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Q u o t e:
I think what BM needs is a new rotation. Prior to the patch it was Steady Shot spam all day long and post patch the steady shots are intermingled with arcane shots. Even with 3/3 Improved Arcane Shot and the effects of Ferocious Inspiration Arcane Shot doesn't seem to add that much punch. I don't think Arcane Shot needs to be pumped up much further, but perhaps a custom shot for BM is in order (since we don't want to improve steady shot back to pre patch.) I believe a debuff or DoT effect shot that either deals its own damage or improves pet damage is the way to go. It should be a shot with some synergy with pets that is usable by all specs but can be improved via talents under BM. (And replace Pathfinding).

There is one thing about Steady that bothers me though. In the past several raids I've noticed my Recount data showing that Auto Shot is outdamaging Steady Shot. Not just because Auto Shot occurs more often, but on average damage per hit and occasionally crit. I suspect that it's a bug that needs to be looked in to and imagine that if it is fixed it will push BM up a bit higher.

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Just a thought, but try adding Multi-Shot or Aimed Shot to your rotation. It's less mana efficient, but more dps.

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Q u o t e:
Here's my worry, with all of the cynicism you've come to expect from the hunter community :)

1.) BM will be buffed 5-10%, and still have the same rotation it has now, with nothing new and interesting.

2.) Survival will be nerfed, and probably pretty badly, because too many people complain about ES in PVP.

3.) When the changes to ammo come about, as Blizzard has been talking about, MM will become the new "required" raiding/PVE build because pets don't take advantage of my bullets (no matter how I load them), and Survival will have been beaten too hard with the nerf stick.

I don't like the idea that Marks is where the baseline is being drawn, especially considering the numbers I'm seeing from every other class. It makes me and my pet uncomfortable, and right now, he's packed with bullets and could explode if you make him nervous.

Don't blow up my kitty, GC!

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Quit wasting bandwith ><

Hunters seem to be nonstop chart toppers. As a mage it amazes me how Blizz can let it go onward. So many problems arise when they try to ballance pvp and screw up the pve part and then visa versa. Its not just hunters tired of the ping pong game.

Every patch classes who min max have to suddenly totally change how they play. Part of this is because WOLK was released too soon and wasnt polished. Compared to other games it was but not to the 3+yr wow gamer.

It's great how they nerf BM and MM. Because BM dmg was too high, but it really wasn't that high and if they had fixed bugs we would be where Surv is now. Now they want to nerf Surv while making BM and MM more competitive. What they need to do is revert all the BM pet nerfs, making BM better, less Surv alone and do something with MM.


Why is it that Warriors and Mages get to do quite a bit more dmg than Surv now and they still want to cut the dmg that surv does. I don't know why they don't want us to at least contend for the top dps slot.

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Q u o t e:
We talked about it a great deal today and agreed that we probably over-nerfed BM. Marks is in a good spot and Survival might be too high once we look at the changes we are making to all other classes

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Jeez, the spec that hasn't been competitive since the early BC is "in a good spot"?!

Wow. Just wow.

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Q u o t e:
We talked about it a great deal today and agreed that we probably over-nerfed BM. Marks is in a good spot and Survival might be too high once we look at the changes we are making to all other classes.

Our plan is to buff BM before Ulduar, but I can't give you a timetable more detailed than that, and things could change for any number of reasons. We are unlikely to touch Steady Shot for the reasons I have mentioned before. We are more likely to look at Kindred Spirits and Serpents Swiftness again.

Again, huge caveats: Predicting changes we are discussing making but haven't made yet is fraught with peril. I only wanted to address this issue because it caused a lot of consternation in the community.

I don't mind admitting when we make a mistake in the hope that it builds our credibility in the community. This was one. It won't be the last. :)

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I think steady shot is fine how it is... I actually enjoy using my other shots as BM now.. It brings a little more skill into the spec. Also I read one of your posts about eating a sandwich and still able to get respectable dps... Yeah I have did this before.. But with a Burrito rather. I see BM as a much harder spec right now even compared to survival because of the shot weaving and more emphasis on how much dps time my pet keeps on the bosses etc.

I have one suggestion though- I would really like to see our 51 point talent to either

A. Give a static increase to Pet- Armor,Health,damage by a %
B. Add some flavor to the pet trees that only 51 point BM can take

Also maybe instead of bothering Serpents Swiftness, you could focus more of the buff on Kindred Spirits to make it a better 45 point talent.

One last thing, Do you think that lowering Cobra Strikes to a 2 point talent would be a little better? It makes that Tier feel really bloated, But the same is true for the Marks tree... alot of the 3 pointers in that tree really suck.

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Q u o t e:
Hunters seem to be nonstop chart toppers. As a mage it amazes me how Blizz can let it go onward. So many problems arise when they try to ballance pvp and screw up the pve part and then visa versa. Its not just hunters tired of the ping pong game.

Every patch classes who min max have to suddenly totally change how they play. Part of this is because WOLK was released too soon and wasnt polished. Compared to other games it was but not to the 3+yr wow gamer.

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If you aren't topping the charts(as a mage) in your raid you either aren't good enough or your gear is seriously lacking.

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Q u o t e:
Hunters seem to be nonstop chart toppers. As a mage it amazes me how Blizz can let it go onward. So many problems arise when they try to ballance pvp and screw up the pve part and then visa versa. Its not just hunters tired of the ping pong game.

