This was originally going to be a commentary on the recent Blizzard Hunter Q&A, however two things occurred to me: 1.) I’m going to work in 25 minutes, which clearly isn’t time for an adequate post on the subject, and 2.) MMO-Champion has since updated with some interesting Beast Master tidbits from Blizzard. So I’m going to write about that latter thing instead (I’m still intending on writing a Q&A commentary, though, since I feel like I’ve got some unique things to say about it– look for it this weekend or on Monday.)
Anyway, let’s take a look at this latest news:
Arcane Shot and Beast Mastery
Yeah that was my point. The solutions are:1) Give BM a signature shot and try to give Arcane a situational use.
2) Buff Arcane so deep in BM that nobody else will get that talent.
3) Accept that BM needs to be buffed in ways other than shots.There are good points and bad points to each tree having a signature shot. A bad point is that it makes e.g. set bonuses hard because you can’t boost things like Explosive Shot easily. A good point is the trees feel a little more different rather than just swapping Explosive Shot for Raccoon Shot if you were BM.
Arcane Shot and Beast Mastery (#2)
If we buff the holy heck out of Arcane, then every Survival hunter just shoots Arcane and won’t take Explosive Shot. Since a lot of the Survival tree is designed to prop up Explosive Shot, we think this would a bad thing. Hence, we have to be very careful about how much we buff Arcane. If we do it in a very deep BM talent, then it’s probably safe. If we do it baseline or through a glyph or an upper talent, then we might get into problems. By contrast, buffing Explosive or Chimera is pretty safe because no other hunter can ever use those shots. BM doesn’t have a “this is BM only” attack to buff, unless it applies to the pet.[…]
As I have said a couple of times now, a very deep BM talent to buff Arcane Shot might work. Otherwise, most of the BM damage is tied up in the pet or at least the pet being alive. Perhaps BM could benefit from a totally new mechanic, even it wasn’t a signature shot, so that we would have more knobs to turn when we needed to buff BM (and only BM).
What it means: Blizzard is aware of Beast Mastery needing a buff, preferably through more buttons to press. I know they are being wary on this though; one thing they mentioned in the Q&A is that one of the reasons Beast Mastery has a more simplified rotation is to allow you to have more leeway to focus on pet control on difficult fights. They were quite wary about Beast Masters having to juggle both a complex rotation, and having to keep your pet alive on Sarth or something.
My thoughts? We can easily fit another shot in there without getting “too complex”.
Honestly my mind is literally stuffed full with ideas on ways they could do this or otherwise buff Beast Mastery deep in the tree, but since I don’t work for Blizzard, we’ll just have to see how things go. My thoughts on a potential “Raccoon Shot” (we’ll play along here) though?
I think it’s fair to say we want to differentiate it from Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot, because we like the different talent trees being unique. My initial thought is to attach a Black Arrow-like effect to it: you toss up your “Raccoon Shot” which does some damage on hit, and also has an effect for a short period of time afterwards; damage increase, extra armor penetration, increases the critical strike damage bonus from all attacks you make on the target– that kind of thing. If we really wanted to get snazzy we could make it affect the pet as well. You could name the ability after a Poison Dart Frog or something. That’s pretty Beast Master-y, right?
My only concern on that is that it becomes too similar to Black Arrow which, again, sort of nullifies some of the uniqueness between trees. Black Arrow is a pretty signature Survival move, there is really nothing that feels like it in any of the other trees right now. But, it seems like a viable idea to me.
Blizzard’s other idea was just to drop the idea of a “Raccoon Shot” all together (which somewhat saddens me *pets the Fuzzy Theoretical Raccoon*) and simply really buff Arcane Shot deep in the Beast Mastery tree. They have already sort of done this via the new Ferocious Inspiration, but it’s clearly not enough of a buff. If they were to go this route, I think we’d have to forego a flat damage increase and go with something more interesting. Reducing the cooldown actually seems fairly reasonable to me. Perhaps we could attach it to Longevity. Or maybe all your Arcane Shots are guaranteed to be critical hits while under the effect of the Beast Within (That would get you three guaranteed Arcane Shot crits right there.) I dunno, these are all just general ideas I’m tossing out, but you get the picture!
