IMO this talent is extremely worthwhile as long as you are going deeper into the BM tree. What else would you spend points on? Thick hide, IAotM, and endurance training are all pretty crappy with regard to pve dps. Sometimes you can get unlucky and a pet can get owned early on in a fight, and spending 5.5 seconds for a rez and mendpet is definitely worth gaining back 25% or so of your total dps, imo.

Even as MM I would pick up this talent on the way to unleashed fury.

Gurtogg (BT) - One Fel Acid Breath would kill it over time. Last kill I had to res my pet 4 times since it was targeted for Fel Acid Breath.
Archimonde (Hyjal) - One word... Doomfire. It sucks, I spend a lot of time reviving my pet on that fight.

Since both of these spells arent classified as AoE damage, avoidance does not help and your pet takes full damage from it.

Those 2 fights are the main reason I have 2/2 Imp Revive pet. Most of the time I am stuck in a non-shadow priest group and pet management helps, but the damage is so high you cant help it.

Armor value in PvE raiding is almost utterly useless. It has little/no benefit to either you or your pet.

IAotH and FF are two of the most powerful talent selections available. As long as you can handle the haste, and manage your pet well, these two should be maxed and you will see a large dps boost from them.

The DPS benefit you take from each point in Frenzy diminishes greatly the more points you take in it. Each point gives you about half as much juice as the last one. The difference in 4/5 in frenzy and 5/5 is next to nothing(going by cheeky's sheet). So, yeah, stick one of its points in Animal Handler.

Leotheras the blind will also kill your pet if he gets a rend on him. Imp revive pet is a must if you don't exactly know when to use you pet on Leo.

Sorry to butt in to the conversation here. But this seemed like the best place to ask this question. I'm currently working on getting Excel so I can use the spreadsheets myself, but can anyone tell me what kind of dps I should be able to put out with my current gear and spec?

The Armory

Also, how about a link to the best possible dps build? Thank you. (I'm noob)

Thanks, Carlaena. I'm sticking with just two points of IAotH for the moment though. I'll see how I handle the minor haste increase before I get those final points.

Malvan, your gear seems well balanced enough. However I'd change my leg enchant to Cobrahide Leg Armor - Items - World of Warcraft. That would give a very nice increase in dps.

Since you are at 375 LW, as I, I'd also try and get hold of this pattern, Pattern: Boots of the Crimson Hawk - Items - World of Warcraft. On my server the pattern is usually fairly affordable and the mats are fairly easy to gather, and it's a nice upgrade over pretty much anything pre-SSC.

Last night at Tidewalker, I had the best luck in the world on my scorpid poison. I was expecting to see my dps as one of my best yet on the fight. (We wiped at 1% though... how awful is that!) I can't link the wws report because it's sort of screwy in that it changed our names, and it only shows one attempt and at 30 minutes long? (I have to try redoing it at home.)

Anyway, I think I botched my shot rotation pretty bad, but one thing I noticed as sorta odd... I actually had to pull my pet off Tidewalker to avoid him pulling aggro! Does this happen just because he had an insane tick going? (900+ for about 4 minutes or so) Or is the tank generating low tps, or a combo of both? Man it was so hard to purposefully break that tick too!

I think my rotation has suffered since reading so deeply into things. Like, I overthink it or something now. I find myself staring at quartz, waiting for that one little flipping millisecond to cast my next steady.

I don't use arcane/multi because I do tend to have mana issues on intense fights and I am almost NEVER in a spriest group. I find that often times, I get hung up on the first tick of IAotH, usually clipping an auto on those cases due to the shift in timing. And likewise, when the proc wears off seems to be another trouble spot. I really don't like that I am so intently watching one set of cast bars either. Are there other methods that will allow me more focus elsewhere? Or is there another timer mod that might let me fiddle with things more.

KC also throws off my rotation, but I don't use any macros, so I am not sure how to incorporate that in for ease of use.

Half the mana bar? Thats a horrible exageration. Pets do die on boss fights and when that pet makes up 20-30% of your total damage, not rezzing it does you far more damage than the mana hit. 4 seconds to get your pet up and back in the fight is hardly "gimping your damage" when that 4 seconds just brought back a substantial chunk of your DPS, so what if it goes down a level to content. I guarantee you get more damage out of the pet than you do by spending the mana from rezzing it on shots instead. There are rare exceptions like Alar in phase 1, but they are few and far between.

Thanks again Gjorn. One last question though: Do I have too much Stamina? I know it seems odd, but should I replace some of my stars of elune for AP/Crit gems? At the moment it seems I've got a lot more HP than I need, and since you suggested the armor kit change, I'm wondering if you think I do. And if so, how much HP is good to stay at for now?

