I have made a small addon making use of the survival talent "Improved Tracking" less painful.
It updates a macro for you, depending on what type of mob you have targeted, with the correct tracking.

For instance, if your target is a Demon, the macro is set to

Basically target the mob, push macro button and the correct tracking is set.

I know this is not directly BM but it might become useful at level 80 if we find that spending points there is of good value.
The addon and more info can be found here, feel free to make feature requests and please report any bugs.

Since I have confirmed (at least to my own satisfaction) that the pet GCD really is 1.25 seconds, then it stand to reason that for Rake to have the best non-loss uptime, it needs to fall off, but for the shortest possible time. There is no 'perfect' cooldown as there would be with a 1.5 GCD (9 seconds being both the CD and the bleed length). For the bleed to not lose any ticks there needs to be 8 other casts done (assuming endless focus) between Rakes. 9/1.25 = 7.2, but since taking that 0.2 cast off would lose us a tick it needs to be 8 casts... Well well well, that just happens to be *drumroll* 10 seconds. The original cooldown. Interestingly that fits my personal observations, I have noticed that the Rake bleed tends to fall off for a little while (I have Rake macroed to priority over Claw in the Steady Shot so that Rake will fire as soon as possible with no Claw locking it out), which would be around a second in my 1/3 Longevity spec... A 2/3 Long spec should see 7 Claws per Rake, and never see the Bleed drop.

While such delicacies are rare in this game, it is not impossible that Rake indeed designed around 10 second rotations being best.
Well that got me thinking, would it be possible to create a pet castsequence? Something like:

/castsequence reset=10 Rake, Claw, Claw, Claw, Claw, Claw, Claw, Claw, Claw

Obviously it is a bit bulky, but any sort of macro could lead to better Cat DPS with anything but a 1/3 Long spec. I guess I will have to try it out tomorrow, a bit late here now. But maybe someone has a better and more elegant solution to this.

I want to post some stuff about tanking with pets. I've had moderate success so far including main tanking heroics, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon. I'll be doing more this weekend and next week. I suppose it's mostly for fun though, because unless pets share a hunters resilience at some point, they will never be able to tank end game (ie Sunwell) raid content. Should I post here or just make a new thread all together? Or not post it at all? Is there an appropriate spot for this? Suggestions from a forum mod would be appreciated.

A search for "Medium Rare" and "Bloody Rare" didn't show up anything in either this or the WotLK thread, so I throw this out here for those BM Hunters that are interested in a potential way to make some gold.

Noticed on my server a hunter charging 30g to duel him and kill his Numaroc pet (one of the rare elites). It does apparently give credit for the Medium Rare achievement (as well as for part of the Bloody Rare achievement).

No idea how long it'll be before Blizzard do something about this.

Nice!

There is another addon that is available that changes track instantly on target change as well as monitor mana and prompt to change aspect of Viper and Hawk depending on thresholds you set.

Should try out

AutoAspect

Any definitive testing done as fas as Aspect of the Beast's "supposed" dps boost versus Aspect of the Hawk's dps in a raid setting? I have tried a couple times in raids and havent noticed anything insanely skewed, or even noticeably different but most of those fights have haven't exactly been a good environment to test in for one reason or another.

For BM Hunter, it's just basically Steady Shot spam at lvl 70, and Steady Shot with Serpent Sting (assuming you;re glyphed) at lvl 80.

For MM rotations I would suppose it's Serpent Sting -> Steady Shot -> Chimera ? haven't been MM since patch so I don't really know, just from what I remember talking with the MM hunter in my guild. I know even less about SV rotations post-patch.

Is there value at lvl 70 to use Serpent Sting prior (with glyph) with Steady Shot? You mentioned at lvl 80, but doesn't the glyph increase damage of Steady at lvl 70 as well?

No. The Serpent Sting glyph increases the duration of Serpent Sting; that's all. It's the Steady Shot glyph that boosts Steady Shot damage when Serpent Sting is up.

