BeBraum

While it may be true that Marks has the highest potential for INDIVIDUAL dps, BM and Surv specs highly surpass Marks when it comes to adding to OVERALL raid dps. With the new talents for buffing party members with Hunting Party+EW in Survival, and the possibility of unlocking autoshots from SS (allowing BM hunters to weave more shots in to their already fast attack speed), Marks will still be the least sought after spec for pve raids (ie. 3rd hunter), especially when group/raid synergy has to be considered. Marks hunters are a lot like rogues: huge individual dps but add very little to buffing raid dps. (No offense to the rogues out there)

 

Arcazua

I apologize. I did not mean to make it sound as if I was unaware of your earlier comments. Only that I'm still not really familiar with the mechanics of Wolverine Bite. Is it really just a Mongoose Bite, nothing more?

I believe someone said Explosive costs the same mana as Arcane does at that level. Everything's getting more expensive with the expansion. I can only hope this means our mana pool will increase to compensate...I'd be perfectly fine with our pool and our costs both doubling if it makes us less susceptible to mana drain effects. (But weakens regen considerably, so maybe not so much.)

That would be nice, however I personally think there should be at least one BM talent going in that should be geared toward the hunter rather than the pet. It's a lot to bite off to have an entire talent tree devoted to an extension of our character rather than the character itself. As it is now, minus aspect talents, there's Serpent's Swiftness and The Beast Within. One of my silly dreamed-up talents was an aspect that combined all our existing talents into one (except for cheetah.) I could probably come up with something else, but I do applaud Blizzard for putting the emphasis of one of the BM talents on the character instead.

 

Sean

Mana pool infos, for reference:

Unbuffed at 77 I have 183 int and 7012 mana with my current gear (though 0 int on my helm/bp/legs which hurts a bit).

And on my copied 70 char with the same stuff and unbuffed I have 172 int and 5683 mana.

I don't think we're going to have hugely larger mana pools, but I think between JoW's top end and Mana Spring/Mana tide we'll do just fine.

 

Chul

The issue I have is that our pets don't scale with a lot of our stats like armour penetration and haste. So if they gained those passively (in the same way stamina, AP and armour scale), then we wouldn't need a +scaling talent, and your suggestion would be cool.

With a 10k mana pool, we'd run out of mana in 54s just doing Steady Shots (1.5s cast). We should not be so reliant on other classes just to even have a chance of dpsing.

I think that Blizzard either has something up its sleaves wrt mana, or has just given the new ranks arbitrary values, and will be tuned at a later date.

 

Sean

Why? Every class in a raid situation is reliant on other classes to really compete - especially the other Mana users.

Wanting to be fully self sufficient is a pretty ridiculous thing to ask for.

 

Kelidor

You seem to only be saying this :

Marks has the best dps
BM's dps isn't as good, but it has raid synergy, so it's better overall !

I have to say you're wrong, Marks does not have the highest potential for individual dps. Even 1v1 without considering raid buffs we give ( EW, Party Hunter, Venom Strike, Imp Mark), BM can still come to the top with much ease.

 

Chul

Are you really suggesting that it is perfectly reasonable to use up your entire mana pool in about a minute, while doing the most efficient shot rotation we have? Seriously?

 

Tyranna

I don't think it's a matter of being completely self reliant for our resource. It just seems silly that having outside help for our resource is a necessity. Warlocks don't need a shadow priest. Shamans and shadow priests themselves aren't reliant on others for mana either. Of course, this says nothing about feral druids, warriors, and rogues who have unlimited damage resources.

The only DPSers that I can think of that really stand out are mages and hunters. They require outside assistance to get to the end of the fight. So it's no longer being a matter of being competative for top damage spots. It becomes a matter of lasting until the end.

 

Reebz

Discounting raid buffs, AotV and consumables - what makes you think that the situation is that much different right now?

Take a trip out to Dr.Boom, spec Efficiency if you like, and watch how quickly your 1.5 sec Cast, 99 mana shot eats through your 6,000 point mana pool.

