In our gforums i posted that Furious howl would make my AQR hit harder than gressil or arcanite reaper,
and would very much like to try this on next patchwerk.

However on patchwerk yesterday, "all" the hunters made their point by not bringing wolves,
and whined until they got a huntergroup with goa shaman.

So clearly we have a conflict of interest here and im interrested in what yields the best overall dps,
and how much furious howl contributes for example a melee group.(rogue,rogue,shaman,warrior,hunter)

Furious howl gives an average of (ca) +50 weapondamage on one attack pr 10 seconds.
As this is being applied to weapondamage (or damagerange?) before any modifications,
would that mean that my ripper would hit for 25-30% more?

If anyone wanna gogo theorycrafting lets use the following settings, Rogue, AQR/Iblis, 1300 ap.

So to sum it up, whats the dpsgain from FH. Is it worth spreading hunters in melee groups for this?

Well, FH iss ~50Damage every 10 seconds per target afflicted so it's 5DPS per melee/hunter in range. If you'd put a pure rogue/warrior+hunter group together and everyone would stand close enough to the pet it'd be a 25DPS boost to your raid.

This is not an optimal group of course but with 3 melees, a hunter and a shammmie/pally it's still a nifty boost to your raid DPS in addition to the roughly 80DPS, your pet does anyway.

I'm still struggling to get all our hunters to grab a wolf. Two weeks ago, our officers were complaining about how some people had no or crappy enchants on their gear and I think having a pig or cat with you in raids because "it's so good in PvP" while a wolf could be of more use is basically the same thing.

unless you can time the howls to coincide with attacks of yours that do modified damage (backstab, ambush, crits, Aggression SS), I don't see how it's doing any more good in a melee group than in a hunter group - it's adding 50 dmg to an attack every 10 seconds. Surprisingly, hunter do attacks, and so reap a benefit from this. Considering the fact that MM hunters get 15-30% bonus damage on an attack they do every 10 seconds anyway, and they can macro their howl to coincide with that attack every single time, I'd think the bonus is better used for the pet owner's benefit. even if a hunter gets a howl that isn't coincident with his multishot (e.g if it's not his wolf doing the howl), if he's MM he gets a 5% damage boost on it thanks to RWS - so again, likely better on a hunter than a random melee attack.

Yes if you could time howls to correspond to attacks with large multipliers, like Ambush and Backstab, it would be awesome, but you can't.

what weapon or AP you have is completely irrelevant, it adds the same amount of damage regardless.

also note that Howl has a range of 15 yards - so if the pet is standing safely back with the hunter (often the case with the amount of AoE and the dearth of pet healing), melee is unlikely to be getting the howls at all.

It's 5 dps for melee to be put in stupid and simple terms. If you are horde your shaman's totems can possible be as high as what 92 agility? So it is a waste to have them put into melee groups when all of them can get that much ap and crit.

I'd put single hunters in a melee group as much as possible as long as they have TSA. As Alliance we build groups that consist of 2 rogues, a warrior (for Battleshout), a hunter (for TSA and FH) and a pally (for Auras).
I almost forgot, the OP was Horde but I honestly don't know how you'd make up the group composition but it would be interesting to know for BC and it's shamans from outer space.

Doesnt the furious howl addition get benefits from your attackpower and crit?

I thought it was (weapdmg+furious howl)*ap*talents etc etc

And wouldnt a crit also be that much larget if FH was in effect? as in: ((weapdmg+furious howl)*ap*talents) x 2(for crit)

Note: i know thats far from the exact way damage is calculated, but im interested in the principle.

Attack power doesn't multiply any damage, it just adds to your weapon damage.
If you had any talents that increase damage dealt by a percentage it would probably affect furious howl, though.

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=24597
The effect is listed as Apply Aura: Mod Damage Done (Physical)
Now read this:
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thre...p=1#post199510
So we can conclude it is affected by armor (bad), but it can crit and the damage multiplied on backstab (good). Considering this it's probably a bit better than 5 dps.

ideal melee group for horde:
2 rogues
1 warrior
1 shaman
1 TSA hunter (with furious howl)

if you have any other hunters left over after making this ideal melee groups, and if you have a shaman left over, sure, give 'em GoA.

it's near impossible to time howl with specials like bs/ss from a rogue perspective, and ultimately a waste of effort. better to leave the howl on auto-cast.

