The Big, The Red, and the Ugly

There was a tuning hotfix that went live on Tuesday and it included buffs to both Beast Mastery and Survival.

• Beastial Wrath now lasts 15 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
• Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting damage increased by 25%.

Bendak from Eyes of the Beast did a nice write-up on how this impacts things in Hellfire Citadel. The bottom line is that is that it doesn’t change much. In Tier 17 gear things are close, but once you start collecting T18, Marksmanship continues to shine.

Fans of Survival may find a few spots to fire off those Explosive Shots and play with those AoE Serpent Stings, but as far showcasing it in WoW’s premiere content, progression raiding, it’s over for this expansion.

The good news is Blizzard has a tendency to over-fix things so it will probably the highest DPS spec in the game when the next expansion rolls out.

Bestial Wrath was made more fun, though. Fifteen seconds of Big Red Pet means you can squeeze three Kill Commands in one session. I still like to use Beast Mastery in the Tanaan Jungle. It’s great for taking down multiple elites and it’s fun in Timewalking dungeons. You can even break out some of your old tier sets and trinkets for those.

While this change doesn’t make it my go-to choice for raiding it does bring the spec closer to it roots of Big Red all the time.