The most exciting part, though, was the mention that “Perhaps BM could benefit from a totally new mechanic, even it wasn’t a signature shot, so that we would have more knobs to turn when we needed to buff BM (and only BM).” I am having trouble envisioning a new interesting hunter mechanic that isn’t pets, shots, and traps, but I would love to hear some ideas on this, because it could potentially be very cool. Dontcha think?
Overall I’m excited to see what the future may hold for Beast Mastery, though I’m trying not to get my hopes up about getting all these neat changes before the next expansion. Better to be pleasently surprised than disappointed I say! Beast Masters really are in a good position at the moment; through the course of World of Warcraft’s history we have gone from being pretty useless to being pretty awesome (albeit via Steady Shot spam), to being sort of middle-of-the-road but with some stuff to do. All they need now is to give us a little more stuff to do, to boost us into what I see as an ideal position for us.
I’m not in any rush right now; I’ve been playing a lot of my babyhunters while Tawyn takes a vacation in Stormwind and makes millions of flasks and potions to sell every few days. Time to sit back and see what happens.
And let’s hope Blizz throws in a free raccoon, cause they’re cute.
Hopefully the shot graphic would be of the hunter grabbing a raccoon from their bag, and flinging it at the boss 🙂
A raccoon pet sure would be cute. Shifty eyes, built in robber mask, and fuzzy FTW! I’d be cool with raccoon shot too 🙂
It’s not technically a shot, but I always thought of Bestial Wrath/Beast Within to be the “signature shot” of BM. I’d prefer if they moved Bestial Wrath up to 51 and them buffed it, modified it, whatevered it to make it equivalent/balanced. Or put in a new 51 that improved the existing Beastial Wrath (maybe reduced the cooldown and/or added some other cool effect).
I mean, shooting things with your crossbow/gun/bow is fine and all, but if you’re a Beast Master, shouldn’t your signature talent be something related a deep connection to your pet.
gotta agree with Methuus. I would not like to see BM just “get a shot.” I’m a BM because of the connectivity with my pets. Giving the BM hunter a new/improved dps shot? Meh. No different from SV having Explosive or MM having Chimera….big deal. Come on Blizz! Use your imagination….have my pets do the majority of my dps and I’ll keep them alive.
It’s one of the weirder aspects of BM. We blow our BW, and we soar above every other DPS…for about 18 seconds, then we plonk back down to below average.
Honestly, it would be problematic to add any more oomph to that. Our big issue is that is only in effect for 18 seconds out of about 70.
I think the best way to make BM hunters on par again, is remove the word “melee” from Aspect of the Beast. Have it give a 10% flat boost to our AP, and a 10% boost to our pets AP. In effect, you trade off Aspect of the Dragonhawk’s dodge & passive DR for better gear scaling at high gear levels.
Sure, tag it onto Aspect Mastery and push that up the tree.
A new mechanic that is not pet related, shot related, or trap related. That one is a tough one, but here are a couple of ideas. They are both “pet” related to an extent, just with an extra oomph.
#1 – Give BM hunters a talent that adds an ability to call forth wild animals (racoons??) to fight along your side for a brief period of time. Think “Barov Peasant Caller” with animals instead of of peasants.
#2 – Add one more aspect to the Beast Mastery talent that allows to call 2 pets. This would be OP of course, so there would have to be some negatives to allowing this (less damage or something).
Both suggestions would be very BM, and #2 would definitely be a new mechanic.
Raccoons are cute, but I don’t like them because I have pet turtles. There is a story involved, but I’m not telling it here ’cause it’s sad and kinda eww.
