An idea I've been batting around but haven't really had a chance to try out yet is using our pets to mitigate damage on the tanks, and whether that is a viable use for hunter pets or not. The BM Bible seems like the place to discuss this, as Longevity lowers the CD on Roar of Sacrifice and Intervene to 21s each. Most interestingly, this means that 2 BM hunters could keep Roar of Sacrifice on the tank with 100% up time and 3 seconds worth of overlap error(Or someone could write a mod similar to the drum mods that alerts when roar is about to go down).
Also, combining Beacon of Light (Paladin's heals on targets close to the tank heal the tank as well), Blood of the Rhino, and Spirit Bond results in paladin heals cast on the pet being more efficiently used than if they were cast on the tank himself(spamming FoLs that normally heal for 3k would be healing for 4.5k instead, as long as the pets were taking damage).
The final result of this, if possible, would be that incoming damage to a tank could be reduced by 30%, which doesn't seem insignificant... Plus if the mob's hit box is large enough you could possibly add in Intervenes here and there (as long as the hits aren't big enough to 1 shot the pets)
Thoughts? Comments? Did I miss a thread where this was already discussed?
I've got to say, I really love this idea. It would be quite simple to toss roar of sacrifice into a steady shot macro using a focus target (main tank is my focus target already for my MD macro), and combining it with Bacon of Light is just the icing on the cake. It would be like adding 30% to the tanks effective health, and increasing the healing done to the tank by ~20% with blood of the rhino and spirit bond. I like the way you think
I haven't played with a scorpid much, but I did take one to a mostly alt-Hyjal run the other night and it ticked Scorpid Poison for up to 2200 at some point, echoing some of the figures mentioned earlier. Too bad I didn't get to use it on Brutallus tonight due to Blizzard's maintenance issues, I really wanted to see where my DPS would top out at compared to my runs using a cat.
Now my real question is how does Scorpid Poison stack up against the exotic abilities (Monstrous Bite) at level 80?
And what will the level 80 BM specs look like? 55/16/0? Points in Imp tracking?
For those who might find it useful, the hunter talent Focused Aim adds 1% spell hit as well as physical hit. This is especially helpful since Volley seems to hit based on spell hit. Also it helps reduce Feign Death resists.
I've got to say, I really love this idea. It would be quite simple to toss roar of sacrifice into a steady shot macro using a focus target (main tank is my focus target already for my MD macro), and combining it with Bacon of Light is just the icing on the cake. It would be like adding 30% to the tanks effective health, and increasing the healing done to the tank by ~20% with blood of the rhino and spirit bond. I like the way you think
Well, since scorpids seem to still be doing competitive DPS even after the nerf in 3.0.3, they seem to be the obvious pet choice for this tank-helping strategy. I'll have to give it a shot sometime.
I've got to say, I really love this idea. It would be quite simple to toss roar of sacrifice into a steady shot macro using a focus target (main tank is my focus target already for my MD macro), and combining it with Bacon of Light is just the icing on the cake. It would be like adding 30% to the tanks effective health, and increasing the healing done to the tank by ~20% with blood of the rhino and spirit bond. I like the way you think
As far as I know this isnt going to work, because of the Beacon mechanics. Beacon only transfers the effective Healing, that the target takes so overheal won´t count. Unless the Pet takes damage equal to the damage the tank receives this plan won´t work.
The thing I notice is there is a ton of various ideas floating around about how to spec a pet for tanking/grinding with some very good arguments to support talent choices. A few things to consider is style of play and the type of environment you play it in. For example, I play on a high pop PvP server where Horde out number alliance 2:1 and tend to be a bit on the aggressive side. This is just the case when playing on very active PvP servers and the threat of gankers looms in the back of your mind. For me I tried to balance my personal spec and my pets spec to be as effective as possible for tanking without leaving myself completely vulnerable to player attacks.
Also consider how you are going to level. Questing and solo grinding requires more thought into building a stronger tanking pet, but if you are going to be hitting a lot (or solely) instances you need to provide more utility and DPS for the group. I know it is our nature to try and find a set cookie-cutter spec for most every aspect of this game, but from my experience the level grind is too dynamic to pin down one set of talents over another. Raiding is different in that it offers consistency in the encounters and the roles we server, so a cookie-cutter has much better chance of emerging that can be tested to max our DPS potential. make sense?
