After spending a perhaps unreasonable amount of time at the training dummies over the weekend, and pestering some friends about deciphering the data, I've finally got a completed spreadsheet for the current iteration of each hunter spec. So I thought I'd put together an overview of each spec as it currently stands, as if it were being released today.
All the typical disclaimers of course apply, most obviously, that it is not being released today, and there's a pretty good chance some of this will change before I even finish writing this. I will not be giving any spoilers to the story of Legion; this is strictly about the mechanics of the hunter class.
All the typical disclaimers of course apply, most obviously, that it is not being released today, and there's a pretty good chance some of this will change before I even finish writing this. I will not be giving any spoilers to the story of Legion; this is strictly about the mechanics of the hunter class.
Rotational Overview
The basic, un-nuanced version of the BM rotation revolves around using Kill Command as often as possible, which does significantly more damage than in WoD, with the addition of Hati and Jaws of Thunder (which we'll go over below).
Instead of Cobra Shots and Arcane Shots to build and dump focus, we now primarily rely on passive focus regen, which has been increased to 15 focus per GCD, and Cobra Shot is now our focus dump. In addition to the baseline passive focus regen, we have a slightly improved Dire Beast, which provides a relatively minuscule amount of focus. This means we need to be a bit more proactive with focus management, as it will take a lot longer to make up for mistakes because we can't spam our focus regen.
Outside of those three abilities, we of course have a lot of other abilities and talents to try to fit in, which we'll cover below.
Core DPS Abilities
Cobra Shot - A quick shot dealing 125% weapon damage as physical damage.
This ability fills the roll that Arcane Shot filled in the WoD version of BM: an instant focus dump that doesn't do much damage: perhaps better known as "filler". While the WoD version of Cobra Shot deals nature damage, and the ability this is replacing dealt magic damage, the new Cobra Shot deals physical damage (as noted in the tooltip), making the shot significantly weaker in raiding environments.
Just like with WoD BM's Arcane Shot, this ability can get you into a bit of trouble if you get spam happy with it. There will be a lot of times when an untrained hunter will see they have enough focus for a Cobra Shot while everything else is on cooldown, then use it only find they don't have enough focus for the abilities they really want to use. This is accentuated more because as BM no longer has any active focus regen, but instead is relying heavily on RNG procs for more Dire Beasts. As Bendak, of Eyes of the Beast, recently mentioned to me "weird to think that using Cobra Shot too much results in way less DPS than not using it at all".
Dire Beast - Summons a beast which attacks your current target, and regens 12 focus over 8 seconds.
Dire Beast was presented to us (in Blizzard's Legion spec preview blog) as a replacement for Cobra Shot / Steady Shot in BM's rotation. This has turned out not to be the case. With only 12 focus generated over the course of an 8 second duration, the focus gained is barely noticeable compared to the 15 per GCD you regen passively. Even when talented for Dire Stable, the 20 focus per Dire Beast is only barely noticeable.Primarily, Dire Beasts purpose is just DPS. Over its duration, the Dire Beast will do roughly twice the damage (depending on your ratio of weapon damage to attack power, and how much haste you have) of a Cobra Shot, and it gives you something to do for a GCD that won't cost any focus.
Kill Command - Your pet deals 1.632*1.5*Attack Power as physical damage.
Kill Command remains largely unchanged from previous expansions. However, with the artifact weapon we'll eventually see Hati joining in on the Kill Command fun (for two thirds as much damage as our primary pet: 1.632*1.15*Attack Power), and also an extra bonus from Jaws of Thunder (which I'll go over in the artifact weapon section).
One major change for KC is it now has a hasted CD. Because our GCD is also affected by haste, Kill Command will always be available to use every 5th GCD, but as we gain more haste, that will be more and more often.
This ability creates what will likely be an unobtainable soft cap for haste. At 50% haste, our GCD will have reached its cap of 1 second, and Kill command will be at 5 seconds. After that we won't see significant benefit from more haste in lowering CDs. We will still see increase from additional haste in focus, autoshots and pet melees, though. Any statement about stat values at this point is primarily guesswork, but if haste does end up being better than mastery, it's very unlikely it would remain more valuable above 50%.
