Steelfleece

I find that difficult to swallow, given that even without the 51 point talent there are a lot of reasons to spend more than 50 points in the tree--reasons that are a lot more compelling than an extra BW every 3 minutes.

Specifically, as I have said before, I find it hard to see a BM build without Cobra Strikes, Invigoration, and Longevity (and investing in all of these talents requires more than 50 points).

 

Chul

My pet's attack speed wasn't affected by my own +haste gear nor was it affected in any way when I used Drums of Battle.

For a while it did look like my pet was getting some of my crit, but when i tested it with > 30% crit (with no pet crit talents) my pets melee crit rate was at like 3% for quite a while so I think it was just the RNG.

If they are going to give warlock pets spell penetration, then they would probably give us armour pen, but it sounds like it is not implemented yet.

 

Dalinoth

I posted this 5 pages ago but no one responded. Would greatly appreciate an answer:

For someone new to both these forums and really understanding hunter mechanics, can someone please explain why all the new Wrath builds are speccing 5/5 in IAotH. To me, it seems pretty useless, especially when haste will be so abundant in Wrath. Thanks in advance.

 

superblotto

Going to echo what SteelFleece is saying, any extra Mana restoration at all when you are at the bottom of the gear curve at 80 (where you have little int, this is especially true if you are wearing a lot of SWP gear) is a god send. Also a fresh 80 BM hunter with quest blues / heroic items is going to be doing the lowest amount of damage in respect to his pet. With every upgrade this ratio leans more towards the hunter doing with the pet scaling but not as quickly. Anything that buffs the pet is going to increase your overall damage (cobra strikes for instance) in a disproportionate way.

The question I've been rolling around with is: how many points in longevity are worth it vs Lethal Shots currently I'm running with 2/3 longevity and 3/5 Lethal shots, the logic being that already pet classes specials clip (cat bleed / spirit beast's dot)* so 3/3 might not be ideal. I may also drop the 51st point in BM and put it in marks depending on how exotics work out.

* Has anyone sat down with other raiders and calculated how many debuffs are going to be put up? IIRC the debuff limit hasn't been increased like it was for TBC, but for hunter's we're all going to want to be putting up serpent sting for the 10% steady shot damage glyph** and if specced SV explosive shot puts up a debuff as well, along with Hunter's Mark.

** Has anyone found out if the SS glyph requires your serpent sting to be present or [i]a[/a] serpent sting? The wording is semi-ambiguous "Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when your target is afflicted with Serpent Sting." I'm hoping it is just required by 1 per raid, though both SV and MM have incentives to put it up (lock and load and Noxious Stings for SV, Chimera Shot and Improved Stings for MM)

Deadblotto
Ottoblotto

 

superblotto

For BM and any spec that goes into BM for the more gravy talents (imp Rez, Focus Fire) it's just filler. With the amount of haste on hunter gear, quiver haste, and the windfury totem changes all coupled with our hard GCD lock at 1.5 seconds it's a supremely lackluster place to invest points if you can avoid it, though it can be argued to still be better than extra stamina.

Deadblotto
Ottoblotto

 

KraxisSingular

For a couple of reasons really. Firstly 15% Haste is more DPS regardless of our being capped for passive Haste. 15% mroe Autos will certainly present some DPS upgrade. Not as much as previously, but it is still there. However that isn't the reason to get it.

The reason to get it is to get Focused Fire and Aspect Mastery for MM. Along the way you get a really nice filler in Imp Hawk and Imp Revive Pet (pet getting more benefit in MM now and Focused Fire requires the pet anyway).
Ahh, but fillers aren't as good as pure DPS talents. That is certainly true, but where do you find a true DPS talent that is better than AM and FF? Because that is actualyl where you will remove the points first. Going deeper in Survival is not going to be conductive since the next tiers are generally light on DPS talents, so better to get them in BM. And MM is also stuggling to find better talents than AM and FF, and even further the 5 points in IAotH. So might as well let them stay.

For Surv... well so far I haven't seen builds with IAotH for Surv. So that appears to be a more free choice.

