Me and another hunter went BM spec to test this concept out. We learned a few things:

1) Kiggler the Crazed, his AOE knockback doesn't trigger on pets. Send that pet in while you're tanking him.
2) Two hunters tanking Kiggler, you can kill him before the raid group gets to him.
3) The BM hunters were topping the charts on Gruul. Stark contrast to being upper-middlin as MM.
4) We were doing ~100 more DPS than the MM hunter in the raid, on average. We're all fairly similarly geared.
5) Gruul's cave-ins are quite managable. With the HoT mend and just keeping an eye for cave-ins, it's easy to recover from.
6) BM uses next to no mana, compared to MM. I personally love that. This was using just BoW and Hawk. I couldn't throw it away fast enough.
7) The 2 BM hunters went into a group with locks to give that 6% FI bonus dmg (since it stacks). In return we got some shammy totems for the pets bump.

It's significantly a different playstyle than MM - but I've easily noticed a large jump in my DPS and damage output. When I used to show up 5th, 6th on fights, I'm #1-#3 now.

Cons:
I feel like a 2 minute mage. I miss scatter shot. You're more dependant on the pet than ever before.

Still, I'm for PVE - and it's an increase over MM, that's for sure.

Zoobert, thanks for posting - it was something I was about to ask about myself! Now, to throw the rest of the stuff out on the table.

I've played Hunter for the last 2 years and really enjoy the class. I work hard at it, and am always looking to find ways to improve my performance. I levelled as marksman, went to high agility survival build at 60 for raiding, switched to BM during Patch 2.0 and then maintained that through 70.

When we began raiding Kara and doing heroics, I was missing the burst damage that marksman hunters could put out (Mostly for things like flares on curator, vorpil spawns and demon chains on illhoof) so I went back to Marksman but specced into improved traps. (I keep two pieces of beast lord on me to use during heroics that require strong cc.)

My current spec is up on armory. http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...uncil&n=Rajani

I also carry Earthstrike and Core of Arkelos which I swap in and out throughout raids. I do alright for DPS in most places. I never top our extreme mages or warlocks, but I hover nicely among the rogues and such.

We're now well established with Karazhan, Gruuls and Magtheridon clears, and looking to move on to SSC. I've been dabbling with the idea of returning to BM and such, but I am not sure on what spec works the best, or which encounters the pet becomes a nuisance, or extreme hazard.

For example: (I've been too scared to try)
Do pets set off flame wreath? (How about snake trap)
Do pets magnify cave-in damage in Gruul, or arcane flare explosion damage on Curator?
Can pets DPS Maiden without crowding the melee?

Once we get into SSC, how do pets handle things? How much of the BM dps comes from the pets ability to cause damage, or does the scaling of SS cover that on its own?

What gem/stat priorities do BM hunters look for, and what changes in my gear/set up would you suggest for either a respec to BM, or for keeping current Marks spec? Can you point me to a really nicely set up BM on armory? Thanks!

Oh Edit: And what shot rotation is considered more common for BM?

Scorpid raid dps has now made the main WoW hunter forums... incoming nerf no doubt.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...08245888&sid=1

No; no; yes, contingent upon how much melee you typically use on Maiden (4 melee + pet probably is a bit much, 3 or fewer + pet would be acceptable).
Variable dependent upon fight (Lurker and Karathress are bad for pets, I'm told, and would consequently have much lower pet dps than other fights). Likewise, variable dependent upon pet. Certain fights allow you to stack the uberstack of scorpid poison, which could easily approach 40-50% of your total damage output by itself (not counting claw/white damage in addition to poison), whereas there are fights where a scorpid will do crappy damage (hydross, for one) and a ravager/cat would be superior. Generally, I would say no less than 15-20% and no more than 50% of your total dps for a given fight; obviously it can vary wildly.
Go with AGI gems (delicate living rubies and whatever the new 10 agi gem is - delicate spinel?). They provide more crit than ap/crit gems (the tanzanite one) while providing the same amount of AP; additionally, they scale with BoK.

I'd recommend checking out Howitzer (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...yon&n=Howitzer) or Djinn (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...+Skull&n=Djinn) as good examples of BM hunters with top notch gear/spec.

Honestly, this question has been asked so many times that I'm just going to say read through the threads to find the answer. I realize this sounds snippy and I hope you don't take offense, but seriously, I think this has been asked at least a dozen times in the past month in this thread alone. Reading through the thread will give you lots of other useful information that you didn't ask about, anyway.

As a fairly new poster I've been spending a lot of my time re-reading old threads. I've read recently that Agi gems are the way to go but when going back to try and find where this consensus was reached I'm not seeing the same thing in those threads.

For MM and Surv, yes, older threads seemed to say that Agi gems are superior but when it came to BM those threads were less in agreement. The point was made that for BM, +AP gems may be the better option since crit only increases the up-time of KC on your pet, and that it only takes around 25% crit or so for that option to be available most of the fight. Straight AP, however, increases base damage of your pet as well as KC damage, so stacking it seemed a better route for BM.

Like everything else in Hunter gearing, it depends on what your current level of gear is. I know, that with my Kara level of gear I'm better off as a full BM Hunter using +Agility gems over +AP. The difference is very minute, but it is there. Your mileage may vary.

Crit rate also helps regenerate focus for your pet with Go For the Throat, don't discount that.

Going back to a topic from page 28 (I think), have any BM Hunters spent any time with the Talon of Al'ar? I let a fellow guildie get this last night because he's SV and uses Arcane a helluva lot more than I do right now as BM, but I'm wondering if I should grab the next one. On the one hand, BMs get a lot of shots, so the benefit of the trinket is great, but on the other hand Arcane is rarely found in a typical BM shot rotation. How mana-efficient does this trinket make Arcane, and is it enough such that this trinket is an "omg must have" item for a BM Hunter? I'm leaning towards yes, but I wanted to get some other opinions. Thanks!

Spent some time this afternoon fighting my crappy work connection to backread the thread. Think I have a handle on the rotation thing but something caused some alarm.

At best, my latency is at 180ms and it hovers usually around the 200ms mark. How much is that going to affect my ability to do things correctly?

You asked for Mag.... here is Mag, a bit crappy kill though.

http://www.chillend.nl/epeen/Magtheridon7.6/

1) Misdirection didnt work and I got hit for 18k at the start of phase 2
2) Shammy didnt drop spell dmg totem after I got ressed like... 2-3 mins later so the first scorpid poison didnt tick that much
3) I ran out of mana because paladins didnt buff wisdom after I got ressed
4) After I got ressed the scorpid poison obviously ticked for less than it could


Dont think the poison gets 300% damage from banish thingy, tried it a few times on our wipes (yes, wipes, bloody clickers).

Reckon I could have beaten million damage and +1500 dps if I didnt die to the pull. -.-

Got rank 4 poison up to 792 with agi food and major agi pot btw.

And yes, I was clicking.

Yeah, you'd have to plug your gear into a spreadsheet to see clearly which is the best upgrade. I just believe the general conclusion was that +16 AP gems were only possible to be superior to +8 Agi for BM spec. I think it also helps to include Kings in +agi gem calculations; a lot of people ignore this to their detriment.

Also, I've convinced one hunter to respec BM. He's well geared, but plays mostly on his healer(it's usually needed more) so getting him in for raids is difficult when he's considered roughly equivalent to a bad warlock(which I'm trying to disprove). Hopefully once we get our damage meters sorted out(they've not all been updated/have been out of sync for a week) he'll get a good chance to go into Gruul or something and melt face.

Hey, sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it and it's a really big thread. Is there a consistant way to do Lurker as BM without pet dieing? I'm having pretty big issues.