I do like the case Saladin made about boosting armor via Natural Armor to mitigate damage, but for me I opted for Grace of the Mantis. I felt this talent was a better choice to combat against incoming melee attackers with high burst ability that will attempt to kill my pet first (i.e. rogues and retadins). The Greater Resist option did not entice me as much as it used to in the old pet system because our pets have 70 resist baseline now, which is a fair amount to mitigate most spell damage. I agree that more resist is better than none and maybe Avoidance is most peoples builds due to the "must have" nature of it for raiding. There are definitely encounters that warrant high AoE damage reduction, which has good synergy with resistances.
EDIT: Additional thought
I think using our pet as a "damage soak" for the tank is risky. I am thinking merely from a raiding standpoint here, but taking 30% of the damage from a tank doesn't eliminate that damage. The damage is still being taken by a less equipped entity in the raid and that damage has to be accounted for thru either raid heals or Mend Pet heals. Using our own Mends uses additional mana better used for more DPS (our sole purpose in the raid) or it will absorb raid Heals that could be better used on a player than our pet. Brutalis comes to mind immediately with this, since the burst is so high that if a Roar of Sacrifice procs at the same time a large amount of damage hits the tank the pet could die or at least drop to very low HP. Lets face it, even really good raid groups with awesome healers are not going to put our pets as a priority leaving us to exhaust Mends and possibly even a Revive Pet that requires multiple Mends also.
I haven't played with a scorpid much, but I did take one to a mostly alt-Hyjal run the other night and it ticked Scorpid Poison for up to 2200 at some point, echoing some of the figures mentioned earlier. Too bad I didn't get to use it on Brutallus tonight due to Blizzard's maintenance issues, I really wanted to see where my DPS would top out at compared to my runs using a cat.
Now my real question is how does Scorpid Poison stack up against the exotic abilities (Monstrous Bite) at level 80?
And what will the level 80 BM specs look like? 55/16/0? Points in Imp tracking?
If rediness resets ever hunter cooldown(BW,RF, and GftT, I think 50/21/0 will be the best lvl 80 raiding spec. In that build also havve atleast 2/3 or 3/3 longevity so ur BW is around a 1.5 min cooldown. This way in about the first 3 minutes you can pop BW 5 times.
As far as I know this isnt going to work, because of the Beacon mechanics. Beacon only transfers the effective Healing, that the target takes so overheal won´t count. Unless the Pet takes damage equal to the damage the tank receives this plan won´t work.
You assume that the paladin is doing *all* of the healing of the tank. I'm thinking more along the lines of 10 mans or raids where more than 1 person is doing the healing. In this case as long as the paladins are the only ones healing the pets 30% of damage plus intervene occasionally should be more than enough damage taken to keep the pallies effectively healing the pet(s).
For those who might find it useful, the hunter talent Focused Aim adds 1% spell hit as well as physical hit. This is especially helpful since Volley seems to hit based on spell hit. Also it helps reduce Feign Death resists.
Spell Hit and regular Hit have been merged into the same stat. Every talent that says "increases chance to hit" should increase both Spell and Physical Hit. Only talent that specifically state "increases chance to hit with spells" or "increases chance to hit with melee or ranged attacks" would discriminate toward their respective damage school.
I too have to say the idea of "pet buffering" the tanks is an exciting prospect. I'm not certain how feasible it will be to use Intervene on bosses (since pets cannot be made uncrittable, and a hunter would have to overload himself with stamina to allow his pet to survive a crit, thus gimping his DPS), but Roar of Sacrifice should certainly provide excellent stand-in utility for Shamans' dearly departed Spirit Link.