@ icedtrip
I like the #2 idea. Maybe have 2 pets out, but they can’t use special abilities or something? (like having an NPC pet, i.e. the mechanical yeti combat pet or something) Or maybe just nerf their damage while both are active. Hmm, this would require some thought.
I love your blog, but I think you overlooked the biggest news to come out of the Q&A. GC hinted Hunters are moving away from mana in the next Xpac. This was a rumor I had heard from ‘sources’ during Wrath beta. Something they were experimenting with internally.
Here’s the relevant part of the Q&A:
Q: Are there any long term plans to possibly removing the need for hunters to rely on a different resource system then mana?
A: I hate to do this to you, but this is a great BlizzCon question. For these Q&As, we’d like to keep the focus on each class’s current status and short-term plans, but at BlizzCon we’ll be happy to go into some more detail on our long-term vision for them.
Love the idea of racoon shot; do it! Also i think we can do well with a buffed BW or some cool 51 point spell where you summon a bunch of critters to fight, like army of the dead. Srs, DKs have so many more cool spells than we do.
Raccoon shot: Your pet’s attacks ignore the target’s armor for the next 10 seconds.
@ Icedtrip
“#1 – Give BM hunters a talent that adds an ability to call forth wild animals (racoons??) to fight along your side for a brief period of time. Think “Barov Peasant Caller” with animals instead of of peasants.”
This was my first thought…something akin to Spirit Wolves, or the Forests that druids pop.
While I realize that BM hunters are affected more by their pet dieing, I just have to say that any good hunter is going to be doing the same amount of pet management to keep their pet alive and attacking. Or maybe I’m just an odd-ball since I manage my pet now just as much as I ever did when I was BM.
@Methuus: /agree. I think what happens should be related to BW/TBW, not necessarily a new shot (although from a design point of view a signature shot for each tree is awesome, mostly for ease of balance/modification).
@Llyrra: “the majority” brings in problems, though – what if something out of your control (such as another player, in PvP) kills your pet? All of a sudden you’re basically dragging your heels until you can get your pet up again.
@Icedtrip: Something like #2 was actually included in Wrath beta. Beast Mastery (the talent) used to make it so you could tame two pets at once instead of one exotic one. It didn’t really work out, though – I could be completely wrong, but as I remember, not only were there balance problems (send one pet to attack the healer and one to stick to the rogue so he couldn’t stealth), but the functionality of the second pet action bar was buggy (what why did my raptor just stealth instead of my cat?).
@Rob: I don’t really like that idea, personally. Not only does it detract from the uniqueness of AotD, but it leads to a power creep pretty quickly. Another way of saying “DKs have this cool AotD thing that hunters don’t” is “AotD is a bunch powerful than what we have, so we should get it too” or “we should get our normal tricks *and* the cool ones DKs have”. It’s a really slippery slope.
@Lupius: PvPers would cry buckets. Of blood.
@All: Ok, I’ve done my bitching, time for my ideas. Whatever goes through needs to scale reasonably well, as that’s an already expressed concern. Here’s a few ideas off the top of my head.
#1: Longevity: Now also increases the duration of your Bestial Wrath ability by 16/33/50%. Pretty obvious; fixes a problem stated above, that the Beast Master only really shines when in Bestial Wrath. The downside is that BW moves away from “awesome, short duration cooldown” (similar to other class’ cooldowns, not least of which is Arcane Power) towards “this is how I DPS, and when I don’t have BW up I pay less attention because it doesn’t matter as much anyway).
#2: New talent: Improved Bestial Wrath, tier 9. Requires 1 point in The Beast Within. Your Bestial Wrath ability now increases your agility by 10/20/30% for 10 seconds after its duration ends. This faces the same drawbacks of the previous idea but adds a neat new mechanic. Obviously some of the other talents would have to be condensed a bit – I was thinking Serpent’s Swiftness down to three talent points (6/13/20% benefit) and Cobra Strikes down to two (30/60% proc chance), but it doesn’t matter too much. I didn’t want to simply change BW or TBW because I felt that it added too much weight to a single talent point.
