H0mez

Does it matter if we are shooting 1s steady shots if we cant use that other .5 second for something?

Is haste really that good if ALL it does is speed up auto shot(assuming BM obv)?

If all our damage was affected by haste, a 1% increase in haste increases our total dmg by 1%, but since 1% haste now only affects auto shot, its really only increasing our total auto shot damage by 1%. Then if we assume something like 35% of a BM hunters total dmg comes from Auto shots, its really only a .35% increase in dps.

Too much math for me, I just keep looking at the dps spreadsheet and wondering if haste is really that awesome for us, as the spreadsheet tends to show.

 

Valinnor

I have a WWS of my first SWP with a cat post-nerf and I was pleased with the numbers, at least on brutallus. I'd be curious to see if others are seeing similar numbers.

Wow Web Stats

I don't have a pre-nerf WWS since they reports have expired if anyone else does it would be great to compare the numbers.

Also my Brut numbers are very similar to the ones I was seeing before the nerf while my numbers for the other bosses are notably lower. Is this what others are seeing as well? Although I'm not sure it even matters since we have 7 days until LK :P

 

Gelmir

I found the same problem with quartz since 3.0, but it has not seemed to affect my dps. the other thing I noticed is it only happens in raids. so my guess is its just quartz bugging, maybe conflicting with another mod. Maybe try another autoattack cast bar to test it.

 

lockelee

Question for you ladies and gents, do you think it's viable to go MM since we do not get the WF haste? Honestly?

 

Saladin

This is the wrong thread for that question by any stretch of the imagination, as it has been picked apart in the WotLK hunter thread already. To condense that information in a nutshell, BM was hit least of all 3 specs by the WF "nerf" because 50% of our damage comes from our pets, who still retain our buffs. Serpent's Swiftness further lessens the bite of the nerf. In summary, you may want to ask the MM hunters if it's viable to spec BM since they do not get the WF haste.

 

Osse

It's still alright.
With better raid synergy, more drum users and hard khorium band (which I had mats for in my bags as the crafter didn't show up) the dps would've been closer to 3500.

3 mins 10 seconds is also incredibly slow kill so that lowers dps as well.

 

Saladin

Indeed, in fact the more significant BM nerf was the armor buff to bosses, as we aren't as reliant on nonphysical damage as MM (SS/CS) and Survival (ES) for our primary damage source.

Ironically, it serves as a stealth buff to the already near-overpowered cat and scorpid population, as their special attacks are largely ignorant of armor.

Given that spirit beasts mirror cats with the exception of a completely magic damage special, I'd be very interested in finding more information about them. Of course they're rarer than jackelopes so it's a slim chance we'll discover much before LK ships and a handful more hunters get their hands on one. But the "delayed damage" mechanics of their Spirit Strike really intrigue me and I would love to learn more from any lucky beta hunter who's caught Loq-y.

 

lockelee

I'm sorry for posting in the wrong forum. I just love MM but i can't seem to hit 2k dps in a raid setting i've done some testing and i've gotten to 17k self buffs and such, but i feel like I personally am doing something wrong.

WWS Wow Web Stats
Armory Currently down due recent move

 

Zeuxis

So, I've noticed since 3.0.3 that the old problem with rake getting "locked out" by claw spam seems to still be happening, despite the focus cost changes... rake seems to get applied about once every fifteen seconds, with a rolling variable of 2-3 seconds around that figure, which is just silly. Has anyone found a good way to combat this other than the horribly inefficient "turn claw off right before rake expires," or "take 3/3 longevity and hope for the best?"

Edit: definitely not a focus problem, this happens even when focus is at 100 and going to waste.

 

KraxisSingular

Definately agree. The Rake nerf isn't very hard.

The Rake hits have certainly taken a large hit, but the bleed is stronger than ever due to the armor buff and the ever so slight buff to the bleed directly.

Pre-patch Rake was 7% on hit and 12% on bleed for me. Now I see 5% on hit and 15% on bleed. That seems to conform with the fact that the rest of the Cat's DPS should be lowered slightly. The hits themselves are visibly weaker though. THe bleeds are too close to before for me to determine if they are in fact better (different buffs from raid to raid, different encounts and so on). The Cat looks to retain it's position... THe Scorpid I'll let others comment on.

