Elendril

Hmm - interesting. I was totally unaware of that - sort of figured based on the tooltip that it was a zero sum for white DPS. In that case, Pet Calculator - Wowhead seems like a solid cat build - the more I think about it the better Bloodthirsty seems compared to Great Stamina, but I'm still pretty convinced that both Dash and Boar's Speed are more important than the second point in it.

 

Crackseed

Yarr - Boar's Speed is certainly nice for closing speed or getting your pet away from a bad situation but I generally rely on dash for that since I've usually found my pet can stay in long enough that if I have to pull it out and send it back in the dash is ready. Course, again, 30% foot speed is nice but I just like the extra healing/happiness off of Bloodthirsty.

I thin it's really a matter of personal preference there as either option is not exactly a DPS increaser as much as utility.

 

Elendril

Well, less travel time is a DPS increase in fights that involve movement - it's the same as the old Cat's Speed vs. Dexterity debate. Bloodthirsty is a DPS increase in fights in which it saves your pet from dying, but the same can be said of increased move speed. I'm pretty confident that the move speed talents will produce better results in the long run.

 

Whitemane

I'd still take bloodthirsty for more healing, dash lasts 16 seconds so it's plenty for any oh shit moment to get it out and back in again after being healed some by mend pet. Very few situations where I move my pet and it doesn't have dash ready. Interesting fact about cobra reflexes, I did not know that.

Rawr prefers raw AP over Agi though - does the spreadsheet see this differently in a fully raidbuffed situation? I've set my Rawr to consider me fully raidbuffed.

 

Selmarix

The Rawr hunter model is very inaccurate at the moment so it is better to use the spreadsheet.
Nonetheless, in most gear configurations AP is slightly ahead of Agi currently according to the spreadsheet. The difference is usually not big though.

 

Lohegrin

I found an interesting post on the official forums:
World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Marked for Death breaks Glyph of Steady Shot

I am going to try this out later, would be nice if some other people did too.

 

Xaraphyne

There have also been reports of Improved Stings breaking Glyph of Steady Shot.

 

Whitefyst

As Tapout stated, part of being MM is that you do a lot more damage than your pet. However, as a former SV hunter converted to MM in Wrath, MMs have great tools to use that help us manage our aggro so that we can still solo group quests.

The keys are MD, FD, and Readiness. If you want to keep pet aggro longer, always make sure to MD to it at the start of the fight. Then when you are about to take aggro (or just after it if you want to provide your pet a brief respite from being attacked while the mob moves toward you), FD and then continue attacking. If you are close to the 30s for MD to be available again, then wait for it and MD again to further increase your pet's threat. If threat is a concern prior to MD and FDs being off CD, use you Readiness to refresh them and use both.

As long as I am able to keep my pet alive, I have had no problem soloing group quests. The only problem is when on rare occassions even with using Mend Pet, and my pets healing per damage talents, and even using 2 pieces of T5, I cannot keep my pet alive long enough to kill the boss.

 

Æthien

I saw this on TKA, and thought i'd post a link to it here.
TKA thread
Apparently, Marked for death kills off Glyph of steady shot.

 

mako

You'll be required to move a pet on any fight that has the potential to 1-shot, so I'm not sure how a cat benefits more than a scorpid as both pets are going to be forced to move. Scorpid poison is a 10 second debuff, so in many cases you could just send the scorpid back in and maintain the stack, during that time, cats are losing out on (significantly more) white damage.

As for Barrage, you may want to compare it to improved mark instead of piercing shots (which is borderline worthless). Right now there just aren't any encounters in normal raiding that involve enough aoe to warrant speccing for it over single target.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

Octopi

Would be nice if you guys could keep on topic and not fill this MM thread with a bunch of stuff about Pet management.

There is already a thread about that.


I have a question about this particular bug.

Has anyone tried it with just putting 4/5 points in MFD instead of full points to see if the bug persists.

