It's not so much a matter of whether buffing pets is a good idea, as of whether you have the warriors to spare. Trickier for Horde as well since a Hunter heavy group would appreciate having GoA while a Warrior would want Windfury generally speaking.
I'd say anything that increases your raid's DPS is never wasted though.
Main benefit is the Warriors in that group are getting TSA and probably Furious Howl for their DPS. If there's totems up the pets are going to get those and battleshout regardless.
For alliance, what's buffing pets going to cost you? 2 silver? certainly doesn't hurt just to press the button
You lose the battle shout if the warrior changes group so yea.
As for pets, one of the main issue is there's no way to raise their hit% or reduce their glancing blows. They already do pretty crappy dps, on top of that they have to deal with terrible crit rate, terrible miss rate, dodges, sometimes parry cause it's annoying to get your pet to go behind a boss unless you're behind him yourself and on top of that on bosses they get tons of glancing blows. But well it never hurts to send your pet on every boss fight even if he dies in the first 30secs, it's still a bit of damage.
The good thing about trueshot/battleshout is that they buff the group automatically as long as you are in range. I am not sure if you target one pet with the 15 min Might it will buff all the pets at once, but 5 min ones work fine.
Like it was said, pets don't scale (other than with talents and the Beastmaster's gear), so they don't do much dps (no hit and only have 300 weapon skill), and will die with in melee range if the hunter doesn't micromanage it.
Some hunters use a Wolf that stands beside them to buff themselves with Howl.
However, pets are really good for leveling, Beastial Wrath is a fun spell, and I bet the 41 BM talent is neat too.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
We actually had a hunter in our guild play around with 31 BM and he was doing awesome damage, even on stupid fights with AoE :) By awesome I mean damage that was actually on point with the other hunters or in some cases even higher.
Our hunters usually save their pets and whistle them up for any enrage mecahnic in AE fights.
Yes pets are nice for things like 30% Huhu (just whistle him up at 29% and Huhu'll be dead before him) and fights with absolutely no environemental damage (Fankriss, Nef P2, Ebonroc, Patch). Everywhere else they're a waste of quails and healer mana. You might get away with them on fights with light AoE (Flamegor) as Alliance just because of JoL.
Our hunters usually save their pets and whistle them up for any enrage mecahnic in AE fights.
Yes pets are nice for things like 30% Huhu (just whistle him up at 29% and Huhu'll be dead before him) and fights with absolutely no environemental damage (Fankriss, Nef P2, Ebonroc, Patch). Everywhere else they're a waste of quails and healer mana. You might get away with them on fights with light AoE (Flamegor) as Alliance just because of JoL.
The hunter I spoke of owned every other hunter on Firemaw with Beast Mastery though. I wish someone with the respect of the community would try and give Beast Mastery a whirl and see how it works and not immediately discard it just because you had to alter your playstyle. I'm not even sure if it's been done, it seemed to me that the conclusion has always just been defaulted that Beast Mastery sucks.
Having TSA, I'm often in a sham/hunter/rogue/rogue/warrior group, so my pet almost always has TSA, Battleshout, and SoE. It would compliment a 20/31/0 build very nicely, I just haven't decided to respec yet (5/31/15 atm).
The hunter I spoke of owned every other hunter on Firemaw with Beast Mastery though. I wish someone with the respect of the community would try and give Beast Mastery a whirl and see how it works and not immediately discard it just because you had to alter your playstyle. I'm not even sure if it's been done, it seemed to me that the conclusion has always just been defaulted that Beast Mastery sucks.
We actually spoke about this a little bit in the hunter build thread and there was some decent anecdotal evidence from at least one 20/31/0 hunter. I think if you aren't that fussed about 10% extra health - and especially if you're a tauren you might not be - and aren't PvPing regularly, more points in BM can make some sense.
<Fric> I think the only kind of gay buttsex I'd enjoy on any level would be assraping a smug hipster douchebag (also possibly a roid head and/or fratboy/Jersey Shore cast member)
<Zyla> If there's gonna be a dick in the room besides my own, i'd rather it have to be my brother's. You know that kinda sounds bad all typed out like that,
I'm actualy trying it right now too. Sure I miss deterence and abit the 10% more stamina but I noticed the there are no points in Surv tree that give me extra dsp in AQ40 and Naxx. Now I have a pet that can have more health than mages and priests and can survive quite nicely. Sure some fights I can't really use them but some fights they do give about 100 dps more (depending on buffs)
Our hunters usually save their pets and whistle them up for any enrage mecahnic in AE fights.
Yes pets are nice for things like 30% Huhu (just whistle him up at 29% and Huhu'll be dead before him) and fights with absolutely no environemental damage (Fankriss, Nef P2, Ebonroc, Patch). Everywhere else they're a waste of quails and healer mana. You might get away with them on fights with light AoE (Flamegor) as Alliance just because of JoL.
The hunter I spoke of owned every other hunter on Firemaw with Beast Mastery though. I wish someone with the respect of the community would try and give Beast Mastery a whirl and see how it works and not immediately discard it just because you had to alter your playstyle. I'm not even sure if it's been done, it seemed to me that the conclusion has always just been defaulted that Beast Mastery sucks.
