These changes are not good for hunters because they only happened due to PvP. If they had reduced the damage of wind serpents against players by a % as a short-term solution, that would have been a way better temporary fix.
As it stands, they’ll keep nerfing pets due to player outcry in PvP until BM goes back to being a leveling only spec, and then they will have to re-buff it again at higher levels so that it can actually be played in raids. Wasn’t the point of SoD to shake things up?
Reducing pet damage without increasing the power of BM or melee hunter somewhere else simply hurts PvE due to PvP.
Hunter runes are all in a terrible state right now. No choice, almost all passives or pseudo-passives like Kill Command and terrible in the output they give. No effort as of yet to try and make more families competitive, and the newest one that could’ve joined the cat/raptor/wind serpent/maybe owl crowd, the scorpid, got its poison scaling completely removed despite the fact that the blue post describing it mentioned that the ability should still do fine with 5 stacks. Not really the case.
We shall see in phase 2 but if “balance” changes like this are any indication, I’m not too hopeful.
Reality is - pet scaling as a whole is a load of trouble and in case of Hunter - BM rune was way over the top on top of that pet scaling freebie and the existing BM talents.
In my opinion - they could and should have taken BM rune all the way to +10% HP/damage and buffed Marksmanship runes a bit more.
Quite frankly - Hunters should be glad BM rune only got nerfed to 20% and 50% focus, that’s probably the lightest nerf Blizzard could do. Sure a nerf is a nerf, but it was coming and only an idiot would not see that and I bet there will be more in phase 2, because this nerf will be WELL over-compensated by the BM tree.
No, stop asking for MM to be better than BM. It’s a common thing to do that lately when it comes to hunter feedback.
Make BM more engaging and have both specs and melee be viable and competitive. Asking for MM buffs and BM nerfs will just kill a spec in favor of another. That’s not in the spirit of SoD. MM has always been the default DPS choice for hunter in Vanilla.
You can reduce pet scaling if and only if you get compensated in other areas. Right now everything, every single buff, talent or rune is enhancing the pet. None of them are active abilities used by you, the player, in any shape or form to interact with it.
Pet scaling is necessary so that they stay relevant at higher levels. The suggestions I’ve seen you make always ask for huge nerfs of pets without compensating the BM spec as a whole. It’s okay if you want to play MM with Lone Wolf (even though imho it’s a bad rune and concept to remove an entire core element of a class, but that’s another discussion), but it doesn’t mean that BM has to suffer for it.
Reducing pet scaling outright without compensating BM as a whole simply kills the spec. They can start with Kill Command, a terrible 60s cooldown that should be an active ability in the rotation instead.
This change happened only due to PvP. Therefore, if they could not think of a good solution, they should’ve reduced pet damage in PvP, as it already happens on WSG, as a temporary measure.
But this is the true no ? Bm needed nerfs and MM need a lot of buffs ? Its not about asking for nerfs, it needed fixes the same as balance druid need stuff nerfed and others boosted. It is what it is and its the right thing
Changes are fair ,but they should also buff hunter auto shots with around 20 % and pet a bit further nerfed and we have it.
BM is all about pet yes… but they took it 2 literally to the point pet is 60 % of ur damage… this isnt right bro. It shouldnt even be 50 % of ur damage…
When it comes to pvp and pets I’ve said repeatedly in multiple threads that pets should just get a debuff to damage against other players and a debuff to their resistance so that player ability CC actually works against the pet. I don’t think that pvp and pve works together well at all, one will have to be the focus of the balancing decisions and the other one will have to suffer for it and considering that most of the content in the game is PVE I think that it should take precedence. And if pets are too powerful with burst damage in pvp environments then a simple debuff to their damage against players seems like the most sensible decision to me.
However… BM as a rune is way too powerful and needs to be altered. As I said in my edit to my former post I think that the damage bonus should be removed completely and given -20% damage instead but with other buffs to make it a proper tanking rune instead for Hunters (that would offer a new style of play (as that is what SoD was sold to us as being)) but for whatever reason I don’t think the developers want to make Hunters into tanks even though a tanking pet would make more sense than a tanking rogue.
Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot are useless to me as MM because BM as a rune is too powerful. I don’t like the continued nerfing of pets either but at the same time the other runes shouldn’t be invalidated by BM like the chest runes are by Lion.
As I said in my previous post the Hunter runes are all out of whack and needs a massive overhaul. I can see a bunch of synergies between runes of other classes and well thought out design decisions behind them but when it comes to Hunter the rune placements, rune effects and rune balancing is completely butchered. I don’t expect the kind of overhaul that I’d like to see happen to happen so I’m thinking of things in terms of as simplistic as possible. What would be the tiniest of tweaks that could be done to make things more useful.
And in that sense could this offer a balance between the rune selection of Gloves? Yep. Does that mean a nerf to pets. Unfortunately, yep. So it’s like, 66% (potentially) good 33% bad. Overall to me it is a net positive.