Zeuxis, I must admit that at times it felt like that too for me. But then again I roll with a pretty clean UI. So I can't see all the debuffs. Whenever Rake falls off it gets at the back of thel ine and can't be seen on the target any longer. But even so it felt like I didn't get the ticks either.
Will have to test that some more.

A way to fix it is to slave Rake and Claw to a mousescroll function. Much like the the old 3:2 macro. Just put Rake ahead of Claw. That means the pet will fire Rake if it is off the CD ahead of Claw. Worked wonders for me last patch. But a better pet priority is better.

Saladin, you are not alone in your interest in the Spirit Beast. It just looks so great and it's racial is special to say the least. It is something else...
Problem is that what I have fished up about Spirit Strike is that it is a DoT. Nothing more. First tick at application, and second, and last, tick at 10 seconds. It doesn't stack and it doesn't refresh like certain DoT-refreshing talents do. It reapplies. That means an application too soon will kill off the second tick, effectively halving the damage of the special. That's bad. I hope it is either wrong or it will be fixed.

Please... Please tell me he is wrong.

Btw, forgot to run with Aspect of the Beast... Damn.

 

Saladin

This was a huge issue I had with Dr. Rawr, Ph.D. (my devilsaur) prior to 3.0.3. Since by necessity of having him, I do not have GftT, he encounters intense focus starvation issues and I found the MB buff falling off constantly. To work around this issue, I fell back on the infamous steady shot spam macro, albeit in a different light:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Rabid
/cast Monstrous Bite
/cast Bite
/cast Steady Shot

...and turned Bite off autocast. By spamming this macro, the placement of the attack options in this particular order auto-prioritizes MB over Bite. It eliminated all of my lockout problems. I haven't had to use it since the patch, though.

For you, you'd want to change the macro to:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Rabid
/cast Rake
/cast Claw
/cast Steady Shot

 

Rosamonde

I have been testing my devilsaur and other pets on the lvl 70 practice dummy in IF, before and after some spec changes I made today. All testing done after 3.0.3.

The changes I made (after reading this thread) were: 3 pts moved from Mortal Shots to Careful Aim; 2 pts from Pathfinding to Cobra Strikes (now 2/3); 1 pt from Frenzy (now 3/5) to Longevity (now 1/3).

With 1 point in Longevity, even without any points in Go for the Throat (yet), I find that Monstrous Bite is triggered as soon as the cooldown is up. In fact, it was serving as my focus dump, since Bite never triggered at all. Tyrone (my devilsaur) got the biggest boost in damage of all my pets. I also found that the cat's Rake DoT was reapplied as soon as it went down with 1/3 Longevity. Puff (my cat) got the second largest boost and was still best overall, though not much higher than the devilsaur in the test; I still think the cat will do better in a raid setting because of Mangle, however.

I am not a math whiz, but it seems that the timing on the cat and devilsaur specials works well with 1/3 Longevity.

Here are the results of my test. I was using Aspect of the Hawk, but no other buffs. I included Bestial Wrath and Kill Command as often as they were available. I ran the test for 4 minutes each and used Recount to measure the dps for each pet. I chose 4 minutes to get two full cycles of BW plus cooldown time in the first round; obviously I was able to get a third BW within 4 minutes in the second round with the point in Longevity.


Pet---------Round 1------Round 2----Gain
Cat----------383.8--------427.5-------43.7 dps
Moth--------375.4--------390.6-------14.2 dps
Wolf --------354.6--------382.6-------28 dps
Devilsaur----342.2--------419.6-------77.4 dps


(I should add that my gear is SSO badge/T5/early Hyjal drops, so I am not going to post up the huge numbers some of you folks are! However, I still care about doing my best among my peers and hope to hit the ground running in WLK. For comparison, my pet/hunter combined dps is around 2000-2100 on Hyjal and Black Temple bosses since the talent patch .)

I am intrigued by the moth special attack's potential for scalability, but for now both cat and devilsaur are moving ahead.

 

Saladin

How did you manage this? With 1/3 Longevity, MB would have a 9 second cooldown. Were you unable to generate 25 focus in 9 seconds, or am I missing something as I likely am?

I also am looking at moths with some interest. %-scalers always get me wet, and as our gear gets closer to the AotB/H break point, it only sheds more favorable light on Moth AP scaling.

 

Kamaa

I raided Hyjal tonight with a scorpid. I had 1/2 invigoration and 0/3 longevity. Mana was noticeably better. I definitely feel that the time saved being in hawk > viper was worth the 1/3 longevity. The only purpose 1/3 longevity has been serving is de-syncing my CD's with my trinket.

