TrevvyTrev

By the same token, if you use a pet with suboptimal focus generation for two weeks before the expansion, it doesn't really matter. You do enough dps either way to kill just about everything that needs killing, provided that you're doing content that is remotely near your skill/gear level. Go For the Throat is a great talent, but it's not like pets have zero focus with just bestial discipline and it's arguable whether the dps from added focus greatly exceeds the added dps from more pet talents and access to exotic family abilities. Additonally, the additional talent points actually are useful at level 70, because you can't get all of the "raiding" talents without the 51-point talent. You can't max out spider's bite and still get Bloodthirsty; you can't have Rabid and Call of the Wild; and you can't have any survivability talents unless you forego dash (and increased travel time is lost dps). Your pet may have more focus, but it is more fragile and does less dps, even if you don't count the damage from the exotic specials.

 

fliptrocity

Hey!
Long time lurker, first time posting.

Even with the nerfs to cat and scorpid dps, they are more than likely to still be the best dps pets in game, until wrath anyways. Most other pets out there , i.e. Wolves with Furious Howl, have special abilities that don't stack in a raid situation
rendering said abilities pretty much useless.

Another thing to consider, with the new Animal Handler, we're going to see our pets get dodged and parried less, thus possibly making up that loss from Rake and Sting nerfs.

So in the end, for the next 9 days... Cats will likely be the best dps you can get.

As soon as you hit 71, go get a Devilsaur , and name it Mattaos.

 

Schmerz

Simple question. 3/3 Cobra, or 3/3 Longevity. Currently I'm at 3/3 Longevity with 1/3 Cobra. Bestial Wrath is always on cool down, I was just wondering the damage per second advantages of having 3/3 Cobra 1/3 Longevity over 3/3 Longevity 1/3 Cobra.

 

Mattaos

Until some true numbers are tested to show that the "new improved" exotic pets are trumping the GFTT argument, I am still sticking with GFTT for my Cat. The main exotic that was recognized for DPS was the Devilsaur, which did not receive a boost in damage from its special (just the focus reduction). As far as the focus piece concerned, we covered that topic a month ago. Yes, 4 more points will obviously give you more specing options for your pet. And yes, there are advantages to having more survivability. But, like I said, we covered this a long time ago and for level 70 content under the current HP nerfs and 3.0 pet buffs survivability is not as much a concern when min/maxing your raid DPS.

 

Aern

I would definitely agree with matt, the majority of the discussions that go on in these hunter threads (and the reason why so many people enjoy reading these boards) is geared toward raiding and hardcore min/maxxing. So yes, min/max doesn't really matter right now, but nothing does until expansion so might as well do what ya love.

As for exotic pets, iirc the blue post stated that the dps increase would be about 10% to the exotic family specials. It appears this hasn't applied to devilsaurs, and most exotic pets for that matter, so unless you're going with a rhino you're not gonna be seeing that buff. I'd wager as well that 1 point in gftt is worth more than 10% dmg to any pet's dps, let alone 10% special dps, and any exotic pet's dps is going to be decreased by not having gftt so the gain in dps will most likely be nullified.

As for some numbers I've tested so far, went to the level 70 target dummies and tested cat dps against scorpid dps. Did it kinda lazy since I just wanted to make sure the pets had enough focus to use it whenever they had a gcd up. So there was no BW or KC or other AP proc usage, just CS and GftT while in AotV. I consistently saw my scorpid doing over 100 dps higher than my cat. So I'm betting that the reason why scorpid poison was doing so well still hasn't been changed and the nerfs to the stacks before scaling is included really are having only a small effect on the overall damage potential of scorpid poison.

 

TrevvyTrev

The devilsaur did not get a dps boost for its special, but its special already does more damage than a focus dump, plus it adds a stacking buff. The focus change helps deal with AI issues where it doesn't use it enough and the buff falls off. Additionally, Monstrous Bite wasn't doing more damage than rake or scorpid poison so there was less of a reason to use it in the first place. If rake and scorpid poison dps was nerfed to be lower than monstrous Bite (accounting for the +dmg buff), then we have to recalculate how worthwhile it is.

