Howitzer

I'm almost 100% certain with a BM spec multi-shot isn't even considered in the rotation on single target fights. I would still use Arcane shot though since it ignores mitigation and can do more damage than a mitigated SS/AS. Back on topic though, I'd seriously love to see kill command as an auto-triggered event as soon as I crit. I already have a billion buttons to mash in perfect sequence to DPS effectively.

 

Harwin

I just continue using steadyshot. Steady shot also speeds up with imp AoTH (or so I understand - I haven't verified this myself) so in a latency-free situation it doesn't clip any differently than it did before. And yeah, latency becomes a bigger factor now and might make auto slow down a bit, but I'm still doing more dps than not firing steady at all, and I'm still getting a haste benefit from Imp. AoTH.

Edit:
(Based on Howitzer's comment below) I should note that even with imp AoTH my attack speed is > 1.5, so I don't worry about GCD issues. If I ever get Dragonspine trophy I'm going to have to seriously reconsider my shot rotation (or get a slightly slower bow - using a 2.6 base right now)

 

Howitzer

I don't really know about IAoTH combined with SS and its overall effectiveness. I'm guessing it will really fuck your shot rotations up if you're firing faster than your GBC. Some BM specs I've seen don't even have points in it at all. Thoughts?

EDIT: The other factor I didn't even think about are the Slaying Talents. 3% Damage and 3% critical strike bonus damage on Humanoid Slaying specifically... This tier 1 survival talent replaced FI completely and is up 100% of the time. We all know the majority of all mobs in TBC seem to be Humanoid thus far. This won't be the case in TK / BT / etc, though.

 

Jayde

I asked him about this some time ago (when he was gather the mats for the crit scope) and he explained to me that crit was a larger DPS increase for his current setup. I think a lot of it has to do with crit affecting Arcane Shot, but +dmg scopes doing nothing...in addition to the effect of Mortal Shots.

 

PhoR

Bigblue, as long as you don't have a weap that's too fast, you can easily fit steadies inbetween autos even when Imp Hawk is up (rapid fire is another question entirely though).
After 2.1, you're going to need to use Viper almost exclusively because steady/KC spam sucks up incredible amounts of mana. So I wouldn't even worry about Imp Hawk.





As far as BM and raiding is concerned in my eyes:

Encounters that are pet friendly..
BM is fantastic for a raid group, probably more so than MM hunters. BM hunters fit nicely into caster groups, which give them a much better chance to be paired with a shadow priest.. which is the single best synergy for hunters right now.

Encounters that aren't pet friendly..
BM shouldn't lose to MM hunter in damage by any significant amount. But BM's group buff and a lot of his utility is gone (can still have imp mark and can still scorpid sting). So an MM spec would definitely be better (though maybe not by much) in a no pet situation.



So then you just have to figure out how many encounters are pet friendly vs how many aren't.
We'll just have to see how much survivability the mend pet and avoidance changes grant us.






I also want to share part of a strat that I use in Gruul's right now because it seems to me that a lot of hunters that would like to go BM just aren't figuring out ways to keep their pets up in encounters where it should be pretty easy to do so.

Right now, your pet gets 100% health back when it's dismissed and re-called. Dismiss pet is a 3 sec cast followed by an instant call pet, which is FAR more efficient to do than using mend pet currently..
HOWEVER
If you out-range your pet, it auto-dismisses. So how can you use that to your advantage?
Call a safezone on the opposite side of the room from the entrance. Put your pet on stay a bit behind the raid before you engage the fight. Have the pet attack gruul as the tanks are running in (but don't use dash/dive, and no pet skills at the start.. you dont' want to beat the tanks to gruul or out-threat the secondary tank at the start or he'll take hateful and die)
When the first ground slam is about to happen, put pet on passive.. he'll run back to the stay spot and dismiss because of range. Then just re-call him after the shatter and attack again.
It's simple strats like this that can make BM spec just fine in raid situations.
You just have to figure them out.

 

Howitzer

The other thing I was thinking about in 2.1 is the fact that it will take 30 shots to maximize your new Hunter's Mark to 440 RAP. Having 5/5 serpent's swiftness will decrease the time it will take to get you to that max level especially if you're the only hunter in a 25 man raid, (which is quite often the case in my guild).

 

Valkyrus

Correct me if I am wrong, but would that not reset the pets stay position?
I see that working for the first shatter, but as soon as you call pet you would need to resetup his stay position.

 

Beerbaron

random answers:
- BM hunters use replacement cycles with 2.7 and faster weapons: special, auto, special, auto.. etc (where special is steady, auto, multi)

- multishot from a BM is generally a waste of mana on a single target though.