Omegatron has arrived.

 

Aern

I believe he's using the term focus dump in a slightly different way than most of us understand it. I think hes just trying to say that the only ability that was using focus since he had bite off.

As for AotB, I'm really getting very interested in this. I've always been a fan of doing things that are out of the norm if they will up my dps, its fun to be on the cutting edge. Testing out a bit on test dummies with my gorilla and my scorpid i was noticing a rather large different in the special dmg. Both thunderstomp and 5 stack of scorpid poison were hitting for about 100 dmg more than normal, thunderstomp going from 600ish to 700ish and 5 stack of scorpid poison going from around 550ish to 650ish. This was, as usual, completely unbuffed. I'm not getting a chance to test it in raid content because my lazy guild won't take the 3 hours to clear sunwell so i can test fatty pet deeps, but I definitely plan on doing some more testing between now and 80, with both normal gemming (all agi for me) and regemming for mass AP/crit.

As for the moth/devilsaur ideas, if aotb turns out to be a dps increase at some point, it definitely seems like having even MORE percent modifiers would be the way to go. It really is getting out of control the types of percent increases BM hunters can get, and why I'm thinking MM and SV probably won't ever have a chance to catch BM.

Kamaa I'd definitely agree that Longevity is the first place I'm looking if I need to scavenge points for invigoration, but once we start bringing the beastial wrath glyph into the discussion, is it gonna be more practical for us to just go full 3/3 long and just alternate use trinkets on each beastial wrath? Especially if you're an orc (best hunter racials ever) you'll be able to use blood fury and a use trinket while still having a proc trinket like the crit trinket with the huge 1k AP proc from badges.

AotV is quickly becoming very disappointing for me, I guess at 80 as our INT increases, as well as our time to OOM, the mana return mechanics of jow and replenishment being percent based will return a higher and higher ratio of mana compared to the mana we consume with steady. Question is at what INT level, if ever, will replenishment and jow be able to keep us atleast full enough on mana to allow us to use viper significantly fewer times or not at all?

 

◊ Tobin

I used to use Bloodlust Brooch + DST.

I currently use Ashtongue + DST because Bestial Wrath no longer lines up perfectly with Brooch and we are actually firing Steady Shot more often now than before. I continue to use DST because it's just that good. Even though the proc won't affect Steady DPS, it has no internal cooldown and up quite often.

3 procs on a 1:30 Gorefiend and 6 procs on a 3:00 Brutallus. (Note that Ashtongue procs even more often)

Even the haste doesn't contribute to pet DPS, I found DST vastly superior to all my other trinkets other than Ashtongue. I suppose if I win a Sliver next week, I might have to decide which trinket to drop.

 

Mattaos

I wanted to link the build I am switching to immediately after we clear SWP for one last time next week. This is my leveling build, which puts most of the focus on pet survivability and durability. 51/10/0

At first glance, you notice I opted for Beast Mastery over the raid DPS staple talent of GFTT. I did for 2 reasons A.) I have immediate access to 4 additional talent points to boost pet performance and B.) I can pick 1/2 GFTT at 71. I am still a advocate for GFTT, but for the sale of leveling 70 to 71 I opted to ignore it initially.

The 4 extra points gave the ability to spec my Gorilla TANK SPEC I left Cobra Reflexes initially to max Stam for access to 2/2 BotR. The ability for my Gorilla to Smack faster is decent idea for down the road, but I felt survivability talents were more pertinent from the start. Spiked Collar, Avoidance and Guard Dog are obvious choices. I like Grace of the Mantis for tanking, especially when we (I) will be facing mobs 2-3 levels higher than my pet at times. Lastly, I picked up Taunt. I was debating over Taunt and Roar of Sacrifice, but I felt an ability to immediately pull aggro of me was wiser since I don't usually have a problem pulling it off my pet.

As far as my BM spec I am using, which is geared towards my pet more than my burst capabilities.

• 5/5 Endurance Training over Imp AotH
• 3/3 Thick Hide for added survivability. Left Imp Revive for now.
• 2/2 Imp Mend and left Spirit Bond alone for now. Having BotR makes up for SB initially.
• 2/2 Animal Handler is the new "must have" talent for pets, especially for tanking.
• 3/3 FI over Catlike Reflexes. Debatable for some, but FI is still a "must have" ability for both you and the pet imo.
• 3/3 Longevity and left Cobra Strikes alone. 7 sec Thunderstomp (or insert pet special here) is greater than pet crits. Considering I am not going to try and pull aggro off my pet, the frequency for me to proc CS for pet is greatly reduced.
• 1/1 Beast Mastery for 4 extra points in my pets talent tree. I am using my Gorilla and not an Exotic pet.

