I am not the one to complain about balance usually beause it is very volatile, but the issue has been so bad for so long that we need to talk about ranged hunters. More specifically, BM hunters, because “ranged hunter” is not a build. It’s an umbrella term for multiple fundamentally different builds. And while some ranged hunters are doing well, the regular non-hybrid BM specialization is not.
In fact, BM hunters are terrible.
To begin with, out of 8 rune slots (rings do not count) only 3 slots even have a rune for the BM spec, namely gloves, bracers and chest. All the remaining 5 rune slots have nothing beast-related. How could the devs even possibly commit such glaring oversight? I have heard people complain about runes overlapping and bad rune design in general, but this is just something else. Imagine playing tank paladin and 5 out of 8 of your rune slots only offer damage and healing? That’s the level of how bad it is. Yes some of these 5 survival / Marksmanship runes still ofer DPS increase, but the problem is that they are not Beast Mastery runes. We need at least 3 more beast-oriented runes.
The other problem is that the overall damage output is too low. Everyone demands that you change your runes. “You know that explosive shot deals enormous damage, right???” - they tell you in every dungeon. Yes, I know. I am playing the Beast Mastery spec. I will be using the Beast Mastery rune. We need an overall buff to the damage output of our spec, because otherwise we are non-viable. Add a x0.5 pet damage multiplier to players specifically so that PvPers do not complain again.
Please stop forcing us to be Surv, MM, to place traps or go melee. Just make the regular non-hybrid BM spec great again
2 Likes
Dont forget the very useful Invigoration rune… oh wait.
But at least you have nerfed to ground Kill Command… oh wait.
During p1 and p2 people cried so hard about hunter pets, so after all the all the nerfs they are back to being garbage vanilla pets.
At this point im thinking of removing pet related abilities from my action bars, except dismiss pet for BGs.
2 Likes
They should add a rune that works in conjunction with BM rune, allowing you to tame exotic pets and boosting their scaling.
A rune that makes BWrath affect the hunter too.
Kill Command rune to see a return, to a less restricted iteration, like in phase 1, but more tuned compared to p1.
And a passive rune to make it so that hunter crits reduce CD on BWrath per 1 sec.
There, added TBC, Wrath, p1 and forgot which expansion talents into runes and made BM viable!
EDIT: And a rune to change Mend pet to its TBC, insta cast HoT, state
That would be great. Honestly it’s so bad now that anything pet-related would be a blessing. Being a minion spec without minion talents/runes is just stupid
BM rune needs to be put on chest. Chimera shot needs to give something to the pet. BM rune damage should be way higher. The nerf was understandable at level 25 because pet damage was quite high compared to player damage (that’s how the game was made).
The scaling should be redone. Maybe the beast mastery rune should do like the TNT rune , give X% of your attack power to your pet.
Killing order should work like BC killing order.
Steady shot should work like BC steady shot , or should not clip the auto shot. It should also give some focus to your pet
It is SOD. every one got fun and overpowered stuff. So don’t be shy
Even as a ranged hunter I dont like being forced into having to play Lone Wolf, I liked having to micro manage my pet as MM/SV so yeah I support my BM enjoyers.
I don’t think we need to complicate it.
Just take runes that are worthless, like Cobra Strikes (chest), Hit and Run (cloak) or some other rune or rune slot that devs don’t want to mix with with BM spec and add following runes in descending order of importance:
Exotic pet rune:
- Allow for taming of exotic pets, allows for the taming of exotic pets and doubles the bonus that Beast Mastery Rune provides (rebalance BM rune on its own). This is basically the Wrath talent, just adjusted to work with BM rune and push for BM playstyle since taming could be one and then rune changed over.
OR
- Allow for taming of exotic pets and double the bonus from Unleashed Fury and/or Endurance training and/or Ferocity
One makes it work with BM rune, locking it in, limiting shenanigans, one makes it work with BM talents
Inner Wrath rune:
- When activating Bestially Wrath, hunter is affected by 100%/75%/50% of the effect
Improved Mend Pet:
- Turn it into a HoT and buffs it or makes it scale
Kill Command:
- Make it affect more abilities, adds a new button
You’ve made BM strong with more power or scaling, you’ve made it unique with exotic pets, you’ve added a button to press in rotation, you’ve made it less annoying to play by making the mend a HoT.|
And what you can do is keep BM rune on gloves, so it competes with Chimera and Explosive, add Exotic to cloak so it prevents free traps with low CD, perfect to swap out hit and run and still can be used by melee hunters and then depending on the playstyle you want to allow or exclude, last two runes can go into lots to compete with melee/dual wield or with trap launcher if you don’t want ranged traps on BM hunter (tho I’d love BM/Survival to be viable)
1 Like
Sorry to tell you that but we all saw in p1 how strong pets kill players with 5 hits.
Wind serpents rampaging all over ashenvale 
They will (hopefully) not make the same mistake again.
I can’t even think of 3 that would count as pet related demonology rune for Warlocks.
This is why I suggested to nerf huner pet damage to players so that the PvP crowd does not whine again
I looked through warlock runes and quite a few of them are pet-related, but my understanding of the spec is shallow. The reason why this is more forgivable is because demonology now is not a minion spec, it’s a tank spec
lone wolf mm, no more issue.
I am a BM hunter. The issue is that my spec is unplayable. Moving on to MM, even if I wanted to, would not solve the issue of BM being unplayable.
Ok. Pet related are 5 runes that is true, but what i wanted to say is “runes that make my pet a killing machine instead of a wet noodle” there are zero of that kind