Catching Up with the 3.2.2 PTR
Patch 3.2.2 has been on the Public Test Realms (PTR) since well before BlizzCon, but so far I’ve not said a word about it. I usually love tracking the progress of the PTR, but between BlizzCon and real-life commitments and distractions, I’ve been remiss about keeping up with this one.
Tonight, however, Blizzard deployed PTR build 10433 — a build that is causing quite a stir among Beast Mastery hunters in particular — and so I thought it was high time to catch up.
Let’s start at the beginning: minor patches like 3.2.2 usually don’t have a lot in the way of new content (compared to major content patches like 3.2), but this one includes a level 80 revamp of the classic Onyxia encounter to celebrate WoW’s five-year anniversary.
As usual, there are a bunch of class and balance tweaks. For hunters, the official PTR notes include only a handful of bug fixes:
- Hunter Tier-9 2-Piece Bonus: Critical damage from Serpent Sting will now work properly with the Mortal Shots and Expose Weakness talents.
- Master’s Call: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds, Frostfire Bolt, and Slow.
- Trap Mastery: Tooltip now states the correct amount of snakes summoned.
Real exciting, eh? But there is one data-mined change that is causing some contention. MMO Champion reported today that the latest build includes this change for Beast Mastery:
- The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all time.
- Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)
Ghostcrawler himself responded almost immediately to a post about this change on the Damage Dealing forum:
I love data-mined patch note day.
It should be no surprise to anyone who has been on these boards for long that we’re trying to chill out abilities that convey offensive and defensive bonuses with the same button press. At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet. With this change, hopefully, Bestial Wrath becomes more of a defensive ability while taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.
I call it more of a defensive cooldown because it now breaks all CC like a PvP trinket.
For myself, I find Ghostcrawler’s explanation fascinating. I never would have considered Bestial Wrath as a defensive ability.
96 Comments
BW as a defensive ability? Seems odd to call it that. With BM pet’s still dealing out (after last night’s testing on live) 44% of total DPS, I don’t see a pets 50% dmg increase (that’s on a 1 min 20 sec CD if glyphed) being defensive at all.
Will I push away from that “break all forms off CC”? No. That’s good to know that at least that BW got a balancing act instead of an outright PvP nerf.
I will still never see BW as a defensive ability. Master’s Call, now that’s a defensive ability.
However, overall, I’m still greatly displeased with the lowered BW time. Nerfing BM (in pvp or pve) just seems redundant at this point. It’s the least played spec still, lowest dmg of the specs, and the only time it “shines” in PvP is arena with the proper specc’d specific class.
So I still stand by it’s a PvE change for the sake of Arena (which I’m beginning to get sick of).
And I don’t know why GC is saying that they made this change to steer away from offesnive and defensive capabilities in 1 button press. According to his talk at Blizzcon, they were wanting to remove all this “boring talents” that give just “passive” buffs and make talents more dynamic and move these “passives” into the Mastery system. While BW isn’t a “passive” ability, Beast Within will now be one (with the underlying 10% dmg at all times).
Soo….which one GC? Giving us a talent change that will just be changed more in Cataclysm maybe 8 months down the road? Why not give us a “dynamic” talent ability (A shot? A pet skill? a command of attack!?!) that is on like the other specs’ chimera and explosive shot? That’d be more like what you devs stated at Blizzcon…
Ugh it’s times like these I want to get on my druid and never look back *headdesk*
Well, Beatial Wrath imparts immunity for a time, so yes, somewhat defensive.
What *I* find fascinating is that they think BM hunters are too dependent on the pet. Hello? BEAST MASTER? That’s kinda our raison d’etre. So I really really don’t get that.
Grimmtooth:
Well yes, it is somewhat defensive, and in a way it always has been. But its still more of an offensive ability as a BM hunter will have it glyphed and use it whenever it is up far more often then as a pvp defense mechanic. I mean it’s just more useful as an attack than as a “oh crap” button. XD
And I completely agree. When the heck did Blizzard start going “that spec that boosts it’s damage based on it’s pet…yanno…they’re relying on their pet way too much.”?? Too dependant on the pet… it’s like they don’t remember the days in Vanilla WoW when most Hunters were told “dismiss pets!” for an entire raid and then the BM’s were screwed cause our pets were what was our main damage.
And since when does BW dispel all CC? It sure won’t break pally stun, and can’t be used to break fear if you’ve already been feared. It’s a good defense against mobs, who are too dumb to not cast fear on a bright red hunter, but in PVP? Wut.
Now, if they change the way BW works to be a Big Red Bubble then maybe I can see it having a shorter duration, but frankly… it isn’t. And who uses BM for PVP anyway, when Surv is so overpowered AND aimed at PVP with all those nice PVP talents?
Anyhow, I also wanted to add for Mania’s benefit; Ursangous ( untamable bear in Ashenvale that used to use the old duridbear model) has now been updated with the black new-druid-bear model. Shadumbra is unchanged.
Nacht:
I think GC means this new 3.2.2 BW will break all stuns.
Actually I went to check on that druid bear last week. Sadly, still untameable. I really wanted to tame him now too. That new bear model is sweeeet.
… to clarify, cause I’m not sure I was…
Currently, BW/TBW do NOT ‘break CC like a trinket’. Is he saying they’re changing it so it -is- like a trinket? Because that’s not datamined from the patch notes, was it? Or is he confused about how it works now and thinks it -does- work like a trinket?
…. tbh… I’d kinda like a trinket button.
Very interesting… now I’m curious if:
1 – the cooldown will be reduced
and
2- BW might work with Readiness again?
As I recall (which tbh might not be totally accurate xD ), having that double-string of +10% BW was what made that build too op in the first place.
Now that the 10% is getting spread around some more, and BW is more of a pvp ability… kinda blows that back out of the water, no?
Also – something I haven’t been able to clarify from the mmo-champ link: its 10% at all times, but does it still add another 10% while under the effect of Bestial Wrath?
I suppose the damage increase is a buff but I am concerned about the missing 8 seconds…it’s really not great for pvp. I think the raiders should come out pretty happy with this change, I hope
As a warlock, BW is a defensive ability when used against me especially, because it negates my most powerful form of crowd control.
According to the talent of the 3.2.2 Beast Within grants 10% damage to all attacks (by you, the Hunter), and when you pop Beastial Wrath, you gain an additional 10% damage and 20% mana cost reduction in spells.
So yes, you will have 10% damage increase all across the board and you will gain 10% more when BW pops.
Nacht:
No, GC is not confused about how BW works, that’s why he said “I call it more of a defensive cooldown because it *now* breaks all CC like a PvP trinket. ”
He meant to have the emphasis on the now as on “as of now on the 3.2.2 ptr”.
Whether or not this is true, I have to queue to find out.
Tbh how is it bad? I can glyph Dancing Rune Blade for 17 seconds and it has the same cd time as glyphed and talented TBW. I wouldn’t have minded a 3 second drop but a full 8!? Oh come on! What about Shamans and their wolves! Seriously in pvp if it’s not the retrilolz and the DKlolz it;s always those damned wolves that crop up. I’ve been killed by them! I’ve seen them solo people! And there’s two! D:
Teridom: TBW was a PvE AND a PvP ability. I don’t know how many times big red pet syndrom saved me when a rogue decided after I have finished killing someone, somehow, in 1v1 to TRY AND GANK ME. It’s WHY I don’t spam it; rogues ALWAYS GANK ME and I NEED that OCRAP button.
