Dunno, I'm still leaning heavily towards full BM when 2.1 hits man. Its just been murder on the PTR with DPS testing.

I know this isn't a 2.1 issue, but do pets chain flame wreath again? I've heard that they'd accidently changed it back to how it was. I'd like to respec BM tonight and try it out(since 1k latency ruins my shot rotation, and hopefully BM will help that, and offload some of my dps to my pet) but I also don't want to see my pet get the raid wasted either.

I can speak to this: I had been using my pet on Aran with no issues at all up until last week, when he set off a flame wreath. As far as I can tell, the only thing I did differently was resurrect my pet (I don't remember why, just that I resurrected him) and it set off the flame wreath in which I was standing. The typical rule of thumb I use is "No one can enter or leave a flame wreath without setting it off", but since my pet hadn't been detonating the raid I didn't think it was an issue. I doubt I'll be able to test it tonight when we do Aran, but I'll ask the raid if they mind if I test it (or perhaps testing this would be better done on the PTR, I don't know).

So as far as I'm concerned, there are a couple possible issues:
1) resurrecting a pet sets off flame wreath
2) they changed things so pets now detonate flame wreath all the time
3) we all were incredibly lucky and never set off a flame wreath before, and nothing has changed

I would say 1 and 2 are far more likely, but I don't have enough evidence to conclude between those two.

Did some more tests on 2.1 PTR.

Builds used:
MM: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=VxbZVEoRVzGestch
BM: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=meb00xgRwuVoVxbRV

Results (SWS 2.1 Beta):
MM High ~ 895 DPS
MM Low ~ 850 DPS
MM Pet ~ 120 DPS

BM High ~ 860 DPS
BM Low ~ 820 DPS
BM Pet ~ 250 DPS

How:
I pulled badlands mob, let pet gain around 10k threat and then in "same" secound: started rotation, marked target and turned on SWS counting. After around 2min (HM end and/or OOM) I turned off SWS. Did 3 tries each build, then removed crit and calculated avarange, then added assumed crit and miss ratios (see notes).

Notes:
- High: arcane9, multi6, steady1
- Low: multi1, steady1
- One special between autos (2 are impossible due to 500ms ping)
- KC not used (I think it is crap + reason above)
- MM 21,5% crit (due to barrage), BM 20% crit, MM pet 5% crit, BM pet 15% crit
- MM/BM hunter 0% miss, MM pet 8.6% miss, BM hunter 4.6% miss
- -5% to pet damage due to 2.1 glancing
- victim was good old badlands mob (but with crit/miss adjusted after)
- DPS lasted ~2min, HM active (0 stacks at start), rapid fire, trinket and BW used once per 2min
- Gear was mix of T5 + phoenix bow (with +12 scope)

Conclusion:
Which is better? Answer is: "Depends on encounter". MM is safer and also uses less mana. On the other side BM can outdps MM while encounter is pet friendy.

Anyway what concerns me is very poor damage/mana with high rank shots used. If you look at results we gain ~10% damage for DOUBLE mana usage. I think something is terribly wrong here...

Sometimes I think Blizzard want us to be that way:
Turn on Viper, put HM on target and spam steady!

EDIT: Forgot 5% dodge for pets. Now I am thinking about real % of pet dps due to pet unfriendly encounters/abilities, positioning (parry) etc. I think 50% would be safe to assume? Also MM hunter probably scale better with raid buffs.

I'm wondering what encounters ARE pet friendly. The main bosses I have seen are
Maulgar- pet not really useful as I'm typically tanking the shaman guy in NR gear, I suppose I can switch the pet to hit the dps target but typically I just try to keep the shaman situated
Gruul- Dies to stone/cave in quite often
Magtheridon- Dies to adds but if you are vigilent it can survive Magtheridon himself provided the blast waves are stopped immediately, and Magtheridon doesn't conflag the pet too much
Hydross- seems to die once he gets the Poison Dot
Tidewalker- Dies to earthquake
Karathress- not too bad, priest boss AOE chews him up a fair amount but this one isn't that bad
Void Reaver- seems to die pretty quickly to melee Pound

I haven't been on the PTR to be honest so I don't know how big of a benefit the new HOT and avoidance are going to be, but it seems that you would almost always have to have that HOT up for it to be able to heal enough to keep the pet alive. I know that right now it is too much of a mana drain to try to Mend pet everytime it gets hit by conflag/earthquake/ground pound.

All in all I am very excited by what I read here and think the community has supported that on pet friendly encounters BM is superior to Marksmanship. However, I'm wondering if there are enough pet friendly encounters to justify this. From what I have seen there is not.

Last week my pet set off the flame wreath. Was in melee range with Aran - flame wreath was cast hitting a couple melee - Aran moved - the pet moved to stay in melee and boooom.

For now I am dismissing or leaving my pet on stay for the encounter.

We had a snake from a snake trap set off flame wreath last week.

I've always acted as if my pet could set off flame wreath - I just hit STAY as soon as I see it casting and turn it back off afterwards. So I can't tell you if you're hitting issue #2 or #3, but I'm pretty sure you're not hitting issue #1.