(sorry for the wall of text)
[edit]
Another way they could alter BM to be a better designed rune could potentially be to remove all effects but the growl taunt and then make it so that BM: “This rune buffs any pet talents by 50%-100%”. This is just me throwing something out there so I have no idea how balanced it would be but basically there is no way for you to get benefits from this rune unless you are specced into the BM talent tree unless you desperately want a taunt I guess? That way it is still a good rune and it is more favorable to BM hunter’s than MM hunters.
Hunters will end up being a Kings, true shot aura provider.
Once 40 comes they fail to balance beastial wrath + sprint combo, so they will nerf beastmaster again to the point that you are useless without your cds.
Ofc they will never manage to balance MM either since the combo trap aim shot multi chimera will be deleting people in 3 gcd.
Anyway sadly hunter runes are either boring or useless.
Read my posts and their your posts again, Zerezas. You are asking for a BM spec/rune nerf to buff MM spec/runes, thus reducing the viability of Beast Mastery as a spec, which uses the pet as your main damage focus.
What they have to do is redistribute the damage so that different specs can be good: BM, MM and melee. Nerfing a glove rune in favor of another doesn’t achieve this.
The problem is not how much % the pet makes of your total damage. BM is like that. Go check logs of future expansions or retail and see the damage pets do if you need a comparison.
The problem is that all the power of the spec and runes is baked in passively and permanently into the pet. There’s no input from the player. Kill Command is basically a passive and Cobra Strikes is bad even if it didn’t have competition with HotL due to only proccing from critical shots, one of which is awful due to its mana cost and damage.
The damage the pet does has to be more tied to the hunter itself doing something, there has to be an interaction between pet and master just like it happens in future versions of the spec.
My entire point is that Beast Mastery should not be killed as a competitive spec in favor of another. If they start buffing MM, the outcry will shift from the pets to the aimed, multi and chimera shot combo insta killing people.
In my opinion, the talent tree that should focus on tanking, if it was ever added, would be survival. The pet could share some of the damage/tanking duties a la Soul Link in a way.
The survival (and BM a bit) tree offers a lot of defensive options and even a cool down for tanking purposes.
BM right now is clearly overtuned and Marks is clearly undertuned.
So yes, parity should happen where it’s actually viable to not run a juiced-up pet and where runes like Chimera Shot are a viable alternative to the BM rune.
I understand that you are trying to defend your toys, but some just don’t want Hunters to be ALL about pets where pets do 50%+ of all the damage.
I’d be glad to have a viable alternative where pets do 15% of the damage and you the remaining 85%. And for that to happen runes will need to be balanced.
OR - WE CAN nerf WARRIORS that are TOPPING logs and will COMPLETELY OBLITERATE the game at 40 and 60. GOD #)=%(Q it. Stop nerfing at LEVEL TWENTY-FIVE. JESUS
As a hunter main I’m glad I’ve had the time to level a couple of alts. This iteration of WoW is meant to be fresh and fun, but it’s getting to the point now for hunters, that it feels targeted and the same experience as the original classic.
Everyone re-roll other classes that are exploiting bugs for more damage cough warriors, or un-killable warlocks and druids.
SoD will never ever be balanced. In particular not around PvP. Hunters have had their day and they exploited their griefing potential to the fullest. Zero sympathy from me.
And yes, I would assume most people have 3+ chars at lvl25 at this point, so on to the next.
Hunter mains that are passionate about their class will continue on to 40 regardless of the relative power of their class, everybody else will log on to something OP in phase 2
Pros:
SoD is fun so far no matter what class you play
now to the point…
Cons:
NERFING NUMBERS is lazy developemnt…
Melee hunter? No? nothing? Just nerf pet dmg so melee hunter is total crap?
No runes slot swapping to make Hunter more interesting? Lonewolf on legs? LION = BM or even better Melee rune?
Make it so PET boosts hunters dmg and hunter boosts pets dmg - stacking up - so in PvP you have that stupid burts but in PvE you have actual mechanic, rotation, weight and impact
Example…
1.
LION + BM rune = 1 rune like this: +10% stats aura +10% for hunter AND when you use XY ability (arcane shot or raptor for example…) it crease your pet dmg by +10% and and focus regen by 25% stacking up 3x
LION + MELEE bonus = +10% stats aura +10% for hunter AND your agility now adds +2 melee ATP + mongoose bite can be used on CD
I mean theres nothing good in this patch… having a problem with hunter PETS!!! Like where… in PvP? how about reducing PET DMG vs players by XY% in general + Making EYE OF THE BEAST “silenced” so you cant use pet abilities… until you figure out how to fix it corectly?
Pets are an inherent core feature of hunter. If you don’t like them, then you chose the wrong class but that’s also Blizzard’s fault for having only one class in the game that can use ranged physical attacks.
Calling pets “toys” just shows that your intentions are just to get MM buffed and ignore BM as a spec, thus making MM once again the only viable DPS spec for hunter in classic.
It’s okay if you have this personal feeling. You won’t see me asking to nerf MM or Lone Wolf even if I disagree with the concept of the latter.
SoD is meant to spice things up, not force us into the exact same play style.
And yes, it’s wrong to ask for one spec to be above the other. They should all be competitive so that you don’t have to feel forced to be a specific one for raiding, the very same way you feel right now. Ironically, you’re literally asking for others to be forced instead so that you can be satisfied with a play style you like.