The BMs Are Found
Our buddy Okoloth at Armory Musings has completed the analysis we requested.
As you can plainly see, BM is the dominant spec, and as we all know, for good reason. Now let’s see what happened to the spec-distribution with the BM Hunter Nerf of 2009:
Blamo! 70% to 34% is quite the stampede, isn’t it. But what’s even more surprising is the dropoff in MM hunters. Five percent of them went SV too!
The BM-nerf isn’t the way we would’ve chosen to even out the specs, but it sure did work, didn’t it.
Comments
52 Responses to “The BMs Are Found”
Got Something To Say?
Email icon provided by Nexodyne.-
BRK’s Site Meter
BRK License Agreement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
BRK’s RSS Feeds
That’s pretty amazing. Each spec has about a third of the pie.
Wowzers… incoming SRV nerf!
I guess I’m stubborn. I’ve decided to stay BM until I can dual spec. Although, honestly I’ll probably give in before 3.1 arrives. I’m still deciding whether SV is viable at my gear level where haste doesn’t come so easily.
I’m guessing that’s pretty much dependant upon the last holdouts finally getting frustrated enough to leave BM…I know I haven’t changed over yet just cause I’m avoiding learning a new spec. The longer it goes without a BM buff or a Surv nerf, the more the migration from BM will continue.
The only thing is its not really an evening out of the specs, surviavalism is over shooting bm by a good 20% on dps. IF blizz was aiming for balance the should consult som toddlers on a sew saw
Yeay! I’m not the only one who has stayed BM after hitting 80…
I thought everyone would be SV by now..
I wonder if its only the “proper raiders” who went SV…?
too bad you cant split the pies up by gear level or something, to see if any hardcore ppl are still BM..
I wonder how this works. I imagine there is some lag with shifts like this. There are likely a number of lvl 80 hunter alts who haven’t played much since the patch. If this is the case, the number actually still playing BM is even lower. Personally, I have 2 80 hunters. I switched my alt to surv to learn and will switch my main before raiding thursday.
Now…all that survey does is analyze the specs of hunters at 80. It can’t tell us how many of those hunters are raiders, how many are mains, and how many are farming alts.
I know if my Hunter was a farming alt, I’d leave him BM…
To be honest what I find most interesting is the number of hunters who are now LEVELING as SV.
I have an addon that tells me what spec somebody is when you are targeting them (out of curiosity, and is nice when I am PuG’d into a raid)– the number of hunters who haven’t even hit Outlands or Northrend level yet who are running around as SV has absolutely skyrocketed. You’d think BM would still be the preferred leveling spec, but this whole nerf thing is very far-reaching. It has weasled into the psyches of young hunters or hunter alts. Not that it’s bad, it’s just veeeery interesting to me.
It is nice to see more variety out there. But the specs could stand to use more equal performance, as I am sure we are all aware.
P.S. my three highest level hunters are all still BM =O
If there were a way to only select raiding hunters for those spec balances, I’d be more interested in the results. Instead, you’ve got all the people who just play for fun lumped in with the people who just dinged 80 and don’t know any better lumped in with the farmers lumped in with the actual raiders.
With all that in mind, I think it’s pretty sad how *uneven* the balance is now.
Is that for level 80 hunters only or is it all hunters? I think the leveling spec is still definitely BM.
@Pike
What mod is that you speak off? it sounds like I need it.
A small correction. We do no know if MM moved over to SURV in that percent. We just know that MMs moved from MM to one of the other two specs. Same with BM, some of them could of moved over to MM …
Yeah, I just poked around and see BM are still 75% of hunters from level 71-79.
Good info there though.
I would just like to point out that many hunters like myself were forced out of BM due to raid dps. If you even hint that you are BM on my server you will be mocked. “only retards raid BM” is the usual line. SV is not that bad, Im doing alot better in pvp [bg only, i havent touched arena since bc and will never again until they balance the classes in 1v1, you cant have a rock paper scissors senario with the class balance we have now, everyone just teams with scissors and cuts up the ratings inside of the 1st min of arena ] with an SV rading spec [sv brings burst dmg and thats the only way to survive in pvp *cough* mages *cough* ], and I am the top dog of the charts in pve. I still dont like Sv its over complicated [and it realy hurts your dps when their is server lag. Trust me its the server and we never had these problems back in 40 mans] and L&L still bugs out if you get the buff but have already cast ex shot [and s sting procs don't happen if you have less than 1k mana in you pool] Plus my kitty has a big death rate now that I can monitor his health because i spend my raiding time looking at the cast bars.
