Griffen

A hunter, Zmeyda, raised a consern on the EU hunter forums that I don't remember being adressed in this thread (I've read it for at least a month):
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> [Concern] Hunters need spell penetration?

Anyone have an idea of how much of a problem this is? And if the partial resists would be reduced by spell penetration? (should perhaps arp and spell penetration be merged then?)

Edit: I know our +hit also affect spell +hit, but does this affect the partial resist problem? Also, if it does, it was mentioned that more rating was required for spell +hit than 'normal' +hit to be hit capped, is this correct?

Numquam catapultas allice, iram omnium concitabis

 

Equalizer

I've never heard of casters gearing for spell pen, as long as spell hit was capped they were fine. And as far as I know +hit is +hit now, so by that we shouldn't be having issues.

 

Vegelus

Yes, bosses (or rather mobs) have around 5-6% dodge rate by default (don't remember exact value). Even when attacking them from behind. That's why expertise is important for melee. Parry may occure only when fighting in front of mob - that's why tanks want more expertise - to minimalise chances of being insta-gibbed by parry/white/special combos. Parry chance varies and it's one of the stats used to tune encounters.

Expertise needed for melee is ~23 (so called soft cap) - to remove dodged attacks. For parries (only for tanks, so not important in our case) it may be even 56-56 expertise.

 

Rane

Game Masters will remove it for you if you ask them nicely. Next patch should have the option to abandon/remove them from the stables right away.

 

◊ Dravous

The blizz tool tip doesn't change to reflect any shot speed increases, not even a quiver/ammo pouch. If you would like to check how haste is effecting you, there are a few addons you can get. However I would highly recommend quartz. It has the standard cast bar with cast time ticking, but lists the total cast time of whatever your casting, accurately to as many as 3 decimal places if you want. It also has an auto-shot "swing" timer that does the same thing. I've found it very helpful in determining how various haste buffs/gear are actually effecting my shots.

 

Zeuxis

Griffen: Well, now that hit rating is just hit, and not divided between spell and physical hit, that takes some of the wind out of the sails of this argument. You should be carting around about 9 percent hit anyway, and then you should be benefitting from any raid buffed spell hit (buffs can apply to just spell hit, as opposed to hit rating, which applies to both) and boss-debuff spell hit. Throw in earth and moon or curse of elements... and, uh, what was the problem again?

The MM hunters in my raid have reported little-to-no resist issue, but I'll double check. Frankly, I don't see it being much of a problem, but I could be wrong.

Edit: (Response to your edit)... spell penetration would, in theory, help with partial resists, yes. I'm pretty sure that there's absolutely no reason to stack spell pen unless you're trying to do something silly like use explosive shot on supremus or chimera shot on something nature-y; casters certainly don't. Curse of Elements should provide all the spellpen you need to make partial resists relatively negligible; if it's not, something is wrong. I suspect the original poster was raiding in an environment without it.

 

Uglychick

Ok, i'm confused here. Call me n00b but: on the day of the patch, you could find on wowhead Glyph of BW. When I asked inscriptioner in my guild to make one for me, the answer was:don't have it, and I have all the major glyphs. Conclusion: Glyph of BW will be available after WOTLK. Is this true or not? 'cause, if you browse the wowhead now, there is now Glyph of BW listed.
All of this make my life miserable when it comes to macros. Although i put 3/3 in Long, BW is still on 1,4min CD, so I cant combine it with KC. Temporarily i put KC together with Rabid and SS in one macro.

So we now have:

BW on 1,4min CD (if 3/3 long)
KC on 1 min CD
Trinkets (whatever) on 3 min CD
Rapid fire on 5 min CD (cause I couldn't put 2 points in rapid killing, I needed 3/3carefull aim)-just to clear, I used to combine trinket with rapid fire in one macro, i had 2/2 in rapid killing.

Since I cant combine anything with anything I might as well single spam all abilities, beside SS.

Any ideas about useful macros? I'm sorry if someone already asked the same or similar question, I tried to read everything but its like 200 pages...Maybe I've missed something.

Thank's for help!

greets to all posters!

 

Griffen

I suppose that's why I've not seen it discussed either I'm unfortunately not very up to date on spell mechanics so just wanted to bring it up for feedback

Numquam catapultas allice, iram omnium concitabis

 

Osse

This might be old but I'll post it anyway.

Now I understand that majority of the hunter class playerbase will choose the cuter or better looking pet over an ugly one with slightly higher dps but the design just seems bizarre to me. No other class requires days or even weeks worth of camping in order to min max their character.

 

Griffen

I'm surprised if they let it do the best dps of pets in the game. Making it be actually rare should be enough of a trophy.

