Is a joke.
6 Likes
I would argue that most of the BM talents are, or at the very least, they are uninteresting, ineffective, and some of them don’t do a whole lot to further the gameplay tied to the core fantasy of BM.
Obviously there’s a lot of subjectivity that goes into this but there’s much that can be done to add more distinguished choices for us to pick between, either based on pure preference when it comes to the thematic approach, or to provide better choices for various types of content/encounters.
It’s the reason why I decided to work out an alternative concept/approach to what BM could be like. Again, much of it depends on subjective opinions ofc, but I like to think that when looking at the spec objectively, it would make for a better approach.
8 Likes
All I know is they missed a golden opportunity to make the Dire Command lego, one with the pack, spitting cobra, killer cobra all synergize, and they decided to buff a joke 280% and the result was still a joke. Like they just slapped a buff on a skill nobody was using so bm hunters couldn’t say we got NO changes.
And maybe I’m just bugged but i feel like Dire Command never procs.
3 Likes
To me, the most hilarious thing with it is that it’s still bugged; the damage dealt by the cobra you summon is still being reduced by 35% of it’s total if you’re also using the talent Animal Companion.
I also don’t like how the design makes the cobra appear after your BW ends. I mean, I get what they were going for, I just don’t enjoy the approach to the design. (Hence why I changed it in my concept mentioned above)
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This is absolutely still the case too. I just tested, making sure I used the same number of Cobra Shots during every Bestial Wrath and Animal Companion is still reducing the damage of the cobra.
As I’ve said previously, this has to be a contender for the longest a talent has been bugged without a fix on record.
2 Likes
I just went through the 5 Timewalking dungeons with Spitting Cobra.
I heavily favored it, trying to get as many Cobra Shots in during BW, focusing on reducing the CD of BW as much as possible. I used Animal Companion, so the damage was reduced due to the bug.
Spitting Cobra did:
1.8% of my total damage overall
4.2% of my total damage on single target bosses
I feel like this is a DPS loss over Thrill of the Hunt. The extra crit scales really well for us. The ONLY time Spitting Cobra was decent was on bosses that we had to LOS due to mechanics, the Cobra would continue to DPS and not take any AoE damage. This might be worthwhile on raid boss fights where you have to move out of range of the boss.
For players that have a hard time managing Barbed Shot stacks, or are just sub-par in general, this will be a good choice, as the passive damage only requires you to do two things, Cast BW, and spam Cobra Shot.
2 Likes
More or less the issue. The best options in each talent tier are all passive and don’t alter the gameplay in any way. They need to go through and do sweeping reworks to a lot of the underperforming talents and spice up the choices a little bit.
1 Like
Perhaps not the longest, but it’s certainly up there for sure.
With Animal Companion active, it sure is.
Yeah, ofc there’s nothing wrong with having some choices that are entirely passive.
But IMO, the best approach to talent-design is when most of them affect your gameplay either directly, like with abilities, or as passives which alter the core functions of the spec.
Having said that, I do think that there needs to be some middle-ground to how many active talents we have. Like now, where we can get something like 6-7 new abilities added to our action bars, from talents alone. That’s too much really…
And since all of those are stand-alones with no real attachement to the core spec itself, I feel that they don’t really do much to further the spec and it’s core fantasy.
2 Likes
BM is a joke, not just spitting cobra.
And that’s the problem. With other classes there’s talent rows you feel really excited to see but with BM it’s like “Oh… boring passive, boring passive, boring passive.”
Even the 50 row is boring. Come next expac I really hope they redesign a lot of those talents because they don’t feel rewarding.
Edit: I’ve been looking at the Wrath/Cata talents from the old tree and realized what’s been missing from the spec. There’s no back and fourth between the Hunter and the pet. They used to have synergy and would give buffs and focus to one another. Take the old Focus Fire passive, it would give the pet a stacking buff and if you consume the buff, it gives your pet focus and would raise your Haste. That’s what’s missing from current BM.
We need more synergy between us and the pet. It needs to feel like a mutual bond- an extension of our character. More depth and more teamwork with the pet.
4 Likes
We shouldn’t have to wait until next xpac for them to put some effort into class design. They didn’t bother this xpac, why expect them to do it next time?
Bush’s BM and Pet Talent Revamp Mine was done in a fraction of the time their alpha/beta takes and I’m one person. We have to hold them to a higher standard than random forum posters.
I prefer passives to active spells because it ends up being too many buttons.
Talents that replace spells with new animations/ abilities, like mongoose bite/raptor strike in survival, would be a good middle ground. Maybe cobra shot is replaced by spitting cobra and the cobra’s attacks are what refreshes kill command by .x seconds or w/e.
That’s an on the spot idea, but stuff like that could spice it up. Maybe stampede replaces kill command (but with like a limited range, less cone, or "stampedes towards your target and does damage to up to 5 enemies within x yards.
Bad or not, I really just like using spitting cobra with my dire command to get that old stampede feeling… you know when stampede would send out the other 4 pets your character has… good times. As a demonology lock main, my hunter also likes the Zoo approach.
1 Like
I’m still messing around with it, running low keys. It’s actually kinda growing on me. I like that it basically increases the DPS window of BW. The Cobra actually hits pretty hard, and if you can get it to pop inside a Lust window, its fun to see those bolts fly. I saw a lot of 2-3k hits so with lust, burst potential is pretty decent.
How were you getting 2-3k hits? Mine hits for like, 400
IMO, there should be a few options that provide active spells as, some people want this.
Again, a healthy mix of the lot is the best. Some active abilities, some passives that impact your core gameplay and choices, and some passives which are more or less purely passive.
Agreed.
In my suggested concept, I decided to include the Legion-version of Dire Beast. Back then you could choose between Dire Beast and Dire Frenzy(Barbed Shot). And while it wasn’t perfect, having these options was one of the best things they’ve done for the spec in a long time.
Purely because of how it allows for different players to approach the fantasy more on their own terms. Some want to focus on empowering that one pet? We have an option/options for that.
Some want to overwhelm their opponents/enemies with a bunch of wild animals? We have an option/options for that.
…I really don’t get why they took that option away from us, going into BfA, when they changed Dire Beast to this bland press-on-CD-thing.
1 Like
You have a 400 item level on your Hunter or something? At 220 ilvl, I did some testing with spitting cobra. Doing my rotation as normal, it was hitting for 300-330ish. When I focused on just threading as many Cobra Shots as possible during Bestial Wrath, I got it up to a tad over 600. 2-3k seems impossible.
2 Likes
If y’all aren’t careful, they’re gonna go back to making us pay for ammo.
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I miss ammo, but only because some would do different things. They should have an ammo slot that does different things, but should just be infinite. Maybe a quiver slot like Diablo 3.
On a 18% Heroic Sire attempt my cobra spit was 26k damage 2.1% out of 1.21 million.
Shadowcore oil was 19k, or 1.6%
God I would have loved that. I know a lot of folks didn’t like the ‘Beast Cannon Build’ but I loved it. It made BM fast paced, and I LOVED seeing which of my stuck in the stables pets would appear.
2 Likes