My pet died the other day on Gurtogg, btw. This is just a reminder that pets didn't become invulnerable with 3.0. Be that as it may, as I mentioned earlier the raid boss nerfs reduce the need to min/max in the first place. My objection was less with the idea that GftT is more dps than an exotic pet (maybe it is) and more with the idea that we can't fault a guy for trying to min/max an exotic pet with 2 weeks to go before WotLK launch and then turn around and try to min/max non-exotics for the same timeframe. As a secondary point my suspicion is that it doesn't matter that much either way, because various gains cancel out no matter which way you go.

If doing what we love is theorycrafting, then we should do it correctly instead of guessing, however educated those guesses may be. The difference between an exotic pet at 70 and a 1/2 GffT pet at 70 is not a 10% difference in family special dps. It's a 10% difference in family special dps *plus* 4 additional talent points worth of dps. We have to add them up, which doesn't make the math as easy as some think. If your ferocity pet never dies and you don't have bloodthirsty, it doesn't matter. If it does die and you don't have it, it matters a lot. If you pick up bloodthirsty, then you give up either one point of Spider's Bite or Rabid, either of which is a dps loss. We need to account for that.

The scorpid may still do abnormally high damage, but without the 4 extra talent points it is squishy. If you raid spec it for avoidance (probably a good idea) then you miss out on Blood of the Rhino. If you add Blood of the Rhino, then you have to give up guard dog, which is the only source of in-combat happiness regen. These tradeoffs don't matter against training dummies, but they might matter on some encounters, which is something that should at least be mentioned if we are serious about engaging in some theorycrafting for theorycrafting's sake.

Survivabilty is one of those things that is difficult to account for in a spreadsheet so people just tend to ignore it entirely. Some people are better at keeping pets alive than others, either through their own designs or because they have healers that pay attention to them. People who never lose pets don't see dps gains from survivabilty talents at all. On the other hand, people whose pets die on raids for one reason or another, will actually see dps gains from survivabilty talents if those talents make their pets die less often or reduce the impact of deaths that occur, because they don't have to lose dps rezzing it or sending it in with lower happiness, or just finishing a fight without it.

Still another thing that we have overlooked are the oft-maligned cunning pets. Cunning pets are less susceptible to focus starvation because of Owl's Focus. Obviously you get more OF procs the more focus your pet has (because it uses more specials) but the focus gap is smaller because there is a hard cap of how many specials your pet can do in a given time because of cooldowns, both global and otherwise. Another important factor is that cunning pets consistently underperform against training dummies, because they never get to use feeding frenzy. And, once again, without the 51-pointer, at 70 you have to make some tradeoffs. You can't have maxxed OF, Roar of Recovery and Wolverine Bite. You can only have *one*.

Finally, the blue post about exotics didn't say every exotic would get a 10% family special increase this patch. It said that after this patch, the family specials for exotics should do 10% more dps than their non-exotic counterparts. Some of them already did (read: Devilsaur) so they didn't get boosted except to lower their focus so they would always use those abilities first if enabled. That's just a clarification since people seem to be wondering why Monstrous Bite didn't see its damage go up.

 

pwnsauce123

i have been reading the forums for a while...i managed to get this spec for myself ...and now that 3.0.3 hit i am doing less dps than another hunter in the raid,with my gear being better than his and in a teron gorefiend fight, he was right under me in overall dps.This concerns me, i spam the macro that mattaos setup at the beggining of the thread. im cheking myself, and my crits just dont seem to be as high. i have respeced about 10 times and right now i am just wondering is it my computer Fps interfering? or am i just popping Cd's at the wrong time which cause too much haste and wasted dps.

these is my current talent:The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Difool

I tried hard to make 51/10/0 work as well as 50/11/0 in 3.0.2. I tried with different pets and different specs, and even posted ealier about the 50/11 Cunning pet, but at the end of the day, for real world raiding (not theory, sorry) the pet specials didn't make up for the lost focus dump, in raiding. Since then I've tried other combinations of pets and pet talents to see if I could dethrone the 50/11 cat and scorpid, but even the gorilla cycling thunder stomp on 10+mobs in Mount Hyjal couldn't keep up with either.

