So... is Survival Just a "Boomstick Bot" now?

[Tani-2570310 (Tani)]

@Rarebite-moon-guard

@Linxy

• Developers’ notes: Beast Mastery Hunters felt a bit weak outside of Bestial Wrath damage windows, so we’re increasing their steady-state damage by boosting Kill Command, Cobra Shot, and Barbed Shot.

• Outside of Bestial Wrath windows.

They didn’t increase the damage specifically outside of Bestial Wrath windows, though.

They simply buffed the spec, including its Bestial Wrath window damage.

Example:

@Lynxie

• Developers’ notes: Marksmanship Hunters felt a bit weak outside of Trueshot damage windows, so we’re increasing their steady-state damage by boosting Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, and Rapid Fire.

…Nevermind that Trueshot disproportionately affects those skills’ damage contribution by increasing Aimed Shot’s damage by a third, by more than doubling Arcane Shot’s indirect damage via bonus Aimed Shot damage (doubling the chance at the damage bonus and the consequent difference due to the AiS buff), the real effect of Rapid Fire’s bonus Aimed Shot modifier and crit damage bonus (from which AiS benefits almost doubly), and halving the cooldown of Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire.

• Which almost exactly how Kill Command (which receives further unique bonuses from Bestial Wrath, soon more so with 12.1), Cobra Shot (which can reset KC only during BW), and Barbed Shot (doubled DoT damage only during BW) in turn interact with BW.

The Blizzard post simply noted that BM is underperforming. Its steady-state damage is how much damage it can put out regardless of particular exploitation.

Because BM cannot bank Bestial Wrath without significant punishment, it cannot manipulate the timing of its outputs much, and thus it does okayish when big AoE opportunities or vuln windows happen to naturally align with it, and underperforms when they don’t.

Above the median, BM is currently the…

• Worst Hunter spec and 5th worst spec in the game on Imperator
• Worst Hunter spec and below mid on Vorasius
• Worst spec in the game on Saldahar
• Worst Hunter spec and bottom-fourth on Vaelgor
• Worst Hunter spec and bottom-2 spec on Vanguard
• Worst Hunter spec on Alleria
• Worst Hunter spec and bottom-4 spec on Chimaerus
• Worst Hunter spec and bottom-2 spec on Belo’ran
• Worst Hunter spec on Lu’ra

@Rarebite-moon-guard

No. Those buffs are not turned off when Bestial Wrath is active.

Then you’ve already seen how much they cared about and changed the damage specifically outside of Bestial Wrath windows: not at all.

They simply buffed the spec.

@Rarebite-moon-guard

Was steady-state damage (time-to-kill) weaker than intended?

That is not what steady-state damage. It’s non-situational damage. It has nothing to do with the time-to-kill open-world mobs when refusing to use your 30s CDs.