Any ways I am a BM hunter, I like the companionship, and more importantly I like my spirit beast. So hopefully they will get this buff soon so all of us can go back to w/e spec we love. I just wish blizzard had a smarter way of figuring things out instead of shoot first ask questions later.
yes i know qq me
@Kinzlayer – ’tis an option you can turn on in XPerl Unit Frames.
I’m still a BM hunter. One of the main reasons is because I found the Spirit Beast. It just seems a shame to go thru so much trouble to find him, just to stable him. Ain’t gonna happen!
Also, with full raid buffs, I’m getting over 2000dps. No, that won’t put me at the top; but it means that I’ll do what is needed on patches when the time comes. I’m still invited to Raid on my server, and my spirit beast even gets /pet by the fellow raiders.
Not so bad, imo.
Z
</3 Spirit Beast…
I’m still a BM hunter and no one in our 25 man raid complains about a lack of DPS. (I guess pushing 4,000 on patchwerk is OK)
I stay for the pets and my raid group wants me to stay as well. Mainly because until I level another pet they’d be stuck with the LSD Wasp of Doom.
Although we can’t say for sure that the MMs went only to SV and not to BM, I suspect that most of them did. In fact, with the BM nerf, I highly doubt anyone went TO BM. More likely, a lot went to SV and some went to MM, and the MM hunters taht were MM for PVP also went to SV for PVP.
Still, those are some solid numbers. A slight buff back to BM and a slight nerf to Explosive shot will push a portion back out of the spec. Then blizz will have a perfect 1/3 – 1/3 – 1/3 distribution. Why that distribution is relevant, I have no idea. And of course we’ll be right back into complete confusion during the class renovation in 3.1.
/sigh.
It makes me sad to see MM as once again the turd at the bottom of the pile.
@Pike
Oooo, I do use XPerl Unit Frame, I’ll have to dig into it then.
I switched from MM -> SV around patch time, but it was mostly because my guild returned to raiding about that time and we needed replenishment. The Volley nerf and Explosive shot buff were just extra incentive.
What I want to know is who is the one guy that specced “Hybrid”?
What about hunters, that are not played anymore? Players who switched to an alt?
I didn’t respec my hunter, it’s still BM, but I don’t play him anymore.
Those numbers tell nothing, they are worthless!
I’ll add to the list of hunters remaining BM. As some others, I have the Spirit Beast and can’t stand to stable it. Especially since I got it less than 12 hours before 3.0.8 hit. I can still end up the night in the top 5 on our 25 man Naxx and am top three on some bosses. I actually finish above the SV hunter that is about equally geared. Granted, my guild is more casual and our top DPSer is only around 4500 DPS for the night and I finish around 2900-3200 for the night, but we down bosses and have fun and that is the point.
SV already nerfed!
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14910001375-hunters-why-the-stealth-nerf.html
GC:”We made a hotfix recently to lower the coefficient of Explosive Shot. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to announce the change ahead of time. We don’t typically do patch notes for hotfixes so we don’t have a system in place to always broadcast these before they happen.
We are in the process of making some changes to get damage done more in parity (in PvP and PvE). If there are other classes far ahead of you on the damage meters, chances are good they will see some nerfs to their damage soon too.
Overall, we are trying to make changes in a more timely manner so that players won’t feel like they are stuck with a bug or other issue forever. We won’t be able to get every issue fixed overnight, but it’s a start. “
I went MM after the nerf. Sure it sucks but it sucks less than current BM and to be BM on my server is to be a leper.
SV was an option but I’ve specced it before and found it wasn’t for me.
