I sure hope so. Here’s an official post from Ghostcrawler concerning Hunter DPS and arena representation:
We think Survival PvE dps is in a good place, and we’re hoping Marks looks better with the last recent tweaks. It’s just a little early to tell. BM is still low and needs a buff.
PvP is another story and we’re not happy with hunter performance there, at least in Arena.
These comments were in response to an embittered post from a raiding Hunter asking Blizz why we aren’t more viable in PvE. I must say, the player did make some valid points though.
One of his complaints was regarding our class specific skills and how they’re being overwritten by other class buffs, or being trivialized by other classes having similar abilities. My favorite suggestion of his was to buff Trueshot Aura so that it provides an additional AP boost for the Hunter over what it provides for the rest of the raid.
Here’s an excerpt from Turovik’s post highlighting what I believe to be very good points and realistic requests:
- Hunters have no unique utility to bring to raids. Misdirect and Survival’s mana regen have been given to other classes. Trueshot Aura is a joke since DKs and Shamans give the same buff (overwriting ours, and also making aimed shot glyph useless…not that people use that glyph anyway). Why not give TSA a personal buff too? 15% for the hunter, 10% for everyone else or something of that nature.
- Hunters 4pc bonus is a complete joke compared to other classes. Why don’t you just give us a static AP buff?
- Can we finally get Mechanicals added to our tracking? This should have been a no brainer to put in the game.
I like the way you think Turovik.
So what change(s) do you think could be made to improve BM DPS? I’m thinking that a realistic approach to this buff would involve a simple change to one or two of the skills further down the tree. The only thing I’m wondering though is whether they’d buff the spec in a way that it puts the pet above the Hunter DPS-wise? I doubt that’d happen, but who knows.
I think a change to Ferocious Inspiration would be a good place to start. A relatively easy buff would be to simply add Steady Shot to the tooltip. Of course, we’d need to buff pet crit a little as well, so how about a 3/6/9/12/15% increased chance to crit with Ferocity, up from 2/4/6/8/10%?
5% additional pet crit and a 9% damage boost to Steady Shot. What do you think?
Sounds good to me. I’d be happy with those changes. 😀
The additional pet crit may be a bit much to ask, but hey, why not..?!
Oh, and while they’re at it… How about buffing Spirit Beast DPS to the Devilsaur level? No way a wolf should be able to provide more overall DPS than an exotic Ferocity pet with a DPS only talent.
It is my personal hope that they really make work of buffing BM again. I started my hunter as my first ‘real’ character after toying a bit with a mage and a warrior. During the entire lifespan of my hunter I have been BeastMastery. It’s just satisfying to see you petDPS being in top 10 of OSheroic for example.
The suggestion made in the original post say buffing
– Ferocious Inspiration: I’d love that 🙂 but upping the pet-crit rate might seem like an easy thing to do. But I think my pet will outdps me then.. as it is sometimes close already and that can never be what the designers want.
How about buffing The Beast Within? Upping the damagebonus we get from it seems like an easy way and it will only affect BeastMastery as this is (imho) THE talent that says ‘I am BeastMastery’.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Read ’em and weep boys! 2v2 just got bitch slapped by the PTR (Season 7 gear will only be available to players with the appropriate 3v3 or 5v5 team rating, 2s will only have access to the previous season’s rewards).
Hey hunterD,
I am pretty optimistic about the changes 3.2 will bring. I just wish it was going live this Tuesday. 😉
I think Turovik was referring to the T8 bonus, due to the “chance on hit”. If it works like IAotH, then results would vary between specs, with BM receiving the largest benefit due to being able to cast more steadies. I suppose he’s thinking a lesser static AP buff would be more practical. I agree, but then again I don’t have any T8, so I don’t know how good the proc rate is. 🙁
The Druid phenomenon is interesting. I chose it because I liked the versatility of the class. I felt like I was getting 3 different characters for the price of one. My main motivation for rolling a Druid was for him to be a tank, but I also liked the idea of being able to heal if needed, or even shift to kitty during a fight and DPS.
