That's something I've been asking myself too.

Editing to add this:

I wanted to ask a few more information regarding a MM spec at 70. Given the fact the hunter is hitcapped at 142 what should we go for? Before many argued about the fact I've been skipping every "mana" point in order to maximize my dps talents. Are they worth taking or I'm just going to sacrifice the dps benefit as soon as I pop Viper? (of course without mana friendly talents, I would have to rely more on Viper).

I'm linking again the spec for reference:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...10252105020351

Actually my main thoughts about this spec are: Mana talents instead of Imp.Mark, Piercing shot instead of Combat Experience and last Wild Quiver against Imp. Steady shot.

The reason I ask, though, is that it hasn't been documented anywhere, either. It's not in the patch notes, and I can't find a blue response to any question about it. Granted, that probably means that you're right. I suppose this is a lame request like "Please post this on the beta boards!" then. Oh well.

When the change occured several beta patches ago it was an undocumented change. The wording for Mortal Shots was the give away that the change happened... "Range Abilities" vs. 'Ranged Attacks"

In a fully buffed raid environment does AotB trump AotH for BM? If so then you could spend all the tier 1 points in stamina rather than an aspect you'd almost never use.

My guild's Hunters have been tossing some patch 3.0 level 70 BM Sunwell raiding spec ideas around on our guild forum. I'm wondering what the best distribution might be of 4 talent points into Longevity and Cobra Strikes (i.e., 1/3 Long & 3/3 CS, 2/3 Long & 2/3 CS, or 3/3 Long & 1/3 CS). I haven't seen them discussed/theorycrafted against each other yet.

Edit: Since I received an infraction, I'd like to clarify that what I haven't seen discussed is the three choices against each other, not simply the two talents in general. I've seen all three combinations proposed from a month ago up through today in separate, disjointed discussions, with different lightly-supported (at best) reasons for each. I was hoping that someone actually had some hard numbers or had at least given it some thought based on the fact that there really does seem to be no current consensus in the context I gave.

At some ridiculously high Attack Power, AotB does indeed trump AotH. While there are some caveats on that math, I don't see any swinging it to a number that is attainable even by the end of WotLK.

A couple pages back someone posted that his pet was getting his hit in extensive testing.

I agree with your picks on glyphs. Nothing amazing, but better than nothing.

Here's what i've got as far as MM mana efficiency talents vs straight dps talents go, particularly looking at your proposed spec.

Imp Mark is a mana efficiency talent as well as a (minor) dps increase. The 30% rap is not the only effect of the talent, you also get a 0 mana hunter's mark. Going 51 in MM, it's one of the better "lesser/filler" talents to pick up.

Combat Experience is superior to Piercing Shots in every way. If you drop anything, it's the latter. The int from combat experience will also marginally increase your returns from replenishment, mana tide and any other % based mana return raid effects.

To optimize your MM build a bit more, you should seriously consider ditching all points in the BM tree 70. The 2% damage lost from focused fire is made up from the last two in improved tracking. IHM is no longer an increase to our shot rotation, since auto is unlinked. A chance to increase white attacks (and ammo consumption) is not quite vital. With 5 in Survival, you can pick up Survival Tactics for another 4% steady shot crit instead.

A build similar to this would be good.

Alternatively, you could ditch wild quiver for situational ability talents (silencing shot and aimed shot) and/or fill out the rest of efficiency.

I found it. Very pleased to know that we can finally hit cap our pets.

As to the glyphs; I'm kind of disappointed to see the slim selection of minor glyphs for everyone. We get a minor glyph as a 51 point talent, though, so that's something. Maybe they will beef up the selection of minor as time goes on. I'd love to see something like "gives your arrows/bullets a [elemental] trail" similar to the way Thori's arrows look. Does nothing, but at least lets you pretend you got the Legendary

At lvl 70 I don't really think its a solid pet talent, the 10% just isnt as significant as it is at 80 when you've got more than double the ap you have at 70. But it might be something interesting to play with, its a way of effectively stacking massive ap during your bestial wrath (at least 1 of them depending on the fight) without giving up stats like crit and arp.

One thing Id like to ask though is what exactly are we looking at for gearing/gemming now? Obviously haste is a much less important stat now, but is it bad enough to drop DST for another trinket? I've also seen some rumblings saying crit isn't nearly as important anymore which seems false to me from what I've seen in lvl 80 raiding. The guys with massive crit have been out preforming everyone else by leaps and bounds, but if theres some math to support maybe regemming for AP now instead of agi i'd definitely like to see it.

