Off the top of my head and without a WWS this is what comes to mind:

1) Make sure your pet's non-dps abilities are not on autocast. There seems to be a bug that is re-enabling these abilities when re-logging,zoning etc which will cost you a lot of DPS.
2) For cat's make sure you have rabid in a macro or it will not cast unless the pet is attacked (fixed in an upcoming patch).
3) Time Kill Command usage with Cobra Strikes procs.

As a side note you also want to be 50/11 until they buff exotics. Until the patch changes, 1 point in GFTT with a cat/scorpid is more DPS than an exotic pet.

I am not 100% sure which post you are commenting off of, but most of the discussions that involved Animal Handler up to this point have been referencing the old AH. The change to AH coming in the next patch is certainly a strong talent for increased pet DPS, but until that change is live it is advisable that hunters bypass AH since it gives a L.70 hunter that is hit capped zero benefit to DPS.

After breifly scanning this thread and the other WotLK hunter talents and discussions thread, I'm looking at the sake of haste and how its going to effect us.

As of now Haste isn't effecting our GCD, so as we approach the 1.5sec Steady cast time, with autshots now being unlinked, is there a lot of deal with further boosting our haste at all. Wouldn't we hold the 1.5 second Steady/GCD as a benchmark and then continue to stack armour penetration?

I don't have numbers to reinforce this as of now, but yes imo.
I have about 6-7% passive haste, have traded most of it for armor penetration. (cloak of fiends for dory's embrace, bindings of lightning reflexes for steadying bracers, even using my hyjal trash neck)
but my problem is, that ignoring the armor pen. and haste on these pieces, the haste gear has better stats overall, so I'm interested in doing some testing.
Haste isn't what it used to be, but it's not a horrible stat, don't ignore gear just because it has haste, it won't hurt your dps, it just doesn't yield the same benefit as it did pre-patch. personally I miss my 1.88 speed, it was something to be proud of (for a long time 1.88 was close to the standard for BM speed) now its 2.00 (which was said by some to be the optimal 3:2 speed, or 1.96) and I've gained a lot of armor pen. I'm up to 105 rating (14-15%). I have seen a dps increase so far, still checking my Armor Pen. neck vs. the SSO/Aldor neck.

Guess its time for me to start invading this thread too, god I love my hunter theorycrafting! Btw tip-top job on the initial post Matt, very well put together, and if people actually take the time to read it, should cut down on alot of the usual play my class for me requests.

Theres been some numbers thrown around in the wotlk hunter thread claiming haste to be the single strongest stat we can pick up (assuming the hunter is hit capped) until we hit the GCD for steady then having it drop off to being the third strongest stat behind agi and crit.

It seems to me that this seems fairly logical when considering that haste will never realistically cap out on auto shot, and the fact that things like cobra strikes and go for the throat while having a soft cap on effectiveness have no internal cd and benefit from increased levels of haste.

If we can figure out exactly how much focus a pet can burn over a fight, we can then figure out exactly how much focus we would need to generate for that pet to maximize its special dps. Once we've determined that, we can figure out what levels of haste and crit will allow us to reach that level of focus generation.

Along that line of thinking, it seems to me that in terms of pure pet dps, haste and crit will have almost the same effect, more haste equals more shots in a given period of time, which equals more crits in that same period of time. Likewise more crit equals more crits in a given period of time.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I currently view haste as our third strongest stat. This might change depending on what kind of effect we find aotv is having on dps and what levels of intellect allow us to drastically decrease aotv time. But then again haste is going to decrease our time in AotV though, so /shrug.

Haste has no effect on cobra strikes beyond bringing steady shot to 1.5 seconds.

For reference:
Autoshot is not able to procs the effect.

GFTT procs are still a valid consideration, but it may be more beneficial to increase crit frequency rather than attack frequency, especially as BM due to your already fast attack speed. As an example, 1% more crit rating allows a flat 1% more chance to crit, giving a flat 1% increase in GFTT procs. On the other hand, at a 1.5 sec steady, 1% haste provides only 1% more auto shots, which is only .5% more attacks which could proc GFTT due to steady being at it's maximum speed already (assuming ~1:1 auto/steady split)

That said, I would value haste similar to hit rating in that it is one of the better "bang for your buck" stats until you cap (in this case, soft cap haste). However, once you hit that cap it's far more useful to focus on other stats instead. It should lead to gearing in a more rounded fashion than the "stack armor pen like it's going out of style" strategy you found in Sunwell.