From the perspective of a fledgeling Gorilladin tank, I can say this is one scenario in which the extreme scaling of pets with raid buffs will be extremely effective. The double dipping pets receive from Hunter buffs + their own can give them some very respectable health pools at level 70, which I suspect will only be more pronounced at level 80. As an example, in my "pure stamina" set, my gorilla Fatman has 9.7k health. With BoK and Fort added on to me and him, that shoots up to a whopping 12.9k health. Add in, as others have mentioned, a +50% buff to healing, and a Shaman on the tank should have no problems with keeping both of them up at a reduced damage/mana cost for everybody. I just really hope this doesn't get nerfed, as I highly suspect it will.
As far as Beacon...I'm just not sure. A Hunter buffer would allow a Holy Paladin to heal 30% of incoming tank damage for 150% of a normal heal. Depending on how good said Paladin is and how heavy the incoming damage is, he could Beacon the tank, then use 1 Flash Heal on the pet + 2 Flash Heals on the MT to heal for the same amount as one Holy Light on the MT, for 8% less mana. Of course, Beacon itself is 35% extra mana to spend, so you would have to fit... 5 of these 3-FoL cycles in the space of 1 minute to come out with a savings of 5% base mana. 5x1.5=7.5 seconds of pure chain-casting. So theoretically, a pally could cram in 8 of these triple-FoL, HL equivalents in the course of one Beacon. That's a 5% base mana savings for the first set, and then 40% base mana savings for every set after that. That would add up to 285% base mana saved in a one-minute period versus no pet buffer.
That sounds a little too good to me; someone check my math. >.> The other things to consider here are:
-'- Is the damage non-spiky enough that the healer can afford to spend 4.5 seconds casting FoL's for the same effect as a 3 second Holy Light? Depends on boss encounter.
-'- Does 1 FoL at 1.5 times its normal effect + 2 FoLs at normal effect = 1 Holy Light? Depends on the paladin's gear.
-'- Is the paladin competent enough to handle flipping back and forth between the pet and the tank at the proper ratio? Depends on the player.
There's a lot of variables that make it very difficult to quantify. Overall it's a practice that may be worth some investigation in the field, but I'm not sure I would recommend it to everyone as the best strategy.
Unless you are daring enough to try the Intervene route to give the pet more damage for the paladin to heal--in which case, you better be sure to grab Imp. Revive Pet.
EDIT: On Mattaos' comments, you're right to some extent. I wouldn't consider dedicating a healer to the pet (with the exception of the far-fetched Beacon example above), but with the multiplicative healing pets receive, stray Chain Heal bolts would be plenty enough to keep them up, and probably any other aoe heal on the melee group.
You're right that that 30% damage doesn't disappear, and still has to be accounted for. But would you rather that 30% damage be taken by someone who receives 100% healing or someone who receives 150% healing? That's 30% of the damage that can be healed in fewer casts, and I believe most healers would be very excited about that. Even if we do have to assist with our own Mend Pets, which you rightfully point out would lower our damage output, we're still at that point bringing more utility to a raid than "just" damage.
You're right that that 30% damage doesn't disappear, and still has to be accounted for. But would you rather that 30% damage be taken by someone who receives 100% healing or someone who receives 150% healing? That's 30% of the damage that can be healed in fewer casts, and I believe most healers would be very excited about that. Even if we do have to assist with our own Mend Pets, which you rightfully point out would lower our damage output, we're still at that point bringing more utility to a raid than "just" damage.
Valid point. Though I am curious if the damage absorbed via Roar of Sacrifice is based on the "intended amount" being dealt by the mob or the amount that otherwise would have been absorbed by the tank (slightly mitigated)? I would assume the damage displaced by Roar of Sacrifice is a full hit from the mob/boss, but I am not 100% sure on that. Does anyone have any insight on this?
-'- Is the damage non-spiky enough that the healer can afford to spend 4.5 seconds casting FoL's for the same effect as a 3 second Holy Light? Depends on boss encounter.
-'- Does 1 FoL at 1.5 times its normal effect + 2 FoLs at normal effect = 1 Holy Light? Depends on the paladin's gear.
-'- Is the paladin competent enough to handle flipping back and forth between the pet and the tank at the proper ratio?
This is the most summary part of your post, but I want to refer to the whole thing in it's entirety really. Could you assign some possible numbers to your theories?