Wild Call - Autoshot Crits have a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Dire Beast.
The tooltip to this ability was recently changed to reflect that it only works on Autoshot Crits. Before, we had hope that that was a bug, and it would eventually apply to at least all of the hunter's shots. Instead, we now have an ability that sounds kind of cool, but procs very, very rarely.
If you're interested in how seldom it procs, this article gets into some of the calculations. As I mentioned, at the time I thought the autoshot-only thing was a bug, so I talk about some other possibilities there that are no longer in the picture.
AoE
BM hunters keep their two baseline AoE abilities the same in Legion: Multi-shot and Beast Cleave. Multi-shot remains a fairly weak ability, but that's ok, as it procs an even better Beast Cleave, which does the damage of a full melee to each target, and, with the artifact trait, increases that damage to 130% a normal melee, and adds on the damage of Hati's melees, which already happen to do roughly 27.777% more damage your main pet's melees.
The addition of Hati and the improved damage transfer nearly triples the damage of Beast Cleave to each target hit compared to in WoD. The reasoning for this relative increase may be the removal of active focus regen. With low Haste levels, you won't have enough focus to keep up Beast Cleave 100% of the time, in addition to using Kill Command on CD. Once you try to add in your burst AoE options, like Barrage or possibly Volley (if they ever improve its damage), deciding where to spend your focus becomes fairly difficult.
DPS Cooldowns
Aspect of the Wild - Grants you and your pet 10 focus per second, and 10% increased Crit chance for 10 seconds.
AotW is a new, baseline, damage cooldown for BM hunters, essentially doubling your passive focus regen to as much as 30 focus per GCD. This isn't enough on its own to let you spam your focus spenders, but assuming you also have a dire beast or two up, and you're weaving in Chimaera Shot, you'll be swimming in focus for the duration of this cooldown.
While the focus regen is the more significant portion of this CD, the additional 10% chance to Crit of course gives you an 7-8.5% damage increase. In addition, that 10% Crit chance translates to a measly extra 2% chance to proc Wild Call during each of your Autoshots, which, well, isn't much. To give some context, if you have 40% haste, you'll have an additional 12.12% chance of getting one additional Wild Call proc over the duration of each Aspect of the Wild (you'll still have your normal chances of proc'ing WC, I'm referring here only to the added benefit of AotW).
Bestial Wrath - Increases all damage you or your pet deal by 20% for 10 sec.
Bestial Wrath remains the most iconic BM cooldown, but with a bit of a makeover. Instead of a big red pet, we now have a kind of orange glowing pet. In addition, with an upgraded Artifact weapon, Hati, our primary pet, and our hunter all gain 20% increased damage. However, the Focus Cost modifier is now gone (though may be returning in set bonuses or legendary items), as is Focus Fire, the 40% Attack Power buff we're used to stacking with Bestial Wrath.
An interesting addition to BW is while the cooldown has been increased to 90 seconds, a new mechanic has been added which reduces the CD by 15 seconds every time you cast a Dire Beast. That means that even with no haste at all, and no Wild Call procs, as long as you use Dire Beast on CD, the longest CD of Bestial Wrath you'll have is about 36 seconds. With haste and Wild Call procs we'll be looking at CDs well under 30 seconds.
Talents
Tier 15 -
- Big Game Hunter - Increases the Crit chance of Autoshots and Cobra Shots by 50% against targets above 80% health.
This talent will be very situational, at best. Because Cobra Shot is such a weak ability, Crit'ing 50% more often for double the damage, still isn't very much damage. The Careful Aim buff for MM currently (which increases the Crit chance of Aimed Shot by 50%) is so incredibly valuable because Aimed Shot is actually a fairly powerful shot, which also benefits from regen'ing 20 focus any time it Crits. This made spamming them against priority adds a great method for progression raiding. Cobra Shots just aren't powerful enough to really help with this sort of priority target.
The only time I can imagine this maybe being useful, is if you're trying to burn through the first phase of a boss, and stacking this with Bestial Wrath and Aspect of the Wild is enough to push your team past the phase quickly. Even then, its biggest benefit is perhaps that the other two talents in this tier just aren't that great either.
