- Blues stated that pure DPS classes should be putting out the most DPS of all classes in a raid. Given the same level of of gear and the same buffs, a Warlock/Rogue/Hunter/Mage should be at the top, within a narrow margin of each other (barring and special circumstance) ahead of the other multi-functional classes. BUT, if you took a Rogue and a Balance Druid, with the same equivalence of gear and buffs, if the player behidn the Druid is better and more efficient than the Rogue, it IS acceptable and highly possible that the Druid will put out more damage. It shouldn't be by much but it is possible. The reasoning behind this is that they don't want non-pure DPS classes to be left behind BUT recognize that pure DPS classes don't have additional possibilities in raid fuctions (ie, a Hunter can't pet tank, a Warlock can't heal, etc).
- Blues also stated that specs that provide utilility to the raid will do slightly less DPS than a spec that offers nothing. Though, at this point in Beta, as all specs are offering something in terms of utility, how much (if any) drop in DPS is worrisome.
As a 3 year SV Hunter, I find it a bit disconcerting knowing that my DPS is going to take a hit vs a BM just because I CAN provide utility to the raid through Hunting Party. If I don't take Hunting Party, why am I penalized? On a fight that is pet friendly and without a mechanic that screws us over, I should be able to do equal DPS to an equally played, equally geared, equally buffed BM Hunter. And why/how is there a distinction between Hunting Party - TSA - FI?
-Is improved IAotH still worth it or am I better off with 7 points in survival? Wild quiver gets a nice boost from IAotH but steady shot gains literally nothing from the extra haste in 25 man raid if I'm correct.
I'm pretty sure you're better off going 5/5 Imp Tracking and 2/2 Survival Instincts instead of Imp AotH and Focused Fire. Doing so frees up 3 talent points (based on the build you posted). And you are correct, quiver + WF brings your Steady Shot cast time down to ~ 1.5 seconds.
Originally Posted by Osse
-Rapid recuperation is a question mark to me. Is it better to have two points in that over improved tracking to spend less time with aspect of the viper? With readiness and rapid killing I'll spend 16.66% of the time with 60% lower mana cost. Got no clue if pet gains anything from the lowered focus cost.
With the 2 (of the 3) points from above, I would highly consider getting Rapid Recuperation. Marks is a mana intensive spec and needs help in the mana efficiency department. Thus, I would go 2/2 Rapid Recuperation as well as finishing out Improved Steady Shot.
Originally Posted by Osse
-Is 2/2 GftT worth it?
-Is the total damage and mana efficiency increase from 3/3 improved steady shot better than 2/3 and a point in improved tracking?
See above about Imp Steady and Imp Tracking. As for GftT I would think that there's no reason to drop it. If we end up having a low enough crit rate that our pets aren't being focus starved, I might see moving some of the points to Focused Aim. Not entirely sure about that though.
Thus maybe end up with something like this? 0/54/7
I did some napkin math with the following assumptions:
* autoshot is 30% of my dps
* mob armor is 25% reduction
With those assumptions, Wild Quiver ends up being a 2% damage increase (0.10 * 0.50 * 30 / 0.75) for three points. Far from the 1-2% per point their "budget" is, but I've found that's the case with most hunter talents. (Probably because we have so goddamn MANY damage-increasing talents and few utility talents...)
Shame, seemed like a cool talent. Hopefully they up the proc rate or dmg or change it entirely to be something useful. (A Hunter version of DK's Necrosis would be sick)
@70:
Wild Quiver is bad. Both Focused Fire and Survival Instincts (7 points in BM or Survival) will out damage it and allow you to grab Aimed Shot for funnies.
@80:
Piercing Shots is absurdly bad, but Wild Quiver is probably the best damage gain you can get instead of moving those points out of the tree. Using the points from those 2 talents you can go grab Aspect Mastery, but I don't think you'll notice a significant difference.
Originally Posted by Kinv
Shame, [Wild Quiver] seemed like a cool talent. Hopefully they up the proc rate or dmg or change it entirely to be something useful. (A Hunter version of DK's Necrosis would be sick)
They can't buff it because it bypasses armor and is affected by Mortal Shots. It would be effectively Sword Spec for 3 points. That said, they really should extend it's reach to all abilities to make it not entirely useless.
That's what I do now. In instances and most PvP situations I have my pet on passive, not because I don't want my pet attacking when I open fire <snip>...
Yes, but I'll litterally never take it off passive in any situation as it is in beta/PTR. I think the current live situation is fine. It'll just be annoying that I'll need another set of pet management macros.
As for the utility/damage argument, the problem is that in 10 mans there are only a limited number of ways to achieve proper buff coverage, and most of them involve a balance druid and a ret pally, which means Hunters add basically no utility... In 25 mans, sure, if we have poor utility and thus do lots of damage it's great. But unfortunately, I'm in the situation of looking at 10 man raids (on a competitive basis, not "casual"). And hence my Boomkin rather than my Hunter, as things stand.
