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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 3.2.2 PTR: Another Beast Within change
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 17th 2009 at 11:00AM
Of course, this is the PTR we're talking about, so this change isn't set in stone any more than the first change was (not to mention that in the next expansion, Hunters won't need mana anyway, so who knows what'll happen then). But those of you who freaked out over the first Bestial Wrath changes can at least take comfort in the fact that the talent is still being worked on.
2n - 1 go left, 2n go right. I don't see enough DoTs! More DoTs now! Are you ready for the return of Onyxia? With the Brood Mother being revitalized as a 10 and 25 person raid, you'll need to be sure you know everything that's coming at you. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.2 will make sure your set for the next patch!
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Grimmhjort Sep 17th 2009 11:27AM
I raid BM and am able to do very respectably in raids. With that said, what people seem to be missing in the changes to Bestial Wrath is the fantastic corresponding buff to The Beast Within. 10% always-on damage buff? Yes please!
BM hunters, like me, should be doing a happy dance. These changes are most definately a significant buff. Can't wait for 3.2.2.
Boz Sep 17th 2009 12:02PM
It looks like the 10% buff has a very limited impact on overall DPS amounting to around 2.2%, which is still insufficient to bring BM in-line with the other two trees from an end-game perspective. A buff for PvE? Yes. Significant? Questionable.
Source: http://huntsmanslodge.com/3871/how-bout-them-apples.htm
It is also a straight-up nerf to BM that like to PvP due to the reduced BW time.
Bullseyed Sep 18th 2009 10:46AM
It is not a PvE buff. Pet loses 50% for 8 seconds roughly every 1 minute. Problem is, pets are more sensitive to damage increasing effects and stats.
perderedeus Sep 17th 2009 11:36AM
The passive +10% damage buff (hunter only) is not as great as it may seem. You have to factor in how much less time you're in TBW with its obvious benefits to both the hunter and pet. Numbers have been crunched and the +10% passive really only works out to around a +2% damage buff overall. Not bad, but not worth a happy dance. BM will still be a good bit lower than SV or MM.
Rugus Sep 17th 2009 11:41AM
@ Boz
By "the spec" I mean it's the 1st spec everyone usually thinks about when saying "hunter class". I've always been MM (gone BM 1 week to tame Loque and park it in the stable) but seeing BM hunters running around with Skoll or Loque makes me think "meh.. sigh..".
Like you said, it's hard to find a spot in a raid if you do not bring utility or dps. Being hunters... we can only offer dps (CC is almost gone in WOTLK with few-rare-precious exceptions). And if you want to bring dps, you wont go BM (not to mention that "dead pet" = "crappy dps").
crschmidt Sep 17th 2009 12:04PM
I'm still not sure why the theoretical difference of 10% difference is such a big deal to people.
I'm not in the best gear in the world -- average item level is 215 right now -- and I was able to pull 5700 DPS on Koralon in VoA 25 the other day. (Tetron, on Malygos, if you want to gear check me.)
Some benefits that I get from being BM:
* Super burst on Emalon's adds. This is going down somewhat (due to the shorter duration), but I can help put out a serious amount of DPS between BW and Kill command by my pet.
* Getting big DPS on adds that might move around and behind me (think infernals in Lord Jaraxxus or whatever) -- my pet follows them for me.
* http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=34460, 3% raid-wide damage buff, which typically has > 90% uptime for my 10-man runs.
A 10% theoretical DPS loss -- which is all I think BM has; 3.2 gave us a ~5%-10% buff via talent changes, and 3.2.2 is giving us another 2%-3% -- is *way* outclassed by knowing how to play your class. Okay, maybe if you're in the top 100 guilds in the world, it makes a practical difference, but knowing when and how to use abilities gives a way more significant benefit than the DPS diff between Survival and BM on anything but Patchwerk-style-stand-in-one-place-and-kill fights.
TL;DR: Player skill is still way more important than 10% dps difference.
Tetron
Rugus Sep 18th 2009 3:22AM
@ crschmidt
I really do not understand how you managed to score 5700 DPS with BM and with your gear. I agree with you when you say that player skill > player spec but 5700 with BM and with your gear is a lot.
crschmidt Sep 18th 2009 2:10PM
Rugus: I agree that it was probably a matter of getting a lot of luck, having done it again two times since. When I wrote the comment, I'd only had one additional run, but I did another one last night. (One was 5200, one was 5300.) My lowest run (a wipe) was 4700, but that was including the bit at the end where I run around trying to let healers and so on escape to save them repair bills, so I don't think that's a useful measure.
Unfortunately, I don't have the combatlog (new computer, don't have addons for auto-combatlogging on Raids yet) for the 5700 run.
The latter two are with using defensive cooldowns to make it easier on healers (Deterrence, healthstone, potion, Lifebloom), and getting cindered 3 or 4 times; I suppose if I did none of those, I could push it up a bit more, plus RNG can always help. (Oh, right, and I'm using resist flasks instead of Endless Rage flasks now, to help stay alive.)
So, consistently, with defensive cooldowns, and resist flask, I'm pushing 5k plus with that gear. I'm pretty much only beaten by warlocks and occasionally another hunter in the PUGs I run with. Pushing more than 5k in that gear just doesn't seem like that big of an "OMG BM is completely unusable!" deal to me. I don't think there's any 25-man raid (other than heroic ToC) where pushing 4k dps regularly, and 5k DPS on 'stand still and shoot!' is going to be seen as something you get kicked out of a group for. I've been at or near the top in every run I've done, and oftentimes I'm way out in front. This applies not just to VoA, but everything that I run, from heroics on up. I can't imagine that if I was appropriately geared for HToC, I'd be that far behind on the meters, either.
