I was hoping to forego KC/melee attacking for just LB. But thinking more I realize that is not a good idea.

I'm curious, did you want to keep your pet out of melee range for the reasons of a specific boss encounter, or for another issue?

Your pet's autoattack makes up the majority of his damage and it's inadvisable to purposefully station him at range (of course I'm speaking on active DPS time, and not pulling him out to avoid a whirlwind or the like).

Badge of tenacity on use is 187.5 agility while being raid buffed for a survival hunter. If an EW triggers the debuff will be roughly 40 AP higher. My question is will the higher debuff stay up if it is continually refreshed after the on use is over?

Please read the first post. This is NOT a thread to ask questions. There is a thread already dedicated to people that need advice with all things Hunter.

bumpidy bump

I'm waiting for the conclusion of this post as a 4years old kid running in circle to not pee his pants !

This is a bump of the Hunter's lounge thread, whose title is the coolest of this board.

In general I sometimes have the issue of a pet dying to random things (volcanoes and molten flame of supremus, rock falls on gruul and the like) and just like the idea of have a pet stay out of range of that and be on constant LB.

Would love to see some information regarding haste and it's effectiveness with a marks build post-nerf, if it's still required, viable, or completely worthless. I'm starting to build up various bt/hyjal haste items to try it out, but i'm beginning to wonder if it's even needed.

I've done a ton of spreadsheet-toying. Haste will help marks / survival up to the point where you are clipping part of your 1.5 rotation; depending on your latency you may have very little leeway to work with there. It's not a far-and above superior stat.

As far as getting Marks / Survival down to 1:1 by stacking passive haste - that is useless. The amount of stats you have to give up in other areas end up being a net loss in DPS.

One other thing I've noticed in playing with specs, gear, and spreadsheets, is that assuming full raid buffs (but no group buffs) and a Survival hunter already in the raid, BM outdamages Marks and Survival even in T6 gear. Those specs may be useful since the late T6 encounters in both Hyjal and BT are very pet-unfriendly, but if you can use your pet then BM will continue to win.

Going to try contribute for the Misdirection macro:

Sorry in advance if the idea already exists or if the spreadsheets answer to this accurately: would it be possible to have a theoritical DPS comparison of naked and geared hunters with the following:

• untalented hunter (as the base reference)
• 41/20/0
• 5/41/15
• 0/20/41
• 0/30/31

Most of the comparisons that are done, most noticeably BigRedKitty's are done using the exact same gear and don't take shot rotations into account.
Although BM likely will out-DPS the other builds, not having supporting evidences annoys me mightily and I'm not sure how to proceed in order to actually support claims of DPS superiority for one build or another.
I may be nitpicking, but of all places EJ is probably the right one to do just that.

DPS of a naked hunter doesn't mean anything. The different specs scale differently with different stats. Also, there is plenty of evidence out there as to how different specs perform (see wowwebstats) there is also a spreadsheet that does a pretty good job modeling almost everything (cheeky's) that you can play with.

Amen to that Zek, I'm Surv too. Don't have that much agility yet, but working on it day in and day out.

If I asked is specifically because the models of comparison you find have the same flaws you are describing: gear isn't adapted from one spec to the other, rotation rarely is.

I checked out Cheeky's spreadsheet now, and it's a nice way to figure out better gear or rotation.

A naked hunter, as any placebo in a test population, is used as the absolute bottom reference under which you can not possibly go under any circumstance. What he can do isn't interesting. What is is what he can't do.

Howitzer, Lactose, and I have all been much busier than we thought we would be when we took this effort on. Here is a write up about Pets I did, and hopefully I can get my other sections done quickly.

Pets in Raids
The only real purpose of a raid pet is DPS. You want to select and train a pet to maximize the damage it deals. There are 3 ways a pet deals damage - melee attacks, special attacks, and Kill Command. You also need to make sure you pet stays alive to continue DPSing as much as possible. Your pet is not a luxury, regardless of spec, but an integral part of your arsenal for dealing damage. If you obsess over which gems to socket, and what shot rotation to employ you should understand the logic behind the choices in picking a pet and training it.

Defense
The primary ways to help your pet survive raid encounters are through mitigating the damage it takes. Pets' native mitigation is exceedingly weak. They do not Parry, and have very low Dodge values. The primary ways to avoid damage are through the trainable Avoidance and Resistance abilities.

Avoidance rank 2 is a must have trained ability. You pet will be hit by Cleaves, AE damages, and other unavoidable effects. Rank 2 of avoidance lowers all of this damage by 50%. In effect it doubles your pet's health and the effectiveness of your healing. It does no good if your pet is the focus of a target's attacks, but in a raid setting no non-tank can really survive more than a single hit from a mob - trash or Boss.