 

Whitefyst

There has been a lot of debate on which specs are best, and the answer really depends some what on a players gear and personal preferences. But with assuming good gear (since that is the goal) and maximizing DPS for bosses, I see the debate really being between the following two specs:

11/53/7 Survival Instincts Build

OR

16/51/4 Unleashed Fury

with the following hybrid

13/51/7 Survival Instincts and 2/5 Unleashed Fury

These specs all avoid the mana talents of Efficiency and Rapid Recuperation since with all the int on our good gear and full raid buffs, mana is not a problem. They also do not include Piercing Shots since the talent is not as good as other options for PvE. The Barrage talents are skipped since Aimed Shot should not be part of the maximum DPS rotation and since most boss fights are not AoE fights and I prefer to build my spec for bosses instead of trash (and untalented AoE is perfectly fine for trash and 5-mans). When dropping from 53 MM to 51 for Unleashed Fury, the talents dropped are one in Improved Steady Shot, since with 6-7 steadies between Chimeras, 10% or 15% chance to proc does not have a big impact, and 1 in Hunter's Mark since the talent does not scale with gear and is inferior in the long run.

So the choice to me is between the slightly more DPS Unleashed Fury build that relies on your pet for a much higher portion of your DPS or the slightly lower DPS build with Survival Instincts that has actually higher hunter DPS. Since for me currently, the difference in total DPS is estimated to be less than 15% fully raid buffed, I chose the Survival Instincts spec. Sure I do slightly less DPS on full pet fights, but I do a lot more DPS on pet unfriendly fights. But that decision is preferential, either choice is good.

 

Crackseed

I've been running a Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft MM build. Right now I have 1 point in FA since I was under hit-cap pre-Naxx run and then leaped to like 2% hit over it xD So I'm planning to drop that point down into Imp Barrage as, while I know the jury i still out on it, I am a HUGE fan of Aimed Shot when I can squeeze it in, plus Volley for trash clearing is just redonkulous.

I don't have concretely solid numbers yet as I've been getting in the swing of my rotation and the encounters, but if this pans out I'll toss in some WWS numbers for comparison and discussion purposes. So far I've managed about 3.5kish DPS on average with a high of nearly 5k for Loatheb. I know not as good as we can manage, but considering I'm still in mostly crafted/heroic gear, lots of room to grow

 

Tornn

I'm interested to know why it is that hunters dismiss Arcane shot from their overall rotation as well as avoid putting points into the talent that improves its damage by 15% for multiple reasons:

As far as I can see, Arcane Shot > everything but Chimera in terms of damage output on my MM hunter, especially with the 15% damage bonus. The crits are strikingly larger than Steady Shot or Aimed Shot, the amount of points to buff its damage are relatively minimal, and it avoids the need to even stack the Armor Penetration of other shots which are considered physical damage. Sure, we want to stack armor penetration, but Arcane shot negates all that need as it deals spell based damage (not sure, but may even be boosted by spell damage buffs). Having played a MM hunter since I picked up WoW two and a half years ago, I feel that the ideal movement for a MM hunter is to use Steady Shot only when all other shots are on a CD. This reduces Steady Shot firing a good deal and I fail to see the downside other than consuming a good deal more mana. However, with Aspect Mastery and the insane amount of mana regen in Wrath, I find very little downtime where Aspect of the Viper nerfs me.

I'm fast with my switches, I do the hawk for every Chimera, and even on Patchwerk against better geared rogues (and skilled players), I was able to out damage them all by a considerable sum (that's with Windfury and Feral crit bonuses for the rogue). I fail to see the actual bonus of sacrificing so many points into Ferocity, however. BM hunters use their pets for considerable gains, I get it...but the 20% bonus damage requires 5 points...5 points that I see being better used elsewhere in the MM tree (especially as I gear up.) Now, I am also lucky enough to be pampered a bit by my guild and always have the draenie 1% hit (combined with gear and food buffs I can fully spec out of the hit rating bonus for bosses), but overall I don't see how Marksman hunters can argue that it is best to Steady Shot spam. That isn't our strength. Our strength is our burst, and our burst relies on all the instant damage shots being fired in quick succession. Finally, remember that % scales to damage. 20% on a pet that does 350 - 400 DPS (my cat currently) is only 80 damage. 5% tracking bonus on the approximate 1300 - 1500 average is only a net gain of 5-15 DPS. Considering that a MM hunter's pet is made of glass, that extra 15 situational DPS I feel is unwarranted (considering on non-pet friendly fights you're actually taking a 65 DPS bath.)