The problem with pets is that if a fight involves area of effect damage that hits pets as well you will lose your pet during the fight due to the poor healing output of "mend pet".
On straightforward fights were you have to hide as a hunter but your pet doesn't I can see that a BM hunter can outdamage a MM hunter (Razuvious and apparently Flamegor as well). But on other fights like Anub'Rhekan I'd be rather scared to use a pet. Also having your pet alive after Nefarian lands is also a pretty lucky shot unless you dismiss it beforehand (and even if it lives it can still get feared into Shadowflame). It's possible to revive it mid-combat but as far as I remember it won't regenerate health because it will be automatically in combat so you'll have to heal it up first, which can take quite a while.
I'd say there's about 20% of the boss fights that can and will kill your pet. That doesn't sound too bad - but the thing is that hunters aren't really known for their awesome DPS. If you were a raid leader and had one DPS spot free, what would you get? A MM hunter that can deal full damage all the time or a BM hunter that can deal 8 times out of 10 full damage?
Also trash mobs tend to be rather nasty regarding AoE damage (the cleaving abominations in the abomination wing) so the DPS output will be lower there as well (not that it matters much).
I don't know if a BM hunter could outdps a MM hunter on a fight like Pathwerk - might be worth a try for someone that has him on farm status.
I'm not even sure if it's been done, it seemed to me that the conclusion has always just been defaulted that Beast Mastery sucks.
I have seen a few hunters speced BM, and even if you add in their pet + personel dps, it is below other hunters.
That said, if you don't PvP and are good about watching your health, you could forget about the survival tree and do a 20/31 spec. You get imp Hawk, 30% more pet armor, 4% more pet health, 20% more pet damage and 15% more pet crit. As long as you manage your pet (feed it, pull it out when hurt) I believe you could outdps the common 5/31/15 spec.
Also I believe people prefer the easy way, and don't want to worry about a little pet's health (most healer's don't) as well as their own, so that is why I feel 20/31 has never been popular.
The fact that pet skills don't do much damage by themselves (like 50-80 damage) hurts.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
As for pets, one of the main issue is there's no way to raise their hit% or reduce their glancing blows. They already do pretty crappy dps, on top of that they have to deal with terrible crit rate, terrible miss rate, dodges, sometimes parry cause it's annoying to get your pet to go behind a boss unless you're behind him yourself and on top of that on bosses they get tons of glancing blows.
I've been throwing this particular suggestion at the Blizzard forums for months now hoping it might stick. Trainable or Talent based +skill or +hit% for our pets would dramatically multiply their damage output on raid bosses and finally, maybe, make them worth healing occasionally.
We also have a hunter who is 20/31 (beast/marksman) and he does excellent dps in general.
Yes that's fine. Except for the Slayings (which do not apply in later instances anyway) there's no ranged damage contributing talents in the lower tiers of Survival.
It's hunters giving up the higher tiers of MM for those in BM that make me go bonk.
One thing a lot of people forget about buffing pets: A happy pet gets a +25% bonus to EVERY buff that affects damage. That +25% dps goes a long way towards sorting out their miss and glance problems. Even a 5/31/15 (read: no pet talents) hunter can get a 100 DPS pet with Strength of Earth + Battle Shout + TSA, and that's before special attacks; after misses and glances it's still doing ~70-80 DPS, and if it's a wolf it's adding 5 DPS to everything within 15 yards of it.
It's true that 20/31 (BM/MM) is regarded as the highest overall DPS build for a hunter.
Pets can be used on more bosses than most people might realize, but the problem is that most hunters are either unaware of a pets utility or don't feel confortable using a pet in all situations due to concerns about getting blamed for wipes ("wtf were you using a pet for?!") by raid members. There's lots of fights where there's AoE curses and things that may or may not hit pets. On fights like A'nub, Noth, and Thaddius hunters are often afraid to use pets because they're not sure about the mechanics. They might not be aware that pets dying don't cause corpse scarabs to spawn, pets don't need decursing in Noth, and they don't chain lighting and they're afraid to try it for fear of getting blamed for a wipe. They'd rather play it safe than risk causing drama.
Personally I blame Blizzard for all this. You can't blame hunters for not using pets if they offer only situational benefit and require some maintanance and you can't blame people for being cautious with all the buggy encounters they've introduced in the game in the past. Blizzard needs to ensure that pets become more useful and provide more benefit to a raid then they do now or they will continue to be a novelty of the hunter class in endgame PvE.
Just make pets immune to AOEs ala Everquest and be done with it. That wouldn't address scaling concerns, but at least it would make pets useful in all fights.
Anyway.... I just bit the bullet and respecced 20/31 from 5/31/15. I barely ever do BWL these days (though I still want to get the red scepter shard if just for the nice resist legs); mostly just AQ20 and 40. We're consistently hitting phase 2 of c'thun and getting vulnerability phases, so we'll be on Naxx soon. I'll lose out on damage on Maexxna, but any other boss I fight regularly should have the same or higher damage output. I'll really miss Survivalist - I loved having 6200 health with just pwf and motw - but I'm gonna give the spec a go.
09/11/06, 9:17 AM
Similar Threads
