Reflections on the 10.0.7 changes to Neltharax for Beast Mastery Hunters
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 EffectNew EffectTo 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.
Background
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 EffectAuto-attacking an enemy grants you 6% attack speed, stacking 5 times. This bonus resets upon auto-attacking a different target.