Each zone has typical magical damages. By maximizing your pet's resistance value against that damage type you get much more survivability than you would from Armor or extra Stamina. Below is a list of common raid zone damage types:

• Karazhan - Arcane/Shadow
• Serpentshrine Cavern - Frost/Nature
• The Eye - Arcane
• Mount Hyjal - Fire
• Black Temple - Shadow

Where possible mazimize the resistance before putting points into other defensive abilities. If you have available training points after Avoidance, Resists, and offensive abilities, drop extra points into the best Stamina available.

Offense
This is where choosing the correct pet family becomes important. Each family of pet has a native DPS multiplier, from -10% to +10%. For a raid pet you want something as close to the maximum as possible. The additional defensive stats of a "tanking" pet are worthless in a raid environment. Even a max-trained Turtle is going to be 2-3 shot by an SSC trash mob.

Some pet damage modifiers for common pets:

• Cat : +10%
• Raptor : +10%
• Ravager : +10%
• Bat : +7%
• Owl : +7%
• Wind Serpent : +7%
• Wolf : +0%
• Boar : -10%

Pets have a high miss rate. And only the Animal Handler talent (or Draeneai racial buff) can modify this. It is important for a BM Hunter to put 2/2 in Animal Handler to help compensate. Pet critical hit rates are also capped at 5% + Ferocity + group buffs. These limitations cap pet scaling at a rate far lower than any normal DPS class. But, because of the combination of speed talents and abilities pets have they scale very well with AP gains - both from the Hunter and buffs. (Blessing of Might is %-wise an incredible buff for pets.)

Most (75%+) of your pet's damage is going to come from Melee attacks. These attacks also scale with your Pet's Attack Power, which means they become increasingly important as you progress in content. I heavily recommend choosing a +7% or +10% DPS pet for this reason. The trainable ability Cobra Reflexes increases your pet's attack rate at a slight cost in damage. This results in a net increase, and is recommended for every raid pet, without exception. For BM pets with Frenzy and Feroicious Inspiration this is an even bigger benefit.

The next largest source of damage is typically from special attacks. These are trained abilities your pet activates based on cooldowns and available focus. The common ones are Bite, Claw, Gore, Lightning Breath, and Screech. These trained abilities have very little scaling in them, basically crit rate through buffs is the only thing that effects them. Lightning Breath is a notable exception, the damage generated from it scales slowly with character RAP (+40 RAP ~= 1 damage, pre-modified.) As you progress your character the variance between these abilities means less and less. When deciding what to train on your pet it is important to understand the following things:

• Cool down : How often can the pet execute the ability? For some (like Bite) there is a certain period of time the ability is unusable. There are also abilities known as "focus dumps" which can be spammed at 1.5s (the pet's global cool down) as long as there is sufficient focus for them. Typical focus dumps include Claw, Gore, Lightning Breath, and Screech.
• Damage per focus: At what rate does each ability turn the focus spent into damage? Some abilities (Bite) and more more effecient than others (Furious Howl).
• Mitigation: A few abilities (Lightning Breath) are not physical in nature, and can avoid armor values. They also may be resisted by the mob. Most of the physical abilities can be Dodged, Parried, Blocked or just missed.

Because of the high-return of Go For the Throat to pet Focus, a focus dump ability is a huge benefit.

The last source of Pet DPS comes from use of the Kill Command ability. For BM Hunters this is a very mana-efficient source of damage. It takes a little bit of attention to monitor when you can use it in relation to its cool down, but it can make up 10-15% of your pet's damage. Since it is based off of a melee attack it scales well with your pet's Attack Power. A well-played Hunter takes advantage of this threat-free damage whenever possible. If you are a non-BM Hunter in a mana-starved environment this should be the first ability ignored.

Putting all this information together the most common raiding pets are Ravagers, Cats, Raptors, and Wind Serpents. Wind Serpents would be #1 for most T5+ Hunters with the exception of some strange AI behavior where the pet attempts to fly back out to maximum Lightning Breath range to use the ability if the target is non-mobile (such as Lurker). This can be compensated for by having the Lightning Breath cast as part of a macro with special attacks by the Hunter, but that also removes it from being used any time the Hunter is not actively DPSing.

Pet Management
All pets do 25% more damage when Happy. It is critical to make sure you feed your pet before a Boss fight, even if it is already Happy. This ensures that the happiness level does not decay to Content during the encounter and cost you 25% of its DPS.

Even with Avoidance rank 2, there are environmental effects that your pet will not survive. Mend Pet, the 2-piece T5 set bonus, and considerate healers can all work to make sure your pet doesn't die, costing even non-BM Hunters a significant chunk of damage. Always watch what is going on around your pet, and call him to/from you as necessary to reposition around effects. You generally want your pet attacking from the rear of a mob to minimize Parries and to avoid Cleaves.