#3: Cobra Strikes: Now also increases the damage of your next Arcane Shot by 15/30/45% or Kill Shot by 6/13/20%. Passive DPS increase for Arcane Shot, though it faces the same problems Hot Streak does.
#4: Cobra Strikes: In addition, now also causes your Arcane Shot critical strikes to increase your agility by 6/13/20% for 15 seconds. Another passive DPS increase. The most simplistic and possibly best of my ideas so far. Note that it applies to *all* your Arcane Shot crits, not just 20/40/60% of them.
#5: Kindred Spirits: Pet damage bonus increased to 8/16/24/32/40%. Now also decreases physical damage done by the hunter by 2/4/6/8/10% and causes the pet to be healed for 5/10/15/20/25% of all healing done to the hunter. Could change to “…and causes the pet to be healed for 2/4/6/8/10% of all damage done by the hunter.” The idea is to shift some damage away from the hunter and toward the pet, but also make the pet less squishy.
@ Euripides – I agree 100%!
@ Llyrra – I actually do not like the notion of my pet doing 50% or more of my damage. 40%, I’m fine with, but 50% or more and it really starts to make me feel like I may as well just sit back and auto-shot while my pet does the work. It was bad enough during that brief bit at the start of WotLK where my cat was doing 55% of our collective DPS on Patchwerk. That’s all just my personal opinion though!
@ Honorshammer – never fear, this post was actually NOT about the Q&A and the thing you pointed out will definitely be covered when I do my Q&A post!
@ Theaah – I 100% agree with you; I have actually never quite understood the “Beast Masters have to work harder because of pet management” thing. Though it flatters me when people (including Blizzard) say that about my spec and talk of it as challenging in that way, I have always strongly thought that all specs should really be putting equal amounts of effort into pet management.
Personally, I still like my Flintlocke-inspired idea for a new Beast Mastery “X Shot”. 😉
Pretty good work for only 25 minutes in which to write! (Or had you already drafted it…or do you type with Rapid Fire ticking??)
Nice work as always, Pike. 🙂 I must say, you’ve done a fantastic job of filling the void left by BRK.
Sharpened Fangs
Your pets special attacks ignore the 33/66/100% of the targets armor
something like this to set BM apart. Rampage; Calls forth multiple pets from our stable for ?? Secs.
I didn’t read the original post that closely, but the idea about the sting that’s sorta like black arrow made me think it’d be nice to have one named after a poison, but the damage of dot would be smaller each tick… ’cause the enemy is getting more resistant to the poison :3 ehe
Interesting article, good read overall.
I have to fall in with the “don’t want a shot” crowd. BM is pretty much about our pet (which is why i never got the QQ over my pet doing 30+% of my dps or damage). Having our pets better able to survive through encounters, PVE or PVP, along with some type of dps boost deep in the BM tree (i like the improved Beast Wrath idea). These two improvements to our tree would be a step in the right direction to help out BM hunters, imho.
As to the multiple pet for X seconds ideas: Remember how we felt when Blizz decided to give rogues Misdirection? And, to add insult to injury, make it “better” than ours? Personally, i like the 2 pet/multi-animal ideas that have been thrown around: but, i would rather have a “unique to our class” ability than a watered-down photocopy of AotD.
NEW HUNTER SHOT!
THE CHUCK SHOT!
You shoot a small mammal at twice the speed of sound at the target, causing the animal to burrow deep into the enemy. Causes a shiton of bleed damage(making Rhino useful!) and spawns a small mammal guardian that acts like a pet Ghoul, sorta. Crits and such proc Ferocious insp and stuff, benefit from talents, etc.
I believe the BM signature “shot” is Bestial Wrath/Beast Within. Like someone else posted previously, With BW my damage surpasses everybody until the 18 seconds are up. If they put something in the Beast Mastery talent to add some extra time to it or reduce the cooldown for BW.