The Thrill Of The Wild: Tier 19 Hunter Set Bonuses

I noticed this was the most searched entry on TotW, which is understandable given the new tier sets coming out with the release of the Nighthold raid on Tuesday; however, the information in this post was a bit outdated, from way back in alpha, so I figured it'd be worth updating so people aren't confused about what's coming out.

The biggest change for tier pieces in Legion is there are now 6 possible pieces, in addition to the Chest, Legs, Shoulders, Gloves and Boots, which we've had for the last few expansions, there's now a Cloak set piece. I imagine the reasoning for this is we'll all have different legendaries, and this gives us a chance to have all of your legendaries and the four set, if the only legendaries you have are the same slots where tier pieces go. This also has the benefit of giving you a little bit of leeway if you get a really high titanforged or warforged off-piece, which is nice.

Beast Mastery

2 Piece - When you use Bestial Wrath, all of your currently summoned Dire Beasts gain 50% increased damage for 15 seconds.

If you haven't been playing BM in Legion, and aren't up to date on the current state of Bestial Wrath, it has a one and a half minute cooldown, but the cooldown goes down by 15 seconds every time you cast Dire Beast. Baseline, that means if you use Dire Beast on CD, even if you don't have a single Dire Beast proc from Wild Call, the longest you'll ever go in between Bestial Wraths is about 40 seconds; giving you a 25% up-time for BW. With Wild Call procs, the Bestial Wrath CD will be much lower.

With the 2 piece set bonus, however, you're looking at a 25 second CD for Bestial Wrath baseline. This also increases the value of your crits, because each Wild Call will translate into a 23 second reduction in BW's CD, instead of the base 15 seconds.

4 Piece - Dire Beast reduces the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by an additional 8 seconds.

With the 4 piece set bonus, however, you're looking at a 25 second CD for Bestial Wrath baseline. This also increases the value of your crits, because each Wild Call. Fortunately, they've changed this set piece bonus, to affect all Dire Beasts during Bestial Wrath (regardless of if you summon them after casting BW). Because Dire Beast reduces the CD of Bestial Wrath by 23 seconds (with the 2 set), you'll often want to cast BW before casting DB if both are available. And because BW is available so often, you're never going to want to delay it; with longer CDs you can often delay them to line them up with other CDs or use them to handle particular fight mechanics, but with this short of a CD, you're much more likely to lose a full use of the CD if you don't cast it as often as possible.

Basically, this set bonus looks like an RNG game. Every once in a while it might be cool, if you just got a lot of procs of Wild Call in a row, summoning a bunch of dire beasts and simultaneously reducing the CD of your BW to 0, but most of the time this is going to be a buff to one, maybe 2 Dire Beasts.

Marksmahship

2 Piece - Every 35 Focus you spend reduces the cooldown of Trueshot by 1 second.

On the current 8th ranked Odyn Mythic fight, which was the closest I could find to what will likely be the most common rotation in Nighthold, he used 15.3 focus per second. This seems like a good expectation, though it's certainly possible to use more focus per second, if you're using barrage and Sidewinders, but in most cases, averaging 15 focus/second should be about right. That means we'll be seeing a 1 second reduction of Trueshot every 2 seconds at the very best, sometimes only a 1 second reduction every 3 seconds. This should bring your average cooldown for Trueshot down from 2 minutes 30 seconds (with 3/3 Quick Shot) to 1 minute 44 seconds.

Unfortunately, Trueshot isn't as amazing of a cooldown as it was in patch 7.0 or 7.1, as the value of Haste for MM hunters has decreased. This will, however, remain a strong improvement, as Trueshot will give us significantly more mobility, as we'll have significantly more time in each fight where we can always cast an Arcane Shot + Marked Shot combo, which do significant damage while we're moving.

And of course, Trueshot provides the same benefit of 100% vulnerability up-time which wasn't as big of a deal when we were all using Sidewinders before patch 7.1.5. So greater Trueshot up-time will help get rid of those stretches of bad luck when we don't get any Marking Targets procs.

4 Piece - Trueshot also reduces the cost of all your focus spenders by 15%.

This is a fairly boring 4pc set bonus. As MM hunters in 7.1.5, we won't have a lot of focus problems because we have access to spammable Arcane or Multi- Shots. However, with the Patient Sniper talent, there may be times where having less expensive Aimed Shots may allow you to squeeze one more in at the end of Vulnerability, when Patient Sniper is at it's highest buff.

In general, it's looking like this won't be a big enough buff to make getting the 4pc set worth while if you have the option of higher ilvl off pieces, especially legendaries. Unfortunately, because there are so many possible pieces you could have with various titanforged, warforged or socketed bonuses, there won't be a hard and fast rule as to when exactly off-pieces will be better.

If it isn't obvious, however, if the off-piece is the same ilvl, choose the 4pc set bonus. Just in case that needed to be said.

Survival

2 Piece - Flanking Strike now has 3 times the normal chance to trigger Hunting Companion.

The wording is a little strange on this tier, so I had to verify that the "3 times the normal chance" means 3 times more than the already doubled chance of Flanking Strikes, and I've been told that is how it will work.

This make the 2 pc set bonus a pretty cool buff to SV's rotation. As most of us will have between 10-15% mastery (with the 15% likely only people with gearsets made for MM or BM), the 2 pc will then bring the chance of flanking strike to proc Hunting Companion up to between 60-90%. With my current SV gear, I'm sitting at 12.7%, which means with the 2 set, my Flanking Strike should proc Hunting Companion 3 out of 4 times. This leads to some interesting choices, if perhaps we're in the middle of one of the 14 second durations of Mongoose Fury, we'd have to choose between taking a chance with Flanking Strike to get one more Mongoose Bite, or using Raptor Strike to keep our Way of the Mok'nathal buff rolling, etc... To me, this is a big part of what makes SV an great spec, as we have meaningful decisions to make on the spot.

4 Piece - When Mongoose Fury reaches 6 applications, you gain 20% increased damage to all abilities for 10 sec.

I'm pretty into the idea of this bonus. While there's already a good amount of reward as SV for doing your rotation well; that is, saving charges of Mongoose Bite and building up your Mongoose Fury stacks within that 14 second window. This adds a lot more reward, though.

Of course, the benefit of it will be completely reliant on actually getting up to 6 stacks of Mongoose Fury, which isn't by any means guaranteed. You have to cast 6 Mongoose Bites with only 3-5 free GCDs (depending on your Haste/GCD) in between, which takes a little bit of luck (though less with the 2 pc bonus). There are, however, a couple of talents that make getting those 6 stacks more doable, including Snake Hunter, which gives you an ability to instantly generate 3 charges of Mongoose Bite, and possibly Mortal Wounds, which gives your Laceration ticks a chance to proc a Mongoose Bite charge.

The only other note I wanted to make here is there may be some chance for some decent Burst AoE, if you know there's a large pack of adds incoming. If you save up your 3 charges of Mongoose Bite, and start them 14 seconds before your pack of adds shows up, you can use those 3 charges, and the 3 from your Snake Hunter talent, interwoven with Raptor Strike to keep up your Way of the Mok'Nathal buff, then spam your 3 Charges of Butchery in a row. With full Mok'Nathal, we'd be looking at over 1000k damage per target, over 3 GCDs, without including any buffs/pot/etc, in decent gear This isn't the most amazing AoE damage in the game right now, and requires a lot of your talents and a lot of set up, but it's nice to have an option for a spec that in general is lacking in the AoE department.