BM first time raiding - pointers?

[Ayne 0]

Despite playing BM ever since I picked up WoW five years ago, I never really participated in raiding or competetive gameplay as such. People were happy to take me along on raid runs from time to time (I was doing pretty okay in MoP I believe) but now in Legion I first started bothering with my own class performance since I'm more or less a regular stand-in for the guild of a friend now.

Thing is just I don't exactly now how or what I'm doing. At all.

 

I have a rough idea about what I should be doing and what talents I should be taking for which boss depending on if AoE will be important or not, but I still feel like I'm slacking more times than necessary and I also very quickly run out of focus, which often has me standing idle until I can cast another skill. A friend told me to check Warcraft Logs - once again, I'm really inexperienced with numbers - and what it basically showed me was that my damage is very inconsistent but I don't really know why?

I got pretty good gear upgrades yesterday (I know it's not fully gemmed and enchanted yet) so I don't know how my logs will look now but I believe my gear is less of a problem here. I'm someone who still forgets fooding and flasking up sometimes, and who's still very unconcentrated while the boss fights are going on and in doing so often hits the wrong buttons or forgets things are off cd already, but I'd still like to know if I'm on the right track at least.

 

tldr; I'd like to know how to get out of gawky hunter status to really pull my weight in pugs. you can see my logs here (I think) and my armory here.

 

My opening sequence is MoC > BW & AotW > KC > DB > Titan's Thunder (bc of my Legendary) > CS > KC etc, during the fight itself I always use KC and MoC on CD. BW is used off CD as well, but I do try pairing it with AotW whenever that should be possible. Rest is just dumping Focus with CS. Is there any occasion where I save my Focus, for example when my next KC is x seconds away? Also, with the Set Bonus I have now, should I just be Stomp + Blinking Strikes only?

For my armory, I only have one question: I'm trying to go with as much Mastery as possible, but is there maybe even a cap that I should reach and then I'm actually supposed to take care of other stats? Also, I just got the Nightblooming Frond Trinket that has a few ilvls on the Entwined Elemental Foci I got from Raid Finder. Was it a good decision to replace it?

 

Thank you for your time!

[Luthixx 138]

Long time BM raider here:

1) your logs are actually pretty good, I compared it to some of mine from where I think I was at a similar ilvl and you're doing quite well. # of casts especially are quite good, biggest thing I can see is on your multi target fights. You don't seem to switch to out to blink strikes / stomp / dire stable / volley much, if at all. The only fights you should run a single target set up are Chronomatic, Trilliax, Krosus, Star Augur and Elisande, the rest are all pure multi target fights and you lose a lot of dps by not utilising volley and beast cleave to the best of your ability. Way of the Cobra is also only useful on fights where you don't use multishot.

2) Don't bother using the pepper food for the fire breath on AoE, mastery food is the best for single target and AoE as it has a massive impact on your pet's damage, and that combined with blink strikes means a lot of aoe. 

3) your ilvl perfection is pretty good, but BM is very reliant on the correct legendaries and 4pc as well as trinkets. Don't be disheartened if you're not top of the pack yet. You'll only get there if you have the shoulders & 4pc, until then BM can be quite a middle of the pack spec.

4) As for your secondary stats, they're all so close in value that there is no real point trying to focus purely on mastery, if an item is 10-15 ilvls higher the agi will usually be an upgrade on its own. Download Pawn and use Azor's string to give you a better idea of what pieces would be an upgrade.

5) Nightblooming Frond is actually pretty garbage now, best bet is to stick to the RF EEF just purely because the proc is SO much better.

6) All in all, you're not bad, but BM as a spec is a lot better at AoE than single target unless you can get those shoulders, so really work on making sure you have the correct talents for every fight so you don't get too down about not parsing super high. You'll really see a huge difference when you get 4pc too, the extra uptime on BW is insane (as a point of reference, with good RNG the hunter in my guild who has shoulders, boots & 4pc can maintain almost 70% uptime on BW).

Shoot me up for any further questions you may have and I'll be happy to help.

Edit: Also just saw you recently got roots... I know that pain, I got roots & then head as my last two legendaries, still waiting on something decent to replace ring & neck...

Edited February 27, 2017 by Luthixx

[Ayne 0]

Thanks so much for your thorough reply!

I totally forgot that Dire Stable was a thing! To sum things up, when I'm not fighting either of the single target bosses, I should always go with Dire Stable / Stomp / Blink Strikes / Volley instead. My question here would be if, once I get 4pc, I should always stick with Stomp and Blink Strikes or if it'll still be better to go with Dire Frenzy and Bestial Fury? I mean, I'm probably going to do my own tests on a dummy, I'm just wondering if there will be a huge difference, or one at all.

I'll definitely consider the addons you recommended me! I also appreciate your opinion on the food, I was never sure what the viable option of the two was.

Sorry to hear that you, like me, are plagued with not so great legendaries! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, perhaps RNG will be kinder to us now. The upside is that we shouldn't be capable of getting stuff that is even WORSE than we already have...

 

Update: I got the tier chest and would thus be able to get the 4pc effect.. should I sacrifice about 700 mastery for that or wait until I get the helmet?

[Luthixx 138]

I personally use Volley on any fight I'll be dealing with more than 3 targets for any extended period of time, so most of the AoE fights.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/11#difficulty=4&class=Hunter&spec=BeastMastery have a look at the talent set ups they use for each of the fights here (of course don't use one with the pack unless you have legendary shoulders). That's usually your go to spot to see how the best parsing hunters do it.

Yes, 4pc is WAY over 700 mastery in terms of total damage output. 4pc for me was about a 70-80k dps boost single target, so you won't miss that mastery at all. Of course though, when you get helm, run with that and go back to your current chest.

Dire Frenzy I'm still iffy with, I don't like the way it generates focus, sometimes you have to leave it so you don't focus cap (if you're above like 90 focus it's better to wait), and waiting sometimes means you might get another proc which is quite frustrating. I still prefer Stomp and it generally works a lot better for me, plus as soon as there's even one add, stomp does far more damage. But Bestial Fury for sure on each single target fight. If you're running Way of the Cobra, you benefit more from stomp anyway. Blink Strikes is more for if you're dealing with a lot of add switching and you need your pets to cover the distance faster, or if you're on a multi-target fight; on pure single target it does fall behind.

[Ayne 0]

Hi there, I figured I'd best give you some more feedback again!

 

The logs from other, better performing players really helped me. It honestly gave me some insight into how important it is to switch talents depending on the fight, something I had never done before because I was under the impression that hunters didn't have enough viable options for the time being.

I replaced my chest to get the 4pc effect and really have to say that it did wonders for the overall feeling of my gameplay. When I'm very lucky, I can almost seamlessly go from one BW into the other - I'm still stumbling over my KC's thanks to my boots, but I'm having less problems with it when I can just chuck in my artifact's ability. Here's to hoping my next legendary drop will be kinder to me, or rather the both of us.

When me and my friends tried out Trial of Valor the other day, I believe I was either in the Top 3 or 4 in every of our tries - despite doing a lot of things wrong again, but I guess it's simply still a work in progress. I don't want to expect too much from me when I'm still standing right at the beginning.

 

I can't possibly thank you enough for helping me out! I feel much more confident already!