So what's the problem, again?
Kheradin Sep 17th 2009 12:07PM
Ghostcrawler's rationale on the forum for the change was that the developer's didn't like seeing one spell that gives out both offensive and defensive bonuses. They want to push this as more of a defensive bonus. However, this makes no sense as the talent essentially stays the same with only a shorter duration and an additional CC removal ability added. It is still an offensive ability for pve and and a defensive ability for pvp.
No matter how it's spun, this is a nerf at the moment. With the shorter duration it will lower a BM hunter's dps in pve (the 10% passive buff doesn't make up the difference) and in pvp it's obvious that this hurts since it lowers the amount of time a hunter can dish out damage without worry of CC. Our ability in pvp is already hampered by the fact that we cannot do serious damage while on the move.
Ghostcrawler staked his reputation last year on improving hunter representation in pvp. I don't see how this helps that situation. And the 10% passive buff only gets us back to where BM hunters were before patch 3.1 for pve.
crschmidt Sep 17th 2009 12:23PM
The 10% hunter buff does make up for it. In the end, it's a small (2%, maybe) buff to PvE.
The change in the 'defensive' portion is that you can now get out of anything that a trinket gets you out of, which is a pretty significant change. There were a number of stuns/CC types in PvP that I couldn't get out of with the old ability. This essentially makes it so that your ability to get out of stuns goes up, but your burst goes down. If you're surprised at a change that gives a flat DPS change, but with lower burst, you haven't been paying attention.
This is definitely a PvP offensive nerf, a (possibly minor) PvP defensive buff (it really is like a second trinket now), and a minor PvE buff.
Bob Dewane Sep 17th 2009 12:15PM
I am just thankful that, due to my limited play time, I don't raid and pretty much just spend my time in 5-mans. That way people don't really care that I'm BM specd since heroics are pretty much a faceroll by this time anyway. I LOVE my rare pets. Wanting to have them is the reason I rolled a hunter.
I forget where I read it, but I thought there was a post in the Blizzcon notes that indicated Blizz was toying with the idea of letting hunters tame beasts to use as mounts in Cataclysm. IF that's the case, I hope they make it exclusive to the BM tree. I mean really, how awesome would it be to use Loque or Skoll as your mount?!?!?! I am sure, though, that those who play the class for the pure dps of it would be less than thrilled. Ah its like the saying goes, you can't please everybody all the time. It's a game and a fun one at that so I'll keep playing! =P
Nopunin10did Sep 17th 2009 12:31PM
The "tame mounts" comment at Blizzcon was made in response to a player suggestion for that feature. My understanding is that the developers smiled and said the equivalent "cool idea bro". I wouldn't read too much into it.
The animation set for a mount is probably different enough from the animation set for an everyday beast that I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon, if at all.
Bob Dewane Sep 17th 2009 2:41PM
NOOOOOOO!!!!
I don't EXPECT anything but I hope to GOD that they figure out a way to make this a go. I know Jack and $%!# about computer programming and Jack just left town so, for all I know, this very well could be too much to do. IF IT'S NOT, though, please Blizz, let BM hunters tame mounts!
Clbull Sep 17th 2009 12:41PM
Imho, Blizzard should buff Arcane Shot to deal 1.5x as much damage as it does now, and provide an even higher boost from Ferocious Inspiration (so that it deals substantially more damage in BM), to balance out burst in BM spec, and kinda put MM on par with Survival.
Thats the only way they can justify this nerf, since BM is currently rock bottom in anything but pvp at the moment, and this nerf to TBW and BW will just make Hunters even worse in PvP.
WIstin Sep 17th 2009 1:43PM
I don't know about everyone else's BM pets, but my pet is pretty hard to kill and I think that is part of the point. The number 1 excuse to make people leave beast mastery is DPS loss due to pet death. If your pet is dying as a beast master something that should be happening isn't happening. So, while true your dps drops when your pet dies, your pet shouldn't be dying.
Now, as for the 10% thing. We'll see how it works out. I think the result will be a negligible gain or loss.
Gianni Sep 17th 2009 4:46PM
Your pet is hard to kill? My ferocity pet dies in less than 5 seconds to a single warrior beating on it. This is in pvp gear, so my pet has about 200-ish resilience and about 23k hp.
Ulduar bosses can do ridiculous amounts of dmg to pets, especially Mimiron and Iron Council. Not to mention all the pet bugs around, ie. in arenas and instances where either the pet despawns (Yogg) or gets stuck (Ring of Valor arena).
crschmidt Sep 18th 2009 2:31PM
I have to agree with Gianni here; if your pet isn't dying, you're a lot better off than me. That said, as BM, I can spec into heart of the phoenix, which I use several times per raid, usually, but that doesn't mean that my pet isn't dying, it just means that I can pick him back up when he does, and not have to stop dpsing for 10 seconds to res.
(I am specced two points in improved revive pet, and they're 100% worth it for me.)
tfwagner2001 Sep 17th 2009 5:23PM
At the very least, BM Hunters should get new pets equal to their level - not possibly 5 levels below. (Really, all hunters need this.)