EDIT: I'm retarded and forgot to turn off aspects on the spreadsheet when I was testing, please delete.

If you're agility geared currently, that explains a good deal of it; BM and MM benefit more from AP gems/enchants than Agility. As has been discussed a couple times now, if you are geared for one spec and check yourself in others (particularly if geared for SV right now), then your current spec comes out by a fair margin. Be sure to change your enchants and gems, and possibly trinkets and a few pieces of gear, to reflect the spec you want to change to. This should provide a more accurate picture of your new DPS in that spec.

I guess I forgot to mention that I also changed gems and enchants in the spreadsheet for AP gems and enchants in the BM spec. As for MM, I still see higher dps numbers in the sheet with agility gems and enchants over AP.

With max rank/fully improved Kings, I see Agility gems coming out over AP gems even for BM and MM (very, very slightly).

Check all of your settings (buffs? gear? talents? shot rotations?) - there's no way you're going to see a 1200 DPS loss due to ES scaling getting a slight nerf.

Ahh, it was the shot priority that needed to be changed - thanks! Version 84 was using a different pet with BW & I hadn't changed that, whew

Something I am wondering about:
How came it, that with the ES nerf agility went down from 1.3x dps to 1.2x dps (down 'bout .1) but AP went up 'bout .05 per point, so that per itembudget the value was now about .99 (.88 before the nerf in the spreadsheet)?

I do understand, that with less scaling, the DPS increase per AP is less, but this should affekt AP more then agi, because Agi also grants crit.

edit: Now with new and improved spelling.

This question is about Focus use and focus regen for a raiding BM hunter, and ultimately, talent point conservation.

If this is dealt with elsewhere, please direct me there.

We have base pet focus regen of 24.5 per 4 sec (wowwiki), and then 1 or 2 talent points to be put into Bestial Discipline, which increases the regen rate by 50% or 100%, and 1 or 2 talent points to be put into Go for the Throat, which gives the pet 25 or 50 focus upon a ranged crit.

The spreadsheet has a great section on how much focus regen exists based on talent spec and crit rate (Pet Calculations E29:F38), but I'm having trouble figuring out how much focus regen I NEED - in other words, how much focus my pet uses. It has been suggested that I watch my pet and see if he's not doing anything, but keeping everything working smoothly in a raid is hard enough - I can't pay attention to my pet to really see if he's focus starved.

Say you have a Cat in a Raid/instance setting (no Prowl - or Growl *shudder*). Say the focus-using talents the pet would autocast would be just Rake and Claw. Rabid and Call of the Wild would also be autocast, but they use no focus. (Let's ignore Charge since it can only really happen once per mod at most, and more likely once per group if the mobs are kept less than 8 yards apart, which they usually are.)

According to the spreadsheet, haste seems to increase only base attack speed, not special, focus-using attack speed (much like we Hunters ourselves, I guess), so focus-using attack speed is fixed at 1.25 regardless of buffs.

How can I figure out how much focus my pet uses? I'd think it shouldn't be too difficult a calculation, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around modeling it.

Once I know that, then I can mix and match talent points in BD and/or GftT, at a crit rate, say, of 35%, and with the spreadsheet's focus regen calculation, come up with the best use of these talent points.

I have also had it suggested that I play around with the talent points and see if the DPS changes. That might work but it would still be pretty opaque - just a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether I have enough focus or not - not a way to see if I have too much focus, or a way to plan ahead for when I have x more Crit, for example.

Also - Shandara - if the spreadsheet does the calculations behind the scenes anyway to determine focus use, why not have a handy section on the Pet Calculations tab that shows focus use?

Assuming you want enough focus for your cat to do something every pet GCD (1.25 seconds):

Cooldown of Rake is 10 seconds, which lines up with the GCD with no points in longevity. Every 10 seconds, your pet will cast 7 Claw and 1 Rake. That's 7*25 + 1*20 focus per 10 seconds, or 19.5 focus per second.