Edit: Although unless I am mistaken, beastial swiftness and a quiver should already cap your steady shot speed, so I suppose my last statement would be more applicable to non-BM hunters.

They do not clip to my knowledge. Examples would be on our fights of M'uru post nerf we popped all our cd's and I had a weapon speed of under .7 seconds at times and my dps would sometimes peak at 3500 and Id remain between 3200-2700 until phase 2 where dps would stop for a moment. A short sample: Wow Web Stats Thats my best evidence for you. you'll notice wws showing a lot more autos than steadies now, almost a 2:1 auto/steady. where as before people were very close to a 1:1.

One thing to note is that if your pet has focus available, you can get the GCD for pet abilities to be ~1.25s. However, my testing also indicates that if your pet has to wait for focus to become available, it may take some time after the focus is available before it is used. Therefore in practice it is always best to err on having more focus than is required, as this should ensure a better DPS uptime.

So pet regens (or regened) 24.5 focus every 4 sec, so w/ 1 pt in bestial discipline, it would have 36.75 focus/4sec, just short of needed 37 focus/4sec, but it's really close. It's probably a wise idea to max bestial discipline, since you may get short intervals of crit drought, but math-wise, 1 talent point spent elsewhere (although I'm not sure where) could give more dps. As for math above, are you sure pet has 1.25sec gcd? I really never cared enough about it before, so I'm not sure. Also, in a minute, there should be 6 rakes and 42 claws assuming 1.25sec gcd, since you have total of 48 gcds to use, unless rake doesn't trigger gcd for the pet.

Shoutout to fellow bonechewerer(?). It used to be a lot more fun w/ more guilds racing through raiding contents.

EDIT: there should be total 49 skills used, since there are 48 gcds (one at time 0).

Imo, fully raid buffed, I have 42% crit and my pet never runs out of Focus. I disable Prowl and Growl before every boss pull, put Rake before Claw on the pet bar and Rabid in my macro. Almost reached 3k DPS (2997...) and I'm wondering right now, 3/3 Longevity and 1/3 Cobra Strikes or 1/3 Long and 3/3 CS? I'm specced into 3/3 Long and 1/3 CS with a Cat right now.

Excellent thread, well done!

I'm also an advocate of the above build. I've been experimenting constantly with different talents and I've found the above spec to be an extremely efficient DPS build. Here's a very recent WWS from Teron using that build with a cat pet (specced in the standard cat DPS format): Teron Gorefiend

My gear is completely BT (i.e. no Sunwell upgrades) using [Black Bow of the Betrayer], which appears to me to now be superior to the badge crossbow - something I've seen echoed in this thread.

The thing that confuses me at the moment is how people seem to class haste as redundant for BM Hunters. Personally (and perhaps this has to do with my gear) I've found adding haste has increased my DPS significantly. Along with hit it's one of the stats I'm intending to cap at 80 because from my own personal experience the return on investment makes it completely viable. I've also noticed DPS upgrades replacing most of my armor pen items with pure AP (i.e. replacing 2 x [Dagger of Bad Mojo] with [Halberd of Desolation]) - is this something others have seen as well?

If you're BM, a quiver and Serpent's Swiftness already brings you down to the Steady Shot haste cap, at a 1.48 sec cast. Unless you play MM/SV, reaching haste cap for Steady Shot as BM doesn't need anything on your part. BUT, it still shortens our Auto Shot cast time, and with AS being unlinked from SS, your AS will be a bigger part of your DPS than previously.

One consideration that I haven't seen posted here, is that for a 51 pt BM build, with a cunning pet, the extra pet talents allow you to train Owl's Focus without losing Wolverine Bite. This doesn't directly feed the focus pool, but it does offset focus starvation somewhat. In that build my owl was pretty close to the starved cat against the target dummies. Two additional talents that help offset the lack of added crit (cornered and feeding frenzy) clearly don't come into play against the target dummies, but hold up well in raiding. Well, FF at least, cornered is better for farming.

I'm not rehashing the 51/10 vs 50/11 thing. The latter is clearly the better raid DPS spec, especially in the current build, and happens to be my current spec. I'm just pointing out the 51/10 with a cunning pet is a nice match, and really isn't too far behind in dps for raiding.