- Way of the Cobra - Cobra Shot deals 5% increased damage for every pet or guardian you have active
I suspect that this talent is kind of just left over from earlier iterations of BM hunters, where they had a lot more Dire Beasts at a time. As it is, this suffers a lot from the same problem as what we have above, even if you can manage to get 5 pets out (your main pet, Hati and three Dire Beasts), you're still only looking at 25% increased damage to an ability that does very little damage to begin with, at a large focus cost.
Perhaps there will be some trinkets, or set bonuses that will make this talent more appealing. In the past, we've had set bonuses that could give us up to 5 pets/guardians at once (I'm thinking of the wind serpent from ToES/HoF, specifically), which, in addition to our regular pets and dire beasts may be enough to boost Cobra Shot into a decent damage range.
- Dire Stable - Dire Beast generates 8 additional Focus over its duration.
This brings the total up to 20 focus every time you use Dire Beast. As I mentioned above, the focus regen is almost noticeable with this talent, though you still have to be paying pretty close attention to your focus bar to catch it.
At the moment, this seems like the most likely choice from the level 15 tier. That extra focus translates into roughly one Barrage every 2 minutes, which, if timed well, may turn out to be a considerable gain.
The danger of this ability is if you spend the extra focus on a Cobra Shot, which is so inefficient (when measuring damage/focus) you won't be able to do enough extra Cobra Shots to increase your DPS significantly, likely making one of the other two talents which directly increase CS's damage better choices.
To put it in terms of actual in game damage: with the PvP gear we get at 110, not including any Crits or trinket procs, my Cobra Shot does 17,352 damage (against a level 113 raid boss). That's 433.8 damage per focus. That means the 8 focus per Dire Beast translates into about 3470.4 damage. Alternately, in the same situation, one Barrage does 171,614 damage (to its primary target), that's 2,145.18 damage per focus. So if I use the extra Dire Beast focus on casting extra Barrages, rather than extra Cobra Shots, this talent's 8 focus per DB translates into 17,161.47 damage per dire beast. A much more reasonable sum. Of course, in game it's much more complicated than that. If you had made a mistake, and otherwise wouldn't have had enough focus to cast a Kill Command, but this talent saved you and gave you the focus, then you're talking about an ability that does 2605.9 damage per focus, and getting even more out of it.
The point of this all is to say, while this looks like the best talent choice (at the moment), depending on how well you manage focus and execute your rotation, this can be significantly worse than the other options.
Tier 30 -
- Stomp - Each Dire Beast will do an additional 200% Attack Power each time it is summoned.
This talent essentially doubles the damage done by Dire Beasts in single target, which isn't insubstantial, and only gets better if you can hit multiple targets.
To clarify, it does 200% of the Dire Beast's AP, which is 115% of the hunter's AP, and it still benefits from BM's Mastery. For some context, a Dire Beast Melee (of which the DB does 4 each time it's summoned), does 2*AP/3.5 damage, which is to say, it does 65.7% of the hunter's AP as physical damage. Each stomp does 2.3 times the hunter's AP to each target it hits.
- Dire Frenzy - Replaces Dire Beast; causes your pet instantly to do 5 attacks on your target, gaining 30% increased Attack Speed for 6 seconds, and generating 15 focus.
This talent was presented as an alternative to Zoo-master hunter that BM is turning into. Instead of summoning random Dire Beasts from the wild, you imbue your pet with some of that Dire spirit. It works with pretty much everything that would affect Dire Beast, including Dire Stable and Wild Call.
The increased attack speed makes this a particularly tempting talent for burst AoE situations, as the attack speed buff could bring you up to 3 or 4 melees within the duration of one Beast Cleave, instead of the normal 2. As we discussed above, Beast Cleave is a bit more powerful than it was in WoD, so in situations similar to the imps on Mannoroth, this could be a very important talent.
Outside of the attack speed buff, this talent also lends itself well to any fight with significant pathing issues. It's likely you won't want to play BM on that sort of fight anyway, but there may be times when a pet can follow the boss if it's on them the whole time, but not if it's running from you to the boss every 12 seconds or so.
