Ok, I think I'm missing something here. Aren't pets' base attackspeed 2.0? That means those buffs won't cap that low. As mentioned earlier I seems to remember a speed of around 0.99 with Frenzy. So 30% from Frenzy, 30% from Cobra Reflexes and 20% from SS does end up at 0.99 for a 2.0 speed base attackspeed.

I wouldn't bank on that. They nerfed avoidance tanking enough to prevent people from becoming unhittable - they don't want repeats of the current "Rogue tanks Illidan" type stuff - but, for example, Death Knights are shaping up to be incredibly strong avoidance tanks with 20% through talents and 6-8% in a baseline skill, plus a lightning shield type damage absorber.

Drums do not work for pets. Nothing that grants "XYZ rating" will benefit pets in the slightest. Pets do not use the Rating mechanic.

Surefooted is as much a PvE talent as a PvP talent. Sure, hit is easy to come by, but getting hit from talents basicly frees up room for more agility/crit/ArP gear. It's like saying "Lethal Shot's isn't worth it with all the crit rating on gear...".

Noxious Stings is a flat 3% damage bonus - you will be using Serpent Sting anyway. You might consider Wyvern Sting a lackluster PvE talent, but it actually does more damage than Serpent Sting, and you will replace 25% of your Serpent Stings with Wyverns.

And why would it be overboard to take 5 points in Hunting Party? There's no internal CD on it, the more you crit the more it procs. Going from 4/5 to 5/5 is a flat 25% increase in the Energy/Rage/Runic regen from it. Back when there was an 8 sec internal CD I could understand it, but currently it's worth all 5 points.

Personall I'd spec something like this:
0/19/52

Aimed Shot isn't really needed in PvE. The last point could be put in Imp Stings, GftT or Sniper Training, whichever turns out to be best (or perhaps even Trap Mastery, depending how that turns out).

Start out with 2.0.

Take off the first 30% (0.6) to make it 1.4.

The second 30% (0.42) off makes it 0.98.

The last 20% (0.196) off makes it 0.784.

A few more people posted while I was editing mine to address this, so the point might have been lost in the flow of the discussion, but the short of it is that you can do 51/15/5 that includes both Improved Tracking and Separation Anxiety. You just have to skip Longevity and go 2/3 Cobra Strikes. The damage boost you'd get should outstrip the sacrifices, though.

Edit: So you could try a build like this, for example. 2/2 Go For the Throat may be overkill with the focus cost revamp, so that could free up a point for a few things.

That's not how haste works.

A 2.0 attack speed is 0.5 attacks per second. 0.5 a/s * 1.2 * 1.3 * 1.3 = 1.014 attacks per second = 0.986 attack speed, which is displayed as 0.99 on the pet screen.

You balance hit on gear to be what you need. I think I balance hit rating at 1/2 the value of crit rating as BM because that's all that is needed for it to be at the cap. You're not gaining 1% worth of crit rating by taking 1% of hit on a talent. It will allow you maybe fill out 1/2 of that, making it a weak raiding talent. For such a dismal increase, I'd rather have the utility value of Hawk Eye.

Improved Stings is absolutely dreadful. First, there is no pet scaling from that. Second, you have to be using Serpent Sting to gain any benefit at all which may not always be the case (especially if an MM hunter is in the raid on a non-disarm fight). 3rd, Serpent Sting would have to be 10% of your damage for this talent to be a 1% overall damage increase per talent point. There is no way in hell, even with the changes, that Serpent Sting is going to be 10% of our damage.

I understand the GfTT argument, and usually I do 1/2 there. I really wanna see how the focus stuff plays out before I really decide on that. It may get put into 4/5 Hunting Party.

Noxious Stings is NOT a 1% increase. There is NO pet scaling with it. So if your pet does 15% of your damage... guess what? That makes it a weak .85% increase... plus you're throwing away a point in Wyvern Sting to get to it. Also, Noxious Venom damage increase doesn't work with Wyvern Sting... so you wouldn't be using it even if you had it.

