After taking a break from raiding for the month of July, my main team is starting to get back in to some SoO runs, in hope of gearing up some new members for faster levelling, and just to get some practice working together before WoD and the new Mythic system drop. I played the current live version of BM in a farm run last night, and it got me thinking a bit more about some of the changes to BM when playing in WoD.
The Target Swap:
The first thing I noticed, is I don't have to think much about target swapping in WoD. I mean, I have to think about which target I should be prioritizing, and to some extent keeping up Beast Cleave, but for the most part, in WoD, you just hit your highest priority target. The reason this is sticking out to me as a significant difference is while playing the BM on the WoD Beta, I very quickly forgot about Serpent Sting.
I don't think I ever noticed it before, but now I find myself sitting in raid anytime there are a couple targets for a significant amount of time, trying to decide if I should put up SS or not. I realize this is a little bit silly, and that as I get back into the swing of the 5.4/MoP playstyle it will go back to being second nature. Still, it was something that stuck out to me as making BM a good bit easier on multi-target fights. You only have one thing to really think about, a fairly simple cleave up-time.
Level 100 Talents:
The more I play with them, the more I'm starting to notice more differences with the level 100 talents. The one that's surprised me the most is Adaptation. At first I felt like this was a cool talent, but not really something that I would notice; like it would just be my pet over there doing neat stuff without me. However, it's really growing on me, and I feel like it is changing the playstyle of BM, even if just a little bit.
For example, RoS is one of those abilities that I have macro'ed/key-bound in PvP, but since I only use cunning pets in PvP, I don't really think about it any other time. Now I have this extra bit survivability CD when using a tank pet or a DPS pet, and all of the sudden I'm finding all sorts of situations where I want to use it. Sure, chances are I wasn't really going to die, but, especially while learning new 5-player dungeons, if the tank slips up or the healer slips up, you've got one more go-to ability to save the wipe (even if it just involves keeping one of them alive for a few extra seconds so you can finish pew pewing).
The other big thing with Adaptation, is now that they've removed the Empowered Pets perk, that combat experience buff is looking pretty sweet (not that it didn't look sweet before, really).
Another one I've liked (which, really, I liked with SV and MM too) is Focusing Shot. It just feels good to be getting that huge influx of focus. There's no more needing to slowly build up your focus to get ready for Bestial Wrath, just hit Focusing Shot once, then pop BW with plenty of focus to spam arcane and KC through the whole duration. It does, just like when using it on the other two specs, take a bit more attention to detail, but it feels totally worth it to me.
As I mentioned when talking about BM earlier this week, it could be that it just feels so good because it's the only spec we have in WoD that's doing even average damage. But, I am having fun with it, and that'll have to be good enough until they start doing some damage tuning.
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