And I would also like to please ask that you are careful when making false assertions for other readers. Aimed Shot, nor any special shot, resets the auto shot timer. I have seen my auto fire at a steady rate employing all shots. Oh, and yes, Attack Power scales better than Agility because Trueshot Aura is now % based. As is the ferocity tree's Attack Power buff, along with the Death Knight's blood buff.

 

Kkyle

I am not sure about this one.

Agility scales with kings then converts to AP which then scales with Trueshot Aura.

Trueshot Aura also does not stack with Death Knight's Blood Buff.

Also, for marks, agility gets an additional 4% boost.

Those three points that buff arcane shot could be used some where else. To justify the use of those points for Arcane, you need to evaluate the DPS difference of not placing those points in other talents.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought MM hunters don't want to stack armor pen since it doesn't affect Chimera or Serpent sting?

If the rogue had the Feral Crit bonus, you had it too.

Where specifically and why?

From what I have heard, Marks pets do 15-20% of the total damage. Let's say a MM hunter achieves 5k DPS on a fight. That means the pet will do anywhere from 750 to 1000 dps.

How is a MM hunter's Pet made of glass? If you go into the BM tree to pick up Aspect Mastery, you have grabbed most of the pet survival (and revive) talents a BM hunter will have.

 

Tornn

Yes, point for point agility does gain a slightly better upgrade. If you compare the two, yes, agility between the talent bonus and Kings rewards enough so that the usual 1/2 agility to AP gap is not accurate. I phrased it poorly. What I meant to imply was it was better to stack AP because the gains from Attack Power as a MM hunter outweigh the small bonuses to crit you get overall.

 

Harmann

I've been playing so far as a few specs in Wrath; I did the Survival thing before we had a Ret Paladin permanently in our raids, then I went Marksmanship, then I tried out BM/Readiness and went back to Marks which is where I'm specced right now.

I'm a fairly new returning Hunter, mine was retired for Magmadar when I rerolled a Dwarf Priest for my guild at the time. I'm picking back up with the Hunter for Wrath now.

I have a few questions:
Here's my armory profile for you to have a look if you want; The World of Warcraft Armory

On our 10 man raids, I'll have Might, Trueshot, Horn, MotW and bosses are not sundered due to our lack of a Warrior, just Fairie Fire. So I'm missing Heroisms, Sunders, Int buffs, Kings.

I seem to be capping out at around 3k dps and I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. Looking at my talents I should definitely ditch Wild Quiver in exchange for Survival Instincts. I am hit capped on raids despite what my hit rating my signify, got a Draenei and +hit food on me. In fairness I am still the highest DPS on our raids and I say that with weight because the DPS in our raids are players I've known for years are they are amazing, but they are all melee and missing Windfury/Talons... I feel if they had that, I'd be in the left in their dust.

Does Wild Quiver increase proc rates on things like Imp AotH, JoW and on hit trinkets? (I know they have internal cooldowns, but that doesn't mean you're activating the things enough to set them off every time the cooldown is up)

Can you see any glaring mistakes with my gear or anything like that?

I understand the argument that with 10% attack power increase buffs that AP is just as good as Agility... but Agility gets a 10% buff from Kings, a 4% buff from CE and then on top of that the AP that it adds gets the 10% Trueshot multiplier anyway.

And I guess my biggest question... is Marksmanship competitive with the DPS from a BM/Readiness spec? I really hate that playstyle completely but if it's what I have to do then it's what I have to do.

