Suspiria

Some questions about your spec Mattaos:
0/0 Imp Mend Pet: There are many situations where our pet is afflicted by curse/disease/other things, which healer dont dispel, ofc. A single point in Imp Mend is very useful, imho.
2/2 Animal Handler: Exactly, why? Seems our pets dont need anymore nothing, sharing with us hit, expertise is needed by warrior, for avoiding dodge (for ex, there are many class which need expertise), but if our pets stand behind the boss... Maybe I've missed some news about this talent.
1/3 Longevity: Ok, no Readiness, but 3/3 Longevity seems a good burst; in 4 minutes of fight, we can go BW 3 times, not bad, no?

Also, someone said that 51° BM means strong by 4 more points in pet spec, but I've some doubt: we can take the "real" dps utility talent also without 4 extra point by talent (in your pet spec, leaving charge, cower, and other, you have the same pet dps). Really, I cant see any stronger difference between a cat with 16 or 20 points.
/discuss

I've read many "spec 54/14/3, best spec ever", but I cant see yet any good example about this, some link?

Loque'nahak also had arcane damage istead of Rake, some boss maybe can resist/immune him.

 

TrevvyTrev

First, pets try to stand behind the boss, but they don't always succeed. Second, bosses and other NPCs can dodge things that are behind them -- it's only players that cannot.

 

Valinnor

I think that some have talked about the Spirit Beast before and I was intrigued so I flew around the Basin for a few days and eventually found Loque'Nahak at 71, 71 or very close to it. I didn't have a free pet slot at the time so I flew to a stable master and came back about 4 minutes later, and the Beast was still there. I do not know if he pats but he did not move in the 4 minutes between when I found and trained him. He is not aggressive and was yellow on my screen, don't know if this will be the same for everyone but it should help for hunters tracking beasts. Good luck in getting him all =)

I don't know if he's any good and my preliminary tests in some heroics were not looking good, but perhaps some people can get him so we can get lots of data as to his viability.

 

Suspiria

Ok but, until now, we havent form of expertise for our pets: Animal Handler means a real increase in dps?

 

Rathenel

On the subject of Loque'Nahak, the secondary on Spirit Strike fails to proc roughly 90% of the time, since use of the attack refreshes the debuff before it deals damage. That said, with 3200 RAP, Spirit Strike crits for roughly 1100 damage. He's marginally behind standard cats because of Rake.

 

TrevvyTrev

Correct. It is a real increase in dps because fewer pet attacks will be dodged (or parried).

 

Mr00000

I've been working on putting together a quick guide for the other hunters in my guild. Currently I am reccomending BM (not forced), but may suggest MM as we get more haste gear (not in Naxx quite yet).

I haven't written the whole thing out yet, but here is a quick synopsis:

Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

May go with AH instead of SB

Pet Spec: Pet Calculator - Wowhead

Not sure if this is "cookie cutter" ferocity, but I think it should be :P

Macros:
Rabid in with Steady Shot spam
CotW in with a Cooldown Macro - Trinket (2 in my case) + KC + BW + CotW
An "oh shit" button for pets - Lick Wounds / Phoenix

What do you guys think of this?

 

Mattaos

You mention things that make perfect sense for the most part, but keep somethings in mind as the gears begin to grind trying to hash out the perfect spec...it is early in the expac and 95% of the WoW players base is not actively hammering 25 man content. There is plenty of time to test/tweak/adjust specs.

In order to keep my spec lean to tap into as much potential DPS as I can I had to decide whether certain talents were a "must have" or a "useful to have." Imp Mend didn't fall into a "must have" category for me. A few reasons for this is I raid with some very good resto shamans, which almost eliminates my use of Mend to heal my pet. Also, my pets has never had issues in being dispelled in my raid. Lastly, I opted to stick with 4/5 Frenzy since my (and my pets) crit chance is so low at 80 and dropping to 3/5 Frenzy is not wise. Eventually I will have an extra point from Frenzy to move into another talent, but I doubt it will be in Imp Mend.

