We're talking about unbuffed at all (no WF on weapon, no WF and agil/str totems)? Or selfbuffed? If second is the case then I'm not suprised at all.
See - those 2 buffs - WF and agil/str totems give us (same for enha shammie) really big dps boost. And shammie's buffs cover a lot (half maybe?)of our needs leaving space only for Blessings/Wild/Int/Food/Scroll/LotP. That makes a lot of difference for us between unbuffed/selfbuffed and raidbuffed.

edit; forgot about few buffs but I think that my point is still viable.

@ Dssurge and other MM hunters: Which shots are you using in your rotation?

I used the following spec in SWP: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Not the most optimal spec I'm sure, but we got our first Muru kill by facerolling on our keyboard so it's not like it matters anymore.

Anyway, I was really not sure which skills I should use. I tried using Arcane, Aimed and Chimera shot whenever the cooldown was up, spamming Steady Shot in between. Eventually I gave up on Aimed Shot because things where a bit messy (loads of addons not working and I was missing some Arcane and Chimera shots). That said I really dont know if I should drop Arcane Shot as well or if I should get Aimed Shot back in there.

As for Marksman itself, I must say the new talents are somewhat underwhelming. By that I mean, Wild Quiver and Improved Steady Shot are 2 new talents that you barely notice. Maybe it takes some getting used to, but I never saw myself firing that extra Auto Shot, or getting that Steady Shot proc.

Also, with Carefull Aim, is Fletcher's Gloves of the Phoenix better then Gloves if Immortal Dusk?

Gloves if Immortal Dusk:

30 agility
2 red sockets
90 ap
30 crit
22 armor penetration

Fletcher's Gloves of the Phoenix
30 agility
25 intellect
2 yellow sockets
76ap
34 haste

So its 30 crit, 22 armor pen. and 2 red sockets -vs- 11 ap, 34 haste and 2 yellow sockets.

Not really sure which 1 wins out. Red sockets > yellow sockets and armor penetration is really good. That said I'm not sure how to evaluate haste.

Time to do some boring math I suppose but with the content massively nerfed it's seems somewhat pointless.

I almost cried, I'm just so sentimental.

Anywho. For Aspect of the Beast - I suppose it will keep it's non-tracking function, which I have been very fond of in BG's to be honest, and which I believe is slightly underrated - but I would also think that it will be very good for BM pets tanking, and with all the stacking of modifiers on our pets (now also on exotic pets) - perhaps it will be a better aspect for BM hunters than "dragonhawk".

If it is, that will feel odd but strangely in tune with being a BM hunter.

(oh, and I'm drooling at the prospect of having imp AotMonkey talents affect the new Dragonhawk, as well as using glyph of aspect of the monkey, combined with glyph of TBW and glyph of disengage for pvp at 80)

Haste simply doesn't as well in a raid situation because we get so much from auras and procs, and we're hindered by the GCD on Steady Shot. Stick with Gloves of Immortal Dusk even if you have Careful Aim.

The only haste cap that exists now is the 1.5s steady cast soft-cap, obtainable with 16% haste + quiver (untalented wf totem haste). After that value haste scales linearly (almost, procs throw it off a little), if adding 100 haste adds 50 dps, adding another 100 haste adds another 50 dps, and this applies up to unachievable amounts of haste rating even taking into account drums, rapidfire and bloodlust.

In short, more haste = better than, but assuming a wf-dropping shaman or imp icy talons DK, AP, Agi, Int, Crit and ArP are all better than haste.

Hello everyone.

I would like to inquire about several issues I have encountered. Yes i've read the discussions on this thread, and am quite a persistant reader of it, however, I felt I should ask what's on my mind.

1.Rabid.

Seems logical indeed binding this ability to the Steady Shot macro and such. It may sound silly, but it annoyed me nevertheless, it breaks Prowl as soon as I wish to shoot a creature and I would like my cat to enjoy the first strike out of Prowl.
Now, obviously the "Solution" is not to shoot untill the pet reaches the creature, hits it and then press the macro /shot / whatever, but that is -not- what I wish for realy.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm more than happy to hear.

2.Shots clipped?