And no the nerf DIDN’T even out the specs. It broke one spec and skewed another spec to the point of being exactly what we had before. Still imbalanced just a different tree on top right now. Yeah, the numbers aren’t as overwhelmingly in favor of SV like BM had been. Yet…. But you wait. it will be.
I went SV from BM a while before the nerf; I was asked to do so by my guild for the Hunting Party buff on raids, and just never bothered to switch back. I’d always liked the idea behind SV, but had never had the ungodly amount of Agi needed to make it raid-worthy pre-WotLK. I’m having fun with it, and even if they undid the nerf tomorrow, I think I’d stay.
re: Ghanur not necessarily ‘worthless’ – but i see your point. i bet 90% of people active on their hunters aint BM anymore.
I don’t find it that surprising… I think that since SV was doing such low numbers before the patch, many “SV-hearted” people would have gone MM rather than BM, because the trees have a similar playstyle (and a similar underdog feel
). So, when SV was buffed, those people happily resumed their SV specs.
FYI, to correct a few points in the post. The numbers does not tell you that the difference in percentage of MMs and BMs moved over to SV. It only told you that there are more SV then other builds.
It is entirely possible and probable that some of those percentages moved between MM and BM.
and even though marks is awsome we still dont have as many people, guess thats because everyone is to afraid to play the harder spec
@Vronak
Wow… Stealth nurfed SV already! GC is fast…
I wonder if this will make 50% of hunters run back to their trainers and respec BM now.
yep I feel for you SV’s on that one… at least us BM’s (one of those last determined few)knew we were being hit with a big nerf bat… well I say a big nerf… I’m still pulling in over 2K dps overall on raids and can do up to nearly 3K, depending on the boss, on a fight by fight basis… so not a chart topper, but still in the running so im happy
Wow. I never realized how much of a minority I was as a pre-patch Survival hunter. Less than 5%? I’ve always enjoyed the spec and found it a benefit to raids, easy to solo as, and always PVP ready.
This is good in concept. They’re adjusting the specs to get them nearly equal in usage distribution! While I think it’s not realistic yet, this is what they’re aiming for with 3.1 and beyond.
The BM-nerf was needed. BRK, you of all people should have seen it coming when your dps was scaling faster with gear than everyone else in you TBC raids. I don’t agree that it was nerfed in the best way, but it’s damage output/effort input was way over the top. They should have just reduced/removed/changed serpent’s swiftness.
MM spec got nerfed with the patch, we lost a high tier talent.
Improving a useless shot is waste of talent points.
Imagine BM losing cobra strikes, or longevity?
Just in response to some of the interesting points in the comments above.
(1) Characters must have been active during the period to be included, this is detected from the lastModified attribute on the character sheet.
(2) Known characters are being refreshed periodically as well as new characters being discovered.
(3) Level 80 characters have been prioritised over the past week so the leveling reports are not all that great post-3.0.8 at the moment.
(4) I would really really love to distinguish between characters in order to classify them as ‘Raiders’, ‘Casual’ & ‘PVP’. I have made a few steps towards doing this in the past few days, stay tuned.
Okoloth: Have you considered using Achievements to divvy up raiders/non-raiders? Seems to be how the ranking sites are ranking guilds now, so it’s as good a pick as any.
Here’s something to consider. It takes time for people to move to the ‘best’ spec. I remember in TBC being the only BM hunter on my server (from what I could tell anyways). It was top dog, yet everyone still didn’t believe it. People were slow to move to the spec and try it out. Some never did.
Keep watching this and I bet the SV # continues to grow, and the BM continues to shrink.
I went survival after 3.0.8, and to be perfectly honest, I’ve come to the realization that I like it more than BM. I like not being gimped if my pet dies on, say, Heigan, which it always does. I like blowing shit up for massive damage. I never trained an exotic pet and you can get all the pet talents you need without the extra points, so I really couldn’t care less about losing the 51-point talent.
There was supposed to be more to my previous comment, but I got sidetracked and lost my train of thought. Make of that what you will.
[...] up on Beast Mastery – I love playing it, and I will do whatever I can to make it viable, instead of jumping ship to the beloved dps-spec-of-the-moment. I’m blessed to be on a server with raiding guilds that [...]