And then there’s the ocrap KILLKILL EVERYTHING TO PREVENT A WIPE- on my alts AND my main I have had to do it, just blow everything including TBW to KILL IT WITH FIRE; sometimes works sometimes doesn’t.
Tbh I don’t think this is any sort of a fix, the rogues and death knights just qq’d to much. I mean seriously on Rosa, ALL THE DKS TRY TO SNARE ME and it’s like HELLO I AM RED. Or my pet. I mean by now druids have stopped trying to hibernate it or snare it; warlocks are growing smarter and don’t try and focus on pet alone or try and dot me down fiiiirst. Paladins stun me from afaaar and then lolshot meeee.
Rogues AND Death Knights are still the ONLY class that from what I’ve seen from using AV to get like 20-50k exp cheaply, that still tries to snare me when I am un CCable.
So now we kinda are forced to glyph to make a talent work! I mean come on :/
Figworth:
But currently BW is hardly a defense mechanic. I mean it only works (now, in live) if I beat you to pressing BW before your fear goes off. If Fear is already on me, BW does jack squat.
Interestingly enough, Fear will be instant as of 4.0 (cataclysm). So prehaps this BW change (to be like a remove all CC/Stun/etc trinket) is an advance preparation for 4.0′s insta-fear.
That’s total BS. Beastial wrath has always been our main form of offense. Does anyone remember the original beastial wrath? It was 100% damage for 12 seconds. Then it was nerfed to 50% damage for 18 seconds, and they tried to call it a buff, saying it was more damage over time. It was actually like 10% less damage. AND NOW THEY ARE NEARLY HALVING IT. And they are already saying BM is low on damage! How the hell does that make sense? Defensive ability my shiney white ass.
As my double, yes, I am a little angry.
Well, it largely depends on what the cooldown is. If it’s a shorter period, but the cooldown isn’t that long, it may well be a buff because it’s up more frequently. Although since they’re apparently making it a pocket trink, I doubt the cooldown will be all that short or people will be all WAH WAH THEY HAVE A PERMANENT TRINKET WAH.
I’m not going to shriek nerf until I see how the numbers play out.
Nacht:
CD is unchanged. It’s still 2 mins CD (unless glyphed, then its 1 min 20 secs). So they only shortened the duration, not the CD itself.
I am. I am sick and tired of them trying to take the focus of BM away from the pet. It is BEAST MASTER. It means you rely on your pet. It means you have to know what the hell to do with your pet in order to be effective. But apparently that is not okay. Apparently they don’t like all the focus being on the pet. But that’s why you SPEC THAT WAY. If I wanted all the focus to be on ME, on MY damage, I’d have gone marksmen or Survival, and NOT beast master.
*takes a deep breath* On the upside, it’ll help with escaping CC. But ten seconds? Come on. TEN SECONDS? If your going to drop the duration to ten seconds, BUFF THE DAMAGE BACK TO 100%, OR GIVE US A TALENT TO DO THAT. But….don’t just neuter it then try to pretend we should be happy that you just turned our main offensive tool into a defensive one.
Palla:
A-freakin-greed. 100%
You sound just about as mad as I really am, and I’m kinda glad I’m not the only one who sees it like this. I know, I should wait til I run recount on ptr and see the changes, but I’m more then willing to bet my dps will not be going up.
Not to mention like I said earlier. We all heard them say they want to prune the talent trees and make talents more active and not so passive. Yet they give us a passive buff to “fix” our spec and in fact nerf our ONE BUTTON that is BM’s “Explosive Shot” (if you will). Their logic is maddening at best.
I really am starting to wonder if I wasted my time planning a worgen hunter in cataclysm…
This is deffinatly a change that I hope does not go live.
As I play nothing but BM Hunter I cant imangine my damage output after a hard hitting nerf like this…
/pray that this doesn’t make it.
-Shadowkaizen
Sad to say this…. but when the heck do they call this a buff?? If they KNOW (supposedly) that BM is low on the dps-o-meter than what it was originally, cropping BW/TBW isn’t going to bring it up….. with it’s duration shortened, we’re going to lose more dps that way…. I agree with Palla and Rikaku on this. And they say they’re trying to lose the focus on pets in BM tree? HELLO? The talent tree itself is a humongous buff for pets ALONE and not much else for the hunter except for a small few buffs that do not deal directly with damage overall.
Epic fail on this one…. too dependent on pet my white fanny… it’s not BM tree for nothing. Honestly, are they really that dumb? Seriously, where do they get that crapload of data for something like this?
From what I am reading, it is a flat out PvP nerf. It was affecting crowd control in arena to much. I can understand that, to an extent. It was eighteen seconds of damage on a pet your probably not going to out run and can’t CC, neither pet nor hunter. But the added ten percent to the hunter was stupid, and didn’t really help to solve the low damage issue. Yes, cut it down to ten seconds, but boost the damage done, or give us a talent to boost it. I’m just repeating myself now, but it makes me angry. I am not going to flat out defend beastial wrath or the beast within, eighteen seconds is a long time to be immune to CC. But it got nerfed by 45% of its duration and damage, and we got a piddly ten percent increase to the hunter ALONE in return. Because, you know, that totally makes up for almost having the damage from it.
I realize that ten percent is passive and always on, but it means beast masters just had their only form of sustained burst halved. HALVED. And that is an okay nerf how??
This is BULL!!
And I’m screaming NERF!!
I use TBW for explosive offensive damage only, or if I want to kill something really fast. It saved my dumb white butt many times with a bad pull, or a too strong mob, or adds, or from a completely group wipe(thanks to FD too).
So this just pisses me right off. I’m also starting to reconsider both my ideas of a Worgen and Undead hunters now. Thanks GC, a little bit of BM love just died back there. Maybe I “should” respec to Survival…
And hey, look! I already have a trinket that breaks CC, so thanks, but no thanks.
I’ve been able to break fear by popping BW >_>
Elsi:
I dunno how you did <_< I just did a WG and got feared by a warlock and my BW did nothing when pushed until after fear wore off.
Hit enter too early. (so full of rage)
Then again, maybe something else went on when you did it? The only way I’ve been able to break fear (or other fear mechanics) is on my Druid with berserk. Otherwise I need to be big and red before being feared.
I could be wrong though. I’ll admit it =) If I am, I retract my statement but I’m fairly certain I’ve never BW out of fear, cept for like pre-BC.
Ok, I had a little something to eat, and calmed down a little, but just enough to make this post not a rant…
You know, I never tried to use TBW while feared or under other CC effects, and since I started playing post TBC, I didn’t know that it use to before in Vanilla. I just read the tool-tip and used it as such, so I don’t know. It could be a good thing, IF I PVP EVER, WHICH I DON’T!!!
The rage is rising, again…
I just read Palla’s post below mine and it got me to ask: Who actually pvp’s straight up as a BM hunter?? And in arena?? That’s a joke, right? I salute those that do it…. and I’m not being sarcastic either when I say that if some actually play BM in that, because I RARELY (like, as in not at all) see BMs in pvp in my realm… even in WG.
