Is BM actually fine?

Classes Hunter
1

So I’ve been playing BM in keys for the last few weeks as I’ve been climbing slowing. It seems to me that most on the forums think BM is underpowered or under tuned.

I personally don’t think this is the case (would post logs but cannot link) my experience in BM vs MM vs all other classes tells me their are a few small issues of QOL and damage ramping that would make BM feel better, and bring us up to par in short AOE Burst windows.

Before I discuss that, lets cover the two damage profiles.

ST- Not much to say here, BM ST is strong.

AOE - Again our AOE is very strong, but it takes to long to ramp, and feels rushed during frenzy/BC timers being so short.

I think that 2 QOL changes and a potential talent point would fix most of our M+ complaints.

  1. Frenzy duration from 8 Seconds to 9 seconds.
  2. Beast cleave duration from 6 seconds to 9 seconds.
  3. New talent point:

Insert name here
Instant 1 min cd
Your next kill command sends your pet into frenzy, granting 3 charges.

Ok, lets cover theses ideas and why.

The first two are simple, an extra second of frenzy would help with 3 stack uptimes at lower crit/haste levels on top of widening our aoe windows to allow more CS

Beast cleave being 6 seconds is a bit miserable. it makes us waste a lot of focus on multishot, and only allows a 2-3 kill commands in that window. longer window would feel better and allow us to retain focus for KC procs.

talent idea. I’m not a game designer or engineer nor am I trying to be. But the issue I see with our perception of low performance is the way our AOE works. Most of our AOE is from our pets AA, and most of our pets AA come from frenzy’s attack speed buff. The governing issue is that as we begin AOE on each pack (assuming the tanks not chain pulling) we have to gain 3 charges of frenzy. With a two stack of BS, available this means we need to delay each stack till the last 2ish seconds. So without procs it takes us about 18+ seconds to get our primary damaging AOE ability to be on par without BW, and with its still 6+ globals. This is to long in M+ and the worst part is now we have no BS charges.

The talent I’m proposing would allow us to open on a AOE pull with:

Multi>Talent>Aoe Rotation
instead of
BS>BS>Multi>KC>BW>BS>Multi>Aoe Rotation

a 1 min CD may seem long, but consider that this would allow us to have 2 BS charges at the start of a pull.

This change would also not massively affect our ST rankings or performance, which again, does not need help.

I’m curious to hear what others think about this.

Thanks

2 Likes
2

BM’s biggest issue is that there’s no burst. At all. The damage output is almost completely flat. That looks fine on paper if you hit a target dummy for 10 minutes, but falls apart in the real world where you have trash packs, adds that need to be burned, phases that need to be pushed, etc. It feels like we were intended to take Stampede and Call of the Wild to fill that hole, but, well…

Agreed on AoE though. Losing the 10 second Beast Cleave we had at the end of SL really hurt. They need to either increase Beast Cleave duration or buff Multi-Shot so it doesn’t feel like a wasted GCD.

10 Likes
3

Prob a bad use of wording, I’m saying burst in comparison to other classes ability to ramp AOE in M+ trash pulls.

4

In long fights we are fine. The issue is we have no big funnel damage to put into a specific target or to burst during like the shield phase in RLP.

I really think the biggest issue with hunters in keys is our lack of defensives and survivability. Curious how you feel about that being someone who runs higher keys than I do. I just always feel like the healer has to babysit me compared to others.

10 Likes
5

Just a couple of points.

  • Increasing the duration of Barbed Shot is unlikely to happen. The tight window of Frenzy is the trade-off for unlimited movement. Rather than standing still for a couple seconds for Aimed Shot, we have to weave Barbed Shot for Frenzy stacks while doing everything else.
  • BM single target is great, when we use our optimal single target build. Unfortunately, this build includes virtually no AoE talents. This is why we’re fine on raid boss fights. In keys, however, we have to choose a more balanced build that includes AoE, which means our single target is barely mediocre and our AoE is still trash.

Why is our AoE trash?

  • Multi-Shot does jack all for damage, yet costs 40 Focus. Alone, it doesn’t even trigger Beast Cleave. We have to talent into Beast Cleave for Multi-Shot to become that trigger.
  • A significant amount of our AoE is now tied up in Kill Cleave, which makes Kill Command AoE. At 30 Focus and limited charges, it’s difficult to get an adequate number of Kill Commands into a six second window.
  • Finally, we have to do all of the above while still maintaining three stacks of Frenzy, which means at least one GCD during the Beast Cleave window needs to be Barbed Shot.
  • In the end, our AoE rotation takes too long to set up while having a short duration. It’s convoluted and weak.