For BM. It isn't as if there is any real choice for raiding. Endurance Training? Unless we need 5% extra health I really don't think it will be better than even a marginal DPS upgrade. Marginal DPS is better than no DPS. Always.

Haste as a stat on gear is 'wasted' because it takes up space for other stats. Talents aren't like that. You can't just get Marked for Death or Lighting Reflexes instead, no matter how much better they might be.

 

Chul

I want to test the average Monstrous Bite stack during a normal fight with all the pet specials on auto-cast (like Rabid, Call of the Wild and Bite) so could anyone recommend an addon that does this or an easy mechanism to calculate this? There are many addons that tell you a buff uptime, but I need to know the average stack as well and I'm not sure if any mods can do that.

 

takel

[edit]Bloody heck, I shoudl stop posting too early in the morning

 

Trifle

Uh survival instincts is +4% crit for steady shot as well as arcane for marks hunters. And 4% less damage from all sources is nothing to sneeze at, either.

 

Hirgux

I have a few questions regarding the new talents; sorry if they have been already discussed here I didn't find it.

1) Invigoration restores 1% of base mana I think? Because I skilled 2 Invigoration and 3 in Cobra Strikes but I could just use my auto/steady rotation 1:20 minutes instead of 1:05 - doesn't seem that much for two talent points. (I'm lvl 70)
2) The 1-5% improved dmg from Improved Tracking; when will they be added into the calculation - after everything or at some point before? So when I see 700 auto hit above my target would it be 735 with 5%?
3) Same for Kindred Spirits; +20% to the dmg I would see above the enemies head without the talent?
4) Longevity reduces the cd of pet abilities by 30%; does this also count for the global cooldown of bite etc?

I've tested some pets on the dummies (darnassus; nobody else there) and I got:
Scorpid with poison and claw: ~300dps // with only poison: ~333dps
Raptor (lvl 69): ~240dps
Ravager: ~230dps
Windserpent (lvl 69): ~235dps

Did you also experienced that scorpids are good again; followed by raptor/cat/serpent?

I did not skill the 51 bm talent @70 because I think it's useless; do these exotic pets more damage than the scorpid?

I probably skill like >> this @ 80 << for pve raiding; what do you think?

greetings

 

Ketari

1/ Invigoration isn't wonderful, no.
2/ It's a multiple for total damage
3/ See 2
4/ I don't believe so

With the steady shot glyph it's worth keeping up serpent sting (or A serpent, unsure if someone else's counts)

Also, I'd advise testing a Cat.

As for the build;

Animal Handler is no longer of (or is far less of) value now your hit transfers to the pet
Kindred Spirits gives 4% pet damage/point, and BM pets are ~50% of your damage. So it's much better than improved tracking or efficiency.
Improved Hunter's Mark gives a small, static bonus. Go For the Throat, on the other hand, is very powerful for BM Hunters.
Focused Aim has, note, 1%/point of Hit in it

 

TrevvyTrev

It depends on how much you value dps at whatever stage of the game you're in. Cobra Strikes and Invigoration are less dps than the alternatives (Longevity may not be, but you don't have to give that up to only spend 50 points in the tree). If we look at it from a dps perspective, Cobra Strikes grants 2 guaranteed crits, the additional value of which can be represented as the total value of a crit (pet crits do double damage, so if you take 2 crits and subtract out the normal damage that would have occured anyway, you end up with the same value as a normal crit). Mikari gave us some numbers to use earlier in the thread:

Hunter AP: ~5200
Pet AP: ~3100
Crit%: 30%
Avg. Pet Crit: 1545 (unfortunately this number includes regular pet attacks, so this will throw things off)

Cobra Strikes when maxxed means in this case that a hunter would have a 30% chance to crit on any given steady shot (or arcane shot) and a 60% to proc cobra strikes on that crit. This is an overall 18% chance to proc cobra strikes. Note: technically we should further discount this chance to account for the probability that the "guaranteed" specials would have crit notwithstanding the Cobra Strikes proc, because the pet has a natural crit rate > 0. For now, we won't bother with it. The value of a cobra strikes proc is the average value of a pet crit, so this all amounts to an 18% chance for an extra 1545 damage, or an average value of 278.