…the 10% damage increase at all times is a VERY poor substitute to piddling shat “burst” damage that the current ability has now from it’s original ability when it was first introduced. From bad to worse, when will it end?
Rowdy:
I’m a BM hunter who pvps, but I do it casually. But I’m “straight up” BM (Not being sarcastic, I just love the straight up part).
However, the big “story” behind this change is assume because one of the combos in the last arena tournement WAS a BM Hunter which beat out the Rogue/Mage/Priest combo. So alot of people are guessing that that was the foundation for the TBW/BW change. I’m inclined to agree.
You can BW your pet out of fear, and if you time it right you can pop it as fear goes off so that they blow the mana on it. I’ve done both repeatedly, though sometimes I take a step or two from fear before beastial wrath clears it.
If this really is just an arena nerf, then I am going to be pissed. We’ve had beastial wrath at this point for what, four years? And suddenly, because it counters the oh so vaunted CC of RMP, it gets a nerf to the face? And do not mistake it for anything else. Your pet is losing its 50% damage modifier for eight seconds and the hunter loses their 10% damage modifer for eight seconds, AND you lose CC immunity for that full duration as well. You may end up with an infinitesimal overall damage increase, but you lose the usefulness of the CC immunity. And I don’t think the projected roughly 2% damage increase makes up for that. At all.
And there’s another thing!!!
I “was” 100% for 12 secs, in Vanilla?! To 50% for 18, and now this?!
grrrRAWR!!!
as my second post… (third actually if you want to get technical)… Blizzard is so focused on Arena and PVP (and their pvp and arena crybabies) that when they make the changes, they don’t take into account what happens outside of PVP/Arena…. and to those players who DON’T do them at all.
Feh, I hardly ever touch my hunter now outside of farming and some raid instances where long-ranged dps (SV/MM) are required.
Good job Blizz, way to go on further breaking an already broken spec for a hunter…
I wanna swear so bad, but I can’t, even drunk-as-toast sailors would blush at what I want to say out loud.
I PvP as a beast master, Rowdy. All the time, and I am very effective at what I do. PvP is a careful balance of directing your pet, target choice, hitting the right attack at the right time, and staying the hell out of melee range. It’s that way for all three specs, but beast masters have to focus more on keeping pets on the right targets, and being in melee doesn’t effect them quite so much, though it is still a massive hindrance. The problem is as I mentioned, that our burst comes mainly from beastial wrath, intimidation timing, and aimed shot to help deal with healing.
Course, forget trying to damage through a dedicated and well geared healer, but as I understand everyone is having that problem at the moment.
Rikaku! You cheat! You stole my line and posted it! Actually, thank you for posting that. I have a phobia about the forums.
Palla:
I did? My bad? XD I have no idea what you mean but your welcome…i think XD
I salute Palla and Rikaku… “straight up!” BM’s *grin* …you, the few, that can own the enemy, are far better BM hunters than I will ever be… come to think of it, so is my cousin before he stopped pvp-ing on his BM hunter after the initial tidal wave of BM nerfs…. I watched him do a TON of damage in every pvp during BC during the height of BM supremacy, he’s one of the few like us that got into “Rhino Bowling” like Palla did whenever he was in AV.
Oh the beast mastery thing (BEASTmastery)? Actually after reading MMO champion for today I whined at my paladin and rogue playing friend (how do I get along with those two? Honestly…) and said that to them. I thought of posting it sooner, but the last time I griped about GC and Blizzard failing, I got a temp ban from the WoW forums. However, once you mentioned it, I was fueled with friendly rage and posted it for all of us angry BMs. XD
Rowdy:
The sole reason I got a rhino was to “rhino bowl” at the Lumber mill in AB. Ah that cliff and I….was good times!
I did it for the tower’s in AV. I have never been more pissed then when they nerfed stampede. So stupid to kill the knockback entirely.
Unfortunately, I see this design philosophy getting worse. I think this might be the first step in taking damage away from the pet, and adding it onto the hunter in BM. They’ve talked about it before, but never really done anything with it until now……but think about it. How will mend pet work on an energy based system? Revive pet? Will revive pet and mend pet cost eighty or a hundred energy? I am very concerned about what this could mean for pets in Cataclysm.
And something else! Does anyone else remember back in 2.9, when they said they were going to buff melee for hunters? And then again, in 3.1? And now, NOTHING. We get hit with constant nerfs well before we get any sort of promised buffs. It’s such a load of crap.
Palla:
I remember them saying that! I also remember them saying they’d fix BM after 3.0.8 PFFFFFFFFFFFT raspberry to that!! But I agree with you Palla, I kinda see BM going in that direction too.
Though I will say this, I am not a huge optimist by any means, but I think Cataclysm will be BM hunters time to shine. Why? Well they already stated that with the focus system, Steady Shot will regen it (focus) faster (along with haste). BM is a very Steady shot-based spec, so we’ll be spamming that alot more than SV or MM. Also keep in mind that BM has always been a roller coaster. It was bad in vanilla (lets admit it, until 2.0 came along, MM was the only raiding spec), good in TBC, bad in Wrath…lets hope Cataclysm bodes well.
Another thing, Mastery system. They stated that they plan to prune out the “passive and boring” talents out of the talent trees and make them under the “mastery” system. So we will be getting new talents that are more command and action-based (like BW or chimera shot) as opposed to passive bonuses to damage.
Maybe we just have to stick it out for another 6-7 crappy months.
Also I made an achievement to commemorate GC’s words. I shall now use it as a sig.
http://worldofwarcraft.mmocluster.com/img_achievements/155327_669eb5e2ff48165efee4a85e67a00667.jpg
And another thing! Hunter pets don’t level in PvP! Meaning we are the only class, literally, that could not level purely in PvP!
The more I read it, the more stupid it gets to me. It’s like…..they had a meeting. And in this meeting, some one said “Well, a BM spec has managed to actually help WIN a tournament. Now the rogues, mages, and priests are all whining and crying about how 18 seconds is to long.” “So what do we do, boss?” “Well isn’t it obvious? First, we cave into the whiners, and make half the duration. Second, we give them some stupid ‘buff’ to make it not so bad. That should divide the community on whether or not it is a nerf. Oh, and make the buff just to hunters.” “Just to hunters, boss? But what about the pet?” “Pah, hunters depend to much on their pets!” “…..uh, boss, you do know this is the beast master tree, right? Thats sort of what the tree is supposed to depend on.” “Who cares! We can change it. Its our game!”
It just makes less and less sense as I go. Beast masters depend on their pet for 40-50% of their damage, and beastial wrath plays a pivotal role in that. The GOOD beast masters do their damage just fine with no real threat to the pet, except during learning phases. The bad beast masters don’t know how to recall their pets during AoE or bad fire phases. So….are they saying they are pandering to the bad players? Because that isn’t what it feels like. It literally just feels like they caved into the mass amount of QQ that went up when a beast master hunter actually did well in an arena tournie.
Now, like I said earlier, eighteen seconds is a long time to be immune to CCs and snares. But the answer wasn’t a ten percent hunter only buff. It was to buff the damage done by beastial wrath. This is…..just getting more and more stupid as we go along in Wrath, isn’t it?
