Bear in mind, Belzi, that one of the things that's making BM such a powerhouse spec right now is the insane amount of scalability pets get from %-damage modifiers combined with raid buffs. I am surprised to see that the DPS difference in your tests show a less than 20 DPS difference (which would fall within the acceptable realm of personal preference) between 3/5 and maxed Kindred Spirits, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you're going to miss the 8% damage scaling on your pet the second your kitty gets Blessing of Kings and a Mangled target to scratch at. When comparing Kindred Spirits to Cobra Strikes, you're looking at a straight-% damage increase that scales very well in a raid setting and is bolstered by every stat gain you acquire VS. a "trickle-down" effect to your crits that is based entirely on your own chance to crit.

Given that, I would expect the gap between 1/3CS-5/5KS & 3/3CS-3/5KS to get wider at higher gear levels, not smaller. As to how much wider, I'm not sure. It still could be within a couple dozen DPS difference, and at that point it's more of a flavor choice really.

Pet scale increadibly well with buffs, thats true. But as far as I know, it's the specials that scale absurdly well. Therefore a Blessing of Kings would change the autoattack:special-ratio in favor of specials too.
For a cat the mangle-debuff is a huge benefit, but if you raid with a wolf (for a little raid-support) you can scratch out this factor.

After thinking about it again, there are only 2 raid-buffs that change the autoattack:special-ratio in favor of autoattacks.
Those are Heroism/Bloodlust (?) and Windfury Totem. Both come along with a shaman (in our 10-man-raidgroup we often raided without one in the past).

So, now I'm fairly sure that there is a breakpoint (at least for certain pet-families).
The question is if we (or I without a raiding shaman) can reach it.

I have been running heroics as 50/11 spec with a gorilla. Compared to a MM spec with rapid recuperation it is funny seeing pet do so much damage but the uptime comes nowhere near MM spec at the moment. My damage was definately lower as a fury warrior who I usually beat by a fair bit was now beating me, not by a lot but he did. I guess that is mainly because I run instances with a crazy bear who keeps pulling mobs VERY fast so I'm lucky to get two ticks of mana from aspect of the viper while running to target new mobs. After a while I have to start regening mana with viper by shooting mobs where as with MM spec I just keep going and going.

That said, if you plan on leveling solo, BM with 2 set t5 and a gorilla with blood of the rhino is a lot of fun as I've found out recently. Tank & spank elite killing is fun.

I respectfully disagree - understanding why stuff is happejning means I can make a decision for the next pet w/o relying on others' intuition or massive testing - I'd rather now what's happening then simply follow the herd.

Steady Shot.

So it seems obvious now that there IS a break point for AotH/AotB, but has anyone been able to find what the break point is? Specifically what will it be at 80 since I'm assuming it will move up quite a bit with new ranks of AotH. I am also curious as to if there is a know break point where the devilsaur passes the cat or even the scorpid due to the % based bonus on the special.

This break point between AotB and AotH would depend largely on the raid buffs present.
My own tests (see 2 pages back) indicated, that beast and hawk are on par. At least with my gear. I got the same dps numbers in an unbuffed situation vs. a test dummy. So I concluded that a raid situation would tip the scale clearly in favour of the beast. (I wasn´t able to test it yet because my guild didn´t do SW since my findings.)

So I followed that path all the way and specced out of iAotH to put those points into added stamina and armor. Every little bit helps at times.
I also regemmed some of my items such as [Starstalker Legguards] in order to get the most ap without totally gimping my crit. (took the 3*10 Agi out and replaced them with ap/crit and 2*ap/sta in order to get the juicy +8 ap socket bonus and also to free up some slots on other stuff as far a meta requirements). So including King´s, I gained 25 ap (and some stamina) while losing 0.48% Crit. But I digress.

Maybe somebody could figure out that breaking point? I for certain can´t and won´t.
I know that LK is very close already and a lot of things will be put into new perspectives. But moving from the old staple AotH to the new and revamped AotB while also changing socket and enchantment priorities, would come close to a revolutionary change in the hunter world.

Problem with linking all your Cooldowns might propably be that you want to use them during a Bloodlust/Heroism
to maximize your overall dps.
Same problem would occur during the Kil Jaeden Fight, because you need the damage in one part of the fight.

This is true to some degree, but it depends on what trinkets you're rocking.


Example A: [Dragonspine Trophy], [Bloodlust Brooch]

In this scenario, you're totally right. You use BW+Brooch, and then your Brooch has a 2 minute cooldown while your BW has only a 1.4 minute cooldown. This breaks the link so that the next time you can use your BW, you can't use your trinket. Thus you may lose out on some "primetime DPS" during Bloodlust/Heroism since you can't fire off your trinket at the same time as BW.


Example B: [Berserker's Call], [Bloodlust Brooch]

This changes things completely. You use BW+Berserker's, and then your Berserker's has a 2 minute cooldown while your BW only has a 1.4 minute cooldown. But your Bloodlust Brooch only has a 30 second shared cooldown. That means as soon as BW is up again, you're ready to pop your second trinket. And after you do that one, Berserker's will be back up in time for the next BW. Thus you reach a nirvana-like state of rolling trinket cooldowns when you use 2 on-click AP trinkets.