I will not drive into Animal Handler. It has been touched on above and some simple research on expertise will reveal the power of this talent for a melee pet.

Currently, I am using a Cat for a DPS pet. You can search the old WotLK T&A thread (now locked) for more information about this topic. The tick duration of Rake is effected by Longevity and though 3/3 Longevity is ideal under my current spec I do not have enough points to cap the talent. The next best option is either 0/3 or 1/3 Long. I opted for 1/3 since (based on the spreadsheet) is net DPS gain overall vs. not taking Long at all.

Again, as my gear improves and I gain more crit I will have the freedom to shift points around some more. Another area I could draw a point from is GFTT at some point. Like I said you have brought valid points about specing BM, but you are also assuming a hunter will be proportionally balanced with DPS stats as we were at 70.

Last night, in heroic Drak'theron Keep (using the gear I currently have on the armory) I pulled over 2900 DPS on the first boss using my Cat and the spec I posted. That might not be that impressive for some, but the point is that there is a method to my madness in the way I spec'd in order to provide as much DPS potential as I can.

I have become a fan of the 51 point talent for shear pet survivability, hence another reason I don't have to invest early talent points into Imp mend. Imp Cower and Bloodthristy are extremely valuable talents. It is true you can grab all the necessary DPS talents without the 4 extra points and is something I will explore after I determine what the best DPS pet option is going to be, which at this point is up in the air some. I cannot access my Devialsaur without the talent and it is just dumb to continuously pay 50g to respec every time I want to test him out on a run. Make sense?

EDIT: Response to Mr00000

Aimed Shot is pointless for BM. Animal Handler is a must. Spirit Bond vs. Imp Mend Pet debatable (see my above response). 3/5 Frenzy is not wise for a hunter not geared from Naxx because crit procs will be too low to have consistency. The 3/5 Frenzy concept was discussed during level 70 raiding post-3.0.

Without a lot more WWS reports and tests coming in from live raiding it is a bit early to call "cookie cutter" anything.

 

Mr00000

I see your point on AH, and somewhat on SB / IMP.

I went with Aimed because it is 1 point for an instant healing debuff that can help on certain encounters. Once I get enough crit, I would go 1 in GftT and 2 in Rapid Fire.

I did 3/5 frenzy because I did Cobra Strikes / Invigoration over Tracking in your build. I need to play with the numbers, but I think between the pets normal crit, cobra strikes, and the buff to Kill Command from Focused Fire, 3/5 in Frenzy should be enough.

 

Mattaos

The bulk of the crit to support 3/5 Frenzy is going to come from Cobra Strikes, which is only proc'd off your ability to land a critical. For me, currently I only have 20% chance to crit severely reducing the consistency for a CS proc. The other thing that drives Frenzy is the pets ability to hit the target consistently (pet crit chance is enough), which is where AH comes in and our ability to gear for hit. Kill Command is a 60s CD rendering it an "ok" at best ability for increasing consistent pet crits since a lot needs to happen during that 1 minute CD to keep Frenzy up.

My main point is the 1 point you gain from 3/5 Frenzy can only be used in either Imp Mend or Spirit Bond anyway. The question is now whether the player has enough crit to proc CS enough to boost the pets ability to crit consistent enough to maintain Frenzy? Gemming for hit and crit is an option I guess. Frenzy is a DPS gain where SB and Imp Mend are not for the most part. I would be interested to see what you find post Naxx gear.

 

Ristoril

You sure it crits? i haven't seen spirit strike crit yet on the initial hit, but recount may not be recording it so i'll have to hit a test dummy and watch the combat log.

 

Valinnor

The dissent about whether or not Glyph of Steady Shot and T6 4 set bonus stacks is alarming. I'd very much like to see some sort of consensus about this because I'm trying to hold off throwing out my 4 set until Naxx at least and if I didn't need to do that it'd be great to know .