Oh, and as a PvP hunter, let me tell you that it is a massive, MASSIVE nerf. That’s eight seconds off of my pets increased damage, eight seconds off of my ability to burst down things. Eight seconds and the damage lost from it are easily the difference between life and death. Hell, in a large scale BG or Wintergrasp fight your already lucky if you or your pet even LIVE for the full duration, and now your telling me your halving it? It just BOGGLES me how this makes sense to them. They act like we should be all happy because you can use it as a trinket, and they gave it a 10% hunter damage increase, but thats what you have the trinket for in the first place! It isn’t worth losing that much PvP burst damage over.
I guess I should be happy that they at least added two things, one for PvE ((The 10% damage increase)) and one for PvP. ((Being able to use it to get out of CC.)) But it doesn’t feel good to me. At all. Just another nerf for hunters, as it were. And an increasing feeling of unease, that Blizzard does not really know what to do with the class.
Reading this, makes it easy not to return *eg*
The 10% damage increase for BM hunters is a pure buff. Pets won’t be doing any less damage – the hunters themselves will just be doing more. Yes, BM is meant to be about the pet, and by and large it still is. However, raid mechanics are currently too punishing to pets in general, so until Blizz have a chance to change the raid mechanics across the board (i.e. when they make pets 100% immune to raid AoE damage in Cataclysm), buffing the hunter’s own DPS for those times when the pet dies or is otherwise unusable is something of a workaround. Not ideal, obviously, but the revamps needed aren’t something they can easily address in a content patch.
Turning TBW into a cc break rather than a preemptive defence is huge. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was actually the first change that the designers put on the table for the ability, and then the duration reduction followed on from that. Most people can use their PvP trinket once every 2 minutes (or every 5 if using the cheap or heirloom version). A BM hunter will have the option of equipping a DPS trinket instead and still having a CC break every minute, or else continue to use their PvP trinket for 3 CC breaks every two minutes (or 6 every 5).
@Palla: “Hell, in a large scale BG or Wintergrasp fight your already lucky if you or your pet even LIVE for the full duration, and now your telling me your halving it?”
Uhh, so you’re saying you often don’t get to use the full 18 seconds even now? So if you often spend the last oh, say, 8 seconds or so chowing down on some dirt, isn’t it worth trading the extra duration for a CC break? How often are those extra 8 seconds actually the difference between the target living and dying?
*shrug* It’s an MMO, things change and they always will. What worked last month may not work next month. Claiming the developers don’t understand their own game just because the direction they want to take something differs from the way you personally would take it is a bit rich though.
Then again, I’ve long found the meta-game relating to the psychology of developing a game where players have a personal investment in their characters and their performance utterly fascinating, so my perspective on buffs, nerfs and other changes generally qualifies as a bit odd (even when it comes to the classes I play myself).
Blizz just doesn’t want us to be BM. I pve and sometimes do heroics as BM just because I enjoy sending my bug red pet at people. I rollled a hunter for the PETS and I spec’d BM because I wanted to buff my PET! Now they’re making it so I can’t raid or pvp as BM. Where’s the buff we’ve been waiting for all this time?
Not only that, but they’re nerfing armor pen! Mine isn’t as high as I’d like it to be, but there are many MM hunters who completely rely on it. They’re pushing us toward SV more and more. I refuse to apec SV though, it was alright until they decided to nerf lock and load and add black arrow.
What i do not understand is last time i checked a Hunter is a pet class i think all specs should be designed around our pets. what is the point of playing a pet class if your pet does not add to your damage. To me it seems all blizzard wants to do is make us a gun/bow carring mage. locks are having the same problems blizzard needs to wake up and see that we want to be a pet class because we love our pets. If they want to up BM damage why not give us back the old pet stats that gave them plus 15% damage or even better keep you word blizzard and make exotic pets do the damage you promised us they would make.
Ummm.. let me get this straight. We are getting 10% more damage for 1 min 10 seconds and loosing 8 seconds of our 10% more damage from TBW/BW. I don’t see how this is a bad thing for PvE. You will still pop it when it’s up. But when it’s down we still do more damage.
Ok Nimizar.
‘The 10% damage increase for BM hunters is a pure buff. Pets won’t be doing any less damage – the hunters themselves will just be doing more. Yes, BM is meant to be about the pet, and by and large it still is.’
Guess what. 10% is nothing if it’s just the hunter; why? Because well oopsie, BM Hunters have no burst shot like SV hunters of MM hunters. We kinda only have Steady, Arcane, Auto, Kill Shot and Serpent Sting. Unless you min/max and go for aimed shot or whatever.
My shot rotation? Steady Shot Spam after arcane and SSting, hope Cobra Strikes procs, if I have it I forget, or hope I CRIT so more focus dumps onto my pet, and my pet does more damage. And between all this is mend pet spam if needed AND TBW popping. With trinkets and etc.
But my burst DEPENDS upon me having EVERYTHING. Cause what good is an extra passive 10% to -me- -only-, if my pet’s damage gets overall nerfed, my burst gets overall nerfed.
I mean SV get Explosive shot and while fire immune mobs are probably immune to it- it already does -more- damage than my arcane shot, it does a dot and the dots if I remember right can crit.
They have also put in a PVE talent in a pure lolz!pvp talent! Aka Kill Command in Cat Like Reflexes!
My tree is already bloated. My tree is already broken. This is less of a fix and more of a nerf; I don’t give a crap about that 10% you know why? Cause of the nerfs they’ve done to pet damage; and the crappy broken bloated pet trees too! Even for BM!
you can either have a pet that has survivability OR A GLASS CANNON.
I was -happy- when I was able to use HotP if I oh crapped messed up. Now? Well now I’ve not used it since they implimented those ‘nice BM only talents’. And i’m kicking myself for it no matter how glitchy it was.
Blizzard kinda shows they have no clue as to what to do half the time; TBW is fine as it is. But now? Now you really DO have to glyph for it to be good!
And Dannil: Don’t you know, blizz basically admited they nerfed pets, norm and exotic because of Cunning! :D
Edit: Also I pvp as BM. I pvp on my belf and my orc as BM maybe not ‘pure’ as I’ve got some talents in mm, but main bloat is in the bm tree like always. I’ve gone toe to toe with almost everything from my hurtle from 60-70 on my orc and 50-66 on my belf. And let me tell you it’s horribly hard- not as hard as I found it on Ryai, but it’s getting there. When I don’t lag it’s fine but even when I don’t lag well I have to blow everything to stay alive. I don’t even bother with melee attacks- I don’t have even wing clip on my bar. I know if I get in melee and stay in melee range, I’m dead. It’s not like the past where I could possibly wing clip-procc-flee like crap.
No now it’s dead time.
I abuse the fact I can throw down three traps at a time, I abuse detterence and the disengage glitch. If you press it enough before it goes off you can get 2-3 jumps off. Sadly, this means you can hurl yourself off high places even more in AV/AB/etc.
I’ve died mid air and had to wait a few seconds for my corpse to fall thanks to dots + disengage. i’ve died from over jumping. I died from using detterence. Or not using it in time rather.
But the sad thing? The sad thing is, when I know how to play I can play better than some other hunters in better gear. I seem to be as bad as an MM and SV with stealthing and just shooting the crap from the backs, instead of wading in all BIG RED PET like I remember with Ryai.
