The Gaming Lizard

Patch 3.0.8 seems to be the "Kick BM Hunters hard in the groin" patch. Nearly all BM hunters are crying over the drastic loss over their DPS. Ok fine, I did think BM hunters are OP but looks like this nerf has been too severe. It's either Survial or lolbm.

I'm still a hunter/pally at heart so any nerfs to the class stings. What went wrong? How did the BM fall so far into the chasm of worthlessness?



Let's take a look at BM hunter changes:

* Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.

Not really a big nerf to the hunter but rather to the raid, reducing their raid buff ability.

* Ferocious Inspiration: This talent now also increase the damage the Hunter does with Arcane Shot by 3/6/9%

Minor buff thrown in, doesn't seem to help much.

* Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.

Direct nerf to pet damage.

* Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.

Only affects hunters who don't take Beast Mastery

* Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.

While BM hunter rotations have changed somewhat to add in Arcane Shot, still a nerf overall to hunter class.

* Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.

10% speed loss, pretty big.

* Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.

Used to be 20% i think. Big nerf

* The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Poison (Scorpid) has been lowered.

Nerf to cat users

* Rake: This hunter pet ability has had its damage adjusted to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.

I'm not really into those theorycrafting stuff so I can only offer what shallow opinion of what went wrong. Hunter pets scale too well. As the hunter improves his gear, his pet gets buffs as well. True, a BEASTMASTER needs his pet and that's where the problem lies. Take the pet out of the equation and the hunter is just a child with a water gun.

The Beastmaster tree has 2 pet damage increasing talents, Kindred Spirits and Unleashed Fury, both using %. Old talent wise, this adds to a 40% pet damage increase [correct me if i'm wrong, hard to find old values form talent trees]. New, this gives a 30% increase only.

With the new Serpent Swiftness, pet hits slower by 10% too. No doubt, pets will deal less damage with this patch. Minus all these scaling, hunter pets are pretty weak. With BM taking only 20 talent points in Marksman, their DPS will surely fall. For now it looks like it's the time of SV hunters.