Numquam catapultas allice, iram omnium concitabis

 

Zeuxis

Actually, I'm re-thinking my position on this.

Spell pen never used to be an issue because curse of elements was always up.

In many raids, CoEl is probably going to be "replaced" by earth and moon, since it provides the same or better damage benefit, and happens naturally as part of the boomkin's damage-dealing. E&M, however, does not reduce resistances like CoEl does.

I'm wondering if in the process of transitioning to only using damage-dealing curses, raids are inadvertently upping their partial resist rates. I'm talking it over with the warlock/druid gurus in my guild. Contrary to my initially dismissive reaction, you may be on to something here.

 

Melkunie

I leveled a Orc female to 80 for WoTLK to min max my class(which might not happen in the end due to achievement system and legendary) so for me it's a given i will camp this pet like there is no tomorrow if he really gives the most DPS.

Weird choice indeed, considering day 1 hunter's know how often certain rare pet's got nerfed just to make them...standard.

 

Trigun

Question is does being lvl 80 with Loque’nahak trump having readiness?

 

huntcaudata

I'm trying to piece together what a macro (as in large or all-encompassing, not automatic button stuff) rotation for MM will look like, i.e. when should trinkets, rapid fire, and kill command be used. What I'm doing now is popping rapid fire and Kill Command with my "big" trinket, assuming that the AP buff from the trinket transfers to the pet. After that (which can be done almost immediately, given new tank threat shenanigans), I simply re-use them on cooldown, substituting my "little" trinket for the second kill command. I've got a ton of questions around whether this is the right thing to do, though.

1) Do trinket and/or proc buffs transfer to pet AP scaling?
2) If Serpent sting is put up under an AP buff, does it stay at that strength when refreshed by Chimera?
3) What about Scorpid poison?
4) What does Kill Command do to Scorpid poison?
5) When should readiness be used?
6) Would it be better, as some have suggested, to use rapid fire under AotV?

If these aren't commonly held knowledge, I suppose I'll get to testing them.

 

Mattaos

This will be a tougher question to answer until the exotic pet buff patch is active and hard testing can be due to determine the increase in DPS the 51 point BM talent will provide. At first glance, it seems that Readiness spec (50/21/0) is a strong contender to be the raiding spec of choice, but again it is too early to claim "cookie-cutter" or best spec for level 80 imo. I guess some numbers can be threoycrafted to speculate a potential outcome using Blizz's numbers posted for pet changes from the upcoming patch notes, which if I am not mistaken is the current build on beta atm?

EDIT: fix wording

EDIT: Actually, re-read the original question and it should probably be more like ... "Does being level 80 with Beast Mastery trump having readiness?" It was already stated by GC in his post over the weekend in response to the cry for a lower spawn rate that Loque'nahak's DPS is not any better than any other (exotic) pet currently in game.

 

Mattaos

It would not be wise to macro in Serpent Sting at all since it is an instant cast spell with a 15 sec duration. You would be refreshing your sting every GCD and wasting loads of mana in the process. Serpent Sting is going to end up being a mandatory shot to work into a rotation once the Glyph of Steady shot is available post-WotLK. Letting the ticks go for the max duration possible before manually refreshing (for BM and SV) would prove the most mana efficient method.

It still seems a lot of hunters are still fishing for a 1 button spam macro for WotLK. Currently, rabid is being macro'd in merely to offset the current pet AI that will not use Rabid unless the pet is being attacked, which is being fixed in a future patch. Kill Command macro'd in with BW from a 3/3 Longevity (and BW glyph) BM hunter makes sense to reduce on keybind bloat and to max pet DPS under the BW effects. The forecast at this point for WotLK doesn't show any truly effective 1 button macro spamming macro config, except to spam Steady Shot as a BM hunter. Can any current beta testers provide any rebuttal on this?

EDIT: Fix wording

 

Elinga

I don't remember seeing anything about this in the last 20 pages or so, so if I'm asking again... my appologies!

Does the hit percentage from Careful Aim apply to pets? the guild's BM hunter and I were discussing how viable it would end up being for someone to take at 80 when they had more points to spread around. Her biggest concern was that she needs her pet hit-capped, and if she takes 3% of her hit from a talent would her pet still get it?

 

Mattaos

This actually an interesting concept in light of the recent change to AotV. Some factors to consider would be time to oom and amount of replenishment effects in your raid. Using Rapid Fire (with a AP trinket also maybe) while under AotV could be a boost to combat the nerf PvE received with the AotV change. Someone reported on the beta forums that they noticed almost a 50% reduction in the amount of time spent in AotV. Though this "test" they did was on a test dummy and self buffed, which is not nearly the same as raid buffed.