I’m having to learn new skills, new strategies, and it’s hard. Yes it’s hard, and if you want to do it I suggest doing it like how I’m doing it, level up and pvp in the new bracket. The world’s changed and not for the better for hunters.
and I’m learning how cheap rogues and paladins and dk’s are all over again. .-.
Did anybody notice that in the new patch notes, every class listed got more buffs, yet we keep getting nerfed. I really hope they have something good innstore for us for Cataclism. At this point in time, i reallt don;t see the new expansion being worth my money. I play a hunter because i like my pets. I play BM because i like have a powerful pet. I don;t wanna play another class,m and I don;t wanna play another spec, but it seems that Blizz is pushing really hard to get people to do one or the other/ Like I said, Blizz better come up with something really a,azing for hunters if they exp[ect to get any money off me for the expansion.
Ok, as annoying this is, will that mean that hunters won’t be able to safely tame King Krush solo anymore? I mean it’s rare to see people with it anyway, but Bestial Wrath plays a big part in the tame. Crap pet out, send on Dino, Use BM and release fast, then start the tame, with that 8 second difference, who knows what KK could do to us. Ahh well, whatever the cost, people will find out how to get him soon enough, using Heroism/Haste related shizzness, I mean, cmon, people managed to get the Spirit Wolf back in BC :)
p.s. I’m real tired at the moment, so bear with me if I made no sense, I tend not to on forums or anything else anymore.. yet I am English :O
*The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all time.*
now i like 10% bonus. but no. not happy about a 10 sec BW. to much CC out there.
wtb better concussive shot.
I ran some math with a hunter doing 4000 DPS and 45% of damage done by pet. This change is a small increase in damage, about 3%, but it increases mana use by 2% which means more time in viper. The net increase is +2% damage for a 45% reducting in time where the hunter can’t be CC’d (something I’ve found quite useful on Auriya fight in Ulduar (crazy cat lady) and her constant fears). Depending on the fight, this could actually be a nerf.
For those who like math:
3.2 3.2.2
Base Damage 320,000 339,200
Wrath Beast increase 16,200 9,000
Wrath Hunter increase 3,960 2,200
Total Damage, 80 sec: 340,160 350,400 (+ 10,240 damage / +3.0%)
Mana Use: 160/sec
Base 12,800 12,800
Wrath savings – 576 – 320
Total Mana Used 12,224 12,480 (+2.1%)
Viper Damage Reduction
4000 DPS
80 sec X 2.1 % = 1.68 sec in viper at 50% damage
4000 X 1.68% X 50% = -3360 damage
Net damage increase: 10,240 – 3360 = 6880 over 80 sec for net +2%
and here i was hoping BM would get buffed so i could actually bring my sweet ass Skoll spirit beast to raids and dungeons and not DPS like i’m nubtarded. so much for that theory……
………. so i was reading the convo’s going on, and thought i agreed with alot of what you guys were saying, then BAMM palla mentioned the switch to Focus, which i had forgotten about, and about cried…. i don’t want no stinky Focus, mana is just fine for hunters, and fixing something that isn’t broken is dumb… *sigh*
WILLING TO BUY MANA FOR HUNTERS.
We were broken- yes we were, for mana, untill they finally FIXEd AotV and made it a god damn godsend even for the downtime, it’s gotten to where I can be so lazy while grinding I can just go shroooom AotV and continue on. Less downtime of grinding is win.
But re-reading Palla’s post now I am scared for those talents :/
Why is it they feel they HAVE TO FIX THINGS THAT ARE NOT BROKEN. And upon doing so break things horribly.
Didn’t they learn that with the FIRST MANA REGEN CHANGE THEY DID.
Ninetythree,
I have been using Skoll in raids and I have been doing just fine in dps…. anywhere from 4400-4800 dps on Ulduar bosses. That’s not too terribly bad. Now, last night I went raiding in Ulduar, and my dps took a terrible dive. i used the same rotation, same gear…. but for some reason my dps was cut nearly in half. i have been trying to figure it out all morning and for the love of God, i can’t figure out why my dps suddenly took a nosedive. So, if anybody knows of anything that may have changed for us in the last day or two, let me know.i would love to know why my dps is hurtiong as of late.
Emrsonbiggs:
How long was your testing? I’ve been hearing (can’t actually play yet) that on longer fights the overall dps is down (so 3.2 is better). Meanwhile on shorter fights the new (3.2.2.) is better. It makes sense overall. If you use BW alot in a fight (like say maybe Koralon where you can pop it about 3 times) or some of the Ulduar bosses (pop-up book guy) where you use BW more than that, it’s a noticeable loss in dps. However, in PvE play (such as heroics) you will see the “buff”.
Nimizar:
I’m not quite sure how one can see the nerf to BW/TBW and say our pets are not losing any damage. They’re losing 45% of a 50% damage increase uptime. They are getting nerfed while the Hunter themselves are being buffed. But as Ryai pointed out, what good does that really do? Maybe if BM hunters were allowed to stack AGI and take full advantage of the buffs AGI gives like MM and SV it’d actually be worthwhile, but pets don’t scale with that so it’s basically a wasted gem slot to gem for it.
And I don’t blame people for saying Blizz doesn’t know what they’re doing. We’ve watched them again and again with the Hunter class this past 10 months.
* They’ve done nothing but destroy one spec (some will even argue 2 for some time) and buff one spec; at the same time talking about making more specs “viable” and at the same time saying “we want to reward harder playstyles”. In reality they meant “reward harder rotations” because that’s all it is. BM isn’t “easier” to play because of our steady shot spam, we have to control another character (our pet) who does upwards of 45% of our dps. MM is easiest if anything.
* They’ve talked about buffing BM and making more pets viable and giving pets more survivablity. Instead, they bloated our pet’s talent trees and tried to fix BM through “BM Only” talents. Our “pets survivablity” was gained at 40% stamina from the Hunter at the cost of a useful talent such as “Heart of the Phoenix”. Our pets weren’t made “more viable”, instead Ferocity lost 5% damage, Tenacity +5% armor and Cunning 5% HP. Did it make any pets more viable? No. We’re still using cats, raptors, and wolves…maybe Devilsaur if you’re still hanging in there.
* My favorite part: a Developer stating that a spec focused on increasing their personal damage through the damage of their pet is “focusing too much on the pet”. Meanwhile, they stated previously they’d like us to start using more AGI instead of AP (something that would in fact, help BM hunters alot more if we could start gearing like other Hunters) and there’s no help in sight for that.
So yes, I completely agree with everyone else who states that obviously Blizzard doesn’t know what they’re doing. Why else nerf a spec that is hardly even played anymore? Having 3 BM per server is too many? Too OP? So our only burst is nerfed? I’m sorry, I just don’t see Blizzard’s logic. Usually I try to find the silver lining here, but that 10% Hunter only dmg increase just isnt cutting it. If I wanted to increase my damage, I’d roll MM or SV.
I’m kinda beginning to think about speccing to MM, even though I’ve been BM all time. But seriously, for me it seems they only nerf BM. I mean, why would they nerf us, when there’s so many other overpowered classes out there? Warlocks, Druids, Death Knights, whatever! Why BM? We’re not even near the dps of those classes.
Geez… :/
pls pls tell me u posted this on a wow fourm 2
/agree Rikaku
i mean, 10 seconds? wth…you get longer durations from talent procs…this is why i changed from BM, even tho i loved the spec, they seem to be bent on destroying it….
