Exbox

Well, I'm waiting for my chest still for that 4/5, BUT, looking at the new sunwell gear...

If my haste was that high I'd probably put a modified MM spec in then. It'd be nice..
Something like..
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
It just allows for SUCH a flexible spec - that and a lil bit of raid utility with imp HM.

Without the 6 points in Barrage you dont have to dump as many points in the tree which allows for some extra pet dps, yusyus?

 

Glaurong

I think if you can stack enough haste to get down to 1:1 I'd go with this build for max DPS.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

However you end up spending a ton of item budget on a stat that doesn't scale your pet directly and doesn't have much synergy with your talents. A build like that, might be competitive with a BM hunter.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

Destrali

Hello everyone, I'm a MM hunter from ages past. In the past I geared myself a particular way placing more emphasis on AP over Crit, especially when the Agi - RAP went from 1:2 to 1:1. As I look around at other various hunters now I see that a lot of them still continue to Agi stack much like the old days. I also run a reasonable amount of ArP, I currently only run just under 400 ArP due to just recently joining a BT/Hyjal guild. My question is what are your views on raw AP vs Agi and what place does ArP have for Hunters?

In the past for me I placed greater value on AP > Crit to get more consistant big hits over an extended period of time while continuing to gear myself with a decent amount of Int to have a considerable size mana pool for a Hunter. Is this still a valid way to go at this point in time.

This may be off and most likely subject to disagreement but I have come to a sort of rough summarization of the 3 specs.

BM = Haste Spec
Surv = Crit Spec
MM = AP Spec

BM stacks haste to create slim tight shot rotations that are highly mana efficient
Surv stacks Agi/Crit with Agi being the stat of choice due to EW, to include high mana efficiency based on crits
MM appears to be the spec where more consistant larger hits are used to offset the slower speed in comparison with BM and the lower crit rate when compared to Surv.

Is this the actual reality of the Specs or am I jes imagining this and slightly off base on the stat itemization for the MM Spec?

 

Howitzer

The more armor pen you can stack the better off you are, given that most bosses have 7700 armor...

Armor / Armor After Executioner / DPS gain in % / DPS Gain in % Compaired to previous 1000 armor
10000 / 9160 / 2,166 / 0,1880
9000 / 8160 / 2,382 / 0,2161
8000 / 7160 / 2,632 / 0,2501
7000 / 6160 / 2,924 / 0,2917
6000 / 5160 / 3,267 / 0,3431
5000 / 4160 / 3,674 / 0,4072
4000 / 3160 / 4,163 / 0,4885
3000 / 2160 / 4,756 / 0,5928
2000 / 1160 / 5,485 / 0,7291
1000 / 160 / 6,395 / 0,9107
0 / -840 / 7,553 / 1,158

(taken from EJ Forums thread http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17078-r...ry_numbers/p5/ )

The thread discusses the executioner enchant, but you can see the principles of how armor penetration works and apply the same theory to passive armor pen. Through gear you can get around 800-1000 armor pen if you're really going for it, with the only real sacrifice being some +hit. The other hunter pieces of gear you should look for with armor pen are:

Madness of the Betrayer
2x Dagger of Bad Mojo
Signet of Primal Wrath
T6 Shoulders and Gloves
Dory's Embrace
Choker of Serrated Blades

Your summation of the specs is basically correct.

 

Admeta

Good guide Howitzer, one small thing I noticed. You recommend using Fel Mana potions when you are down 3200 mana, not when your dry... this is good advice although I would recommend using one earlier then when your down 3200, say at maybe 2000 to 2500 depending on your rate of consumption. Since the Fel mana potions are not an instant 3200 mana, but returns mana over time you would be able to start up your cool down a little sooner and will use a portion of that mana up before the Fel mana potion fully ticks its full 3200 mana back to you.

 

Howitzer

With the recent changes to viper and the better your guild gets on learning content the less you're going to have to blow fel mana and just use Super Mana potions in its place. At least in my experience. I haven't had mana issues at all especially if you have the luxury of always having a shadow priest or a resto shaman in your group.

 

Admeta

I wish I could have a Shadow Priest all the time, but as you know Hunters don't get much respect and are often just thrown where-ever as an after thought. Even though I, as many BM Hunters, output some of the highest DPS in the raid (even with a less then ideal group setup). I don't like to ever go into Viper if I can help it. As you have pointed out yourself, it gimps DPS a fair amount.