Otherwise, the 5 hits of your pet are very similar in damage to the 4 hits of a dire beast, the slightly longer CD and the slightly higher focus gain of Dire Frenzy compared to Dire Beast basically negate each other. So primarily, the benefit of this talent is in the Attack Speed bonus, and just in personal preference, if you don't like Dire Beasts.
- Chimaera Shot - Deals 660% AP as nature or frost damage to your target and up to 1 other target within 8 yards. Generates 10 Focus for every target hit.
For most people who've tried BM, this seems to be the go to talent. It's an incredibly powerful shot (does nearly double the damage of Kill Command against only one target, even after including Hati), and instead of costing you focus it generates focus. In a spec with more downtime that anyone wants, Chim Shot is a bright shining beacon of hope.
I don't have anything negative to say about this ability, so I'll only say, it should be baseline. Having it in this tier makes me fairly uninterested in learning the other two talents. Even if there's a way to make Stomp or Dire Frenzy better than Chim Shot, it will take lots of careful practice and meticulous play, whereas Chim Shot you can have to put very little thought into, just use it on CD and watch your DPS increase.
Tier 60 -
- One with the Pack - Wild Call has a 10% increased chance to reset the CD on Dire Beast.
There's not a lot to this one that I didn't already say in the section above specifically about Wild Call. It increases the number of Dire Beasts you get. Not by a lot (haste has much more affect on your total number of DBs).
Especially when paired with other talents that can benefit from more Dire Beasts, this talent can feel pretty useful, and just having more Dire Beast casts to spend your GCDs on is nice.
- Bestial Fury - Increase the damage bonus of Bestial Wrath to 40%
Bestial Fury doubles the base value of Bestial Wrath. If you include the artifact ability which increases the buff by 6%, you're now adding a 1.46 multiplier to every ability. BM right now is more about lots of small hits, than just a few big hits, but we've still got Chim Shot, which with the 46% increase from BW, produces some fairly amazing Crits.
The biggest benefit of this talent while raiding will be for taking down priority targets. Because we have the new variable CD on BW, we may have a little bit more leeway on when we use Bestial Wrath. Saving this for priority targets could help BM get out of the rut it's been in of just being generic AoE and do all the mechanics, to instead actually doing important DPS, when it matters, to priority targets.
- Blink Strikes - Your pet's Basic Attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) deals 50% increased damage, and can be used from 30 yards away, teleporting your pet behind its target.
Blink Strikes is back, unchanged from the WoD iteration of the talent. It's still not the most exciting talent out there, but does provide a solid damage buff, along with some target swapping utility from the teleport.
While I doubt there is anyone who's willing to read through 5000 words on a spec likely isn't very close to being finished, and also isn't interested in min-maxing their character. But, just in case you're a raid leader, who may be lending advice to newer raiders, or you're the hunter in your guild that other hunters look to for advice: Blink Strikes, even when tuned slightly below the other talents in DPS, is still a great talent for anyone just getting started, or who doesn't do the best at stacking CDs or quickly reacting to procs. This is essentially free DPS, which takes virtually no management to keep up (outside of not having your pet on passive).
Tier 90 -
- A Murder of Crows - Summons a flock of Crows that attack your target for 975% AP over 15 seconds.
A Murder of Crows is also returning as a BM talent, doing tons of damage, especially considering it's still benefiting from BM's mastery.
This talent remains a good choice for single target fights, but where it really shines, is on priority adds. The largest benefit here, is unlike Barrage (which does more damage, even single target, until you get around 40-50% mastery), you don't have to spend 15-20 seconds before an add comes up, trying to save your focus while still using Kill Commands, hoping you'll get an extra Dire Beast proc. For only 30 focus, you can use aMoC, and the target dies within your 15 second window, your CD is reset, as a little bonus.
- Barrage - Channels a spray of shots for 3 seconds, dealing 13.6*Weapon Damage to your target, and 6.8*Weapon Damage to any other targets roughly 43 yards in front of you, in a 75 degree cone.
Barrage returns in Legion as well, also unchanged from its WoD counterpart. The primary difference here will be in play style. Without any sort of active focus regen, fitting barrage into our rotation is much harder. This difficulty is mostly going to show off who has been casting too many Cobra Shots and who's been managing their focus well, as I mentioned above.