Master Tactician has an uptime of about 53% with a 2.8 speed bow. That's a 1.06% average crit rating per talent point... you took Surefooted over this...

Aimed Shot is for pulling/MD'ing. The added threat to the tank at the beginning of a short burst fight is well worth 1 talent point.

Last I had heard Hunting Party had a cooldown. If that's not the case then I will definitely change things up to make that 5/5.

What's the base mana for hunters at level 80? 8000 or something? If it's around there, 3/3 TotH + 5/5 HP is close to no-mana for crits on Explosive & Steady (and Arcane).


Good call. Someone let the devs know Noxious Stings should affect our pet's damage as well as include the damage afflicted by Wyvern Sting, not just Serpent.

With the changes to Distracting shot, is Aimed shot even needed anymore? Meaning, can you misdirect the taunt of Distracting shot?

Also, is it worth the points in Sniper Training without Hawk Eye? I've always thought they went hand in hand. Otherwise you'd be trying to position yourselves in a 5 yard window and I'm guessing that would negate the +6% damage increase on a mobile boss (which we could see more of in the expansion) But I'm putting Kill Shot aside, which definitely appears to be a powerful ability.

In conclusion:
1. Where is my Beta Key?
2. Where is it?

Somewhere around 4500-5000 I believe, it's not hard to get a fairly good educated guess with the co-op of a few people of different levels on the Beta but I'm unable to log on and ask right now.
Priests & Druids gain about 1.2k~ from their level 70 amount so I assumed it would not be massively different here either - will find out tomorrow and post in here a more accurate educated guess if no one else does before

I think Chimera+Serpent Sting will be pretty amazing.
With Current scaling, and 5k AP,+ 3/3 Imp Stings, SSting will tick for around 400 every 3 seconds.
Over the course of 5 minute fight, this is amazing dmg. because of Chimera Shot, you would only have to use SSting once at the beginning of the fight, and it would continue to tick away for 5 minutes. this by itself is awesome. Now, add in the fact that every 10 seconds when you use your C shot, you deal 125% wep dmg +40% SSting dmg instantly, in addition to it ticking over and over and over. I see this being a huge part of MM dps.Also, the 10% inc. crit dmg on chimera shot due to Marked for death, Makes using this rotaion optimal for an MM hunter. I heared they were thinking of raising the coefficient to 0.2, making this a hell of alot more effective then it already is. not to mention the other MM perks....Steady shot having a 15% chance to make chimera shot and various other shots do 15% more dmg and cost 40% less mana? i wouldnt be surprised seeing 4-5k Chimera shot crits with the imp steady shot proc while using SSting.

I find your posts too be rather odd. You complain about Surefooted being a pvp talent despite the fact that even in the current end game, being hit capped is hard to achieve. Then you turn around and take Lock and Load despite it being a pure PvP talent.

5/5 hunting party is an absolute must now with no internal cooldown.

Personally, I also thing you put too much emphasis on your pulling. Aimed shot + wolf is hardly necessary.

Had a look at Improved Tracking again. It says "increases all damage done to targets being tracked." That is pretty vague actually. What does it imply? You could argue it means everything, from Mages to tripping over own feet etc. Though that is quite unlikely, the wording doesn't preclude it. However, something more interesting would be if 'all' in this case means everything the Hunter and Pet does. The other +damage talents have conditionals. Focus Fire says "all damage caused by you", Ranged Weapon Spec says "Increases the damage you deal with ranged weapons" and finally Marked for Death says "Increases the damage done by your shots and the damage done by your pet's special abilities". Improved Tracking has none of these conditionals, would it be unreasonable to expect it also includes all pet damage? In that case it is without a doubt the best scaling talent we will have... Save perhaps for Marked for Death.