 

Mattaos

I am just posting this now and will re-visit this post if more testing is needed, but I found something very nice tonight after respecing. I dropped points from Imp Mend and went 3/5 Frenzy while picking up 2/2 Animal Handler. This yielded 100% up time (from watching buffs/debuffs manually, not timing the up time) of Frenzy and FI. The gain from 10 expertise seemingly allows the pet the ability to narrow the gap between hits and miss to keep the buffs up consistently.

This was also observed with my pet solely attacking the L.70 test dummy without me attacking at all. So, this is not factoring in the added focus from GFTT and Cobra Strikes (I am 1/2 GFTT and 3/3 CS).

[reserved for more information]

 

KraxisSingular

Even without the Expertise, 3/5 Frenzy and 3/3 Cobra Strikes should be enough. The amount of crits your pet will do is rather astounding, as long as you can keep it supplied with focus. Obviously such is rather much harder without GftT, so Animal Handler and Cobra Strikes lose a lot of power in relation.
Basically GftT save you one point in Frenzy that can be used in other more effective DPS talents.

 

Bikiniwax

So I wonder if even 1/2 GFTT is really essential now with the reduced focus on pet specials in 3.0.2?

 

KraxisSingular

Really... Read back a page or so. We have been over this. And also my post just above yours go into this issue of Animal Handler and Frenzy in relation to GftT in particular.

Yes, Go for the Throat is still as important. Remember that Claw/Smack/Bite still cost 25 focus, and most of the racials are on 6-10 second CD. That means you at best spend 145 focus where you would have spent 150 before (5 dumps to a 6 sec cd ability with the 1.25 sec GCD). That is not anything worth mentioning.

 

sihyunie

They only reduced focus cost of family specials, not the focus dump abilities. What gftt mainly does it allows the pet to spam its focus dump ability, so yeah, gftt is essential imo. Whether the 2nd point is necessary (well not really a choice at 70, but it'll at 80) is upto the player. Mathematically (assuming 40% crit, which is easily obtainable in raid), 2nd point doesn't really help pet dps, but you might have short periods of critlessness, which can cause focus starvation (although it is very unlikely at such crit %), so 2nd point is a safer choice. I'm not sure where that 1 extra point will go (improved tracking?), but it'll probably be better spent somewhere else than max gftt.

 

Vegelus

It did not stack since 3.0 went live. We had 2 BMs in one group few times and one's FI was rewritten by another. Simply turning on any SCT-like addon that show buff gains will tell you how it is. And if raidwide FI would stack it would lead to stacking BMs in raid just for increased damage.

 

◊ foolish_fool

I have been browsing petopia and something is bugging me. It seems to me that the pet specials (rake, sting, monstrous bite etc.) seem to in fact have lower damage than the focus dumps. For example: the level 80 rank of sting is said to hit for 64-86. The equivalent level Smack hits for 118-168.

Now, sure sting has the nice added effect that it reduces armour, but if you are in a raid group where this is provided somewhere else, would it be just more dps to not cast the special abilities at all and just focus dump every gcd?

Some of the skills seem like it would be a much closer comparison, or the bonuses not as replacable (I am thinking Monstrous Bite in both cases), but it still concerns me somewhat that the focus dumps appear to hit harder than the specials. It may be that the specials scale somewhat, or benefit in many cases from not being effected by armour, but has anyone tried a dps comparison of just focus dumps vs. specials + focus dumps? Even rake looks to me like it would be better left out of a pet rotation.

 

Homarid

Hey guys I just wanted to comment on the 3.0.3 changes as far as the scorpid goes. I really didnt notice a change at all. I took my scorpid to bt last night and the poison still scales beautifully and does serious damage. I was seeing spikes of almost 2k ticks with normal being around 1k. I wish I had a 2 week stretch to show you the difference but me and another hunter swapped specs for 2 weeks to try stuff out while keeping a tsa buff in the raid. I'll link some wws anyway and if you could give me some comments on playstyle and anyway to improve that would be great.

This week, spec I have 4pc T6 but no beast-tamer shoulders.
Last week, spec I am MM without 4pc T6, other hunter has 4pc T6 but no beast-tamer shoulders.
I know the theorycrafting leans toward BM being more damage, and in practice it does for me, but they are still very close. So in the end I think it just ends up in your playstyle deciding which way to go.

Also for anyone curious FI does not stack with the ret paladin aura in any way and will never show up while the ret paladin is in the raid.

