There was a discussion thread on the PTR forums regarding many issues with your set bonus and interactions with your class abilities. We wanted to continue that discussion here, and update where things are with regards to the upcoming tier sets and their bonuses:
Survival
Corrected an issue where a Mad Bombardier buff that refreshed an existing Mad Bombardier buff caused your next Wildfire Bomb to do less damage than intended
Corrected an issue where Wildfire Bomb with Guerilla Tactics talented would incorrectly restore multiple charges of Mad Bombardier if your Wildfire Bomb hit multiple targets.
Still investigating problems with Wildfire Bomb not working with Multiple Survival hunters at the same time. (This isnât related to tier sets, but re-listing so you know it isnât forgotten)
Marksmanship
There are a lot of intertwined interactions between Aimed Shot, Trick Shots, Double Tap, Lock and Load, and the upcoming tier set bonus which grants even more Trick Shots. We want this all to work together as you would expect it to, and have fixes in testing for what we believe is all of the issues that had been listed on the PTR forums.
Corrected an issue where if you have Unblinking Vigil, but not Trick Shots, and gain Trick shots from an Aimed Shot cast, you would not benefit from Trick Shots, and Trick Shots would be consumed.
Corrected an issue where if you have Unblinking Vigil, and gain Trick Shots from Aimed Shot, which grants another Unblinking Vigil buff, both Unblinking Vigil buffs would be consumed by a single Aimed Shot.
Corrected issues with Double Tapâs damage and the Set Bonus damage increase for Trick Shots.
NOTE: After several of the above changes, you can sometimes get into a lucky streak of Aimed Shot->Unblinking Vigil Proc->Aimed Shot->repeat⌠The threshold of Focus expenditure to gain a Trick Shots buff from the 4-piece bonus might be adjusted upwards a bit due to this, and weâre evaluating things and will be sure to post about any changes being made.
Beast Mastery
We have read your posts outlining some issues you have with your upcoming Set Bonuses with regards to AoE damage. We donât have any specific details to share in this post of what is going to change, but are currently planning on adjusting your 4-piece Set Bonus before it becomes available in the upcoming weeks. When we have more finalized details, weâll be sure to let you know.
Thanks for the heads up! Nice to see this was addressed relatively every step of the way.
Still investigating problems with Wildfire Bomb not working with Multiple Survival hunters at the same time. (This isnât related to tier sets, but re-listing so you know it isnât forgotten)
This may not be the time or the place, but it does seem WFB is perpetually bugged in one way or another since its inception. Has there been any internal discussions (that is publicly shareable) about removing the ability for something less tricky to make work?
Thanks for looking into tier set issues for all three Hunter specialization. Can the tier set for BM like many others have suggested on ptr, BMâs area of effect attack can be triggered by kill command increased damage buff please ?
Thanks again for posting on the Holy Hunter forum to remain us once again, we are not leaving you behind as we do for all classes at matter of time.
Thank you for the communication. It was starting to feel like you just didnât want to work on hunters anymore.
Iâm not the best player but it feels like Iâve got to work so much harder to keep up with the other classes. Losing the Dom shard has also been painful and I was feeling very disheartened.
I am hopeful you may start moving BM in a more positive direction.
I really think it will be a missed opportunity if the response to this type of scenario is âthis should not existâ rather than âwhile unintended, this is a fun gameplay moment that can happen from time to timeâ.
At the very least, I hope it is understood that if the focus number is increased, that will constitute a nerf to an already weak ST spec and would require some other change to balance out.
I donât think you understand the core of why people are complaining about the 4pc bonus for beastmastery. YES, we do have issues with AOE. NO, that is NOT why people are complaining about the bonus.
The covenant abilities do NOT work with the 4pc unless and ONLY if youâre Night Fae. Any other covenant has a DPS LOSS if they use the 4pc. Why? Well, looking at Venthyr in this case (the Hunter Tier Set Feedback thread on the PTR forum goes into Kyrian fairly well). Use of the Kill Shot proc from Flayed Shot conflicts with the 4pc bonus. If you use it instead of Cobra shot when the Cobra Shot proc is up, you lose damage. But, you have to use it in order to open up the chance for another proc. Thereâs really no winning - either choice you make (Cobra Shot proc OR Kill Shot proc), you lose damage. No 4pc should introduce such a situation that it is not an improvement to take it (especially if your objective is to improve damage with the set bonus).
I have proposed an alternative to this that would allow Venthyr to work without reworking the set bonus: Allow Kill shot proc to stack and have it active 30 seconds before expiring (you can also set this to 20 seconds). Or, and this came up later but I didnât post: You could combine all the kill shot procs into 1 hit instead of individual uses. Either way, it would address the gap that the 4pc bonus currently creates.
I feel like youâre hearing only part of the concerns and addressing the least game breaking ones.
First off, thank you for the continued communication. More than anything else its really great that you are letting us know whats up, even if its a nerf.
That being said, I hope you realize that
A) upping the focus required for the 4pc will be a nerf, as less trick shots = less buffed aimed shots. This nerf will also mainly affect our ST, as in an aoe scenario we still have multishot.
We are a spec that is already 50% behind the top simming specs in ST, and it seems crazy to be nerfing the single target part of a spec that is already weak single target-wise. So at the very least, nerfing the spec in single target without compensating it in some other way seems like a way to hurt mm hunters a lot going into the raid
B) without the interaction with vigil, the tier set doesnât change the playstyle of hunters at all. It feels really bad to finally have a legendary that changes up how we play, only for it to be nerfed into oblivion before the raid opens. Obviously this can allow for a lucky loop sometimes, but there are plenty of proc based abilities in wow, and I donât know why this one in particular is so bad.
