I think at this point it is safe to say that Blizzard's idea of using +spell damage on pets failed. Any ability that uses it is exploited and nerfed. Personally I loved it, because anything that allows scaling with progression is more fun.

Are there any other specials that use +damage in a meaningful way? Does Screech or Poison Spit?

edit: useless post, delete please

Wow, that is one hell of a nerf. It is now a far worse focus dump than just about anything you can get on a pet. 135 on a full stack is just sad, especially when you consider activating claw as a focus dump will more often than not push the poison stack off because of the GCD messing with the timing.

Just tested this myself too.. 2507AP with BW and FI active gives an amazing 190 dmg/tick at 5 stacks.

Screech seems to function the same as claw/gore and doesnt get any bonus in damage.

The ironic thing is that they promised us 'pets would scale', but when we finally have pets that scale in a meaningful way with the BM tree (rather than being a marginal difference between BM/MM) they have to change it.

They seem scared of making a true difference in the way damage scales for Bm, MM or Sv hunters, seeing as how for all 3 trees the ranged dps output is still the largest slice of the pie. I actually enjoyed having a scorpid put out a _significant_ part of my dps, seeing as how it's a _beast_master tree...

As long as we are on the subject of pets, can anyone see if Boar Charge still generates a large amount of threat when used in conjunction with Growl? As long as they are swinging nerf bats, it would be good to see whether they consider the snap threat boars are capable of as an "issue."

Pyrestones will still be better than living rubies, but the Glinting cut is better than Wicked unless your hunters are all maxed on hit. The better option of course, is to just farm the trash on off-nights so you can get enough gems for everyone.

I don't think anyone can really be surprised they nerfed this... BM hunters will still do a ton of dps.

I truly, truly want to flame you and anybody like you.

But I will be nice and just say I am glad for the change.

That theory craft died when they removed scaling on lighting breath months ago. WS hasn't been a raiding dps pet for ages. As it is now from 2.2 and on its standing between cats, raptors and ravagers. gore does slightly (like 1-4 dps) higher damage but on the other hand is ugly as hell (my opinion :P) since gore doesn't scale its a non issue. WS will never become competable since they got only a 7% dmg modifier and its insane crit dependency.

You think just like the clueless people on the official forums who are raving on about every nerf when it comes, the current fotm whine is wf now that it wont procc on special attacks. They seem incapable to grasp the reason why something so incredibly obviously overpowered needs to get toned down, i mean having a group of 3 hunters, 1 warrior and a shaman and STILL the shaman puts down WF because it ups the DPS output of that group more than a agi totem would be a wake up sign but no.
Same with scorpid poison, people just don't seem to understand that having a defensive pet out dpsing dps pets by 200% is not ok game mechanics wise.
I'm quite sure the riot on official forums will be immense and massive as usual and i'm certain blizzard will ignore them just back when WS got nerfed.
The hunter issues they should work in are in complete different areas (like steady shot, ranged survivability, mobility kiting, pet classes, talents etc).

It is quite obvious that the spell damage Wind Serpent and the Scorpid got from hunter RAP were too high. I was actually surprised that the last change to Lightning Breath didn’t make it to the Scorpid since both use similar scaling formulas.

The question I have is: What would be a good RAP -> pet +dmg scaling formula? The idea here is that your pet’s DPS should keep up with your own gear scaling and maintain a certain % of your total DPS. The RAP -> pet AP scaling is a start, but there are other stats like haste rating which doesn’t directly benefit your pet and at some point, you’d “outgear” your pet, but to a much lesser extent than pre-BC.

Any math inclined could figure this out? Without a good answer, it is hard to conclude if Blizzard over-nerfed the Wind Serpent / Scorpid, other than the fact that it’s nerfed HARD.

Anyone do any testing on current PTR build with this trinket?

[Ashtongue Talisman of Swiftness]

I'm not trumpeting for an overpowered pet, I'm clamoring for the actual pet scaling they promised us. Inadvertently, they provided it for us (Lightning Breath, Scorpid Poison) and now they remove it. Flame me all you want for resisting this change.

I agree with you. Now the only pet left for absolute numbers in dps terms is a Ravager. And that is sad. What it would be interesting to implement is rap scaling for claw/bite/gore. But i am almost sure that they will mess with their formulas so much that the claw will do more damage than a rogue.

Well on the bright side, Blizzard appears to have fixed 2 Piece T5 on the PTR so that it's now affected by Auto Shot. I also checked Talon of Alar to make sure they didn't fix some mechanic that caused auto shot to not trigger certain effects (I know the Talon is supposedly working as intented). Sadly it remains unchanged.

This most recent PTR change simply makes the choice for end-game pets that much smaller. It really takes the fun out of having a pet when every single hunter you see has the exact same one that you do. The fun dynamic of keeping stacks up is now gone as well. Its back to feed it, send it in, and forget about it.

Well now that Haste Rating has received a decent nurf. I was Wonder if its time to pick up the Gun from BT (1.9 speed) and use a 13% haste quiver, and for the haste gear replacing it with pure dps mail/leather gear. Hopefully i can pick up the gun this week and try it out. What do you guys think?

I see no reason to use a 13% quiver over a 15%, sure you will clip more but more haste is never less dps, it just isn't needed. More haste wouldn't help auto/steady, but would not hurt it either, but it would help if you sub in arcane/multi mana permitting.

[E] So pluging it into the spreadsheet over a Sunfury was around 80 dps loss, with a 200ms ping, I dont think its worth it.

The Talon of Al'ar remaining worthless saddens me because I just got it several days ago, only to bank it until it is buffed. Would it even be worth it to use the talon if they did fix it?

On the bright side, we won't have to worry about trying to keep our pets in on bosses when the pet is in present danger just so we can keep up the poison stacks. And anyone who was originally using a scorpid will most likely see a personal increase in dps from the hunter by a small margin due to not having to save cooldowns. This looks like we can put up another point for marksman spec on the board because that option of having the scorpid do massive dps from BW and trinkets is gone, so now your DPS comparisons of you in BM to MM spec are now actually something to consider more so than before since the scorpid cannot push anything in favor of the BM tree . Once DST drops (if it ever does), I think I will try out some WWS tests on the servants to see if the trinket is actually the difference in DPS by speccing something along the lines of 14/44/3. The fact that DST and IAotH combined puts the MM spec closer to a perfect rotation and shoves the BM spec too far past the perfect shot rotation speed may be enough, if the gear alone from high end game content isn't.

Testing has given the following formula for its damage range:
SteadyShotDamage = DamagePercentageBonus*RWS*(150 + (WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed)*2.8 + 0.2*RAP + [Dazed: 175])

You picking up the 1.9 speed Gun with much, much lower min/max damage of the Bristleblitz isn't going to help any in my opinion, neither will getting the quiver speed down by 2% to avoid clips. I would roll with the punches. Your armory suggests you already have possible clip issues when IAoTH procs or at least if RF is up + IAoTH. With this change you might just have an easier time managing a rotation.

Nerfing Scorpids hasn't really helped anything, especially now that they made level 70 Ravagers tamable. The only change is that now every good raiding Hunter will have a Ravager. At least before there was some amount of difference, and Hunters used different pets on a per-fight basis. Now? Ravager for every fight.

Does anyone know where the level 70 Ravagers are, though? I know they are in the mine on the Netherdrake place, but is it possible to get to them without being 300 Riding skill?