, well thought out, wish they had invited you back at Alpha!
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Kindred being a two point talent is just laughable.
At one point, Focus generators gave us a percentage of our total Focus returned, so having 20 extra Focus meant each tick gave more Focus. Now our Focus generators are static; ie, Barbed Shot regens 20 Focus over 8 sec, rather than 20% Focus over 8 sec. If they swapped this back to a percentage increase and did the same with Haste, Kindred would be a great talent.
As it stands, nobody is going to choose Kindred Spirits. Not only is it a bad talent, it costs two points and is replacing a base passive that nobody pays attention to. Who knows though. Maybe they will make Focus regen percent based before release.
3 Likes
I was unaware of the Focus change… Good to know.
The extra Focus would however still be good for PVP where it might be required as an on demand focus dump attack to finish a cripple.
Stomp Currently is being outperformed by Brutal Companion a single point Talent accessible Via our Must Have!!! Bestial Wrath, Barbed Wrath, Scent of Blood. Trifecta.
My reasoning Is… We have a near desperate budget deficit at level 70 of 2 points minimum.
I chose Stomp as the Tool Tip shows no Change when second point added and Stomp at 1 point adds in the 20th point to proceed lower for a single Target build allowing one to bypass AC talent if wished.
Right now in Beta already we are in a Bargaining with the Dev situation… Ask for 6 Maybe get 2-3 freed up.
Till Now they seem unwilling to adjust the remaining 3 point Nodes, Even though Advocacy has been asking since Early Alpha.
Qa’Pla was added as I do not believe we will get a reduction from 3 2 point For Thrill of the Hunt. and we needed a second 1 point reduction in the 6th or 7th row.
1 Like
Personally, I’d prefer it remain static, as to be something taken specifically for more Focus banked before a burst window, but for Kindred to be something like 25 or 30 Focus with a single point.
I prefer it being taken as a deliberate choice rather than just a blanket suits-all-purposes talent.
2 Likes
I don’t think this fixes the Kindred problem. Barbed Shot already keeps you near full focus thanks to One with the Pack allowing essentially one Barbed Shot every 6ish seconds at 24% crit and 5% haste. More focus regen when you are swimming in it doesn’t really change anything.
If you’re swimming in Focus with only 5% haste, you’re not playing correctly. BM is a constantly clicking spec and with almost 29% haste, I hit a second or two delay often while I wait for Focus.
2 Likes
You playing on the beta? Because it plays much differently than PTR at 60 and on live. I don’t think even stacked haste to the max you could get to 29% haste on the beta, between haste and crit I’ve only got around 15 total % from rating with nearly no mastery or vers. I’ll check it when I log back into the beta after the next build goes live but I’m 100% certain that’s where I’m at.
On the beta at 70 with 360 ilvl you fill nearly every GCD and never have focus issues. You are using Multi-Shot basically every other GCD because it’s bugged most of the time to only give 3s duration. Other than that you are pressing a ton of Barbed Shots and Kill Commands and only a handful of Cobras. Things like Explosive Shot (low focus and low CD) and Death Chakrams (focus gen and low CD) do a lot to help keep focus high. There’s essentially no down time and no focus problems.
1 Like
Not on Beta, but messing around on PTR. At level 60, with every build I’ve tried so far, I’m still hitting the Focus wall. I just don’t see how those few extra talent points and much lower haste would change that. If I get a beta key at some point, I’ll have to give it a whirl.
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There’s some logs here (https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/feedback-hunters/1279513/700) if you wanna take a look, not mine obviously. I’m sure if you wanna get nit picky you can find a handful of moments where he had to wait for focus amongst these logs but for the most part you just don’t care about your focus.
These logs are almost all (might be all, I didn’t look at them all) having to spam Multi-Shot to keep Beast Cleave up because the 3s duration bug. After Qa’pla and Beast Cleave rank 2 get fixed your average focus use will go down, you replace some of the few Cobra Shots (35 focus) you do cast with more Kill Commands (30 focus) and you cast Multi-Shot (40 focus) half as often. You will still be filling basically every GCD and not thinking about focus, One with the Pack is huge focus income.
2 Likes
Good to know Focus will or should not be an issue.
Still the lack of wanting or needing to use Cobra Shot as a BM Hunter seems kind of a tuning dependent problem. I just hope they don’t do the usual Nerf the Alpha talent to promote use of the Beta talent { Remember Arcane Shot nerfed it to never used } Hopefully Fixing the MS Cleave bug will at least allow the use of more Cobra’s
The current description of how BM is shaping up looks to be depreciating the potential of builds using many of our Node choices.
Serpent Sting, Latent Poison, and Arctic Bola. as they rely or trigger solely off of Cobra Shot. Neither trigger off Kill Command or Barbed Shot.
This also makes redundant the potential for Poison damage from Serrated Shots.
And to a lesser amount Cobra Senses, and Flamewalkers though potentially these will be primarily taken for the Kill Command interaction.
The lack of options other than passives is what makes the current Shadowlands version of BM less than interesting.
3 Likes
EDIT didnt let me edit so i deleted previous post.
I totally love the idea that cobra shot is weak and purely for helping us get more kill commands. This allows kill command to remain a strong spender and pushes the majority of our damage profile to the pet once again. Having the secondary effect of our mastery being useful again.
With the new placement of serrated shots there is a strong possibility of us being a bleed spec as well especially during execute phases. I’m loving all these changes and cant wait for the new beta build to come out.
Taking the left side that buffs pet damage and kill command seems to be the way to go imo
1 Like