Would someone be so kind and test whether scorpid poison from two hunters pets just keeps one stack going (as is the case now) or if it might stack individually because of all the buff/debuff reworks?

The serpent sting glyph might be viable for MM hunters, since they can pick up improved stings, and it'd provide some leeway (spelling?) on being a gcd late with chimera.

For minor glyphs, mend pet and feign death should be marginally useful. They're two I see as indirect DPS increases. If you're careless and didn't feed your pet, or it died early, you could possibly return it to full happiness (although I don't think it's quite that effective in practice). As for FD, if you had a resist, it'd be 5 seconds sooner you could potentially continue DPSing, although that scenario should be much less common with 3.x than it was in 2.4.

From the posting from various hunters on Beta at L.80, crit appears to be the one stat that takes the biggest hit in terms of level 80 scaling from level 70. I can't understand why anyone would disregard crit for our class, so I agree with you there Aern. For a BM hunter, crit is a key part of several proc'd abilities. Haste is an obvious overkill, even at L.70 post 3.0. I have shelved my DST for my Zerker's Call for 3.0, since raid buffs and Quick Shots drop my speed down under 1.8 and lower with heroism or Rapid Fire. RAP scales so much better than it ever did in TBC, but it would seem to me that Agility is (and will always be) the main focus of a hunter. Careful Aim also makes Intel an actual viable stat, more than it was accounted for in TBC.

BM hunter... Agility -> AP -> Crit -> ArP (??)

EDIT: Wording Fix

Regarding pet spells - what has more priority - pet autocasting or macro spamming 20 times per sec? I'm gonna tame Devilsaurus in 3.0.2, so i'll have to micromanage focus a lot.

God I'm really gonna hate going back to my madness of the betrayer, not really sure what else I could go with, hopefully blackened naaru sliver will drop for the first time ever in our months of farming muru. Now I really don't see why people are so down on crit now, theres such a massive amount on the 80 gear and its obviously extremely easy to get, I've already seen hunters with 6k+ rap and 45% crit as bm (check the pic of the guy dropping 6k sustained dps on patch and look at his stats, they're sexy). But I really think this beating up of crit is coming as a reaction to mortal shots nerf. When you look at how much we get from crit procs and add in the fact that at some point of high enough crit you'll be able to drop a point out of gftt permanently and still have enough focus for your pet to spam with, it just seems like people have been jumping on the crit hating wagon when we really haven't seen any numbers to support why crit has been overtaken by another stat. Now I may be going with int gems in my yellow slots from now on, but I've always been a mass agi bm hunter anyways, kings makes me happy. If anyone has some numbers to show at 70 or at 80 what our best stats/gems would be I'd love to see them, I can't run the wotlk spreadsheet because I'm cheap and dont have excel.

Let me save you alot of time and disappointment, devilsaurs preform no better than a cat, and unless they've changed the feral drood bleed synergy with a cat's rake, a devilsaur will easily get beaten by a cat. You can thank blizzard's all pets should be equally policy for annihilating any chance of exotic pets being useful for dps and by extension our 51 point talent being useful at all in end-game raiding. I guess its a good thing though since at 80 you'll be able to pick up readiness and spam off beastial wraths so often people will think you're permanently bugged.

On top of all of that you've got some people saying that scorpids will be out dpsing everything with raid buffs because of scorpid poison. Now I'm not sure exactly how this will work, seems like the amount of dps lost from ferocity pet talents not being available will be fairly high. I did however get on my lvl 80 hunter and tame another scropid and went to test the dps, self buffed my scropid was ticking at a 5 stack for 224 with 522 resisted since it was on the heroic training dummy and was only level 75. That is some very large dmg coming from a tanking pet. Hopefully we'll see some numbers later tonight comparing cat and scorpid dps. Since I don't get to raid til tomorrow (thanks jerks getting back from blizzcon late >.<) I won't be able to provide any raid buffed numbers until tomorrow. But you can bet i'll be swinging away at those practice dummies for a while tonight!

From my time spent doing 5-mans and a few runs of Naxx on the my gfs beta account I have seen no evidence to prove scorpids are better than cats, from my experience or from any other hunter I've spoken to. What I can attest to is that we have been majorly ripped off when it comes to glyphs, and I was hoping this would have changed by the time the patch came but I am disappointed that has not happened.