Wow Web Stats

I just got Loque'Nahak so he's not even 80 yet but this is a parse from an Old Kingdom Heroic last night and according to WWS, spirit strike is recording as a dot and I'm getting no crits. Granted that my crit is low =) but it shouldn't be zero if it's capable of critting.

 

◊ Sarutobi

If someone on Mal'Ganis has the glyph I'll see if I can get a /combatlog and WWS up tonight.

 

Rathenel

I'm getting Crits on the initial hit and none on the secondary damage if it occurs. I've turned off Rake and Claw to test this.

 

Ristoril

Spirit strike is deffinitly not critting. What i'm seeing on the test dummy is the intial hit then it not recasting again till the dot finishes which eventually makes it look like 2 hits with the reapplication and the dot going off . This is with a level 80 pet on a level 80 test dummy everything turned off except but spirit strike. You may want to retest Rathenel

 

Kivshani

Actually the Ammo Pouch and SS don't effect th casting speed of Steady Shot, just the weapon speed. Only Haste Rating changes the casting time of SS.

 

Frisk

So I plan on raiding as Marks and I think that a cunning pet might work well for that tree because of the mana regen ability (because marks drains the mana pretty quickly). Has anyone done any research on the best dps cunning pet?

 

mersenne

This is so very, very incorrect. The tooltip will not change to reflect cast time reduction, but your quiver and Serpent's Swiftness most definitely reduce Steady Shot cast time.

 

Ele

I can assure you they do reduce the cast time, mine is a bit below 1.5 seconds and I have pretty much zero haste gear.

I have a question about my "Enrage macro":

#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/cast Call of the Wild
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Bestial Wrath

Very often it happens that everything goes off, except Call of the Wild, even spamming with the mouse button the skill on the pet bar, doesn't really help, it seems to just refuse going off for a few attempts. What am I missing here?

---

A small tip if you want to squeeze every little bit of damage also in 5 men instances, use this Steady Shot macro:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot

Basically line #2 will fire a kill shot if a mob is below the 20% hit points mark, hiding the error messages when it's not possible to cast one.

 

Laertis

i´m wondering what haste rateing i should be aiming at 80 as a Markmanship hunter ?

 

Razzmatazz

The answer from page 1 (please put some effort into looking for answers before asking questions):

The original post had some more explanation as to the reasoning behind this, feel free to check it out. Also note that the 602 haste rating isn't a "hard" cap by any means: gathering more than 602 haste rating will still boost your dps, as that additional haste will still lower the time between your Auto Shots. But the extra dps from any haste over 602 rating (or 18.33%) will be significantly lower due to the limiting factor of the global cooldown (the further reduction of Steady Shot's cast time below 1.5 seconds is virtually useless as you can only cast one Steady Shot every 1.5 seconds anyway).

 

buzzy_

Simple questions about hit rating.

vs lvl 80 you need?
vs lvl 80 with 3\3 focused aim you need?

vs lvl 83 (if 83 is the lvl of the bosses if not, I beg you plz to correct me) you need?
vs lvl 83 with 3\3 focused aim you need?

 

Intie

Against lvl 83 mobs (aka bosses):

With no Focused Aim, you need 296 hit rating to be hit capped.
With max Focused Aim, you need 197 hit rating to be hit capped.

If you are sexy draenei like me (or you have him/her in your group) you need 263 hit (or 164 with Focused Aim) to be hit capped against lvl 83 mobs.

 

Gleithan

I have noticed the same thing. I think it has to do with Call of the Wild being on the pet GCD. If I hit the macro standing still not attacking anything, Call of the Wild always goes off. But if my pet is attacking something, it sometimes doesn't.

Thanks for the second macro; is the /cast !autoshot line required?

 

Fimbo

So we are four pages into this new thread and the same question has been asked two or three times already.

Please do at least some basic research before asking questions that will quite obviously have been asked already:

Combat Ratings at level 80

Hunter: Simple Questions/Simple Answers