- when imp hawk procs, steady shot's cast time is sped up. most epic weapons are 2.6 or slower, so even with that proc, you can still maintain your shot cycle w/o too many issues

I need to do more research, but for post-patch I'm changing from MM to BM and will be stacking leather agi/ap extensively. a lighter mana burning steady/auto replacement cycle and dropping multishot will help alleviate mana issues. it really seems like this setup will be a good mix of dps and endurance.. just need to math it out more w/ gear availability. i'm almost ready to start believing that a BM in complete leather who FD+drinks (25-35% of their dmg continues while drinking) would do more than a hunter who tried to avoid FD+drink with mail int/mp5 gear.

BM also has fringe benefits:
- BM is much more welcome with a shadow priest than MM, potentially resolving mana issues when in full leather.
- replacement cycles are much more forgiving with your latency unless you are trying to thread a needle with a 2.3 type weapon (not a typical speed for epics though)

 

brannstokk

My BM rotation is Auto-Steady unless TBW is up, in which case I will use the higher-damage specials (Multi and Arcane) in place of Steadies, since they cost 20% less mana under the effect of TBW.

I also use Multi and Arcane with Rapid fire, since weaving Steadies between every RF Auto is impossible.

I pretty much believe the devs intended BM hunters to use the Auto-Steady predominantly, since it's very mana efficient. The surplus mana to be used for Mends.

 

Norwest

I'm not sure what you mean by a auto/special rotation with BM. How can you fit specials in with a 1.95 attack speed?

Here is what my theorycrafting on BM found:
There's hardly a reason to use special shots at all. You can't fit them in properly, they have to replace a steady. They do provide larger DPS, but at a very large cost.

The damage per mana of upgrading a Steady to an Arcane comes out to 0.65 damage per mana, the cost of a multi is 1.35 damage per mana (single target). To give some perspective, Serpent sting has around 4 damage per mana.

Specials are good for the following situation for a BM:
If you are with a Shadow priest
If it is a burst phase
If you have mana near the end of a fight
When you use The Beast Within.

Other than that, you are just wasting mana, and you are better off stacking the AP/crit. The BM build really breaks hunter's reliance on mana. So far the best builds I've found have used iAotH with a 2.6 - 2.7 after accounting for lag. At low latency 2.5 is viable but there's no good guns in that range.

One other interesting thing I turned up, is that the +haste enchants are still viable for the BM build. My spreadsheets showed the +10 haste rating to gloves slightly above +24AP

 

Glaurong

I've been BM for a while now, been a fan of it since they added serpent's swiftness. By far the most powerful talent we have. There was a lot of talk about BM vs MM in the main hunter thread and I don't think my opinions have changed much since then.

A BM hunter with the right bow (2.7-2.8), using a priority queue will only be about 5-10% behind a MM hunter with a similar bow, or a MM hunter with a slower bow (3.2) who slots 2 specials and delays autos. That 5-10% is easily made up by the buffed pet.

Also I posted this in the hunting hunters thread. If you want to see what a pretty decent full burn rotation looks like as a BM hunter with a 2.8 speed weapon (with lots of haste effects thrown in to complicate things.

 

Howitzer

Are Cats the new best-BM pets considering the LB nerf last patch? Or any pet with a Gore ability like a Ravager?

 

Norwest

That was one of the questions I had. How does a BM use rapid fire effectively? I'm going to be running some numbers on that and looking at how to best combine TBW, Rapid Fire, iAotH, and Trinkets.

One question for the hunter community, what happens when you swap bows in combat? Is there a cooldown on your autoshot?

 

Beerbaron

steady shot *is* a special. auto/special rotations are called replacement cycles. the core cycle is auto/steady, but you replace arcane/multi in as mana allows.

btw, another bonus to BM is that you can sync your best trinket with TBW.

that's part of the beauty of a replacment cycle.. its so simple. since most epics are 2.7 or slower.. when haste effets proc, you continue with your cycle. it would take an effective post-haste weapon speed of about 1.5 + latency to start delaying autoshots.. even then.. its best to continue with your cycle (possibly focusing on instants instead of steady at that point tho).

 

Glaurong

A cat with Bite and Claw 9 after the glancing change will be pretty close if not a bit better than a windserpent. As of right now it is pretty close just because of the added uptime of FI with a bite/claw pet. Pets have buggy ability refresh/global cools sometimes they can use multiple abilities at once, sometimes not. Overall bite/claw has been able to dump way more focus than I first thought.

On anything that gets stunned or immobilized and triggers the stupid windserpent caster behavior, a cat do better.

As far as a ravager goes I can't really comment, I refuse to level one up from 63 to see.

 

Howitzer

LOL same here man. There's nothing worse than leveling up a pet at that level to 70. I did it with a wolf at 67 and it was painful.

 

Norwest

With Rapid Fire, a 2.7 becomes: 2.7/1.2/1.15/1.4= 1.397 sec. That's too fast, unfortunately. Taking steady out may be the best idea, but once arcane/multi are both on cool down there's not much you can do. You may even have to do the unspeakable and use Serpent Sting (ewwwww). Either way you won't get the same amount of damage out of a rapid fire that a MM/SV would get since taking out steady or delaying auto both hurt DPS a lot.