My suggestion is to make the chance of vigil shots âpseudo-rngâ, where the actual proc chance behind the scenes goes down if too many procs in a row are happening, and down if the opposite happens. Maybe too big of a change but idk.
TL;DR: please donât nerf our single target without compensating, and vigil introduces a new playstyle so donât nerf that either or its the same rotation exactly for an entire expansion
Please do not nerf one of the highest population classes, that hasnât been relevant since you âbug-fixedâ us in Castle Nathria, over an interaction which could potentially be very very fun. Please donât do this.
While lack of AoE damage is an issue, itâs not the most pressing issue. Conflicts with two covenants and the poor performance of a third, means the set bonuses locks BM Hunters into Night Fae only.
Necrolord; Just bad in general. Set bonuses donât help with that.
Venthyr; Set bonuses and covenant abilities compete for GCDs and resources. Playing Venthyr means choosing one or the other for the most part.
Kyrian; The massive crit bonus to Kill Command, plus the crit heavy Resonating Arrow, means Kill Command will be well over crit cap far too often.
I would suggest closing some of the AoE gap by simply allowing Kill Command to cleave while Beast Cleave is up.
Thank you for communicating with us. I have an out of nowhere but not that unpopular opinion to present: All three hunter specs do not need focus. The specs would be just as good or better without it. MM does not need focus, there are already so many restrictions on what we can cast and when. BM and SV donât have to watch focus, because we already know what is going to happen because itâs part of our rotations.
I would not miss focus at all if you outright removed it (and reworked steady shot + the steady focus talent for mm). I think there would be few hunters who would miss it. I trust you to tune things so there are no broken results, but I donât believe there would be many, if any.
It seems like the people who created the set bonuses for hunter have read about hunters, but donât actually play a hunter.
Thereâs zero improvement to AOE and so BM will fall further behind in mythic + and some covenants donât work well at all with rotation priority (Venthyr).
Glad to see a blue post here, would have been better about 6 months ago.
I second Cognizantâs Points and suggestions for the BM Set.
I like a lot of BM already stack Crit to the break point which lands at 45% un-buffed for me where now my Sims favor Versatility and Haste over Crit { Titanic Ocular Gland its not BIS } to further illustrate Cognizantâs Point about Kyrian.
Venthyr is as Hogx says
My suggestion is to make the chance of vigil shots âpseudo-rngâ, where the actual proc chance behind the scenes goes down if too many procs in a row are happening, and down if the opposite happens. Maybe too big of a change but idk.
Donât they do this already with trinkets (normalization)? Regardless I mean they could try the fix they suggested but just buff some other damage to compensate (and honestly maybe take a closer look at MM/BM ST as itâs looking VERY low)
This is legit amazing. I canât recall the last time I saw a well put-together, detailed blue post from you guys. 9.2 has been a great release thus far, and the path you guys are starting to take is making me see a glimmer of old Blizzard again, and a small shimmer of hope. Donât ruin this, guys!
Appreciate the increased level of communication. Itâs also nice to see that issues are being worked on/looked into. In the future, the hope is that this type of dialogue/feedback loop happens a bit earlier in the cycle, and not the last couple of weeks prior to/during the launch. Anyway, still nice to see whatâs being worked on.
This sounds good and all, but the issues with how it does in no way provide a boost to our AoE, itâs only one part. Like many others here have mentioned, there are several issues with the set bonus(es) for Beast Mastery.
2+4 set: Conflicts with the mechanics of several covenants/abilities by competing for resources, GCD space, or substantially overcapping on critical strike for Kill Command.
2+4 set: Like you mentioned, they do not provide any bonuses to AoE or Cleave. And since the silent fix in an earlier build, the boost to single-target damage is now fairly mediocre as well.
4 set: Conflicts with certain talents, or competes with talents, like Killer Cobra, for mechanical functionality.
4 set: The cooldown reduction effect, the synergy between Cobra Shot and Kill Command. For the most part, it only results in how you as the player have to keep track of how long you wait between using the two. Ex. Will you be able to cast one more Cobra Shot before Kill Command comes off cooldown, or will doing so result in an overlap? Itâs the same as how it worked before, just that now, thereâs another small variable to it. Obviously, I canât speak for every BM player here but, in my mind, that small variable doesnât make for a fun addition to our gameplay.
Due to how late it is in the cycle, complete reworks, to âfixâ everything, are probably not on the table for this tier. Having said that, certain changes would go a long way towards making the set bonuses feel better, and more fun to use. Numbers are ofc subject to change.
2-Set - Killing Frenzy - Your Kill Command critical strike chance is increased by 15%10%, and damage is increased by 7.5%, for each stack of Frenzy your pet has.
That 4 piece would have a few âissuesâ. Firstly Beast Cleave duration. Having to maintain Beast Cleave can cost a good amount of focus. We also have the issue of Kill Commands CD. IF you are to cast Multi Shot then two Cobra shots you can then sneak another KC in before Beast Cleave falls off but this kind of rotation will quickly leave you deprived of focus. This would result in a situation were the effectiveness of the set bonus could snowball in value. This could also lead it to feeling lackluster to those not spending focus so aggressively.
The second problem would be gear swapping. If the 4 set is AOE only then it would be more beneficial to swap to better itemized gear in an ST situation. Generally speaking Set Bonuses should feel impactful enough in a wide variety of situations that you wouldnât consider dumping it lightly. This has been something the team struggled with in the past so it is not unheard off but still it would be preferable to avoid this situation if possible.
I think a better solution for a 4 piece would be Kill Commands Critical Strikes cause our pet to thrash all nearby enemies if the team is set on a Kill Command based Set bonus.
Killing Frenzy