Well, back on track. Frenzy is definately useable with 3 points when we have Cobra Strikes. But otherwise the BM tree is pretty bloated now, and we still have that crappy lost point in T1-2. And 1/2 GftT should be more than adequate. Even Cobra Strikes at 2/3 might be doable without too many adverse effects. But where I think the points might be best 'taken' could be Invigoration. Before calling me a blasphemer, we don't really know the manaenvironment of raids yet. In single play Invigoration isn't enough, and neither should it be. But in raids we get access to mana totems of various kinds (Mana Tide will be huge), JoW, Judgement of the Wise, Hunting Party (perhaps)... Combined, Invigoration is certainly one of those talents which might end up being redundant real fast. No point in being at 95% mana when the boss goes down. And since they want MM to be viable too (and it has preciously few mana regen options) it doesn't seems too unreasonable.

The real gain of Longevity is the gain of stuff like Call of the Wild, Rabid (so that the bonus stack never falls off), Roar of Sacrifice (I'm assuming the 3 sec CD is a mistake of sorts) and Roar of Recovery (which could incidentally make up for some of the loss in Invigoration). The big one is obviously Call of the Wild. In an all physical party this will be huge.

I'm just trying to say that I think it isn't Longevity that is the best candidate right now. And even if Invigoration is needed, then perhaps dropping all in Cobra Strikes and rely on the procs from the pet's internal crit plus what it gains from SoE (if the current GoA is a fitting comparison our pets will see about 3% extra crit from it) and possibly Leader of the Pack, well that could be a better option.

So I'm thinking something like a spread out version.
Obviously it isn't perfect, but perfect doesn't appear possible anymore. I had to spend a point in either Invigoration or Cobra Strikes, and it strikes me a as silly to put a point in Cobra Strikes and not get one in Invigoration, likewise the other way round seems less than great. For two points I think one in each is best. If there is enough mana, then the Invigoration point can go to Survival Instincts perhaps, or another in Cobra Strikes, whichever is best DPS.

Hmmm... thinking about it, all these choices appear to cater to different levels of raiding, gear and even guilds (many casual guilds will not have all the raidmana options available all the time).

L&L isn't a pure PvP talent. Blizz is pushing for us to actually use our stings in our DPS rotations in raids. They've said "If you're not using your stings because they aren't good enough, we'll fix that". So a talent that gives you three free instant cast no cooldown explosive shots (which should return mana with thrill and hunting party with the change to have a direct damage component) after 15% of your stings is definitely a raiding talent.

I don't see how you think being hit capped is hard to achieve. I am constantly lowering my value on hit, because all the best Survival gear is flooded with it.

Lock and Load is amazing for AoE in which Blizzard says there will be a bit of. Explosive Trap, Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot, Volley. Also, very strong for mana efficiency. I don't think Survival has a lot of mana problems, but I frankly never want to even consider using Viper or mana pots.

Wolf's are a nice pet regardless. The difference between pets is very slim. The point was, macroing it to your Aimed Shot is a nice added incentive. I don't see how 1 point into Aimed Shot is overemphasizing Misdirect. Think of how many threat sensitive fights we have now. Added misdirect damage is multiplied by every DPS'er in those situations.

As I stated in my other reply, if HP has no cooldown, then 5/5 is a must I would change my spec to accommodate that... going with 1/2 GFTT and... I can't decide what else to take a point out of but it would probably be Improved Tracking.

Base mana at 80 should be around 5000~

Roughly accurate costs at 80 should be:
Scorpid = 550 / Serpent = 450 / Viper = 400
Multi = 400 / Steady = 200 / Arcane = 350

Hope that helps.

And very roughly, a 60-80 mana gain from Steady crits (assuming a 9-10k mana pool). A drop in the ocean compared to JoW, but nice to know that we can self-sustain Steady spam for quite a long time. Reminds me of rank1 aimed/multi pre-BC. Lower damage than using Explosive, Stings, etc, but easy to sustain and notably more damage than only auto.

