Decided to give BM a try after absolutely hating the idea of the spec.
And holy hell. The amount of damage/utility, survivability, instacast everything is absolute nuts…WHY is this such a night and day experience?
This isn’t funny, this isn’t cool, this is a ridiculous oversight of balance.
MM needs a rework to compete with BM and Surv, absolutely mindblowing.
Well I wouldn’t say a rework. More it needs some retuning and some things need to be fixed.
Turtle preventing attacking, not removing dots, and providing no self healing does not justify it’s 3 minute CD. You could easily slash it’s CD in half and not hurt the balance in pvp all that much and in pve it’s already super situational as is.
The amount of damage AS does for it’s cast time is stupid low. The damage either needs to be bumped way up or the cast time needs to come way down. I’d prefer something in the middle.
And these are just a start to fixing MM.
They could start by resetting to MoP
I think we’ve had enough reworks. It needs refinement.
I played SV in MoP. What was MM like?
The playstyle was more or less the same. The problem was that MM had comparatively weak AOE because of the lack of Serpent Spread. Like SV, it had a LNL mechanic, so its single-target was decent, but near the end of the expansion, it just couldn’t catch up to SV because the spec was just throwing out so much damage. There were other problems as well, but I spent most of my time in MOP doing CM dungeons, and there were multiple reasons SV was the go-to spec for that content.
If anything, MM’s WOD iteration was the best the spec had ever been - its mastery changed to the unique Sniper Mastery that rewarded you for standing still.
I really loved MM in WoD. Almost as much as I had loved SV.
I liked MoP a little better because you had the old master marksman which made steady shots proc instant aimed shots, and you still had arcane shot for pvp. I really only enjoyed MM in wod when we had the HFC bonus that made aimed instant. MM’s problem though was always it’s bad aoe.
i had an idea that seemed good to me but others didn’t find appealing. basically, rapid fire would become the filler generator instead of steady shot. it would add more flare to the spec, keep the generator as movable, and you could interrupt the cast without losing focus for stopping the cast. otherwise, i’m not sure what blizz could do besides reverting to wod/mop mm or just making aimed shot castable while moving. it just feels horrible to stand still for an ability that doesn’t hit that hard. it should probably be like pyroblast levels of damage.
We’ve had too many reworks. But the only way to resolve a collection of broken ‘reworks’ is with another rework that is hopefully reflective of something resembling competence this time.
Why do you keep saying this? 
I mean, isn’t the whole point of unpruning is to not to lose another talent?
We’ve had Rapid Fire since Vanilla! And it was always classified as a MM spell. Furthermore, we had both Rapid Fire and Chimera Shot in WotLK, Cata, MoP, and WoD.
I absolutely agree that Rapid Fire being a focus builder is stupid. It should be a focus spender.
But seriously, I genuinely dislike (hate is too strong a word) seeing people on the alpha forums either clamoring for the removal (in an expansion that is focused on unpruning!!) of Rapid Fire, or to force an “either, but not both” choice re: Rapid Fire and Chimera Shot.
Seriously, is it too much for me to ask to have two spells that I’ve always loved? Again: they’ve co-existed for four expansions. (And Rapid Fire have existed since Vanilla like Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting.)
You know what, we totally need Readiness AND Stampede back for all Hunter specs. 
That would be sooooo much fun.
I’m not sure if I can agree with Readiness all that much, but Stampede definitely needs to make a return. It was such a fun and iconic ability. Blizzard totally gutted it because they, once again, didn’t want to put the effort into properly tuning it.
We have had Rapid Fire, the channeled Focus builder, since BfA.
We have had Trueshot, which used to be called Rapid Fire, since Vanilla.
They are not remotely the same ability.
Rapid Fire, the channeled Focus builder, feels out of place in the rotation. If I wanted to spend 15-25% of my combat time channeling, I’d play a Shadowpriest.
Give me instants and hardcasts. Burst damage. Individual large hits.
THAT is what MM has been about since the beginning.
Fair enough. I wasn’t really thinking about the changes that the abilities have gone through.
As MM, I can do about 95% of my BM damage overall. MM play is more restrictive, complex, and less forgiving.
I’d rather play MM, but it just feels like handicapping myself a bit too much, in comparison, at this point. It’s kind of like adding a 6th mask in a Horrific Vision run.
I think that’s the core issue really…
As far as the whole Rapid Fire bit goes; That’s, oddly enough, my favorite thing in MM these days. I do train wrecker damage and am fully mobile with it. I like both of those things.
That’s a tuning issue. MM is undertuned on live right now. MM on alpha is tuned to do really high damage. We will need to wait for later in the beta once some tuning passes have happened, but I’m not worried about numbers.
I like that MM is more restrictive, that it requires some set up and properly planning movement. The issue is that that planning isn’t properly rewarded on live right now.
And that’s why I’m suggesting making the Chimaera Shot talent a Rapid Fire replacement. You can keep Rapid Fire as you like it, I can drop it for an instant that has roots with MM all the way back to Wrath. Everybody wins.
In BFA prepatch, MM rocked hard… and was nerfed just as hard… Put out so much when opening…
Moving on, we were chain casting steady shot to stack an Aimed wrecker… then balanced to revolve around Rapid fire for the majority of the expansion… MM held it’s own for a while. I played it the most in BFA.
Now, with end of expansion gear…BM just absolutely owns it all in every way… You really are implementing a self handycap by not going BM as a hunter…
Not a fan, don’t really want to end up here again…
I’m no stranger to handicapping myself to play my preferred spec. I’d rather play what I like than play something that does a little more damage. If I am being forced to respec or sit, that’s one thing, but given the choice I’ll play an undertuned spec I like rather than an overtuned spec I don’t.
Im sick and tired of constant reworks,every time they just make it worse.
I just want it back baseline. Tired of the new trend where you have to rebuild your old spec with talents just to play the way it used to be 5 years ago. Best part of old MM was opening with aimed, chimera, kill shot and melting people. Rapid fire is just goofy and out of place.