Beast mastery is a fan favorite. It was also unbalanced for the first part of this expansion, and got nerfed hard in patch 3.0.8. After that patch, the majority of people who played BM in a raiding environment were people who really liked the playstyle, and had more skill with it than they did using another spec. All the “fair weather” beast masters moved on to survival, and then marks, and now, it seems, back to survival. All this while, however, beast mastery has been getting small buffs to bring it back into the fold of “raid viability” (which I define as being at a point where you are not asked to respec if your guild is hitting the enrage timer on a boss).
The first steps have already been taken, and some of the die-hard BM enthusiasts have already started to give the fair weather players a run for their money. The next step is live on the PTR, and while that doesn’t mean it’s coming for sure, I’d not bet against it:
According to mmo-champion, the beast within now gets an additional 30% mana cost reduction to spells cast while it’s active, in addition to the 20% it already has.
This enrage is going through some interesting changes- it had to be changed to reduce it’s overpowering force in arena, so they reduced its duration to 10 seconds and added a passive 10% to hunter DPS that works even when you’re not enraged. This ended up being a slight PvE buff [edit: added link]. 10% of about half your damage is slightly better than 8 more seconds of enrage time per use of bestial wrath. This buff came at a cost, however, of mana. The amount of time you could save 20% on your shots was reduced. And that brings us to today’s discovery: increasing from 20% to 50% mana savings while enraged more than makes up for the lower enrage time in terms of mana. Now it’s a slight PvE buff with no strings attached. Except you can’t make a beast cleave arena team any more.
Of course, all this analysis is comparing raw DPS throughput on a fight like patchwerk. All current content has encounters that bias toward one spec or another. Yogg and faction champions are fights where BM does well (because of DPS continuance through gaze avoidance and the enrage breaking all the same CC as a trinket), but the twin val’kyr is biased against them (since our pets do not benefit directly from the DPS buffs we can collect). Comparing specs is not a science, and the only benchmark we can use doesn’t reflect many of the encounters we currently play.
I’m theory-crafting it as a smidge over a 2% dps gain.
I show slightly less (about 1.5% at a 50:50 ratio), and the higher the pet’s damage in ratio to the master’s, the lower the bonus from TBW gets.
I think labeling folks who respec’d out of BM to SV or MM for their raiding spec as “fair weather” is harsh. We respec’d to a higher DPS spec so that we are invited to raids and certain instance runs. I will submit that the majority of folks who are raiding as SV or MM has BM as their second spec. BM is an universally loved spec for all hunters. Whether one raid as one is irrelevant to their affinity to BM.
We respec not because we are following fads, but we do so to keep up with progression.
I certainly am in the same boat, but I believe that the “fair weather” term applies, and is not at all harsh. The only reason that it has a negative connotation is because “fair weather friends” are not true friends, but we’re talking about a spec, which is more like a tool than a friend. If you can’t use a screwdriver to do the job, get the hammer out, and you’re not hurting anyone. Except whatever you’re trying to unscrew.
If the OP is not referring to the hunters who spec’d of out BM to raid in a negative way, then I apologize for my reply. :)
I might have chosen my words better, but yeah, nothing negative about picking the highest performing spec. That’s what this blog is all about.
See, I had always thought it was called adapting =P
Granted, Survival was my primary play choice over the years so while it’s nice to see it in the prime, it does feel kinda sad being lumped into the majority now.
(great blog/podcast, this does fill the void for me from when BRK quit months back.)
One of the funniest tags I’ve seen on a forum was (and I forget who and where) “Survival before it was cool” :)
BM is an universally loved spec for most hunters.
Fixed that for you.
I’ve got to admit, one of the nice things about playing a “nerfed spec” is that… more often than not… the things you see on the PTR are buffs! =)
I miss BM. It’ll be awesome when/if I can get back to it and still top those meters.
I don’t miss BM as much as I thought I would. Mostly because I don’t really like any of the exotic pets, least of all devilsaurs… is it possible to have top BM dps without an exotic pet?
Well, in *theory*, the Devilsaur is the thing to have. I enjoyed mine in the day.
However, in *practice*, the Devilsaur is a pain because of their hitbox size. Large hitbox == eat all the AoE and stuff on the ground. Dead pet != “top BM dps”.
They also stop attacking when they change size so they can reposition their big butts into a void zone. Personally, I’d take the second highest theoretical DPS pet that won’t do that and go with it instead. I believe that’s (ugh) a wolf again.
Last I checked Devilsaur > Raptor > Wolf for Beast Mastery.
Though wolf may inch up come the Bestial Wrath changes.
Devilsaur, meet Baby Spice.
Does that work in combat? If so, that would be a game changer :P
Ok… this is a post related to BM hunters, but…
“All the “fair weather” beast masters moved on to survival, and then marks, and now, it seems, back to survival”.
“back to survival”? why ? what is going on with survivel spec? all Hunters that I know are MM spec lovers. What is going on with Surv spec?
3.2 buffed lock and load, and 3.2.2 is going to nerf armor pen. For most levels of gear that I’ve checked, SV will perform slightly better then MM.
3.2.2… got it.
Expect 3.2.2 and patches to follow to promote BM heavily. All the gear from TotC seems to favor AP not Agi, which from what I have learned is the leaning for BM hunters. Although I dont notice a large difference on the spreadsheet with AP gems over Agi.
–T9 set bonus = BM heavy
On a side note I did VoA and Ulduar last night and was BM for most of the night if i recall, I actually was quite impressed with myself :D
I’m using a worm because of our usual lack of armor debuff so my dps is lower in that respec but I still wasn’t dead last as I expected. I did a lot less than usual as SV though. I need practice also :P
A huge part of DPS in any spec is knowledge of its rotation and cooldown usage.