Yep, the second screenshot was with him as the first-slot-in-stable Animal Companion, not my primary pet.
Edit: in any case, I’d report it as an error. It’s clearly unintended.
he also, if I’m standing still to long, randomly flies straight up…then back down thru the floor, if I move he comes back tho. ill try to get screen shots and come back to this later on.
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You’re trolling right? You can use any other pet you want you dont HAVE to use a spirit beast… You’re telling me when you made a hunter and choose beast mastery and you didnt have a spirit beast yet wasnt a hint to that?
Don’t like spirits beast!?? got the perfect solution for you… don’t play the class…
JesusChrist; how rocket science is that … not to play a class you don’t like…
Wait, since when did hunter = use spirit beasts? You know their are 59 pet families, right? And spirit beasts can only be used by one of the 3 specs? And one of the others doesn’t even use pets (most of the time)?
You’re acting like hunters that don’t want to use a spirit beasts are hunters that don’t want to use a critical central mechanic of the class, which is preposterous. They just want choice as to which pet to use.
Ya! Those idiot hunters! They could just not use one! Just like they could just not use a ranged, or enchants, or mail armor. Nothing in the game was forcing them not to use Dire Beast or Murder of Crows or Barrage!
I’m not ignorant nor am I a wow expert. But when I got my first spirit beast back in ICC loque’nahak. Which I named Harley because of it growl. I felt so proud. To sit and wait to gain that pet and finally taming it was just so satisfying. No more than trying to obtain a rare mount no different then getting that legendary weapon. Just like all the legendary items we work for, it’s the reasons we play. For hunters to take 3 months of waiting is just awesome. To me it just sounds like you don’t want to take the effort to get want everyone else has because your to lazy to farm for it. All the hunters that have spirit beasts had to work for it , beating out 50-60 other hunters wanting to same pet. I think it would be a slap in the face from blizzard just to start handing them out. I think other hunters that have labored for their spirit beasts would just be pissed. That you got yours without any effort. So piss off with your whiny self and work for it.
Honestly, I’ve sat and camped for my fair share of spirit beasts. And I don’t mind if others get them more easily than I did. It’s already been a thing since Legion at least with the cats in Suramar IIRC. It doesn’t bother me at all though if others have an easier time since they aren’t exactly all as special as they used to be and we’ve gone through periods where they have been almost mandatory for optimal raiding.
I do agree with them being overpowered back in bfa. No other tenacity pet brought the same amount of utility as spirit beasts.
But spirit beasts have been heavily nerfed since SL prepatch.
-spirit mend nerf
-soothe/dispel made baseline
Now, spirit beasts aren’t as “mandatory” anymore.
…I have a spirit porcupine at lvl 39 and I noticed it appears I can’t make him ferocity, is this a new change or it’s always been like this?..last time I played with my 120 (now 50) I could have swore you could change their specs around…
Back during Legion you could swap pet specs around. They changed that during BFA however and now pets have set specializations. Spirit Beasts as a whole fall under tenacity which grants bonus health to the hunter. Ferocity now grants leech, and cunning movement speed.
Additionally, each specialization provides an ability the hunter can use. Bloodlust / heroism for Ferocity, a 20% damage reduction cool down for Tenacity, and master’s call for Cunning.
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Thanks! I wish they’d stick to something and stop going other ways…
EDIT IN: did a bg with the porcupine and I still did decent dps, I love bm
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To add to this, all pet specs now deal the same DPS, so the only thing it affects is utility.
Ferocity is handy for 5-mans if you lack another source of Bloodlust (mage/shaman/another hunter), and is incredibly strong for soloing, but the leech is quite weak in raids, and the lust is almost always redundant.
Tenacity is extremely strong in raids (extra defensive cooldown YES PLEASE!), and a solid option for 5-mans if you have another source of lust. For soloing, Ferocity beats it handily for BM (same for SV, just not as substantially. It’s basically a wash for MM for soloing).
Cunning sees little use in PvE, as the movement speed isn’t make-or-break (and we’re already very mobile between Disengage + Posthaste and Cheetah), and snares/roots aren’t common enough in PvE to warrant it. However, Cunning sees substantial usage in PvP, and a Cunning + Mortal Strike pet is, as far as I’m aware, still considered effectively mandatory in any sort of serious PvP on a hunter.
