They could just give them totem-targeting. When's the last time a mage tried to aoe down you and your pet in pvp?

"Sacrifice pet" lvl10 trainable skill please. How stupid is that instead make other abilities to scale like they should they nerf the only one that scales properly. /golfclap

That's just the thing though. They would specifically need to add code to every encounter in the game with exceptions for pets. Personally I think pets should be "phase shifted" for all intensive purposes on nearly every boss fight.

Can someone post some good BM builds (suppose 41/20/0)?
How about http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=mxbhzxgRVuVoVxbRV ?
Also is there rawanger higher that 63 in game? Leveling pet 63 -> 70 is pure gayness.

No, they wouldn't. There's already a flag that makes things completely immune to area effect attacks: "totem".

Also, it's "intents and purposes". Intensive purposes is nonsensical. Sorry, personal pet peeve.

Just theorycrafting off the top of my head, Serpent + Poison Spit + Viper Sting for PvP, viable? I have no idea. It's not like whatever I'm attacking/Viper Stinging is being CC'd anyways.

I've not seen any info on a "pet patch". Anywhere I could look at it or are we just assuming there will be one.

Im a little concerned. I just did some figuring out of what epics i was going to be getting over the next month or so and...if I get all epiced out in Kara epics and equivalents...I will no longer gain any RAP or Crit, but i will gain about 3% tohit. If you want to see my current gear, you can check the armory, im the only grogzor. Am I missing something or is itemization that bad for us?

Not quite. Go For the Throat is a two-talent-point spec. It's not mandatory by any means. Forcing yourself to take two points, then feeling forced to use a Wind Serpent to take "full advantage" of those two points, is putting the cart before the horse.

Ignoring crit rate, resists/armor, and happiness modifiers: Rank 9 Gore costs 25 Focus and does an average non-crit damage of 73.5. The current incarnation of Lightning Breath does something like 140 damage per pop (obviously this number varies with your RAP) for a cost of 50 Focus. This puts Gore at 2.94 Damage/Focus, and Lightning Breath at 2.8 Damage/Focus. Taking into account various factors, either Gore or LB could come out on top. Gore damage depends the most upon mob armor, while Lightning Breath depends the most on your RAP and mob resist rate. If your RAP is extremely low, Gore comes out on top, but if your RAP is very high, you could add enough damage to LB to put it over the top.

Something to consider is that there was always a rather significant marginal cost associated with Lightning Breath in terms of both talent points and Pet Focus. If you wanted to use a Wind Serpent, you were pretty much forced to spend two talent points in GFTT. But the way Focus bars worked with regeneration and GFTT, you could find yourself wasting a significant amount of focus because your pet would be completely unable to use Focus if it stayed under 50 points (which happened a lot more than people realized). Then if you got more than one GFTT proc or a GFTT proc + normal Focus regen, you could find yourself with "too much" Focus that your Wind Serpent couldn't get rid of because it can only dump 50 Focus intervals at a time, and was starting with enough Focus to create significant "backfill" (meaning there is Focus that your pet would normally gain but did not because the Focus bar only goes up to 100). Essentially, Wind Serpent Focus dumping was only "the best" when it was at a resting state of roughly 0-15. Any more than that and you ran the very high risk of wasting a significant amount of Focus when you got multiple GFTT procs in a row.

Ravagers find themselves with a slightly different issue. At times you can have multiple procs in a row and because Gore only uses 25 Focus every 1.5 seconds, it can't dump Focus fast enough to use all of what it could potentially use. But because Ravagers can use any amount of Focus above 24, you will find yourself with a larger "overfill" margin than you would with a Wind Serpent, and you will also find your Ravager sitting at a low-Focus resting state for a longer period of time.

Multi-Shot only makes Gore look even better, because if you get more than one proc from Multi, you get them all at once, so your pet has no time to dump Focus between procs (I should probably add that it is usually Multi-Shot preceding or following another shot which causes Focus "backfill" in the first place).