As a 3 year SV Hunter, I find it a bit disconcerting knowing that my DPS is going to take a hit vs a BM just because I CAN provide utility to the raid through Hunting Party.
I don't quite see how this is true. Perhaps I missed a post where someone proved that BM will continually scale better than MM or SV. Right now I don't believe that to be true. From first hand experience with another SV hunter who out gears me slightly there is no "hit" between the two specs worth being upset about. He can keep up with me/beat me on most encounters.
My understanding from raiding as BM, as well as SV and MM is this:
BM is doing the most damage right now out of the gate at 80. Why? because your pet scales very well with raid buffs. My pet is doing about 50% of my overall damage in a situation where I can use him 100% of the time. Now when I say raid buffs you have to keep in mind that the ones that I'm getting the most impact from are static values that will not scale (BoM/BS, SoE etc.). However a BM hunter is not going to scale like a MM or SV hunter will with raid buffs and better gear (MM has Combat Experience, SV has Hunter Vs. Wild and EW)*. Basically a fresh 80 BM hunter is going to have a pet doing a ton of damage (2kdps is about average in a 25 man as far as I've seen), even though the hunter itself will not. Over time, with better gear, the pet does not scale up as well and thus gets out paced by other specs. Remember when you just hit 70 and your pet was doing 40%+ of your damage? same situation now at 80.
I really think the progression will be as follows:
Just hit 80:
BM will be highest dps with SV close and MM a little behind both (it's so mana intensive you need the +int from gear)
Mix of T7 gear / Naxx weapons:
All 3 about the same, you'll end up with SV/MM being top dps in pet-unfriendly fights (anything where a pet doesn't get buffed as part of the fight mechanic: ie Thaddius/Loatheb)
Full t7 best Naxx25 gear:
SV and MM pulling ahead of BM
Why? Because MM/SV scale better than BM does
*I left out Careful Aim because every spec should be picking it up
At level 76 there is a Rank 5 of Hunter's Mark which increases it to 300 AP, turning the talent into 90 AP for 3 points. While still quite terrible, it's sadly still a larger dps boost than Piercing Shots or Wild Quiver. :/
Uh, how? Wild Quiver is ~2% dps increase for three points. IHM barely ends up being ~2% AP, and AP is far from our only source of damage.
I get that people think Wild Quiver is a poor talent, but as far as I can tell, hunters actually have very few talents that give 1% dps or more per point so it's not like it's drastically worse than anything else, is it?
I don't quite see how this is true. Perhaps I missed a post where someone proved that BM will continually scale better than MM or SV. Right now I don't believe that to be true. From first hand experience with another SV hunter who out gears me slightly there is no "hit" between the two specs worth being upset about. He can keep up with me/beat me on most encounters.
You're absolutely right. BUT, the caveat to that is that you're assuming this to be the case. Everyone assumed in TBC that MM and SV would continue to be strong until people proved otherwise. Everyone assumed that it was a scaling issue due to how poor blue and Kara gear was for the MM/SV specs. And yet, here we are with guilds clearing SWP and MM is a complete joke and SV is nothing more than a buff bot spec. With the nerfs to the two major DPS talents in SV and the anex of Readiness to MM, you have to wonder if your point of "scaling" is ever going to come to fruition.
Full t7 best Naxx25 gear:
SV and MM pulling ahead of BM
Why? Because MM/SV scale better than BM does
BM pets scale incredibly well (almost double, nay triple as fast as MM/SV pets). Couple that with a lower damage hit from AotV (since more damage is done by your pet it's less of a penalty to go into viper) and you have a winner. If BM has a flaw it is its reliance on the pet. It needs full raid-buffs and great gear to really shine.
I wouldn't really say that MM/SV scale better than BM just because they both have a single shot on a cooldown that scales better. BM has a pet without a CD that scales very very well.
They're also mostly latency independant, while the hunter is not. The crux is whether it's hard to keep it alive post T7 instances.
BM pets scale incredibly well (almost double, nay triple as fast as MM/SV pets). Couple that with a lower damage hit from AotV (since more damage is done by your pet it's less of a penalty to go into viper) and you have a winner. If BM has a flaw it is its reliance on the pet. It needs full raid-buffs and great gear to really shine.
I wouldn't really say that MM/SV scale better than BM just because they both have a single shot on a cooldown that scales better. BM has a pet without a CD that scales very very well.
They're also mostly latency independant, while the hunter is not. The crux is whether it's hard to keep it alive post T7 instances.
