So there I was.... BM hunters in M+

Classes Hunter
1

Hi to all,

TLDR: Buff the Hunter class, specifically BM. I mean an overal buff to damage, survivability and add utility so a group actually wants to bring a Hunter. I.e. bring a passive damage buff for the group, shorter interrupt, stuns etc. Make Hunters one of the highest DPS classes again, since we cannot do anything else besides doing damage.

Let me elaborate…
I have quite some experience with the game, having played for over 15 years, nearly 30k achievement points including harder ones to obtain. I have played a few other classes, but Hunter has always been my main and most played class. Whenever I played Warrior or Priest I always had a feeling I had something to bring, whether it was PVP or PVE. This didn’t make me want to switch classes, but it always made me wonder… Why didn’t I had this feeling when I would play Hunter, my main class.

So currently, during M+, I stil make some mistakes and have to learn boss fights, but I think I overal rank up above average. Since yesterday I actually received the final piece of gear, a 392 gun so I know that my gear (iLvl 385) is up to par for M+. I played up to M10 with a blue weapon (ilvl 353).

Damage
After I enchanted my gear and set foot in M11 and above I realised that I am a nuissance to the group. I basically don’t bring anything apart from ok damage and a bit of inconsistent CC which can’t really be relied upon. There’s RNG to the BM Hunters rotation, so you can never truly anticipate on how you should play. If I don’t get the correct procs, I lose certain buffs and my damage goes down. It has been like this for years by the way. I am surprised that it never changed for the better. Being a pure damage class I really think Hunters should perform better in terms of damage compared to most other classes. We no longer have Wild Spirits & Aspect of the Wild. We received nothing in return. We basically have no burst ability besides Bestial Wrath. The biggest improvement you made is making Kill Command have 2 stacks, although we need to spec in this it greatly increases the flexibility we have in our rotation. Still we do too little damage. I also notice that Beast Cleave doesn’t always work in combination with Kill command and multiple enemies which are in range of the pet.

Defensive CD’s
Besides the above, the defensive utlity of a Hunter leaves much to be desired. We have no mitigation. We are not close to the melee group to receive the AOE floor healing. I notice that I consistenly require targeted heals because of random damage from mobs/bosses. I don’t have enough Leech to get my health back quick enough. Exhilaration is something I use regularly, but it’s on the global cooldown, making it less usable whenever you immediately need it. We have a bit more armor, but for the damage you get in M+ this doesn’t matter. The defensive mechanisms we have (Turtle and Survival of the Fittest) are flawed. The cooldown is too long and the abilities feel clunky. Aspect of the Turtle basically feels like shutting down the PC. I always thought Roar of Sacrifice was a great ability. I know it is still here, but it should come as a passive pet talent, instead of having to go with a tenacity pet.

Small discussion
To continue about survivability of the Hunter classs; I had a funny discussion with the group I did M14 with today. Some of them blamed me for dying while I had defensive CD’s which were still off CD. I tried to explain that I was anticipating on running away from the AOE and therefor didn’t want to use Aspect of the Turtle. I tried to explain that it often feels pointless to use Aspect of the Turtle if you can simply run away from the AOE and still provide damage. Obviously I shouldn’t get hit by the AOE, but it’s very counter intuitive to use Turtle so that you just “don’t have to run away”. I hope that you get my point here. Using the ability also nearly nullifies the hunters damage. Why do you make it like this? Are turtles immune if they hide in their shell? Ofcourse not, they make great soup… Cough.

To summarize
I don’t see myself as an asset to the team. This makes me less enthusiastic to join for M+, which is basically the only content for me out there to play. Up to M15 I feel I should have much better impact on the group performance as a Hunter so that the content is actually enjoyable for me. In the current situation I wonder why I should still play the game.

When I did a small search on the forums I found this video so it looks like I’m not the only one. This is proof that Hunters deserve a buff.

I really hope you have something to add to this story so Hunter gets what it deserves and we can have fun in M+ again.

Kind regards,
Nolls

14 Likes
2

I completely agree with you!
Beast Mastery’s situation has been problematic for several seasons (although in S4 SL it eased up for a moment, but that was solely due to the ability to create BiS from 3 tiers and season affix).
Now Beast Mastery is pretty decent on the raid in ST fights (it always has been, by the way). But M+ is some kind of tragedy! The damage dealt to AoE is poor compared to other classes (I tried different builds). Survivability is also a problem (especially since dungeons are still underscaled and tick very high damage at some points).