“At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet.”
I wonder why BEAST masters would be dependent on their pet :P
Well? Okay, so you people all hate the change with a purplefaced loathing.
THIS IS WHAT PTRs ARE FOR.
Download the client. Report on the change as sucking every chance you get. Post on the forums. If you QQ enough, they’ll change it. Get your friends to complain about it. Don’t just bitch and gripe on forums Bliz barely reads, if at all. They don’t watch Mania’s blog like some marvelous pulse of the hunter community. They make decisions based on reports from the PTR and PTR forums and that’s pretty much it.
Okay, Nacht? This is a place for people to vent just like any other. I have every intention of letting how stupid this is be known, but I also know Blizzard. This won’t be changing.
To Nimizar and anyone else calling this a buff, I stated quite clearly that over the course of a regular boss fight, it’d result in about a 2% DPS INCREASE for the hunter. But that’s OVER TIME, and does nothing for immediate damage, which is something hunters tend to have a small problem with anyway. That’s losing eight seconds of a 50% DPS increase for our pets every cooldown, and that’s not a small amount.
And Nim, don’t try to throw my words back at me. That 10% is close to nothing in PvP, especially at the moment, and ESPECIALLY for beast masters. See the tick is, and I know this may come as a big surprise, but Beastial Wrath is the beast masters go to button. It’s what you hit when you need something or several somethings dead in a hurry while soloing. It’s what you hit every cooldown while raiding. It’s what you hit virtually every cooldown in PvP. It was apparently a pretty big arena tool just recently. So you can’t tell me that almost cutting it’s up time in half is a good thing in any way form or fashion, nor can you say that bull !@#$ excuse cuts it.
And I can give you one HUGE reason why. Metamorphisis. 20% damage increase, 600% armor increase, 6% less change to be hit by criticals, 50% CC reduction time, AND CAN BE GLYPHED TO LAST FOR 36 SECONDS. Do you know what the only difference between this and Beastial wrath is? Meta isn’t full CC immunity, so it will never be touched.
There are others. Bladestorm, berserk, killing spree, Shadowform, blast wave, dragons breath, typhoon and thunderstorm off the top of my head all confer both defensive and offensive aspects at the press of a button. Blade storm in particular is nasty, since it also effects up to four targets around the warrior while making them un-CCable, and does this attack seven times over the duration for the warriors weapon damage, which is not only considerable but has the change to deep wounds upon critical for all four targets.
In the end, I am not saying Beastial wrath didn’t need a nerf, the duration was a bit long, and I have said that. What I am saying is that we didn’t get anything to really make up for that damage lost in that time span. Over a period of several minutes and something like three beastial wraths, sure, but no per beastial wrath period, and it pisses me off.
Finally, some Hunter news from you. Glad for it. Anyways Bestial Wrath should NOT be a so-called “defensive” ability. That is terrible that they’re MESSING with that. That is horrible that they are detracting from pets. I totally agree with the people that are arguing for the pets. But in the end, I do like how it’ll now break all crowd control.
I agree that I never considered Bestial Wrath a defensive ability, because playing a frost mage I would get completely obliterated by BM hunters. It was basically a kill-mode switch; I had no choice but to Ice Block and then pray my shields would hold.
I do hope that those of you who are disappointed about the duration reduction will see just how overpowered it was in pvp. It is of course odd that there weren’t more hunters represented in successful arena teams, but I hope you don’t use that as the counter argument for the nerf.
Nacht? I second Palla on this. When have they ever listened to PTR and made CORRECT changes or didn’t go through with the proposed change that actually made sense to the hunter class overall (especially in BM) that did not classify as an all-out nerf? The hunters are now mostly a minority in this instance because after every patch all we see is a letdown to the class in the BM tree. I’ve tested in the PTR back in the day and rarely do I see what most of us have been complaining about get fixed or changed. More power to those who did, but so far…. nada.
Empty promises are all that Blizzard have to offer to the Hunter class and the BM tree thus far… and it won’t likely change anytime soon.
Nim? Unless you’ve played and tested out everything the way Rikaku and Palla and Ryai have done and due to their dedication to the hunter class and the BM tree… you’ll never see or get a feel of exactly how they KNOW how the class and spec is played to its fullest extent….. then you don’t have a leg to stand on in what you said.
This is more of a business political move on blizzard’s part without even thinking things through and making changes for change’s sake without really looking at it in-depth and relying on nebulous “data” (wherever they got them, i don’t know) and from the QQ-ing of crybabies (aka bad players) about people who actually know their class and can play it effectively. Anyone can simply hit buttons and whatnot to make use of the class and their skills and its easy to get into a routine of shots/abilities/spells u like to use best… but its the player with SKILL that can make even a “bad” class/spec look good, as Palla have shown with what he knows.
If the majority of the hunters here say its not a buff and actually a nerf, then they obviously know what they’re talking about because they actually know their class. This forum may be about pets… but its also – in a way – about the hunter, because without hunters, there would be no pets to talk about.
We vent here because a lot of us share the same beliefs and know our class well. Venting on the official WoW forums are a fifty-fifty deal and a very low chance that someone from the dev team actually reads it and gets it…. honestly… have you read their hunter Q and A and compared it to the actual topic/post in the forum? None of the actual good points other posters there were ever cited.
If they didn’t “listen” well then, I am not surprised that they are still not “listening” well now.
Brb gaiz.. levelin’ a drood..
..Crap, crap, crap. Bestial Wrath is fine. Duration is fine. People who QQ about BM are the ones who think all BM hunters are crap and cannot amount to anything no matter how they play. It’s clear they either never encountered a GOOD BM hunter, or just want to be able to faceroll them again.
Let’s keep the discussion focused on the game and the changes instead of on the supposed qualities of other people, eh?
Oh, and a bit off topic but back to what some one was saying, you CAN use beastial wrath mid fear. I’ll go back into a few more BGs and test it again, but…..yea. Odd that I never noticed that before. More later.
Actually, as my double on the defensive side of it, how many people use it as a reactive ability? Personally, and perhaps this is just me, I don’t seem my pet running away in fear and say “Oh, I need to use beastial wrath!” I am not going to hold back beastial wrath just to wait for some one to CC me. The only possible exception to this rule, and probably the only thing I am looking forward to, is being ganked by a rogue. Now we will have a second ‘trinket’ to help combat them. But in the long run, trying to turn our main offensive ability into a defensive one is just stupid.
I only do a BG from time to time (pvp’s not my style), but when I do I usually just send my devilsaur at the nearest hordie and go beastial wrath. I’ve always used it as an offensive only ability. Of course while dungeoning or raiding, if I know a fear’s coming up, I’ll try to time my enrage for then, but when you’re BM, you gotta pop beastial wrath the moment it’s up if you want good dps.
I wouldn’t be so angry, but this just smacks of a knee-jerk reaction to that arena tournament. If I thought they’d actually put a lot of time and thought into it, instead of blinking at the beast-cleave team winning and then screaming “IT BEAT PMR! NERF!”
