KraxisSingular

Ok... unless the next level of bosses last vastly longer or burn mana it seems you ended up with enough mana to last you in most cases. But not really enough to take one or both points from Invigoration. However, one point could be enough in that the uptime for Viper could be made up for by the extra talent point somewhere. It is just where? Imp Tracking? Not really a great option (around 0.5% DPS on trackable bosses).

So it seems Invigoration is just shy of manadatory.

 

Bainik

So I decided to do some testing in the spreadsheet on AotH/AotB (assuming talented IAotH and their respective glyphs). I loaded the level 80 BM profile's gear and then changed the main hand to Custom Main Hand. I then proceeded to test setting the values for +AP and agility on the Custom Main Hand to very large values so as to see if there even would be a break point where AotH fell behind AotB and surprisingly even with values over 10,000 in either slot AotH was always higher. Maybe the haste from the glyph and IAotH scales better than we thought at 80?

 

Esoth

To borrow Mikari's WWS for second, I find the boss fight mana regen more interesting than looking at the entire night. Patchwerk for instance: http://wowwebstats.com/cd1z5o4tjq1hc...85-80566#buffs Invigoration is giving back about the same as judgment of wisdom. It's a short fight, but a fight like that should show a consistency in mana regeneration that will scale with the length of the fight. We're looking at about 200 mp5 (averaged for the fight) for JoW and invigoration each. 200 mp5 is a rough figure for what we were seeing from JoW at level 70 - so it hasn't kept up quite as well, but as a whole, that's a decent amount of mana for a fight where we are just standing still and shooting.

Edit: invigoration and JoW seem to be ticking for about the same, so that would explain why the numbers are so close on these fights. Since JoW is still (afaik) far and away our best method of mana regen, this makes invigoration look very promising.

 

Saladin

There's a very logical explanation for this phenomenon, my friend!

Judgement of Wisdom
Unleashes the energy of a Seal spell to judge an enemy, giving each attack a chance to restore 1% of the attacker's maximum mana. Refer to individual Seals for additional Judgement effect. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

Invigoration
When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you have a 100% chance to instantly regenerate 1% mana.

In other words, the reason JoW returns the same amount of mana as Invigoration is because...well, they're exactly the same amount of mana.

BUT! Here's the really sexy part. Judgement of Wisdom has a 4-second ICD, which means at most you can only gain 1% of your mana every 4 seconds relying on JoW. And that's in a completely theoretical, perfect setting that we are very unlikely to reach given that the proc rate has been cut in half.

Invigoration, on the other hand, has absolutely no cooldowns apart from the 1.5 (1.25 some are claiming) pet GCD. That means if your pet crits with Claw 2 times in a row, i.e. a Cobra Strikes proc, you gain 2% of your maximum mana in a 3-second window. Meanwhile, JoW can only provide 1% of your maximum mana in a 4-second window.

Furthermore, Invigoration is completely hunter-contained and independent of having other classes in the raid. Yes in 25-mans we're guarantee'd a JoW, but it's completely conceivable to field a 10-man raid with 0 paladins. Put simply, JoW is not a given on every fight. Your pet is; assuming you can keep it alive that is.

So what we end up with is comparing two roughly equal sources of mana regeneration. JoW scales with haste (more attacks = more procs), and is limited by a 4-second cooldown opportunity cost. Invigoration scales with crit (more crits = more CS procs), and has no internal cooldown. As a matter of fact, in the case of AOE pets like bears and gorillas, CS will guarantee a multi-crit on their AOE attacks, which results in up to 3% mana return with a bear and x-number-of-mobs-% mana return with a gorilla.

This leads me to conclude that JoW is, at best, equal to Invigoration's value as a mana regen mechanic--and at worst, less than Invigoration. As critical as JoW is, that should serve to demonstrate how critical this talent is for raiding. I don't anticipate any BM hunter being able to bypass this source of mana for the foreseeable endgame future.