If you have points in longevity, your pet will use slightly less focus (since Rake will be more frequent and it's cheaper than Claw). 3/3 Longevity brings Rake cooldown down to 7 seconds. That doesn't divide evenly by 1.25, so part of longevity is wasted here in a situation where your pet always has enough focus for Claw. You'll get 6 Claws followed by a Rake with this rotation, which takes 8.75 seconds of GCD. During those 8.75 seconds you use 6*25 + 1*20 focus, or 19.43 focus per second.

First, I've just started playing around with this sheet to get a little used to it while I level my hunter to 80, where I may use it more often for making gear and talent selections, and I'd like to thank you for the obviously high amount of work you've done in making and maintaining it.

Second while playing with it I noticed a pair of relatively unimportant errors. There are two errors in the dodge calculations (hence why they aren't very important): Aspect of the Monkey is only giving 8% instead of the new 18%, and Aspect of the Dragonhawk is giving nothing.

While these things aren't very important in a DPS spreadsheet, since the value is calculated and displayed I figured it is worth correcting.

@Tsook Thank you for mentioning Longevity - I overlooked it.

Do the pet's regular attacks get in the way of the Special Ability pet GCD? You assumed not, so I will too unless someone says otherwise.

According to what you are saying, in a raid setting (regardless of Longevity, though I think most people see it as a must have at that point in the talent tree) as long as a hunter has 19.5 focus/sec regen, their cat will never run out of focus?

Base focus regen is 24.5/4 sec or 6.125/sec. 1/2 BD would be 36.75/4 sec or 9.1875/sec. 2/2 BD would be 49/4 sec or 12.25/sec - still not enough.

So 2/2 BD by itself is probably not going to be sufficient focus regen for a pet, which is interesting.

Now, GftT awards either 25 or 50 focus on a hunter ranged crit. Haste is in play as well, since faster shooting means more crits/second (and therefore more focus regen/sec) than slower shooting with the same crit rate.

Using the spreadsheet’s Pet Calculations Focus Regen section, I think if a hunter can only get off 1 shot per second and has a 30% crit chance, 0/2 BD and 2/2 GftT will give the cat 21 focus/sec regen – plenty!

I didn’t change my talents around, but even subtracting out the 369 Haste Rating I have from gear, and taking Rapid Fire out of my shot rotation, according to the spreadsheet I still seem to have 1.11 Hunter Shots per Sec (remember – auto *and* special), which gets me to 22.65 focus/sec with a 30% crit rate with 2/2 GftT and 0/2 BD.

With my full gear and rotation, I have just over 1.20 Hunter Shots per Sec and 36.67% Crit (raid buffed, mind). I’d get 28.04 focus/sec with 2/2 GftT and 0/2 BD. 28.04 seems like a terrible waste to me, with a cat. Other more focus-needy pets may be different, of course. I can’t just go 1/2 GftT and 0/2 BD, though, since that would give me just 17.02 focus/sec regen. (This is more than 2/2 BD alone, though.)

But, maybe a point is better spent in BD than in GftT, since it helps me get to the rest of the BM tree, whereas I may not be going much deeper than GftT into MM. How about 1 point in BD and 1 point in GftT? If a hunter has 1.2 Hunter Shots per Sec and 35% Critical Hit chance, 1/2 BD and 1/2 GftT yields 19.5 focus/sec regen.

(By the way, 1.2 Hunter Shots per Sec and 45% Critical Hit Chance would get 19.5 focus/sec regen with 0/2 BD and 1/2 GftT. That 45% is 385 Crit Rating more than I have now though, so it’s way out of reach.)

I had 2/2 GftT and 0/2 BD until now. To me, this means that I can take the point I had in Animal Handler and put it in BD, and take a point out of GftT and do anything with it. Sure, taking a point out of AH does nerf my pet’s damage slightly, but it looks like there are other places I can put it that will not only give me better DPS now, but scale better for the future.


Postscript: On the Pet Calculations tab, I'm not sure I completely understand how the spreadsheet derives the "CrittingShotsPerSecond" number in F32, labeled "Hunter Shots per Sec" or the "CompositShotCritRate" in F33 labeled "Critical Hit chance". Maybe someone can explain? Also, the second number differs from what shows up on the Gear tab, since it seems to include Survival Instincts. I'm not sure why the number on the Gear tab doesn’t include Survival Instincts. Anyone know?