I'm glad to hear it helped. I've always believed in playing the spec you're most comfortable with, maybe because I've always been BM One thing to remember is that the dummy never goes to 20% health, so you don't get the double kill shots, which would add maybe 6% or better to your number. All the ferocity pets are supposed to do the same damage now, I believe the only difference is the buffs.

Are you familiar with the dps analyzer at Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer I get a lot of whispers from other hunters, and I always direct them there. You can easily download your character from the armory, adjust the settings slightly for the fact that your using a target that's always at 100% health, your latency, and the lenght of the fight and get a theoretical dps number. It's a good target to shoot for. It will also allow you to play around with your talents, pet talents, gems, reforging, etc. to see how that may impact your dps.

I also grabbed a program called wow log parser. You can use it to compare the number of each type of shot you fired compared to what the dps analyzer says you should have, as well as lots of other helpful info. I also macroed Focus Fire into all of my shots, so it has nearly 100% uptime (approx. every 16 secs).

The biggest thing that will help your dps whatever spec you are in is your ranged weapon. Right now that may be the 264 PvP stuff. You may get some flak from people who don't know what they're talking about for using a PvP weapon (much like with the Rowan's tank gun at one time), but right now slower weapons do much more dps (and the extra crit and agility on it doesn't hurt). Seriously, it really is better than my 264 Zod's.

My Kill Command hits harder than Kill Shot and Serpent, so I would priorise it higher.

You can use Favor bevor or after BW but during the 10 seconds I would recommand to only use 2 Kill Commands and 8 Arcans (Focuscost = 140). With zero Hast, no KC glyphe and no Ivigoration-proccs you have to pool focus to 100 / 110. If you use Favor during BW you lose 12,5 focus and 10% dmg on one Arcan.

I haven't checked what my kill shot is hitting for, but pre patch it hit for maybe 10k and crit for 20k+. With the glyph you get 2 in a row for a cost of 0 focus. You're right about fervor the first time through, you should be able to hit kc, srp, and 4 arcane, then kc and 3 arcane and a steady for a cost of 140 focus. I have 110 focus and regen maybe 72 in 12 secs, plus 9 for the steady, which leaves 51 going into the 3rd KC. Hitting fervor just before or after the 3rd KC (40 focus) leaves enough to be able to refresh serpent.

That reminds me, I forgot to mention that you'll want to build up some focus just before BW comes up again, so that you can take advantage of it, probably 85 or better.

On a different note, has anyone noticed ISS missing? On the dummy none of my other shots ever miss, but ISS seems to consistently show a miss rate of 6-12%. Is hit rating calculated differently for that shot?

Arcane spam during BW provides quite a lot of Cobra Strikes procs, thus focus via Invigoration. I can't recall being low enough on focus during BW to go for SS.

I haven't hit the dummy in a while, you're probably right. I'm averaging 1.3 focus per second from invigoration. But I think BW lasts 10 secs, and it's 12 to the 3rd KC, which leaves a 2 sec window to get in a steady.

While trying to see which pets should I have to complete the 10 man raid composition, I saw a table on petopia site (buff table) that hints that BoM does not stack anymore with Trueshot Aura (both 10% AP). When playing in raids, the buff GUI indicate that they are working in parallel as I’m seeing both icons appearing in the active buff screen. In cases where buffs overwrite each other usually I can see single icon, for example I can never see an icon of Trueshot Aura active with an icon of Abomination might. Is the petopia table correct and BoM and TA don’t stack and it is only a buff GUI issue?

I am under impression that it is due to BoM providing a "better" version of the buff (i.e. AP+MP5) instead of just AP from TSA.

The unusual behavior that both can show at the same time, even though BoM is a "better" version (the MP5 component), may be attributed to the fact that TSA is an always-active aura, while BoM is a castable buff. This misleading graphical representation seems to be the case with most of other buffs that are provided by an aura and a castable buff at the same time, even though they are supposed to overwrite each other. Graphic representation-wise, two non-stacking castable buffs will overwrite each other (MotW and Kings for example) and two auras will also overwrite one another (TSA and AM for example), but not an aura and a castable buff. On the other hand, this doesn't seem to hold true for some of the other buffs, especially in the case of an aura and a castable buff done by our pets.

Here is my understanding:
1) They do not stack
2) Since TSA is now a permanent aura, it is up before BoM has been cast on you.
3) When BoM is cast on you, it shows up on your buff list since it provides more benefits than just the 10% AP. Your TSA still exists for you since its your aura.
4) Whether the buff list should still show your TSA or not may or may not be a bug, but either way it does not have any impacts to game play.

Is is worth using Explosive trap instead of the Black Arrow?

We've noticed that Might will stay up (even with TSA) only until mana tots are put down. Then bye bye might buff, with both of its elements otherwise covered.

At least, that's what we think is happening... input welcome.

Blizz buffed Cunning's Wolverine Bite talent in one of the past beta builds... Does anyone have approx. damage numbers for this ability?

It seems that relentless has been retroactively been changed to require more blue than red.

