Kheldul on Episode 189 of the Hunting Party Podcast

I'm the big eye beholder guy.

Nice Immediate Changes for SV and MM

Hot off the presses!  Some very nice immediate changes for MM and SV.

• Hunter
  • Marksmanship
    • Chimera Shot's damage has been increased by 50%.
  • Survival
    • Explosive Shot's damage has been increased by 10%.

SV has been considerably lower for me.  Including "AoE fights" (e.g.- Galakras and Dark Shaman).   You'd think with the slimes that an unlimited AoE SV multishot would rule the charts.  It's not bad, but it's not like Tortos bats.  The ExS change is probably not enough to change things until we get into 4pc T16 set bonuses.  I may flip my second Specialization to a pet-tank setup just for the bars and what-not for a bit.

The Marksmanship change has been LONG overdue.  Again they probably need more but it's great to see attention there.  It's also very nice to see it in the right ability.


It's a great way to close out the second week of Siege.  Well in related news, our guild killed three new bosses tonight.  That brings us to 9/14 in normal.  We weren't planning on doing the last boss, Malkorok, but we cleared trash (there's a lot!) while one person watched a video.  I believe we got him on our second try, so I'd call him pretty damn easy.

BM Hunter's AoE Future - Maximizing Beast Cleave Damage

Current State of the Union
In MoP 5.2, we have one big AoE choice with a few small variations.  You run as a Survival Hunter.  You lay down Multishots and get Serpent Spread.  You drop an Explosive Trap.  If you're rigged for AoE, you run with Thrill of the Hunt and slam those multishots in and toss in Barrage fire.  You also toss in free LnL ExShot procs.  If you are BM you do what you can, but you don't see the enemy health bars drop very fast.


BM's AoE Future
It is very likely that BM will have it's AoE buffed in MoP 5.3.  The big buff is coming from an increase to Beast Cleave damage.  It's going from a +30% to a +75% damage application.  This isn't going to require BM to have special builds to better AoE.  But you will want to do things a little better to maximize your AoE damage.

Maximizing BM Beast Cleave Damage

1. Beast Cleave is a buff put on your pet that is short lived.  Have a timer bar to see that buff duration!  I recommend a NeedToKnow.
2. Don't let the buff drop!  Multi-shot starts the buff.  Ensure that you have enough focus to multi-shot again so you can keep the buff up on your pet.
3. Make sure to have your pet in range of the AoE mobs!  The redesigned Blink Strikes may help squeak out a bit less travel time.
4. If you read the tooltips, Beast Cleave's damage makes the " pet's melee attacks also strike all other nearby enemy targets for 30% as much".  Soon that will be 75%.  So I currently pop Bestial Wrath to boost the pet damage by +20%.  DISCLAIMER: I don't know if this is applied only once to the pet's melee attacks or if it double-dips and is applied to the melee attacks and the bonus cleave attacks, or if it is applied to neither.  I've looked but only spent about twenty minutes trying to determine the benefit or non.  I'll need to be much more scientific and do it without any equipment that can proc with a nice quiet target dummy cluster. 
5. In addition to macroing in Bestial Wrath with my BM's MultiShot, I also have it engage the enemy, send in my pet so it doesn't want to smack something else for a second or two, and kick off Rabid if it's off CD.  I also have it not complain noisily.

#showtooltip Multi-Shot
/startattack
/petattack
/petassist
/cast Multi-Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Rabid
/cast Bestial Wrath
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1

What Else Can BM Do for AoE?

1. Remember to drop the explosive trap.
2. Line up a nice barrage or glaive attack.
3. If you have a DPS worm, you might experiment with burrow.
4. Use Focus Fire conservatively as it drains your pet's Frenzy stacks. 

Eager Cleaver

I saw a fair number of requests for it in the official feedback thread.  I made my case here and requested it somewhere in the 100+ pages in the thread.  I think it's been pretty universally requested.  And GC is making something happen:

Beast Cleave - damage increased from 30% to 50% of original damage.

The Beast Cleave change was because we felt Survival's multi-target damage was too far ahead. We don't mind good AE as a spec niche, but it shouldn't be so high that you feel like an absolute idiot for not swapping to that spec.