I have also been testing the advantage of having 2/2 go for the throat as opposed to 1/2, and see other hunters have been testing it as well. Is there a consensus on at which crit % 2/2 is no longer optimal?

Improved Aspect of the Hawk - Rank 5/5 – Still a DPS increase
While Aspect of the Hawk is active, all normal ranged attacks have a 10% chance of increasing ranged attack speed by 15% for 12 sec.

Endurance Training - Rank 1/5 – Dump Piont
Increases the Health of your pet by 2% and your total health by 1%.

Focused Fire - Rank 2/2 - Must Have Talent
All damage caused by you is increased by 2% while your pet is active and the critical strike chance of your pet's special abilities is increased by 20% while Kill Command is active.

Improved Revive Pet - Rank 2/2 - Raid Must & Point Allocation to move on to the next tier
Revive Pet's casting time is reduced by 6 sec, mana cost is reduced by 40%, and increases the health your pet returns with by an additional 30%.

Aspect Mastery - Rank 1/1 - DPS increase for AotH & AotV
Aspect of the Viper - Reduces the damage penalty by 10%.

Aspect of the Monkey - Reduces the damage done to you while active by 5%.

Aspect of the Hawk - Increases the attack power bonus by 30%.

Unleashed Fury - Rank 5/5 - BM Staple Talent
Increases the damage done by your pets by 20%.

Improved Mend Pet - Rank 1/2 - With Spirit Bond = Less Mends and added healing from raid heals
Reduces the mana cost of your Mend Pet spell by 20% and gives the Mend Pet spell a 50% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the pet each tick.

Ferocity - Rank 5/5 - BM Staple Talent
Increases the critical strike chance of your pet by 10%.

Spirit Bond - Rank 2/2 - Huge Pet survivability Talent
While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 2% of total health every 10 sec., and increases healing done to you and your pet by 10%.

Intimidation - Rank 1/1 - BM Staple Talent
Command your pet to intimidate the target on the next successful melee attack, causing a high amount of threat and stunning the target for 3 sec.

Bestial Discipline - Rank 2/2 - BM Staple Talent
Increases the Focus regeneration of your pets by 100%.

Frenzy - Rank 4/5 - Same as post 3.0, since I am only 2/3 Cobra Strikes
Gives your pet a 60% chance to gain a 30% attack speed increase for 8 sec after dealing a critical strike.

Ferocious Inspiration - Rank 3/3 - BM Staple Talent
When your pet scores a critical hit, all party members have all damage increased by 3% for 10 sec.

Bestial Wrath - Rank 1/1 - BM Staple Talent
Send your pet into a rage causing 50% additional damage for 18 sec. While enraged, the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.

Serpent's Swiftness - Rank 5/5 - BM Staple Talent
Increases ranged combat attack speed by 20% and your pet's melee attack speed by 20%.

Longevity - Rank 2/3 - For level 70, 2 pts is enough to be a DPS gain and free up 1 pt
Reduces the cooldown of your Bestial Wrath, Intimidation and Pet Special Abilities by 20%.

The Beast Within - Rank 1/1 - BM Staple Talent
When your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing mana costs of all spells by 20% for 18 sec. While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.

Cobra Strikes - Rank 2/3 - 40% chance to proc & approx. 45% crit chance raid buffed
You have a 40% chance when you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Steady Shot or Kill Shot to cause your pet's next 2 special attacks to critically hit.

Kindred Spirits - Rank 5/5 - Huge DPS Gain
Increases your pet's damage by 20% and you and your pet's movement speed by 10% while your pet is active. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

Marksmanship (11 points)

Lethal Shots - Rank 5/5 - BM Staple Talent
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 5%.

Careful Aim - Rank 3/3 - DPS Gain @ 100%
Increases your ranged attack power by an amount equal to 100% of your total Intellect.

Mortal Shots - Rank 2/5 - 2 extra pts for 12% crit bonus, since hit capped via gear (no Focus Aim)
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your ranged abilities by 12%.

Go for the Throat - Rank ½ - ½ is all that is needed at the right crit to focus gen ratio… 35.5% crit unbuffed = plenty of focus
Your ranged critical hits cause your pet to generate 25 Focus.

NOTE: Kindred Spirits is an obvious DPS gain for a BM hunter as this talent scales well with Ferocity pets and Ferocity talent. IMO this talent should not be overlooked for a raiding hunter, since there really is not other talents to supplement the DPS loss.