By contrast, suppose a hunter skips invigoration and Cobra Strikes, and instead puts 2 points into improved arcane shot and 3 points into improved stings. The base value of serpent sting would be 2250, plus an addtional 675 (30%) from the talent. The base value of Arcane Shot would be 1257, plus an addtional 127 (10%) from the talent. This extra damage is guaranteed (100%), and totals 802. A 100% chance for an extra 802 is an average value of well, 802.

So strictly from a damage perspective, skipping cobra strikes and invigoration is warranted, but that would have to weighed against the lost damage that the 50/21 hunter would incur if it turns out that the hunter needs to resort to Viper more often than the 55+ BM hunter. If Readiness ever affects BW (it does not currently) then it's not even clear that the 50/21 hunter will have to resort to Viper more often -- he will have an additional 18 seconds of 20% mana reduction to play with. In any event, making that judgment would depend on what other sources of mana regen were available, and similarly which target debuffs were available (e.g., whether raid makeup has nature/arcane debuffs instead of armor debuffs).

 

Senicus

I don't think anyone has brought this up or thought about this, but with MM being Mana intensive, and not having a pet like bm to do dmg while were in viper, the MM tree does have a raw Mana talent that could AND should be tweaked to help them out. Forgot the exact name of the talent but it decreases the mana used by 10%, which would be easy to up to 15-20% or more, I mean you would think blizzard would think of this but idk

 

Catalept

Efficiency is a low-power, low-tier discretionary talent... boosting it to a high-power talent would essentially make it a mandatory talent, which Blizzard doesn't like too many of.

It remains to be seen just how well Readiness will improve Rapid Recuperation's effectiveness, but it seems to me that the solution to MM's mana issues is simply to improve the cost-reduction it confers.

 

Tyranna

I'm not sure I agree how discretionary Efficiency is. It's basically a requirement for all MM builds just because of the build's high mana expenditure. I can see it being optional for BM and SV builds but that's just because they have other ways of getting back mana readily.

 

Greenpiggy

The wording of improved tracking intrigues me(has it changed?)

'Increases all non-periodic damage done to targets that are being tracked by 5%'

Has anyone thought to test if that includes pet damage?

 

Chul

Just tested it then, and it had no effect on my pet.

 

Iluminati

There has been some talk about different pets, but no straightforward/decisive conclusions. If I may present a few questions/my conclusions:

With the changes to all the pet abilities and pet mechanics it looks like the best dps pets will all have the inherent 10% damage (Ferocity), and then from there whichever has the "best" unique skill will be the best for overall dps.

From what I can find Cats, Devilsaurs, Spirit Beasts/core hounds, and...wasps(!?) are the only pets that combine the natural +10% damage with a high dps unique ability (all others have additional affects and/or long cooldowns that limit their dps potential).

-Cats: Even if rake is currently broken (ignoring armor/too high scaling) the bleed portion should be scaling with mangle/trauma and ignoring armor, making it a very strong. edit: doesn't scale as well with longevity due to the bleed duration (9 seconds) being longer than the 3/3 longevity cooldown (7 seconds).

-Devilsaurs: monstrous bite has a higher base damage than the average special and gives a 9% (fully stacked) damage increase.

-Spirit beast/Corehound: Spirit strike/lava breath - spells = ignore armor + synergy with caster debuffs. Spirit Strike has a higher base damage.

-Wasps: Sting. There has been talk about sting replacing Faerie Fire, but I've seen no mention of it's dps potential. Currently it's listed as a 6 second cooldown (the other abilities I've discussed are all 10 seconds untalented) with similar base damage to the other abilities, along with being a spell for caster debuff synergy. Shorter cooldown + high base damage + caster synergy makes it seem to be the highest dps unique ability excluding possible monstrous bite. Has anyone tested a wasp as a dps pet in comparison to cat/etc.?

Summary:
1. If this is true and cats/wasps are doing close/equal/more damage than exotic pets, Beast Mastery looks like an incredibly weak talent. No advantage in having an exotic pet for dps and no advantage in the extra 4 pet points (max pet dps can be achieved with something like Pet Calculator - Wowhead).