One way to narrow this down might be to pull from the existing statistics only those who have the Naxxramas Arachnid Quarter achievement, since those are listed on Armory as well.
This way, you could look at all those who raid, even if only a little, and you’d *definitely* get all of those who raid seriously.
interesting stuff. I actually changed from BM to MM (mage in mail LOL BRK). I did some target dummy tests and it seemed roughly the same DPS when pet and shots are combined. People tell me that pets don’t live long in real raid boss encounters anyway – is that actually true?
I find that the gorilladin is great for soloing and an ordinary cat is fine for instances. I also prefer MM over BM in PvP -more instant shots. Can’t speak for survival hunter, though.
For now, I’ll stay MM – got addicted to Chimera shot..
@Silvermist
No it won’t. BM is what SV was during TBC.
Well, I am a hardcore raiders since WOW vanilla.
I leveled as a BM then, went Surv during Vanilla era.
Then came TBC, again BM to level and Surv to Raid
During this time Surv asked you to know what you are doing and also when to do thing right.
In comest WOTLK, the BM spec is OP, so naturally all go to that and its a fairly simple specc too with mashable macros and you are still top dog…all huntards are happy , all skilled hunters frowm because there is no true distinction between the two types of players.(surge of alt hunters is also visible during this time…)
Enter Patch, Yes it is the big BM nerf patch…HUNTARDS go cry me a river…ooh nerf blablabla…Hunters know they will work hard but at least some vindication to the class…want to play it and be good…LTP!
Tbh Hunters have always had to work hard when raiding (end game) and the experienced Raiding Hunters will agree with me that it is still a lot of hassle to get good dps but still it was like that before.
There are however a number of factors chimed in that really have made me think seriously about re rolling to another class:
Surv raiding build today is extremely sensible to Server lagg and to gear. Now Gear can be overcome by just working ti and getting there. but server lagg can really mess up your shot rotations and the drop in dps can be as much as 50%… !!(enter comments ..yous uck , LTP …)
what then happens is that the BM hunter, MM hunter that comes along who is not so sensible on the lagg out dps’es you.
Next thing that happens is that RL, CL start tellig you LTP and what have you..mostly fueled by the forums and what have you.
TBH I like the “nerf” because there is now an evident difference between Hunters and Huntards (no offense to anyone.) but I still think that Blizz should think a bit more about issues like lagg as they really gimp DPS output of Surv hunters…which demotes them back to tards even though they aren’t.
My expectation is (as seen from the 3.1 notes so far) that they will tweak some things back up again.
I myself switched back to SURV only after I got my 4 valorous set as well as the Maly and Kelt one handers plus the gun a
I am now back with my good old Cat and am usually in the top 5 of our guild (on certain bosses I am top or top 3) however Surv build is now also about aiding the raid with replenish (which i consider subpar but hey we got something at least) and DPS…
Bottom line we can still be OP dps class but you have to work hard for it , harder than any other class…but nowadays no one can say hunter is the easiest class to play anymore…TARDS will always be there but end game not so much…
Sad comfort…lets see what Ulduar brings and lets take it from there…
My toon is Cabronsote…
Regards
Glenn
I can very proudly say I was Surv before it was cool.
Suck on it!
Like you care BRK Mr BM hunter him self just ship right away, I hope you dont come back to BM when we are fixed.
Nice work
[...] hunter tidbit: Big Red Kitty, your one-stop shop for all things huntrish, commissioned an interesting WoW Armory-mining survey of hunter specs and just what 3.0.8 did to the BM/MM/SV proportions. The results shocked the hell [...]
I loved BM! that was my spec! i knew it down to a T! The nerf was extremely disappointing!!! i truely hope they give it back to us! Hunters were just fine the way they were. I still cannot understand why they nerfed hunters, when there are many other classes that over-power now. We were/are the best class, now they have just made it harder than it already was for the hunters.
[...] in Uncategorized There has been evidence of Beast Mastery hunters jumping ship and going Survival–or, at least, away from BM. It was [...]