EDIT: Eep, I'm over-thinking things. The Steady Shot glyph requires mats from Northrend, so Serpent Sting right now at 70 isn't really all that, although the glyph will be available at level 62 when the expansion arrives.

I was doing some BGs and ran into a BM using a wasp. The hunter stated that the wasp was the best PvP pet he/she had tested? Any information on the wasps?

Probably due to their special abilities.

Sting is -armor and not able to stealth. Swoop is a 1sec root + 25% ap on next pet attack and being a ferocity pet it does 10% more damage than non ferocity pets. Add to that all the BM talent increases and i can see how that could be a useful pet in BGs.

All you have to do to determine whether or not serpent sting is worth using at 70 is see how much damage it does per global cool down compared to just pumping out another steady.

With standard raid buffs, 7700 armor boss, though only sunders on target (my guild has lazy moonkins/locks)

My average steady shot hits for 1362 as BM with crits worked in.

With the same raid buffs a single serpent (glyphed) does 1931 damage
Even non glyphed it would be 1609

Now, I don't have 4pc T6 but 10% wont catch up that amount unless you also have an absurdly higher crit rate than me (hair under 32% unbuffed).
With 10% more armor on bosses soon the same boss will have 8470~ armor widening the gap farther.

So for me at least using a global cooldown every 18 seconds is an increase in damage done, at a slight mana consumption increase. Marks and SV hunters have chimera shot and lock and load giving them incentive, so all specs can make use of the sting even without steady shot glyph which will make this whole thing irrelevant.

We can tank some of Sunwell. Our usual warlock tank wasnt around last week for Twins, and nobody else seemed keen to give it a shot. I ported out and respecced BM and grabbed my Gorilla. It went smoothly, a 2 shot (first wipe was because you shouldnt let bad alts tank Sacrolash).

At first I ran down the bottom, thinking I would be mucking around with passive/attack to dodge Blazes on the ground. It occurred to me after a while that I really didnt need to move it, and I was getting drilled from shadow images down the bottom, so I just ran up top and had a bit of fun with Eyes of the Beast. I was jumping around like an idiot for a while, until I realised that I would still need some decent threat for p2. Needless to say, I played terrible but the healers said it was fine to heal, and nothing went wrong. I'm sure if I had actually done stuff such as, say, use Bestial Wrath / Kill Command at all, and stay in melee range rather than trying to burn a rogue or two, it would of been even better.

They all have it. Press P and go to pet skill, then drag it to your pet bar...

I've been BM since day 1 i started raiding propely doing rather decent on bosses like teron, but looking at the changes im trying to find a BM specc to maximize the output, would like some feedback on if anyone's been trying


40/21



Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft



Since i still think it's better with controlled burst damage when it's needed, with double BW and rapidfire. But i haven't tried the specc yet or will have the time since instances are cleared for this reset.

BW isn't affected by Readiness cos it isn't a Hunter skill, it's a pet skill and TBW is an effect of the pet being in BW.

I would still suggest a 50/11/0 spec though for maximum DPS (as of now), something like my spec. =)

I can confirm that on beta at 80 my hunter being specced 50/21, Readiness definitely does reset the timer of BW.

I just specced it, and Readiness does reset it. Question is how mutch this will actully do in comparrison to 50/11 raiding wise, I'm personly thinking Double BW and rapidfire will get more use out of my drums,haste pots,procs and heroism.



I'll uppdate the dmg imp after wedensday raid.

There is a very simple addon called "Autotrack". All you have to do is to click on your target and it automatically switches the tracking :
Autotrack

I don't really see an extra BW per fight making up for the loss of 20% pet damage plus cobra strikes / longevity.

Especially when BW is going to be up every 70s anyway...

Since it seems like we will to some extent end up with WOTLK gear that has haste on it whether we like it or not, does it make any sense at all to spec at some point without maxing Serpent's Swiftness and move these talent points somewhere else?

At least we would take best use of the haste we got and maybe that would compensate for not having access to Cobra Strikes and somewhat reduced attack speed of the pet.