Personally, I think Beast Cleave & Kill Cleave should get significant buffs (when I say significant I’m thinking of ~30%) to match others in terms of AoE.

As for CC - here I think there is not really anything to complain about.

As for PvP - we have already established that defense is not BM’s strong point. This should be compensated by high damage. BM in SL was not a burst class. But thanks to Venth covenant it could often deal damage with Kill Shot which made it do pretty high sustained damage. Now it doesn’t have that. We are an easy target and can’t help our partners in battle.

I hope Blizzard will prioritize the issue because it is unbearable to be treated like this for many seasons.

5 Likes
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Well put in the opening post regarding BM, unfortunately my faith in the competence of the class designers is extreamly low, remember S3 in SL when they kept “buffing” us with 4% when we were at the bottom of the barrel for months?

It’s a shame that an expansion as great as Dragonflight that does so many things right is held back by incompetent class developers.

2 Likes
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Totally agree with you two. I love BM, but at the moment I feel so useless in M+ :cry: You don’t boost your team, you slow it down. Especially in terms of survivability. 2nd boss Nokhud and Sha e.g. are a pain in the tail end. After using your CDs you are cannon fodder.

I really hope there will be changes after RWF is over. But I am not counting on it though…

3 Likes
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I dont play Bm but all I can say is they should get a buff so that their pet don’t die all the time while in dungeons at lest :stuck_out_tongue:

My guild has 4 Bms and I hear their pets dies from loads of stuff wish they could get a defensive buff towards their pets like more default avoidance or something.

I support a BM buff tho even i as shadow compete with a BM.

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Agree with you OP. Especially this week in M+ (Grievous, Bursting) you really have to try and time your defensives (The little you have) right and still there are times when you have absolutely nothing to use to help your healer out.
Lucky to have a group of friends to play with so I don’t have to stress too much about damage or survivability. BM is one of my favorite class/spec combinations lore/fantasy wise so I play it regardless but yeah would be nice indeed to see some improvements made.

1 Like
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It happens but more often I find my pets being stuck which can be pretty annoying at least in M+ where the group is moving fast. Also there are times when my pets are there but are unable to find a path to attack. It’s a minor dps loss in both cases but annoying nevertheless.

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I think one solution to the pet problems in dungeons would be to have dismiss pet instant so you can dismiss and recall them with only GC.

1 Like
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Hunter in a nuttshell Bravo i agree 100%
We are forced to bring a spirit beast for raids to heal ourself if Exhilaration is on cooldown.
If we activate aspec of the turtle only thing we can do is just stand there or run away until the buff is gone . There so many thorghast skills wich would make great buffs for hunter when added like

  • Able to attack when aspect of the turtle is active (we can defend and attack )
  • Exhiliration cooldown reduced by 30.0 sec. ( faster heal and save the pet heal )
  • Aspect of the Cheetah cooldown reduced by 30.0 sec. (cooldown is to long )
  • Hunter’s Mark now increases damage the target takes from all sources by 15%. (but make it 5% and make it a buff hunter can bring in raids )
    *Disengage reduces all damage you take by 50% for 10 sec. (even it’s for 10 sec its somthing )
    And there are a lot more i bet
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That would be great. New spell “re-call”. There are many situations in which my pet is lost (for example, Shadowmoon Burial Grounds dungeon - Bonemaw - I am unable to change the target for adds that appear during the fight). In addition to dungeons, it should also work in raid (from similar problems). It would also be possible to increase the movement of the pet when changing the target (I mean the fights in which our pet is on the boss and we have to move to the adds which are out of range of Kill Command - the pet then moves very long to the target).

In terms of PvP - on Epic Battlegrounds pets should be immortal. Unfortunately, in the flurry of fights in which there are a lot of opponents they die quickly from AoE dmg (even if you heal them).

However, the priority is to improve the AoE situation. It is weak. And after yesterday’s update on wowhead in which from B-tier in M+ BM dropped to D-tier the problems with dungeon invitations started again. It’s unbearable to be treated like this for several seasons.

Powerful AoE buffs are needed.

11

Hello, fellow BM hunter here!

Basically, I do agree. Our survivability abilities have long cds and we are walking papers without spirit beasts (and after solid nerf of spirit beast’s healing like few years ago it doesn’t help much either), our DMG… ehhh. At the moment the state of this spec is on the same if not worse level than season 1 of Shadowlands (getting kicked out of the groups for the specialisation alone for example). While in m+ I usually can still compete with other DPS (if I even get invited), this week affixes especially on elemental boss in Nokhud or Sha in the Temple are close to lethal for me.

