I've tried it before, but I thought I'd give another go at a BM build. Hoping to learn from my betters, I altered the famous BigRedKitty's spec for use in melee, and rummaged through my bank to look for stuff I could use under conditions where I don't have aggro. My tanking gun was replaced by Hemet's Elekk Gun, my Madness Card with the Maelstrom Card, and my Vengeance Card with a rotation of trinkets: Core of Ar'kelos, Uniting Charm, Terokkar Tablet of Precision, Bladefist's Breadth. My rings and necklace were replaced, too, trading off tank stats like dodge and parry for attack power and agility.
I used my pet wolf Cafall as my tank, giving him Growl 8, Bite 9, Dash 3, and Howl 4.
With Cafall having aggro, that removed Mongoose Bite and Counterattack as options. Finally, I became what people accuse me of: a player that spams nothing but Raptor Strike. (Well, Kill Command worked its way in there, too.) The lack of aggro also meant there was no reason to have on Aspect of the Monkey. It was Viper, all the way. Good thing, too, because without Resourcefulness I was hurting terribly for mana.
Honestly, this whole setup is horrible for what I do. I fell from a dps range of 550-700 down to 275-400. I was drinking every other fight or three. Cafall had problems holding aggro (though that may be due to my inexperience in letting him hold it). And neither of us were nearly as durable as I've gotten used to.
A build that includes Resourcefulness might be an improvement, but even then I'd still be facing the problem of lower overall dps. On the whole, I think I have to consider the case for Beast Mastery builds closed: I just can't seem to find a way to make them work for the way I've learned to play as a melee hunter.
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3 comments:
You might consider adding Disengage to your attack "rotation" while you have a BM build. Yes, it will mean that you're using a bit more mana, but it also means that you're going to leave aggro on Cafall. A simple macro like:
/cast Disengage
/startattack
will ensure that you don't lose that valuable DPS time. It's not a "guaranteed" aggro reduction since the spell can be resisted--I believe it's based off of Hit Rating--but it's certainly better than nothing. Perhaps if you were to add this ability to your repetoire after picking up Resourcefulness? I dunno, just a thought to leave aggro on your pet.
Thanks, Anon. You're absolutely right. It's not enough to persuade me to revisit BM just now, but I had completely forgotten I even *have* Disengage. It's not exactly a spell I use regularly!
If Serpent's Swiftness applied to melee, I'd be all up in deep BM for melee huntering. Sadly, it doesn't, which sucks. Same to Improved Hunter's Mark not granting the full stacked AP bonus to melee attackers.
I tooled around with a Surv/BM Tank Hunter spec that worked pretty well for crashing around ST with a ret paly healing, though. But, not having inspected your talent build recently, I imagine that's probably what you've got going anyway. (Endurance Training, Thick Hide, Imp. Aspect of the Monkey, Focused Fire, ... I went with Imp. Mend pet myself, but that's probably because I'm a beastnoob at heart and was using Ascension as my offtank ...)
Doallyn, when I get time to level him again, will probably end up being 31/0/30 while I get the hang of end-game melee huntering. Sadly he isn't quite as "unstained" in ranged combat as one would want him to be, since ... things in the Ghostlands really hurt small, fragile blood elf hunters in melee (ow ow ow), and I decided I'd try to do with him what I didn't do with Ans and level every possible weapon skill he has to 350 for the luls.
Although good news for you and possibly convincing people to run instances with you (heck, I'm tempted to roll something horrifying over on your server to level up expressly to join Gweryc's adventures)--a BM/MM hunter of my acquaintance says she's successfully tanked Murmur in normal Shadow Labyrinth (I believe she was Surv at the time). Sonic Spear is just delicious anyway, so maybe you can find a group crazy enough to let you tank SLabs for them. ;)
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