People who keep saying that BM was easy are right... however, they changed it to make it no less 'complex' than the other specs by nerfing steady and buffing arcane. Currently the rotation is the same as survival -- just trade out explosive for arcane.

The 'too easy' argument is a straw man. They fixed that but still made it do 800 less DPS than a spec that isn't any more difficult to play. Hell, Marks is probably the easiest spec now since you don't even have to refresh serpent sting.

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Q u o t e:
I have to disagree. We listened for months about how this was the right way to do it, and that things were going to be fine. And he did say it himself, he felt there were too many BM hunters and not enough people trying SV. I dont know how else to take that other than he tipped the scales in favor of SV. I like many others in the hunter community prefer to play BM. I am currently SV and yes the dps is great. But I still hate it. And really its the only choice there is. I think a majority of the hunters would be happy if he would just say yes we are fixing it and trying to do it as quickly as possible. But I am afraid its going to be swept under the carpet for months to come. And that just isnt acceptable. People worked their asses off on their BM hunters, and the devs deside to put their spec on the back burner until they are ready to deal with it?

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The thing is IF SV and MM had been competitive coming out of beta people would have switched. Most of the BMs didn't wanna be there to start with they just had no other choice. We have been playing the one viable spec game for years now. Its time for all the specs to be viable so that people can choose the playstyle of their choice. To argue otherwise is illogical.

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Q u o t e:


Why?

I don't see this much QQing over on ElitistJerks, which is full of numbers.

Yes, I agree that BM has some problems at the moment. However, people keep declaring that MM is ruined, yet I'm doing very well in spite of that.

Here's what I don't understand: If the boss goes down and I have loot, didn't my raid have enough DPS?

And if my DPS was at the top of the chart (and comparable in numbers to what I see over at EJ), why should I think that MM is broken?

Is 2863 DPS on Patchwerk in a 10-man with iLevel 200 purples "bad" in your book? How so?

What would raising my DPS in the Patchwerk fight do, other than kill him faster?

My questions are quite sincere. Please, illuminate me. :)

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Make the fight shorter for the healers who unlike the rest of the raid, actually do something on patchwerk besides faceroll dps buttons.

Question: With Arcane shot becoming a must in the BM rotation is L&L a worthwhile talent to get?

Ferocious Inspiration increases damage dealt by Arcane shot by 9%
Survival Instincts (2 points you get on the way to L&L) grants 4% critical strike chance to Arcane shot.
Lock & Load grants 2 extra Arcane shots free of charge when it procs.

The Test: Target dummy, no buffs, cooldowns blown (BW, RF and trinkets). Duration 1 minute. All specs were tested exactly the same way. Results are the average of 10 for each. Pet used Cat. Glyphs Serpent sting, steady shot and Bestial wrath.

BM spec 53/18/0 with improved stings

Self---63857---(1064)
Pet----31470----(524)
Total--95327---(1588)

Pet damage consisted of Melee 52 hits, Claw 32 hits, Rake 5 hits. Self-damage consisted of Auto shot 32 fired, Steady shot 19 fired, Arcane shot 6 fired. This is of interest for later.

BM spec 53/0/18 with L&L (using serpent sting procs, average was 1 proc per minute)

Self---60077---(1001)
Pet----26307---(438)
Total--83619--(1439)

Pet damage consisted of Melee 52 hits, Claw 21 hits, Rake 6 hits. Self-damage consisted of Auto shots 32 fired, Steady shot 19 fired, Arcane shot 8 fired.

Conclusion. No GftT results in an average of 11 less focus dumps for the pet per minute. No Lethal shots and no Mortal shots points resulted in the poor self damage result.


BM spec 53/0/18 with L&L (using traps to proc L&L, average was 2 procs per minute)

Self----58438---(974)
Pet ----25190---(420)
Total---83628--(1394)

Pet damage consisted of Melee 51 hits, Claw 22 hits, Rake 6 hits. Self damage consisted of Auto Shot 26 fired, Steady shot 16 fired, Arcane shot 8 fired.

Conclusion. As Above. Also the inherent range attack speed of the BM hunter negates any benefit from trap dancing. The time it takes to place those 2 traps and step back resulted in approx 6 less Autos and 3 less Steady shots for the same amount of Arcane shots and 2 Immolation traps. Overall Trap dancing in this spec results in a severe drop in dps.


