I love the butchery playstyle. Not a fan of carve/guerrilla Tactics playstyle at all. I leveled my hunter with the intention of figuring out a viable butchery playstyle despite all the guides advising against its use. WoWHead’s SV Hunter Rotation Guide goes as far as saying " **STOP! DO NOT USE THIS TALENT! when selecting it as a talent. Butchery is also left out of single target sims even when you wear Butchers bone fragments.
Why make Butchers Bone Fragments (BBF) unless it was intended to make butchery worth using?
It takes far to long to build 6 stacks with far to little payoff (especially when you add flayed shot to the rotation). This is especially true during a heavy AoE rotation. There is only time to get 1 perhaps 2 Raptor Strike(Mongoose)s before butchery is used again. I am only getting around 6k crits with full stacks. Not very impressive.
Simple improvement to make it worth using.
Change: Raptor Strike(Mongoose) increases the damage of your next Carve(Butchery) by 20%, stacking up to 6 times.
To
Fix: Raptor Strike(Mongoose) increases the damage of your next Carve(Butchery) by 40%, stacking up to 3 times.
This would buff Butchery’s overall throughput and make BBF worthwhile in AoE situations.
Butchery experience so far:
So far, the best feeling Butchery/BBF build I have tested is 3/3/x/1x/3/1. Next best was 1/2/x/1/x/2/3.
I have also messed around with a latent poison/ Butchery build. 3/3/x/1/x/1/2 where butchery acts as the filler till you get to 3 Tip of the Spear stacks. Fun build but not efficient.
A buff to Butchery directly or indirectly would be nice.
-Direct Buff:
-Increase damage to equal raptor strike so butchery can be used as a filler till 3 tip of the spear stacks can be consumed.
-Add a bleed to Butchery.
-Indirect Buff:
-Buff Flame Infusion Conduit when using Butchery by 15%
-Wild Fire infusion always applies Shrapnel if Butchery is used.
This is a butchery viability thread. In before just make SV ranged again. If you would like SV to go back to ranged please visit the 100 other threads on the topic. Appreciate it.
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THe legdanry was doomed from the start.
In legion it only Mattered due to hellcarver which increased carve/butchery’s damage by x% per target hit.
Without that trait, any legendary or trait will fall short with butchery. Add in the target capping and the problem only gets worse.
It looks like Carve and Butchery are just flat out under-tuned.
That’s likely due to Wildfire Bomb being so good but in a world where balance matters, taking the Butchery Talent should at least be a “meaningful choice”. And it’s not.
SVs AoE is just overshadowed by Bomb and that an unfortunate shortcoming of the design team.
Edit: I just re-read my comment and wanted to add that don’t let anyone discourage you from experimenting and trying to make it work.
Also, it’s very unlikely but possible that it(Carve/Butchery) could get adjusted in the tuning pass that often come before/after raids.
4 Likes
I was really hoping they would buff Chakrams and Butchery to be an actual viable thing, because I too am not a fan of guerrilla/wildfire combo.
I don’t understand, if talents are severely underperforming for quite a while and there is really only 1 CLEAR path to go then why wouldn’t they buff them? But hey, they are the professionals they know best, why would you want to buff weak talents anyway? 
The build sounds fun, will give it a try. Here’s hoping they just keep tuning SV to be a viable melee and show some love to the forgotten builds, instead of listening to people crying saying make it ranged again.
3 Likes
They could add a significant bleed to it, which would help with talent synergy, or maybe even a useful debuff.
2 Likes
I mentioned adding bleeds to Butchery in a direct and an indirect fashion as well. It certainly fits the theme of the the ability.
2 Likes
After playing with BBF more I have a few thoughts:
-Remove the stack timer! Stacks should behave similar to DK cold heart.
-Full BBF power should occur at 3-4 stacks! This is a must.
-A bleed must be added to butchery either directly or indirectly.
I think there is a bug where stacks miss in the new raid.
They just buffed the lego to a 60% bleed. It may be competitive now vs wildfire.
I think that is the Venthyr legendary though not BBF.
Right. I read fragments and immediately went to that lego. My bad.
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That’s actually a nice boost to the Venthyr lego. I’ll need to make it when available now.
Bug: BBF does not stack when using Aspect of the Eagle.
Last note because I realize I am beating a dead horse.
I was hesitant to say BBF damage should be buffed while also requiring less stacks to fully power, but it should as follows.
Raptor Strike (Mongoose) increases the damage of your next Carve(Butchery) by 45%, stacking up to 4 times.
Let me explain.
Single target issue:
-Even at full stacks BFF hits around the same as a fully powered mongoose bite or raptor strike. This makes Butchery a null ability even when stacked. Why use Butchery in single target when you can you Raptor Strike which has more interactions for the same output.
I suppose it at least makes it so you can spec Butchery while maintaining your baseline dps but that is a super big sacrifice in order to play a style you prefer.
Increasing the rate and total damage of BBF would make butchery useful in the single target rotation
AoE (This is wonky):
-Using BBF during a M+ mob pull feels bad because the payoff is laughable. Usually you only have time to fit in 1-2 raptor strikes at the cost of resources and before bombs/butchery are up again. Making BBF hit harder per stack makes it more versatile and valuable to use at lower stacks. Building up full stack for the next mob pull would be fun. Misdirect and AoE Nuke opener.
Would also provide an incentive to take dead talents like Flanking Strike and Terms of Engagement for the needed focus.
Imagine. 1 fix could resurrect 3 dead talents and a whole new fun playstyle.
Thanks for listening. Calling it a day on this.
3 Likes