Does Serpent Sting inherit the AP of the Hunter when it's applied or does it vary constantly depending on my AP (ie: do Serpent Sting ticks get stronger when Mirror of Truth procs or should I use that proc to reapply a new Serpent which I then keep rolling with Chimera?)

Do you guys wait for some procs to pop Rapid Fire or do you just blow it near the start to ensure you get a minimum of 2 Rapid Fire/Readiness uses in?

I notice that Serpent Sting uses a charge of Misdirection. Does this mean that for an MM Hunter, our Serpent Sting is being given to the tank's threat forever since we keep it rolling?

When you've got haste procs like IAotH for your entire Steady Shot rotation and you're 1s ahead of the Chim cooldown after your 6th SS, do you go for a 7th or have 1s of downtime? Or does this depend on whether or not Imp SS has procced yet?

Also, will my pet indeed remain 15-20% of my DPS? I was under the impression that I scale better than it and that when I'm doing 2500 DPS, he's 20% but if I'm doing 5k it might be more like only 12-15%. And am I right in thinking that 1/2 GftT provides enough focus for whatever he needs to do? I crit so often and so regularly that I have a feeling 50 focus per crit is just overkill... ~40% crit with buffs and another 3% from the Judgements; with an average attack speed of 2sec and shots going off every 1.5, it's roughly 1 crit every 2 seconds excluding Wild Quiver, Rapid Fire and my haste proc trinket.

 

Tornn

If you can argue 3 points into Arcane could be spent elsewhere, the same theory can be used for Ferocity, which can be used for anything since there are a plethora of MM talents that are comparable to one another and overall, at this point, seem to be preferential. The fact that Arcane Shot can eclipse the damage of all other special shots outside of Chimera should be more than enough reason to take those 3 points over other things.

Armor Penetration is on our gear, it's a fact of life that we should pick some of it up. Everyone is talking about using Piercing Shots for Steady Shot and Auto Shot damage bonus (auto shot is still our best DPS as it fires the most no matter how you roll it and buffing Auto Shot is important). Armor Penetration is also beneficial once you cap hit and get a high enough crit, where the actual raw damage you deal yields the most gains.

I had the feral crit, you are correct. However, with most rogue specs getting larger crit gains than hunters, that was the point of my illustration (I raid with a mutilate and a combat rogue who both love the crit).

Where specifically and why? All over the place as a matter of preference. Everyone is discussing where they like to put their extraneous talent points, I can discuss specs of all different kinds and I change mine regularly based on my gear and how my Armor Penetration, Hit Rating, Crit Rating, and AP are scaling. I simply mean that you are going to have to invest a lot of points into the BM tree to pick up 5/5 Ferocity. Hell, I put 7 points in Survival for the bonus Arcane and Steady Crit and the 5% bonus damage from Tracking. (That's 5% of a normal shot. 1000 damage + 5% = 50, meanwhile 2000 crit equals 100, which is a 10% damage bonus from a normal shot.) I think that more than makes up for the pet DPS, especially on fights where pets don't survive.

From what you've heard? Not to be too antagonistic (which you seem ok with) but my pet does roughly 350 - 400 DPS. I do about 3200 - 3500 as of now (not being as well geared as I could be). 3900 DPS with pet, 350 - 400 is equal to 10%. Also, that percentage is just a statistic, it isn't scaling. It isn't like you increase your DPS by a certain amount and the pet's damage also increases that much. It would only scale if all your DPS was increased by simply stacking AP. Your pet only makes gains that way. It doesn't gain from your ranged weapon's damage, it doesn't gain from your personal haste rating or your armor penetration and it doesn't have stats that scale nearly as well as your own. So no, a MM hunter pet hitting 1000 DPS is highly unlikely except in the best stat-stacked gear.

If you have taken the 5 points in improved Stamina, the 2 into the revived, the 5 into improved Aspect of the Hawk, the 2 into the pet focus, you might as well forget MM and go BM. Not to mention if you pick up the awesome pet heals for damage done buff in the Ferocity tree all the BM hunter buffs help keep that pet healed far better than a MM hunter since it does less damage ontop of which, a healer "might" heal a BM pet because the pet buffs the party. Try getting that to happen on an MM pet and you'll have to be bribing the healer.