Possible fixes.

  • Increase the duration of Beast Cleave. Simplest answer.
  • Increase the damage of Multi-Shot - by a lot. Paired with Master Marksman, this would make it not feel bad to use Multi-Shot.
  • Reduce the cost of Multi-Shot, so the AoE rotation doesn’t start with a Focus deficit.
  • Increase the damage modifier of Beast Cleave and/or Kill Cleave. Doesn’t solve the problem of a convoluted AoE rotation, but would help the damage problem.
15 Likes
6

As long as BM can focus on one target over a period of time its dpsis pretty good. Thats the only thing it has.
Its aoe is abysmal, is extremely sqishy, has no unique buffs, and its only raid/group buff is lust, a buff brought by other classes that bring comparable or higher dps, the same buff, and other utility.
This makes BM decent in raids and a joke in M+ and PvP.

6 Likes
7

Single target, Raiding, Great or doable for sure.
Mythic Plus AoE sometimes if everything is grouped up great we do ok but over all no compared to other classes our survivability and AoE is garbage. But its not going to be fixed so I guess either live with it or roll something new. Or go MM and have great AoE for mythic plus, but lack luster dps on boss fights in mythic plus. I just try to do my best but I sometimes want to cry seeing the difference in BM AoE compared to others in Mythic Plus. Its just bad.

1 Like
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100% I’m discussing damage viability when our greatest issue is our survivability. Yes we need more heals than other classes because we have 0 passive mitigation outside 6% talented avoidance. This is something that needs to be fixed at the class design level, with that being said this is what I do to survive unavoidable damage.

-Avoid avoidable damage
-Run avoidance enchants+talent
-Verse flask
-10%+ verse
-Healing pots
-Predicting incoming damage and planning defensives.
-Leech pet

As I’ve mentioned in other threads I’ve gone as far as running tanking trinkets and rings on pre nerfed content. Its a shiet show now, but the above I’ve mentioned plus a healer prioritizing your dispels should be fine till 21+'s.

Agree

This is only the case in lower gear levels or bad secondary distribution. Once you have enough crit in your gear to talent out of TOTH and Sharp barbs and run our ST talents including direpack while maintaining our AOE talents.

This build still does the same AOE damage (+/- TOTH) and gives us 85-90% of our single target capability.

My logs should be public if you look, I’ve been running this build for the last week or so.

here’s the build if your interested. Also keep in mind its extremely dependent on secondary plateaus (some seem arbitrary) But in my experience you need 33%+ crit, 18%+ haste and 37%+ mast. Mast becomes +/= crit but haste makes it feel better.

(B0PAIlFMjeNhnEouGfV8Ij2uSJgWSAIEAAAAAAAAAAAaEayBolIJiIRSoJRkDIJkkEhGSkA)

It takes longer but its not week. In fact on sustained AOE, its among the better specs in practice. A good example is tree boss in AA, BM regularly 160-190K dps on that fight and I’ve only been topped by a rogue. MM does not do that much on that fight (unless EX is killing adds with salvo etc keys 14 and below)

Lol as I was saying.

No this would make us flat insane.

I could see a play of this idea working towards a solution.

Any damage tuning now to BC is going to need to be reverted as mastery stat weight increases with new gear values.

It still concerns me that a large portion of this forum believes this.

Facts, but not the point of this thread.

3 Likes
9

It’s not the same AoE damage. Aside from losing 9% crit from ToTH, you aren’t using Brutal Companion. As a pet ability, it cleaves during Beast Cleave and hits hard. Other than that, it looks like a decent option to try.

Tree boss is kind of an outlier in my opinion. I often finish that fight close to 200k, because I can keep Kill Command charges in reserve for the add phases and just obliterate them. Even then, I am routinely destroyed on that fight by DKs, Monks, Rogues, Mages and Shaman.

That being said, I think our AoE has great potential and isn’t abysmal. I consider it weak, because it has too many weak points - long build up time, convoluted maintenance, bad pet AI, etc. I gave multiple options to fix the issue, but clearly extending Beast Cleave is the easiest and best way to fix it.

6 Likes
10

You can pull the 1 point in sharp barbs and put it in Brutal companion.

11

On Paper… maybe

In practice absolutely not. If you’re a casual player, who runs random BGs, LFRs, and Low M+ you’ll be ok. You may actually enjoy playing.

If you’re trying to push higher content, kiss your beloved BM good bye.

