Our bow-wielding Hunter Writers, Tarlo (Beast Mastery) and Azortharion (Marksmanship), have dissected the Hunter changes in the recent Blue post to provide an early look at where these changes leave Hunters in 10.0.7.
Beast Mastery Hunter Reaction
The Interaction:
The current effect of Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky increases the attack speed of the player by 6% for each auto-attack made against the same target, stacking up to 5 times for a total of 30% increased attack speed. Pets naturally inherit the attack speed of the Hunter, which has meant the bow was also increasing the pet damage of the Beast Mastery Hunters by a significant amount, resulting in a 10% increase in damage overall. This attack speed interaction has also been present in other spells, talents and trinkets such as Controlled Current Technique, but never gave quite as much attack speed as this effect. The high power level of the effect meant that even a Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky from LFR could outperform any other bow in current patch, and most likely we would have kept this bow equipped for most, if not all, of the next major patch. The rare status of the bow has meant a frustrating experience for unlucky hunters and a large disparity between those who got lucky and those who did not.
The Changes:
For Patch 10.0.7, Blizzard has decided to change the effect from increasing your attack speed, to increasing the damage of your auto-attacks. This new effect would exclude pets, so it’s significantly less potent. If the previous effect was worth around 10% dps, this new effect would be worth circa 2% dps on single-target and 1% or less on AoE.
Old Effect
New Effect
To compensate for this nerf, the damage of Kill Command, Stomp, Serpent Sting and Barbed Shot has been increased by 25%, the damage of Cobra Shot has been increased by 50% and the damage of Death Chakram has been increased by 100%.
If you do not have a Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky prior to 10.0.7, these changes will net you a roughly 16.5% buff on single-target, and a 15.5% gain on AoE. If you do have a Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky, you will instead gain a 8% buff on single-target and 6% on AoE.
Differences after changes
| If you have the Bow | If you don’t have the Bow | |
| Single-target | +8% | +16.5% |
| AoE | +6.5% | +15.5% |
Where does this leave Beast Mastery Hunters?
As it stands, Beast Mastery is an extremely potent single-target spec in raid. These changes will emphasize this further by buffing your single-target slightly more than your AoE. While not always the flashiest on the DPS-meters, boss damage remains a very valuable metric on most bosses in the Vault of the Incarnates and is arguably the most valuable niche hunters bring to raid at the moment. Your AoE will likely remain somewhat underwhelming by comparison. Due to this disparity, it might have been wiser to buff single-target less significantly while buffing AoE more. It’s not unreasonable to expect these buffs to be partially rolled back in future PTR-builds, given Beast Mastery’s already strong performance on single-target.
Another strange aspect of these buffs is that they chose to buff specific spells rather than every spell. The net result of this would be that something like Kill Shot will be made significantly weaker compared to the spells getting buffed, and will barely be worth pressing at all without further changes. Utility picks such as Wailing Arrow will now also come at a slightly higher trade-off in terms of output. This somewhat worsens the current lack of build variety with Beast Mastery Hunters, as it strengthens current builds utilizing Dire Pack. It is unclear what exactly Blizzards intention was with doing it this way, but maybe more changes are coming.
The other change from this is that Beast Mastery Hunters will no longer have to farm lower raid difficulties for the bow. While the effect still has some value, especially on single-target, you can now reasonably expect weapons of higher item level to compete with it, especially in AoE scenarios.
Beast Mastery Hunter Guide
Marksmanship Hunter Reaction
Blizzard has recently announced significant changes to the Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky Epic Bow. This Bow can only drop from Raszageth (on any difficulty) and the Great Vault. It is a significant power increase compared to not having it. Its effect is worth far more than its item level (which can be as high as 431 from Mythic Difficulty). It is tough to be competitive as a Marksmanship Hunter without it.
You can read more about the changes in this article. In this piece, I will review the effects of the nerf and the compensatory buffs and what it means for Marksmanship Hunters in Patch 10.0.7.
What’s Changing?
Old Neltharax Special Effect
Auto-attacking an enemy grants you 6% attack speed, stacking 5 times. This bonus resets upon auto-attacking a different target.
New 10.0.7 Neltharax Special Effect
Auto-attacking an enemy grants you 10% auto-attack damage, stacking 5 times. This bonus resets upon auto-attacking a different target.
This has several important implications for Marksmanship:
- The old attack speed bonus also affected the cast times of critical spells like Aimed Shot.
- The old attack speed bonus was causing increased procs from the powerful Lock and Load talent.
Turning the attack speed into auto-attack damage removes these “knock-on” effects of increasing attack speed. Blizzard can be sure that the new effect has minimal synergies that could make the Bow useful beyond the current season, which would not be intended.
Compensation Buffs
The above changes will weaken the Bow, meaning that all Marksmanship Hunters experience a “nerf.” This would understandably cause outrage, as Marksmanship is not in a fantastic spot (though it is far from terrible). To compensate for the Bow nerf, and much to the celebration of Hunters who have not obtained the Bow yet, they have announced the following compensation buffs:
Where Do Marksmanship Hunters Stand in 10.0.7?
When considering everything, Marksmanship Hunters can expect something like a 2-3% overall DPS buff in Patch 10.0.7, based on these changes and a talent reshuffle they have also announced.
On top of this, Hunters are far less reliant on Neltharax to be competitive, as it will now only be worth approximately 1% DPS. For comparison, it used to be worth over 5%.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, the changes achieve the goal Blizzard must’ve had in mind; reduce the power of the Bow so that anyone can be competitive without it, without negatively impacting the viability of Hunters. Of course, Hunters who have not obtained the Bow have many reasons to be happy. They will receive a far more significant and noticeable buff in-game.
My main criticism is how long this took to happen. Beast Mastery suffered far more as a spec from how overpowered the Bow was. Still, every Ranged Hunter felt how negatively impactful it was not to have it. From Blizzard’s words, it’s clear that the Bow was far more powerful than intended, particularly for Beast Mastery. However, this should not have surprised them as they were informed of the factors that made it so powerful before the expansion launched.
This change should have happened when the raid launched at the latest, and 2 minor patches were far too long to wait. The harm has already been done to many Hunters as they have quit the spec or even class, knowing that it is so difficult to obtain the Bow and be competitive, as they will not be competitive without it. I hope that Blizzard walks away with the lesson of more carefully considering the knock-on effects of special weapon effects like this one and that they have a look at Community Discords, where the problem was intensely discussed even before Dragonflight launched.
As for the meta viability of Marksmanship, I expect this to remain relatively the same from this. The AoE is still great, while the single-target could be much better. Survivability is currently poor but will get a substantial boost in Patch 10.0.7. The utility is still lacking or non-existent, so Marksmanship rides or dies on its powerful damage profile and general damage to be desirable in the meta. While its damage is good overall, it needs to be better for the top echelons of Mythic+, and it has no unique or powerful utility to compensate in this regard.
Marksmanship Hunter Guide
