I miss the day’s when BM actually felt like a “Beast Mastery Hunter” where stampede summoned all your active pets to fight by your side, I used to have a roster full of sea gulls with a stampede macro tied to me yelling “RELEASE THE CHIPS!” It made me smile every time my blood thirty seagull troop would decimate unsuspecting enemies…
We shouldn’t have to choose a talent to have a second pet, this should be BM standard, we shouldn’t have to forgo using Dire Beast, Murder of Crow, Killer Cobra… We should be able to choose what ever pet we want instead being tied to a certain family - bring back pet talents! these are what made BM cool as a true master of the beasts.
I really want to see some identity come back to BM in Dragon Flight, I want to feel like a bad a$$ master of the wilds again, not what we have now… While I still love and enjoy BM it’s just lost it’s identity and doesn’t stand out as it’s name sake anymore…
It’s true that Stampede should be reverted to its old form but it’s worth pointing out that the old Stampede wasn’t specific to BM.
I don’t think multiple pets out should be the default. It should be a competitive option, as should playing with a single closely-bonded pet.
Those talents you mentioned have historically always been talents but I wouldn’t mind seeing Dire Beast as baseline so BM had just a little more engagement/activity in its baseline form. The biggest problem BM faces right now is its base gameplay is very bare and all our active talent options happen to be pathetically tuned compared to passive options on the same tiers. BM is a very stagnant spec that hasn’t changed much at all since BFA, and in BFA its talent tier was lambasted for being clearly unfinished and unmaintained.
I’m not sure how you figure pet talents are what made BM cool as the true master of beasts. All Hunters had pet talents. It’s true that BM got a few extra points but they were passive bonuses and back then pets did not have a central role in our active ability priority like they do now. Also you could not respec pets between ferocity, tenacity, and cunning back in WotLK either. The only update the current pet system needs is the ability to respec pets.
BM still has a solid identity but one major problem is that since BFA SV has been hijacking that identity and has borrowed/stolen several aspects, with SV Hunters advocating taking even more BM mechanics such as Exotic Pets. But that’s the whole SV melee v.s. ranged debacle; they could make SV pet-independent but that would mean you have a spec with no ranged weapon and little to no pet usage i.e. not much of a Hunter at all anymore. We didn’t have this problem before Legion because SV was more clearly defined as an extension of the Hunter class when it was ranged rather than something separate.
Maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough but I 100% agree with everything you’ve said, my main point being is that BM hunters are forced into certain talents to stay competitive when the talents I listed lean to the role play of the spec Beast master.
BM, SV & MM should have their own talent identity however all 3 specs steal each others talent choices, lvl 30 and 40 talents are the same on all 3 specs, Murder of crows on all 3, barrage, Blood seeker on SV and Bloodshed on BM…
Maybe expand on the Identity of each spec without borrowing talents from each other, create new ones streamlined to the spec, SV melee, MM the lone wolf and BM the master of beasts…
It’s become somewhat of a problem in the current talent trees where the “fun” options are undertuned compared to passive, clunky, or otherwise undesirable talents. E.G. I prefer Streamline, but Steady Focus sims so much better. It almost feels like a deliberate attempt by Blizzard to prop up unpopular designs with blatant up-tuning to justify them.
edit* Lone Wolf is perfect right now, please don’t mess with it.
Yeah. BM and SV need reworks to give them their identity.
There is nothing really Survival about the spec. Im not talking ranged vs melee. Just in general. Bring back snake trap and scorpid/viper stings and other aspects. Something.
And BM is all “well, you can tame exotics with very few perks above any other pet besides the skin.” And even then the pets were nerfed into the ground. It is boring. It use to be my favorite, but Ive rarely played it except when pet tanking was needed to survive solo play.
Marks, I personally think is ok. “From a button/ability standpoint.” But would be nice to be a little bit tankier in lone wolf.
buff joke of a melee survival to meta S tier and beyond still couldnt get people to play it. now i guess thats why they are giving melee survival the best things from bm and mm. lol still not gonna work.
SV of WOTLK is what I miss the most, I enjoyed that spec so much back in the day…
I agree 100% but still refuse to play anything but BM SV is a definite no for me and I just can’t get into MM, Hunter drew me in when I started vanilla wow because of pets and the whole lone wolf thing isn’t for me personally…
me personally it is 5.4 sv hunter then 5.3 > 6.0. but even wotlk was ook. the melee aspect of a player or mob running into you. then having a dead zone and you would wing clip to slow them disengage back out and pew pew range them. that was ok. not the greatest but 1 trillion times better than it is now i must say.
yea 5.4 survival hunter was the OG ASMR spec. having played every spec in the game many times over on every class there was nothing as polished as 5.4 survival. it had everything. interupt, dispell, cc, multiple slows, knockbacks, more mobility that any other class x10, burst, dots and insane sustained.
its a big reason i am on the hunter forums crying for it back everyday lol
Also the likes of Gingi, Preach, Limit Max, and Izen Hart have called out MoP Survival as the best iteration. NEVER accept the talking point that it’s just a handful of us on the forums.
SV is a definite no for me and I just can’t get into MM, Hunter drew me in when I started vanilla wow because of pets and the whole lone wolf thing isn’t for me personally…