Honestly, I have been just using Super mana potions more lately, I have gotten a little weary of farming mats to make Fel mana potions... and I also have had the same experiance as you in that Super Mana potions are sufficent enough for our Hyjal/BT clears, we are getting pretty fast and efficent at clearing the place now without having to Flask and pot at every turn.

 

Kope

Hey all.

I'm actually a survival hunter. I'm coming here to ask help for one of the MM hunters in my guild. I want to help her get the most out of her character in regards to DPS.

Our guild is a casual raiding guild (2 nights a week) and we're up to Vashj/Kael (currently working on Vashj).

Here is her WWS from our last raid: WWS Loading...

Here is her armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rfist&n=Bijiki

She is an awesome person, one of the best I've known. She doesn't have the best reaction time and I think a good DPS macro would do best for her. She's currently using a macro that the hunter class lead (who is BM) gave her which is why I'm coming here asking for help.

Any suggestions? Specific macros? Gear or talent suggestions? All are most appreciated.

 

Destrali

Last night I ran with a new macro. Its the new /castsequence macro with some alterations I feel have helped it to a reasonable degree.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=2 !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

I use this macro and one other during raids. The only difference between this macro and the other is that I omit Multi-Shot from the /castrandom so Im not smacking CC'd mobs or mobs that are being multi-tanked. Thus keeping my threat to various mobs who arent gettin a whole lot of direct attention paid to them rather limited and I dont have to deal with some snarling thing runnin at me.

I personally havent been able to get the 3:2 macro to function with adding in KC and /castrandom but that might be something thats my fault. If someone has a working tested version of the 3:2 macro with KC and /castrandom added in thatd be great becuased id like to test it with my toon's gear and my play style.

 

Exbox

Take the castrandom out and you should be able to achieve an MM 3:2

 

Wisechin

Cheeky Howitzer and the rest of the hunter community. ..

I have been a 7-45-9 MM hunter since I started raiding Kara last April all the way through to Mother Shahraz in BT where my guild has progressed to. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightning's%20Blade&n=Wisechin

I find that there are some nights that I really perform well and top out our charts and others where I can’t seem to get it going (still pulling top 5 spots on most nights, and fights). On average I am an 1100-1500 DPS hunter depending on group buffs and whatnot.

My raid leader does not build around me or the other hunters, but around the 4-5 warlocks and 3-4 mages that we raid with. I have begged for him to make sure that if a Feral Druid is in the raid that he place me with him, but the melee group seems to prefer our BM hunter in their group, leaving me out. The Druid makes a huge difference for my DPS output.

Mana has been largely on me to deal with and I find that with chain potting fel mana pots from about 8k mana down on cooldown I can go about 6-8 minutes before switching to viper at around 20% mana and riding the fight out from there.

My raid leader requires flasks otherwise I would generally dual elixir to use Mageblood, but otherwise I buff myself to the maximum at all times in a raid including using timeless ammo the whole time. Agility food and Mana Oil are always running, and for every raid I have 50 mana pots with me including many Fel Mana pots.

I am certainly not UBER-GEARED but I have my fair share of T6 equivalent epics, with the obvious hole at ranged weapon slot since I cannot get one to drop for me. We are currently taking a break from killing Arch, so I will either get a Legion Killer, or just stick it out for either of the T6 Bows.

I have poured over Cheeky’s sheet so many times, virtually re-speccing to BM, against what I want to do, just to get the most out of my DPS, but I cannot seem to pull the trigger and do the respec.

I use a 1:1.5 cast sequence macro that seems to work pretty well for me as long as I am not running around too much, but running and hunters are not a good combo anyway. I get a pretty good result seeing roughly even Auto Shots and Steady Shots at the end of the raid. Every once in a while the Macro seems to jam up, but I tested pretty extensively shooting Dr. Boom , and the Macro beat me by a fair bit on average, and certainly showed me that I was ignoring my Steady Shots in favor of my Multi/Arcanes.

I have a Brand new Gaming machine and average about 50-60 FPS with sub 200ms ping to the server, so I can kind of eliminate that from potential DPS dumps.