Also note, I did some minor testing with Aspect of the Beast last night and was very pleased with the results on the test dummies. I believe I will find myself using AotB predominantly during the leveling process, since it adds to my pets ability to gain/hold aggro. Thunderstomp is now a magic-based ability, which in itself is a good thing to overcome armor, but AotB will increase other awesome tanking pet's abilities like Swipe (Bear) or Stamped (Rhino).

Of course, this is my interpretation of what talents are ideal for initial leveling and some aspects of my talent choices are debatable. I encourage others to share additional insight on other tanking specs. We have 1 week left, so now is a good time to start thinking about it.

 

Stigma

Heya! First time poster and non native speaker here, so gimme some credit! ^^

The issue of Hawk vs. Beast got me thinking and I ran some tests yesterday. Since pets seem to get a 20% increase to their AP instead of the tooltip´s 10%, I figured it was worth a shot.

So I grabbed my cat, got rid of all proc items and tried to kill a lvl 70 dummy.^^
I used no buffs other than the 2 aspects but lit up BW + Berserker´s Call + KC + 2*Rabid per run. Each of those runs lasted for an average of 1:20 min. until I was about to go oom.The racial "Berserking" was used only every other run due to the 3 min. CD. So I created a somewhat normal raid scenario without the buffs.(standard 50/11/0 with 3/3 CS)

My AP during those tests was 2546, Crit was 32.51, weapon speed was 2.14, ArPen was 26.47 (196) and my Hit Rating was 137 (couldn´t quite make up for the loss of MotB, but vs. a lvl 70 it shouldn´t matter). Gear was twins bow, 4/8 t6 and some sw drops. My pet´s AP was at 864 or 1046 (with AotB) respectively.

The only difference between the 2 tests was the aspect used. I fired ~400 arrows in each aspect and then some until the crit % was reasonably close to my actual crit % (<1% for Steady+Auto combined).
The dps was actually about 50 higher than shown in the logs due to the Rake DoT ticking for a few seconds after cease fire until I would get out of combat. This shouldn´t matter though, since I wasn´t interested in absolute numbers, but the dps difference between the 2 aspects.

Setup:
I always attacked in the following order:
1st macro was:

/cast Dash
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack

followed immediately by

/cast Berserker's Call
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Berserking
/cast Kill Command

and then I spammed (via G15)

/cast !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rabid
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rake
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Claw
/cast Steady Shot

(all pet skills turned off)

In short, the dps was almost identical! So I would assume, that raid buffs would favour the AotB and make it superior to AotH. As an additional benefit, one would be able to spec out of iAotH and put those points into increased pet (and self) survivability.

Here´s the 2 WWS logs:

Hawk
Beast

I´ll give AotB a shot tonight in SW and let you know how it went.

 

Gozardina

I have to agree with you Mattaos, this should be a great build for questing/grinding survivability to kick off leveling next week. The other reason it should be an OK trade-off to wait until 71 to get GFTT is that 2/2 BD should be sufficient while running from mob to mob, making focus less of an issue than when you are running instances/raids where it is mandatory. I tested a chimera with the owl's focus talent and leveled him from 65-70 in one of my Legion Hold sessions. Yes, he was focus starved, but overall performance for simply grinding was just fine. A previous post of yours convinced me to snag a gorilla for my xpac leveling pet as well. Now I just have to play the waiting game...

 

Frchorknabe

First Timer here as well and I hope you'll be gentle

I have basically two questions, one specific, one more generic:

1) While all sources I found (especially the empirical arguments) bolster the choice of Cat over Wasp because of Rake, I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is the case. The 65er Sting does 30-40 +spell bonus while Rake does 12-16 (3-5) +AP/14. So given the way my stats translate into pet stats (and given the paper doll values), the damage of Sting should be higher, additionally Sting occurs more often. What am I missing?

2) Looking at your tank build Mattaos, both in the introduction and your recent post, choosing Spiked Collar seems to be at odds with your statement that the goal is incoming damage reduction - I would assume that picking the armor boost would be more helpful. Yet you state that SC is an obvious choice...color me confused.

