a) Pet threat won't be an issue unless they do a very substaintial fraction of our dps - into the 70% range. That won't happen (I don't think it's even that high in beta with a cat). If they are lower, other classes would be pulling aggro first.
b) Blessing of salvation doesn't exist anymore, all tanks just produce that much more threat.
c) 2k dps isn't a big number anymore (not that I expect it to remain where it is).
d) Yeah, I doubt bm hunters will be needing to feign.
Thanks for clarification, totally missed BoS part, should really lurk more other classes infos .
I was concerned about threat since tanks nowadays pull about 1100 - 1300 tps in a standard encounter, and they rely on other players aggro dumps / dps pauses / passive threat reduction to hold aggro.
As i'm expecting dps to pretty much double in the expansion 2k tps -melee- seems high considering 1300 tps is end game now and would not probably be alreadly doubled at naxx level.
Anyway nice to see it is not a problem, to me it exploits a bit the fun of playing the hunter class and one of its primary advantages over other dps classes, but i guess it's the price to have a real pet for once.
I'm still looking to carry on as a Beast Master Hunter into Wrath of the Lich King, how do other people feel about this talent tree in terms of PvE DPS. At base glance, so many talents seem worthwhile. For me, this seems to be about the best build available: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and pet talents worked around a Devilsaur(stacking DPS buff): Pet Calculator - Wowhead
I've read reports about Aspect Mastery being pointless, but to me whren it concerns Aspect of the Hawk Rank10;
The hunter takes on the aspects of a hawk, increasing ranged attack power by 300. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
The extra 30% brings to total to 390, close to 1/4 more AP from this single spell and quite possible equal to one of the new elixirs.
The only concern in what seems to be the new cookie cutter BM build is how deep the tree has to go and not allowed too much into other talent specs, such as Marksman or Survival. Marksman the main concern being un-able to get 3/3 Careful Aim, which seems to be free attack power and quite worthy as I can see Intellect pools growing considerably in WotLK. Although I may be seeing this as a talent that can be considered 'just a bonus'. As for Survival, the new improved tracking talent seems to be nice, although just a filler, such as is Murder for rogues.
Any comments and feedback from those in Beta playing BM, or suggestions on talents?
Any comments and feedback from those in Beta playing BM, or suggestions on talents?
I agree that Aspect Mastery looks good value for a single point.
Assuming Blizzard are going to get all pets to do comparable DPS, it might be worth foregoing the 51-point Beast Mastery talent. Something like this (50/21/0) will allow you to get most of the Beast Mastery talents and spec into MM for Readiness (it's where Scatter Shot is now).
I've selected no mana regen talents so it does rely on your raid providing Replenishment.
Xien, as I understand it Careful Aim is worth more per point than Rapid Killing. Also, we don't yet know how Aimed Shot will work out - it might be worth dropping a point into this instead of your last one in Rapid Killing. Apart from that I concur with you that this seems to be the definitive 3.0 BM spec.
Edit: also, I wouldn't say that Aspect Mastery is useless. It certainly looks good for a single point, however bear in mind that like Hemorrhage, it only adds a fixed amount of damage and doesn't scale with gear or buffs.
Ok, I was testing whether client latency had some sort of affect on auto-cast abilities like Claw. To my suprise, I am getting ~1.25s Claws. At first I though that maybe Longevity was reducing the cooldown somehow, but I retested it with no "haste" talents nor Longevity and I'm still getting~1.25s Claws. My testing was shooting a mob (with 2/2 BD and 2/2 GttT so pet isn't focus starved) and just had Claw on auto-cast. Then I opened the combat log in Excel and filtered on Claw, checked the time difference between one claw and around the 30th claw later and see how long it took on average per cast.
Can anyone else confirm this?
