WoW: Aspects of the Hunter - Beast Master Fallout

You've heard him talk about WoW on our gaming podcast. Now Rafe writes each week about his favorite Warcraft class - the hunter, offering insights, opinions, and lots of other words about the different aspects of the hunter.

I’m running late with the column this week, due to a mix of database problems with the site (this is actually the second time I’ve written this column today) and the endless lure of WoW’s concurrent holidays. I admit it – I’m an achievement addict and a holiday addict, and having Fool for Love and Lunar Festival running together means a lot of time spent in game. To make matters worse, my rogue, who I started before my hunter, can’t finish the Fool for Love achievements without hitting level 80 (at which point he can enter Naxxramas to Pity the Love Fool), so I’ve been spending a lot of time roguing around Azeroth instead of hunting. Can I beat the clock to 3am Sunday? We’ll see.

I won’t spend a lot of time discussing Lunar Festival like I did Fool for Love. I will say this: Lunar Festival has rapidly gone from one of my favorite holidays to one of my least favorite. I won’t grumble about having to gallivant all over the virtual world; there are lots of holidays that include that demand if you want the achievements. What puts me off from Lunar Festival, however, is the lack of experience to be gained by all the globe-trotting. Here we’re doing just as much, if not more, world traveling as is required by the Midsummer Fire Festival, but lighting and dousing bonfires elicits experience, while paying respects to Elders doesn’t. For someone trying to get some extra experience, this is a huge disappointment, and rates Lunar Festival toward the bottom of the holiday experiences of Azeroth.

Instead of talking about holidays, let’s focus on a debate that divided the hunter community over the past week. Last week, Frostheim posted an article at WoW.com assessing the raid viability of the Beast Mastery spec. His findings were as such: the spec is great for soloing and leveling, but as a raider, a BM hunter is going to put out 20-30% less damage than the other two specs for the class. Frostheim equated it to allowing someone to raid in lower quality gear and no pants, just because that’s how they liked to play. Die-hard Beast Mastery hunters were furious over the article, and the hunter world lit up with slings and arrows of outrage.

My response to Frostheim’s findings: one word – duh.

Understand, I leveled completely as a Beast Mastery hunter. I love having the added points for my pets’ talent trees and I love being able to tame creatures other hunters can’t. I even spent several weeks searching for Gondria, who I finally added to my small pet collection, and who I still contend has one of the coolest abilities and is one of the prettiest animals in the game. When I do (infrequently) enjoy PvP, I tend to switch to Beast Mastery as well, allowing my pet to take more sizable bites out of my enemies while I shoot-and-scoot. I fully expect when the Cataclysm hits, I’ll pull Beast Mastery out as my dominant spec again for the new leveling experience. And still I say: duh.

I won’t go into pity-party mode, but Hunters frequently have it rough in raids. We rarely get the opportunity to just pew-pew away at bosses, often having to kite something or dance around to fulfill other expectations of the fight. It would be great if we could just send our pets in to gnaw on the big, bad boss. But the truth is, just as frequently, the fights are not very pet friendly, resulting in the loss of our beloved animals and the DPS they bring with them. When you’re a BM hunter, you just cut off a sizable part of your damage capability. Think of how badly your DPS would be affected if you turned of auto-shot and just used instant shots. On top of that, BMs don’t have the shot variety of other specs (especially the current top contender, Marksman), leaving them less options for causing damage. It’s pretty simple: less damage opportunities minus the pet leaves a lot of lost DPS potential.

Now, I completely get the other side of the argument – the “I should be allowed to play how I want to play” argument. If you can find a group of people who won’t argue with your choice to raid as a Beast Master spec, that’s great. When I joined my guild, the guild leader at the time was a Beast Mastery hunter, and he continually drilled into me that it was acceptable, and I should play the way I want to play, even when pug members rolled their eyes at my BM spec. I have every confidence that, if I respecced tonight and showed up to raid, my guild would accept it with little to no problems. They’re just those kind of people; people who believe you should play the way you want to – the way that keeps the game fun for you.

So why did I change from BM to Marksman? It’s pretty simple. When I commit to raiding with a group of people, I’m committing to help them get through content or complete certain objectives. That commitment supersedes my own selfish desires in my mind. So if changing to a new spec will help my guild advance in Icecrown Citadel, I feel a responsibility to respect. On top of that, I’ve never been the kind of player who likes being carried through content. I may not be able to top the damage meters all the time, but I want to be able to look at them and see, on average, that I can contend with the other people I’m running with – that I’m earning my place in their company, not just being carried out of kindness. Choosing a spec that has 20-30% less damage just doesn’t accomplish that, no matter how pretty the pets I can tame may be.

Now, I ‘m not saying we all have to be cookie cutter raiders. I don’t have a wolf pet, and I don’t see myself suddenly picking one up just because the data says it’s better than my raiding raptor. There is room for variety and individual flavor. But when a spec falls so far behind the others, and Blizzard says they aren’t intending to fix it because there are still two viable specs for raiding, does it really hurt to try out one of the other specs? Who knows, you might suddenly find you like having a greater variety of shots or playing with different tactics.

Bringing this back to my opening, this is a problem rogues encounter as well. And wouldn’t you know it, just like I leveled a BM hunter, I originally chose Subtlety as my rogue’s spec. Much like my hunter, I finally broke down and tried another spec and really wound up liking it. Variety is the spice of life; not just in our characters, but in our opportunities as players as well. When we get so locked into one spec or one way of playing, we shut ourselves off from other opportunities that might be just as fun and help lead our characters and our teammates to greater heights. And for you die-hard Beast Masters – at least Frostheim offered up tips on Extreme Beast Master Soloing as recompense.