Neither of these situations take into account Bite, which both pets can learn. But I will add that based on my own (unscientific) testing, I found that my Wind Serpent was retarded. If you put LB in priority of Bite, it would rarely ever used Bite when it had <50 Focus, and would for some reason wait until it had enough Focus to cast LB, then would cast Bite first and follow it up with an LB if it had the Focus (or would cast LB then Bite, depending on its freaking mood or something). If you switched it around to "force" it to cast Bite first, it would use Bite over LB every chance it got, meaning you were hurting yourself on the Focus/Damage instead of via the stupid AI. It was really, really annoying. This same weird priority AI seems to help the Ravager, because you probably want it using Bite whenever it can anyway to get rid as much Focus as possible, then spam Gore until it can use Bite again. Which is what happens if you put Bite in front of Gore in priority. Those cases where it seems to want to cast Gore regardless of whether or not it has enough Focus for Bite don't come into play as much because hey, if it's waiting to cast Gore over Bite, it'll just cast the damn thing because it has enough Focus to do so anyway. Honestly the way Blizzard has coded pet bars and priority queues has left me slightly tweaked, because I've seen my pets refuse to hit Growl even though they had the Focus to do so and it was first in priority, and instead wait to hit the second or third priority skill THEN cast Growl.




At any rate, what I *really* wanted to point out was that if you wanted to, you could simply pick up a Ravager for the high-Focus efficiency and only put one point in GFTT, making it practically impossible for you to waste any Focus, and freeing up the point to put in something else. This might "cost" you some DPS, but probably only roughly 60-70 damage per crit, which is a fair tradeoff considering the gains in efficiency and the extra talent point you get.

To relay back to the haste effects and trinkets. My guild an I downed gruul yesterday (cheer!) and we got Dragonspine Trophy (Equip: Increases your haste rating by 325 for 10 sec.)

Now..I was a bit skeptical on bidding a large amount for this (one because t4 hunter pants dropped :P but also be cause there was little information on it) It honestly could've been the worst trinket there is. BUT. This trinket went to a sword rogue and after some decent testing on the blasted lands unkillable mobs, this trinket is amazing! Now..it was hitting at about 2 proc's per minute, but if thats true, (and 325 haste is 30%) thats 30% haste for 20 seconds per minute, making it a flat 10% haste overall.

Afterwards we went to kara, and of course this data could be completely wrong, but...all i'm saying is, if a hunter ever gets a chance at this, TAKE IT. If you can accomodate your shot rotation to fit certain haste effects effectively, do it. You wont regret it.

On a side note, Romeo's Poison Vial is one of the most random trinkets, and is probably better off sharded >.<

Where else are you going to put that talent point, though? It's not a fair tradeoff if there's not an equally good place to put the talent point, which there really isn't. You have Improved Concussive Shot, Efficiency/Improved Hunter's Mark (depending on whether you're the sacrificial hunter or not), or Improved Arcane Shot. ICS and IAS are junk. IHM is worthless if there's already a hunter with it 5/5. 1 point of Efficiency and 1 point of GFTT is nowhere near as good as 2 GFTT.

Dont know why a Rogue would want something thats purely a proc, provides no passive bonus, and works counter to your cycles/cds.

Our first and only one went to a Hunter and hes inlove with it even more than when he first found it on Wowhead.

A haste trinket is godly to CP rogues.

I'm interested in this trinket, but really, the only thing affected is auotshot dps. If I have a weapon that permits me to use a: "Auto, steady, multi, auto, steady, arcane" rotation, the haste proc will mess it up. I believe +AP procs/uses are nearly always better than +haste, due to the potential waste.

If a haste proc permits a perfect auto/steady rotation, and one uses it expressly for that purpose, that seems highly suboptimal or even wasteful. And haste never affects the GCD, which is often my biggest enemy.

Then again, I still would like to get my hands on the Dragonspine Trophy to find out for myself.

I levelled with a Ravager 60-70 as full BM and was very pleased with the results. If you do any sort of PvP, WSs just don't cut it as BM because intimidation is basically useless (unless you're using that macro that prevents them from flying in & out, although I heard that doesn't even really work). I think I'll just go 1/2 GftT, should be sufficient for a 25 focus spam ability.

On another note, I have 2 questions regarding PvP gear:
1) ATM I'm using Bladefist's Breath + PvP Trinket. Do you think I'd be better off w/ BB or Hourglass? The hourglass has nearly a full % more, and the AP proc woudl be kind of nice although it is 100% unreliable
2) What's everyones take on the Gladiator Xbow? It seems to me that although it may not be so good for pve (go figure), it's incredible for PvP looking @ its speed & stats. Do you think it's worth it for me to be saving up for it? My armory profile is active ATM, name is Faerun on Frostmane (Reckoning Battlegroup). Thanks for any input... ATM I'm hoping for a Steelhawk Crossbow, but that doenst seem to want to drop

On the subject of the trinkets, I believe that any CoH: item is not exactly desirable for PvP.

In PvE, the fact that the proc is Chance of Hint, is unimportant, over the course of a thousand shots, the effect will actually be effective most of the time. PvP is too situational, you fire 10-15 shots in grouped battles per target and therefore I consider Use: items preferable over CoH: items, because the chance that the item will proc at a time where it's useful, is too small.