For ranged:
SlayingMod*(Ammo*WeaponSpeed + RWSMod*(RAP/14*Speed + WeaponDamage + Scope + Furious Howl + ShotBonus))
Speed -- depends on shot, either Weapon Speed or normalized speed
ShotBonus -- 150 for max rank Multi-Shot, 600 for max rank Aimed Shot
RWSMod -- 1 to 1.05, depending on points invested in Ranged Weapon Specialization
SlayingMod -- 1 to 1.03, depending on points invested in Slaying vs Target.

Same system for melee, I might be missing some modifiers here, but...

SkillMod*(AP/14*Speed + WeaponDamage + DamageBonus + FuriousHowlBonus + SkillDamageBonus)

By DamageBonus, I mean stuff like... +5 weapon damage enchant.

Edit: Furious Howl is affected by both armor mitigation and crit modifiers.

removed

no, better to leave howl macro'ed to the hunter's multishot, so he gets the 15% bonus on it from Barrage (because he's MM, obviously...) :P

4 hunters with a shaman for totem will yield a bigger increase in raiddps than hunters split out into groups for furious howl on melees. Rarely a guild has all hunters with TSA so it will only be half the melee with TSA+Furious howl and the hunters will all lose GoA. For alliance it's better to split up the hunters ofc.

Sorry to hi-jack your thread. But, I am terrible at macro-ing. Can someone post how to macro furious howl and multishot plase

Should work just fine.

But its still better that the hunter brings a wolf, than a cat or any other pet for dps right?
I'm thinking mainly about patchwerk here, where aoe effects and such can be ignored.

With 4 hunters and a shaman in a grp you get TSA and FH on 4 people, 8 buffs. (one group buffed)

With 1 hunter in 4 groups you get (rogue, rogue, warr, sham, hunter) TSA on 16 people, FH on 16 people, 32 buffs. (4 groups buffed) Can also be mentioned that hunter pets will get battle shout (i think) with this setup.

Assuming shaman dont benefit from TSA or FH, suppose they heal on patch.

So to break it down we are left with:
16FH, 16TSA,(4 bs on pets) vs 4FH, 4TSA, 4 GoA

However this is if we assume WF in the melee grp, this is most likely wise, tho GoA+MH poison/sharpening stone here is an option.

Anyways, making a lot of assumptions here, that all hunters have MM, that there is an ideal group setup etc etc, anyways. Just spewing out stuff, brainstorming.

Getting the benefit of multiple Furious Howls in 1 group is fully possible. Pets also get the TSA bonus, and benefit from SoE and GoA, so it would be...
8 TSA (4 on pets)
8 FH (4 on pets) minimum, 32 FH (16 on pets) maximum, most likely ~20-25 (half on pets) -- this is per 10 seconds
8 GoA (4 on pets, increases crit rate, 20 agility needed per crit)
4 SoE (4 on pets)
+ Mana Spring

Edit: Also remember that happy pets deal 125% damage, effectively increasing all buffs on them by 25%.

When I've watched, we usually put together melee DPS groups of Rogue/Rogue/Warrior/PriestDruid/Shaman. We tend to discourage cross-healing on trash, so having two healers per group is generally aimed for, though, for sustained boss fights, obviously, having a Mana Tide battery in a healer group is a good thing.

Hunter groups are usually Hunter/Hunter/Hunter/Hunter/Healer or Hunter*5. Most of our hunters are 0/21/30, so being able to leech TSA off the MM hunter is a very nice boost to their DPS. When the Healer in question is a Shaman, though, for GoA and Mana Spring, they see a large improvement in sustainability/DPS.

EDIT: In my experience the Furious Howl boost isn't affected by Backstab/Ambush multipliers, so it's just a flat 10DPS for each individual group-member (If it were, I'm sure that I'd get the occasional backstab 300 points higher than . I'm not sure whether or not it's affected by armor, as I know that Hemo is not. Given that it's the exact reciprocal (Mod Damage Done vs. Mod Damage Taken), I assume that it isn't, but can't be exactly sure.

is it worth it? sure it helps just like every little bit does. Don't you put a trueshot hunter with warrior/rogue/shaman anyway for the AP boost? If so how does this change anything. I mean its like having cake and pie. Sure you can eat one but why not just eat them both?

This is correct.

This is not. It's 300AP for melee DPS (100 TS aura x 3) vs 176 AP for a hunter (assuming the best possible agi totem). Melee get dibs on the aura first, then if there are leftover hunters/shamans/feral druids you can set up a GoA group.

TSA doesn't stack. It's like having two Pally Devo auras on - they don't stack.

You, my friend, are clueless. :(