Specifically for raiding, spirit beasts are still by in large the default pick for BM. They’re the Tenacity spec that raiding hunters prefer, and while Spirit Mend has been heavily nerfed from BfA, it’s still a unique heal no other pet can bring. None of the pet family abilities are particularly relevant in Nathria (or in raiding content as a general rule), so spirit beasts kinda take the cake. Spirit Mend is now closer to a 8-10% heal instead of a second Exhilaration, but it’s still freely targetable, off the GCD, and on a 30s CD. Slap it on Kael’thas on CD during Sun King, and otherwise treat it as a minor survival button, or just leave it on auto-cast (pet casts it on you if you’re under 50%, iirc).
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I’ll touch on the 200 stable spots. One of the best parts of having a hunter is tracking down ‘rare’ pets; it’s like a mini game to break up the monotony
Honestly you get better overall healing with ferocity pets in raids due to the leech. Exhilaration becomes an 80% heal vs 30% (leech return from the heal on you plus the 2 pets… even more if you have the conduit) also a mend pet which is a 6 second cooldown heals nearly as much as the over nerfed spirit mend due to leeching a 50% heal on 2 pets. On a pet with 22k hp the return from just the base leech is 1650 per pet. So that a 3200 heal ever 6 seconds vs very little more on a 30 second cooldown.
An argument can be made for the extra hp but thats not doing to make or break a raid and a 6 second 20% damage reduction is negated by the constant leech which ends up being close to 250hps on its own.
You really don’t. A huge chunk of leech healing ends up being overhealing, or causes other healing you’re about to receive to overheal instead, effectively wasting the benefit. It’s also a trickle, rather than being more concentrated when you’re low.
I just checked, at the effective average healing of my Spirit Mend is still right at 20% of my HP (I have 34k HP, it heals for ~5450 over the duration, and I have ~25% crit, so ~6800 per cast). A 20% on-demand heal and a 20% DR cooldown are definitely stronger than a trickle of ~200 HPS, of which usually half or more is wasted due to overhealing. A spirit beast can actively save your life.
You’re also forgetting that around 2/3rds of the damage you deal as BM doesn’t leech heal you, it heals your pet instead. Damage from Kill Command, Stomp, Beast Cleave, and all of your pet’s direct damage (auto-attacks, basic attacks, etc) leech heal them instead of you. That’s why Ferocity is so strong for BM for soloing, because the pet can heal itself a ton via the leech. That also makes Predator’s Thirst incredibly weak for healing the hunter. The only sources of reasonable healing you get are Mend Pet and Exhil.
Also, just to get some facts straight, Mend Pet has a 10s CD and lasts for 10s, not 6s, and it consumes a GCD that could be spent on damage instead (while Spirit Mend is off the GCD, since your pet casts it). Your math is off on Spirit Mend, too. It heals 10% of the pet’s HP per tick, and you get 15% leech from that, so that’s effectively 1.5% of your pet’s HP per 2 seconds while Mend Pet is active. Pet’s have 77% of our HP, two pets, so that’s effectively 2.31% of our HP per 2 seconds, at the cost of 1 in every 7 GCDs. I also tested Exhil, and even with the leech and 2 pets, it went from 30% to 53%. That’s not nothing, but it’s definitely not 80%.
As an example, if we look at your log from the 30th, Darkvein (because she’s does have any invuln or vulnerability phases and you lived through the encounter), you healed yourself for a total of 84.5k over a 300s fight, which is 282 HPS. My spirit mend (and I’m about 5 itemlevels below you), unbuffed standing in my covenant hall, is 6800 every 30s (factoring in averaged crits), which is 227 HPS. Factoring in your itemlevel advantage, flask, and Battle Shout, it’d easily equal.
You’re also misrepresenting how useful Mend Pet is, considering you cast it a total of 4 times across all 8 bosses you killed that night, all 4 during Council of Blood, and only one of those 4 being while you were <90% HP (2 of the 4 you were at 100%).
