I looked everywhere and I couldn't figure out a way how to filter out the Boom Bot damage. Im not very experienced with WWS so if someone can tell me how to do this or walk me through it I'll go back and correct it.

As it stands, I should have added a caveat to that post explaining that the damage takes into account all damage to Boom Bots and should be taken with a grain of salt (or as a "maximum possible damage output" test?)

You're pretty much right. From the reports from people in the Beta, +50% AotH isn't exactly much compared to the ton of RAP we will have when ready to raid. Unless it does get a good buff, this will be the basic DPS spec.

( Oh and, I'm pretty sure 4/5 Frenzy and 1/5 Aspects would be better. Spreadsheets show that more than 4/5 Frenzy gives a really small dps boost, but this is just a small detail =p )

The talent calculator shows PV does give 1% damage increase regardless of rank 1, 2, or 3. The only difference is the mana discount to Serpent Sting. 10/20/30%.

I have a couple general questions though. Why are a few people hung up on MM being the PvP tree? I see quite a few talents in BM that would directly impact PvP such as Longevity and Master's Call. Would it be so bad if MM became the raiding tree again like it was pre-TBC?

I actually didn't even notice the original spec I clicked on (and subsequently swapped talents to "fix" it ) had 5/5 Frenzy. I'm so used to seeing 4/5 I didn't even look. So yes, 1/5 Aspect Mastery would be better.

The feedback on Aspect Mastery has been negative across the board, so I doubt it'll stay as-is.

It's probably because MM has silencing shot, scatter shot ( both on low cooldowns ) and the new chimera shot for good mana draining. I'm not saying MM is a better PvP tree than BM , no one is completly sure about that, but we know for a fact that MM in PvE lacks some things that BM has.

BM = PvP / PvE
MM = PvP

Sad truth

Regardless of the damage it puts out, Explosive Shot is a very odd choice... its crits don't proc SV's 'on crit' procs, and at the moment at least, it's just a straight up nuke spell. I understand the need for a 'catch up' talent to boost SV's raid DPS to something respectable enough to make the whole SV package work, but ES is a pretty unimaginative option.

To me, the obvious fix seems to be:

Reduce the per-tick scaling to 0.1 DPS per AP.
Allow ES crits to proc HP, EW and TotH.
(Possibly) Unlink the cooldown from Arcane/Kill, and increase it to 12 seconds.

This keeps it effectiveness as a DPS boost to compensate for the lack of raw DPS talents near the bottom of the SV tree, while giving it a synergy with SV's main purpose, which is to keep the crit-procs rolling, as the triple-ticks from ES would serve to do admirably.

Just realized that hunting party might be bad when pulling multiple mobs with several tanks as the mana can draw unwanted aggro to you or who your pulling to.

Pull with shots that can't crit.

Perfectly worded. It may be semantics by bloody heck I'm waiting for the day that all three trees are capable of contributing meaningfully to raid DPS.

In my honest opinion, MM and BM should be pushing out the same DPS pipping each other depending on the situation while Survival sacrifices personal DPS for raid support but pushes out steady amounts of damage.


As for a shot that cannot crit but generates a decent chunk of threat... that is a use for Distracting Shot ;P (Apart from Rank 1'ing warriors into combat so they can't charge or anyone else so they cannot stealth, drink etc...)

I'm all in favor of seeing MM become a viable raid spec again, but until they change the Hunter class to be more than spaming Steady Shot, whoever can cram the most white damage into their uniform special shot rotation will always be the victor. This flaw is further amplified in Wrath where Steady simply doesn't clip. Chimera Shot is a great idea if stings scaled correctly but we've all seen how great Conflag worked out for Warlocks in relation to damage vs. global usage.

Breaking it down to basics, the core reason the MM and BM trees will never be 'equal' is because of variable gear levels. When is 20% more pet damage the same as xx% more weapon damage? Will all talents and abilities scale at the same rate based on AP, Crit, attack speed, damage ranges, etc.?

There's 101 reasons why DPS trees will never scale at the same rate and I think it's silly to even try and balance them in a lot of cases. No matter how close they make the trees in terms of damage out, any serious raiding Hunter will either be Survival or whatever happens to be the highest personal DPS spec, even if it's a difference of 2-3% damage. They may as well use this as an excuse to have properly implemented PvP, PvE and Support trees. Having the Marks tree become the equivalent to the Rogue Subtlety tree is fine with me as long as it's glaringly intended to be that way. Maybe it will make them dig some of the more useful talents out of the bottom of the tree and move them within striking distance on 51/x/x specs (assuming they are optimal).

Mmmm, part of the problem is also the rather haphazard way Blizzard has scattered scaling stats across the class in general.

Pets only gain raw AP, armour, HP.
They really need to gain a potion of agi, hit and crit and remove the idiocy that is spell damage (why bother with Spell Damage if you nerf the coefficient with every ability that can meaningfully use it?) and just have all pet abilities scale with the pet's AP. Basically, turn the pet into a pocket rogue when you look at the scaling mechanics. As for hit and crit, while I loathe to water down the pet centric focus on the BM class afforded by the Ferocity and Pet Handling talents by modifying stats that are otherwise statics (especially in Animal Handler's case), I think that's what is really holding back some mechanics in equating the trees.