EDIT: Formatting.

 

Shandara

@Saladin:
JoW Was changed a few builds ago to have NO internal cooldown and a reduce proc chance (currently believed to be 25%).
So it's on a roughly equal footing with Invigoration. The only difference with invigoration is that it gets worse or better with less and more raid buffs on you and the pet (those increasing crit chance).

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

KraxisSingular

Problem is that you only assume scaling with your AP.

The reason Beast would do more would be buffs. Battle Shout, Kings, TSA, GotW, petfood (stacks with scrolls?), whatever that puts Strength or AP on your pet directly. That is more than 4 times more efficent than boost the pet AP through your own gear (22% scaling). It isn't even that hard to get 2k AP for pets now, 10% of that is pretty crazy for a permanent boost.

Beast might very well be better in early raiding for BM. Perhaps later with good enouh gear it is better to just go with Hawk again. We'll see I guess, as it seems we are having a hard time predicting the results of this.

 

ElginRoko

I think people are underestimating MM's soloing potential, there's a classic hunter technique which MM is incredibly good at, kiting. I've just finished levelling my hunter for WotLK, having done the entirity of outland as MM post 3.0.2. Kiting using chimera and keeping a serpent sting up does an insane amount of damage, I soloed Arrazius the Cruel at level 63 (tried it before, but needed 63 for the aggro radius reduction) and he dropped on the edge of the pools of aggonar. Chimera refreshing serpent every 10s actually a pretty big hunk of damage, everything i've kited has gone down very quickly.

This is something that can swing both ways of course, I had to resort to distracting shot-trapping the bird from the jump-o-tron quest in nagrand because it was too fast to kite and I couldn't heal my pet (gorilla with blood of the rhino) fast enough, I'm sure a BM hunter would've had no trouble with that, and would've finished it off much faster to boot.

My guess is that BM will have better soloing capabilities for the 2-man quests, but MM will come up trumps when you have to kite.

For insurance reasons. Yes. That, and for freedom.

 

Saladin

Actually, I don't think anyone has questioned the killing power of MM, as it is indeed a very powerful spec right now. The thing that people are wondering is if it can beat the endless mana / endless killing perpetual motion machines that are Survival and BM. Survival and BM have a ton of longevity and most of their damage is direct, to boot. Marksman throughout beta has had the most severe mana issues, and a large portion of its damage comes from "setup sources"--that is, you have to place a dot on your target before you can even use your primary shot. As opposed to mindless SS-spamming as BM and Arc/Explosive Shot with SV, which require no setup. On mobs that die (or should die) in a matter of seconds, you really don't want to have to set up combos one by one.

Furthermore, kiting is also perfectly capable as a BM hunter (and Balance druid) from personal experience. Oh how many hours I've spent giggling my butt off as I kited packs of the elite Wrathguards from the Dark Portal to Honor Hold to annihilate the town... But that's neither here nor there. I believe we've concluded that every spec is viable to level with provided you work out your own little groove for how to play to its strengths and minimize its weaknesses (MM's setup time, BM's Viper dependency, SV's damage).

 

Sebudai

I'm not sure how MM with Rapid Recuperation could be worse than BM or Survival in a soloing environment as far as mana efficiency is concerned. I rarely drop below 90% mana when I'm grinding mobs that proc RR currently.

 

TrevvyTrev

One way to "split the difference" so to speak would be to switch to Aspect of the Beast when you activate Bestial Wrath. With aspects having a separate GCD, you can activate both at once. With BW/TBW giving the pet a 50% boost and only a 10% boost for the hunter, a fully buffed pet should gain more during BW from being in AotB than the hunter would lose. When AotB fades, you can switch back, which again benefts from the fact that there's a separate GCD and you won't have to lose specials from your rotation. I've been experimenting with this approach to get the timing down, and eventually hope to crunch some numbers to see if practice matches theory.