Now that the so-called Autoshot clipping phenomenon is claimed to be gone, I wonder more than ever what would be the difference between myself and the next BM Hunter, afterall, we can both spam Steady-Shot freely even though he could not weave shots properly before the patch and I could, for example.

Most of the time it was my tool of indication seeing which Hunters can play their class and which cannot.
On that note I am bound to ask, seeing the Steady-Shot is still the most mana efficient one there is, spamming it -only- (as a BM Hunter, of course): Is it still the wisest thing to do? (Multi can be considered in between, I suppose if we're talking about trash mobs and Arcane/Serpent only when forced to move, but you get the point)

3.Bugged abilities / tooltips.

-Wingclip is now 50% it seems, I'm more than sure it was 60%.
-Cobra Reflexes' text has bizzare figures in it (at the pet's talent tree), is the ability bugged or simply the text?
-Deterrance's tooltip does not say anything about the 60% magical resist it was meant to have aswell. Am I mistaken or wrong to think it should have that? Has anyone tested?

4.Aspects.

Last but not least (bear with me, but I do have alot on my mind, hehe).
The "Dragonhawk" aspect seems very nice, I do hope they will consider merging the Beast one and the Wild one, so we can at least get some benefit to our damage whilst being asked to "give up" our aspect for the sake of some resistance buff. It will also make our action bars less crowded, perhaps.

Any thoughts , ideas or solutions regarding the main issues I presented are most welcome.
I deeply apologise in advence for any spelling mistakes I've made.

Thank you.

1. If you are questing and using prowl in this regard then you could just switch rapid onto autocast as it will be targetted. This is probably likewise for PvP. Most people target pets when they see them.

2. Steady shot spam is the way to go for single target mobs. If there are a few mobs to be hitting then our new and improved volley is the way forward (mine was critting regularly for ~1600, that's per second on each target. When glyph of steady shot comes out you'll also want to lay serpent stings down. Serpent is also good if you need to viper up.

3. Wingclip: they altered it down to 50% I beleive. Cobra Strikes: Just a typo on the code for the talent tree, the skill works fine. Deterrance: Blizzard decided it was too powerful and took the spell reduction away, you probably saw the updates in the patch notes when you updated on Tuesday but Blizzard aren't the best for keeping their patch notes up to date.

4. I still beleive the jury is out on AotB. The couple of pieces or theorycrafting we have seen have failed to encorperate the AP and DPS potential of a BM pet with > 30% BW uptime and buffed to the nines. They tend only to look at the contribution from the hunter. If anyone out there is interested in making a really comprehensive formula for AotB v AotDH that'd be awesome. Not to slant anyone who has laid down some basic numbers, they themselves have admitted it's not the full picture.

While fighting through extremely laggy servers last night, we raided BT kind-of as a mod and new talent check. Though we were never in the raid at the same time, a fellow hunter whom I share an identical spec and very similar gear showed nearly 800 dps higher than me (recount data). We were trying to figure it out and the only real difference we could come up with was he was using the old "3:2" macro spam, and I was using a macro posted a couple pages back in this thread.

Our gear is essentially identical, though he has DST and I use the BT Exalted trinket. Our spec is identical. With no more shot clipping to foul up a rotation does anyone have any ideas why there would be such a large deficit in DPS, on my part?

He was around 2800dps, I was around 2000.

Does anyone know of a mod that'll flash/pop up a message when Lock'n'Load procs? My buff bars tend to be on the small side, and in the middle of a raid its not always easy to discern between Lock'n'Load and the million other procs I get. I was hoping it'd be part of the Blizzard default "reactive abilities" but I guess not.

Power Auras

It can be used to track buffs / debuffs / cooldowns etc. and you associate them with a visual representation on the screen. It's going to be a might might add on with the way LK is going.

Is anyone else having any problems with claw or bite spam "locking out" longer CD pet abilities? In extensive testing last night, I was finding that scorpid poison or rake were both being delayed, sometimes to the point of falling off despite longevity, while the pet continued to happily use its gcds to spam claw. I had to start turning claw autocast off and then back on to ensure scorpid/rake re-application.