Thankfully, quoted from DPS Meta Gem Change...Change it Back - Forums - World of Warcraft :
"The current design has been reconsidered, so we're planning to revert gems that now require more blue than red gems back to their original requirements. Such a change can't be accomplished via a hotfix though, so we'll have to wait to revert these in a future patch."

Never understood what the strong reasoning for the DPS meta requirement change before, honestly.

Well, since the meta gem requirements will be reverted back at some point, the question is whether it is worth regemming now to get that 21 agi and 3% crit damage bonus for the undisclosed amount of time until the patch comes to revert the change.

Obviously the answer may not be the same for everyone, but I believe that for most hunters, the answer is that it is NOT worth regemming to get the meta bonus until the fix to revert the requirements.

Using my hunter as an example and using both hand calculations and Female Dwarf to show the differences, I illustrate why.

My hunter currently has the following gem color credits:
4 blue
21 red
2 yellow

First, I regemmed so that I ended up with:
12 blue
11 red
4 yellow

To accomplish this, I did the following regemming:
- Changed 2 Delicates in 2 yellow sockets to Smooths for -40 agi and +40 crit
- Changed 2 Deadlies in 2 yellow sockets to Smooths for -20 agi and +20 crit
- Changed 2 Delicates in 2 blue sockets to Rigids for -40 agi and +40 hit
- Changed 4 Glintings in 4 blue sockets to Rigids for -40 agi and +40 hit
- Changed 6 Delicates in 6 red sockets to Glintings for -60 agi and +60 hit

This is a net trade off of +60 crit, +140 hit (to put me 141 hit over cap), and +3% bonus crit damage for -179 agi. That is a lot of agility to lose and resulted in a -234 DPS.

Alternatively, I made the same changes except with using Quicks (+20 haste) instead of Smooths for the yellow sockets, but that was -286 DPS, so 52 DPS worse.

Then I looked at ways to reduce that extra 141 hit to try to make up the DPS gap. I only had 4 items with hit rating on them, and one already had the hit reforged. I reforged the other 3 pieces, with each individual reforge being a DPS improvement, despite losing some net mastery. The reforge trade off was +82 crit versus -66 hit and -16 mastery. This still left me at -143 DPS and 75 hit over the cap. (Note that for the haste gemming case, the difference closed a little as it was only -168 DPS.)

The final option was to replace hit gear with non-hit gear. The hit pieces I had were:
- T10 gloves - can't replace them since need for the 4-set bonus
- Neck - I do not have a better neck to replace it with
- Ashen Verdict rep ring - not replacing that either
- Belt - this was my only option for replacing where I had a worthwhile gear option

The regear still was -86 DPS and 26 hit over the cap. (Note that I lost 14 DPS when regearing with the haste setup.)

Thus, it definitely does not behoove me to spend the cost to regem 16 gems now to temporarily get the meta bonus until the requirements get reverted and I need to regem 16 gems again back to what I currently have.

Others should not take my results as being truth for them since the answer does vary with gear and spec. Still do a similar analysis for yourself and see the differences.

What seems like a smarter and cheaper change than regemming your non-meta gems to met the Relentless meta requirements is to regem your meta gem to meet your current gemming. Of the worthwhile options for hunters, here are the results I got in FD:

Thundering: +92 (chance to increase attack speed)
Destructive: +44 (25 crit and 1% spell reflect for survivability)
Swift: +37 (21 crit and minor run speed) (overall this was +72 DPS for me since could replace the run speed enchant on my boots to gain 10 agi)
Engimatic: +37 (21 crit and reduce snare/root by 10%)
Invigorating: +21 (21 haste and sometimes heals on crits for survivability)

A small but nice change was made on how metagems show in AH. You can now see straight away if your currently equipped gear meets the requirements of meta bonus.

GC seems to read this thread and quickly fixed it as part of 4.0.3a, you no longer see buff that stack on your buff window. Currently the TSA is not appearing anymore if you have another raid buff that provides the same effect.

Is there any consensus yet as to which professions will provide the best effect at 85? Leatherworking seems to provide a lot better results this time around due to LW-only agility bracer enchant.
I've leveled engineering lately, however Cataclysm raid bonuses don't seem so obviously good for us anymore. Casters get a great +int engineering tinker, while an agility one doesn't exist. Coupled with the fact that Nitro Boosts are now eligible to failure in a raid enviroment, it makes it even more unlikeable.

I was wondering about JC / Alchemy, what do you guys think?

Somebody else noticed that dog and fox pets are missing charge in their talent tree, which is standard for other ferocity pets? I assume this is a bug?

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Just a quick question: Do point of no escape actually work on raidbosses? I have tried searching for a definite answer, but find myself getting conflicting answers.

I am new to hunter in PvP, and specifically I am wondering what the hunter role is in battlegrounds and what the preferrable spec is currently with 4.0.3. I ask because it seems like I run out of focus before being able to do a significant amount of damage and am currently looking at my role as a support role (traps, scatter shot, venom shot, concussion shot, etc.) saving my focus for those. I have been BM and have started experimenting with Survival because of those support role bonuses.

Does anyone have an "up to date & legitimate" knowledge and kindness to explain,
how and in what ways does weapon speed affect a survival hunter's performance beyond patch 4.0.x?