The idea is that MM hunters hit harder than BM hunters, which is why you go AP over Agility in general. Wild Quiver will cause procs as it is considered a separate "hit" on the mob. Serpent Sting is useless for MD, only the first tick counts, I do not wait to blow Serpent Sting til Mirror procs, but I also have Loatheb's shadow (I will refresh Serpent Sting manually if Mirror procs early since the eternal refresh of Chimera will warrant it.) I blow Rapid Fire twice at the beginning if I know the fight is going to be a sort of single phase. But I will very definitely hold off on the Readiness if the fight is very short or the boss has a severe enrage timer and i know i won't be getting the chance to use it for a 2nd double pass.

1 point for focus generation should be good enough, especially as you get more and more crit. And as I just said actually, no, your pet's damage will only keep scaling that way if all your gains are AP based. Which is highly unlikely. Getting a new weapon that severely kicks A won't boost your pet's DPS at all unless it has a lot of AP somewhere.

Overall, BM is still the best pound for pound DPS spec, but MM is certainly fun and can do damage. I remain #1 DPS generally (we lack warlocks) and I'm MM, so I don't worry.

 

Harmann

This 3900 DPS that you're speaking of, is this in a 25 man raid or a 10?

As I said I'm missing Heroism, Sunders, Kings and there is no CoE/Ebon Plague on the mobs (surely affects Serpent and the Serpent portion of Chimera Shot). I'm also missing Wisdom and Mana Spring/Tide as well as Arcane Int which generally pushes me to use Viper a little here and there to maintain my rotations (don't worry, always shift to Hawk for my Chim Shots). If I had all those buffs, I'd be at 13k mana easily with an extra ~200 mana/5. Probably wouldn't even have to look at Viper with that.

And apparently JoW is bugged or something and requires our Ret Paladin to Judge Light and Wisdom rotating. I haven't heard anything about this bug, but the guy is very knowledgeable and I'll take his word on that, but it's definitely hurting my mana regen. I've invested in Runic Mana Pots, but I'm still needing to Viper here and there. I try to do it at the best times like running to take a portal in Obsidian Sanc or when doing the Heigan dance or running to my Spore.

Also when fighting adds with mana and lower HP, I'll generally give them a Viper Sting + Chim combo to get a bit of mana returned that way if they're going to die too fast for Serpent to be worth anything anyway.

 

Rashabindi

So ive been playing as BM lately but am leaning towards switching over to MM, but am a little unsure on what talents are worthwhile.
My big concerns on what i should get is:
-Efficiency( assuming im only using standard rotation of SS/Chimera)
-Piercing shots( is the armor penetration for just SS worth 3 points in the talent)
-Wild Quiver (how much of a DPS increase does this result in?)

Surrently im looking at a few different MM builds:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...h=161318000000-Unleashed Fury/Efficiency MM build
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...h=161318000000- 7/57/7 Build
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...h=161318000000-11/53/7 with wild quiver

The glyphs i would use are as following:
-Glyph of Serpent Sting(more DPS on chimera shot)
-Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk
-Glyph of Steady Shot( 10% dps on SS is huge considering serpent sting should almost always be up)

 

Elendril

I really don't understand the argument that AP is better than AGI now because trueshot aura is a % increase to AP. Master Marksman was a 10% increase to AP for MM hunters before. Ultimately what is at issue between the relative value of AP and agi is how much crit contribution you get from Agi and the relative value of that crit compared to the AP. At lower gear levels, AP is better. At higher gear levels, crit is better - in early BC AP was better than Agi. It was once AP values rose that the relative value of crit (and thus Agi) increased.