I'm not sure I'm happy with the number -- as it seems a bit low -- but I am happy with the sentiment.  We've certainly seen very rough numbers thrown around before.  MM and SV buffs were stated at nice high round numbers and then got cleaved down ... to lower very round numbers.  The "50% of original damage" value sounds incredibly round and subject to change.  We'll have to see which way it goes.  If it goes up then we will not be compelled to have an SV spec.  If it goes down or isn't a noticeable change to our AoE capability, then we may feel that is a requirement.  Beast cleave is one source of our AoE damage, but hardly all.  So a +20% to it may not be meaningful.

FWIW, I either have my alternate talent as either a pet-tank setup or a PvP setup.  I haven't done too much with either since MoP, but I am starting to line up a pet-tank suit.  On many somewhat challenging boss fights I'm swapping talents or glyphs -- but never specs.

Continued "Spell" Cata Changes

Curious Observation #1: Are there mana drain and disarm effects with Chimera if those venoms are gone now?

Curious Observation #2: Kill Shot no focus cost, but nerfed and CD extended.  Hmm.

Curious Observation #3: Multi-shot.  Kinda expected but a little disappointing in the "how is that supposed to work??" area.

Abstracted from MMO-Champion:

Beast Mastery

• Viper Venom and Scorpid Venom seems to be gone.
• Widow Venom no longer mentions "Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.", I guess the 2 previous venoms are indeed gone.
• Focus Fire now has a 15 sec cooldown. Down from 30 sec.
• Improved Kill Command now Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 5/10% instead of reducing its cooldown.

Marksmanship

• Kill Shot now deals 150% weapon damage (down from 200%) and scales with 30% of your Attack Power (down from 40%). Base damage reduced by 50%. Cooldown increased from 6 sec to 10 sec. Focus cost removed.
• Multi-Shot - Fires several missiles, hitting your current target and all enemies within yards of that target for x% of weapon damage. / 40 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
• Aimed Shot no longer deals 300% of weapon damage, now deals [ 40% of RAP + 681 ] damage. Cast time increased from 2 sec to 3 sec.
• Arcane Shot base damage reduced by 60%, now scales from 19% of Attack Power, up from 17%.
• Chimera Shot no longer deals 190% weapon damage, now deals [ 24% of RAP + 401 ].

Survival

• Serpent Spread - Targets hit by your Multi-Shot are also afflicted by your Serpent Sting equal to 6/9 sec of its total duration.
• Point of No Escape no longer affects Freezing Arrow.

Hunter AoE

All DPS classes need to be able to AoE with some effectiveness.  We currently do fairly well. We do great as single target DPS, so we don't need to be the best in AoE.  Personally, I feel that warlocks, boomkins, and mages should be better than hunters, spriests, and melee in the AoE department.  Our trap and volley are both nice and get the job done.  Heck, if you're SV, you can trap, volley, wait for a LnL proc (or two if you drop a frost trap too) lob in 3 Explosive Shots, and go back to volley and trap.  You can be top trash dps if you want.

In Cataclysm, we will no longer have Volley.  We'll be "making more use of multishot" to paraphrase.  I have to agree that our channelled Volley spell is kinda hokey and using a "shot" is a better idea.  The idea that we have too many buttons and need some trimmed is a bit of a red herring IMHO.

Losing Volley will also further remove one more item from our losing rogue-hunter battle.  We can't damage them unless we see them.  And we can't get them out of stealth with an AoE.  To that end, I say fix the real problem: Flare really kinda sucks and should have its travel time greatly reduced and it should have its cooldown removed to just the global cooldown.

In Cataclysm, we'll be able to launch our traps as if we attached dynomite sticks to the arrows or had a grenade launcher slung under the barrel of our rifles.  That's nice, but it's not good AoE DPS or expected to be good AoE DPS.  Plus, the cooldown on traps suck.

So we're told Multishot will work to fill the void of the Volley.  Honestly, Multishot seems hokey too.  I kinda get it for bows, but don't really visualize it for crossbows or guns.  And Multishot in its current form doesn't come close to filling an AoE void.  So Multishot must change too, right? 

Will it be a cone-like attack?  A cone-like attack sounds like a shotgun, but where does that leave bows and crossbows?  Will it simply change to hit more than just three targets and remain a bit odd?

What about something crazy?  How about a shot that sounds like it should be called TNT Shot.  Target one mob and fire it.  It does instant damage to all mobs near it.  Sounds like it should be called Explosive Shot, right?  That's how right it is for the hunter class.  Oh, and they already gave us something similar 20 levels ago.  Not that we ever used the thing. 

Then again perhaps we should all just run around with a different pet.