When Blizzard made this button, did they consider what’s happening if a hunter looses his/her pet in the middle of a fight? It took me a few seconds before I got what the whistling was all about. I have no idea why my pet didn’t turn up, but it didn’t and I was nearly killed because I didn’t do anything but whistle.
PS
And please, let us edit this button with what spells we want in it. Both my DK (frost) and my Mage (frost) are on suicide missions when using that button, as many of their spells are AOE, which might not be the smartest thing to use in all situations.
Honestly just don’t use the button unless you are doing the most casual of casual content. If you need help with your rotation, Hekili remains a better option.
I’d say Hunter is actually one of those classes that work very well with the SBA.
It’s perfectly viable for at least low- to mid-level M+. Personally, I haven’t gone beyond +3 so far with my Hunter, but that’s not because of low damage, that is actually competitive, but rather because I still occasionally die to the boss mechanics I’m learning, and I don’t want to be a liability to my group.
Of course, manual play yields higher damage, particularly on a target dummy. But the more mechanics there are to watch out for, the better the SBA performs by comparison, because only bots can maintain the perfect rotation at 100% under stress.
As for the OP:
MM works quite well in groups (though the question whether to switch back to BM with todays changes is what brought me here in the first place) and you avoid the occasional pet hassles (such as the jump in HoA). Also make sure to turn the pet’s taunt of.
To be fair his video is more about the comparison to his GSE sequence and how to integrate Call of the Wild (personally, while I had CotW on my hunter, I just had it on a button without any problem).
As for the comparison with manual playing:
I tested during 11.1.7 and I could get better results at the target dummies manually, but I really had to pay attention and work hard for it. That made it clear to me that I would not be able to maintain a perfect rotation under real life conditions. As I already mentioned above, the SBA particularly shines when the going gets rough.
The real benefit is that I have much more time to pay attention to what is going on, position myself better, and contribute more and more meaningful to interrupting.
Other classes that work fine and which I am personally playing are Unholy DK and Warlock. I also enjoy my Balance Druid with the SBA, but I am not so certain about how it compares to manual playing because I did not even try that (in contrast to 20 years of manually playing a Hunter or a DK).