For level 70 and having limited points to incorporate the new talent trees splitting Longevity and Cobra Strikes seemed as the best choice. 2/3 Longevity is enough of a reduction to allow 1-2 extra BWs per fight, but going 3/3 will take a point out of Cobra Strikes. IMO 3/3 Cobra Strikes is optimal, but since I am limited on talent points at 70 I am opting for 2/3 for a 40% chance to proc. This better than skipping Cobra Strikes all together.

Maxing Careful Aim is a point-for-point DPS gain overall. Mortal Shots is only going effect our Steady Shots (and Arcane Shots if worked into the rotation), so I dropped my 2 floating points in MS for at least a 12% crit bonus along with my Meta.

IMO 1 point is all that is needed in GFTT to sustain adequate focus gen to maintain pet specials consistently. I can only see going 2/2 GFTT if a hunter's crit is under 28% or so.

Invigoration is not a major concern for a level 70 raiding build, since A.) mana pools are much smaller atm and B.) raid replenishment is enough to sustain DPS before switching to AotV. These 2 points are better used else where, i.e. 2/3 Longevity.

Numbers have been thrown around to show that careful aim is one of the highest dps increases point for point in the early stages of any tree. Pretty much any spec should be picking it up, its just that good.

As for focused aim, the only fight I can think of it being useful for might be KJ because of firebloom. For anything at 70 it just seems like a dps loss since the fights really don't have that much aoe that is constantly hitting you and knocking you back, pre-nerf muru is really the only fight I can think of where this would have been extremely useful. You just don't have enough points to justify going for it.

On the topic of exotic pets, they're cool looking and fun, but if you're concerned with pve dps, you wont be picking this talent up theres just nothing to justify taking it over something else.

Your spec that you posted, is pretty much awful. I don't want to be overly rude but it is fairly offensive to look at. If you had read the 10 or so pages you've said you have read you most likely would have seen why I say your spec is so bad. Looking at the marks tree, theres absolutely no reason to go full mortal shots anymore, fill out careful aim and take the other 2 points and move them to the bm tree. Looking at your bm tree its fairly well put together, until you get down to invigoration and kindred spirits. Invigoration is a terrible talent, minimal amount of mana for 2 points that could be better spent in other areas. Kindred spirits is probably one of the larget dps increases you'll see for your spec. Taking points out of invigoration and a point out of spirit bond or imp mend pet, you then take put a point in longevity and drop the rest of your points into kindred spirits.

Now I know this puts you at a cookie cutter 49/12 and you might be able to go 50/11 depending on your crit rating but there is a reason why people call certain specs cookie cutter. They're standard because they're the best way to spend the available points.

Looks like mattaos beat me to it. Can you guess how bored I am not being able to get on and test this stuff in my current gear? /sigh hurry up blizz!

Anyway, mattaos, do you have anything concrete to support 2/3 long and cs and 1/2 gftt? It had seemed like it was set in stone that 1/3 long and 3/3 cs was the way to go with 2/2 gftt. I personally would love to be able to squeeze more points into longevity and Id also like to flesh out kindred spirits since I hate having unfinished talents, a little ocd coming out in me i guess. I just haven't seen anything to suggest one way or the other that one point allocation is better than another. Gogogogo OO version of the wotlk spreadsheet! /cry

While I realized that most people are putting Level 70 at 3.0 as synonymous with WotLK, I'm going to make a small attempt at steering this away from "spec's to raid with for a month", and see what bites on "WotLK leveling specs".

Thoughts on BM 51/10/0. It is very pet-oriented, forgoing 5/5 IAotH and 1/5 ET for 5/5 ET and 1/3 Thick Hide. 2/2 Pathfinding, 2/2 Spirit Bond and 1/5 Frenzy over 5/5 Frenzy. And 1/1 BM over anything in GftT. I'd be working the next 9 points to fill out GftT, Lethal Shots, Longevity and Frenzy. Next ding means level 80, so that's a respec before I even spend that last point.

What thoughts do you have for an MM leveling spec, and for a Survival leveling spec? What about pet choice? Still the staple Cat, or are there better choices out there to balance killing speed with survivability?

Anyone who is planning on specing BM have a revised shot macro that includes both Kill Command and Rabid? I was wondering what was the ideal way to position these abilities. Or is it better to put KC on a different Macro - but I don't think it's CD aligns well with anything else other than just spamming it with SS/AS macro. Any help appreciated. Thanks

I would disagree with this. Those 4 extra pet points are very useful for pvp dps as has been stated several times in this thread I believe, at least at level 70. They are less useful at 80.