With all that haste in LichKing another option would be a second glyph for steady shot (similiar/inversed to healing touch-glyph of druids):
- Increase casting-time of your steady shot by 25%, but increase it's damage done by 35%. *

This would result in a decision to make. Try avoiding all passive-haste and give a shit about the glyph or take the glyph and don't have to worry about some passive haste.
I know, some of you have latency-issues. For those a little longer cast-time may be a fair choice too.

Obviously, for a BM such a glyph would be more of a must-have than for Marks or Surv.

* Numbers are just out there to show the concept.

I can certainly understand what you are thinking here, but it just is not feasible to gimp our pet as a BM hunter. The pet is our bread-n-butter and haste doesn't negatively affect us to the point of needing to avoid it for the sake of building spec around it. Search the WotLK T&A thread since this topic has been discussed over there and links are provided to GC's comments on the decision to use haste on the early tiers pieces. There are other options to supplement tier 7 slots that do not have haste, besides for BM we really are mainly after 2pc T7. Haste will quicken our Auto Shots for added DPS, but we can always replace haste with more desirable stats thru gems, enchants and off-set items.

Cobra Strikes and increased pet attack speed is far too important to ignore just to even out haste some for our own benefit. If we wanted to put some math to it I bet we would find a far more significant reduction in pet DPS than overall DPS increase thru our own contribution. Make sense?

I'd agree with matt, the difference in the affect of haste on steady shot/auto shot would be higher if you dropped SS but it definitely wouldn't outpace just going for other stats over haste. I think alot of people really discount the affect haste has on our dps, blizzard nerfed the dmg our auto shots were doing because it was such a significant portion of our dmg. Auto shot really is the only shot in our rotation that we can get to go as fast as haste allows us, which in turn allows us to get a greater benefit out of procs that don't have an internal cd. It also gives us a faster refill time with viper, which if they don't fix the way viper is working, looks like it could be a big concern when dealing with longer encounters. Basically what I'm trying to say is I don't think we have figured out yet the full effect of haste on raiding at 80.

Kajsa, unless you're talking about level 70, you're not gonna have to give up the stuff we have right now at 70 in bm to get down to readiness. With readiness and the glyph, longevity may not be that big of a priority for dps. I tested out quite a few diff specs on beta and 50/21 consistently came out on top for bm, its just that good.

Thanks for the feedback and intuitively I would probably agree with that. I'll throw some math at this and if I find something contradicting, I'll repost.

Since we have about 40% crit with just T7 in raid, Cobra Strikes has about 13/25/37% uptime, which should be a significant dps difference.
As for Serpent's Swiftness, even after soft haste cap, the talent is still a dps increase (granted it's a minor one), while there aren't really alternative dps talents (invigoration is dps boost if encounter is long, but we'll see how long they are before getting to concrete numbers). Also, Serpent's Swiftness ups pet dps significantly (it should be about 5% of total dps loss for not taking it). With just the rough numbers, Serpent's Swiftness isn't really replaceable. As for Cobra Strikes, more math may be needed once WotLK comes out to see if invigoration may be worth it, but I doubt it, since it's too situational.

Couple more things I'm curious about.
Pet GCD. Some say it's 1.5, some say it's 1.25, and I haven't personally tested this to say anything about their tests. However, 1.5/1.2 = 1.25!!! Is it possible that Serpent's Swiftness's 20% haste is affecting pet's GCD??? I'll try testing this once I get home (bah respec...), but it would be nice if others can as well.

Another thing is, how are you people gonna spec bm when WotLK comes out. The general thread is way too long. =P
I was thinking something like this. I didn't think too hard about the spec, so it probably isn't that great, but any comments/discussion would be appreciated.

I have a general question, I know it was prolly answered earlier, but perhaps I missed it?

Ive been using this macro since the patch:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/startattack
/cast Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rabid
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();


Is there not a use for KC anymore, as in a macro?
And if anyone has a better macro to use, please share.

Im sorry if it is a noob question, this is the first time Ive posted on these forums, just trying to gather some info.

I manually cast KC when Cobra Reflexes is up.
Otherwise, you can just put it in your Steady Shot macro, as KC doesn't cause GCD afaik.
Just make sure to put it before Steady Shot in the macro.

I have personally tested three different situations to see what came of it. And it certainly appears that the pet GCD is 1.25. I haven't tested for MM/Surv yet. Interestingly I have noticed the same about Serpent's Swiftness being the crux of this odd GCD. One then has to wonder if perhaps WF totem has the same effect...

I've linked KC with my "nuk" macro (RF, TBW, Berz's Call), waiting for BW, trinket and KC in the middle of fight, for a better pet's burst damage. Test said is better manage KC under TBW or spam it everytime is up? Is my only doubt about new KC.

Until the BW glyph is available, its better to just spam it when CD allows, and even when it is available, its a pretty marginal decision.
On a side note - if you actually get into theorycrafting the skill its kind of alarming how bad it really is, I mean pressing an extra button in a rotation for what amounts to an extra 10-20dps out of around 5-6000? they should just remove it from the game.