Aran is in fact almost my ideal "difficult to handle pet but possible" encounter. Everything can be done with stay/follow attack/passive. You can't use him all the time (Flame Wreath unless no melee gets it, arcane explosion, etc), but you can use him a lot of the time. It gives me something difficult but possible to manage. I like Prince for the same reason.

I recently respecced BM with another hunter just to test it out. 2p Riftstalker set bonus helps a lot (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37499). 15% proc rate, although I have not seen it crit, but I havent really been watching it either.

And so far we've noticed that:

Maulgar: Yes, dies to Whirlwind if you dont micro-manage your pet.

Gruul: Died a few times to cave-in since pets take full duration Stoned (30s i think)

Magtheridon: Can die, but if done correctly will live most of the fight without having to micro-manage too much.

Hydross: Easy, havent had him die yet. Just need to call back during transitions.

Lurker: I dont even use my pet since I stay on the small platforms the entire time. This fight is terrible for a BM hunter.

Tidewalker: 2p Riftstalker set bonus helps a lot for this. Also pet taking chain heals will live most of the time until I get watery graved and hit my own pet with tomb.

Karathress: Agreed, priest AoE waterbolt pretty much kills my pet every time if meleeing. I usually dont even use my pet for that one add.

Void Reaver: Terrible now with it taking 6-8k Pound damage every 10 seconds or so.

Solarian: Easy if pets receives chain heals.

Alar: Right now, will die most of the time to the flame buffet if it's 4+ ticks.

As for pet mend on PTR (heals for 425/tick, 2800 total if I remember correctly.). It should be fine, but pets will still need heals.

I've chained flame wreath because I fd'd and drank(was deadzoned) before iirc, so the pet rez thing may be a similarly odd occurrence. Not really movement, at least as I consider movement, but maybe it bypassed the "no pets will chain flame wreath" thing. It just seems too miraculous that a pet alive for the majority of Aran wouldn't eventually trigger it.


[Edit:] I'd consider Maulgar an acceptable fight for pets. You can have it dpsing the adds, and possibly OTing olm for 1-2 hits if your tanking is sucky. Whirlwinds in the later stage don't seem to be much of a problem either. And although they can easily kill your pet, once you get the adds down the fight's basically over. And the pet can help you down adds better while you're OTing Kiggler.

Well, as for FD/drink in flame wreath, as far as I can tell it considers getting up from FD to be someone entering a flamewreath and sets it off. I've seen the same thing with paladins and BoP/DS - when the buff expires, they gain flamewreath and explode. It's kind of funky how it works. My best guess as to the mechanics of this is that it checks to see if someone has gained/lost the buff after the initial cast - so if someone 'exits' the ring (by either walking, DSing, or FDing) they'll lose the buff. If you rez someone into your flame wreath, it appears to consider them as gaining the buff and detonates the ring. Kind of funky, but that makes sense to me.

I don't even bother with my pet on Aran most of the time - Aran always seems to arcane missle my pet and our interrupters always seem to fail to interrupt. Anyway, IF Aran didn't single target cast massive spells on your pet and IF pets didn't set off flame wreath, I would use my pet. This week I'm just going to put him on stay outside the door so I can get the FF buff and leave it at that.

Edit:
Maulgar is funky for pets. We tank Kiggler over by the gate leading to Gruul and then tank Blindeye on the path leading into Maulgar's room - all the way on the other side of the room. My pet usually despawns if I send him to Blindeye, so I either have to put him on Olm or just have him stand next to me and get arcane aoe'd to death by Kiggler. For a fight with as much potental AoE as the Maulgar encounter, though, it's surprisingly easy to keep your pet alive.

Once again, these tests are highly inaccurate due to the level of the mobs. BM obviously depends a lot on the pet, and the low level of these mobs means basically no misses and no glancing blows, which is very much not the case in boss fights. Due to damage multipliers in BM, a BM pet on those mobs will scale exponentially larger in terms of damage due to the mob's low armor.

As for Aran, they fixed him for a couple of weeks so that pets would and immunities would not set off flame wreathe. The same hotfix, they made it so that snakes from snake trap are considered pets (which is why they started showing up in your combat log if you have pet dmg turned on). After a couple of weeks, they had another hotfix and it broke the fight again. They say it's supposed to be fixed in 2.1.

I never have a problem with pet on Maulgar...

Myself and another hunter hold aggro on Kiggler and send pet in on Kiggler after we have solid aggro, he lives just fine. After kiggler is down I just micro him in and out on whirlwinds.

My guild is very good about giving me a shadow priest and buffing my pet since I am BM so on fights like doomwalker or Tidewalker my pet lives way more often then it dies. With raid buffs I can get my pet over 9K hps. Over 10K with warlock. I use a Windserpent.

Lurker I just use him to get off one TBW before he gets smoked ;p

FYI, owl pets can't swim with Eyes of the Beast I tried to move my owl off the small platform to the middle platform and he sunk like a rock Windserpents, however, are good to go :p

So even with the new pet mend HOT being chain cast it won't be enough to keep the pet out of harms way. I am hoping that avoidance will seriously make a difference otherwise its going to be ugly for BM even in 2.1. I don't think there is anything healers hate more than to heal or buff hunter pets.