 

Mattaos

You pretty much answered your own concerns in the first part of your post. The pet specials typically have an added mechanic tied to it, which is the trade off for some damage. This does not apply to all pets and some pet specials are deceiving, i.e. Scorpid Poison and Rake, because they scale so well. Lets use the example of Sting (Wasp), which does a decent amount of damage every 6 sec and applies a debuff the equivalent to CoR or FF.

The second part of your post doesn't make much sense to me. Would you only use Auto Shot in a raid? Why limit your DPS potential? In many, many previous posts (some on this page, in fact) touch on the importance of GFTT. As long as you are providing your pet focus to draw from it can use all its abilities fluently.

 

Sk1nk

Hey there, i read through the complete Beast Mastery Bible, but still got a point not mentioned at all.

I would like to know if skilling Invigoration with 1/2 or 2/2 and Kindred Spirits 4/5 or 3/5 could increase the dps of a Raidhunter, because it's stretching the uptime of the AotH.
We are currently raiding on KJ and i noticed myself switching into the AoV because i ran out of Mana, but I'm not sure if the damageloss of the pet is equal, more or less the damage I'm winning while skilling Invigoration.


PS: I'm not a native speaker, so excuse possible misspelling.

 

Kisai

KJ fight is kinda special, since the chain lightning (or whatever its called) drains your mana. But even with this, the revitalize from the dragons and the mana regen from the judgement of wisdom (i assume u already have some ret paly raiding) should be enough to keep your mana while not using aotv, so in my opinion invigoration is not worth its costs.

btw hello, new here

 

Kamaa

I'm on my way to work, so I don't have time to test this, but my first thought would be pulling the one point out of longevity. I too suffered last night when we saw how big the JoW nerf was. The 1 point in longevity is a theoretical and perhaps debatable gain anyway since it means you'll be using Bestial Wrath without the benefit of trinkets.

If anybody can do some math or testing on this matter it would be great. I'll look into it tonight when I get home as well.

Omegatron has arrived.

 

Saladin

Kamaa, I for one have jumped on the hunter-tanking bandwagon ever since the first whiff of Gorilladins on beta. This is a total wet dream for me as I play a "real" tank (prot paladin), and it's a pain in the ass that I can never take any other character to instances. I have no delusions about raid tanking as a hunter, I'm perfectly cool with taking up my mantle of South Carolinian Tankadinian for that, but I would really like to be able to tank all LK 5-mans at least on normal as a hunter so that I have more options when the guild wants to run something. So I really, really, REALLY would love for you to show me how it's done and take me as your Gorillawan apprentice.

On the case of Devilsaurs v. Scorpids v. Cats, we all know that cats and scorbids scale insanely well, and many hunters balk at devilsaaurs due to the fragility of the 3-stack MB buff. However, assuming a perfect universe of 100% uptime on 3xMB, would it be conceivable that there is a level at which +9% all pet damage outweighs an equally-scaled Rake/S.Poison? Right now at 3000 AP I believe it's generally accepted that scatpids are > or = devilsaurs. Will that change when we're all spelunking around Icecrown Citadel sporting 7k AP?

That's been the most attractive feature of devilsaurs to me since they became available: the massive pet scalabity. A devilsaur means I'm getting...

125% Happy
20% Unleashed Fury
3% FI
20% Kindred Spirits
9% Spike Collar
5% Orc Racial
9% 3xMB

That's a veritable buttload of %-scaling damage debuffs, and I'll admit to some cognitive dissonance as to how scatpid scaling could match it, post nerf.

 

Shikimaru

With all of the reworking done to steady shot, auto shot, ect.. is it true that the DST is a tad inferior to the Madness + Beserker's Call combo?

 

Aern

This thread is shaping up very nicely, lost of good ideas and questions getting thrown around in here. Fun fun!

In response to Trevvy, the reason why people discount the extra 4 points is for ferocity pets, you can gain every direct dps increase (besides call of the wild) and compensate for the other talents with intelligent play. Yes, you might have some crappy things happen to your pet every once in a while, but its been my experience in the past and especially since the patch that if you do the little things to take care of your pet, it won't be dying. Remember if your pet dies, even if you get it up instantly, you're losing dps from the lost buffs on the pet. Feeding your pet before a boss pull, and keeping an eye on it's health/debuff/positioning and calling it back when you need to has been more than enough for me to keep my pet alive and happy, and it should be for any other hunter.

