Kiera

Do you think it would be advisable to macro BW/Kill Command/ Call of the Wild/Rapid Fire/Trinkets?

Or would that just be overkill?

Currently I have BW/Rapid Fire/Trinkets macro'd.

 

Miya Mirage

Just tested it with 3 different ferals on the beta realm and it was raidwide with all 3 of them regardless of which group we were in (I tried different groups to check wether there might be a bug after groups 1-5 due to 25man raiding).

Maybe the issue for the poster above was something pvp-flag related. The druid not being pvp flagged and you being flagged won't give you the buff. It won't give it to you in 5 man groups on live either in that case though, because unflagged players cannot give any kind of buff to flagged players.

 

Mikari

I ended up keeping Call of the Wild not on auto cast and using the following macro

#showtooltip
/petautocasttoggle Call of the Wild
/cast Bestial Wrath

I have Kill Command macroed to all my shots/stings. My trinket is also macroed to my shots. I'm not really sure you can macro Rapid Fire to anything now since it's on the GCD in 3.0.

 

Kirion

Flametongue is flat spell power totem, so is Totem of Wrath. Weapon is not required.

42.

 

TrevvyTrev

Putting aside whether it's advisable, you're going to have to change your macro anyway, because both BW and Rapid Fire initiate the GCD in 3.0 (they don't currently). Either that or you will have to be mindful of pressing it twice each time. I ended up splitting mine into a BW/Trinket macro (haven't tried using Call of the Wild in it yet) and a Rapid Fire/Haste potion macro.

 

Nekondas

I just finished testing what pet will be best for BM hunter when 3.0.2 hits.
Arison wrote on previous page

It seems he is right .... i took lvl 69 scorpid and without any buffs/debuffs he was producing about 30-40 more dps than cat lvl 70. My hunter was just shooting auto/steady to provide focus for pet from GftT.

Any1 knows whats the formula for scorpid poison scaling with hunter rap ?
I want to know if raid environment will favor scorpid even more.

 

Dirty

This might be a bit short-sighted, but why is 50/11 better than 51/10 (as in this spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) for the coming patch? Won't exotic pets be tameable yet, or....?

 

◊ arison

You can't do 51/10/0 because you miss out on Go for the Throat, resulting in your pet being very focus starved (which has been covered countless times in this thread already). Exotic Pets in and of themselves aren't particularly noticeable DPS increases, and the 4 extra points won't allow you to really do more dps since Ferocity pets can get the interesting DPS talents with the points you get at level 70.

 

◊ arison

Ah! Great to know. The tooltip still says party and the raid I was in had what seemed to be a feral, and I didn't get the buff; perhaps they were testing a different spec. You still will want a Draenei in your party (unless that also is raid wide; I didn't test that).

FI still says party wide, too. Perhaps just a cosmetic bug, but has anyone tested it since they said it would be raid wide? Has there even been a build since they made that statement?

 

Dirty

Fair enough, and is there a reason to take one less point out of kindred spirits, and put it in the second gftt? With my current gear I got about 45% crit in raids, which is a lot of focusprocs due to gftt.

 

◊ arison

Yeah, 50/11 is probably viable. You should test it and see how focus starved you are. I think scorpids will be more sensitive to focus starvation since it could prevent them from keeping a stack of five up. With a 4s cooldown and a 10s duration, it is unlikely, but conceivable dpending on how pet prioritization of abilities works out. I may try 50/11 initially instead of 49/12 and see how it goes. I find 49/12 on training dummies keeps me pretty much at fill focus most times, but occasionally will dip even to zero and stay there a couple of seconds (to the point scorpid did once fall off). But the RNG can be brutal, and betting on 4% more damage constantly vs unlucky streaks may be a better long-term gamble.

 

Ketari

Each point in GffT is worth about 60 DPS. 51-BM isn't worth any DPS as-such since you can take all the Ferocity DPS talents without it...

 

Cranch

Well once I turned off autocast for Claw, my scorpid was able to keep a stack of 5 on Uvuros with no problem (53/8/0 build.) I can't kill Uvuros on live solo without kiting it, but just before PTR was taken down, had no problem just tanking & spanking it with a lvl 69 scorpid.

 

Stoop

Well I guess the question then is how much dps do you get without claw with a 53/8 vs with claw and 49/12.

 

Berfert

The last time scorpids were popular raid pets, there would only ever be a single stack of poison up on a mob. Any scorpids past the first would only refresh (or stack if it isn't alraedy at 5) the stack already there. Is this still the case? If so, then it's only a good pet for one person. Cats, on the other hand, don't have this issue.

 

Nekondas

Sometimes there was 5 stacks of poison on target for 30-40 sec, sometimes shorter, sometimes pet couldnt even put 2-3 stacks up.
I have no ide why, poison is on autocast, but its seems there is problem with pet gcd. I observed it casts claw constantly but sometimes skips poison , thats why stacks are wearing off.

 

Rabid Rob

The problem is, exotic pets are more like a minor glyph like the polymorph/shape change right now. The only exotic that really seems to have potential is the rhino with his knockback attack for PvP... I was just thinking last night how fun it would be on the bridge in Eye of the Storm. Exotic pets just don't have any mojo, and the extra pet talent points don't either.

At 70, GftT is too important. At 80, it's a crappy 51 pt talent up against a great 21 pt talent, Readiness.