In raids I cannot even compete with MM hunters (funny enough, I do better in normal than heroic raid and I have no idea why). I don’t want to respec only for raiding because I have to, but I want it to be a choice, but from all hunter specs only MM works for raiding.

Honestly, entire class needs adjustments. It’s just frustrating at the moment, but I do hope it can be anyhow fixed soon

12

Hello, fellow BM hunter here!

Basically, I do agree. Our survivability abilities have long cds and we are walking papers without spirit beasts (and after solid nerf of spirit beast’s healing like few years ago it doesn’t help much either), our DMG… ehhh. At the moment the state of this spec is on the same if not worse level than season 1 of Shadowlands (getting kicked out of the groups for the specialisation/class alone for example). While in m+ I usually can still compete with other DPS (if I even get invited), this week affixes especially on elemental boss in Nokhud or Sha in the Temple are close to lethal for me.

In raids I cannot even compete with MM hunters (funny enough, I do better in normal than heroic raid and I have no idea why). I don’t want to respec only for raiding because I have to, but I want it to be a choice, although from all hunter specs only MM works for raiding.

Honestly, entire class needs some adjustments. It’s just frustrating at the moment, but I do hope it can be anyhow fixed. It has been too long BM is in weird limbo state

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Not only they die too often, they also still get stuck on terrain after all these years, like, when are you planning to fix pet pathing?

Was playing with a mm yesterday that was 10 ilvls lower than me and not only did his burst go way ahead, even on st he was able to keep up, so please tell how the war orders and beast master talent nerfs were justified?

I will say it again, having to use a st ability (cobra shot) in your aoe rotation so you could actually aoe more is just not fun and makes you get focus starved quick, we have no burst, little survivability, having to use 7 globals before you can actually start kill cleaving is clunky and doesnt help the group.

Sure we have good sustained damage but the ramp up is brutal. We also have to kick (24s cd), stun (1min cd), trap, purge (10s cd), slow (melee as ranged…) while most other dps classes just go ham on dps and we are there stitting and wondering what we actually bring to higher keys.

When cloth wearers have more survivability than you and outdps you by quite the amount something is not right.

Also, how is speccing into the 6% avoidance talent not even giving us 6% avoidance? its like half at best, whats the deal with that?

SL was even worse, but i coped since at least we had some burst with wild spirits, was hoping we could get some love finally after all those years yet you nerf us early on and dont look back, really hope we can get some buffs at least or this will just feel like another meh xpac like SL.

Also, feign death is not working like intended, most of the time i get up instantly after using is, rendering the ability useless.

And dont get me started how useless misdirect is since it doesnt count your pet damage, and since our pets do 75% of our dps now its just a wasted talent.

2 Likes
14

Yeah From all shadowlands covenant abilties we get the one no one ever plays in our talent tree the chakram While demon hunter got the wild hunt abilty :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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That was a real bloody slap across all four cheeks, bum included! I’d never even heard of bloody Death Chakram until this xpac. Most classes got their best covenant ability (druids with convoke for example), but we get that garbage. Why didn’t we get Wild Spirits? It was the one thing that brought us up to par with other classes’ base cleave even without their cov abilities, and now we’re back to being dead bottom in pack damage.

Low AoE (especially BM), laughable survivability, and no party buff/utility; it’s no wonder hunters are not just unpopular in m+ but outright hated.

3 Likes
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In my opinion that’s not true. After doing more than 100 keys this season I cannot confirm. It’s quite easy to find groups :slight_smile:

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I can’t push more than 16 because i literally don’t have dps compared to the other classes, some decline me just because i’m bm and i have a higher rioscore and itemlevel than them, at the moment i’m stuck and watching others go on .The only way is to change spec and go mm as if i had a button in my brain that turns on and off when i want. I’ve always played bm hunter and during bfa i was always on top and pushed like a train now i’m the last wheel of the wagon

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I notice this as well. Even though my gear and M+ score is fine I don’t get invited. Really bad. I’ve been searching for +15 or +16 for days already and just don’t get invited.

3 Likes
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this is not something new, been so in most expacs, exept BFA where BM was superior to pretty much everything else.

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That is true for low keys, but try to get invited to 15s and higher as BM, it’s literally impossible now, today I got kicked out of a 13 when they realized I was BM, and I’m 400 ilvl and over 2k IO, it’s very unusual for that to happen of course but I don’t think many other specs face that possibility.

I’ve said it many times before also on the paladin forum when I used to main Ret, Blizzards attrocious class design is really holding this game back.

1 Like