Massive nerf to spirit mend in SL

Classes Hunter
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Except approximately 2/3rds of BM’s damage leech-heals their pet rather than the hunter. 75th percentile damage output for BM on mythic Shad is 4810.31 DPS, of which approximately 1600 DPS actually leech-heals the hunter. That’s approximately 160 HPS from leech, and and only if none of it is overhealing (which is almost never the case).

Spirit Mend heals for a total of 258% AP over the duration. A mythic raider is likely to have approximately 1500 AP at the moment (based on a random sampling of upper-end logs, AP equals approximately 136% of Cobra Shot’s average damage outside of Bestial Wrath), which means Spirit Mend heals for 3,900 per cast (this also matches said logs, where they used spirit beasts, which was most). If used on cooldown, that’s 130 HPS. Slightly lower, but since it is intentionally cast, it’s much more likely to be useful healing (a quick spot-check of Shad’har, for example, showed the few hunters I sampled were at maximum HP perhaps a third of the time, including almost the entirety of phase 1. This isn’t unusual for raid boss fights), and it is freely targetable on raid members, and you also get a second defensive cooldown and a bit of bonus HP to boot.

Spirit Mend may have been nerfed, but unless you need a snare or mortal strike on a fight (and none currently do), it’s still the best option for BM for raiding. The healing is in the same ballpark as the maximum possible healing from leech, but is more versatile, more focused at the time you need it at, and comes with a second defensive CD.

From a talent perspective, Aspect of the Best boosts the leech from 10% to 15%, but it also boosts the healing of Spirit Mend by 30%, so it doesn’t tip the equation very much. From a gear perspective, we currently have late-expansion levels of mastery, which inflates pet damage. However, we also have insane amounts of crit from corruption stacking, which leads to an absolute glut of focus and a much more significant increase in Cobra Shot damage. Our damage in SL is actually even more biased towards the pet, further weakening the leech.

Basically, spirit beasts are weaker than they were, but they’re still the strongest option for raiding and probably for M+, unless you need the lust. For soloing, Ferocity pets were already substantially better, they are simply even more so now.

1 Like
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I was always under the (mis)conception that our pets did 3/4 or 75% of our damage, something that I have never really questioned until; I read this thread. I went back and picked 2 random fights from my logs, mythic Skitra and Heroic Shadhar both STR fights so cleave wouldn’t mess up any results. Turns out I am doing 34.5-35% of my total damage myself a lot higher than the 20-25% I have always thought we did.

I’m sure that will drop as soon as SL hits and then will probably crawl back up over the course of the xpac until it’s close to where it is now. I’m curious, is that # going to be back around the 20-25% mark in SL ? Either way, I most likely will always use my spirit beast in the raid(s), simply because of the extra defensive you get and albeit it’s a lot less than it used to be the spirit mend may just save you from a wipe sometimes as low hp is still more hp than none.

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Ya, 25% is a bit low. Before patch, BM’s hunter damage was elevated by crit corruption, which meant more focus regen, which meant more Cobra Shot casts. After patch, BM’s hunter damage is elevated by the fact that Cobra Shot got a straight 50% buff going into SL (69% → 105%). And in both cases, hunter-sourced damage is elevated by borrowed power (essences), though this will likely continue in SL as well (depending on covenant choice, of course, and depending on what haphazard bandaid system they throw at us in 9.1, 9.2, or 9.3 to “fix” covenants).

The number I’ve typically been using as my rule-of-thumb is that 2/3rds of a BM hunter’s damage is from their pet, and this reasonably aligns with logs both before and after the pre-patch.

Anyway, specifically, about the leech aspect, even at a third of your damage instead of a quarter, the leech is still pretty bad. I did the analysis on that above:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/massive-nerf-to-spirit-mend-in-sl/632016/61