Here is kind of what I was thinking (going to use level 70 numbers because the spells will probably scale similarly to one another).
We'll assume the tank takes 10,000 damage every 5 seconds (Yeah, they probably take more than that, but I want to keep the numbers easy)
Flash of Light usually heals for 2000 (On my paladin that's a decent, close round number. Probly a little more in actuality)
Holy Light heals for close to 5000 (Probably a little less, but let's keep the numbers easy, and tilt the scales towards not using roar of sac.)
In scenario 1, we don't use Roar of Sac.
Tank takes 10,000 damage.
Paladin casts 2 Holy Lights to full heal him in 4 seconds (Assumes Light's Grace is already up)
In scenario 2, we do use Roar of Sac.
Tank takes 7,000 damage
Pet takes 3,000 damage
Beacon of Light is up.
Paladin casts Flash of Light on the pet, healing the pet for 3000, and the Tank for 3000
Then 2 FoL on the tank to heal him for 4000 total damage. 4.5s for a full heal on the tank(and pet).
Seems to be even more efficient than the numbers you posted? Not sure if you were including the actual effect of the beacon making 1 FoL on the pet worth 3(1.5 on the pet and 1.5 on the tank)? Obviously it takes a little bit more time to get the heals out in scenario 2, but it's also reducing spike damage on the tank which could greatly help on something like patchwerk where spike damage is the killer.
*EDIT: Oh, and if you intervene while Roar of Sac is not up, even if the pet dies to the hit you can likely rez it before roar of sac would be back up anyway (with imp rez)
My hunter got to 70 recently, just a quickie, when I was leveling, then gearing my shammy and my druid, there was a system in place called AEP (Attack power Equivalent Points) that I could feed into the Pawn addon, and it would 'rate' gear by its stats. Is such a thing available to hunters? so I know whether a certain item with crit/AP is better or worse than one with Agility etc.
Of course, Beacon itself is 35% extra mana to spend, so you would have to fit... 5 of these 3-FoL cycles in the space of 1 minute to come out with a savings of 5% base mana. 5x1.5=7.5 seconds of pure chain-casting. So theoretically, a pally could cram in 8 of these triple-FoL, HL equivalents in the course of one Beacon. That's a 5% base mana savings for the first set, and then 40% base mana savings for every set after that. That would add up to 285% base mana saved in a one-minute period versus no pet buffer.
I royally bungled the arithmetic on this one. >.<
In order to cover the cost of Beacon of Light, you would have to cast 5 triple-cycles of Flash of Light. So that's 5 x 3 x 1.5, which equals 22.5 seconds to break even and save 5% on the Beacon of Light cost. For every triple-FoL-cycle cast after the break even point, the paladin saves 8% more mana. (60 - 22.5) / 4.5 = 8 more cycles before Beacon has to be refreshed. So that's 64% base mana saved, plus the 5% base mana from Beacon of Light paying for itself. That means a paladin saves 69% base mana during a one-minute period, not 285%. I knew that was too good to be true.
Once again, this is a very theoretical situation, and I won't be able to post numbers until I can experiment at 80. It's certainly worth investigation, though. If its feasible, we're talking about paladins saving 69% of their 4394 base mana pools at 80 per minute, which comes out to over 250 MP5 just for having a hunter pull this trick off. >.>
EDIT: In practice, I expect the actual gains to be much, much lower. We're comparing a triple-FoL cycle to an exclusive Holy Light cycle. No sane holy paladin heals with Holy Light alone. So it's more likely we're comparing a hairy cycle like 6 FoL's vs. 3 FoL's + 1 HL.
Hey guys I know the idea of using AotB has been kicked around a bit with little raid data to support a claim in either direction.
This is the last WWS of BC for my guild Wow Web Stats
Of course this is 70 data and will change at 80 but I was very pleased at the numbers my pet put out.
Normally my scorpid or cat will do 39-41% of my dmg but with beast on it was doing 47-50%
At 80 with greater AP I can only predict that beast will be much better than hawk at least on a single target dps fight or any fight where you can keep your pet on the boss.