Across all 8 bosses, you personally (ie. not your pets) dealt a total of 4.68 million damage, which would translate to 717k leech healing. You cast Exhilaration 9 times, with each one healing your pets for 24.5k each per cast, which would translate to a heal on you of 7350 per cast, for a total of 66.15k more. You cast Mend Pet 4 times, healing each pet for 12250 per cast, for an additional 14.7k leech healing. Grand total of theoretical leech healing would be 798k.
Of that, your actual leech healing over those 8 bosses was 480.6k, meaning 40% of your leech was just entirely wasted. And that’s not counting waste from healing you were about to receive that your leech then caused to overheal instead (and thus leech that wasn’t actually productive in healing you).
Moral of the story is, you’re much better off with that 20% DR cooldown, a 20% targetable heal every 30s, and another 5% buffer against death (and a 5% boost to Exhilaration, incidentally).
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What are you talking about?
Spirit Beasts are the worse option for BM right now.
Ferocity pets are the absolute strongest choice in all scenarios.
Spirit Mend was nerfed to the ground. Spirit Shock is not baseline, and it was replaced with an almost entirely useless pet-only decurse.
I’m pissed too. I spent a lot of time farming Spirit Beasts for my BM Hunter, and now I can’t use them. That was a defining feature of BM, and it was essentially removed without so much as a patch note.
Then we get somebody like you, who clearly has no idea how the class works, come in here demanding “changes” to the class. This is the most absurd thread I’ve seen since the “make Hunters tanks” threads.
Again, Spirit Mend is still a ~20% heal on a 30s CD. Yes, it’s not as strong as BfA, but no other pet provides something similar. And the potency of Survival of the Fittest shouldn’t be discounted. Trickle healing doesn’t save lives in most situations, burst healing and DR does.
I’m…not? I’m not the OP. Maybe you should re-read. I’m simply arguing that spirit beasts aren’t as “useless” as some people believe simply because Spirit Mend isn’t healing for 40%+ of our HP anymore.
It’s exactly 16% for me if I don’t crit, but it depends on a lot of variables.
Here is my post in the beta forums:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/massive-nerf-to-spirit-mend-in-sl/632016/26
Somebody posted some tests last week. I stumbled across them while I was looking for something else:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u96BEaJ7FZg
Survival of the Fittest has nothing to do with Spirit Beasts. Besides that, I’m not really sure where this is better than having BL and Leech. Jeeze. It’s no comparison.
I hit the wrong reply button. I was talking to the OP.
Yes, but it can crit. And your leech healing also scales with crit. So looking at Spirit Mend without factoring in crit is faulty.
Also, I did the math above. A huge proportion of leech healing, typically at least 40-50%, is overhealing or effective overhealing (ie. causes other healing you’re about to receive to overheal instead, causing no increase to survivability).
As for your video link, he fails to account for the fact that Spirit Mend is buffed by 30% by Aspect of the Beast, he’s only looking at the tooltip (which, why, he has the combat log right freakin’ there). Just like you, he also fails to account for crits, while he checks the leech healing by actually attacking (and thus accounts for crit). Between the two, presuming he has around 25% crit (as I do), that already places the two nearly equal (2706 * 1.3 * 1.25 = 4,397.25, compared to his leech healing of 4,336). Add in the overhealing waste from leech, and it’s clearly better.
Edit: oh, and he’s looking at best-case scenario leech. He used Bestial Wrath, which is not on an effective 30s CD with current gear and build, and actual fights almost always have losses due to various mechanics.
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So tell me where Spirit Beasts are better than a Ferocity or Cunning pet? Where does a Spirit Beast really shine? I can’t think of any content where a Spirit Beast is a superior choice.
The only thing I can think of is during heavy raid-wide damage. And that’s normally too sporadic and avoidable. If it’s sustained, Leech is going to be much better for your Healers.
In PvP, it’s really a non-starter given non-spirit Beasts offer many more tools than Spirit Beasts do.
In Torghast, Leech is by far superior (especially this week). Most people should be running a Clefthoof anyways for BL, Cheat Death, and Armor.
I literally never run with my Spirit Beasts any longer. There is no content where it is better. There is always a better choice and I’m genuinely upset about it.