For BM at least, haste is not critical stat by any means so the hasted effect from Rapid Fire could be used to our advantage to get out of AotV as fast as possible and slightly offset the lose of DPS. Figure if Rapid Killing is taken Rapid Fire will be available every 3 min. (same CD as AP trinkets), but is also is hard to theorize or test since JoW is still apparently broken...no one runs oom atm.

 

Mattaos

It was tested several pages back that Focused Aim does in fact effect our pets hit. Looking at the stats and reports from beta testers at level 80 that Focused Aim is a good investment for early raiding. Hit does not seem to be readily available at 80 to offset the huge scaling from 70 to 80. Also note that Animal Handler has been changed to grant 10 expertise (2/2), which a nice boost to combat dodge or even the occasional parry 9if not attacking from behind).

Focused Aim seems like a decent point investment to allow for better itemization at 80. This way we are not sacrificing other valuable stats just to stack hit from less optimal item choices. Of course, this is based on the items being linked via wowhead.com and mmo-champion.com to be more "haste happy" than "hit happy."

 

TMoe

Dont know if it has been posted here, but on the Topic of partial resists:
Every Boss in the Game has a 6% Chance to partially resist Spells, fix. You cant work against it with Spell Penetration, this 6% are always there.

 

Kwellthân

I have read the past 20 pages, done my spreadsheet and thought I was ready to blast everything away but this is what happened:

Last night we downed KJ (for the first time - with nerf man that's an empty feeling) and went BT afterwards and as a bm I only won on council with a scorpion :-/

My shotmacro:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Scorpid Poison
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Claw
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

My "boostmacro":

/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/use Berserker's Call

My build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

WWS:
Wow Web Stats

I had Scorpid poison and claw on auto and didn't notice any problems in that category until I saw our wws- my pet dps stinks and mine isn't that imba either. Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?

oh btw I do dkp thats why my dps is so low on trash and why I missed Supremus (the gate closes on encounter)

 

Mattaos

One question I do have that I have not been able to fully understand is the reason for macroing in both Scorpid Sting and Claw while having both on Autocast? I have been using a cat, so I don't have experience with the Scorpid 3.0. It would seem to me that having both mechanics macro to /cast on top of each other might be actually causing a delay in the cast of both. Your Autos were critting 54% of the time, which should be providing plenty of focus gen even at 1/2 GFTT to leave both un-macro'd or least to leave Claw to fire on its own. I looked mainly at your Gorefiend kill, since it is the best depiction of a steady DPS race.

Did you notice any delay in your Steady Shots with this macro?

You might also notice a net gain in DPS by taking 3 points out of Mortal Shots and taking 3/3 Careful Aim, which has been covered several pages back already. Looking at your Mother kill you were critting 40% with Autos and only 30% with Steady (just use this as an example). Since, Mortal Shots is only effecting specials you are not gaining as much benefit from Mortal Shots in this case. 3/3 Careful Aim (not knowing how much Int you have, but assuming it is on par with most T6/SWP hunters) would have increased your avg Auto dmg per shot (including Auto crits) more than the bonus you gained from your Steady crits....especially for the short fight durations reflected on your WWS.

Also, grats on the KJ kill

EDIT: Additional thoughts added

 

Rabid Rob

I've been stuck playing a lock for TBC, and I can tell you that the amount of spell pen you need is actually quite small. In TK around Void Reaver, with the cloak spell pen enchant I didn't get early banishes breaking, but with a stamina cloak instead (damn those saws) I sure did. CoE should also make this pretty much a non-issue, as someone else mentioned, but locks are moving away from doing that if there's a boomkin present - which is fairly likely given their superb dps level now. IIRC 2 spell pen gems should do about the same thing, so it might be interesting to test on lvl 80 boss dummy to see if there is a change, but the damage breakdowns I've seen make me think it won't be a useful amount. OTOH, if spell pen translated to pets caster effects, that would just make the scorpid more awesome, but I'm positive it doesn't since useful don't get transferred to our pets except for a handpicked few.

 

RSkillz

TY for your answer, I appreciate it!

The reason why "I" am looking for a macro solution is because I hate watching at cd bars for my shots and most important it totally ruins my awareness to the rest of the group. In a big raid I could live with it but in a 5 man heroic I find it important to be aware of the rest of the group so I can help out anyone at any time. It's the way I like to play.

 

Kwellthân

No I did not notice any delays in my SS using this macro but thx for the tip with carefull aim. Also I dropped the point in spirit bong and placed in longlivity. Might have to change some CS to longlivity as well although spreadsheet doesn't like that idea.
New build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I noticed on a target dummy that by switching scorpid poison off auto it didn't apply it at all though it was in my macro....weird :-/

oh btw my pet has the following build but can't see that much dpsmath in it that could go wrong :-) Pet Calculator - Wowhead