*shrug* These changes are actually tempting me to go back to BM as a raiding spec so YMMV. Especially if they go through with the adjustment to TBW to avoid the increase in BM mana consumption (GC mentioned on the forums that they are considering adjusting the mana cost reduction to 40-50% as it wasn’t their intent to increase BM mana consumption with this change)
Agreed that my first post neglected the actual pet damage reduction due to the 45% BW duration reduction. Haven’t done the math myself to work out where the break even point is for the hunter damage buff to balance out the pet nerf, but the suggested figure above of a 3-4 minute boss fight sounds about right.
Also agreed that anything I say about PvP should be taken with a very large grain of salt – I’m definitely armchair quarterbacking on that side of things. However, being less personally involved also gives me the perspective to more easily try to see things from the devs point of view, which can be difficult when something the devs do goes against the grain of a playstyle which represents the investment of a lot of time and effort.
Changes are rarely (never?) as game breaking as they sometimes appear – pointing that out is the reason you will usually see me taking the contrarian view in the face of cries of “OMG! They made *them* overpowered!” and “Waah! They NERFED *me*!”.
On other topics that came up…
As far as Agi vs AP goes, even EJ say the evidence isn’t all that clear cut that AP stacking is the right way to go as BM until you get past 40% unbuffed crit or so (reason being, until that point you get the feedback effect from GftT and Cobra Strikes that can increase pet damage more than the raw AP will and, as was pointed out, Agi scales with more raid buffs than AP does).
Regarding BM shot rotations: if you don’t have Aimed in a BM raiding spec then Multi-Shot takes its place in the rotation (the only time it doesn’t is if there is CC near the main target, but how often does that happen these days?). A PvP spec should have Aimed Shot :)
Mania’s Arcania » More on Bestial Wrath Changes - September 10th, 2009 @ 8:02 pm UTC
[...] posted more today on the upcoming changes to Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within that are currently on the [...]
I’ve put up a new post with the additional information that Ghostcrawler posted today. I don’t want to split the discussion, but I figured it would be good if everyone was working from the same basic info.
I have a bm spec hunter and im also mad about them making BW last less amount of time. and too rikaku saying BM is the lowest dps spec for hunters, thats not true as long as you’re geared equaly. its actualy the highest. i out dps MM and Survival hunters equaly geared on a regular basis and have at times out dps’d better geared MM and survival.
Vampryeblood:
“and too rikaku saying BM is the lowest dps spec for hunters, thats not true as long as you’re geared equaly.”
There’s no way that two equally geared AND equally skilled (in their respect specs) Hunters (one BM and one SV) would be equal damage. I am in almost identical gear to my SV friend and he blows me out of the water everytime. Now I have beaten SV and MM hunters who don’t know what they’re doing.
But as I said, if you have a skilled SV Hunter and a skilled BM hunter, that BM is not going to outdmg that SV Hunter (even if they’re in exact gear). This has been theory tested over and over and has proven true (that’s what pre-mades are truly perfect for).
Nacht:
“Download the client. Report on the change as sucking every chance you get. Post on the forums. If you QQ enough, they’ll change it. Get your friends to complain about it. Don’t just bitch and gripe on forums Bliz barely reads, if at all. They don’t watch Mania’s blog like some marvelous pulse of the hunter community. They make decisions based on reports from the PTR and PTR forums and that’s pretty much it.”
Lets be fair now. Mnay hunters have posted numbers and logic back at Blizzard in order to stop a nerf (AKA ptr 3.1 anyone?). All throughout 3.1′s testing did legit Hunter numbers and feedback come in and say that the nerf was too hard. Blizzard didn’t listen; patch went live. 3 weeks later “We believe we did overnerf the Hunter class.” Literally, that’s what we told them BEFORE it went live and they still didn’t listen, so they don’t exactly listen XD
Have to correct the last thing I said: Using Aimed or Multi in a BM shot rotation is actually questionable because they don’t hit that much harder than Steady Shot, cost more mana and can’t proc Cobra Strikes the way Steady can. So depending on mana availability, the DPS increase may not be worth it.
@vampyre: the comparisons are for equal gear between hunters that are each playing their spec to maximum potential. A good hunter that knows their rotation and pet control will always beat a less skilled hunter unless the latter hunter has *much* better gear. (e.g. something as simple as switching to Viper during forced DPS downtime in boss fights will greatly increase DPS in practice, but will never appear on a spreadsheet)
@Rikaku: the community has been wrong a lot more often than Blizzard though. It’s just so unexceptional that nobody bothers remembering all those cases :)
That’s one of the differences in PvP and PvE, Nim. I HAVE to use Aimed shot, since it’s instant cast, and it adds mortal strike to the target. Pre-aimed shot a lot of PvP DPS non-pet comes from the length of time it takes the target to waddle to you through wing clip/frost trap/pet abilities/concussive shot, and you live the rest of your time off of instant cast shots fired behind you. Post-aimed shot is the same, expect you can pour on a bit more damage while running away screaming bloody murder. But unfortunately, unlike in PvE, you really don’t have a choice. You HAVE to eek out that damage in the time span your given, and that time span ain’t much. It’s even less for warriors, DKs, subtly rogues, and enhancement shaman.
@Palla for #72;
That’s my thoughts exactly; I don’t hold back BW for any CC, it’s nice that I have it up when it “does” happens or the CD is over and it’s next in my rotation, but still. I’m going for max damage to kill something as fast as possible.
Ok, so the ones that was QQ were a Rogue/Mage/Priest combo.
Huh.
So it’s ok for Warriors, Pallies, and DK’s (with their pets, BTW) to rip through them like tin foil, but not BM Hunters with their pets?
Huh.
Is it just me, or is there something wrong with that picture?!
This is gonna give some Bm hunters another excuse to spec survival :I
@Palla: I was a bit inaccurate in my correction – what I had wrong was the part about using Aimed and Multi in a normal BM PvE rotation, even though that actually wasn’t the last thing I had said in the previous post. I haven’t confirmed the math myself, but the idea that the DPS increase isn’t worth the mana cost in most cases makes a fair amount of sense (although I may have to plug that into the DPS website at some point to see what those calculations have to say on the topic).
As you rightly point out, Aimed is pretty much compulsory in hunter PvP specs (it’s also handy in PvE for firing on the move, even if the theoretical top DPS spec for BM skips it).
Nimizar:
Yes, I don’t need to list all the times the community has been wrong. But really, what are *we*, the players, going to do to the game when we’re wrong? At worst we don’t play our class well for a few days while we re-gem our gear or change rotations. If Blizzard is wrong, they hurt an entire spec an/or a class. There’s a much bigger difference between a player being wrong and a developer being wrong, and in the latter case, why does the player matter?
So I don’t think anyones forgotten cases where the community is wrong, I just think that well when someone who doesn’t influence the game is wrong, its not as big a deal as when a creator of the game is wrong and never listened to the community in the first place. =)
The community wasn’t wrong in 3.0.8. Most Hunters werent saying “BM isnt too OP, It doesnt need to be nerfed”. Most were saying that BM was getting overnerfed in that patch. They said it since day 1 on the 3.0.8 testing. At worst, the players saying BM wasn’t too OP were ill-informed and didn’t even have justifications for their incorrectness. But the players who gave numbers that it was an overnerf weren’t illogicals. The had the numbers to prove that while BM needed a nerf, it was too much.
Blizz just reassured us that the “community was wrong”. Then after it goes live we get a blue saying “Ok we do think BM got hit pretty hard.” “BM’s numbers are too low.”