Just further on this, Reedu of Vis Major posted a link to the combatlog of a Malygos raid in a feedpack post. Looking at the pet Reptar (Raptor by the looks of things, since it also cast Savage Rend) shows similar results for Claw. Here are some snippets*:
9/29 19:51:20.625
Claw
457
9/29 19:51:21.859
Claw
438
9/29 19:51:25.187
Claw
531
9/29 19:51:26.234
Claw
543
9/29 19:51:29.453
Claw
1099
9/29 19:51:30.625
Claw
493
9/29 19:51:31.843
Claw
498
9/29 19:51:37.062
Claw
708
9/29 19:51:38.234
Claw
639
9/29 19:51:39.484
Claw
288
9/29 19:51:40.656
Claw
609
9/29 19:51:41.875
Claw
319
9/29 19:51:43.125
Claw
295
9/29 19:57:52.390
Claw
615
9/29 19:57:53.593
Claw
635
9/29 19:58:55.781
Claw
513
9/29 19:58:57.015
Claw
451
9/29 19:58:58.203
Claw
414
9/29 19:58:59.406
Claw
878
9/29 20:06:42.062
Claw
821
9/29 20:06:43.250
Claw
418
9/29 20:06:44.453
Claw
481
9/29 20:06:45.703
Claw
462
9/29 20:06:46.875
Claw
951
When I did my testing in my previous post I used a UI hook to print out the GCD and Claw showed 1.5s so it looks like auto-casting Claw somehow casts it quicker. If this is indeed a bug, it could help to "nerf" pets without forcing Blizzard to change any scaling or multipliers too harshly.
Thoughts?
* Picked a random selection of the log and imported into Excel then filtered on Claw.
Originally Posted by Skillstep
Why is it that other classes feel whole and simple and fluid yet hunter feels like directing a symphony as a paraplegic midget with tourettes?
Will the Water Elemental get more survivability? More resist? More +hit? More scaling?
All pets should inherit the hit of the master now.
Quoted from a Mage post, will this be the same for the Hunter and Warlock class, and reference to my earlier post having pet with full hit rating will also mean two more free talents.
Edit: also, I wouldn't say that Aspect Mastery is useless. It certainly looks good for a single point, however bear in mind that like Hemorrhage, it only adds a fixed amount of damage and doesn't scale with gear or buffs.
The Hawk benefit doesn't scale with gear or buffs, but the Viper portion does.
I agree that Aspect Mastery looks good value for a single point.
Assuming Blizzard are going to get all pets to do comparable DPS, it might be worth foregoing the 51-point Beast Mastery talent. Something like this (50/21/0) will allow you to get most of the Beast Mastery talents and spec into MM for Readiness (it's where Scatter Shot is now).
I've selected no mana regen talents so it does rely on your raid providing Replenishment.
I was thinking about using a similar build, however I still put 2 points into Mend Pet for the reduced mana cost as well as the 50% chance per tick to cleanse. Also, why Imp. Hunter's mark? You should get much more of a damage return from getting Improved Stings because Hunter's Mark no longer gives the scaling attack power as you deal damage to it like it does on Live. All that talent does now is give you an extra 90 AP. While 90 AP is nice, it doesn't scale nearly as well as Improved Stings does.
I was thinking about using a similar build, however I still put 2 points into Mend Pet for the reduced mana cost as well as the 50% chance per tick to cleanse. Also, why Imp. Hunter's mark? You should get much more of a damage return from getting Improved Stings because Hunter's Mark no longer gives the scaling attack power as you deal damage to it like it does on Live. All that talent does now is give you an extra 90 AP. While 90 AP is nice, it doesn't scale nearly as well as Improved Stings does.
2/2 Animal Handler is a waste of points for a PVE build, as pets now get 100% of the hunter's hit, so the pet is hit capped when the hunter is. I suggest 2/2 Spirit Bond (the 10% healing received is certainly nice), or 1/2 Spirit Bond and 1/2 Invigoration.
The pet is not hit capped when the hunter is unless you have a nice 12% worth of hit rating. Animal Hander is absolutely not a waste.
I thought pets were considered to be warriors for the purpose of calculating hit on melee swings? Where does this figure of 12% instead of 9% come from?