Have you guys considered moving to a 51/10/0 spec today because of the pet changes:

Animal Handler: Now increases your pet's expertise by 5/10. (No longer increases the pet's chance to hit.)
Rake (Cat), Scorpid Poison (Scorpid): Lowered damage of all ranks.
Raised the damage of exotic attacks: Spirit Strike, Lava Breath, Froststorm Breath, Acid Spit, and Stampede.
Lowered the cost of pet specials from 25 to 20.

Has any testing already been done on this? Is so is there an exotic pet thats a clear choice for max dps?

Not really. They'll still be focus starved no matter what, so I would still say Exotics are only for lvl 71 and above, when we get one extra TP to spend while also having points in GftT.

All exotic pet's special abilities, except Devilsaur, were suppose to be have a damage boost to result in a flat 10% increase in dps overall.

I noticed a change to thunderstomp in the notes. Does that have a very appreciable effect on how great gorilla aggro has been lately? I was going to use the gorilla as my leveling up pet, but I don't know if it is still going to be able to hold mobs as well as it had been before this patch.

Well with nine days to go, if exotics become the best across the board pets, wouldn't it make sense for many people who aren't going to be raiding soon anyway to respec and tame an exotic so that they can be ready to level with it when the expansion hits?

Might be worth just leveling the 1 level and getting this guy here. You will also then be able to get the 1 point in GftT

A curiousity it seems to me is this change to Ferocious Inspiration going raid wide in 3.0.3. Does this still stack? I cannot envision any stacking of a raid wide FI to be an intended design by Blizzard, as it would result in raids stacking BM hunters, which would contradict their intended plan for raid composition. I would then presume that this would be moved in-line with other overlapping raid wide buffs. Sanctified Retribution would be the closest relative to FI. SR, however, is only a +2% damage value, as opposed to 3% FI.

A crude guess would be that either Sanctified Retribution would be buffed to +3%, or Fercocious Inspiration reduced to 2 talent points. I have been unable to uncover any more clarity on this subject via the almighty google, but I feel it warrants discussion.

I know for a fact on beta FI didnt stack. It was extremely annoying to see the blizzard combat text spam FI gained FI removed FI gained every .000001 sec because we had like 3892048239 hunters in raids. After checking the buff post made way back that I kept on my desktop for reference (Percentage Damage Increase: Ferocious Inspiration, Sanctified Retribution) so they are considered by blizzard to be under the same type of buff and therefor shouldn't stack.

FI and Sanctified Retribution don't stack (they were grouped together in the blue post for which buffs were equivalents), nor does FI stack with itself.

IIRC SR is being bumped up to 3%, but I can't seem to locate the blue post stating such. Wowhead's wotlk site shows SR 3%, while their "live" site only shows 2%.

Bynal's Armory

I'm using the same bow as Tithene. This is the only bow I have access to. I don't have an Arena Rating capable of getting the S3 or S4 bows/guns. So am I hurting myself when Heroism and Rapid Fire are active? Should I wait until Heroism is expired and then use Rapid Fire? Should I dump Some haste items like the Cloak of Fiends for non-haste items?

Thanks for your help Mattaos.

Honestly, Fammaden, you don't need the EJ forums to decide on whether you sepc for 51 pt BM or not in anticipation for WotLK release. 99% of the topics discussed on these boards is geared towards raiding. With the release around the corner most topical discussions have tapered off, but there is no reason to pose such obvious questions that you can answer for yourself.

For raiding these last 2 weeks before expac release, it doesn't make sense to use a focus starved pet in an attempt to max DPS. 10% DPS increase is pointless if the pet has no focus to draw from to even attack consistently.

I actually recanted this statement, becuase passive haste is not the same as the weapon speed per the tooltip. The amount of DPS being put out is the thing to pay attention to and a few minor test I did using the spreadsheet showed this. Example, the badge xbow was doing the same DPS as the Bristleblitz Bow. The badge bow was good for pre-3.0 to tighten a 3:2 rotation or even achieve a 1:1 rotation. Of course, the shot rotation concept for BM is completely changed. Also, Steady Shot mechanics have changed. Hasted attacks do not negatively effect us like it did when Steady Shots clipped Autos, so no heroisms/rapid fire procs are not hurting you.

EDIT: Added another comment

With the nerf that has officially came to scorpids and cats dps (scorpid poison and rake lower base numbers), will a cat or scorpid be the ultimate raiding pet now? I currently raid swp 6/6 with offdays going to BT. Im just wondering what other people are thinking of using for raids.

There are a few options..
-focus starve your pet for 10% dps increase which with no focus would probably round out to be neutral.
-stick with a cat / scorpid and take the dps loss
-switch to another pet, i.e. raptor, boar, wolf, bird, wasp.

Another topic is FI. After reading over the EJ boards i still haven't found the definite answer to the question "does FI stack". I've heard on beta it didnt, but as all of us know, beta changes every 15min. I've also heard that SR has the possibility of stacking with FI. Would it be useless for a bm hunter to get FI with the Overpoweredness of a ret pally usually being in the raid?

And my third question, with the changes to FI, would it be recommended to change the 50/11/0 spec for raiding?