 

Grigorim

It is assumed that there is not supposed to be an ICD on JoW, but since the change you mentioned some analysis of proc rates in the Ret Pally Theorycrafting thread has strongly hinted that the 4 second ICD is back. Is your assertion based on testing that contradicts this, or are you simply assuming such?

 

Ele

I'm just too accustomed to BM and don't mind if I have to spend a few seconds in Viper every now and then (with the last change I do it when moving from a camp of mobs to another, the passive regen is quite good).

The hunter class is just a non-stopping grinding machine, few classes can match its raw killing power and efficiency, no matter the spec. The thing that slowed me down the most since last patch, believe it or not, is ammo consumption, but I tend to keep a few engineering crafted arrow boxes on me now to reduce that downtime as well. I just wish I had 50 slots bags to hold all the cash loot I find.

My choice for levelling is to have the toughest possible pet (Gorilla): I pick the 9% extra dodge over 3% extra damage of FI, because I can literally ignore any adds up to a total of 6 mobs and I'm confident my pet will survive them all.
Raiding is a different story of course, but for levelling, one brick of a pet makes my life so easy that I can easily shrug off my slightly lower dps.

 

Shandara

Hmm, I based the conclusion on a combatlog, but I can't find it at the moment. This was also a build ago so it's not unlikely it has changed (yet again). I'll have to find a paladin and test it a bit.

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

ElginRoko

I do, and did all the way between 60 and 70 as MM. There's a very good reason for this, which is that my gear is pap, mostly quest blues and greens or stalker's chain, and as such has very little intellect (about 180 ATM). But that's the unfortunate nature of the gear you get while levelling up, it's low ilevel greens mostly, typically only carrying 3 stats, and intellect is generally considered secondary among the available stats. Now, post 3.0.2 levelling as a hunter does suffer from the fact that you only get new ranks of your main damage spells after 67, and the first tbc rank of pre-tbc spells comes with a 25% mana cost reduction. The only one of these that's normally used in a dps cycle is serpent sting though. during chain kills I was finding I had to pet-tank-and-viper one in every 4 mobs or so. That however, was before they changed AotV to be partially passive. Now the only time I attack a mob with viper active is when I forget to switch to hawk before a pull :P

You'll still be breezing through mobs without thinking about viper for the low 70s, but I'd guess you'll want to start thinking about switching to viper between kills at around 76 when your standard green quest reward becomes comparable to the high level epix I suspect you're toting right now

My point was that people seemed to be stating that BM was always the best choice for soloing group quests, but that's only true if the pet can stay up with just mend pet. Otherwise, if you have to resort to kiting, MM > SV > BM

Also, on MM's setup time, it's a GCD right after you've used to pull with steady, and a tick of serpent + the chimera sting is much more damage than youd've got putting a steady there. I can see where you're coming from with the setup time statement, levelling an ele shaman convinced me that DoTs are a bad way to level, but I'd use chimera as my "it's almost in melee" ability without the sting, so I consider the sting proc part of the sting damage, which makes serpent pretty damaging even when mobs are falling 6 yards from my feet :P

Unless they've hotfixed it in the last 5 days, this WWS parse from the ret pala thread seems to indicate that there's no internal CD

For insurance reasons. Yes. That, and for freedom.

 

Agnus

I haven't really tested the idea, but Explosive shot is an AoE, so just thinking of AoE grinding when we're lvling, would it be worth it to go Surv with a gorilla to do Explosive shot/Volley with the gorillas thunderclap or is that too much? I usually gather up about 10 mobs with my gorilla then aoe it all down as BM, but would it be better and faster as Surv?

 

Mr00000

Volley seems to be a much more effective AOE than using explosive shot at all.

 

TrevvyTrev

Just as a point of reference, most high level epics aren't replaced by standard green quest rewards, even at 80. Leveling to 80 on beta, the only item I replaced with a green was a trinket, and even that was because I wanted to test it more than it was a particularly clear upgrade. And the trinket I replaced wasn't a high level epic -- it was a Bloodlust Brooch.

