I find that a little ironic, since the purpose of a macro is to minimize any downtime between shots due to anything but lag But then again, most macros flip out if you start throwing in other shits and forget to reset it. So I definitly understand this statement.


As for BM...I like BM solo and PVP. A lot. A very lot. However, my hunter being an alt, is regulated to being leader of our C Team, which is full of people with "abnormal" schedules, and a few who don't seem to want to take raiding seriously...so he isn't raiding a lot. I am Survival spec (20/41) and I like it a lot. I am sure that with BM I could do higher sustained DPS without burning mana pots, however, I don't want to test the healers with healing my pet while they have to focus on a tertiary guild tank, AND people who for the most part have never done any raiding before Kara. Am I just hyping the pet factor too much, especially with the new Mend Pet mechanics and Avoidance?

Right now, I am 4th in DPS, beaten by a rogue and 2 mages. Below me is whatever DPS we can fill in which is usually somebody terrible, and the tanks.

I don't like being so low. I would say that I have gear equal to or better than these guys. I use a pretty standard "spam this shit" macro for Survival (arcane auto steady auto steady and then weaved in multis/stings as needed)

/edit; That's interesting that you say its' not the biggest, a lot of the charts I see show the pet being close to the rest of shots used in terms of added dps!

Alright, here is a chart of last night's entire Mt. Hyjal raid damage dealt:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=2vo1vk1zyknbo

In this WWS report you'll see the several 1st attempts my guild had at Archimonde. In these Archimonde attempts there is me, (a BM hunter), and a Survival Hunter. Both equally geared, both using the same bow. We didn't use our pets all night because we were retarded and believed that a pet death would cause a 4,000 dmg DOT to the raid. (We realized this morning it was coincidence that a pet died right when another player died which led to that assumption that it was bugged last night).

Anyways, Archimonde: no pets

Attempt 1: no pet:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...o&s=9969-10036
847 DPS
Attempt 5: no pet:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=12276-12464
787 DPS (only 3,000 damage behind the survival hunter)
Attempt 8: no pet:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=14593-14884
893 DPS

Now here is another fight, in the same evening, on Fusion's 1st kill of Azgalor:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...bo&s=7236-7539
1153 DPS - big difference, yes?

As you can see, a BM pet is going to add roughly 300-400 dps which is excellent BUT STILL less than half of what you yourself are putting out. YES, the pet is absolutely important and crucial to keep up, but by no means does it completely define your usefulness as BM.

Doomfire pretty much bones pets if they ever get hit, so you weren't missing out on much with not using yours last night.

Doomfire is a terrible ability they gave an end game boss, its applied by physical means. Meaning getting highest rank of fire resist wont help your pet live through it. Maxing out stamina would be your best bet. I switched back to my Wind Serpent for this fight because its melee range is farther then a scorpid and has dive, helping it move out of doomfire faster, it helped a little. I still don't think Avoidance is working as it should on Doomfire and Azgalor's Rain of fire. The DoT they add to the AoE ability should be affected by Avoidance, so our pets could have a chance to live.

@kronchev
A lot of hunters dont use a /castseq macro, because they are use to casting shots before the auto shot bar is actually filled up, unlike the macro you have to wait for every shot to fire before the next can start.

What on earth do you mean by this. I'm gonna go ahead and throw in the fact that you probably use quartz or somethign that shows your lag each shot, but I still cannot figure out what you mean by this.

For a BM Hunter, which of the two are better if your using a steady shot macro?

Dragonspine Trophy or Tsunami Talisman?

If you have 200 MS, 15 fps or lower in raids, 2.9 or faster speed bow, points in imp aoth, and a slow reaction time, its probably better not to use dragonspine as BM

Yes, being BM on Archimonde is a bit of a bummer. An extra 6 yards range is a *huge* benefit, more so than Serpents Swiftness itself imo! As for my pet:

I typically keep it dismissed at the start. I dont have it passive next to me, as It can be feared into the fire. Then, I bring it out on two occasions; a) I had to use my PvP trinket, so I have my pet out on passive, ready to hit BW if he starts casting fear right as a fire spawns/crawls its way towards me, or b) Its around 40% and I send him in with BW/trinkets/etc just after a fear, to get some quick DPS out of him. Often he dies within 15 seconds from a fire, but once he lasted from 40% to 15%, lucky with fires (and quick dispelling mages).

The reason why I dont keep him on passive and BW as many fears as I can, is because we are a horde oceanic guild. Our tank already has enough trouble breaking the fear (500ms latency, 1000ms cast time. Often he breaks it, Archi starts running to a ranged and snaps back a second later). I wouldnt want to throw an immune-to-fear melee for him to deal with also. I suppose I'm being over cautious, there would surely be people on higher threat that resist a fear, but the extra dps from me isn't going to make or break the fight and I might as well play safe.

Due to latency you can start a steady shot before your autoshot finishes casting, and it wont clip the autoshot, by the time the server realizes you have started steady the autoshot is away, or at least thats my understanding of it.

Whereas a macro will have to wait for the server to tell your client the shot has fired before it will start the next shot in the sequence, thus incurring _twice_ the latency. Not a problem if you play with very low latency of course.