So my question is based on my gear, and what you have heard from me do you think I would benefit from the respec? I can’t see a DPS upgrade from re-speccing on Cheeky’s sheet. In fact I saw about a 10-20 DPS downgrade by moving to a 41-20 cookie cutter spec, which confused me.

Any advice would be appreciated, my goal is to be the absolute best MM hunter that I can, and if at the end of the day BM is that much superior, to to be the best BM hunter I can be.

 

Kehoe

This wasn't directed at me (obviously, who the hell am I?), but I recently respeced to BM after being MM since servers opened. After about 3 weeks of playing in this spec, I cannot say enough good things about it, and you will likely to see a dps increase on a majority of fights.

I am back into my MM PVE spec, but the mana efficiency, high dps low pressure shot rotation, and group buff all make it very tempting to continue with (assuming the things in Sunwell I have heard about are tweaked a bit). I would recommend to give it a try, and stick with it for a few raids. Also, probably the biggest reason why Cheeky's spreadsheet shows a decrease in DPS is weapon speed. If you are able to and are serious about BM as a spec, get a few haste pieces such as [Bindings of Lightning Reflexes], [Valestalker Girdle], [Band of Devastation]. The bindings alone made my spreadsheet dps jump by 15 DPS.

You did mention you use a macro for MM, and I believe the similar BM macro will be a bit more forgiving of running around as well. I am not an expert in this though, I prefer to manually weave my shots (for BM, I was using a KC/SS combo macro).

I guess what I am saying is give it a try for a bit, and if you like it, invest some money into the spec. I shunned the spec for a long time, and was surprised that the fights I thought would be miserable as BM were managable, and some fights like Shahraz I did significantly more damage. I definately get the feeling from your post that you will get the same kick out of the perks of BM that I did.

 

Ivaldi

I recently spec'd MM, to try it out for PvP. I loved it for BGs, simply because I could take on 3 mobs at once (pet on healer, trap one, scatter another, silence and burn healer). I was NOT so fond of it for PvE. The shot weaving involved is far more complex, to me, and requires lower latency and more concentration. I also lot DPS as a MM. Now this is my personal experience, but I think she should go BM, and use either a simple 1:1 or 1:1.5.

At the same time, it concerns me she's a MM using a BM shot rotation, however I could be mistaken.

 

Wisechin

It was directed at the hunter community and you are a hunter

K, so I was looking over your gear which is mostly what I have planned out to pick up, except the cloak of Kael, cause I doubt I will kill him again and Tsunami never ever dropped for us.

Question about bracers? You are using the ones off Rage, have you decided not to use the ones of Supremus, or what? I debated long and hard about that, currently I am using the ones from Supremus cause my crit was a little low.

The bottom line with my spec, is that I know if I change to BM I am going to like the DPS upgrade so much, that I will never go back to MM which is by far my play style. So basically every time I have an off night and one of our BM hunters beats me, I think about it again, and every time I beat them, I think that I can keep my spec. It's silly the way the mind works.

Thanks for the help.

 

Kaladian

I love MM spec because i played it for so long pre BC but as we got thru Kara i specced BM and never looked back. We have everything on farm so i switched to SV just for giggles a few weeks and i also raid some as MM so i have T6 level experience raiding all specs. For me DPS wise BM>MM>SV or X> X-200 > X-300-350 DPS wise. For reference the week before i changed to SV on Rage i got 1679 dps as BM and just under 1300 the last 2 weeks as AV(1278/1268). Overall hunter DPS without pets all 3 specs are very close DPS alot closer then players think but the BM hunter is sooo much better then MMor SV pets like in the 300 DPS range. I have seem my ravager come close to 600 dps on some fight with the proper groups. As MM or SV my aggro is more of an issue without Salv.

The main thing is how easy it is to DPS as a BM hunter. 3:2 macro, T6 4 piece bonus, and the BT trinket jsut works so well together. Hit my macro button and keep my pet alive that is it.

 

Kehoe

I took the bracers because they were the first items that came available to me to be honest. I may grab the Supremus bracers the time they drop and no one needs them.

From my personal experience, I saw DPS increase but not significantly higher than a MM spec (some fights I top now, others like Council, Archimonde, Illidan it is up to luck with what happens around my pet). The biggest difference for me was the ability to be survive outside of a shadow priest group and still do high dps over a long fight. It is also nice knowing if I get thrown in with casters, I am giving a 3% damage buff rather than AP.