 

Mattaos

The Cat is pure DPS without any additional debuff type special. Sting does bring some nice DPS with a rapid attack, but Rake is an initial strike for X and bleed of X over 9 sec. (3 ticks). The bleed effect is affected by bleed-effect modifiers (i.e. Mangle) and is increased by AP. In comparison, the cat is dishing more consistent damage each CD than Sting, plus you run into possible situations where a target is immune to Nature dmg (or high resist) and in a raid the armor reduction debuff is not always useful. Druids FFF or Locks CoR trump Sting for that debuff slot.

Sorry if I confused you. Both builds I linked include Spiked Collar, which imo is a 3 pt investment for a nice damage increase. Damage = threat and pet threat = more DPS time for the hunter. The armor increase is nice (agree), but I have enough armor increase from Thick Hide and main interest of that pet talent is to access Pet Barding. Again, imo Grace of the Mantis is a much better talent for mitigation again burst damage and in order to get 2/2 Pet Barding you would need to give up 9% damage increase plus 4% critical strike chance reduction (resilience equivalent). Is a few more points of armor and 2% dodge worth giving up those 2 talents? Debatable.

If our pet has 12,000 armor (after Thick Hide), Natural Armor/Pet Barding would provide an extra 2500 armor or so (plus 2% dodge). For tanking a 5 man or even group quest, I would say this is an advantage. But, for leveling via questing/grinding with 5 mans mixed in (maybe some pet OT duty), I have to lean towards my original build. How long does a mob survive against you and your pet? My line of thinking is that heavy, quick incoming burst damage is more of a concern, plus my pets ability to hold aggro while I lay waste to the target.

 

Rosamonde

No, I actually did mean "focus dump" in the way Saladin understood it. I had both Monstrous Bite and Bite turned on, but since MB now costs only 20 focus while Bite costs 25, it seems only logical that MB would act as the focus dump. I do not have any math to explain this, just the empirical data from my observations. I watched the icons, and every time the MB cooldown expired, it would trigger again within a second. Bite never triggered.

So my devilsaur was generating 20 focus within 9-10 seconds, and this appeared to be enough to keep the MB buff up the whole time. This was with Growl turned off to simulate a raid setting; with Growl on the timing was a bit off, but Bite still did not trigger before MB. I do have 2/2 Bestial Discipline. According to wowwiki, a pet regens 24.5 focus every 4 seconds -- is this now out of date? Otherwise it does not seem too surprising to get back 20 focus in 9 seconds.

I am planning to keep my moth around and see how it looks with higher level gear...

PS I am a "she"

 

Mattaos

I don't think the wowwiki description factors in BD, which is a 100% regen boost (49 fp4 or 12.25/sec). In theory, the Focus Dump term is referring to the talent more consistently consumes that available focus (i.e. Claw, Bite, Old School Lightning Breath), so after every Claw (Bite or Smack) and GCD there should be right at 24 focus available for the next instant to consume. Do you have MB macro'd to activate ahead of Claw? I am not sure why MB would be consuming available focus before your instant attack (aka Focus Dump) if both are on autocast.

EDIT: In response to Rose's post below.

Actually, this makes sense that the AI will choose the ability that is "ready first" in relation to available focus. But, MB is still restricted to a 10 sec CD vs. Bite being instant consuming more focus over the course of an encounter.

 

Rosamonde

No, both were on autocast and neither is macro'd. I thought Bite must be bugged until I noticed that MB took less focus now (before the last patch MB cost 30 or 35 focus). My thought was that MB was used because it cost less focus than Bite, and since both were ready at the same time, the AI chose MB as being cheaper. I will try it again and pay more attention to how much focus I have when the MB cooldown comes up. Maybe it is over 20 but still under 25 at that point...

 

Taidaisher

I am currently specced 52/9/0 and have been reading through this thread and checking the different specs being used. I had been debating respeccing to a 50/11 or a 51/10 spec but now am wondering about the viability of my current spec for leveling in WotLK.

I have a scorpid, cat, silithid, wasp, core hound. Been using the core hound as my primary pet and I like it for raiding/rep grinding. I started using the silithid last night and really like the dash/web combo it puts out. The AI for the web seems to pretty good. It seems like the silithid casts the web (obviously only when available) only on things that are trying to rush at me. Not sure if I should keep my cat/scorpid or replace with a guerilla.