Don't forget, he's levelling and hasn't yet got the top end gear. I would expect 9k mana unbuffed at 80.

 

KergeKacsa

Pls correct me if I'm wrong.

You said that GCD is 1,5s, Steady Shot is 2s. Haste is only reduce Steady shot, not GCD.
So, any haste that reduce Steady timer below 1,5s is a get nerf, because that part is just reduce Auto Shot timers, not effective SS timer, because of GCD.
So, if we dont want to loose our Rapid fire haste effect partially, we should NOT getting haste gear too much.

Top hasted (passive, Rapid Fire, everything you got) Steady shot timer must be over 1,5s (or equal) to get the most of it.

Am I correct?

 

Sean

Warlocks gimp their DPS without a shadow priest pretty hard - worse than us putting up Viper. Sure, they can tap, but they lose a lot of DPS doing it. We can go a lot longer with viper, but the same thing applies.

And Mages, well you know they're pretty much dead in the water. How about Elemental Shaman? Boomkins?

Retadins and Shadow Priests are the only real classes that can support themselves on Mana.

We require JoW, others require Shadow Priests, ect.

 

Kelidor

That would be true, assuming I understood what you meant ( Europe =D ).

 

Sean

I would definitely want to be hasted down to 1.5s Steady Shots without having to use Rapid Fire, ect. And it's not a waste past that since your auto shot damage is still significant, it just isn't as big a DPS gain.

Though, just Quiver Haste + Serpent's gets Steady Shot down to like 1.45 as BM. And Quiver + Untalented Wind Fury gets you down to 1.5 on the nose for Survival/Marks. So any haste gear is going to be purely Auto Shot damage in a raid group.

I think we'll have to wait to see what Cheeky comes out with to see exactly how good it is versus other stats past that point.

 

Korlash

If we take no talents in efficiency our SS costs 110 mana. With the new max rank costing 280 it means our mana pools would need to be roughly 2,5 times bigger for things to be the same as they are now. Seems a bit optimistic but maybe raidwise totem effects, etc. will make it work. I just hope when I do a 5-man instance I don't have to be dependant on there being a shadow priest in the group or something along those lines. As for leveling it seems I'll be downranking most of my shots since my measly mana pool with TBC gear just ain't gonna cut it.

Edit: Was going through Enh Shaman talents and I see they also have an Int to AP converting talent so looks like high end mail armour will be carrying a lot more int. So maybe big mana pools will be realisable.

 

Zaroua

On the topic of mana consumption and such:

WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion
Early tests show that the returns are based on the casting Paladin's stats when the proc occurs, not when initially judged.


A Ret Paladin with 4000AP and 1200 SP would thus generate 468 mana a proc. As far as I understand, those are reachable level 70 values in Sunwell gear (factoring Sheath of Light talent for the SP).

If a Druid specs Moonkin in Darnassus, do the trainers still laugh at him?

 

Ril-gania

Don't forget Talents such as Invigoration (BM). As most raids probably still may have a SV, Hunting Party (SV) also will restore mana - hopefully your SV-hunter will be in the same group as the other hunters.

(i apologise for my terrible english, i'm no native speaker -.-)

 

KraxisSingular

Well, Hunting Party is the way it is because Surv hunters have an unlucky streak in getting into other groups than the Hunter party. Hence there is less incentive to put the Surv in a hunter group now.

I'm loathe to call judgement on specifics right now. But if we truly are going to rely on Retri's judging to be competitive I have a feeling Hunters might drop very far down the wanted classes. A lot of guilds don't run with Retri's as it is a rather unpopular spec of a relatively unpopular class. More so for Hordes as there is a very common and widespread unwillingness to be a Belf.
As most buffs it should help, not be a requirement, at the very least it should be a combined effort rather than one buff being the sole carrier. Sure a lock will lose a fair bit of DPS tapping, but us going OOM will be a tougher hit. With the changes to our mechanic it is likely to be 40-50% less DPS when OOM (Mages of course near 100%, but at least their regen is better). As it is even now Viper can't hold me running if I get down there.

