I've considered glyph of trueshot aura as my 3rd glyph - I like the idea of it being "non situational" (straightforward fulltime 10% crit buff to aimed) unlike killshot, which i feel might get wasted often - especially on trash. One question i have though is if my TSA is getting overwritten often by the DK's ap buff Does that eliminate the glyph buff?

Yes, and that's why this glyph is not the best option at the moment (until Blizz fixes this silly issue).

There is always debates on what is the best spec, and the answer depends on your playing style, the raid make-up, your gear, etc.

I use a 11/53/7 build myself, and here is the build I prefer for my personal situation:

11/53/7

Since the 11 in BM and 7 in SV is straight forward and standard for this build, I will not discuss those points.

For the 53 in MM, everything is pretty standard and required with the exception of the following:

- 1/3 FA: Obviously, points in FA need to be adjusted depending on the hit gear you have and what combination of gear, gemming, talents for hit provide the best DPS. With my current build, FA points come out of Barrage.

- 1/2 GftT: 1 point in this talent is required to help keep up the focus regeneration for your pet. Depending on your raid buffed critical strike chance and selected pet talents, you may or may not need the second point in GftT.

- 2/3 Barrage: This talent is more to buff my AoE then it is to buff my Aimed Shot, although it is good for that as well.

- 1/1 TSA: Some players do not take this talent since there are others in the raid that may provide it. I still personally take it since it only costs 1 point, is always active (instead of being proc that has down time), is another source of the 10% AP in case we are spread out or the other sources are dead, I am always in range of my TSA, and it helps in 10-mans, 5-mans, solo where there may not be another source of the 10% AP buff.

- 2/2 RR: I am not usually for taking mana talents, but the benefit from these two points, not only when using RF but after killing mobs too, is too good for me to resist, especially when we are speed pulling trash or when in groups without much regen buffs or replenishment.

- 1/1 SilS: I take this point for two reasons: 1) free (except for mana cost) DPS since off the GCD and 2) another source of ranged interrupt if needed.

Talents I avoided are:

- IB: The benefit of Improved Barrage is really lacking compared to other talents when you are only 53 points into the MM tree.

- ISS: As the number of steady shots has been reduced by the 3.0.8 changes and then the Chimera glyph, the benefit of this talent has been greatly diminished.

- Eff: Just not worth the points.

Final thoughts: This build is neither the max single target DPS build nor the max AoE build; however, I believe that it provides a good balance between the two. You end up being within 50 DPS at worst of the max single target DPS build while still being able to perform good AoE for trash and certain boss fights (e.g, Razorscale, Decon, Kolo, Thorim, Freya, etc.). In addition, you still provide the 10% AP buff and have a source for interrupts if needed and have good mana situation with RR, reduced Viper penalty with Aspect Mastery, and judicious use of Viper Sting/Chimera Shot on bosses with mana.

I also realize that there are certain talents that are not ideal on some fights, but you are never going to have a build that is ideal for all fights.

I have to second this. Unlike casters who rely heavily on replenishment (a raid wide buff), our regen is mostly come from JoW - a debuff on a single target. If everyone is fighting the same target this is a non-issue, but there are a lot of fights where this simply isn't the case. Add fights or any time ranged and melee are split I've seen quite a bit of benefit from it - Thorim guantlet comes to mind. I'm seeing about 8-9k mana returned from RR on that gauntlet alone (lots of rapid killing in addition to rapid fire), whereas JoW was only up on the two big guys and gave a comparatively weak 3k mana.

Ok so this is my first time posting. Sorry If I step on any toes.

I have been reading this thread and haven't located a solid answer to my question. I may have missed it and if so would appreciate some direction to the answer.

How should Armor penetration be weighed in comparison to Agility or Attack Power? I know that the benefit from this stat was increased by 30%, but does it warrant 16 armor pen rating gems instead of 32 Attack Power or 16 Agility?

Thanks in advance

I use a very similar build as well, taking full Barrage instead of Silencing Shot (mana constraints as well as personal preference). I like the additional damage reduction from Aspect Mastery and Imp. Revive Pet as well.

My biggest draw to this spec though was not having to deal with ISS procs. I run a priority rotation a la Survival instead of the Chim/Aimed/Arc/SSx3 I see so many of you using with 7/57/7. I just feel like a priority rotation gives me a lot more leniency and let's me watch the encounters more closely than a set-in-stone rotation would. ISS is not a great talent anyways, so I see no reason to conform your rotation around maximizing it at the cost of situational awareness. Afterall, the Survival rotation is the whole reason I went MM in the first place. I didn't want to spend my raid nights staring at cooldowns instead of my surroundings.