Currently, MM is not legitimately competitive with comparably geared/skilled BM hunters, not because MM dps isn't good, but because BM dps is completely off the charts. I raid as MM and consistently trail one of our BM hunters and run about neck in neck with the other on most fights, but the margin between myself and the top BM hunter is not particularly close.

Harmann - There are a lot of flaws in your gear and some character choices in general. You have mining and no second profession - two crafting professions gives you about 80 free DPS stat points over your setup - the best, IMO, are Leatherworking and Jewelcrafting (the former because of bracer enchants as well as potential BOP crafted items down the road and the latter for the ability to socket extra stats of whatever you want and still get socket bonuses). You don't have the 3% bonus crit dmg metagem, you're significantly below the hit cap, and you don't have Unleashed Fury. That's a lot of potential DPS you're giving up.

 

Harmann

The metagem was an uninformed choice that I picked up a couple weeks ago with the helm, I didn't know they'd made an LK version yet and I just saw this one on the AH for 40g and grabbed it.

Working on Jewelcrafting atm as well, armory just isn't showing it yet. I'll probably keep mining cause part of raiding for me is paying the bills for potions and flasks... this is my only 80 at the moment, if that changes at some point then I can consider picking up LWing or something.

I mentioned in my post that despite my low character sheet hit rating, I am capped on raids due to a Draenei, my spec and +hit food.

Things I need to do that are on my list to boost my DPS:
Boot enchant
Glove enchant
Metagem
Jewelcrafting (mostly cause of that fact that I can use Prismatic gems to achieve socket bonuses without using blue gems, any other profession yields a similar stat boost as JCing otherwise).

But as I was saying... is 3k DPS reasonable with my gear considering the amount of buffs that my raid is missing?

Anyway here's to hoping that they boost Marks and Survival to get a little closer to BMs damage. Personally I'd choose either playstyle over BM which I just don't find fun or engaging whatsoever. Don't see the skill required to spam Steady Shots and use BW, Rapid Fire, Kill Command and Readiness on cooldown.

 

Tornn

It was in a 10 man. In a 25-man the only difference really will be possible more buffs, but nothing overly significant that I can imagine (probably Wisdom and maybe a BM hunter buff).

And I completely disagree. Critical strike rating is more valuable at lower levels because the added crit helps you catch up and have more shots hit for bigger numbers. AP becomes more valuable at the top when your stats are through the roof all around and you want to enhance the damage of every single shot. Also, remember that critical strike chance isn't a guarantee so striving for some astronomical figure is not helpful in the end. 50% crit is cool, but remember that it just means you're less likely to have a cold streak, not that 50% of your shots will actually crit. It's going to fluctuate.

But yes, BM hunters are insane right now. Insane. And they won't get nerfed anytime soon I think because they aren't overly powerful in PvP.

 

Crackseed

@ Tornn - I'm a fan of Arcane Shot, always have been - but even when I've maxed it out with 3/3 Imp Arcane, if I'm using just the first Barrage talent, Aimed outdoes it even with armor mitigation included. I've managed some nice crits with Arcane as I'm sure any decently/Naxx geared hunter can attest, but Aimed by and large outstrips Arcane's output for me, even if maxed 3/3 and using Imp Steady proc. I'd rather use Imp Steady proc for a massive Chimera then use it on a lesser damaging skill. So since I'm trying to maximize Imp Steady uptime, it's hard to justify arcane shot in a non-mobile rotation when chaining steadies between Chimeras and mayhaps Aimed shots is far more justifable and potent DPS.

@ Elendril - I'm definitely on the fence about that too. AP seems to be the stronger stat given the disparity it has in terms of gemming and enchants. Most AP enchants easily yield over 20 more AP then the comparable agility option so it's panning out stronger, but I'm hoping more agility stuff gets added in as I'm a total fan of the dual benefit of agility over the simple pure AP facet.

 

Cobrakai

Actually, I've found that leaving your pet in during Sapphiron's ice bomb doesn't hurt your pet at all (in the 25 man version, that is). My pet has yet to die (or take damage) from the Ice Bomb. This is true for every hunter in my raid.