2/2 animal handler, most pets have around a 15% chance to miss from what I've seen in all my WWS reports on mobs 3 levels above them. It's hard to tell what is dodged of course since pets have no source of expertise at the moment. They certainly do not appear to have 9% hit, though I have 151 hit and still managed to miss a few times according to that log.
I'm not great at reading WWS reports (I'm no raider anymore, so I never got into the habit), however as I read your WWS report I think you have misread it:
F.ex., lets take white damage (swings) and Kill Command, if you break them down it says:
The total miss is obviously a combination of misses, parries and dodges. Parries and Dodges are not affected by +hit to my knowledge, so that leaves only the miss chance.
For Kill Command you have reported a miss chance of 6.4% and 4.1% for swings. I don't know why they differ so much, but if you have animal handler a 9% miss chance against lvl 63 boss seems like it could be possible, and that the different miss chances are just a result of random deviations.
I expect this will be a moot point (the worth of Animal Handler in relation to pet hit) once they get around to revamping the talent. GC (or maybe it was Koraa) already said they would be making changes to it since pets get hit from the hunter now. That's why Grace of the Mantis was changed, and it's probably just a matter of them thinking up something new for Animal Handler.
Pets have a 9% chance to miss a target of +3 levels, just like a non-dual wielding player. What you are seeing in your WWS reports is the combined number of all avoided attacks (miss, dodge, parry), which WWS for some reason calls "Missed %".
Extensive tests on the beta realm show that a pet will never miss if the hunter is hit capped (9%), though dodges and parries still occur, of course.
If Animal Handler was changed to give pets Expertise or just lowering the chance that the pet's attacks are dodged (a change I suggested through the ingame feedback tool), it would be a solid investement of 2 talent points again.
Thanks for pointing that out, fixed a long lasting misconception on my part. It does lead me to expect they'll possibly replace that +hit portion of Animal Handler as you have suggested with some sort of plus to expertise. Though with the powerful scaling of BM right now and the addition of the master's +hit they may not want to as a form of keeping their dps from becoming too powerful.
Last edited by Doncabesa : 09/30/08 at 10:16 AM.
Reason: clarity
Also, why Imp. Hunter's mark? You should get much more of a damage return from getting Improved Stings because Hunter's Mark no longer gives the scaling attack power as you deal damage to it like it does on Live. All that talent does now is give you an extra 90 AP.
I had forgotten about the change to Hunter's Mark.
Survival hunters would keep Serpent Sting up on the target (see Noxious Stings) so I could see them taking Improved Stings.
I need to do the math and see whether taking 3/3 Improved Stings with Glyph of Steady Shot and using Serpent Sting in my rotation will be better damage-wise than spamming Steady Shot.
With multiple non-Surv hunters in a raid I'd be inclined to set up a Serpent Sting rotation (assuming we all have the glyph).
Someone in the EU hunter forums mentions what I find to be a legit issue.
I'm a past raider turned casual pvp'er so I tend to see things from those perspectives, forgetting about casual pve 5-mans/heroics. But as the guy/gal mentions in his post: several classes have received buffs to their cc making it more reliable: Shamans with hex, druids with entangling roots, ret pally's with 1 min repentance with 1 min cd, and rogues a 1 min sap.
If this is correctly represented, is it not reasonable to ask that our traps duration match their CD (adapted either way)?
I know in TBC that CC have been important and a definitive + factor for being brought to heroics. What are peoples thoughts?
By reasoning, Hunters have always been a viable CC class when it comes to five mans and heroics, its just that other classes seem much better at the role than we do. We've been able to chain trap for upto 60 seconds with not too much effort by a pre combat trap, followed be a freshed trap but then we have problems.
Mages on the other hand have a mobile and active CC that can be refreshed ad-infinitum for PvE as opposed to a trap being imobile and on cooldown. Hopefully, Frost Arrow could change this, although it seems to be a little bit of an edited Camoflage if pre-combat trapping was anything to go by. This is however becomes a little more usless in my opinion with the distracting shot changes that will 100% pull a mob towards you and your trap rather than just a "threat boost". I've not done too much extensive research on Frost Arrow, but I'm under the impression the arming time still hasn't been removed.