Druid really is an amazing class when you consider all of the abilities available to them. My dilemma right now is how to dual spec? I’d like to go Feral/Resto, but then that means toting around another whole set of gear. I haven’t tried Boomkin yet, because I’m afraid I might like it too much. I really want my next 80 to be able to fill roles other than DPS.
Well, I’ve got awhile before I need to worry about plunking down the G for dual spec. My goal right now is just to get him to 80 so that he can fly around Sholazar and pick flowers.
On topic:
I have a feeling that big things is in store for hunters in 3.2 (hopefully, and not 3.3), the devs among with a legion of hunters all seem to agree we need buffs both in pvp and pve so i hope they’ll come.
I’ll bet hunters will be in the top 3 with most text under them at the patch notes 🙂
Turovik, is he complaining about tier 8 or 7 set bonus? Becouse t8 is really nice imo, t7 in other hand.. :p
Off topic:
I dont have any Druid alt myself but yeah, i remember a long thread in some forum wich hunters clearly stated that Druids was the most common alt overwhelming 😉
Yeah, but it gives you a chance to get familiar with your abilities and talents.
Might as well wait a bit on that Druid since you’ll be getting Travel Form at level 16 in the next patch.
For some reason, Hunters seem to gravitate towards the Druid class as an alt, I’m no exception. I think you’ll have a lot of fun later on. Just take your time and enjoy the journey, although heirloom items make the journey a little easier. 😉
New heirloom chest in the next patch too. Stacks with shoulders, so 20% additional experience with both pcs equipped. I know what I’ll be spending my shards on.
Yesterday I’ve been playing my drood for a while and dinged level 12. I must say that… well… it’s just boring as hell moving around on foot and spamming the same talents all the time. I forgot how simple and “long” was the starting process…. Argh!!!! 🙂
Druids are pretty fun. I have one at level 74 that I play on occasion. I plan on leveling him slowly since he’s mainly been reduced to being Garwulf’s flask maker. I love skydiving as druid, then shifting into flight form just before impact. Good stuff.
I just play one toon (my hunter) but I often think about rolling a new alt: a druid. I love the flight form, instant polymorphs and so on. Plus, leveling with heirloom items would me pure fun I guess.
The only thing that kills me is thinking about re-leveling through the old world (argh….) and re-doing most of the Northerend quests. Doing dailies is already enough for me… doing them twice would be just too much!
Hehe. You’re not insane Darkbrew, you’re just a Hunter. So many people think this game is serious business, but WoW is simply entertainment. It’s your $15/mo., do with it what you want.
My first alt that I leveled was another Hunter. I really couldn’t pick another class that I thought would be as much fun to play, plus I wanted to try out a different race, spec, pets, professions, lore, etc…
Of course, that was nearly three years ago before we had dual specs and five stable slots.
Unfortunately, I can’t really think of too many reasons to play him again other than being able to tame new pets. My only motivation would be if I decide to ever roll on a new server, he could be my main there. I am definitely interested in trying out a PvP server. Hmmm… I may just have to do this. 9 more character slots too… woohoo!
I really wish they would do something about BM. It used to be my favorite tree. I’m actually leveling a second hunter (I know, I’m insane).
Even for leveling I find BM to be lackluster compared to the other trees. I’m level 70 and am going with a MM spec.
I’m using a turtle and really liking it.
If pets begin to inherit our crit as they are supposed to with resilience, I am going to be so delighted.
The one thing that bugs me is that Ferocious Inspiration is completely useless in the presence of a Retadin. It’s still useful for the Arcane shot damage, but aside from that it’s quite painful to see my favourite buff be deflated like that.
As far as buffing BM goes, I think that Pet Stat Inheritance would go a long way towards that. More crit, resilience, and other things would help our pets do a lot better, and would be especially beneficial to Beastmasters everywhere.
Something that I really really really miss from old-world is “trapping” and crowd control. We’ve got great tools to trap mobs… but we never use them. WOTLK introduced the new technique called “just gather the mobs around the tank and you’re done” with few exceptions (bosses).
Crowd control was nice because hunters could actually bring something useful. More tactic, more fun.
Of course we can get buffed and bring more DPS but… what’s the point? We’re like mages more or less: bring DPS and you’re ok. We need more, we need some variety in my opinion.