As for cunning pets, the only really interesting thing about them that I've seen in roar of recovery. Feeding frenzy is ok, but once again I don't see it making up for the lost dps of a ferocity pet during the first 65% of a fight. Owl's focus to me is really a non-factor since we'll be getting even higher crit early on at 80 and even with 1 point in gftt I'm not having any focus problems at all. Overall the cunning group of pets just doesn't really have a stand out special right now that can bump it above ferocity pets. I tried wind serpents and chimeras in beta and they just weren't putting out the dps of ferocity pets.

As for devilsaurs, i think the question at 80 is going to be whether or not something like 55/x/x will yield higher dps than 50/21. If they don't fix the way scorpid poison is scaling, it seems to me like scorpids will probably be the top raiding pet. Especially when you bring readiness into the mix, extra rapid fire and extra bw proved VERY nice in naxx fights since they were mostly pretty short encounters, 50/21 to the eye looks really juicy. But if mana becomes an issue, being able to free up points for full longevity and invigoration with a devilsaur might be a really solid option. 7 sec MB should keep up 3 stacks very easily and less time spent in viper could prove quite the dps difference, especially since invigoration has a bigger effect the longer the fight.

One thing I was thinking about though (i get excited whenever I get thinking about kinda off kilter types of ideas) is how to make the best use out of roar of recovery. Its not directly related to bm, but if you've got a MM hunter in the raid (if they can pull dps without being oom instantly) having them bring a cunning pet wouldn't be such a terrible idea. It would be on a 6 min cd (no longevity for it makes me cry) but 30% mana to the whole grp would be really nice. MM really isnt depending on pet dps like bm is and it would also help with their mana consumption problems. Would definitely be nice to mooch an extra 30% mana every fight or maybe even twice a fight.

In response to saladin, thats a good point. It really would be nice to see it go up to a 15sec buff but I have a feeling blizzard had already anticipated this exact thing and didn't really want a full 3 stack of MB to be up all the time. This stupid pets should be almost equal really is annoying. >.> I want my pet that does ridiculous dps compared to everything else and thats it!

 

Saladin

This is actually a caveat of the devilsaur. MB lasts only 12 seconds, which disappoints me. If lasted for just 2 more seconds (or let's say 3, to account for GCD and other unpredictables), then you could afford to miss one MB and maintain the buff. However, even with talenting full Longevity, you can never fit more than two "attempts" at MB within the length of one MB buff. What this translates to is, for every single MB miss you have to rebuild a full triple stack of MB to get back to peak efficiency.

Now, it's easy to get hit capped for our pets, and they stand behind mobs anyway to avoid parries, but that still leaves dodge. As of right now, the only way to reduce dodge for our pets is Animal Handler, and that makes this talent damn near mandatory for Devilsaurs. More so even then longevity, perhaps.

However, longevity does provide an indirect benefit to MB upkeep. Untalented, it takes a full 30 seconds to build 3xMB. With 3/3 Longevity, that number drops down to 21 seconds. So, assuming you do lose the buff (which you most assuredly will without Animal Handler, and even then possibly with it), you "gain" 9 more seconds of 3xMB uptime thanks to Longevity. You also get the benefit of MB's direct damage more often.

Personally, I'm really starting to rethink Longevity and Devilsaurs. I got the talent for when I Gorilladin, but the dual-spec system is making me consider specs that lack it. Indeed, the value of Longevity for Devilsaurs seems to fall smack dab in the middle of Gorillas and Cats: 3/3 Longevity is a total DPS increase for a Gorilla, while 0/3 or 1/3 is acceptable and even preferrable for a Cat.

In short, Longevity's okay for a Devilsaur, but I doubt you would miss it for other more critical talents.

 

galatians

hey guys im a 1st time poster as well.

about the changes to the pets. I have a cat that i love to death and having been using forever. last week i decided to test out mm/bm/surv and as i guessed bm came out top. during these tests i wrote down my personal dps and my pets dps (on test dummies in IF). I decided to do a test last night with my pet to see how much my pets dps was nerfed but it seems that my cats dps was actually 5 higher then it was to begin with. Any suggestions to why?