BM spec 42/11/18 with 1 point cobra strikes, GftT and L&L ( Hell why not. BM hunters say they enjoy pet management, SV and MM say they enjoy shot management. So why not go for the best of both worlds. As GC pointed out, and I paraphrase, Complexity should = more DPS)

Self – 62026 – (1034)
Pet – 27634 – (460)
Total- 89660 – (1494)

Pet damage consisted of Melee 50 hits, Claw 31 hits, rake 6 hits. Self-damage consisted of Auto shot 32 fired, Steady shot 18 fired, Arcane 8 fired.

Conclusion. With the points back in Lethal shots and Mortal shots I was able to get my personal dps back up to roughly what it was as 53/18/0. Unfortunately the no points in Kindred spirits resulted in a 15% dps loss to the pet (naturally).

How does this all compare to SV and MM. It fails.

If I was “Dev for a Day” and hang the consequences. Changes I would possibly make.

Move GftT into the Pet Talent Tree. Either on its own or combine it with Cobra Reflexes.
Make the pre req for Survivalist 5 points
Make the pre req for Lock & Load 10 points
Make the pre req for Hunter vs Wild 15 points
Buff Arcane shot.

These changes would open up the possibility for BM specs to go 53/0/18 or 53/18/0 or any number of possibilities leading to buffing different areas of your play style. Pet, stings, arcane shot or personal crit.

BM was probably nerfed because:

1. Pets were doing more damage than the hunter, and pet dps itself didn't take much micro-managing - certainly not as much as Survival.
2. The double dipping of pet buffs, and from hunter gear probably created some scaling issues, that Blizzard didn't want to spend time investigating.
3. SV had almost disappeared from the raiding scene cos of BM. They also might have decided to buff SV so that they could get more replenishment batteries to help the healers. Leaving SS unchanged would have simply caused people to migrate to MM instead. Hence the buff to Explosive shot to ensure hunters re-spec survival.

I think Blizz isn't being honest about why these changes were made even after all the PTR feedback. If you wanted BM to become a little more harder to play, it would have been better to make abilities like Kill command, Beastial wrath, Call of the wild to be more than a "push-and-forget" ability.

People on beta were also didn't like that Kindred spirits applied the same buff as unleashed fury which was a few tiers up. You had the chance to make that tier more "involved" but blew it for a flat % boost.

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Q u o t e:
People who keep saying that BM was easy are right... however, they changed it to make it no less 'complex' than the other specs by nerfing steady and buffing arcane. Currently the rotation is the same as survival -- just trade out explosive for arcane.

The 'too easy' argument is a straw man. They fixed that but still made it do 800 less DPS than a spec that isn't any more difficult to play. Hell, Marks is probably the easiest spec now since you don't even have to refresh serpent sting.

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I agree to some degree. IMO, Blizz has managed to make the specs equally hard to play specifically with the nerf to Steady Shot. Which is why (gasp) I'm actually ok with the nerf to Steady Shot. The only problem I have is that only one spec was buffed effectively to counter that nerf. Unsurprisingly, it is now the favored DPS spec.

Marks now fires off Serpt-Chim-Arcane-Aimed-Steady in order (perhaps switching Arcane/Aimed). Nonetheless, we keep all our shots on cooldown and press Steady when everything else is waiting to come up, while managing Readiness, Rapid Fire, and Trinkets. I'm ok with this thought process.

BM now presses Serpt-Arcane-Aimed/Multi-Steady, once again pressing steady when everything else is on cooldown, while managing BW, Rapid Fire, and trinkets.

Surv. now presses Serpt-Explosive-Aimed-Steady, managing lock and load and rapid fire, and pressing Steady when they have nothing else to do. If they are trap dancing, you have the extra fun of running in to drop a trap. Fine, basically same rotations for each spec.

If all things are equal, why are we finding that Surv. is so high? Answer, because Surv. was compensated for the steady nerf with the buff to Explosive shot.

My conclusion is that Marks needs to either have Chimera buffed or some other damage adding talent added to the tree (perhaps instead of the bad next to last tier talents) to equal Explosive.

BM should have the pet nerfs rolled back to see where it stands and have the 51 talent point give 4 extra dps talents as GC has suggested, with further action taken once those numbers are sorted.

Thoughts?

PS: If Surv. is suppossed to be where DPS numbers are, then as Necurse suggests, it's the Fury Warriors/Mages/Locks of the world that need the same treatment BM received and be brought down. I'm just not sure what Blizz is aiming for atm DPS wise.

All specs micro manage pets, your first point is moot

Second point valid

Ensuring people spec into one tree or another is completely arbitrary. Most of the time they just throw numbers at us and we sort em out.