I don't take 11 in BM just for 90 ap. You take it for the 5% reduced dmg taken, 1% health, 90ap, less damage penalty on viper...and the best reason: Imp Pet Revive.

I end up as survival alot in my 10man so i can provide replenishment, and one of my biggest complaints is that spec doesnt have imp pet revive.

Well, the 1% health is crap, but 5% reduced dmg is nice.
90ap is obvious. It's more valuable Improved HM because it's constant. You usually don't HM adds. Freya, Auriaya, Hodir, Kologarn, Thorim, Razorscale, XT-02, Yogg Saron, etc all have adds that you don't bother using HM on.
10% less damage penalty on viper is awesome, but only for General Vezax.
Improved Revive Pet - with Heart of the Pheonix I find this talent to be much less valuable. Good pet management will keep your pet alive most of the time.

Improved Aspect is just such an awesome talent for one talent point. It's too bad you have to pick up 3 arguably crappy talent points to get it.

Does your pet really die that much? I haven't used revive pet since ulduar came out. Heart of the Phoenix is off cd on the very rare occasion that my pet does die.

You raise a very interesting issue in my opinion: when to mark up adds? Hunter's Mark gives not just 300 AP for a MM hunter, but obviously 5% damage for both hunter and pet (I believe the 10% extra crit damage given by the talent Marked for Death is *always* present, when reading the exact wording, but I'm not entirely sure on this). So my question is; when is it worth casting a hunter's mark on the add? You mention Yogg Saron for example, in p1 i do cast HM on them, p2 obviously the big tentacles require a mark on them. Another example: Emalon the Watcher in VoA, is it worth spending a gcd on a mark (and another on a serpent sting) before casting your actual shots on the adds (which enrage in 20 seconds)? After the Emalon nerf this isnt a big deal anymore, but before the nerf this week, i was wondering if i should just nuke the enraged add in those 20 seconds, or spend 3 seconds (plus another second to actually target the enraged mob) on global cd first.

Some fights it is pretty obvious i think one should mark up the adds (5% damage for both hunter and pet is a huge deal ofcourse), fights like Freya, Auriaya, Thorim gauntlet, Razorscale the sentinels, Yogg Saron.

Is it really that common to take Heart of the Pheonix for MM/Surv pets? You have to lose either 3% crit or 3% damage to take it. I have Imp Revive Pet so maybe I'm biased, but I'd rather have the damage and just lose 4 seconds on the fights where my pet is at risk (Mimiron is about the only one I can think of off the top of my head).

I'm spec'd 9/55/7 right now just for imp revive pet. ISS probably isn't worth the points so I'll probably swap back to 11/53/7 soon, but it sure was fun getting ridiculous Chim crits on fights with damage modifiers.

To get back to the point, losing your pet on virtually any encounter is the largest single damage loss that can happen. Assuming your pet has died, shaving 6 seconds off the res time of a pet will account for more damage than any 2 additional talent points you can spend on any fight currently in game (assuming the fight lasts at least ~20 more seconds.)

The choice really isn't difficult. If your pet dies, having imp res basically gives you a free 20-30k damage due simply to reviving your pet 6 seconds faster; before the added bonuses of making it cheaper and return it with more health. That said, it is fairly difficult for your pet to actually die in Ulduar with few exceptions.

I think the answer is based on your role as a MM hunter. I view the MM hunter as more of a utility hunter, much like the enh shaman is more of a utility melee. My guild has 4 actively raiding hunters and I have one of us go MM because we don't have the 10% ap buff from blood DK's or an enh sham. This being the case, our MM hunter spec's IHM to give 90ap to the other 3 (plus himself) and he marks a lot of things that I normally wouldn't waste the GCD or the 100 mana on. (IHM also makes his HM cost 0 mana which is nice).

However, if you use your MM spec as a more preferable spec to do top dps, then you probably don't want IHM. Also if yer the only hunter, or only 2 hunters, then HM loses some value as well. The reason I mentioned YS is because I was thinking of phase 1 guardian spirits, phase 2 constrictors, and also the tentacles inside the brain (if you actually go in). In my experience, these die too quickly to be worth a GCD. Of course for phase1 adds, it depends on your role and raid strategy. My raid has me assigned to kill the adds once they get to Sara. By the time that mob dies, the next mob is already at like 50-60% health so I don't find HM useful at all.

For determining which mobs to mark, I usually make a split second decision of... "will using a HM for a GCD on this target help me do more damage than just firing a steady shot instead?"

300 ap + 5% hunter and pet damage > 1 steady shot ........ after X seconds.
I'm sure someone could do the math on that if they really wanted to.


