First, for the record, what I’m about to say/ask is not meant to be sarcastic, trolling, or negative in anyway. This is a pure casual wanting to better understand your argument.
So far I get what you’ve been saying - I clearly don’t play at a high enough level to even dream about offering an intelligent opinion about this subject - but I can follow your logic. Here’s my question - if the logs posted/mentioned here aren’t useful to show the “true” state of BM (my choice of words here), are there any logs you would suggest should be looked at instead?
Again, I’m just a solo player who is simply curious about what logs I could/should look at, in your opinion, to get a better sense of the spec instead of the top graphs posted on Wowhead and Icy Veins.
The issue with looking at 95th percentile mythic logs is that at that level of play people will be playing the optimal specs. MM/Survival are just better due to their damage profiles because of the fights designs so right off the bat you are going to get a smaller sample size.
These types of links are used constantly to say XYZ class is bad please buff.
If you read the first paragraph is actually states this disclaimer
Specs that are considered underpowered are generally played less and tend to appear weaker than they actually are.
This happens as many performance-oriented players will tend to play the strongest spec or class, increasing even further the gap between top and bottom specs.
Position of specs for the 95th percentile might be skewed by alternative strategies and parse funneling. For that, we’re including the chart showing the result for all percentiles to paint a better picture for all specs.
So right off the bat those type of links arent a good sample because at the top level of play players are going to play the best performing spec.
Then you have to factor in damage profiles. In mythic raiding class/specs that have on demand burst fare better because of fight design.
When you look at the fights, BMs damage profile only good for 2 fights. Skolex and Halondrus because BM is a single target spec. 9 out of 11 fights have priority adds which benefit MM and Survival more because they are very strong on multi target fights.
SO here is where the real issues BM is facing right now.
BMs set bonuses are very bad compared to the buffs that MM and Survival got from their set bonuses.
BM is a single target spec in a raid tier with only 2/11 fights that favor its damage profile.
BM lacks any on demand burst. The only on demand burst you get with BM is with Wild Spirits which Unity is worthless on some fights like Xymoc for example.
BM has a lot of little issues that arent going to be changed in a .5 type patch because they arent going to redesign a ST spec to do a lot of aoe/cleave to the MM/Survival levels.
BM does need some tuning, it needs the tier fixed so its not awful
Beast Cleave probably needs to be uncapped depending on how tuning was because it cant be stronger than MM or Survival cleave/aoe damage.
Outside of that it just wont be amazing this tier because of the fight designs dont favor it.
The issue I have with Doc and Bulletproof is that they are screaming that BM is unplayable and then linking mythic 95th percentile logs as their evidence. BM is playable in ALL content, however once you start getting into the higher levels of play like CE Mythic guilds/Top key pushers its going to fall behind because of the issues I mentioned above
Its better to take a strong player on a weak class than for that player to swap specs to a spec they arent familiar with thats OP.
I agree that BM isn’t as bad off as many seem to think it is, but it definitely needs attention. Like, serious attention. I quit playing BM because I couldn’t find high level groups that would take me strictly due to my spec. I dislike SV and MM and don’t want to dedicate the time to getting that muscle memory down, so I switched to a different class.
Just need to point out one flaw in your argument though…
The problem here is that in the last week, in Mythic raids, there are over 6k parses of BM Hunters at the 95th percentile. It’s the 11th most played spec in Mythic raiding, but still dead last in damage. Sure, a lot of Hunters are playing SV or MM instead, but that’s still a substantial number of BM Hunters to gather data from.
You’re entitled to your opinion about the class, but that is a serious issue that has been widely ignored this patch.
A class rework isn’t necessary, but tier set and talent tuning should always be on the table.
Case in point would be 9.0.5 when they buffed Spitting Cobra by 260% and it’s still trash. Why is it trash? Because Blizzard seems completely unaware that Animal Companion’s damage reduction aura is also affecting other talents.
Someone suggested elsewhere that Blizzard won’t be doing any serious tuning until after the MDI, because they have too much invested there to mix up the meta. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Then why are you even showing up to these threads? You’re not even disagreeing with the principle of the arguments of the people you’re raging against.