 

Hagen

So maybe the 10% more mana from viper will be the true strength of Aspect Mastery.

I hope the balancing will lead again to a state where we can dps through a whole fight. I think what we see now is pretty hard, even if it can be countered with a really good group/raid build.

 

Akston

It is possible that the vast majority of fights will be rather short compared to the current standard, although i really hope that isn't the case.

As far as mages having better regen.. If i use mage armor in my current gear i have maybe 220 mp5 while casting fully raid buffed and most of the time it's better to use molten armor over mage armor because of the damage loss (i assume this is probably similar to using AotV over AotH) in which case i have whatever mp5 BoW gives me and am completely reliant on outside sources for mana. Every mana consumable a mage can use comes at the cost of dps. Mana pots instead of Destro, mana gems instead of flame caps, and Evoc instead of dpsing for the duration. Seems like we are in a rather similar position with the way things are currently.

 

Gokey

I think it's way to early to be making any sort of judgement call. Invigoration is going to be very, very good. What's even more amazing is it's synergy with Cobra Strikes. One thing most people are overlooking is that each proc of Cobra Strikes is going to return 6% mana, not 2%. (You have a 60% chance when you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Steady Shot or Kill Shot to cause your pet's next 3 special attacks to critically hit.)

Let's assume nothing changes at level 80 and we're going to have similar crit rates, gear, and the common group setup (feral, hunter x3, shaman), 40% crit rate, 10k mana pool, fully raid buffed, etc. I'm going by some of my old WWS's that I'm staring at. It's not really important that I'm 100% accurate here to prove my point.

Let's say 28 steady shots per minute. Of those 28 steady shots, 11 crit. 60% proc rate on Cobra Strikes would mean that it will be about 7 PPM. Assuming a Mana Pool of 10k @ 80, each proc of Cobra Strikes is going to give you 600 mana back (2% x 3) via Invigoration. 7 times a minute is 4200 mana per minute or 350 mp5.

Assuming an innate pet critical rate of 20% and that your pet is spamming one 'special' instant ability every 1.5 seconds, he's going to use about 25 specials a minute when you factor in focus droughts, movement, etc. Of those 25 specials, your pet is going to crit with 5 of them. Your pet's Invigoration will proc 5 times a minute for 1000 mana or 83 mp5.

The Survival hunter is going to be in your group. It's safe to assume that Hunting Party is going to be about 5 PPM. 5 PPM = 200 per proc, 1000 mana per minute, or another 83 mp5.

The level 80 mana oil that I found is 19 mp5. 2 of those is 38 mp5.

The new rank of Mana Spring is 27mp2. Improved it's 33.75 mp2 or 84 mp5.

Rank 9 Blessing of Wisdom, Improved is 109 mp5.

350 mp5 + 83 mp5 + 83 mp5 + 38 mp5 + 84 mp5 + 109 mp5 = 747 mp5

Those 28 Steady Shots per minute are going to cost you 7840. Kill Command is going to cost about 1850 per minute. That's a grand total of 9690 mana spent per minute. But.... you're going to be regenerating an average of 8964 mana a minute with this kind of setup. Are you sure you're going to have mana problems?

(Obviously you are going to be spending mana on other things as well, but I seriously doubt it's even possible to run out of mana if my napkin math is right)

 

Gokey

Also, slight update on exotic pets via a Blue Poster on the Euro Boards:

 

Shandara

It's slightly disturbing they keep hammering on the fact the the extra 'power' will come mostly from the extra pet talent points associated with BMT.

 

Osse

Not just slightly. 51 pointer which gives 5 pet talent points and "unique" looking pet.

They're having a laugh, right?

 

rotflcopter

Did some calc's using most of the formulas found here and on WoWWiki and here's what I've got:



XLSX on demand (PM me). Rating to % calculation taken from WoWWiki. Correct me if I've made any mistake.