3.0.3 will even the balance a little more, with reductions in both focus cost and cat/scorpid damage. Birds of Prey especially with snatch going from 40 to 20 focus.

I think any raid worthy spec is worth exploration. Can you link a WWS report if available? I am curious to see how your pet did with all things (raid buffs & conditions) considered.

In regards to the pet GCD piece. I simply used the GCD reflected off the spreadsheet without questioning how accurate that calc was at the time I did that quick pass at figuring a rough estimate of pet focus regen. Focus seems to be one of those things most hunters (atleast me) take for granted, but figuring out a general breaking point in which our own crit% can comfortably justify specing 1/2 GFTT (2/2 BD assumed for all builds). My rough clac above basically gave an idea of the regen numbers expected at a 30% crit chance simply re-enforcing the concept of only dropping 1 point in GFTT at that point.

I will see if I can research more data from some WWS reports to better pin down the number of attacks we can actually expect from our pets, which would alter the calc I posted above. But, I think we will still find a 30% crit chance sufficient focus regen taking 1/2 GFTT. I would like to start narrowing down that crit chance number too to determine the true breaking point for when going 2/2 GFTT is absolutely necessary to maintain DPS. This information will be valuable for early level 80 itemization.

One thing that has been lost in my memory over the mists of time - is the healing from 2 piece T5 threatless, attributed to the hunter or attributed to the pet?

In a previous post I commented to a poster about potentially dropping his currently equipped badge xbow for a slower speed on the basis of higher DPS due to raid haste effects. I had another person reply to that post bringing up the point that the DPS for any weapon that is relatively the same shouldn't matter. Considering the way Steady Shot works now (vs. post 3.0) this is true and evident in my post that showed the results from the spreadsheet when plugging the various weapons (i.e. badge xbow, Illidan bow, Archie Bow, Twins bow). So, in retrospect, there is actually no disadvantage to using the xbow from a DPS stand point since Steady Shots will be under the 1.5s mark regardless and the speed of the xbow will showcase its displayed DPS (on the tooltip) in Auto Shots.

But, the [Black Bow of the Betrayer] did have an advantage over the badge bow and Bristleblitz Bow when considering normalized raid Replenishment (no JoW bug) and factoring AotV uptime due to the mana return bonus that the bow provides. In fact, I have my [Black Bow of the Betrayer] macro'd to swap-in during AotV and a separate macro to swap my Twins Bow back when I re-activate AotH. The mechanic of that bow to return mana on every successful hit is extremely strong during AotV up time and I suspect it to be useful even in early stages of level 80 raiding (PoV subject to change upon testing at level 80).

Post Cont...

Hit rating is top of the list for hunters when considering stats until hit is capped. Given.

Haste is not a "bad" stat, but at a certain point it becomes less valuable when considering other more desirable stats available on same level items. AP has been moved up the list of importance for hunters with the advent of raid-wide buff and changes to Trueshot Aura (also, Unleashed Rage or Battle Shout) to boost AP based on a % vs. flat amount. Crit is also a major consideration for hunters, especially BM hunters, which means Agility is still the one stat that carries the best budget value for our itemization (AP + Crit). Also keep in mind that technically there is not a hard cap for haste for say. One could stack haste for days dropping their Autos to .1% if so desired, but what most people have been stating about "capping" haste is a soft cap which a point where haste basically stops giving the hunter any DPS value. The budgeted haste on items are taking the place of more valuable stats.

Armor Pen is still going to be a desired stat once the next patch is released. Bosses are getting a armor buff of 10% increasing the value of ArP slightly beyond what an acceptable limit is currently. Obviously, ArP is useless in a raid after the point where a targets armor is reduced to 0. Now, we have more armor to penetrate and ArP will need to be re-visited to determine a soft cap % based on average boss (and/or mob) armor.

If the spreadsheet or your own testing is indicating that the Halberd of Desol is a DPS upgrade, then more and likely your gear config was deficient in another area, i.e. hit rating (?). For me, I have basically the same DPS results on the spreadsheet and in testing when swapping between 2x Shivs and a Shivering Felspine because of the itemization of my gear.

There is no best or cookie cutter spec. Right now it seems that 50/11 may be the spec of choice, because GftT is so critical towards keeping your pet from becoming focus starved, but there are 51/10 and 49/12 specs that show some good promise.

Devilbus

I suggest doing a little more researching of not only this thread, but the WotLK A&T thread. This information is readily available with justification, testing and reasoning behind the commonly used raid builds.

A long time ago during TBC raiding 4/5 Frenzy was proven to be a sufficient amount to keep 100% up time. Having 1 point in Animal Handler is also odd. I am not sure if you are factoring in the possibility due to the upcoming change giving expertise or you are not aware of the transference of hit to our pets recently added in 3.0. Either way, only having 1 point in Animal Handler is not offering the full potential to your pets DPS. Post-3.0, 2% hit > 1% hit and now with the upcoming change 10 expertise > 5 expertise. 3/3 Longevity was/is a good DPS boost, but 1/3 Long and 3/3 Cobra Strikes has shown to be the better DPS combo.

Why would you do that?
Lets make the assumption that you delay your viper shooting by 1 global CD by switching weapons, that means you just lost 400 mana(at least at my current viper levels) - meaning you would have to shoot 50 shots in viper to make up that shortfall - doesn't seem likely with say..8k mana pool(20shots)
Thats not to mention the fact that you're doing less damage with that bow(albeit half less damage) and that you lose another GCD to switch back after and it seems a bit of a loss.
Is there another reason like the proc triggering viper regen or something?

I can assure you that BBotB's proc doesn't trigger additional viper ticks.

It doesn't seem worthwhile to use the bow as a switch weapon at all, since you're going to be getting it's 8 mana/shot regardless of if you're in viper, hawk, or something else. Two GCD's spent on swapping would be better spent to get one extra shot in during viper, and switch back to hawk one GCD earlier. It's essentially ~40mp5 as long as you're attacking with auto/steady, and your aspect won't change how effective it is.

I'm inclined to say you either use BBotB, or you don't. There's not really an inbetween, and if you've got a twins bow, you shouldn't need black bow for pve at all.

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying the there is a GCD used for the Aspect switch and a GCD spent for the weapon swap, right? Honestly, I have not seen a GCD initiated for the weapon swap, but I wasn't looking for it either (will check tonight). The proc from the BBotB is additive to the viper tick, so it is an extra 8 mana per shot. The DPS difference between the Twins bow and the BBotB is 1.5 dps (using the tooltip DPS of both bows). Using simple numbers, if the current AotV gives back say 350 mana/shot and it is used at oom with a 8000 mana pool, it would take 23 shots to fill that mana pool. The extra tick from the BBotB would eliminate 1-2 additional shots required to fill up the same 8000 mana pool. The difference in DPS is not great enough to make a huge difference, but of course one could argue the stat gain from the Twins Bow would reduce the 1.5 DPS difference even more. The point is to get out of AotV as fast as possible, correct?

The swap seems to be instant, but I re-test it again tonight to see if an additional GCD is applied for the swap itself. also note that come next patch Aspects are being taken off the GCD. On paper the extra mana returned just made sense. And, I will admit that using this same macro beyond low level 70s is a stretch.

EDIT: Ok, I took a few minutes to research the GCD/weapon swap piece and it does, in fact, incur a GCD in combat. When I devised this weapon swap macro I did not factor in a GCD, which is essentially negating the that extra shot being saved by using the BBotB. Point taken and thank you for the insight. Just for my own sake, I still plan on doing an active test with this macro, but looking at this on paper factoring the GCD charge the results are not going to be nearly as great as I initially considered.

Sure - here are 4 - just don't laugh too much - we are not a 1337 bunch. The first two are the first raids we did after the patch and no one understood what was going on.... the second one was fun as we AoE pulled everything. On these ones I'm running 51/10/0 (Armory is borked and is still reporting my old spec). Using an owl.
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

The second two are after we have things a little more straigtened out. I'm 50/11/0 and using a cat. The third one was a mess for me because I'd just reinstalled the application from an old image just before the raid and didn't noitice that it rolled back ALL my macros until after the raid, so there will be some funny stuff there from some unknown point in time (given the number of arcane shots, probably from a PvP time).
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

I'm still an armature and reading into these. Any insights would be appreciated. For other hunters Kheer is MM spec, Mable is BM, but with literally her old 2.4 talent tree. Purujit is something like 46/15/0. None of the four runs is the same content.