I was looking at the PvE aspect of LnL (15% chance on Sting to give 3 free Xplosive shots), and I'm not a whiz at math, but it looks like it won't even proc once a minute. I guess the major question I had, was with simply doubling the percent (ranks 10/20/30% instead of 5/10/15%) would make this talent OP? I'm horrible at mathematical modeling, so I'm just hoping to generate some talk around this talent.

With a higher proc chance I believe it would synergize quite well with Noxious Stings, but without any idea of what percent wouldn't be hideously OP, I'm hesitant to suggest something to the blues.

I understand your hesistation. The proc on cast is low, quite low. And the reason it is attractive is because of the lack of any other real talents there. I think the talent is one of those that Blizzard had mentioned to be less effective talents (they don't want them all to be good). But I would not be against changing it to a 3-6-9% proc per tick + what it does now. I don't think that would make it OP. It has to remain relatively low as it has a nasty potential for OP, and getting it to that would be horrible as a nerfstick could slam Explosive down rather than LnL.

The problem with a Proc per Tick is that Scorpid doesn't "tick" (as far as I know).
Some paper-napkin math says that assuming a reapplication of a sting at the exact point it ends (ignoring "GCD pushback", or early reapplication) means that Serpent is fired 4 times per minute, and Scorpid is 3 per min, leading to a Procs per Min of 0.6 and 0.45, respectively.

On a 7 minute boss fight (arbitrary number), that's roughly 4 procs from Serpent, and 3 from Scorpid.

That certainly seems like an underwhelming number, but if you consider the sudden burst of damage you are getting from those 4 or 3 procs, it may balance out about where they want it. The worst part will be when you get procs on threat-sensitive parts of fights, because you basically will just have to eat the proc or hope that FD doesn't fail.

Additional thoughts: I would assume that the 'buff' from L&L is going to have a timer on it, where it essentially becomes "the next 3 Arcane / Explosion... fired within 10 seconds". If that 10s (or however long) is more like 30s, then it may actually become overpowered in PvP because you can sit on those three free, fast shots for a quick burn.

To be honest it seems about right to me (the proc rate). Compare LnL to Imp. Steady Shot. Both have a 15% chance to proc via Serp/Steady however one is a Tier 4 (LnL) while the other is a Tier 9 (Imp SS). On a per proc bases LnL wins hands down on the amount of bonus damage the proc grants. 3 arcane/explosive shots for 0 mana and no cooldown is vastly superior to +15% damage and -40% mana on 1 chimera/arcane/Aimed/kill shot in terms of both mana and damage. So the way blizzard balanced these two talents in different tiers is to make one proc off a shot that is spammed constantly while the other procs off a sting that is cast roughly every 15 seconds if it is being used as much as possible.

Edit: On a side note. Has anyone tried seeing if the Imp SS proc is like Rapid killing in that if you are really fast and know what you are doing you can get double bonus out of each proc like you can on a Rapid Killing proc with Aimed/Arcane? I'm stuck at work or I'd test this out myself. Assuming it is possible, the question then becomes is it viable to weave in Aimed shot to try and double dip on the proc (during boss fights).

Well... let's do a little math, shall we?

When it procs, you replace 2 Steady Shots with Explosive Shots (the first would have been an Explosive Shot anyway). Let's say that Explosive Shot deals 1000 more damage on average than Steady Shot. That's 2000 damage added per proc. At .6 PPM, that's 1200 damage per minute, or 20 DPS. 20 DPS for 3 talent points is 6.66 DPS per point. So... if we do 2000 DPS at 80, that's only a .33% damage increase per point... which is awful.

But, it's also saving us 2 Steady Shots and 1 Explosive Shot worth of mana. Someone said base mana at 80 should be around 5000. Steady Shot is 4% base mana which is 200. Explosive Shot is listed as 504 mana on the official talent calc so we'll use that for now. Thats 1208 mana. 1208*.6=724.8 Mana per minute, or 60.4 MP5.

So.... 20 MP5, and .33% damage per talent point for single target DPS (at best).