Dire Beast has a base attack speed of 2 and does scale with the hunter's melee haste similar to hunter pets. I don't believe it scales with ranged haste like rapid fire (pretty sure I checked, but it's been a bit so it might not hurt to recheck). So the haste will increase the number of attacks your Dire Beast gets, which increases the damage done and the focus regen it gives the hunter, as long as the attack speed becomes fast enough to fit in additional attacks during the period Dire Beast is active for.

For example, with no haste on the hunter, the Dire Beast can get between 7-8 attacks (7.5). With heroism up, it goes up to 9-10 (9.75). Usually the extra attack will fit in since there is no delay on the first attack, but it seems a little erratic and doesn't always squeeze in the same amount of attacks for the same haste.

I'm fairly sure it does, although I didn't do detailed tests on the frequency of updates as it's difficult to measure precisely. Blizzard made changes in this expansion to make guardian style pets no longer freeze stats on summon but instead be kept up to date with the summoner stats. This applies to pets like fire elementals as well. I will note that my site doesn't accurately reflect this- the attack count is calculated when you summon the dire beast as it would have required a significant amount of extra code to explicitly simulate each dire beast attack separately.

I was thinking about the best course of action in multi target fights, more specifically: when to use SrS or Multi Shot for multi dotting.

Here are my thoughts so far, using numbers from Rivkah's femaledwarf.com with my own char as a reference:


A. 2 or more targets, spread far apart

1 AS: 32900 dmg, 20 focus = 1645 DPF
1 SrS: 53969 dmg, 25 focus = 2159 DPF

Using SrS to dot other targets seems to be clearly better than only using AS as a focus dump, even when assuming that the other targets won't have the 5% spell damage debuff.


B. 2 targets next to each other (i.e. Stone Guard in Mogu'shan Vaults)

a) using 1 MS every 15 sec to also dot the second target:

One MS cast does ((10307 MS dmg + 16268 Imp SrS dmg) * 2 targets) + 53969 dmg for a full SrS on the secondary target
-> 107119 dmg for 40 focus = 2678 DPF

b) "spamming" MS

I'm not sure how to calculate what happens when you use MS instead of AS as a focus dump all the time. Let's say only the MS does damage, while the SrS dot has no chance to tick (which obviously is too low, because you can't just spam MS all the time):
((10307 MS dmg + 16268 Imp SrS dmg) * 2 targets)
-> 53150 dmg for 40 focus = 1328 DPF

So with two targets next to each other, it seems to be a good idea to use MS every 15 seconds to also dot the second target. I'm not sure what happens if you would simply use MS as a focus dump instead of AS while maintaining your normal rotation otherwise. FD.com says for 1 target it's "only" a loss of 2228 DPS (60637 DPS -> 58409 DPS), so for two targets the DPS loss will be smaller. Maybe it would be even a DPS gain.

C. 3 targets next to each other

a) using 1 MS every 15 sec to also dot the 2 other targets:

((10307 MS dmg + 16268 Imp SrS dmg) * 3 targets) + 53969 * 2 dmg for a full SrS on both other targets
-> 187663 dmg for 40 focus = 4692 DPF


b) "spamming" MS
Let's say again that the SrS dots don't do any damage at all, because I don't know how to calculate the dots:
((10307 MS dmg + 16268 Imp SrS dmg) * 3 targets)
->79725 dmg for 40 focus = 1993 DPF

I'm not sure what to make of 3 target fights. The DPF and DPS becomes better than using AS, so using MS as a focus dump while maintaining your normal rotation otherwise seems advantageous.
Would it be even better to forego other shots completely, only using CoS and MS? I don't know. ES only does 50499 dmg for 35 focus = 2020 DPF for me, which is comparable, and the DPS is worse... on the other hand there are the free LnL ES.

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edit:
Maybe FD can help if I try to alter the priority list a bit more. Using my own character as a reference:

2 targets, normal rotation but using MS instead of AS as the focus dump:
According to FD, this would be a loss of 2162 DPS in my case, but MS and Imp SrS do 3294 DPS which would be gained on the secondary target.

2 targets, spec into TotH instead of DB and use MS as the focus dump:
For a single target this would mean a loss of 4930 DPS and a gain of 4311 DPS from MS and Imp SrS on the second target, so it seems to be not a good idea. (For three targets, with 4311 DPS on both secondary targets it obviously would be worthwile to take TotH over DB)

3 targets, AoE rotation (ExT, RF, MS and CoS only, specced into TotH):
This would mean 21568 DPS lost single target, but 11934 *2 = 23868 DPS gained on the other targets. Without TotH it only would be 8140 *2 = 16280 DPS gained, though.


To sum up my thoughts so far:

- multi dotting with SrS is better than a simple AS if targets are spread far apart

- 2 targets next to each other: one MS at least every 15 sec is good; using MS instead of AS as the focus dump while still maintaining the normal rotation seems even slightly better. Speccing into TotH is not advisable, since it's a minor DPS loss.

- 3 targets next to each other: Using MS instead of AS as the focus dump is good; using the AoE rotation (Explosive Trap, Multi Shot, Cobra Shot, Glaive Toss or Barrage) seems slightly better if you're specced into TotH and worse if you are not.

I'm curious about our optimal opener while using MoC, since it has such a huge focus cost. What I've been doing, which I'm not sure is optimal, is the following (~4.5% Haste):

MoC
Stampede
RF/Berserk
DB
ES
GT
BA
SrS
CS
ES
Readiness

This gives me just enough focus to last through the opener and not be starved of focus. Popping RF/Zerk and DB earlier gives the most focus regen as early as possible. I've found that when I use a 'regular' opener, like with SrS or ES first, I'm ending up starved and forced to CS at awkward times.

In the OP, the preferred leg enchant for non-leatherworkers is actually [Shadowleather Leg Armor].

Femaledwarf is showing haste to be much better than crit for my hunter. Are there known haste plateaus? My ilvl is 484 and FD gives me the following stat weights.
Haste 1.699
Crit 0.773
Mastery 0.277

Keep in mind that Haste values vary greatly based on a number of factors. In the real world, though, Crit -is- better than Haste by a significant amount.

The only reasonable "known" plateau (which is not really worth going for), is at 3864 haste, which allows your Dire Beast to attack one more time per duration.

For expertise, do we need to hit both caps for melee and range stats? My range stats shows 6.53% expertise with Dwarf racial, but the melee stats only shows 5.53% expertise. Just wanted to make sure.

No, you will only need to cap the ranged portion, so 2210 expertise rating will be enough as a dwarf/troll to cap your and your pets expertise needs.

@ LilM8,

Great post, though SrS ticks while spamming MS. This can be tested on the target dummies. Get a Thrill of the Hunt proc, then spam 5 multishots (you must get successive TotH procs from the Multishots). The damage log will show SrS ticks in a multiple of 7 (14 if 2 targets, 21 if 3), not a multiple of 5, meaning 2 ticks occurred during the MS spam.

When they created Cobra Shot they moved the SrS tick to a different timer from the DoT.

Freezing trap is the "ice block" trap, not the "ice patch" trap, so it won't work on the grand majority of bosses.