So whats the Beast Mastery covenant going to be?

Classes Hunter
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Any clear winner?

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We’ll have to wait until we have sims for it.

Necrolord was looking best when I tested. Venthyr seemed good too but it’s hard to compare a focus generator to a focus spender just looking at dps meters so I naturally go towards Necrolord because it’s a focus regen on top of the damage. Kyrian ability buffs crit damage, so its contribution doesn’t show up neatly in a dps meter and I have no idea how well it does in reality. Night Fae is complete garbage at the moment.

Plus I have no idea what soulbinds are stronger.

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I’m going with necrolord as well. Chakrams is both single Target and aoe, instant cast with a 45 second cd. Fleshcraft is a good ability too even though I think the majority of people will have it. I imagine all the raids and bgs for the next 2 years with a million glowing green spheres lol.

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Just going by the class abilities, necrolord seems like the only good one atm, despite being the most boring.

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That’s not technically correct. Death Chakrams splits its damage when it bounces so it’s not really an AoE. It hits 7 times no matter how many targets there are. It does hit all 7 times on a single target if there’s just one. So hitting multiple targets doesn’t add damage.

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necrolord or kiryian.

while the venthyr dot is nice and helps to fill the rotation it does less damage over any period of time than the chakrams will on a single target. in addition, the kill shot proc is nice but kill shot does nowhere near the damage for bm that it does for mm. being fully mobile ranged makes it easier to plan when you may want to use fleshcraft in a raid to avoid raidwide damage, and it’s easy to keep it up perma while overland questing/soloing which pairs well with leech. not to mention being able to pick your own locks a couple times an hour if you are using fleshcraft.

kiryian is actually really good given that bm is heavily reliant on crit and crit chance is going to be tiny for a while. the little potion you get has it’s own CD separate from health pot and healthstones and gives some very very handy status cleansing. the 30% crit ability is great for the most part, but does require you know how the fight works beforehand or you could lose all of it’s potential as soon as something moves.

rotationally, venthyr “feels” best. the door is nice for sure. but power wise the chakram wins. i’ve had the last tick of it crit for almost 4k on a single target in the starter gear you get on torghast test server.

what bm lacks is legendaries that mean anything. until blizzard decides what to do with cobra vs. arcane - arcane being vastly superior dps wise but not lowering the cd of kill command - the legendary that reduces kill command by 4s with every barbed is the way to go at least. and if blizzard is royally stupid and instead of lowering cobra shot focus cost to 30 they just nerf the piss out of arcane, the focus generation from chakram becomes MANDATORY imo.

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But it does damage to multiple targets if they exist. Is that not aoe?

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no. it’s a chain. ie. chain heal is only called an ‘aoe’ heal by lazy plebs.

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So chakrams is a single target and a “chain- target” ability then. Lol

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It’s kind of an issue with semantics, but I’m trying to be helpful here. Everyone expects an AoE ability to do more damage when it hits more targets. But Death Chakrams doesn’t do that. It always does the same amount of damage. So if you just call it AoE without any caveats that’s more confusing than helpful.

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Regardless of the amount of damage, it still does damage to multiple targets. If there are seven targets stacked and i fire a chakrams in there it will damage a “chain” of targets. The amount of damage is of no consequence

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The amount of damage is the reason you hit your abilities. You want to know how your abilities work to know how to use them properly.

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usually at this point i ignore people like you lookin for a semantic edge because you are unwilling to admit you don’t understand what you are talking about, but i’m off work today.

the damage of an aoe is both variable and scaling depending on wether or not there is a target cap. a single cast from an aoe will do less overall damage on one target than on two.

chakrams will always do the same damage whether you have 1 target, 2 targets or 20 targets. it does not scale up or down with number of targets and you WANT to use it on a single target unlike an actual aoe ability. it’s a chaining ability, not an aoe and the two are not interchangeable.

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yea i was agreeing that I should have stated it was a “chaining” ability instead of an aoe ability. I was simply trying to explain to Khalid that the amount of damage done to multple targets doesn’t determine whether it is or isn’t a “chaining” ability. Its just the fact that it either does damage or not to said targets. Not the amount. Im not trying to find a semantic edge. Im just saying the ability damages single targets and when there are multiple targets it will damage multiple targets. Word it however you would like to make yourself happy, i apoligize I used the word “aoe” in my initial statement. Jesus.

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It’s not even a chaining ability. Chain Lightning and Chain Heal both deal more damage/healing if there’s more targets, up to a cap.

Death Chakram does not. Death Chakram is just a creative meteor effect, where it effectively (but unequally) splits its damage amongst the targets hit, up to 7 targets. Same total damage done, just less per target for each additional target added.

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I liked Venthyr’s Flayed Shot on Beta the best for the following reasons:

  1. Provides another direct Damage over Time ability to the BM arsenal (alongside Barbed Shot)
  2. Has the lowest cooldown at 30 seconds
  3. Has the longest uptime at 20 seconds (only a 10 second downtime)
  4. Has synergy with the returning Kill Shot by having a chance to use Kill Shot 1 or 2 times over that 20 seconds

All-in-all, it makes BM feel more robust and the rotation coming out of it is more fun instead of being more clunky.

That being said, I can see I can see Necrolord’s Death Chakrams as being much more relevant to Mythic+ dungeoners, though.

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The main issue with Flayed Shot is that Kill Shot doesn’t itself synergize with anything for SV and BM. It’s just flat damage, and the damage isn’t nearly as high as it was (relative to our other abilities) before Kill Shot was removed in Legion.

MM sees much more synergy with it, due to Dead Eye, but that comes at the cost of a rotation that is insanely focus-negative. Flayed Shot + Dead Eye makes it impossible to simultaneously use all AiS charges, RF on CD, use all Kill Shot procs, and consume all Precise Shot charges. Since Precise Shots is typically the most worth dropping of those, that means Precise Shot charges are simply ignored and wasted in many cases. The rotation itself becomes frenetic, where you feel like you’re constantly spamming Steady Shot, frantically trying to generate enough focus to use all your Aimed Shot charges and Kill Shot procs.

Really, my beef with Flayed Shot for BM and SV is mostly just that it feels rather tacked on and unimpactful. Kill Shot doesn’t even scale with BM’s mastery. It’s just another filler ability for those specs, an alternative to their existing spammable fillers when it procs, with no other impact on anything.

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If they fix it, Night Fae is a no brainier for BM. It’s bugged right now, munching its own proc via weird ICD issues, and doesn’t work from pet damage. Assuming it procs from KC, pet attacks, and (especially) Beast Cleave and Stomp, BM will have ridiculous AoE burst.

If not, Necrolord looks like the default option for all specs.

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I dunno, the crit damage bonus from the Rylakstalker’s Piercing Fang legendary could synergize extremely well with Resonating Arrow’s crit bonus.

But ya, I fully expect Necrolord to be the default pick. MM might go Flayed Shot, but only if Dead Eye isn’t fixed and the rotation that almost completely ignores Precise Shots ends up doing more damage (which is very possible, tbh).

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That was my initial thought as well, but the Focus economy with Flayed Shot is really, REALLY rough, and you start overcapping AiS unless you (as you said) ignore Precise Shots entirely. Even then it can be a problem.