Depends on what they're fighting.

Try Volley in a large group and look at your DPS. Volley does a lot of damage now.

While doing BT trash it's quick to DPS down large groups of Undead.

one thing

Even with incoming nerfs (balancing) to cat and scorpid dps do you think they will fall with dps below exotic pets like Devilsaur? At lvl 70 I don't think so, taking Devilsaur will still mean you don't have 1/2 GftT so any pet should beat it. So real testing will start at lvl 71

and thanks for previous answers!

The point of using gorilla is cause it can use TS to aoe tank mobs and it also generates a lot of threat.

I wouldn't skip charge to put a point in avoidance as it doesn't really benefit you as much in terms of helping you leveling.

Gorilla is the king of grinding imo, let it pickup 7-8 lvl70 mobs, fire a thunderstomp or two and then volley them down, 2x t5 helps alot here. While you loot, the gorilla picks up the next group destined for destuction. Dont think a warp stalker will be able to beat that.

About this gorila pet...I was looking on pets models and skills on petopia and noticed something:

Gorila has:
Thunderstomp 25 Focus 10 sec CD
Shakes the ground with thundering force, doing [rank] Nature damage to all enemies within 8 yards. This ability causes a moderate amount of additional threat.

Rank: 6 lvl: 80 dmg: 236 to 334

Rhino has:
Stampede no focus cost 1 min cooldown
Your rhino slams nearby enemies within 10 yards, causing [rank] damage and knocking them back 15 yards.

Rank: 6 lvl: 80 dmg: 91 to 123

The question would be, why is the gorila so much better than the rhino?? it's not even an exotic pet, which rhino is..
Is not the goal of the BM 51 point talent to give us the best pets in any situation (tanking/dps/pvp)? From what I see here I wouldnt take a rhino over the gorila in any situation...why make the rhino then? Am I missing something? Even if Stampede costs no focus from what I see...it by far worse than Thunderstomp...Do any of you see any situation where Stampede could be better than Thunderstomp?

Or does the Rhino has Stampede AND Thunderstomp?

edit: nvm, delete please.

Hit Rating on gear is transferred 1:1 to the pet.
The hit chance gain from Focused Aim talent also affects pet hit chance.

The word track used to describe the Thunderstomp immediately makes the Gorilla favored. Some other things to consider when comparing these two abilities is the effect they have on mobs or groups of mobs. TC will slam the target(s) just like Thunderclap from a warrior effecting only the immediate area around the Gorilla. The Rhino actually knocksback the mob(s) several yards. The knockback (that used to be 15 yards, but has been nerfed to X yards[?]) has the potential of aggroing more mobs. The Rhino also lacks the ability to gather up multiple mobs quickly and efficiently like the Gorilla.

The mention of the Warp Stalker is interesting when you read its special ability.

Warp
30 yd range
Instant 15 sec cooldown
Teleports to an enemy up to 30 yards away and gives the pet a 50% chance to avoid the next 3 melee attacks. Lasts 4 sec.

I can see the logic is skipping Charge (25 second CD) if using this pet. The Warp ability lacks a 1 sec stun or AP boost, but a 50% chance to dodge the next 3 attacks is kind of nice with a shorter CD than Charge.

Personally, I am still sold on the Gorilla. The additional threat mechanic and the overall power of Thunderstomp is too nice to pass up. By simply macroing TC into your Steady Shot and leaving it on autocast ensures it triggers regardless of single mob tanking or multiple mob tanking.

On this topic, last night I ran with a guildie in his alt's guild thru Hyjal. This was the first time I have really had the chance to open up the power of the new Volley and was blown away. I have read multiple posts about how insane Volley is and have even experienced a little while farming with my Gorilla. I do not have the ability to post the screenshot (cannot locate my screenshot folder since patch 3.0.2) of my Recount and I will see if anyone was running a WWS. For the entire run I did approx. 8 million damage and 4.7 million of that was from Volley alone (46% crit rate).

So, for large AoE pulls like in Hyjal Volley was not added to my "rotation," but was the only shot I was using the entire time.

The pet's AI and autocast skills are really messed up. Sometimes my gorilla will just continue to use focus dump and not use TS at all even with an abundance of focus. I really hope this get fixed in 3.0.3 so we don't have to keep marcoing everything.

I came across this tidbit from the PTR 3.0.3 patch notes as reported on MMO-champion:

The wording seems a bit vague for a non-english speaker but I interpret it as meaning that thunderstomp will be purely magic damage, meaning no armor mitigation. That would make it even better for threat generation.

Thunderstomp only fires off if there are multiple mobs. If there is only 1 mob, Thunderstome wont fire off at all regardless of focus.

Well with a Magicial Coeff, the crits will only be 50% instead of Double Damage. And I suppose its also going to affect the damage of the spell as it wont be based on our AP anymore and instead be based on Spell Power (Why I would not know).

Presently I’m running with 50/11/0 with a Cat to take advantage of the massive DPS they’re doing until 3.0.3. I’m intent on moving to a Devilsaur for raiding at 80, since GFFT will no longer be mutually exclusive with exotic pets at 71, and I’ve seen what they’re capable of at 80 on the Beta.

I’ve always been a raptor man, and pre-3.0.2 they did really decent DPS compared to the traditional Cats, Ravagers, Wind Serpents. Savage Rend, however, is a rather clunky special, with a significantly longer cooldown (42 seconds with 3/3 Longevity) than other pet specials. But I believe in its potential due to the crit-based proc Savagery adding 10% damage done (even larger than Devilsaur’s fully stacked bonus) for 30 seconds, because the greatest thing about Devilsaurs and Raptors is that the self-buff modifies white damage as well, which is the majority of pet DPS done, and scales very nicely with pet attack speed.