Other than the obvious focus drain, Barrage remains a great talent for bursting priority targets, and providing solid AoE.
- Volley - Launches a volley of shots at the targeted area, dealing 3.0888*Attack Power as Physical Damage over 6 seconds.
This is something hunters have been complaining about ever since the ability was removed, and Blizzard has answered your cries.
Unfortunately, as it's currently tuned, there is no situation where Volley will be a better DPS choice than Barrage. The only possible exception to that from a non-DPS point of view, is if there you're in a situation where there are adds completely surrounding you, just out of range of pulling them, but close enough where barrage would hit them. Which does bring up a side benefit of Volley: if you struggle to position yourself well in dungeons, using Volley instead of Barrage will keep the other party members in your group from getting upset with you.
Tier 100 -
- Stampede - Summon a herd of stampeding animals from the wilds around you that collectively do 27*Attack Power as physical damage over 12 seconds.
Not only does stampede do 27*Attack Power, per target. It also is buffed by BM's Mastery, and by Bestial Wrath. With the Bestial Fury and a full artifact weapon, and only 26.8% mastery, we're up to 5000% of Attack Power, per target. That's a pretty decent deal.
The down side is, this version of stampede doesn't summon new pets, but instead sends waves of randomly spawned pets in the direction you're facing when you cast it. If you're turned 90 degrees to run somewhere, your stampede is completely wasted. Or worse, if your tank decides to reposition the boss after you've cast Stampede, you'll lose out on a million or more damage.
- Killer Cobra - While Bestial Wrath is active, Cobra Shot has a 25% chance to reset the CD on Kill Command.
Because we have such a high up-time on Bestial Wrath, this talent does have some potential. If, somewhere down the line, we have enough haste, and to some extent, enough Crit (for Wild Call procs), then there may be some situations where this talent becomes worthwhile. But as things are, we only really can afford to spam Cobra Shots during Aspect of the Wild, and that's only if we're not using other high cost talents. Which brings up the primary trouble with this talent: there are too many other important abilities that we need to be spending our focus on during BW. At only 25% chance, there's just not enough focus available to be gambling on a Kill Command CD reset that you'll likely only see once every 120 focus.
- Aspect of the Beast - Kill Command causes the target to bleed for ~120% of Attack Power as physical damage over 6 seconds.
There are more effects of this talent, but I'm going to focus on the DPS version. The tooltip for this talent isn't currently matching with what's happening in game, so it's a bit unclear what the intention for the bleed effect's damage is, but right now it's around 120% AP over 6 seconds, or 3 ticks for about 40% AP each.
This is a flat damage bonus, which serves to increase the value of your Kill Command significantly. As it currently exists, this talent only seems to affect your primary pet's Kill Commands (not Hati), and it cannot Crit. Both of these things diminish the value of this talent.
The primary benefit of this ability is having a buff which is up 100% of the time. If there's a fight that needs consistent DPS, instead of bursty CDs, AotB might be the right talent for it. Mostly, however, I think we'll only being seeing this talent a lot on high movement fights, when the tanks can't keep the boss still long enough to use stampede.
Titanstrike Artifact DPS Abilities
There are no real choices as to which of the Artifact abilities you'll get, as the goal will be to unlock all of them by the start of raiding. Since there's no decision to make, I won't spend as much time on each of these, but just quickly go over what each of the DPS abilities.
- Hati's Bond - Introduces Hati as a second pet who always fights beside you. AP is 115% of hunter's AP. Does not benefit from Combat Experience.
- Focus of the Titans - Increases damage of Multi-Shot by 15%.
- Furious Swipes - Increases damage dealt by Beast Cleave by 30%.
- Beast Master - Increases attack speed bonus of Dire Frenzy by 15%. Increases damage dealt by Dire Beasts by 10% (not currently working).
- Jaws of Thunder - Every time you Kill Command, there's a 15% chance you'll deal an additional 50% of the Kill Command's Damage as Nature Damage. Applies to both your pet and Hati (with Master of Beasts).
- Master of Beasts - Hati benefits from Bestial Wrath and Beast Cleave, and responds to Kill Command. When leveling your artifact weapon, this is easily the ability that makes the single most impact on how the spec feels.