This is all true, and if past statements from Blizzard are taken at face value, the days when Hunter pets are impossible to use on bosses are long gone, never to be seen again. "MM/SV scale better than BM" hasn't been true since 2.0 came out, but it keeps cropping up as a Truth people take at face value. Pets scale with gear now. BM pets scale so well that even just scaling with AP they will more than keep up with MM/SV.
The cat's ability, Rake, was doing too much damage. We want to keep the pets to very similar dps so that you really feel like you have a choice. If we err, it will be on the side of the exotics.
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?
I wouldn't really say that MM/SV scale better than BM just because they both have a single shot on a cooldown that scales better. BM has a pet without a CD that scales very very well.
If MM/SV scale better (and I emphasize the "if"), it won't be because of the single shot, but because the hunter scales better with gear than the pet does. Right now, the bulk of the power increases people are seeing at 80 are from updated raid buffs, and the "double dip" effect of being able to buff the hunter's AP, buff the pet's AP, and still have the pet gain another 22% of the hunter's AP buffs. This double dipping doesn't apply to gear, since you can't equip the pet with gear upgrades, and buffs aren't going to get any better as we progress (barring some kind of set bonus), so when the bulk of hunter power starts coming from gear upgrades pet scaling slows down by comparison.
On the topic of which spec scales the best, I did a quick test using the WotLK DPS spreadsheet. I removed one ring and noted the DPS of the hunter and the pet, then added a custom ring (+200 agility, stamina and intellect, +500 RAP, +300 crit rating, +200 ArP and +100 haste rating) and noted the DPS again.
Results:
Spec
No Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
Custom Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
% DPS increase
BM
6746 (3859/2886)
7785 (4744/3040)
+15.4%
MM
5873 (4748/1124)
6996 (5815/1181)
+19.1%
Surv
5268 (4180/1088)
6239 (5094/1144)
+18.4%
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?
On the topic of which spec scales the best, I did a quick test using the WotLK DPS spreadsheet. I removed one ring and noted the DPS of the hunter and the pet, then added a custom ring (+200 agility, stamina and intellect, +500 RAP, +300 crit rating, +200 ArP and +100 haste rating) and noted the DPS again.
Results:
Spec
No Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
Custom Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
% DPS increase
BM
6746 (3859/2886)
7785 (4744/3040)
+15.4%
MM
5873 (4748/1124)
6996 (5815/1181)
+19.1%
Surv
5268 (4180/1088)
6239 (5094/1144)
+18.4%
Wow it looks like pets should get even more benefit from their owners gear then? Perhaps latch more stat transfer to a talent in the lower end of the BM tree? Oh well.
On the topic of which spec scales the best, I did a quick test using the WotLK DPS spreadsheet. I removed one ring and noted the DPS of the hunter and the pet, then added a custom ring (+200 agility, stamina and intellect, +500 RAP, +300 crit rating, +200 ArP and +100 haste rating) and noted the DPS again.
Results:
Spec
No Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
Custom Ring DPS (Hunter/Pet)
% DPS increase
BM
6746 (3859/2886)
7785 (4744/3040)
+15.4%
MM
5873 (4748/1124)
6996 (5815/1181)
+19.1%
Surv
5268 (4180/1088)
6239 (5094/1144)
+18.4%
So, the lesson of that one is apparently MM and SV do scale slightly faster, but not fast enough to catch up to BM, since that ring's combined stats are likely more than the total upgrades from Tier 7 to Tier 9.
honestly, from what I have seen beta-side, all three specs are close contenders, BM being king from the start line. In the end I don't see Survival being king. I see BM or MM being lead at the top tier, but I think personally that with fights getting more intense you'll start to see people going BM over MM, not because it's easier (Micro managing a pet and using more than 1 shot are both pretty easy) but because it's less latency dependant, I'd rather have my pet die and insta-rez than have to blow global cooldowns on a sting, or mess up my cooldowns because I didn't have a global cooldown available or my fps/latency crapped out.
All in all with what I've seen buffed, unbuffed, etc. I expect to see BM and MM either even, or within 100 dps of eachother with Survival maybe a bit behind, but I really wouldn't be surprised to see them all within 50-100 dps of eachother.
So, the lesson of that one is apparently MM and SV do scale slightly faster, but not fast enough to catch up to BM, since that ring's combined stats are likely more than the total upgrades from Tier 7 to Tier 9.
Well those numbers are quite impossibly high. Take note that the best numbers seen so far are 5k DPS from Warlocks and a few Mages. Hunters I have yet to see break 4.5k.
So something isn't really right there. Be it the interruption effect (should actually even out with BM taking a heavier hit per cast on mobile fights, but more of the DPS for the other specs is affected by interruption). Or armour is unnaturally low, which would boost BM greatly due to the pet and the prolific use of armour ignore abilities by the other specs.