If they say that they want all specs to be viable then they bloody well better make it so, but this no choice BS has got to stop.

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Q u o t e:
From what we can tell, SV and MM are pretty close. SV may be slightly higher, but not by hundreds of dps.

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I think maybe as somebody who has not been with the game for years like much of the hunter player-base has, GC, you may not be aware of the sway that theorycraft think tanks have over dps communities. I understand and applaud the desire to make all trees viable, especially for a class that has little to offer in the way of raid contribution other than excellent dps, until Blizzard gets out of this cycle of disconnected swapping one tree viability for another. I see hope in paladins as they have become well viable in their three trees (maybe OP but that's another story). Unfortunately this concept of hard vs. easy isn't being equally applied to 'hybrid' vs. 'pure', see priest recent woes (getting off topic).

Target dummy or no, every pve raiding dps will follow the EJ think tank, and there is nothing wow could do to change this. If one spec or tree proves number wise that it is possible to maximize dps with a certain play style then every hunter that wants to maintain a dps spot in a competitive raiding environment will do it, 'ease' of play has little to do with it and I'm positive you will see this come time for Uldar, that an overwhelming majority of raiding hunters will be survival and as time progresses with a trickle down effect more casual hunters will follow the specs of those in the top raiding guilds. You will never be able to get away from this. Whatever EJ says is what the community will ultimately follow on a majority basis.

As far as keeping pets alive imo that isn't a valid argument, pet damage and pet awareness is no where near important to the ultimate numbers of MM or Survival nor should they be, thus in my experience in raiding has show that hunters who are using these specs, rightly so, do not pay nearly as much attention to their pets, let them die, etc because they should not contribute a substantial percentage of that hunter's damage.

The difference to me between the ease of BM and the other two trees has not been a sudden realization, it has been the change of ease in end game content, and I feel and hope over the lifetime of WotLK as content proves to be more challenging and we do away with what you call 'naxx welfare epics' that specs may spread out more evenly, but for now you are replacing one majority with another and I personally do not see that as a solution.

Your BM hutard will become a Survival huntard because they will follow the lead of the pve dps raiding hunter.

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Q u o t e:


QFT.

I've run MM for much of my 2-year career in WoW, because I like it. My current guild is friendly, fun, and we're making good progress on the content. I've got decent gear, some room for getting better stuff, and no one says a damned thing about anyone's spec unless asked for an opinion.

And my MM build is doing just fine. As I said earlier, I'm topping the damage meters when we're killing bosses.

10-man Patchwerk. I did 2863 DPS, topping the meter, just the boss fight, beating everyone else in my group, with a Tenacity pet and my 11/53/7 MM build.

I don;t understand what I should be upset about. I barely touched SS; mostly Autoshot, Chimera, Arcane, with a few Aimed Shots. And 2800+ DPS in a 10-man. How is that bad?
And isn't that what it's about? Taking down bosses, getting new loot, and moving on to the next challenge?

With the exception of fights like Patchwerk, beating most raid bosses requires coordination and "dancing" in addition to DPS, tanking, and healing. Heck, I love trying to have the best DPS in a group -- but I certainly do NOT base my self-worth on what Recount says at the end of the evening.

I do agree that the BM tree was nerfed a bit too strong. I won't argue that for a minute.

However, having spent some time at ElitistJerks and with friends online, I see no basis for the vicious QQ in this thread. BM is *not* dead. Hunters are still getting into groups. Bosses are still dying.

No one is forcing you to pay $15 for a month fo WoW. If you really, truly believe some of the hyperbole in threads like this, why stay with the game at all?

I'm happy, and willing to adapt. Bill the Croclisk and I will go on to more adventures. The game, for me, is fun. Other people's mileage may vary -- and if the road WoW takes upsets someone so much that they can't be civil, why in heck are they still playing?

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I'm not trying to gloat when I state this, just trying to compare your claims of MM not being largely inferior to SV.

I myself ran 10 man Naxx tonight with my guild, and I topped the charts on Patchwerk as well in my run with 4045.6 dps. Now I'm not saying your numbers suck or that because they're lower than mine that you do. I'm just trying to provide a bit of perspective for you in terms of how MM stacks up currently with SV.

Sadly as I see it, Blizz's likely course is going to be to slap SV with the nerf stick as hard as they did BM because they created the same problem they had with that spec, with SV as well. Which means we'll either be stuck with 3 subpar specs, (in terms of numbers, not personal preferences) or they'll have to rebuff the other two specs to make up for what happened.