Hey guys I know the idea of using AotB has been kicked around a bit with little raid data to support a claim in either direction.
This is the last WWS of BC for my guild Wow Web Stats
Of course this is 70 data and will change at 80 but I was very pleased at the numbers my pet put out.
Normally my scorpid or cat will do 39-41% of my dmg but with beast on it was doing 47-50%
At 80 with greater AP I can only predict that beast will be much better than hawk at least on a single target dps fight or any fight where you can keep your pet on the boss.
Hope this helps a bit =) enjoy the grind to 80!
Yea attack power does and will continue to scale incredibly well on pets, and with all the amazing +% damage modifiers the BM trees has the scaling will be ridiculous, and with hunters pulling AP values up around the 6k mark in 25man nax gear more and more AP will be getting fed into the pet making all those modifiers that much stronger.
My hunter got to 70 recently, just a quickie, when I was leveling, then gearing my shammy and my druid, there was a system in place called AEP (Attack power Equivalent Points) that I could feed into the Pawn addon, and it would 'rate' gear by its stats. Is such a thing available to hunters? so I know whether a certain item with crit/AP is better or worse than one with Agility etc.
Well, in WoWWiki you have Hunter Agility Points, which is what you're talking about. However, it's an approximation of TBC values. For example, if Careful Aim is now a must-have for all hunters, then the value of Int should go up. Also, it doesn't take into account ArP and Haste.
I guess in a few weeks someone will get around to fixing that...
*snip*
I think using our pet as a "damage soak" for the tank is risky. I am thinking merely from a raiding standpoint here, but taking 30% of the damage from a tank doesn't eliminate that damage. The damage is still being taken by a less equipped entity in the raid and that damage has to be accounted for thru either raid heals or Mend Pet heals. Using our own Mends uses additional mana better used for more DPS (our sole purpose in the raid) or it will absorb raid Heals that could be better used on a player than our pet. Brutalis comes to mind immediately with this, since the burst is so high that if a Roar of Sacrifice procs at the same time a large amount of damage hits the tank the pet could die or at least drop to very low HP. Lets face it, even really good raid groups with awesome healers are not going to put our pets as a priority leaving us to exhaust Mends and possibly even a Revive Pet that requires multiple Mends also.
Just some food for thought.
Apart from the 150% healing received also mentioned, classes such as shamans and priests would probably be much happier being able to bounce chain heals and prayer of mending off two targets, those two spells being more efficient than single target heals. Since they automatically target anyway a shaman could just spam chain heals on the tank and pet and probably do it for longer, although this is just an idea with no numbers behind it.
Concerning the tanking ability from pets other than Gorilla.
Since Gorilla aka Gorilladin are widely spread now I tried a different pet to be more "unique". It's purpose: Leveling, thus damage and tanking should both be adequate:
Reason for my choice it both the skill and style. Already had some people asking me where I got my pet from.
Pretty fancy but alas there are two caveat:
1. The Aggro doesn't build up as fast as the Gorilla and
2. Movements seems a bit buggy. I loose the pet very frequently when swimming and it seems very hesitant to go close-quarter with mobs (moving 1 metre, then stopping, then again 1 metre).
Any of your experienced similar problems with tanking pets?
It's sad to only have the gorilla as a real tank with so many interesting pet styles and skills in the game.
2. Movements seems a bit buggy. I loose the pet very frequently when swimming and it seems very hesitant to go close-quarter with mobs (moving 1 metre, then stopping, then again 1 metre).
This is not a "tanking pet" issue. My cat pet has been having pathing issues in some regions of some zones, and especially underwater.
2. Movements seems a bit buggy. I loose the pet very frequently when swimming and it seems very hesitant to go close-quarter with mobs (moving 1 metre, then stopping, then again 1 metre).
It's trying to find the correct distance for its special ability I believe... most pets with ranged line of sight attacks have this bug.
Originally Posted by Chanii
It's sad to only have the gorilla as a real tank with so many interesting pet styles and skills in the game.