So i think I see where you are going with the Snozz, so bear with me. BM is only viable in Skolex and Halondrus . Let’s look at those two fights first shall we. On Mythic Skolex (all percentiles to remove any of your percieved bias, 1 week) BM hunter was ranked 14th with 2789 parses. MM hunter the AoE spec was 16th with 3145 parses. The difference between them was 3.6% On Mythic Halondrus, the sample size was significantly below the threshhold for any analysis to be made for or against you. If we look at the remaining early bosses, in Vigilant Guardian, BM was last in median DPS with 1595 total parses, MM was second in DPS oveerall with 4726 parses. The difference between the median dps of these two specs was 21.3%. On Dausegne (which is also mostly a single target fight since Core damage is typically a small fraction compared to the main boss but i digress) BM is sixth from last with 1150 parses. MM is one position above it with 2172 parses. The difference between them is 1.7%. On Xymox, BM is second from the bottome with 213 parses while MM is second from the top with 2687 parses. The difference between them is 20.6%. On these four fights, two of which BM should do well in because their mechanics fit your definition of the BM niche, the spec does remarkably poorly compared to other classes and only outperrforms MM on a single fight by 3.6%. Yet on the two largely multitarget fights, MM outperforms BM by over a whopping 20% See where this is headed yet. I hope you do. If BM’s niche is single target, then it should outperform MM by a significant margin (let’s say 15% for arguments sake which would move it from 14th to 4th on Skolex) , but it doesn’t. They are instead within 4% of each other. So either your premise (BM’s niche is single target) is horribly wrong, or BM needs a whopping 11% buff to single target damage to fill its “designated” role. And for the love of Mary, please stop using the word “unplayable.” I looked back and saw where that phrasing initially came from and it was in one of posts (#150) of another thread (Massive Buffs to BM hunters) Since then, it has been picked many many times by both you and Legoless, as well as others including myself which i regret wholeheartedly. So let’s be very very clear here from now onward. NO reasonable person is saying that you LITERALLY cannot play BM hunter in any content including Mythic raiding and M+. You can be carried in any content if other people are willing to do so. What most rational posters in these forums are questioning is not whether the spec is unplayable, but whether playing a BM hunter as it stands now is a significant detriment or handicap to the group in more challenging content. The numbers suggest that it is. You yourself have suggested that you should be able to play MM/SV for content better suited to its strengths so you don’t handicap the raid. So stop saying “unplayable” and start using the term viable. Its more in line with what people are actually talking about.
@Bepples I think i am not too far off in my assessment that Snozz and Legoless are acting like trolls. It is a game they play, on multiple threads, to hijack the conversation so we focus more attention on them than the question at hand. I unfortuantely have fed into that because I chose to engage with them, and it was a mistake. I think I am done though because they wont stop being trolls despite all the urging one can do. It is not in their nature.
I feel like all these posts do is devolve into Bulletproof and Snozh (mostly Snozh) arguing with people for the sake of arguing. I go on and off using the forums, and seems like a good time for me to go off. There used to be good hunters here, and now there aren’t that many left. Keep up the good fight those of you who are left, I’ll be hoping for buffs/changes on the sidelines.
Did YOU even read the thread? The whole opening post does not include the word “unplayable”. It lists a lot of issues with the spec and correctly states that BM currently is very much underperforming compared to other specs.
In fact it is you who brings up the buzzword “unplayable” because its a nice, undefined word and you can call everything “playable” as long as your raid doesnt instantly wipe if you are in it.
BM is severely underperforming. Stop arguing with “playable” because it is a hollow therm that you can just make up to mean anything.
BM is underperforming yes. It’s not severely underperforming though. And honestly the only people saying it’s severely underperforming are the people that can’t maintain frenzy stacks.
We can agree to disagree but when someone says it’s severely underperforming on a low levenalt I take their claims of being able to manage frenzy with a grain of salt.
If BM was severely underperforming it wouldn’t be performing higher on ST fights.
It’s just underperforming and most of that is due to tier.
IDK man, I think I’m on Gromgarr’s side with this.
BM’s niche is ST as we’ve established 1000 times. However, being slightly better than MM at ST does not make it good at ST in general. In pure ST fights, even ones that should cater to our niche specifically (Halondrus, ST with movement) we are lower middle of the pack. We underperform in our own very particular (and rarely encountered) niche and are downright awful in anything that isn’t said niche. I would consider that severly underperforming.
We do the ST of AoE specs while being a ST-oriented spec.
Heroic Skolex 95th percentile 1 week logs, not mythic, heroic. Bm has more parses than SV and MM combined. Tell us again about the famed single target niche and not severely underforming. When we look at Mythic Skollex under the same parameters, there are fewer parses but SV ahead of BM. In both cases BM’s damage is well below the median damage dealer classes. Use the heroic metrics, BM hunter is currently 9.4% below the median, and 13,94% from the top. To bring us within 5% of the top, BM needs a 8.9% buff to all damage dealing attacks including those that deal AoE. Unfortunately it is unlikely that this will happen, and even more unlikely that the tier will be reworked in any significant manner.
Yes but with tier as it is we are currently severly underperforming and the chances of tier bonuses being changed at this stage are slim to none.
I’m not sure why you’re emphasizing that tier is a lot of the problem; we all know that, we knew it when the bonus was announced. If tier is a big part of player power and a massive feature of gear this patch, why are you isolating it and even bothering with considering how BM would play without it? BM is severly underperforming.