In other news, unbuffed dps looks to mirror Shand's spreadsheet values incredibly closely, with the greatest variances observed in pet dps (almost certainly explained by the poor uptime of the "long" cooldown abilities due to the problem I note above), and in MM and SV spec personal dps (which I blame on myself, because my execution of their rotations were far from perfect.)

Oh, and yes, Scorpids are the highest dps pets, hands down. Scorpid was checking in at approximately 250 dps as SV, 300 dps as MM, and 590-630 dps as BM, depending on Long/CS/KS/GftT distribution. Cat was averaging 230-250 as MM and 500-530 as BM (did not bother testing cat as SV.) Wolf, Owl, and Winged Serpent pets were markedly inferior to both, as you might expect, though furious howl did have a noticeable increase on hunter personal dps (too bad it won't work in raids.)

Strangely, after spending about 300g on re-specs, I could not find a statistically significant difference in dps between heavy longevity, heavy cobra strikes, and split longevity/cobra strikes, or between 5/5 KS + 1/2 GFtT and 4/5 KS and 2/2 GftT. CS didn't seem to proc all that often no matter how many points I put into it, and longevity seemed to be largely unhelpful due to the problems with pet special uptime, so I hesitate to apply these conclusions to anyone not experiencing the same problems.

Wearing 4-piece t6 and assorted BT gear, I found BM and MM dps to be pretty similar (1600-1700 averages for BM, 1550-1600 averages for MM), especially accounting for my fat-fingered errors in manually executing the MM rotation (BM rotation was pure steady spam, MM was Chimera/Steady with scorpid applied. I was frequently late with my Chimeras.) SV blew chunks, averaging around 1400-1430 dps, though admittedly there was more error in execution with SV (manually watching for LnL, manually maintaining sting, and late explosive shots.) This is in line with expectations as per Shand's sheet, so I'm feeling confident that we have a pretty good community tool there (thanks Shand!)

Test cycles were approximately 10 minutes long, by which time dps had become pretty stable, even accounting for viper cycles. At least 2 cycles were run per spec/pet combo.

Note that all of these results were UNBUFFED. They don't speak to the impact of raid buffs, especially mana-giveback; I found BM to need viper the most, since I was talented into efficiency/rapid recup in deep MM. SV was so mana efficient it was just silly.

@dssurge re-Volley
I think the aoe-cap was removed for all spells and abilities. Volley is indeed amazing and led to some (with the addition of more aoe from others) ridiculous trash clears in Hyjal. It's to the point where I think multi-shot has become very limited to situational use.

The wasp analysis is not very productive... Do you have any data to supplement this claim?

Thank you for the tips Asmolicious, just one tiny thing - I could not understand what you meant in answer number 1.

The issue I spoke of was Rabid, not Rapid (fire), and it was in regards of a boss fight. I wish to 'squeeze' out the Prowl initial strike when I send the pet to the boss, however, naturally I wish to shoot at the boss at same time (the first arrow/bullet usually hits the boss before the pet reaches there, especially when prowling.)

So the main problem was the fact that Rabid is bound to the shot macro triggers it as soon as I shoot , which also means the pet not only breaks it's own Prowl and run to the boss but also loses valuable time having the Rabid buff on it while not realy striking the boss (untill reached, of course) - loss of dps.

Any possible solution to this other than simply ignore Prowl and the "dead" time with the buff the pet spends moving towards the mob? Perhaps some timer condition can be put inside the macro when activating Rabid?

*Puzzled*

Misdirection has a 30 second cd now.

Mentioned shaman is full T6 like me. AotV can regen amazingly quick what you want, but we always go oom in 1.10 sec using only a SS spam rotation. This is really boring, cause we cant manage our boorst ability with this broken rotation Hawk-Viper. I'm really sad about actual state of our class, I see the "utility" class going to beat us, like mage and other pure dps class, with NO mana issue and useful raid-utility.
I've waited during ALL insane nerf we have caught, I see each class pimped in xpack (Mage and Pala now OP), but ALSO in PvE, our last dreamland, I cant manage this, seriously thinking a reroll.