My "Enrage Macro" looks like this:

As you can see, it casts Blood Fury, uses whichever trinkets I have available, and casts Kill Command and Beastial Wrath simultaneously. The last two lines are strictly for flavor--the /script plays the Ashbringer "Kill them all!" line, and the /e shows "Halestrom becomes enraged!" (Repeated spamming of such macros can result in a party, raid, or g kick. Use at your own risk. )


On the subject of macros, many hunters may have overlooked some added Disengage functionality with the patch. As we all remember, Disengaged pre-3.0 required you to be in melee range. After GC posted that Disengage would be changed to only require combat (no target), I decided to test it out at range. I underwent several hours of gleefully disengaging myself off cliffs to bring you the following info...


Ranged Widener
This is one that I use in mostly just two functions: 1) Kiting melee in BGs, and 2) MD'ing to the tank in instance runs. In the former scenario, I found it to be very useful for staying out of Intercept range on warriors, but buyer beware: it's usually just delaying the inevitable, and if melee does close in on you, you've already blown your escape button. In the latter scenario, I did it mostly just for fun. I would run up ahead of the group while we were killing the last mob of the previous pull, fire it off and send the next group running up to meet us--with me already handily placed at range to commence immediate pew-pew. The overall effectiveness of this macro as a whole is still questionable, however. In PVP, you may not want to blow Disengage that early, and in PVE, you may want to replace Concussive Shot with Arcane shot for a meatier misdirect to your tank.

Melee Widener
Now this is one I'll swear by. Thank God for Disengage coming off the GCD--that allows this solution for one-button melee escapism. Bind it to something you can hit in a split second (mousebutton for me), and the second a rogue closes in on you, you can smack this macro to snare them, get out of melee range, and leave them with a sneaky Raptor Strike in the face to boot! It's a really simple macro but very, very effective for getting back into range. Alternatively, use the following macro to immobilize your enemy if your trap cooldown is accessible:

Trap Placer
Again, a PVP-centric macro, but you may find some use for this in PVE as well. As always with using Disengage in PVE, you need to be very situationally aware so that you don't catapult yourself into more mobs. Provided you're in a safe spot to use it, though, this macro can give you and your trap target some breathing room. It also toggles off your attack to avoid insta-breaking it like a huntard. An important note about this macro is that unlike the other two, you must be in combat before clicking this. The other two macros fire off an offensive ability that will place you in combat prior to attempting to cast Disengage. The last macro can't afford an offensive ability prior to the disengage line because the freezing trap eats the GCD.

I was lucky to have the chance of testing this in beta (although a few builds ago), I tested many pet tank specs and I focused mostly on pet survivability at the expense of some damage. For levelling, the few % points of damage are unimportant compared to what my pet could keep at bay.

My choice was (and will likely be) a personal spec like THIS paired with a gorilla spec like THIS

I kept improved revive pet (with the minor glyph on top) because when soloing tough elites, sometimes my pet died, this allowed me to switch to monkey, revive the pet, heal it and feign to have it get agro again.

Then I had one point floating between Bestial discipline, Improved mend pet and Spirit bond, with the latter being my favourite choice, because when paired with blood of the rhino, it made my mend pet a very powerful heal and one-two casts were enough to kill the toughest mobs I encountered. Focus was really a problem, so 1/2 Spirit bond and 2/2 Bestial discipline would be maybe advisable.

I favoured also Catlike reflexes over Ferocious inspiration, I think 9% extra dodge chance for the pet made it a lot more resiliant to very hard hitting mobs.

3/3 longevity was better than splitting points between it and Cobra strikes, due to the former lowering the Thunderstomp cooldown.

I opted for beastmastery as well for the 4 extra talent points in the pet tree, but during 70-71 focus starvation happened quite often (I only have 1 in Bestial discipline as well), but it's a tradeoff I accepted for a single level.

This gorilla tanked like a champ, rarely took enough damage to even make a mend pet worth casting, except against elites, and allowed me to round up 5-6 mobs for a volley fireworks (it's time efficient when mobs are quite close together). Once I was able to kill 9 mobs in one go (didn't pull them on purpose!), but the pet died on the last two that I had to finish off with normal shots.

What I did was usually have the gorilla pick them up, using Thunderstomp once or twice, toss a mend pet, then start using Volley. I usually right clicked the T-stomp manually after the pet had 2-3 mobs on him and let it on autocast from there on.

As a minor difference from Mattaos pet spec, I favoured 1 point in Cobra reflexes over the Taunt, because it was mostly useless and even with 3/3 Longevity it has a 2.1 minutes cooldown. Last Stand would be a much more useful choice for both grinding and eventually instancing and using the pet as offtank (it can main tank earlier normal mode dungeons, but people have to watch threat very carefully).

P.S.: I spent 90% of my time in Aspect of the Beast, the rest in Viper to get some mana back.

Please delete. Moved to above post.