In fact, most items I did not replace at all (I didn't do any dungeons, as I wanted to see how long it takes to level strictly through quests), and those items that I did replace were with blues from group quests. If I remember correctly, the only things I replaced with quest rewards were a ring, my crossbow, and a helm (the helm seemed to be a sidegrade, actually). I replaced my cloak with a rep reward, and trinkets with profession items. Although, I think I later replaced one of those trinkets with a blue quest reward, but I am not 100% certain. Keep in mind that not every quest has rewards that are even remotely suitable for hunters.

In short, real replacements for high-level epics don't come until high-level dungeons and 10-man Naxx, so if you have really good gear now, and plan to quest-level and grind, you should anticipate hitting 80 in a lot of the gear you have now.

 

Starwind

I haven't been in beta or on the PTRs (I love surprises) but this is pretty much what I expected in terms of swapping out gear while leveling. I remember keeping some of my old raid gear bonuses until I hit 69/70 and I expect that my current gear will be the same if not better in terms of longevity. Don't get me wrong, I want to replace my gear b/c it's fun but I'm also OK if it gets me to 80 (or close).

 

comablack

With 2 hunters both with scorpids in the the raid, only 1 stack of poison is being applied to a boss, the other just refreshes the stack, much like sunder, with the damage being counted for the scorpid that poisoned first. Did the damage reduction nerf go through? its still ticking for over 750-800 in like t5 lvl gear as MM 5 53 3.
Noticed this the other night while playing my alt hunter, anyone know if this is intended or a bug? I tried to ask a GM but he avoided the question and wished me luck in wrath.

 

Vanadizzle

I liked explosive shot in pvp at 70, the lack of 10 talent points and aimedshot especially, gimped the spec at that time pretty bad though.
However the fact that ES can only stun the target on the initial blast now is a pretty severe nerf to its PVPviability. I enjoyed entrapping a bunch of melees with frosttrap and then chainstun em with LnL Explosiveshots.

 

Gorektar

I can also confirm that when there are two scorpids in the raid, only one stack will stay up, and it seems to be the one that attacks first that gets to keep its stack going. It seems to me that the nerf did go through, however, it only seemed to drop my scorpid's poison damage by about 10% (50/11/0 spec). Scorpid still seems to be the pet of choice for damage, I know i'm not giving mine up any time soon. CitizenSnips lives on!

 

Arial

You are both correct: If there are multiple hunters in a raid with Scorpids, only one stack of the poison will be applied.

To answer the second question, the nerf to scorpid poison did indeed go through. Pre-nerf, fully stacked poisons were ticking for 1190-1192 on raid lvl bosses; now, they tick for about 621-625, fully stacked.

Edit: I should be flogged. My first post on here, and its littered with errors.

 

Walori

Just to put in a quick question...

Do you guys know what the hit cap will be at 80? have been looking at different sets of gear and there is not a lot of hit on them, so im thinking that hit cap will be round where it is now.

Thanks

 

TrevvyTrev

Click here for the thread on Combat Ratings at level 80. The short of it is that the hit rating cap will not be where it is now, because that is not how the system works. The cap always gets higher as you go up in level. Take the level 80 hit rating per 1% from that table, and multiply it by 9, because you need 9% hit to be capped. That will be the new level 80 hit cap.

 

Prinsesa

The chance for ranged attacks to miss a +3 mob is 9%. Focused Aim can reduce this to a 6% miss rate.

At level 70 with no Focused Aim, you need 142 hit rating to be hit capped.
At level 70 with max Focused Aim, you need 95 hit rating to be hit capped.

At level 80 with no Focused Aim, you need 296 hit rating to be hit capped.
At level 80 with max Focused Aim, you need 197 hit rating to be hit capped.

EDIT: Thanks Luminaire

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler