For myself with my gear inserted into the spreadsheet (sockts changed to AP) I get
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...&version=9551# coming out with about 100 dps better than the one you linked.

What shot prio have you set up?

I am unable to duplicate your results in v86c, at least not with my own gear. In rotations both with and without multi-shot, and with or without the serpent sting glyph (hawk glyph shows higher dps than serpent sting when I plug it in) 53/11/7 outperforms 52/14/5.

I think a lot of people find it counterintuitive that anything could be a more worthwhile investment than mortal shots, but BM mechanics suggest otherwise when you think about it. BM hunters have a lot of haste, which primarily affects autoshot once you get steady shot's cast speed capped. The end result is that the bulk of BM hunter shot damage comes from autoshot, which is completely unaffected by mortal shots anyway. Survival instincts increases the damage of the two special shots that BM hunters use the most, and because this damage is from increased crit chance, it also increases the number of cobra strikes procs (which proc from steady and arcane crits). These extra hunter crits mean extra focus, and extra pet crits mean higher frenzy and FI uptime.

I am using the following shot rotation in the spreadsheet:

Kill Shot > Bestial Wrath > Rapid Fire > Arcane Shot > Multi-shot > Serpent Sting > Steady Shot

With the spec I posted (53/11/7), I get 6129 dps; with the spec Azurion posted I get 6121 dps -- not a lot of difference between using Survival Instincts or Mortal Shots, as I pointed out earlier, but Survival Instincts is slightly ahead.

I think there a couple reasons why my results are different than Azurion's, other than what Trevvy posted. One is that our stats are different: he has about 4% more crit and 500 less attack power than I do. Obviously, the more crit you have, the more you are going to benefit from Mortal Shots.

A problem with 52/14/5 is that in order to steal an extra point from the BM tree, the spec is forced to take 4/5 Frenzy and 2/3 Cobra Strikes (rather than the more ideal 3/5 Frenzy and 3/3 Cobra Strikes) to advance to the top of the tree. This is where the dps loss comes in.

I tried going 0/0 Survival Instincts and 4/5 Mortal Shots while leaving the BM tree with 53 points and got 6133 dps, which is actually a 4 dps increase over the spec I posted previously. (I swear that every time I try this, I get extremely close results, but always a different one on top!) The thing that swung me towards using SI over MS is that without Multi-shot in my rotation, SI was somewhat better (6075 with SI; 6068 with MS). I was trying to plan ahead for the possibility that the changes in mana regen coming in 3.1 might keep me from using Multi-shot regularly.

Azurion has made me think, however, that I should try to get more crit -- and if I do, I should check again to see if MS is looking better. One of the points that I was trying to make is that the relative value of Mortal Shots vs Survival Instincts vs Imp Arcane Shot does vary depending on your personal crit and AP totals. The question is, which will scale the best and which stats should be stacked for the best result. I don't really have an answer for that yet, but I hope we can figure one out.

PS Using V68e of the spreadsheet.

Personally when talents are that close I always look at other factors to see which is better. In this case I would prefer SI due to the 4% less damage taken. Just like the old Aimed vs Multi fight, tohugh that isn't a talent vs talent.

I use the (53/11/7) talent build posted by Rosamonde with a slight variation. Instead of investing 2/2 in Improved Revive Pet and 1/2 in Improved Mend Pet... I put 1/2 in Improved Revive Pet and 1/2 in Spirit Bond and 1/3 in Thick hide...

I rarely use Mend pet in an instance or raid, either cause a healer in the group heals the pet, or "lick your wounds" does the trick and if worse comes to worse, "Heart of the Phoenix" can be used to quickly bring back your pet with full HP in those boss fights when it gets taken down. Those are the reasons for not investing the 1 pt in Mend pet.

As for thick hide, over the 2nd pt in Improved revive pet... well an armor boost seemed logical..

The armor boost from thick hide is never needed. You're better off putting the point back into Imp Pet Revive so if your pet manages to die, he's back up in 4 seconds with only 1/3 of your mana wasted. As far as Spirit Bond/Imp Pet Mend goes, that can go either way IMO. Depends if you want the bonus heals from Spirit bond or the Decurse/mana cost from Imp Pet Mend.

If the spec I posted shows a point in Imp Mend Pet, then that is an error, as I use 2/2 Spirit Bond and 2/2 Imp Revive Pet: 53/11/7

Well I was mainly trying to point out that any points in Thick Hide was fairly useless seeing that it only reduces Physical damage and not spell from what I recall. But depending on the play style of the hunter Spirit Bond or IMP Pet Mend can go either way. IMO Spirit Bond is way more beneficial in raids for the healing buff and periodic heals.

I was surprised by the point spent in mend pet... I think 2 pts in Spirit Bond is a good investment and hesitated in it (d'oh) putting 1 of those points in thick hide which is bismal cause it does'nt effect magical attacks... crapola!!!

So the point will go back into Spirit Bond.

This spec you posted is indeed a very good BM spec. I have noticed an increase in DPS especially with the 7 points invested in Survival.

Reference to the 3.1 thread for those who overlooked it:

http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t52682-r...mastery_3_1_a/

I raid as survival - but with Loque in the bank, will definitly pick up BM as my "alt" spec for solo farming. He's actually phenomenal for getting initial aggro and holding mobs.

I've seen a lot of posts for raiding BM.. but does anyone have a suggested spec for solo farming or pvp?

That's because serious PVPers don't go BM. Explosive Shot damage is just too good as an instant cast shot that can be cast 3 times in succession with LnL. Plus the ranged CC is invaluable.

However, I could actually see BM getting some merit in a 5's team. It also might work to surprise a 2's or 3's team once which can be to your advantage, since they won't be expecting BM, but if you face the same team again they will know how to counter.
In a 5's team, you will rarely be the first one targeted, giving you the ability to stand still and do good damage. For CC's (especially aoe CC) you have BW. If you do get targeted, you have some good survivability. However, again, you are still losing Wyvern and Scatter shots plus even with BW you still aren't bursting like a non-CC'd SV hunter.

BTW, for your pvp glyphs, you should use glyph of scare beast instead of glyph of feign death.

I'm not sure it's helpful to argue why another spec would be better at PvP if the question is just what you should do if, for whatever reason, you decide to PvP as BM, and what things you should consider. As I said before, if you choose to PvP as BM, you are giving up burst damage for unparalleled mobility (which, incidentally, is one of the things that arena SV hunters claim was gutted with the most recent patches). If you play BM like the other specs, you likely won't do well, but if you play to its strengths and have the right partner it's better than people think. It's a toughness spec (in PvP), not a damage spec. Many people have a hard time getting used to that.

As for the glyphs, I also said that the minor glyphs are flexible, with the exception of revive pet, so if people want to use scare beast instead of feign death that's fine by me. I almost never need to use scare beast, and when I do, I don't have problems getting the cast off due to pushback. I personally find myself needing to interrupt a cast with feign more often than I need to get a scare beast off with someone hitting me, so I went with the CD reduction. It's certainly not to the level where any one choice is wrong (except for skipping revive pet) so saying what people "should" use probably overstates things.

That said, I revised my BM spec to forego Survival Instincts to get Careful Aim. It was just too much of an AP loss for the extra 4% mitigation. That leaves a floating point, which I put into Imp. Arcane, but I am considering Cobra Strikes for that as well. I need to collect some more data first.

Are people using Devilsaurs or Wolfs for BM spec. I am curently using a Devilsaur for all fights except Mimron( melle complaind not seeing rockets) and Yogg(I go SV for thisone since BM cant do much on crushers)

Right, so what is this cap? I know it's when Steady Shot reaches GCD (as you say in your post), but what is the haste rating number for BM? (For that matter, what is it for MM and SV? though I don't play those specs)

Maybe I'm missing out on something obvious, but my steady shot tooltip says 2 seconds no matter how much haste I have. For instance, right now I'm at 252 haste rating and when I tab over Steady Shot, it says 2 second cast time. When I equip more haste and go up to 309 haste it still says 2 seconds. So I am not sure how to figure out when I reach the soft cap other than having a number to go by.

The thing I am running into as a BM hunter is that I am getting a lot of new gear in Ulduar that has haste on it. If I equip all of it, I gain a ton of haste, but I'm losing out on various amounts of AP, crit, and ArP. In general, the Ulduar gear is higher ilvl than what I had before, but assuming I'm over the haste "soft" cap it might not be better. It's been my understanding that AP and crit are kickass for BM, and if I'm not mistaken ArP just got a big buff in the most recent patch (yes?), so I'm just curious what my goal for haste is so I can feel a bit more informed about which gear to use.

That said, are there "target amounts" for things like Armor Pen? Something to shoot for to get a certain % dps before going back to prioritizing AP and Crit? Should you stack Crit until 25%, then focus on AP? I thought there used to be a thread here with all this sort of stuff summarized, but for the life of me I can't find it. I also looked through the first few pages and the last few pages of this thread before posting.

As for gear, I am familiar with Cheeky's spreadsheet and I agree that it's an excellent tool for figuring out how to min/max dps and see how you compare to the theoretical dps you should be doing... but it's still nice to have numbers to look at when you are deciding whether or not to roll on gear in a 10man.

Last thing I wanted to mention is weapon speed. From what I read on this thread and from my own understanding, slower weapons are better now for BM, yes? We used to want the slightly faster ones back in BC (2.8 speed, or thereabouts, was popular), but now with all the haste effects and totems and everything else it seems like it would be easy to get "too" fast even for autoshot (cap there is 1 second? Or did I make that up?). Just curious if I'm correct about BM preferring a 3.0 weapon to a 2.8 or 2.9 these days for PvE.

Cheers
CT

For BM, the number is 0. Serpent's Swiftness and Auto Shot haste (formerly quiver haste) is enough to bring Steady Shot just below 1.5 seconds. Your steady shot tooltip won't update, however. To verify it you would need to use a casting bar mod that shows the actual cast time of your abilities. But BM hunters are haste softcapped from the get go.

The haste questions are already answered so I'll move on to the rest.

The simple answer is no, there aren't target amounts for any stats (other than hit and even that is only because its an easy and direct DPS boost) and there hasn't been since WotLK came out so even if you could find such a post, it would be wrong. As a BM hunter, AP is generally going to be the most valuable stat as it transfers to your pet but even then there is a cross-over point where agility becomes more valuable. You can look at the Hunter stats & scaling thread for general insight on how specific stats scale but that won't give you a threshold target or cap. Hunter mechanics are too complicated for such simple measures now; the only viable answer is modelling. Which leads me to....

If you've bothered to look at Shandara's spreadsheet (Cheeky's spreadsheet has been dead since WotLK release), you should have seen that it includes a a gear planner tab that will give you a very clear idea on what items are likely to provide a net DPS increase for you. The sheet assumes a tank & spank fight but you're never going to do MORE DPS than that so its still reasonable as a general selection tool. You can also look in this thread for current BiS gear.

Weapon speed mattered in TBC because specials would clip autoshots if you didn't have the appropriate timing/macro. With autoshot unlinked from specials (as long as you're not moving when the shot timer expires, autoshot will fire), weapon speed is no longer really an issue other than as it relates to mana regen in AotV. Choose the weapon that provides the greatest DPS increase or the one that you think looks the coolest, whichever choice works for you. This is just a game after all.

BTW Signing posts==Bad

a question that I've been having in my mind is: is it worth switching to AotB before using BW? and then switch back when it's done, if so, would it be worth to glyph for it?

last of all I direct this question on blizzard, aspect mastery... why don't you include AotB in it? hell there's even a glyph for it yet it isn't included in a talent called "aspect mastery" :P

guesses are it's worth switching but it isn't worth glyphing for it, atleast not for now.

My pet of choice for BM now that all tenacity pets have received my beloved thunderstomp. Is the Bear. First they have thunderstomp, and second is that they have a 3 target AoE Swipe attack, so essentially they get two AE's. All i can say is that once Frosty rounds them up and I pop BW things start falling down dead fast. Throw a quick Mend pet and we are ready for the next pull.

Shandara's spreadsheet can model this too. For me it shows that it's not worth it to do either one. I cannot say whether that applies to anyone else, so you'd have to test it in the spreadsheet yourself.

I'm personally using a Wolf as BM. I love Devilsaurs, but the size and loud noises they make have made them to be a huge annoyance with my guildies. In terms of DPS, I personally haven't seen much of a difference between the two (maybe it's the spec I have on the Devilsaur). Looking at the dps meters between the two, my Wolf is pulling 2000 dps on average, depending on the fight. Devilsaur seems to be the same (sorry if that number looks weird, but I'm not sure how reliable those meters actually are. Other guildies tend to have me at 5th in dps, while others have me at 3rd).

In the end, in my opinion, I would say it would be based on your own desire. With my experience, it seems like, between the two, that's all it would be. If anyone else has some hard data for the two pets, please, let me know!

Is there a place to do a "look at my armory" post? i can't seem to see anywhere.
I any case, i don't have a lvl 80 hunter which is why i'm finding it hard to help my guildmate who does. She has pretty decent gear, Be.imba rates her well enough but for some reason she can't seem to output more than 1200 dps.

She is hit capped, made sure of that, and fully enchanted. i took her to UC training dummies to test and had her start with pet, then serpent sting (told her to make sure this is up the whole time) and then go through arcane shot, multi shot and steady shot with highest dmg priority.

There's nothing else i could think of and she still put out far less dps than she should be. Anyone got any ideas?

Armory Link if that helps.