In that same vein, I recently discovered that the Mend Pet HoT is dispellable. Joy!

But on the up side, the Imp Mend Pet talent now reduces the mana cost by 10% per point in addition to potentially removing debuffs.

2.0
Aran: I think it is great to use your pet. He will soak up some damage and intelligent healers will keep him up so Aran has one more thing to shoot at. When I see the warning that flame wreath is being cast I put him on stay (and passive, but he is already on passive.) As soon as flame wreath is over I tell him to attack. The main reason for keeping him around is for one more target not so much for his DPS.

High King Maulgar: Thankfully I don't tank the shammy (go go feral druid) so I use my pet on the priest, lock, shammy without any problems. I never send him to the mage (blast wave) and once we are on Maulgar himself he often dies (from me not paying attention to cool down of whirl-wind) but that is very late in the encounter.

Gruul: Early in the encounter keeping my pet up is easy. Once the cave-ins get really nasty it is almost impossible.

Magtheridon: (I have never killed him.) I can not even come close to keeping my pet up past the first add. Actually, he might have made it to the second once or twice.

2.1
Aran: With some luck I wont have to put my pet on stay and can use snake trap for even more targets (IE it is fixed it again so [pets including snakes from the trap] don't set off the flame wreath.)

High King Maulgar: I don't see much change here, unless the blast wave and whirlwind do a lot less damage to the pet. Either way, my pet is usually alive 90%+ of the encounter in 2.0.

Gruul: Half damage from cave-ins will make this a relatively pet friendly encounter with a little micromanagement. If he has a lot of grows my pet is getting one-shotted now, it will only be half with the talent.

Magtheridon: Again, the -50% from AOE will be great but, the pet will still be taking a ton of damage and I don't see this being pet friendly.



On another note, I will have a hard time doing BM even after 2.1 finally hits because I have found that as a hunter, even one that does well in dps (near any class in damage) I am last to get considered when making groups. My raid leaders seem to think of it as a nuisance when I ask to be with a s-priest (when I was trying BM.)
Do others of you have the same problem? Do you think you could raid well as BM without a s-priest? How? Seems chain potting is not enough.

I petitioned a GM about the pet setting of the flame wreaths and he said it was a known issue that would be fixed in an upcoming patch.... I really miss my pet and the use of the snake trap on Aran because a lot of times my pet or the snakes would take the missiles and save a raid member. Being BM I can res my pet in 4 secs making it reusable to take one for the team and allowing me to use bestial wrath to escape the slowing effect before the arcane explosion and do extra damage. Can't wait for it to be fixed.

Generally speaking my raid group is understanding and either puts me with a shadowpriest or a shaman (for mana stream) and my paladins will try to keep up JoW (although it will inevitably fall off). When I don't have a shadow priest, I chain pot. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but the alternative is having a hunter who's OOM autoshotting (which is worthless). My mana problems are less now as BM than they were as MM, however.

One of my concerns on Magtheridon relates to the shadowbolt volleys: if someone misses an interrupt, my pet takes a big hit. In 2.1, will shadowbolt volley be considered aoe? I mean, each bolt is actually targeted, so I'm unclear how that will work (if someone has tested this on the PTR, it'd be nice to know).

Amazingly my raid leader is quite accommodating when possible, even insisting my pet get buffs such as might and kings. Sometimes a pally will get sick of buffing it though ;p I want to be with a Shadow priest mainly cause of the healing for my pet and of course the mana is amazing as well.

As 41/20 I don't do any worse then a MM hunter on mana, and actually probably do a lot better due to not needing to use multishot in a regular rotation since I don't have 6 points tied into it.

How much do you expect mana usage to go up in 2.1 with kill command not on the GCD? None at all? Just a little? I suppose it is dependent on how you play now but..

Mag: Maybe we just don't have the interruption of the s-bolt volley down good enough, that seems to be what is killing him. Although, I must admit, we have not spent much time on Mag (maybe 3hrs.)

Looking at the typical shot rotation for a MM Hunter (~0.87 shots per second) and a crit rate of ~20% I would expect to be able to use KC every 7.2 seconds (math for this can be found in my spreadsheet under Pet Calculations). This works out to 10.4 MPS. You can punch in your specific set up to get more accurate numbers for yourself.

But that is if you have the opportunity to spam it as soon as you are able to. I've heard that KC has a cast time to it in 2.1, which means you'll have to find time in your rotation to cast it without clipping auto shots.

It does? I thought it was instant. They even removed the animation to make that point clearer.

People have provided a lot of information on pet survivability on Maulgar, Gruul, and Magtheridon, but I would like to see people's experiences on other encounters. What I'm reading is that with a shadowpriest/ 2 piece tier 5, new HOT, and avoidance it's not really that bad to keep the pet up. What is the range of the HOT? Can I apply it when I am at max range to the pet in melee range?