I was basically forced by Blizzard to respec into MM, which I find to be a clunky mess. I hate how it feels, and how it plays. All just to push keys… then I hit the MM key cap, 14s. No one wants to take MM hunters, because there are half a dozen other classes that do a Hunter’s job better. More Damage, More Survivability, More Utility… Hunter’s are in a terrible spot right now all together.

If you enjoy hunter, continue playing it. I was sorely disappointed that the only change to Hunter’s in 10.0.5 was an arguable nerf to the Mediocre viable spec.

The Silence that blizzard has towards hunter better come back tenfold, because the only thing that can excuse it is a total rework of the talent tree.

3 Likes
12

As long as Neltherax exists they will not buff BM…mark my word as soon as they disable or nerf the bow for the new tier they will magically start making changes to BM like fixing call of the wild

5 Likes
13

If we’ve learned anything from the Sylvanas dagger in SL, this will probably be our BiS weapon for the rest of the xpac.

1 Like
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So your argument is if you have the best gear in the game, BM aoe is fine.:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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im sorry but you trying to reinvent the wheel with your spec just doesnt work mathematically. while i believe raidbots sometimes doesnt calculate dungeonslice or 5 target cleave in the best way…it still shows your spec to be over 4k dmg behind in dungeon slice and 5 target cleave. It is also about 700 dps lower in patchwerk than the actual aoe spec. meaning there is likely 0 scenarios where your spec is better. you making up some magical threshhold thinking losing 9% crit is made up by dire pack talents is insane. maybe toward the end of the expansion that might be a possibility. as for now its not even close.
while its great to experiment with talents yours just is worse is 99.99% of scenarios. if you like it and it works for you thats cool. but dont come here misleading ppl like its some magical fix to mediocre hunter aoe/single target combos.

16

Are you really saying that our AOE is on the same planet as some of the other classes in the game like DH/ROGUES/Boom etc… We also have to give up a single target to get so, so AOE these classes do not for example. You keep seeing the same classes over and over in M+ for a reason.

2 Likes
17

I certainly don’t have the best gear in the game, and while I have good gear, I don’t even have the raz bow that everyone thinks is necessary to relevance.

What I was saying is bm suffers from a tight frenzy timer and focus issues until certain haste and crit values. And when those are reached mastery becomes more weighted thus allowing us to move talent points we would otherwise need to maintain frenzy.

This is literally early xpac bm since at least bfa.

Alas the problem with sims. They work in a vacuum. It may not sim out as high, and may not be theoretically better. But in my experience it outperforms the other specs I’ve tried.

Unfortunately I only have one non leaderboard log from last week but for arguments sake its a 95th percentile parse, so it seems to be doing ok.

warcraftlogs. com/reports/HpYvajyk7NFWtmM3#fight=1&type=damage-done

Rogues no. Rest… Yeah, in sustained AOE we are a match or better.

Even in this example I died to burst forth losing the overall AOE battle with the DH, but for arguments sake here is the damage chart from overgrown ancient on a tyran +18

seems ok to me.

imgur .com /a/DBZkLWY

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This is true for PvP as well. BM has the lowest burst in the entire game. Even Kill Shot, our big shiny execute, does about as much damage as a Warr/Ret white hit.

1 Like
19

Seems weird that BM has to invest so many points into limited aoe options… I’ve only been playing around with BM for the first time this week (I’m diehard SV)… But I was shocked at the lack of aoe.

For all the poop SV gets, BM is way more incomplete and random (imo).

3 Likes
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what the hell are you linking what leaderboards?? the leaderboards for timing that have nothing to do with damage? I can see a log of a 16 as BM where you literally finish
3rd on dps getting blown out by a monk and lower than a ret pally.
edit = found a log for an 18 AA where you did 73k. i dont know the circumstances of the run …i didnt review the log but at 410 doing 73k in AA isnt really great…especially when i consistently see other classes in the 90s…and AA is really good for BM with uncapped tree boss area.

the sims work great it but simming a dungeon is hard. ill run your profile in MDT dungeon sim which will tell me exactly what is possible in any M+ dungeon.

you are 410, playing in 17s ,pugging and using anecdotal data to tell us its fine. its better once you get 4pc. its fine and bordering on good if you have the rasz bow. its not fine when you have people in your group who are great at their class…you start seeing the difference.

since you like anecdotal data how about we do a test this week. my hunter is 405 ill send you an invite to do a run with me. im a fairly avg player doin 17s. we will log and post here. we can upload a run to youtube too if ppl wanna see. ill invite a friend who is about the same ilvl as me who can show you on 4 different classes how inferior BM aoe in M+. let me know if youre down for that.