Perhaps a 'Chilling Arrow' would be more suitable to 5 mans and heroics. "2 Second Cast time, instantly chills a target to the bone, rendering it unable to move for 30 seconds, 20 second cooldown." Leaving this spell as more of a root/snare effect than complete disable. Thus a capable CC for instancing providing the players can move away from a cleave range. A form of viable CC for arena, possible sharing same DR as Entangling Roots and Cyclone to prevent further pillar abuse.
I was assuming that Animal Handler was needed for pets to no longer miss. If animal handler is unnecessary then I will probably go for 2/2 Spirit Bond for the +10% healing, and I guess the terrible regen. I would love to see it get -% dodge or better yet, some expertise. We'll see though.
Also, is it 100% certain that if you have the Serpent Sting glyph that you personally don't need to have the sting up yourself to get the extra 10% damage? If so, I may need to reevaluate that talent.
In regard to the high pet DPS that Mikari is reporting - it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. Full raid buffs ought to benefit the personal DPS of a Marks or Survival hunter a lot more than they benefit a BM hunter just because you can make use of more of the haste available.
I suppose this depends on how easy it will be to have your steady shot hasted out just from gear alone, and more significantly whether steady shot's GCD is ever changed to allow reduction from haste. Right now though, just messing around on the PTR, I'm seeing cast time of 1.4 on steady without any active haste effects as BM, versus a 1.7 cast as Marks/Survival.
Doing a PUG ZA on the PTR as Marks, with windfury down most of the run, and several bloodlusts, not to mention my own rapid fire and proccing haste effects, it became clear to me that eventually we will probably be firing three auto shots for every steady if things are left as they are now.
Permitting haste to effect our GCD would change everything, of course.
Seems odd to me that you'd skip Cobra Strikes and Invigoration. As a Beast Mastery Hunter, I'm sure those talents would provide better returns than things like Improved Stings and Rapid Killing.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is what I've been using. Rapid Fire in general now just doesn't seem that impressive, so I don't see the point in investing 2 points in lowering the cooldown when it serves no other purpose other than speeding up your Auto-Shots by 40% for 15 seconds (when Auto-Shots don't even benefit from Mortal Shots anymore). In a Marksmanship build with Readiness and Rapid Recuperation, sure, but I couldn't see spending the points there otherwise.
Invigoration keeps you out of Viper that much longer, which is always a plus, and Cobra Strikes increases your pet's DPS while synergizing well with Invigoration.
Wondering if any beta / ptr testing has been done on whether the viper portion of Aspect Mastery and The Viper Aspect Glyph stacks? (both 10% possibly bringing the damage dealt during viper from 50 to 70%)
If so these two will go a long way to mitigating the lesser damage we do during the 10-20 seconds we're in Viper. I don't even need napkin math to tell me If they do then it will be a net dps gain even on short fights and invaluable on the long ones..
Heck it might even make killing one or two mobs during viper regen while farming livable.
Just further on this, Reedu of Vis Major posted a link to the combatlog of a Malygos raid in a feedpack post. Looking at the pet Reptar (Raptor by the looks of things, since it also cast Savage Rend) shows similar results for Claw. Here are some snippets*:
When I did my testing in my previous post I used a UI hook to print out the GCD and Claw showed 1.5s so it looks like auto-casting Claw somehow casts it quicker. If this is indeed a bug, it could help to "nerf" pets without forcing Blizzard to change any scaling or multipliers too harshly.
Thoughts?
[/size]
Hmm; possibly the Pet GCD is being affected by haste. If they are BM spec, that is 20% haste, which would drop the GCD from 1.5s to 1.2 if it is affecting it . . .
What about improved tracking? I really see that fit into a BM build too. I mean its 5% more damage for both you and pet. That seems way more to me then Carefull Aim for example. I was more thinking about this build
09/30/08, 4:27 AM
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