The only place to stack stamina is in PvP. For PvE I always go after agility gems (except on the Ebon Netherscale set, since it has great set bonuses), and mix in Jagged Talasites as needed to meet meta gem requirements. Click my armory link to see what I did with my gem choices - I generally ignore any set bonus that would give me worse stats than if I put nothing but +8 agility gems in the slot. Its based on AEP valuations, so it may help you to look it over, but I find most BM stats follow this curve:

1agi = 10 pts
1crit = 9 pts
1hit = 13 pts
1ap = 4 pts

So if I have the breastplate, I calculate it out like this: I can socket 8 crit, and 2 nightseyes with 4agi/6stam to get my +4 agility bonus. Thats 12 agi and 8 crit for a total of 192 points, plus 120 HP. Alternatively I could stack 3 gems with 8 agi for 24 total, which is 240 points. When Meta gem requirements are thrown into the mix, I figure out which combination of sockets gives me the best over-all bonuses (as you can see I picked my belt, the helm/bracer have crit only because the socket bonuses make it worthwhile).

If you are under 136 hit rating, sockets are a great place to make up the difference since it is the cheapest and most effective stat for boosting DPS.

If this is the case, I'm a terrible hunter. I generally average about 420-450 DPS in a 5-man. Is this about right? Or do I need to see what I can do on Dr. Boom?

Is that over the entire instance or just on a boss?
Dr. Boom isn't really a good indicator for BM hunters on your total DPS output because your can't use pets. I recommend using the Blasted Lands mobs. It will be higher then what you would actually do but it still gives a somewhat ok representation.

Also, if you need macro help

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast [target=pet, dead]; [pet] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=2/target/combat Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Is what I use, I put it onto my mouse scroll and spam it that way. Supposedly, the Kill Command delays the Auto Attack but I generally don't notice it that much in terms of hurting my DPS.

Yes, that's a full run, I'll go try a BL mob and see what I can do, and yeah it's in a 5-man, I haven't quite gotten to raiding and I'm not putting much time into the character yet, I'm currently powerleveling a new hunter on a pvp server where I'll probably spend more time. But yeah, that's with almost no real buffs up, and I never slack in instances, I don't blow my cooldowns EVERY time they're up, but I use them a lot, and always on bosses.

Thanks for the macro, I'll have to give that a try, also I'm going to pick up a scorpid soon.

Also, any tips on a meter I should use? I'm using SW Stats as is atm.

Edit: Ok, DPS test run, and until I ran OOM, I was putting out about 850 on a level 57 Servant of Razelikh, with AotH, Hunter's Mark, and no other buffs, aside from procs. Scorpid Poison is ticking for 381, after trinket/BM stack.

I hear good things about SW Stats but I still use DamageMeter. I recommend using CombatStats because it lets you know how you are doing now and it keeps a track record over as long as you want of things like hits and misses and such.

For your trinkets, be careful where you use them because they could take away one of your shots and that would be like taking from Peter to feed Paul (Booya, I used it).

Latsly, scorpids getting nurfed pretty bad.

So when is the best time to use a trinket? Also, scorpids will get nerfed, but until they do, may as well use them. In my dps test, I know I nuked a couple auto shots with SS, mostly cause of random latency stuffs.

Edit: Also, how can I find out what the best gear to go for is? I've been going for gear with Crit/AP mostly, but is that right? Is my leather gear good, or am I just stupid?

Hello there Can you please show the source of what are you saying? Thx

That is so sad Instead of making more pets scaling with our gear.. they destroy our best raid pet.

I'd be careful with using set numbers like that.

Firstly, I'm pretty certain you undervalue AP and overvalue Crit, in relation to Agil. Secondly, as you get more and more of a stat, it becomes less beneficial to you. So balance is important.

Something I am fairly confident about is that:
-if you're BM (with kings) 1 Agil > 2 AP > 1 Crit
-if you're BM(without kings) 2AP > 1 Agil > 1 Crit
-if you're SV, 1 Agil > all, at any point.

Why is this?

I'm not totally convinced on this, but maybe i am missing something really simple, please expand.

Omitting talents like Lightning reflexes and Master marksman, why do stats become less beneficial with increased quantity?

Edit: Is there some kind of coefficient i should know about?

Nope, just that adding 10 AP is a 1% increase if you have 1000, and a 0.5% increase if you have 2000. So if you have lots of AP and low crit, you'll get more bang for your buck from adding more crit than adding more AP

Personally, the best trinkets are probably ones with procs ie Hourglass of the Unraveler but if you are using an activated trinket, the best times to use it are either when you have to move to a new spot or right after you FD, then its not so much a problem.

There is nothing wrong with wearing leather but the biggest thing you can probably do is get rid of those damn greens.

Its a good idea to make a macro to activate both Bloodlust Brooch and Bestial Wrath. They are both on a 2 min cooldown, and you will get more bang for your buck if you use the trinket then.

(Thats if you are BM and have this trinket!)