Blue Post Christmas List!
December 22, 2009Bah Humbug. Bornakk says:
The spirit beasts are not the real issue from our perspective. We this spirit beasts are doing fine and we don’t want them to be the only choice for BM hunters since speccing BM should give a player more choices for pets (ideally) and not less.
The problem mainly lies with the wolf just being overpowered. We did consider nerfing them for patch 3.3 but decided that the nerf to pretty much all hunter PvE dps was not worth the benefit of providing more options for pets. Keep in mind though that we have and will continue to make unpopular or even controversial nerfs if we feel they are a benefit for the game.
And:
It may not be great for raiding but is still good for leveling while both Marks and Surv are competitive for raiding. I wouldn’t expect any big changes for now.
I’m glad wolves didn’t get a nerf for christmas, however reading between the lines, it looks like Blizzard feels our DPS might need a bit of a boost. They really hate it when one pet is clearly superior to all others, so the fact that they chose not to nerf wolves speaks volumes. That said, be prepared to have to pick another pet soon. Here’s hoping I can find a level 80 version of it ;)
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I think Blizzard is missing the boat here, not just on spirit beasts, but on all the exotic pets in general.
The benefit of the 51 point talent in any tree should be so significant that the players are compelled to take that final talent in that tree. The current benefit of taking the 51 talent point in BM gives you the ability to tame an exotic pet (which according to Bornakk is more of a vanity thing than added DPS), and adding 4 extra talent points for your pet (which amounts to borderline meaningful DPS increase).
The exotic pets (spirit pets included) should be buffed so that they do their intended roles more effectively than their non-exotic counterparts. And this should come in the form of inherent better abilities or stats and the 4 bonus talent points.
I’m not sure I buy that- the 51 pointer gives access to the bottom tier of talents in the pet talent tree, which are indeed a large DPS increase. Whether the pet is exotic or not, however, I believe should be a vanity (or at best, utility) choice. So for example- a BM hunter can provide a second major armor debuff. If anything, I’d like to see other exotics (maybe the spirit beast, for example) provide other debuffs- maybe something equivalent to the locks’ curse of elements.
The issue isn’t whether the 51-point talent is good enough that a character who would otherwise go 50/0/21 (just to toss an example out there) will go 51/0/20 to pick up the 51-point talent. The issue is whether a character would would otherwise go 0/51/20 or 20/0/51 will go 51/0/20 because to do otherwise would be to gimp her DPS.
Regardless of what the armchair developers would like you to think, it is significantly difficult to make a 51-point talent desirable enough that players will choose it instead of taking everything else in the tree and putting the 51st point elsewhere, but not so desirable that it becomes the only valid spec.
In other words, it’s tough to balance exotic pets so that someone who’s already Beast Mastery will want to take them but someone who’s not already BM won’t be forced to go BM or give up their raid spot.
The spirit beasts are not the real issue from our perspective.
Translation: We have no idea how the game that we built works, nor any idea how raiders think.
So you think that spirit beasts are the real issue with hunters? That we’ll top the dps meters and be wanted by all raids over all other dps classes once Blizzard wises up and buffs spirit beasts?
No, it’s not the cardinal issue. Nailing down the “cardinal issue” behind Hunters would probably be impossible.
That said, Spirit Beasts ARE a very large issue, given that they are worthless for anything more than AFKing in Dalaran.
I’d be happy with an untextured cube for raiding, as long as it gave the best DPS.
I like the cube idea. Plus it has so many comical naming options. Like…Boxxy.
That’s pretty much the only one I can think of, aside from a weighted companion cube reference. But still, funny. Maybe the cube would shoot lasers and stuff too. Awesome.
I am now rooting for a dps cube.
Cube pet family special ability: click pet to interrupt casting, double click to wipe raid. Only works if there are 5 Cube pets in the raid. Using this ability applies a 2 minutes debuff to clicker. 1 minute cooldown on ability.
Heh, that sounds vaguely familiar ;)
Yeah I got the ” untextured cube” from a prolific poster on the wowhead forums and I have seen it referenced by GC in blue posts. Heresay has that the first usage was from BRK.
I saw a hunter solo Chillmaw yesterday with a gorilla pet. I was blown away by this as i have never seen anyone but paladins solo Chillmaw. When i asked him (Rennast) if he was specced BM he said no, he was SV and he couldn’t solo Chillmaw as BM because BM didnt have enough dps and had mana problems. He also mentioned a change to cower in 3.3 that really helped mitigate damage to his gorilla. So I’m wondering now why any hunter would play as BM right now if even questing and solo play are better as SV. imo Blizzard is wrong about BM being the best solo play spec and they really need to add something to the sad BM tree cuz BM is not “Better” at anything compared to the other specs. I stopped playing my BM hunter in WoLK mainly cuz BM is not fun to play.
Chillmaw has been pretty solo-able for hunters for a while. With iLevel 245+ it’s crazy easy.
Generally, if you don’t already have BM as a spec there’d be no reason to flip to it for taking down Chillmaw.
I solo Chillmaw in Marksman spec with my wolf, it’s pretty easy.
Think I started soloing him in mostly 232 gear and when I transitioned into mostly 245 it became very easy.
And not only is soloing as MM/SV sometimes easier, it’s also much more interesting. I think the problem with BM is that it’s boring, and that applies to soloing just as much to raiding, because the whole solo strength of the spec is basically that your pet can survive and if you shoot enough steadies whatever it’s tanking will die. Yawn!
On the upside, even if u can’t find a lvl 80 version of the pet u want blizz has nerfed the exp requirements for pet lvling…
I find the easiest way to do it is to solo the first dragonkin that are in nexxus… they give a decent amount of exp for ur pet even at 79, almost half a bar per kill, and you can reset the instance once they are clear… i lvled a new wolf skin and my arena crab from 75 to 80 in no time flat….
That’s awesome advice! Thanks! I will try that out next time I’m grinding a pet :)