Among many of the interesting and exciting changes coming in patch 3.3.3 is one of particular note to hunters, namely raiding Beast Mastery hunters. In the latest patch notes is a mention of an update to Ferocious Inspiration.
Beast Mastery
- Ferocious Inspiration: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards and boosts the damage of Steady Shot by 3/6/9%.
Speaking from a BM PvP hunter point of view, I think this change kinda blows. It’s not nearly as brutal as the BW/TBW nerf, but it’s still a nerf to BM PvPers no matter how you look at it. Apparently Blizzard cannot figure out a way to buff BM’s damage in raids without further nerfing it for PvP. Blizz is clearly moving towards buffing BM’s sustained damage at the expense of its burst. Oh well.
However, I think this is an exciting and promising change for raiding BM Hunters. This will certainly help to bring Beast Mastery more in line with the other specs. How close it will be, I do not know. I doubt that it will be enough of a boost to push it ahead of SV let alone MM, but it may certainly be competitive.
This reworked FI definitely has me conflicted. On one hand, it’s going to lessen some of my burst capability in arena. On the other hand, it’s causing me to take a serious look at possibly going BM again for raiding. I haven’t raided with Krush since the 10 man Naxx days and I sure miss him. 
If anything, I look forward to testing BM’s viability come 3.3.3.
The one thing I do not understand however, is why Blizz has Beast Mastery going back to the mindless Steady Shot mashing build that it was in TBC. It’s ironic considering they have stated that they wanted to make the spec more interesting. This change to Ferocious Inspiration will no doubt have end game Beast Masters stacking armor pen and spamming Steady Shot like it’s going out of style. There will be no reason to use Arcane Shot anymore, apart from high movement fights and leveling.
This does bother me though, because I am not so keen on the idea of returning to a one button mashing spec. Since BM was always my PvP spec, I used to raid with a BM PvP build which included Aimed Shot in my rotation. Having three shots to worry about in addition to Serpent Sting, at least kept it somewhat interesting. If this change goes live, BM raiders will literally be down to simply keeping Serpent up and spamming Steadies. /yawn
Ah well… it’ll be nice at least to try it out for awhile and let Krush stretch his legs a bit. Who knows, maybe I’ll settle into it once again. I certainly miss having my big red dino in raids. Not sure how our tanks and melee will feel about it though. 
From a PvP standpoint, I’m not too down about it actually. Since my arena partner is a Ret Pally, I’m already getting the 3% damage buff from him, so by dropping FI all I will lose is the 9% boost to a shot I seldom use in arena. Those points can buy me some pet insurance in the form of Improved Revive Pet and 1 point in Improved Mend Pet. Seems as if teams are focusing in on my pet more often this season anyway.
What’d be really nice is… if they were to buff a non-dps ability which would help BM in PvP situations. For example, taking Intimidation off of the GCD and/or reducing its base cooldown to 45 seconds. That would certainly help to undo some of the damage that’s been done to BM’s viability in PvP, without affecting PvE DPS in any way. Just an idea.
What do the rest of you hunters think about the new Ferocious Inspiration?