Controllable burst > uncontrollable burst.

The 3.2 speed on the Gladiator Xbow makes it nice for squeezing a multi or arcane after steadyshot, or if one has excellent latency, 2x steadyshot.

That's a solid build (it's my build after all :-); with 2/2 Bestial Discipline and 2/2 Go for the Throat, your pet will be tearing through shit like it's made of paper. I'd just move the one point from Bestial Swiftness to Improved Mend Pet. Dash/Dive/Charge/Warp are good enough, and 1/2 Improved Mend Pet is all you need to be a soloing machine. I like Improved Hunter's Mark because it gives your pet (and everyone else) the same AP boost as you get from HM, and every little bit helps. It's better than the other options for sure. As long as you're not raiding, IAotH is better than Endurance Training (and maybe even then).

If you find that Arcane Shot finishes its cooldown just before an Auto Shot, so that casting Arcane Shot as soon as its ready causes the global cooldown to conflict with Auto Shot, you'd be well suited to put a point or two in Improved Arcane Shot so that you can weave it in between Auto Shots where it won't interfere. One point in Improved Arcane Shot can make a significant difference in DPS, if 0.2 seconds means the difference between Arcane Shot and Auto Shot conflicting or interweaving. But at the end of the day, the usefulness of Improved Arcane Shot depends heavily on talent spec, gear, and play style. Theorycrafting is all well and good, but nobody ever casts Arcane Shot the very instant its cooldown is up all the time. You get the most out of it by making sure its cooldown falls between Auto Shots without conflicting.

Just another reason why, no matter what Blizzard does, slower ranged weapons are better than faster.

Not sure what you mean about the GC conflicting with auto. If you mean that firing an arcane just before an auto, means you can't weave a steady or multi next, your logic still seems flawed.

Just fire the arcane as soon as you can, if you can't get in a steady or multi then the arcane "consumed" that shot slot. DPS wise it is exactly the same thing as if you waited a fraction of a second and fired the arcane after the auto. The same slot is consumed, the same amount of damage is done in the same time frame.

Also I posted some combat log excerpts that clearly show arcane doesn't have the same hidden cast time that multi does. It doesn't interfere with or delay auto.

Lastly, your point about slower weapons always being superior is just straight up wrong. There are builds and situations where a faster weapon is far superior DPS (even after the WS nerf). I really don't understand the fascination some hunters seem to have with squeezing 2 shots in between every auto. At extremely high AP, steady starts pulling ahead of auto but not by a ridiculous amount. The number of multi's and arcane's you fire is limited by cool downs, so that won't really change.

IMO the best weapon for most hunters is one that falls as close to 2.0 as possible after all permanent haste effects are applied. It leaves some room for hawk procs, and rapid fire, without wasting a ton of time in the process. It also results in a negligible amount of clobbering and is easy to manage.

Sorry I ended up picking your post apart. Just felt I needed to correct some stuff.

Arcane does not have a hidden cast time in the sense that there's a delay between the button press and the shot itself. However, there is a maximum fire rate regardless of what weapon or shot you're using, which works out to be about .5 seconds. This means that if you try to shoot an arcane shot right when your auto shot is about to go off, you'll end up clobbering it the same way that you would with a multi shot. That's the reason that there was always a .5 second delay between aimed shot and the "free" auto shot before they changed the mechanics. I don't know about these combat log parses, but it's really easy to see the delay if you just go out and try it. There's a much smaller clobber window, but they still won't fire simultaneously.

Arcane does not interfere or delay auto shot. It is a true instant. It took me about 30 seconds to verify this in game. If you have good timing you can get your auto and arcane to fire at exactly the same time.

Here is a snip of my combat log.

That's strange. I just logged on to make sure I wasn't just imagining things, and when i tried to shoot an arcane shot right as my auto bar was finishing, it would give me a tiny bit of delay, and run a seperate animation for each shot. Just to clear things up though, i'm not arguing that it isn't a true instant. I'm saying that you can't fire two shots at exactly the same time. You can fire an instant like arcane shot immediately after an auto shot and they will hit almost simultaneously, but if they're both "queued up" so to speak, only one will fire.

Edit: I just realized that I can't prove what i'm saying with a combat log, since it would be easy to just fire them at different times. If you time it properly, you can keep the arcane clear of the maximum fire rate and they'll fire at almost exactly the same time, but to say that arcane doesn't delay or interfere with auto simply isn't true.