It's not the only tank, just the most effective for the solo multitarget tanking you need to do while questing. For single target tanks, the worm has a acid spit that lowers armor (like a warrior's sunder), and for pvp "tanking" (not holding agro, but soaking up lots of damage), the rhino has a aoe knockback.
If rediness resets ever hunter cooldown(BW,RF, and GftT, I think 50/21/0 will be the best lvl 80 raiding spec. In that build also havve atleast 2/3 or 3/3 longevity so ur BW is around a 1.5 min cooldown. This way in about the first 3 minutes you can pop BW 5 times.
Actually its four times, due mostly to the affect of the GCD.
More interestingly, to me at least, is that simulations using Shandara's excellent spreadsheet do not support this. Using lvl 80 raid buffs and the default gear set associated with the 'Shandara as BM - Raid Buffed' and the default pet - a cat - I compared the 52/14/5, and both versions of 50/21/0 (either 3/3 Longevity & 1/3 Cobra Strikes or the reverse). Neither 50/21/0 build came close to matching the total DPS of the 52/14/5. due mostly to a 200 DPS increase in the output of the pet. I attribute this to the Pet DPS improvement of having both 3/3 Longevity and 3/3 Cobra Strikes completely dominating the value of additional BW etc.
For fun I then tried a 54/17/0 build, trading improved tracking for 2/2 Invigoration and 3/3 improved Stings. Strangely, this produced the highest overall DPS of all builds - a good 60 DPS higher than 52/14/5 - while providing almost unlimited mana - well over 2000 secs before OOM. Intriguingly, dropping 2/2 Invigoration drastically reduced total DPS, bringing it below either of the 50/21/0 builds. My assumption is that 2/2 Invigoration means the hunter never needs to swap to viper over a long fight, the spreadsheet knows this and calculates accordingly but it would be nice to have that confirmed.
Obviously, this is not even an empiric evaluation let alone a real-world example. Given that the spreadsheet has been an accurate modeller of Hunter DPS thus far, though, it does provide something else for us to consider.
Actually its four times, due mostly to the affect of the GCD.
More interestingly, to me at least, is that simulations using Shandara's excellent spreadsheet do not support this. Using lvl 80 raid buffs and the default gear set associated with the 'Shandara as BM - Raid Buffed' and the default pet - a cat - I compared the 52/14/5, and both versions of 50/21/0 (either 3/3 Longevity & 1/3 Cobra Strikes or the reverse). Neither 50/21/0 build came close to matching the total DPS of the 52/14/5. due mostly to a 200 DPS increase in the output of the pet. I attribute this to the Pet DPS improvement of having both 3/3 Longevity and 3/3 Cobra Strikes completely dominating the value of additional BW etc.
For fun I then tried a 54/17/0 build, trading improved tracking for 2/2 Invigoration and 3/3 improved Stings. Strangely, this produced the highest overall DPS of all builds - a good 60 DPS higher than 52/14/5 - while providing almost unlimited mana - well over 2000 secs before OOM. Intriguingly, dropping 2/2 Invigoration drastically reduced total DPS, bringing it below either of the 50/21/0 builds. My assumption is that 2/2 Invigoration means the hunter never needs to swap to viper over a long fight, the spreadsheet knows this and calculates accordingly but it would be nice to have that confirmed.
Obviously, this is not even an empiric evaluation let alone a real-world example. Given that the spreadsheet has been an accurate modeller of Hunter DPS thus far, though, it does provide something else for us to consider.
Why did you pick Improved Stings? It just does not seem as big a DPS increase as 3/5 Imp Tracking.
Assuming 6000 AP for a hunter in full Naxx25 gear (as claimed above), rank 12 serpent sting does 2410 damage over 15 seconds unglyphed, or ~161 DPS. Speccing Imp Stings adds 30% to that, or ~48 dps.
Putting those points in Imp Tracking instead would give the hunter a 3% dps increase on fights where all mobs are of the same type. Assuming a pet does 40% of a BM hunter's total DPS output raidbuffed, that means that the hunter+pet only need to do ~2678 DPS for Imp Tracking to break even, which is reachable at 70 so what I assume is a rather trivial DPS output at 80.
Am I missing something here?
11/11/08, 10:05 PM
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