- Pack Leader - Increases the damage done by Kill Command by 15%. Currently, this does not affect Hati's Kill Commands.
- Spitting Cobras - Increases damage dealt by Cobra Shot by 10%.
- Surge of the Stormgod - When you use Multi-Shot, Titanstrike has a chance to discharge an electric current at your pets' locations, causing an explosion of electricity that deals 200% Ranged Attack Power as nature damage to all nearby enemies.
- Titan's Thunder - Discharge a massive jolt of electricity from Titanstrike into all your pets and Dire Beasts, causing them to deal 400% Attack Power as nature damage over 8 seconds. Also causes your next Dire Frenzy to deal 200% Attack Power as additional Nature damage on each of the 5 Dire Frenzy attacks.
- Unleash the Beast - Bestial Wrath increases damage you and your pet deal by an additional 6%.
- Wilderness Expert - Increases the duration of Aspect of the Wild by 3 sec.
BM Ability Formulae
| Ability | Formula | Focus Cost | Phys. | Mast | H. CD |
| A Murder of Crows | 9.75*AP; 1.17*AP [per hit] | 30 | x | x | |
| Autoshot | WD+3*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | |
| Barrage | 13.6*(WD+2.8*AP/3.5); .85*(WD+2.8*AP/3.5) | 60 | x | ||
| Beast Cleave Pet 0/3 | 2*.6*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | |
| Beast Cleave Hati 0/3 | 2*1.15*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | |
| Chimaera Shot | 6.6*(WD+2.8*AP/3.5) | -10 | x | ||
| Cobra Shot 0/3 | 1.25*(WD+2.8*AP/3.5) | 40 | x | ||
| Dire Beast Melee 0/3 | 2*1.15*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | x |
| Jaws of Thunder pet | .5*1.5*1.632*AP | n/a | x | x | |
| Jaws of Thunder Hati | .5*1.15*1.5*1.632*AP | n/a | x | x | |
| Kill Command Pet 0/3 | 1.5*1.632*AP | 30 | x | x | x |
| Kill Command Hati 0/3 | 1.632*1.15*AP | n/a | x | x | x |
| Multi-Shot | 0.55*(WD+2.8*AP/3.5) | 40 | x | ||
| Pet Basic Attack | 1.1*1.5*.333*AP (+-18%) | 25 | x | x | |
| Melee Attack Pet | 1.5*2*0.6*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | x |
| Melee Attack Hati | 2*1.15*AP/3.5 | n/a | x | x | x |
| Stampede | 27*AP; 1.5*AP [per hit] | 0 | x | x | |
| Stomp! | 2*1.15*AP | 0 | x | x | x |
| Titan's Thunder pet | 0.5*1.5*0.6*AP | n/a | x | ||
| Titan's Thunder Hati/DB | .5*1.15*AP | n/a | x | ||
| Volley | 3.0888*AP; .5148*AP [per hit] | 80 | x |
Notes on ability formulas table:
- "AP" - Attack Power; equal to total agility in Legion.
- "WD" - Weapon Damage; use the average of the max and min weapon damage shown on artifact tooltip.
- "Phys." - Physical Damage; these abilities are affected by the targets armor. Calculate damage reduction as "Attacker K/(Attacker K + Target Armor)". For 110 targets hitting raid bosses (level 113), that is "7390/(7390+3474) = .680228"
- "Mast." - Mastery; these abilities are affected by BM's Mastery.
- "H. CD" - Hasted CD; the cooldowns of these abilities are affected by haste. Calculate CD as "Original CD / (1+haste)".
- All BM abilities can Crit, except for two: Bestial Ferocity, which as far as I can tell just seems to be bugged (there's no double dipping possible that would indicate this is intentional) and Jaws of Thunder, which takes half the damage of a Kill Command, already benefiting from the Crit of a Kill Command, if one occurred.
- All BM abilities are affected by Versatility.
- The damage of Bestial Ferocity (applied when you have a Ferocity Pet with the talent Aspect of the Beast) is still unconfirmed, and thus does not appear on this list. It currently does roughly .397*AP per tick, which does not match spell data available.