To make ideal usage of Savage Rend, it’s very important to guarantee a crit with it.

I’m thinking of a build like this but I really wish I could put more points in Cobra Strikes. Longevity 3/3 is critical to maximize the uptime of the pet crit proc and sacking points in Kindred Spirits works against the effort of keeping Savage Rend’s damage proc up.

Right now you simply rely on the RNG, because pet crit rating is very high (~40%). Another possibility is to take Savage Rend off auto-cast and force it manually only when Cobra Strikes is active. Kill Command is also a mechanism to buff pet crit chance (thanks to Focused Fire), though it’s not ideal to wait the cooldown difference (42 seconds vs. 1 min for KC) and also not guaranteed.

I know that ‘conditionals’ are not allowed in macros, but I’ve seen workarounds. I recall a script that looped through your buff icons to determine if a specific texture was present, and you could use that to cast an ability.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to make the best use of Savage Rend? It seems without a conditional macro, you'd just have to be on top of it and manually cast it only when Cobra Strikes procs.

Is Cheeky's still applicable in trying to find our current best gear set as of the 3.0 patch? I know raid-wide buffs and new pet types have changed, but I was wondering if anyone had put together something to assemble the best possible gear/pet/spec till the actuall expansion hits. Also now that Moonkin dont have Imp FF is there another class/spec that privides our missing hit% now? Sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere.

You need to start using the new spreadsheet found here http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t30710-h...s_spreadsheet/

In Eye of the storm, i hear it's great fun for elemental shaman to toss opposing players off that center bridge while fighting over the flag. The rhino could possibly allow you to enjoy this feeling as well.

Getting a Gauge.

Hunters,
I have been struggling w/ the changes since 3.0.2 as I work fulltime and then spend eves either raiding or caring for family/cleaning house/other stupid housewife chores. I, thus, haven't had the time I would like to read the entire wotlk thread on these changes. My dps in recent raiding went from a nice 1.8-1.9k pre-patch to 1.3-1.4k while my fellow MM is still up around 1.9-2.1k.

I am requesting some idea of what numbers, pre3.0.3, I *should* be seeing as BM w/ any non-exotic pet, esp. cat. I intend to implement some of the macros mentioned in this new thread [ty btw for creating it, Mattaos!] at our Sunday raid. Please give me a ballpark for right now that I should be hitting using the macros and knowledge gleaned in this thread. I need to get my game back on track, or risk losing a spot in the raids. Thanks ahead of time.

Aware of cookie cutter issue. Spec is the 50/11/0 w/ 3/3 cobra strike, since patch have been playing w/ my wolf again b/c I love that darned thing, but brought a 69 Scorpid fresh-tamed to SW this week on our first KJ kill (based on info at EJ) and did see some tiny boost to my dps...not enough. I think the problem is my timing w/ new rotations, using trinkets effectively, and comprehension of what shots are most effective. Have some time off today and will be reading wotlk thread to get a better idea of wth is happening to my beloved class. Sunday raid will be back to the cat. Believe we are hitting BT. I'll grab a WWS and post.

I'm not sure where you get the notion that you need a shot rotation at all. At 70, A BM hunter need only mash steady shot as fast as the GCD allows.

Be sure that your talent points are spent properly. 3/3 Careful Aim with 2/5 Mortal Shots is better than 5/5 Mortal Shots, just as Invigoration should not be taken due to being relatively useless (Primarily because JoW is currently powerful enough to keep a hunter at/near 100% mana by itself). If you're not going 2/2 gftt, make sure to fill out 5/5 in kindred spirits instead of spending points in lesser talents. Otherwise 4/5 should be the minimum at present.

Aside from that the only concerns are maximizing dps-time and stacking cooldowns with bloodlust if possible.

I thought haste only hurt if you had more than enough to bring steady shot cast time down to 1.5s OR is 1.5s the fastest our weapons can shoot? (i thought we could go sub 1s)

That xbow has no haste on it, so why does having it auto shoot as fast as possible hurt? I thought they did away with slow bows being all powerful and tried to work towards favoring dps and stats over speed/weapon range.

Tithene, I know this sounds stupid, but did you find out how to assign talent points to your pet?

Skipping that stage can cause you to not see any major difference between pets.
And the bible link at the front, perhaps should have a cookie cutter pet talent layout as well. I'm not saying it's required, but perhaps letting people know what talents to have at 70 without BM is important vs. 80 when they'll have spare points.

Haste is probably not the best term to use when describing weapon speed. What I meant by that is the xbow is so fast in a BM build that it "acts" like added haste in the effect of forcing attack speeds sub 1.5s while under normal raid haste effects.

The advantage of a 3.0 weapon currently (post 3.0) is the speed of the weapon after talented with Serpent Swiftness and a quiver allows more room for hasted effects (i.e. Heroism, Drums, Rapid Fire, WF, Ret Aura, etc...) to drop our speed down into the 1.5s range without completely surpassing it. The big draw of the Xbow pre-3.0 was the weapon speed and how well it fit into a rotation due to our shot mechanics, but unlinked Auto Shots eliminated the need for shot rotations in the sense we were used to in TBC. Stats are important, but top end damage is a key factor for maxing DPS currently with the amount of haste available to us outside of our talents & weapons. The Xbow does not hit nearly as hard as Bristleblitz, Betrayer Bow or Twins Bow for example.

This thought process is also directly tied to some pretty extensive discussions on the original WotLK thread about Auto Shots not being effected by Mortal Shots anymore. I will not drive into that topic again since it is easy to find in the other thread.

I will link a few common pet builds on the first page. Thank you for the suggestion.

EDIT: fixed wording

You don't have to put

in a macro to use them, unless you really want to. You can keep your character count down by using

which will use whatever trinkets are in your first and second trinket slots, respectively.