Every patch classes who min max have to suddenly totally change how they play. Part of this is because WOLK was released too soon and wasnt polished. Compared to other games it was but not to the 3+yr wow gamer.

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I don't want to bash anyone, but as a mage you should be beating hunters on a boss by boss basis, and if not you need to figure out a better rotation or gear up.

Maybe adding a Bleed Talent into the MM tree would help. Maybe intergrate it into their rotation with a proc based function.

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Q u o t e:


If you aren't topping the charts(as a mage) in your raid you either aren't good enough or your gear is seriously lacking.

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Pretty much, or his guild isn't geared enough to make Patch etc sub 3min where the mage kicks everyones ass.

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Q u o t e:
Maybe adding a Bleed Talent into the MM tree would help. Maybe intergrate it into their rotation with a proc based function.

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This would be cool... and at the same time say FU rogues that dismantle me.

Bleeds are coolbeans

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Q u o t e:
They are comparing themselves to relative not absolute numbers.

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Pretty much. They're comparing themselves to other classes that are outdpsing them significantly.

If you want to bring everything in line with MM hunters, you have a GREAT amount of classes and specs to look into (aka nerf).

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Q u o t e:


BM, while not having to glue your eyes to the CD's, requires a lot more attention to pet placement because of how important the pet becomes. When the main CD's you have to pop require a pet to use it makes you pay a lot more attention to what is happening to your pet.

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That's really not true at all. On very few fights did I ever have to recall my pet. Sartharion is the most obvious example, but other than that BM pet management was fa "fire and forget" situation. Obviously there's more to BM than just spamming Steady Shot, but there wasn't that much more. It mostly came down to how to maximize CD usage in conjunction with readiness for <3m fights, 4 minute fights, 5 minute fights, etc.

Also, mastering the art of guessing when your shamans remember to blow Heroism/Lust.

The truth about BM is that it was the easiest spec to master. When this toon hit 70 back in August, I was carried through BT and early Sunwell in mostly greens for a week, yet I was still doing more DPS than other Sunwell geared raiders.

With this patch, however, BM follows SV and MM in having to weave "anything but Steady" to maximize DPS. Pet management isn't the issue. The fact that BM hunters scale badly on gimmick fights like Loatheb, Thaddius and Malygos. The fact that pets don't get item bonuses like haste and armor pen...or talent bonuses like Focused Aim. These are the big issues. Both shot and pet DPS need to be addressed.

Ghostcrawler, can you confirm that the current DPS the Marksman spec puts out (buffed, unbuffed, in their underwear, whatever) is around where you'd like to see all pure DPS specs? With hybrid DPS about 5% below that?

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Q u o t e:


It was glaringly obvious to the Ret paladins that they were nerfed to the ground and that the DKs wouldn't be able to PvP anymore after the nerfs. There are Arcane mages already lamenting the death of their spec in PvE and we haven't even announced changes yet. :)

We do listen to players, but we can't *just* listen to players. There is a lot of voodoo and black magic that goes into our design process and that's just the way it has to be. It often comes down to a judgement call. In this case, we did get the advice of expert BM players and we did look at the parses of PTR raids. We balanced that against what the community was saying on this and other forums and we did a lot of internal testing and napkin math too. Usually our system works out fine. This time it didn't and you have my apologies for that. But your expectation should never be that the players hand us up numbers and those go into the game. It's just more complicated than that.

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hunters have been right about a few things sofar. lets not rehash all the beta issues we told you guys about.. i understand your position in the matter and you are right, we dont expect you to take our every word as truth. What i do think personally, is you should not be so dismissive to our input in situations where you have most of the best players, and theorycrafters telling you all the same thing.

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Q u o t e:


It was glaringly obvious to the Ret paladins that they were nerfed to the ground and that the DKs wouldn't be able to PvP anymore after the nerfs. There are Arcane mages already lamenting the death of their spec in PvE and we haven't even announced changes yet. :)

We do listen to players, but we can't *just* listen to players. There is a lot of voodoo and black magic that goes into our design process and that's just the way it has to be. It often comes down to a judgement call. In this case, we did get the advice of expert BM players and we did look at the parses of PTR raids. We balanced that against what the community was saying on this and other forums and we did a lot of internal testing and napkin math too. Usually our system works out fine. This time it didn't and you have my apologies for that. But your expectation should never be that the players hand us up numbers and those go into the game. It's just more complicated than that.

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Sometimes that's just the way it is, At least with these nerfs they can add in some real flavor to BM 51 point talent or kindred spirits.. .which is same as our 10 point talent currently????????

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Q u o t e:

I guess this is kinda how healers feel. . . staring at the UI watching people's health.

Are people finding using a CD timer mod helps make this more efficient?

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Healers don't watch multiple <10s cooldowns. They watch raid unit frames and the environment to see where damage is incoming. Right now as a SV hunter I am basically staring at Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot, and LnL procs.

I've reproduced a small a action bar with Bartender near the center of my screen to watch the shot CDs, and I use Ghost Pulse for LnL procs. It's clunky and stupid, but I'll do whatever it takes.

The point GC, is that everyone and their dogs (edit: except BM hunters) are outdpsing MM hunters.

If MM is fine, that means you think DPS is too hard across the board ?