I don't envy the headaches attempting to create a balance between the pet and the hunter would be giving the class designers. For all intents and purposes, the hunter's pet is a virtual 'offhand' giving the hunters the same kind of scaling mechanics as a dual wielding DPS when it comes to AP scaling, but there is the lack of synchronisation with the other 'important' stats such as hit and crit which is further compounded by pets being able to double-dip on buffs. It's really because of this double dipping on buffs and the scaling afforded by Unleashed Fury, Frenzy and Serpent's Swiftness which pushes the scalability of the BM tree heads and shoulders above the other trees in personal DPS.

Simply put, though I really should had sat down with pen and paper for an hour or two to thrash out the feasibility, once we establish full attribute scaling on the pet we can then equate the DPS increase through pet talents as a rough increase in AP by equating the Unleashed Fury and Serpent's Swiftness talents. 30% of a hunter's AP is transferred to the pet. That is modified by 20% via Ferocity, another 20% due to SS then another 30% from Frenzy which is an assumed 100% uptime. This means the AP on the pet changes to ~56.16% or a 87.2% increase on effective AP. This means the BM hunter would be gaining another 26.16% AP because of their pet not counting blocks, misses and dodges since it's in melee range. Wow, now that's where the scaling is coming from! All hunters except for buff bitch Survival (agi stacking) would be carrying the same stats since there is not longer a distinction between raw AP and agi/hit/crit for the pet's scalability. That's just for the pet and we have another 20% auto-shot damage on the hunter via the SS talent plus BW for an added DPS cool down.

It's plainly not reasonable to incorporate that much additional scaling on the MM tree alone. It'll probably be possible if the tree was pruned to allow for MM hunters to hit the lower levels of pet scaling ala the old 20/31 build pre-BC, picking up Unleashed Fury at the very least which would reduce the pet advantage on BM vs MM to a manageable chunk.

I know this really shouldn't be a discussion on how to change the hunter class, but I personally feel this would be a golden opportunity for Blizzard to retune and tweak how the hunter class mechanics can unfold since they've already taken the time to rework the pet ability system and work over the shot mechanics by unlinking the specials from the autos and mechanics are getting reworked anyhow so there's the potential for a blank slate right there.



My selfish wish list to modify the mechanics and MM talents would be the following:

Increase the effect of Master Marksman. Perhaps to 15-20% additional RAP to set the stage.

Increase the default scaling on Arcane and Serpent to 20% and 40% respectively. That'll make those two shots more bang per cool down than Steady, thus diversifying the shot selections for all trees. Increasing the damage on Serpent could also mean interesting things with Survival talents. In any case, for sanity's sake there needs to be viable alternatives to Steady Shot. Changing Arcane Shot to use the same mechanics as Steady so it's effectively an armour piercing Steady Shot which can gain from caster debuffs but sacrifices mana efficiency would help when there are situations that mana is not a problem. Fall back is Steady Shot but if you have the mana to spare, subsitute one for an Arcane for more damage.

Piercing Shots apply to Auto, Kill Shot and Multi-Shot and in addition increases the damage cause by Arcane and Serpent by an additional 6-9-12%. Combined with the 'base' of an increase RAP, this would make the MM tree fully focus on using those two additional shots.

Wild Quiver proc chance buffed up and the damage penalty removed or conversely, keep the proc rate but increase the damage per shot. Net result would be an increase in 10-15% base auto shot damage. This is a direct counter to SS's effect on auto-shot damage, but takes it in a different approach. Instead of flat increase in attack speed, it's a bursty proc effect. While it's not 20%, the increase in RAP, RWS and Marked for Death will compensate.

Improved Steady Shot increases crit chance, or crit damage or reduces mana cost... this bit I'm weakest on and need to twiddle around with. Chance to proc the damage increase and the damage increase itself bumped up to 20% which means on a 6 sec cool down, those abilities will gain approx 10% more damage (3 steady shots in between cool downs = 0.8 to not proc. 0.8^3 = 0.512, 1-0.512 = 48.8% to proc at least once. Pushing the proc chance to 25% would increase the uptime to 57.81% for an average 11.56% increase in auto/kill shot damage)

Since we buffed up Serpent Sting's damage, have Chimera Shot deal 100% damage (use same damage mechanics as SS, which is our 'base' special attack) and have the Serpent Sting damage portion capable of critting. Now this shot is actually worth the GCD and tweak the mana cost so it's cost effective.
Probably OP in cases but oh well.

Then we have the problem of pruning the tree...


I wouldn't mind having a tree turned into a PvP tool set so long as all the tools are in the same tree. We have MM with the interrupting shots and dispel resistance, but we have the Survival Tree with the defensive cool downs, the enhanced traps, and durability increases. But yeah, the MM tree is a mess and the Survival tree is a mess because there isn't a clear consensus on what those trees are supposed to do exactly. It seems those two trees need to be merged then split off again to pile all the tricks in one tree and all the damage in the other.