The Hunter tree is mediocre. I see issues with the following:
Posthaste
Should be a single point talent. The first point gives the most powerful part of this talent. The second point is almost useless.
Improved Tranquilizing Shot
An entire talent point to regen 10 Focus every now and then? Laughable.
Should be replaced with “When Tranquilizing Shot successfully dispels an effect, target takes X% more damage for the next X seconds” - or something similar.
Hunter’s Agility
AoE damage is almost always balanced to be manageable in a party, so it’s really just a very minor way to reduce the amount of healing we’d need.
6% reduction on AoE damage is almost laughable for the cost of a talent point.
Using the word ‘Agility’ in a talent that doesn’t give agility seems like a slap in the face.
Sentinel
Very situational talent to spend points on in PvE. Points that could be spent on better talents that increase throughput.
Sentinel’s Perception
Just gives a situational ability to a few other people. Whoopie…
With the change to Sentinel’s Wisdom, this is now an overly useless talent that will never be chosen in the node.
Sentinel’s Wisdom
5% leech and 10% reduced magic damage is pretty weak for a party buff.
Is it raid wide? If not, it should be. Even then, still very niche.
Steel Trap
The immobilization effect breaks on damage and won’t work on bosses, making the damage component key. Essentially one of the capstone talents that does very little damage.
The Beast Mastery tree…
Kindred Spirits
20 extra Focus for TWO talent points. No thanks.
Make other focus regen abilities give a percentage of Focus, rather than a flat amount, and this MIGHT be minorly useful.
Beast Cleave
TWO talent points for a nerfed version of what we have innately right now.
Kill Cleave
I like this talent, but adding in the two points you spend in Beast Cleave and we have to spend three talent points to essentially get Kill Command to cleave. That makes it very expensive.
Sharp Barbs
Another TWO point talent that needs a boost. Barbed Shot doesn’t do a lot of damage. It’s primary purpose is to build frenzy stacks and regen Focus. 20/40% damage added to a low damage ability is a joke.
Qa’play, Eredun War Order
Two points again…
5/10% added damage to Barbed Shot is again a minor thing.
Resetting the cooldown on Kill Command is a joke, because Kill Command is up all too quickly. This talent makes the GCD wall our enemy.
In For the Kill
You can select this talent without having Kill Shot.
Depending on the situation, there are builds that will forego Kill Shot in the Hunter tree. Easy enough to avoid In For the Kill in those cases, but that limits options in the BM tree.
Stomp
Assuming this one is still in development, but pointing it out just in case.
Both ranks do the same thing. There is no added damage to having rank two.
Two ranks for Stomp is also very expensive.
Wild Call
This talent should be innate and replaced by a talent that increases the chance - or, at the very least, be more than 20%.
Master Handler
Seems like a good fit with all the Dire Beast talents, but is on the opposite side of the tree. The only way to get all the Dire Beast talents AND Master Handler is to forego a lot of important talents. It just feels bad.
Dire Frenzy
LOL LMAO WTF Dire Beasts hit for around 100 damage. The strength of the talent is in the 5% haste buff.
Unless Dire Beast in Dragonflight is completely different than it is currently, this talent has to be a joke. Adding 1/2 seconds and 20/40% damage is laughable.
Brutal Companion
Will this special attack happen every time I refresh three stacks of Frenzy or only the first time?
Not to be used with Animal Companion. They may have fixed the aura issue, but my main pet doing this Brutal Companion damage will still be doing 35% reduced damage - as far as I can tell.
Dire Pack
Once again, reduced effectiveness because of the GCD.
Seriously, Kill Command has a 6 sec recharge. There are too many talents that “reset the cooldown of Kill Command”. I understand they likely want to push a build where BM summons a horde of beasts by spamming Kill Command, but that’s a tough build with the current design.
Overall, I’m disappointed with the current iteration. Some of it shows promise, but they need to add more choices, make some cheaper and change others completely.
Brutal Companion is easily my favorite BM talent. It really enables the strong single pet build.
It does work on frenzy refresh, keeping a 3 stack keeps it hitting.
It does not however seem to cause an instant attack. It is currently appearing to empower the next attack. Fluffy isn’t biting more often per unit time, but Fluffy is biting a fair bit harder then Kill Command hits with this.
I think it could be a choice node with Animal Companion and save a spot in the skill tree. Animal companion really neuters it. The off pet doesn’t proc and the main pet has the 35% reduction.
Brutal Companion, High freq BW, high refresh Barbed, has been a very fun way for me to talent BM.
Added note, possible bug. For me, Death Chakrams has the salvo effect, in that it will put an explosive shot on the first two targets hit. Anybody else seeing this? Happens for me without salvo talented. Happens for all three hunter specs.
I don’t have Beta, but just tested this on PTR. You’re correct. It’s not an instant attack and it stacks with the doubling effect already built into Bite/Claw/Smack.
Bite/Claw/Smack already have “Deals 100% more damage and costs 100% more Focus when your pet has 50 or more Focus”. I just tested this on PTR and got some surprising results.