So again, no ones forgetting the community of any class has been wrong, but why does it matter in comparison to the devs? We don’t alter the game, they do.
Ghostcrawler is a moron, he couldnt balence a class even if Abraham Lincoln rose from the Grave with a AK-47 and Demanded it.
As if BM wasn’t ALREADY Dead. They nurf the only upside of the Tree AGAIN!
They also Nurfed Armor Pen which, as a MM Hunter, pissed me off.
*annoyed look at Daginni* Thanks a lot. I just got that damned song out of my head.
That’s a SONG? …..what are you young people listening to now days??
As one who never PVPs except when extremely bored, I have to agree this must be PVP driven – not because I know it for a fact but because I can’t see one valid reason for this nerf from the PVE side so it’s either some sort of (perceived) PVP imbalance or else just pure whimsy.
110% dmg for 10 seconds doesn’t even come close to 100% dmg for 18 seconds; even if they upped it to 120% for 10 sec it still wouldn’t come close.
Back when 3.0 came out I thought Blizz finally had a clue about hunters, but then I discovered they’d removed dragonhawk AOE… and made gorillas “the” pve pet… and then all the business with BM DPS… but at least I could say “well 18 seconds is enough for the average encounter, so my BM hunters can still rate”… but now… sounds like that’s going away as well.
Hope they plan on offsetting the loss in some (meaningful) way, but not holding my breath…
Meanwhile silithids remain borked – starting to wonder if that will be fixed before Cataclysm…
Palladiamors: The song is “The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny” by Lemon Demon. You can Google it to find some videos — it’s a bit of a geek thing, so far as I can tell. Oddly I have never seen those videos — I became aware of it because my husband has a thing for Lemon Demon. I find them to be rather second-rate in terms of geek music — I vastly prefer Ookla the Mok — but they do have a few really good songs. Like that one. :>
*Laughs* Thank you for filling me in, Mania, I had no idea. Geek rock is still a very new thing overall, and I haven’t really been exposed to it.
And Scott, I explained the reason for the nerf over in the other thread. This is the second nerf to Beastial Wrath since its inception, and the largest of the two. The first nerf took Beastial Wrath from 100% damage for 12 seconds to 50% for 18. Within their respective time periods, this was a ‘buff’ as explained by BLizzard. However, if you added in the normal damage that the original beastial wrath would have done for those additional six seconds ((And why shouldn’t you, it’s the same time period after all)) then it turned out to be about a 10% damage nerf, and once again a sizeable burst nerf. Beast masters are great with damage over time, and just plain suck in the ‘right now’ damage department.
@Rikaku: the reason it matters is because *most* of the time, when the devs say X and the community says Y, the devs are proven right. It’s easy to say in hindsight that “hey, this one time when the devs said ‘Horse’ and the community said ‘Ship’, it turned out to be a ship after all”, but when judging the matter before something goes live, you will be right more often by always siding with the devs (since players have a vested interest in minimising any nerfs and maximising any buffs to their primary classes, no matter how hard they try to suppress that instinct).
This kind of biased reflection on past events happens all the time with events in real life (aka “Eagle Eye Hindsight”) and it’s complete bollocks there as well.
Except it isn’t that simple, Nimizar. Actually, I can think of plenty of times where the players have tested and reported things on the PTR ((From balance issues to simple and complicated bugs)) where Blizzard said “La la la!” and totally ignored it. Then, at a later date, went “Whoops!” and had to fix it. The only difference is that usually, they aren’t as verbal about it.
On the other hand, and this one may be a matter of opinion, but there have been a lot of changes made that the community disapproved of and were right about that were never changed. The difference there is that, well, this is Blizzards game. It is going to go the way Blizzard wants it to go.
There are three kinds of complaints on the WoW forums. The first are “WAUGH, MY CLASS IS BEING NERFED AND IT’S JUST BAD, I CAN PROVE IT!!!” where a class with an overpowered ability ((Or several, in the Death knights case. *Shudders*)) just had said ability reduced. I refer to this as the nerfing whine, and don’t pay any attention to it. The second is “WAUGH, THIS CLASS HAD AN ABILITY THAT WAS MADE/IS OVERPOWERED, I CAN PROVE IT, NERF!” in which case a class that usually can beat most classes easily, say warriors or frost mages for PvP, or rogues and mages in general for PvP, suddenly found themselves bested by something they didn’t know how to handle and immediately whined about it. This tends to happen a lot after changes or made, or after certain specs start to become popular. This is the “NERF!” whine type, and again should just be ignored. And then you have the third type. “We have run extensive tests of this ability, and found that it is lacking/maybe a bit to much, and here are the numbers to support it.)) This is done by the people who actually know how to play, and can go either in favor of a slight buff, or even in favor a slight nerf. These tend to be the people who really care about their class and the game, or perhaps the people who are really just more hard core about what they do. It is THESE threads that I listen to, and more often then not the threads that get ignored the most.
So reading over it, in a way the numbers actually support you, Nimizar. By and large, the community is GOING to be wrong. But there almost always some of the more serious players who will do strong testing, and come to these conclusions. Part of the problem, TWO parts of it really, is that Blizzard won’t listen to them, and some how didn’t come to the same conclusion in their internal testing. Beacon of Light, the beast master nerfs, release level death knights, I can probably think of some more but those are fairly large examples for the moment. How do these get past blizzards testing?
On a tangent, I have to disagree with you about being self interested in nerfs and buffs, HOWEVER, I have to state that people like me are in the minority. I think it comes a lot from having so many higher level characters that I am able to sit back and say “Okay, this needs to be done, and that needs to be reduced, but that could probably take a buff.” For a wide range of classes. Like I agree with the time reduction of Beastial wrath, but I don’t think we were properly compensated for it. It’s because of this wide range of class selection that I can tell you that, far and away, paladins are the worst healers in the game. My druid, and even my up and coming priest, can do everything my paladin can do, only better. HELL, my enhancement shaman can almost heal better then my HOLY priest, and that is a very, very bad thing. The beacon of light buff came at the cost of the holy paladins niche, mana conservation. Now a holy paladin can fully heal two targets….for about half as long. Meanwhile my priest can spam circle of healing, and my druid can HoT up and wild growth, then focus on keeping the tank up and it really takes a lot less effort. I also find it really funny that nearly every healing class ((Shaman are borderline, but are still in a better place then holy)) have all the tools they need, but holy paladins are still expected to be a niche healer. And the only buff to them nearly killed their niche, and gave them what was, at most, a questionable buff that would allow them to keep tank healing even when some one else sniped a heal with one of above AoE healing abilities.
I could point out other imbalances, but that one has just always struck me the most. It only got worse in wrath, where holies sort of got an HoT, recently….but it requires preparation in the form of Sacred shield. Oh, and holy shock get’s an HoT!…..if you have 2pieces of T8….
Rant over. I have actually retired my holy paladin, at least until Blizzard decides what they want to do with them. Having one of the healing classes rounded into a corner of niche healing is just bull. And the sad thing is, beacon of light USED to be good, back at the start of beta. It had so much potential to fix paladin’s AoE healing problems…..and then they turned it into that.
*Coughs* Sadly, none of that was really biased. I didn’t say I couldn’t heal on my paladin, I can still heal with the best of them. I am just tired of it being so much more of a hassle for paladins then any other healing spec.
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