I understand where you are coming from, but the playstyle for BM isn't that much different than MM, you just have a bit more love for your pet and think from a melee perspective.

 

Crackseed

I personally found that if you're like 150+ on latency [being in Hawaii with my server located on east coast I run at like 200-250] I cannot effectively react to Imp Hawk. I've been testing it for awhile, but I think it's hurting my DPS when it procs and I can't shift into the 1:1 with latency.

Going to try a new spec w/o it - I'm curious on how Combat XP translates too, as while I'd say Focused Fire is worth more DPS, there's alot of fights that can just break your pet in a few seconds flat and w/o imp rez, too much time is lost on a rez and Combat XP is always in effect regardless of if my pet is alive or not.

What's irking me is a KC macro I've got built into my arcane shot/multi-shot. I've played Hunter long enough I can time my shots by the sound of the bow, but for some reason even when GCD is down and I smack the macro, KC seems to fire before my shots, sometimes delaying the actual shot. The macro HAS KC behind the shot itself in the ordering, but I'm starting to wonder if KC just goes first regardless of it's place in the macro. I'm personally a fan of hand-weaving and I do that for everything but KC just due to nearly running out of efficient binds.

Has anyone else noticed that behavior with a KC macro? I stripped the KC/Steady macro completely due to the annoying lock-up problem that exists. It's just making me wonder if KC is worth using at all for an MM spec either by manual timing or macro'd if it's taking precedence over my shots even with GCD cooled [again, could be my latency :\]

 

Chulak

Since nobody else has done a review of Bijiki's gear and WWS I'll take the time to and hope you come back again to check the thread. I raided as MM up through getting Void Reaver on farm, so I ran as MM with a gear level pretty equivalent to what she's currently running. I was doing significantly more DPS than what I see in the WWS, and I see the following as contributing factors:

--Her shot rotation is broken. It looks like she's using the BM 2:3 macro based on WWS, getting basically all her damage from steady and auto. The BM shot rotation works for BM because of the 20% static haste from SS, and is a disaster for MM. My ideal shot rotation as MM was:

Auto
Steady
Arcane
Auto
Steady
Multi
Auto
Steady
Arcane
Auto
Steady
/Repeat

This is technically a 1:1.75 rotation, as it squeezes either multi or arcane in after steady on 3/4 of the cycles. She should go out to Dr. Boom and practice until it becomes second nature. I've seen attempts to macro that rotation, but I have never personally run with anyone who macroed it and got results equivalent to hand timing. It requires a good auto shot castbar (which all of us should have) and some cooldown watching, but it's the best way to put out the max DPS in my opinion.

Regarding gear, I see way too many +crit and +ap gems, when there should be a lot more +agility. A +8 Agil gem actually gives the same amount of AP as the +4crit/+8 AP and slightly more crit, plus it scales with Kings, making it a much more effective gem (especially raid buffed). Her crit looks low to me, but I think that's partially due to her focus on AP gems instead of Agility. Crit scales better than AP for MM, so stacking it is more beneficial in the long haul.

Nothing outright horrible about the spec...it's a fairly standard MM raid spec. I personally had better luck with a MM/SV hybrid, which was: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Silencing shot is nearly worthless in 25 man content due to the lack of an interrupt, and I was able to pick up 2 full points of crit at the expense of a little AP. I have always stayed away from Imp. AotH as MM, as the optimal shot rotation is so tight that the haste proc tends to be more likely to cost DPS than increase it due to clipped shots and cooldowns. In addition, speccing surefooted would allow her to rotate out some of the +hit gear in favor of something with better DPS stats.

 

Kope

Awesome info here, thank you VERY much for the reply! I forwarded the message to her, I"ll start looking at Cheeky's dps spreadsheet for her and talk with her about maximizing her gems (she uses a mac and the spreadsheet is not mac friendly).

Again, thank you very much for taking the time and laying out the info like this.

 

Destrali

**To Kope:
I got a chance to look over her gear and her spec from Warcrafter.net which appears to of last been updated 7 days ago. Based on what I saw there, for her spec I'd recommend moving the 2 pts from Thick Hide to Humanoid Slaying. Outside of that the rest of her spec is justifiably valid and workable.