For BM Hunters having 2/2 in Improved Revive pet gets your pet raised in just 4 seconds. Pets on passive can be fed during a Feign Death to help reestablish a Happy mood. For BM Hunters this is generally worth the downtime from DPS if there is still more than 30 seconds of combat left. For non-BM Hunters it is usually not worth the time or mana to bring the pet back. In any case, the best strategy is to make sure your pet doesn't die.

From a theoretical point of view, the following order of pet DPS is generally seen:
1 . Wind Serpent - Highest potential damage due to a good focus dump in Lightning Breath. Requires much more mico-managing.
2 . Ravager - Gore makes this slightly better than the next 2 pets
3/4. Cat/Raptor - Identical in DPS potential
5. Owl - Screech isn't quite as good for damage, but the debuff can help the tank out.

Good writeup, but maybe you should mention something about Cobra Reflexes being a must have the same way Avoidance rank 2 is. It's not so self-evident that it is from just reading the tooltip after all.

It may be worth mentioning the ability to macro Lightning Breath to shots as a partial workaround for the wind serpent kiting behavior, and also as a method for getting some (admittedly minor) ranged DPS out of your pet when it's impossible to have it in melee.

It may be worth taking a few lines to explain the lack of scaling of Great Stamina and Natural Armor as compared with scalable contributions from gear. Also, some guidelines on priorities for the Beast Mastery talents which increase pet survivability might be nice, given that it's impossible to take all of them in a 41/20/0 build. (Endurance Training, Thick Hide, Imp Mend Pet, Imp Revive Pet, Catlike Reflexes)

"Always in the rear" - Aside from the usual "dragons with tail swipe" exception. Perhaps worth re-emphasizing that this is an all-raid issue, in that a pet which gets parried can cause extra damage to your tank. A pet user has as much responsibility as the rogues for melee positioning, and far less control.

As a BM I always took improved revive pet 2/2 and improved ment pet 2/2. I don't think there can be exceptions to that unless you have a personal healer for the pet. Especially in fights like RoS phase 1, nobody will decurse your pet. Same with Archimonde.

On the same note, I would also like to know what you think about spirit bond in Hyjal / Black Temple. From a SSC / TK point of view I never found either spirit bond or 2/2 mend pet to be needed (I do use 1/2 mend pet). I see that you are not BM speced anymore. Can you please post your recommended point spread in BM tree for Hyjal / TK?

My windserpent has parried, dodged and even blocked enemy attacks. Also you can't feed your pet when FD anymore, Blizzard have changed it to keep you in combat.

I was under the assumption that even with the nerf, Scorpids still do relatively well in terms of damage on certain fights. They are also still the pet of choice for most Arena hunters, since the stacking Scorpid Poison decreases the chance that Viper Sting will be dispelled.

1.) Yes, they are still the Arena pet of choice due to Scorpid Poison covering Viper Sting.
2.) The new Scorpid Poison is ~1 dps better than Claw (and less dps than Gore.)
3.) A Scorpid has a -6% damage modifier. Cats/Raptors/Ravagers have a +10% damage modifer, and Wind Serpents/Owls/Bats have +7%.

Add 2 & 3 together, and yes, Scorpids do significantly less damage than Cats/Raptors/Ravagers/Wind Serpents now.

Hello everyone, I am new.

Up until now, I'd never paid attention to the DPS I had been doing. It had been in the middle, which never bothered me until I was helping some friends in Karazhan and a much worsely geared hunter was doing more damage then me (and he was quite a douche about not letting me forget). This really started bothering me and I have been working to tweak as much as I can, but I still don't feel I'm getting as much DPS as I should be. Heres my armory:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...halas&n=Rosshi


So if anyone has any tips for respecs, gear (please no stuff from BT or Hyjal, thats a little beyond me), or anything, please let me know!

Thanks.

A several things I can say from a quick overview:

- Your specc: drop the arcane shot, it doesn´t bring you any DPS at all if you use a convenient Shot-Rotation; you only need 2 Points in Endurance, then you have enough points to skill Mortal Shots, it´s a must-have for every hunter-PvE-specc. Also take quick death in MM T3 an completely drop the arcane.
The points in BM are quite okay otherwise, you could move one point out of Frenzy (only need 4/5 there to keep it with Cobra Reflexes) into focus-regg, and most people also prefer imp. revive pet over thick hide, as damage your Pet receives normally is severly mitigated through avoidance.

- Gear: Try to get to the Hitcap! For example I´d put a 8 Hit-stone in the headslot, and one in the bracers (though the socket-bonus there is negligible) then take Hit-Food to raids and you´re nearly capped. Too, the 8AP/2mps-stone would be my first choice if you need a blue socket (in your case feet) and your meta-gem is sub-optimal, 12 Agi/3 % enh. Crit-dmg is the best for PvE atm.

Overall your gearing is quite okay considering your level of raiding, so I think your lack of dps is mainly due to a bad shot-rotation. Try to work at your style of playing and DPSing in raids. Though, without WWS-files nobody can tell you for sure, which are the exact things you´re doing wrong.