In any case, I do think that BM will hold the top place for Hunters initially, then slowly fall off. If it will be enough, I don't know. But given that BM doesn't provide any comparable buffs to the other specs, then I would say it being slightly, and I stress slightly, ahead, would not be bad. But this quite uneven scaling could present certain problems, in one spec being too good early and possibly not good enough later, much like Affliction now. Greenies/dungeon blues Aff >> Destro, T6 Destro >>> Aff. One can hope that it won't be as profound.
But overall it looks fairly well balanced at this time. A few tweaks and it might be there. Understandably Survs feel miffed at the changes, who wouldn't? But the reports don't seem to indicate any huge loss compared to the other specs. I do still hope for a 'selfless buffer' buff to Hunting Party.
Well those numbers are quite impossibly high. Take note that the best numbers seen so far are 5k DPS from Warlocks and a few Mages. Hunters I have yet to see break 4.5k.
So something isn't really right there. Be it the interruption effect (should actually even out with BM taking a heavier hit per cast on mobile fights, but more of the DPS for the other specs is affected by interruption). Or armour is unnaturally low, which would boost BM greatly due to the pet and the prolific use of armour ignore abilities by the other specs.
In any case, I do think that BM will hold the top place for Hunters initially, then slowly fall off. If it will be enough, I don't know. But given that BM doesn't provide any comparable buffs to the other specs, then I would say it being slightly, and I stress slightly, ahead, would not be bad. But this quite uneven scaling could present certain problems, in one spec being too good early and possibly not good enough later, much like Affliction now. Greenies/dungeon blues Aff >> Destro, T6 Destro >>> Aff. One can hope that it won't be as profound.
But overall it looks fairly well balanced at this time. A few tweaks and it might be there. Understandably Survs feel miffed at the changes, who wouldn't? But the reports don't seem to indicate any huge loss compared to the other specs. I do still hope for a 'selfless buffer' buff to Hunting Party.
A mate linked me this in game: WOW Meter Online - More logs!!!!!!
wws similar style log, for patchwerk
MM hunter at #2, with 5100 dps (arms warrior @ 1 with 5275)
Mind you, this log is neither mine, nor my friends, so i cant give any other info other than what is provided in the link.
(*edit* lol at not being able to edit what the link calls itself. No matter how many times i try, it still calls itself "WOW Meter Online - More Logs!!!!!!". Makes it look pretty sus :P)
Well those numbers are quite impossibly high. Take note that the best numbers seen so far are 5k DPS from Warlocks and a few Mages. Hunters I have yet to see break 4.5k.
Actually thats as a BM hunter and that guy is a hoss, hes over 6k rap and 44 crit in that raid. Its pretty outrageous what bm can do.
I'd really like to know what people are seeing as the top dps spec post 3.0 considering top SW gear for a hunter at 70. I'm assuming it will continue to be BM considering what I've seen from raiding at 80, but MM can put up some serious numbers with huge stats so I'm not sure. Thats also assuming the other specs dont get buffed or bm gets nerfed significantly tonight with this patch. And on top of all that, how exactly are yall gonna be spending your points in bm, I was thinking about something like 46/15 but I'm not sure. I really need to get that Wotlk spread sheet and get it working, I hate not having excel.
I've been screwing around on the ptr, etc, and but have not had a chance to test BM in a raid environment.
But, I'd imagine something like this maybe, for 3.0 lvl 70: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
On the lvl 70 dummies, i think i was pulling 2 - 2.1k dps, self buffed as that spec (compared to 2.1 - 2.2k as MM, have not tried SV for a few patches).
Leatherworking - 82 AP vs the standard bracer enchant - does not stack with a standard enchantment, but will stack with a Blacksmithing extra socket
Blacksmithing - 64 AP with 2 blue gems, 80 AP with 2 epic AP gems
Alchemy - 64 AP bonus when using a 180 AP flask, plus double duration
Enchanting - 64 AP across two rings
Inscription - 64 AP vs the best shoulder enchant in wotlk currently
Jewelcrafting - 68 AP vs 3 blue AP gems, 42 AP vs 3 epic AP gems
Skinning - 25 crit rate (0.54% at Level 80). To compare this bonus to the BS 2 socket bonus, this is 8 crit rating less than 2 blue crit gems, and 15 crit rating less than 2 epic crit gems. It's understandable that this bonus is weaker due to being a gathering profession.
Engineering - 340 haste rating for 8 sec every 2 mins - I'm not sure whether this stacks with BS sockets/enchantments, but haste rating isn't that valuable for WOTLK hunters anyway.
Herbalism, Mining, and Tailoring offer little to no benefit to a hunter concerned with min/maxing their raid DPS.
It seems like if you want to have the absolute most min/max bonus you'd go for LW/BSing, but none of the other professions are far behind.
10/07/08, 3:36 PM
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