2. Has there been any testing of Spirit Beasts/Corehounds/Wasps (ie: pets with "caster" specials) as dps pets in comparison to those with physical abilities.

Is this an accurate assessment of the current state of pets? Excuse me if this was rather basic information, but I found no direct comparisons of different pet families in the search tool, and I never got a beta invite to test out a wasp personally.

 

Griffen

That was confusing until I realised you're talking from a pve PoV

Someone on the EU hunter forums have found the same thing:
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Welcome back Scorpid Poison

So I wondered if there is anyone else that is able to confirm this?

Numquam catapultas allice, iram omnium concitabis

 

Celfydd

My personal opinion is that you're not seeing the bigger picture. Although your pet build does include all the talents that directly affect pet dps, I simply cannot imagine any raiding pet without 2/2 Bloodthirsty, and pets that do not have Dash/Dive and Boar's Speed are going to be sacrificing dps for all the time that they spend running around trying to catch up with their target, which may be very often especially if you have to pull the pet away for AoE effects etc. - modelling in TBC has shown that for rogues, Cat's Swiftness is usually a superior enchant to Dexterity and that only involves a small mobility change whereas Dash and Boar's Speed are huge in comparison. Without the 4 additional points from Beast Mastery, you can't even get all your dps talents plus these 4 essential raiding utility talents, let alone put any into spell resistance. With the 4 extra points you can get all these and 3/3 spell resistance as well.

Edit: Also, without 20 pet talent points you can't make a well-rounded Tenacity tank pet that will be capable of tanking serious instances, e.g. Pet Calculator - Wowhead. Although this "hunter tank" role did not exist in TBC and the concept of it is not yet well developed in WotLK, some people have already been exploring it and finding that Tenacity pets can be viable tanks in 5-mans and perhaps more.

 

Bellin

For pure dps Ferocity build one does not need to pick 51pt BM talent Pet Calculator - Wowhead.
On the other hand Tenancy pets gain much more from those additional 4 points.
From a raiding PoV 51pt talent lacks additional dps value while it offers some flexibility. I do not think it is worth picking for raiding BM build and if Readiness gets "fixed" to reset CD on BW it won't be picked in PvP builds either.

 

Celfydd

If Readiness does eventually reset BW then it will be higher dps-per-talent-point than Beast Mastery. But as I said above, Beast Mastery does not lack dps value. A pet that is unhappy after being combat rezzed is doing less dps. A pet that is running around slowly trying to catch up with its target is doing 0 dps all the time it's running. And a pet that gets instagibbed from magical damage because it has minimal resistance to it does 0 dps as well.

 

Bellin

One DOES NOT need more than 16 talent points to pick both Bloodthirsty and Dash.* Please check pet talent build I linked in previous post.

You can only add flexibility by picking some other talents like Heart of the Phoenix, Great Stamina/Greater Resistance, Lick Your Wounds or Boar's Speed (rest is not worth it in PvE). This might matter in specific fight but in general 16 points is enough for you to maximize your dps.

EDIT: *And every other dps ability for in that case.

 

Enova

Aye; ideally, Readiness would be better, if you were fighting, say, Patchwerk or Brutallus. But, as the basics of raiding hardly ever allow for a simple tank and spank, Beast Mastery makes up the lost ground most of the times, just because of the added flexibility. Which of the two is better is all in all a question of encounter, style and, in some cases, particular prefference for a Core Hound or Devilsaur.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Iluminati

Obviously yes, there are big survivability bonuses for those additional 4 points, but for a 51 point talent? Seems very weak. You can get boar's speed and dash with 16 points, but you do miss out on some magic resistance. Avoidance is still there and pets are getting some base level or resistances (unless that was changed) and also Spirit bond +20% healing makes it easier to keep your pet up. There's also the reality that you take the talent and get the nice survival talents...and you can't keep your pet up anyway. It really depends on how healing and damage is going out in the new raids which I don't really know enough about without being in beta.

As it stands now (ie: readiness does not affect BW), there isn't much alternative anyway, and the survivability bonuses will probably be quite useful if they can keep a pet alive where a MM / SV hunter could not.

The pet tanking aspect was not one that I considered, if that does become popular I can see those 4 points being very useful.