That's just for raiding though, for leveling, if you like cool pets as much as I do, go ahead and pick up exotics at level 51, you can still have 1 point in GftT then

 

KraxisSingular

Not entirely true... Yes, GftT is likely better than Beast Mastery at 70, but not because the 4 points don't provide anything worthwhile. They most certainly do at 70. It is at level 80 the 4 points become redundant.

Level 70 Cat with no Beast Mastery talent.

Level 70 cat with Beast Mastery.

As you can see there is a considerable difference. You won't get Call of the Wild without the 4 points, unless you plan on dropping 2 points in either Avoidance, Bloodthirsty or Spiked Collar, which doesn't seem like a great idea. You also lose 6% crit from Spider's Bite (assuming you aren't going to sacrifice what I mentioned previously to get Call of the Wild).
These 'losses' are no small matter compared to the 17 points BM pets get. They get all the sweet stuff and Heart of the Phoenix to boot. No 'wasted' points on stamina or what have you. Pure effectiveness.
The irony is that BM the talent is at it's best at 70, it is likely the point where the talent itself grants the most power due to the power the 4 points add. But it is rendered useless by the loss of GftT. It almost feels like it is designed to be useless in raids, both at 70 and 80.

In regards to that I can only say /faceplam.

 

◊ arison

Don't be silly. First, Rabid seems a little bugged, so you may not want it. Second, the cooldown on CotW is so high as to be extremely diluted in usefulness (especially without 3/3 Longevity). 10% AP boost 15% of the time, for a whopping average AP boost of 1.5% per party member? Not great. Does it even stack with Trueshot?

Bloodthirsty does nothing for DPS, so don't take it. Waste of points.

This is your raid pet spec:

Pet Calculator - Wowhead

51 pt BM adds virtually nothing but frill. Unless something about Exotics changes soon, 51pt BM is not really raid viable either at 70 or 80.

 

Nekondas

make macro:
/cast steady shot
/cast rabid

problem solved

 

◊ arison

Yep, a macro should work, but it seems bugged beyond that. Sometimes my pet had full focus, it was off cooldown, and yet it wouldn't let me press it. There does seem to be some kind of odd gcd behavior, but I haven't had a chance to look into it. Making it part of your macro should work fine, though, more or less.

 

superblotto

I have a Devilsaur on Beta right now, and unless they up the damage from exotics there is just no reason to go 51 points in at any level.

Rabid is buggy right now, though if you throw it into your SS spam macro it ends up working fine, it seems to have weird interactions with Monstrous Bite so YMMV. (maybe it just has trouble with other secondary abilities, who knows)

Bloodthirsty isn't useful for raiding (it's amazing for leveling soloing), since there aren't a lot of truly outstanding minor glyphs there is zero reason to not have the mend pet/happiness one (which is available at 70 IIRC) That means Bloodthirsty only heals your pet 5%, sometimes (which is neat but meh).

CoTW stacked with everything last I checked (2 or 3 patches ago) and it stacks with other hunters, so it's not bad, and certainly with Longevity it's pretty attractive for 1 talent point at 80. At 70 it isn't worth it to lose a point from mortal shots/GfTT/Careful Aim etc.

Deadblotto
Ottoblotto

 

TrevvyTrev

Whoa, slow down. Bloodthirsty is what keeps your pet from losing its happiness damage bonus in the middle of a fight, and what makes it possible to rez a pet mid fight and have it get back up to speed faster. It's the "in-combat feeding" that we've been requesting for years. Sure, people get in the habit of trying to feed pets before a fight, but stuff happens. Plus, it reduces the need to lose GCDs for mend pet if your pet isn't taking enormous damage. It is one of the better raiding talents. In fact, one of the reasons that the other "survival" talents are underwhelming is because bloodthirsty does more for pet survivability in any situation where the pet isnt insta-gibbed.

 

mochunk

This was one of the things I specifically ran a lot of tests for. Moving KC from say a SS macro as of now so it's hitting every 1 min, or using it with BW/Trinket/CotW... every 1.6 or so (talented). And figuring the burst increase averaging out vs it running more often without the extra buffs, and well it kinda comes out even. I noticed an increase of dmg and dps for each test I waited for KC with BW etc... than it firing 1 per minute. But this could just be variables of lucky crits from myself or the pet on those tests... who knows. I kind of like the idea, seat of the pants style, of just leaving it with BW and watching the bursts shoot through the roof instead of just using it every time it's up and it averaging it out anyways.

I haven't done any testing with rapid fire yet. I really just wanted to focus it all on the advantage (or not) of where to put KC now.

Also, as mentioned, if using a cat and talented for it, rabid in a SS macro is the way to go. That ensures it's up as often as possible if focus is present (no prob with 2/2 regen 2/2 GftT).

 

mochunk

I can think of several reasons why to go 51 points (well probably not at 70). Number one being the extra pet talent points.

With trying to max dps for raiding, we're stucking using all points for it, with none left over for resistances. I don't know about you, but I always specced my pet for that nights encounters with resistances for much better survivability. This option is basically taken away from us without either gimping dps or going 51 points. I don't care how good you are at micromanaging your pet, it still takes a lot of dmg from certain fights especially without the resistances currently.

I guess we'll see how much splash dmg is floating around on fights later to see if it's going to be all that useful.