My mistake, I see what you mean now.

 

Rius

I've been using an Owl for some time now. Screech/Claw instead of Bite/Claw, +7% dps instead of +10%, 0% health adjustment instead of cat's -2%. Apart from the really annoying screeching noise every few seconds, Owls perform pretty well. And the latest rank of Screech is -210 ap to all targets, more than double the previous best rank.

I tamed the red and purple one from Sethekk Halls, and he gets a lot of attention =)

 

Beerbaron

you're missing a lot with that analysis. as important as delayed autoshots is the downtime in your cycle where you are neither casting a special or waiting for the .5 second autoshot tick.

that 1.4 number is a good thing! if it were 1.5 or 1.6 with all those haste effects, then imagine how much time you would spend post-steadyshot, but pre autoshot just waiting around casting nothing. also think about how well imp hawk will fit in since its not as big a buff as rapid fire. and by using arcane/multi replacements during rapid fire, you greatly minimize the effect of the delayed autoshots during rapid fire's duration.

even some of the best MM shot cycles will delay an autoshot by .1 or .2 seconds occasionally, or worse, they will have bigger non-casting downtimes in the auto,steady,auto snippet in their full cycle.

 

boomix

I would go with Ravager pet for Gore and Bite with BM spec. I know they are a bit of glass cannon for a pet but dps is quite a bit higher with them.

Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell

 

Norwest

Sorry, I'm not sure if we are arguing the same thing. I'm saying BM doesn't benefit much from Rapid Fire. I have no problems with the 2.7 speed and BM, I'm just saying that it doesn't get as much damage out of Rapid Fire as a MM.

That 1.4 isn't a good thing. With 100ms of lag, you are only getting 22.2% out of 40% of your rapid fire. BM wastes almost half of your Rapid Fire Haste if you keep using steady.

 

Howitzer

I have good latency and even with RF up with full MM I will occasionally miss an autoshot just due to how fast its firing off since I refuse to use a macro for shots. I will just have to try BM in SSC/TK/Gruul/Mag's Lair etc and find out for myself.

 

PhoR

Which is why I said I was giving you "part" of my strat. Not going to spoon feed it.
But if you actually think about it for a bit, you should be able to take what I already said and work out an incredibly good/efficient way to keep your pet up and not stoned in gruul.
It's really not that difficult.


You're right that you won't get as much benefit out of Rapid fire if it pushes you below a speed that you can hold a rotation..


But you could simply switch to a slower weapon right before popping RF. (if you had that luxury)

Glad Xbow = 3.2 speed / (1.15 quiver * 1.2 SS * 1.4 RF) = 1.66 speed
YES PLZ!

Now if only I had the time to grind for it

 

Optimized

I have a few fundamental questions regarding BM. Like the original poster I have been marks for a while and have been reluctant to give that up, despite a lot of evidence that BM may be the best damage build.

1) What trinkets are best for BM. My preliminary inclination is that you want possibly Daggerspine trophy, Bloodlust Brooch, Abacus of violent odds, or Mark of Conquest.
Which 2 of these would be best? Daggerspine trophy seems really strong if you can combine it with aspect of the hawk and get some nice rolling procs. Bloodlust brooch combined with a 4 minute rapid fire cooldown allows you to have some nice interaction with TBW.

2) What is the best pet? I have a windserpent and a cat. I don't want to level a ravager only to find out they are not very good. An owl also provides good utility and good damage.

3) What macros are good for Beast Mastery come 2.1? I saw one floating around that macro'ed steady and auto together that also had kill command, and lightning breath in it on cast random.

4) Seems some people suggest stacking just AP and Agi. Is this really the best? It seems like you want to run Imp Hawk, not viper.

5) What is the ideal bow? I have both Sunfury and Gladiator's. It seems if you had daggerspine trophy and imp Hawk there's a good chance of having one haste effect beyond Serpent's Swiftness. Does this justify Gladiators or is Sunfury still better?

5) BM seems terrible for 5v5 arena (possibly good for 2v2). Is this true. It just seems without the burst and without reliable interupts the build would not perform at a high level.

I'm sorry that I posted mostly questions.

 

brannstokk

It's not as bad as most people let on. 99% of your Hunter abilities are the same. BM is less susceptible to being gayed around pillars, since your pet will chew hard on them wherever they run. BM is at a disadvantage on the pillars in Blade's Edge. It's a trade off.

It's true that BM is under-represented in top 5v5 teams, but you should check out the hunter "Discipleh," who is usually specced 41/5/15 (not at the time of this post, however) and runs a top-5 5v5 team in his battlegroup.

Consider that team's class matrix, and what role a BM hunter would play within that.