Beastial Wrath Change

I love data-mined patch note day.

It should be no surprise to anyone who has been on these boards for long that we're trying to chill out abilities that convey offensive and defensive bonuses with the same button press. At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet. With this change, hopefully, Bestial Wrath becomes more of a defensive ability while taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.

I call it more of a defensive cooldown because it now breaks all CC like a PvP trinket.

Q u o t e:
I for one hope the hunters don't let this go. I hope they raise holy hell and QQ their face off about this

That’s rarely going to be an effective strategy around here. At most it will annoy other players and earn you a ban if it is over-the-top enough.

Q u o t e:
This I find interesting because it doesn't work that way now, it will prevent you from being stunned while up, but will not clear a stun. So against a rogue you need to Trinket/TBW, unless I am very much mistaken.

Since the changes seem to be causing confusion, here is the new tooltip.

“Send your pet into a rage causing 50% additional damage for 10 sec (down from 18). While enraged, the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.”

The tooltip doesn’t say this, but it now breaks all forms of CC that a PvP trinket would break (including Cyclone, Sap, etc.).

“Increases all damage you deal by 10% and while your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing mana costs of all spells by 20% for 10 sec (down from 18). While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.”

So the changes are:

Duration lowered.
Passive hunter damage buff added.
Now breaks all forms of CC (whatever a PvP trinket breaks, including Sap and Cyclone).

Q u o t e:
You're forgetting about the damage hit that pets will be taking because of the decreased duration of Bestial Wrath. More time will also be spent in Aspect of the Viper, further decreasing the DPS increase.

It wasn't our intent to push BM hunters into Viper more often with this change so we are discussing buffing the mana cost portion of the talent from 20% to perhaps as high as 50%.

Q u o t e:
You're already having to modify a change multiple times that has been announced for less than a day, as it's too strong of a nerf. How much thought was actually put into the change other than "this ability is too powerful, let's crush it"?

This sounds like QQ to me. There has been no "modify a change multiple times." We made changes for 3.2.2. I stated that we might make a change to the mana portion because we didn't want having to go into Viper more often to be a consequence of the change. The community pointed out a potential flaw with our plan, and in this case, we agree with them. In essence, the system worked.

If you don't ever want us to make changes based on community feedback, then you're probably going to find many of these discussions frustrating, because the main reason I am here is to get player feedback.

If we never made mistakes or changed our minds, the patch notes would be pretty darn short. :)