Tooltip listed damage: 1964 (Bestial Wrath, Rylakstalkers & Aspect of the Beast talented)
Pet only attacking dummy: 5,295 - 14,302
Rotation with pet to increase Focus regen, but not stacking Frenzy to three: 5,295 - 14,365
Rotation to stack Frenzy and keep it up: 5,295 - 26,248
So yeah, that makes Bite/Claw/Smack the hardest hitting ability in my logs. In a five minute parse:
The only other way to Beast Master, is thru Binding Shackles and currently that also is a truly bad talent because the damage reduction is to “you”, this really needs to be to “target of your misdirect”
After a lot of messing around with different talent builds, this seems to be the best DPS so far. The difference between this build, which focuses on just one pet, and other builds that focus on Dire Beast armies, is night and day. In my testing, this build did about 40% more damage than the best Dire Beast build I found.
Pretty close to what I have been trying out. Been grabbing Sharp Barbs simply because we always have BS at a 3 stack, so was trying everything possible amp BS and its bleed damage.
It is absolutely an instant attack what are you even talking about? Turn the auto cast off, go hit a dummy for 10s and you will see it work. BS, BS, BW, BS (pet will bite), BS (another bite).
Edit: Just tested this, rather than assuming you were seeing something happen. With Bite auto cast turned off, Details shows ZERO Bites for the entire duration. In case you think Details is bugged, I looked through the list of ‘My Actions’ and it shows no Bites as well.
Great understanding of how to test things you have there…
BTW, here is what I got with a few extra tests:
With auto cast off(w/Brutal Companion): ZERO BITES
With auto cast on(w/Brutal Companion): 2,7,27 - 30,186
With auto cast on(No Brutal Companion): 2,727 - 15,092
I feel like this would overly remove much of what little risk-reward we have rotationally, though. Personally, I rather like having to see how much time I have left on Frenzy to determine whether I can fit in one more global before Barbed Shot itself.
I’d far rather see the likes of Bloodshed/Murder taken off the global cooldown and their power reduced only faintly (since their opportunity cost is higher as Focus generation is higher and by 70, using 2/2 OwtP, our Focus generation leaves nearly no downtime as is, to the point that it’d be hard for them to compete with a correctly functioning Animal Companion, IftK, etc).
I’m finding MM to be ok. Not great or exciting but ok. It feels like playing MM, if simplified. Not sure how else to say that one.
Survival on the other hand, ooof. It feels like a toss back to spinning plates when it first whent melee. Only there’s a few less plates and the output is less effective. It has that same sense of non-flowing clunkiness.
Auto Cast is off, short 1 minute fight with a dummy on the beta. I’ve tested this extensively on both Beta and PTR and the behavior is the same on both servers.
Did you notice that bite/claw/smack is incurring the focus cost reguardless of how it is cast? It, however, does not incur the cooldown if auto cast is off.
My pet can regen focus quickly enough to keep up with the Bite cooldown with autocast on, but not quickly enough that she ever has enough focus to cast it twice outside the initial attack, when I wouldn’t have a 3 stack of frenzy. I normally play the game with autocast, and I’m seeing a roughly like number of bites per unit time with or without Brutal Companion. I do notice that when my pet auto bites, incurring the cooldown, following a 3stack barbed it’s empowered if it didn’t go off on the barbed cast.
If I turn autocast off, Barbed Shot refreshes do not nearly keep up with the focus cost. My pet’s focus stays full and can trigger. My total bites pet unit time is much lower though and I wouldn’t normally play the game this way.
I can literally hop on Discord with you and share my screen to show you that it’s not casting Bite/Claw/Smack at all if auto cast is off. Tested over and over again on PTR. Asked a friend with beta access to test it as well and he is getting no casts with auto cast off. Are you sure you don’t have macros to use Bite/Claw/Smack when using other abilities? Those are common, because the pet UI is so bad.
I gave you the log, you can check it yourself. The only attack I pressed is Barbed Shot and several of them you can see there are no Smacks because they aren’t macro’d together.
Looking at your screen doesn’t show anything. Log it and post it, maybe you and your friend have a unique bug that isn’t replicatable anywhere else.
Yes, Brutal Companion is consuming 25 pet focus. I have asked in the beta hunter feedback thread for clarification on if this is intended or not but I honestly don’t expect them to respond.
This also means if you cast a Barbed Shot while your pet has less than 25 focus then Brutal Companion doesn’t trigger.
I can’t replicate this behavior. It is tough to get the pet below 25 focus long enough to see this happen though so it may be happening, I just can’t get it to happen. A log of it happening would be nice if you could provide one, none of the logs I have are showing it.
Here is a log from just now trying to get it to happen. Like I said it is really really tough to get the pet below 25 focus to test this. Every barbed cast triggered brutal as expected and I spammed it pretty hard during CotW. I could have gotten more out if I was more careful with it, maybe I’ll take another look at it later.
That log just says it was cast. I don’t know if you had auto cast on or were clicking it to make yourself look right. Unless you have a video of it triggering with auto cast off and not clicking the button yourself, that log isn’t proof of anything.
I don’t know you. Just saying logs aren’t proof, because it doesn’t give all the information. You started this back and forth with sarcasm “Great testing you guys are doing there…” and I responded in kind.
If you’re seeing different results than I am, I would like to get to the bottom of it. You just want to argue and belittle people.
On PTR, Brutal Companion is absolutely not triggering for me if Auto Cast of Bite/Claw/Smack is turned off. Here is a screenshot of my build with Brutal Companion, Claw auto cast turned off, and a fresh test on a dummy showing zero Bite/Claw/Smacks.