As for her individual stats, MM does put a little bit more focus on a large amount of AP and not Crit or Haste, that being said her Crit is at a decent level, however on the flipside her AP needs to be increased a fair amount. Like the poster above me I do suggest replacing as many of the gems with +8 agi red gems, the agi/stam purple gems, and for yellow slots to continue using the Wicked Noble Topaz to fill in some crit while maintaining some AP.

As for her gear, I'd recommend getting a Dark Reavers cloak from Shade of Aran, or a Dory's Embrace based on your progression those are they 2 upgrades she should be looking for there. I would also recommend doing some Arena to get her a Season 3 Hunter axe, it is arguable the best 2h weapon available to hunters until BT. Enchant on her gloves should be replaced with a +15 agi enchant.

Outside of that the setup she is running has the potential to be very competitive. A couple posts up I have posted the MM macro I use, this functions very well for me in BT/Hyjal. I raid as MM, with a BM and Surv hunter, both of which out gear me and I perform reasonably well given gear differences. Feel free to look me up on the Armory or Warcrafter.net. I'm currently in the process of redoing a few things in my own gear as we speak to optimize myself, much of which are things I've stated in this very post. But please, feel free to use my Armory as a sort of benchmark or reference point for her as I'm currently only geared with Kara/ZA/SSC/TK gear with a neck from BT/Hyjal nothing more.

If you have any questions feel free to PM me.

 

alienangel

I had a pretty similar MM spec to yours, and held off respeccing BM for a long while because, somewhat like you, the spreadsheets didn't predict all that large a DPS gain - it claimed I would get 1300ish as MM, 1500ish as BM. I was much worse geared than you at the time though (basically t4 leather for t5 equivalent stats).

Eventually however I had to face the fact that I was rarely reaching the predicted MM dps, in spite of putting all my concentration into doing every shot at just the right time. So I tried respeccing, and found it massively simpler to reach/approximate/exceed the predicted DPS for BM. As a plus I also had a group buff that wasn't wasted, wasn't as shadowpriest dependent, and now had time to watch for things like doomfires and naj'entus spines.

On the downside, it's really boring just using a macro for DPS now, and I don't have the FPS to do fully manual rots as BM

 

Thundar

I'm a MM now signs i hit level 70 and still love it.
Our guild has just begon in TK and SSC, butt what i see every raid that one time im on top off the dps meter and then next time all the BM hunter are out dps ing me...
On a bossfight like Hydros im on a avarage dps of 750 - 850 without pet butt i really like to increase that amount...

Can get 8 hitrating to get it capped and am working on the pvp arena Axe...
I have no problem keeping mana up in fights, butt what can i do gearwyse to increase my dps even more.
You fellow MM hunters see any items in it you would chance as soon as possible....

:S ok i forgot my armory link here it is:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Cheers and Thnx already

 

Destrali

First off your about 30 Hit Rating off of the cap. Before you concern yourself with other stats you should reach a minimum of 140 HR. All the stats in the world amount to crap if you cant hit the target. Another thing I would change is to swap out your AP gems and enchants for Agi based gems/chants. Reason being that these scale very nicely with raid buffs and provide a nice balance of stats (IE AP, Crit, and Dodge/Armor for when you screw up an pull aggro assuming you dont wipe the raid). Outside of the passive haste you gain from the quiver/ammo pouch, haste for a MM hunter is not really a good thing due to MM having to rely on ArS and MS to make up for lack of steadys (vs BM) and lack of crits (vs Surv) also while maintaining a decently sized amount of AP.

As far as talents go I would recommend moving 2 pts only, being Monster slaying points being moved to Go for the Throat. Making sufficient use of your pet even as a MM hunter can lead to a significant amount of success. GFTT allows you to keep your pet full of focus to perform its focus dump abilities and provide a substantial amount of DPS itself.

 

Kettric

Hey,

I'd like to start by thanking Howitzer and everyone for a very informative and useful thread. It's helped me resolve some of my DPS issues, as well as calling my attention to a couple of possibilities that I hadn't even considered. I may have some questions for everyone later, but I want to research the other threads fully before I post, so as not to make a n00b of myself by asking a question that has been answered many times elsewhere.

That said, I'm interested in taking a look at Howitzer's vid mentioned in the OP, but since Stage6 is now defunct, I can't seem to find it. Veoh (the service that is replacing Stage6) doesn't have it, and even the Fusion guild site references the Stage6 site. Can anybody point me in the right direction?