He just typed skill's name wrongly.
Prowl is bad for dps/raids - in time cat needs to get close to the target it would already dps for 2-3 seconds meaning that gain from prowl's first attack isn't worth the effort. Prowl is better as pvp/soloing tool, if anything.

Hunt: what kind of dodge and resist rates were you seeing? Against a level 70 training dummy with claw turned off, I only lost the stack one time in 10 minutes. (On the other hand, I lost the stack all the bloody time with claw turned on, see my post above.)

Edit: stupid question, but did you have growl or cower turned on in your spellbook? I borked some of my early tests because I forgot to de-activate those, eating pet GCDs/focus.

Unfortunately my WWS seems to be worthless, so I can't get numbers. When I was looking at recount, though, nothing seemed unusual, it was the 5-10% rate you'd expect. Maybe I need to get a bigger sample with claw turned off the whole time.

Edit: No, I even had them both on my bar turned off - to try to avoid the bug where they turn themselves back on.

Forgive me if this isn't the correct thread in which to bring this up, but I noticed an old bug possibly rearing it's head again. Last night I did heroic Mech with a few guildies, just testing our new talents etc. I noticed that as soon as the current target was down, I automatically targeted and started attacking the mob nearest to it. Not very nice, particularly with cc'd mobs.

I also use a castsequence reset macro if I'm assigned a mob to trap, the second line of which is /stopcasting. Last night however, I didn't stop firing and thus managed to break one or two of my own traps.

Any feedback much appreciated.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

I was referring to Rabid, rapid was a typo. I was suggesting that you remove Rabid cast from your steady shot macro and set it to autocast if you were not wanting to break prowl. One assumes you would only use prowl if you were questing or PvPing. Rabid will fire if your pet is being targeted which is very likely in both of those situations.

If, however, you are talking in a raid setting. One would argue that the speed reduction from prowl is worth 1-2 hits which more than cancels out any bonus damage from the prowl in the first place.

In discussing my infraction for bringing up the exact same question, I dug up the following posts that might help at least a little:

First of all, it should be mentioned that any theorycrafting of Cobra Strikes prior to a month or so ago has been invalidated because it was nerfed:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...98/#post889050

Also, this post implies that there is no actual test data prior to that time on the effectiveness of longevity:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...00/#post889973

There's a lot of theorycraft about Longevity itself, but besides not being discussed in comparison to Cobra Strikes, it is irrelevant to the context of level 70 raiding in 3.0.2 because it is framed in the context of post-WotLK (either because is is in relation to the Bestial Wrath glyph that requires Northrend herbs, or Readiness which requires level 80 in order to be obtained at the same time as Longevity and CS).

The most relevant couple of posts I could find prior to my query suggests that talent choice should be weighted towards Cobra Strikes:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...47/#post927052
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...60/#post933248

It was also pointed out to me that I missed a related post that offers some numbers on CS:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...60/#post933334

Even more notable is that in a later post, someone else proposes the exact opposite position:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...63/#post934947

In the following post, the third option of 2/3 Longevity and 2/3 CS is suggested:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...64/#post935930

Here, however, the previously linked poster's choice was questioned and a confusingly oblique reference was made to the discussion being "set in stone" despite the lack of evident coherent discussion or stated opinions on the subject:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...64/#post935937


So far the only convincing related argument I've seen is that 2/2 Longevity is a no-no if you have a cat pet because the resulting Rake cooldown will stomp on the DoT ticks.

Personally I've specced 1/3 Longevity and 3/3 CS to start. CS seems to proc just enough to be up almost all the time. Longevity's effect on TBW's cooldown is unattractive at 70 because the 5 minute Rapid Fire cooldown and lack of access to the BW glyph make lining up of cooldowns less feasible. I wouldn't discount the effect of Longevity on pet cooldowns though.

Disclaimer: I'm assuming you're asking in the context of level 70 specs, as I was. If not then there's a ton of discussion on Longevity at 80 with Readiness, glyphs, etc.

I've seen some posts in regards to Pet Auto Casts, but none of them have proposed a solution. In SWP last night, i had claw, rabid, and rake all on autocast. I had plenty of focus then entire time, but the rabid and the rake were having problems casting. I checked my combat logs and they were indeed not casting. Anyone have any solutions for this?