It is no secret that Beast Mastery is by far the most disgracefully bad DPS spec in Wrath of the Lich King.
To anybody who has ever mained Hunter during Wrath, the reasons why BM blows are obvious. The spec lacks a signature ability that defines the spec and everything in the tree itself doesn’t compensate for this.
BM Hunters only have four abilities that hit harder than Steady Shot:
- Arcane Shot - only marginally, because it has atrocious AP scaling and hits about as hard as a single tick of Explosive Shot.
- Raptor Strike - which cannot be used thanks to melee weaving nerfs. Of all the “unintended interactions” that could have improved BM, this is one that honestly should have been respected, like Seal Weaving in BCC…
- Serpent Sting - Casted once every 21 seconds and is a DoT that everybody has.
- Immolation Trap - Simply unviable to use on bosses with huge hitboxes where you have to place the trap directly underneath the boss for it to work.
A few suggestions to fix this:
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Revert melee weaving changes - Raptor Strike is currently the only hard-hitting Beast Mastery ability and having this would have been a lifeline for the BM spec. Of all the “unintended interactions” that could have been kept in the game, this was one to keep. Marksmanship and Survival couldn’t care less about whether Raptor Strike is on their bar or not, because they actually have hard-hitters on a reasonably short cooldown. It would also make the Savage Strikes talent in the Survival Tree worth taking.
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Replace Freezing Arrow with the Trap Launcher ability introduced in Cataclysm to allow all traps to be launched. This would allow Marksmanship and Beast Mastery hunters to throw down Immolation Traps. Survival wouldn’t really use this for a damage increase because they already have the superior Black Arrow.
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Buff the Arcane Shot damage increase in Ferocious Inspiration from 9% to 60% - This would make Arcane Shot actually hit much harder and would be a buff so deep in the BM tree that it wouldn’t benefit the other specs. The existing 9% damage increase, by the way, was introduced in a hotfix to compensate for a nerf that Ghostcrawler made to Bestial Wrath, because apparently a Beast Cleave comp winning MLG Orlando 2008 was deeply offensive to the devs…
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Buff Kill Command to make the next 5 hunter pet attacks deal 125% more damage - Another reason why BM blows is because Kill Command got neutered. It’s a 2 minute offensive cooldown that probably provides, at most, a 50 DPS increase. This would actually make it worth pressing.
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Add a Kill Command cooldown reduction effect to the 51 point Beast Mastery talent - Let’s say that every crit your pet lands reduces the CD of Kill Command by 1 second.