I really wish the other two specs were competing with SV, because I myself prefer BM, but the difference is vastly larger than I'm comfortable with. And I'm sorry to say, it appears as if MM is suffering a lack as well in terms of numbers.

I'm glad you're playing the spec if it's how you like to play. I think everyone should play the way they want to. I just think that each spec should be comparable to eachother.

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Q u o t e:


Those players who always want the highest dps at any cost will respec for even a marginal dps gain, and we can live with that. For 95% of guilds though, that marginal dps increase is not what is standing between success and failure. There are very few moments in the history of the game where a few dps was the difference between success and failure for all but the most cutting edge of guilds.

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This is very very true, but I still believe you will see the same trend going to survival as 'the tree' as you did with BM as long as there is any kind of evidence that one pops out more numbers on a dummy than another.

I'm hoping to be convinced that quality play style in BM will be damn close to Survival when played well, and depending on boss fight mechanics one spec may outshine the other accordingly, meaning sometimes SV is on top, sometimes BM, sometimes MM, and this would be the clear way to show equality amongst trees. But so long as that 1% is applicable damage wise amongst all trees raiders will follow EJ and more casual hunters will be encouraged to follow it. Group think is group think.

How about reverting the Steady Shot nerf via a talent deep in the BM tree that adds the 10% AP bonus back to the shot? With the current pet damage nerfs it seems like that would even things out a bit amongst the trees... or would that be too much?

GC is there any concern with how much damage Survival specced hunters are putting on heavily armored classes such as Holy Paladins and Warriors in PvP? Explosive shot does quite a bit of damage and when a proc such as Lock and Load goes off a hunter can put out a significant amount of damage on heavily armored targets(especially with talents which afford ES a high crit rate). My experience comes from ~2000rating 3v3 where the hunter would stick on me, thus severely hurting my DPS output(which is acceptable in some circumstances), but then would switch to our warrior and would put his health at a dangerously low level in a fairly rapid time frame. What made it even more challenging was the fact that the hunter has two instant interupts he can put on our healer from a decent range(scatter shot and wyvern sting).

Basically, whenever Lock and Load procs we are forced to burn much longer cooldowns in order to survive the hunters actions alone. When you throw a teammate into the mix it becomes extremely difficult to play against a hunter team if the match is lasting more than 1 minute(not even going to get into Viper Sting).

EDIT: Been looking at hunter talents, and it seems to me with a PvP survival spec you will have +27% crit on explosive shot if done correctly. That seems a little high to me, +27% crit on your highest damage ability from talents alone.

Hey GC i know you need to respond to these huntards..... but could you please address the problem with the rating system in arena? 7 posts here... its just hunters right? i know you dont rly care about hunters lol.
would like to buy my weapons back that you took but i cant get my personal rating above 1800

Too post above me: rofl? look there's a pillar RUN AROUND IT, also lol at mage..... arcane much? your BURSTLOL is on a 3sec CD, mine is 6

All of the raiding hunters I know respec'ed from BM to SV. Posters in this thread have said that BM is dead as a raiding spec, and I agree. All that said, this thread may have somewhat of an "echo chamber" problem - while we may all think there is a mass exodus from BM to SV, the following report, generated from Armory data for US & EU realms as of Friday, 1/23/2009 suggests otherwise:

http://armory-musings.appspot.com/class/Hunter/Summary

Currently, almost 70% of players are still BM, 25% are MM and a mere 5% are SV. Based on theorycrafting & personal trials, this means that 95% of hunters currently have a sub-optimal DPS spec! :D

Still, we should be fair to GC & recognize that whatever mass shifts we're predicting here hasn't hit the mainstream player base yet.

Because most hunters are alts and behind the times?

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Q u o t e:

If we are all so right (and IMO we are - BM DPS is horrible now relative to SV), why are almost 70% of players still BM?!?!?!

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With it only being a few days since patch and an unknown number of those players either have not logged on since the patch, are on break, etc. there is no way to know the percentage of how many of those hunters are currently doing pve/pvp content as bm vs. survival., especially since BM was the spec to have for such a long time.

In any case neither way is correct, no BM should not have been top dps, neither should survival, they should be the same overall in a raid setting at least.

I will tell you though that after the patch I went survival and played with the dummy and wasn't satisfied with the play style, 'easy' vs. 'hard' insert here. I went back to BM, went into a WSG and the first thing out of somebody's mouth was asking me why I wasn't survival and didn't I know that 'vanity' pets like my devilsaur were pointless. Anecdotal evidence, but telling.