On a seperate topic....
Heart of the Pheonix. I personally think every hunter with a fero pet should have this. I find it much more valuable than 3% more pet damage. If you have to rezz your pet more than once in a fight, either your pet management is poor, or the fight is just pet unfriendly and it's becoming more of a liability than an asset to keep it up. HotP also brings your pet back to life with full health/focus.
Another thing to consider - you are basically trading one pet talent for Heart of the Pheonix, as opposed to two talents of your own for improved revive pet.
A third thing to consider - when you are rezzing your pet, it's coming back with 0 buffs. The obvious things to point out here is 1) it's doing less damage than before 2) it's even more susceptible to dying again

As long as you have HotP, I can't think of a single fight where having Improved Revive Pet would actually be a dps gain. For YS, when your pet dies in phase2, leave it dead until phase 3, then use HotP. For Mimiron, you can rezz in between phases, but with good pet management it won't die until maybe phase 4. For the other fights, it's all about pet management. If you slip up and make a mistake, that's what HotP is for.

Using the spreadsheet, if you changed your spec from 7/57/7 to 14/52/5, your dps increases from 6170 to 6206 raid buffed or from 3364 to 3409 unbuffed. So, going to that spec is a dps increase according to the spreadsheet. Plus the added bonuses as previous posters talked about.

7/57/7 becomes a DPS increase at high gearing levels, read 4/4 T8 or T8.5 and higher.

I'm not sure why 7/57/7 is the preferred spec in MM, but Aspect Mastery is a fantastic talent, plus you get revive pet and can slide points into unleashed fury, which for bosses you can sit your pet on is a lot of help. With runes in Ulduar increasing hunter only dps, perhaps taking dps away from pets is why 7.57.7 is preferred.

How do you justify this choice when in the same post you continue with how rare it is for pets to die? My pet hasn't died on a boss kill yet in Ulduar, which excludes only yogg (p2 so far) and Algalon.
To me, speccing for max output then letting the survivability rely on my attention and that of my raid members is a superior choice.

Here are my personal preferences:

- If not in combat, I always mark a target before the pull, even if its an AoE pull. It doesn't cost anything since combat has not started yet. Furthermore, even for AoE pulls, which I usually start with Multishot before Barrage to maximize tank threat with MD. Not only will the multishot benefit from HM but also do the autoshots that will go off on the target. In addition, when the target gets below 20% health, I will use a Kill Shot, which takes advantage of the HM too.

- While in combat, its a judgement call on whether to HM the target. Generally in AoE situations, I do not bother marking a second target after the one targeted before the pull dies since the remaining targets should be close to dieing where there is little benefit to marking it. For single targets, when in doubt I HM it, exceptions being where the target is going to die too quick for the HM to matter. The "too quick" is a judgement call but usually involves targets with too low health and/or must dies fast (like bomb bots) or who have too little health left by the time I get to them. For the Emalon adds, I choose to HM them since they generally last long enough to benefit from the HM.

Because we aren't perfect. And because 3% pet damage for a MM or SV hunter is roughly 1% of our total damage. So if my pet doesn't die, and overall dps is 4950 instead of 5000, nobody cares. If my pet dies and I spend time rezzing it, not only am I 0 dps during that time (which may or may not be a bad time), but when I do start dpsing again, I'm having to rebuild my FotFF stacks, using a GCD to reapply SrS, using a GCD to cast mend pet, etc etc.

My pet has died at least once on Razorscale, Ignis (pre-nerf), Auriaya, Iron Council, Thorim, Mimiron, and Yogg Saron. You must have amazing pet management to have never had your pet die even once on these fights, especially during progression. I would say that you would be an exception then and you could go for taking that extra 3% pet damage without worry. For most hunters, I would think the instant cast rezz to full health would have more value, because it may not be used every fight, but when it is needed, it is far more valuable (Also, HotP isn't on the GCD).

Can you link this 14/52/5 build?

Is it always worth rezing a pet if it dies? I've not been to Ulduar but if my pet dies on something like Heigan - I never bother rezzing it...it's personal damage is pretty limited and having it by me for the +AP buff hardly seems worth the GCDs/mana cost of rezing.

I'm using the 7/57/7 and I'm quite liking it. My dual spec is for PvP and I can't see the point in making it 14/52/5 if we can't track a boss - surely the difference will be <5%, which for me is only roughly 20DPS on pre-ulduar boss' (10 man raids).

On Heigan (a fight where your pet very well might die again and has limited use) ressing generally isn't worth it. When deciding whether to res you have to take a few things into account.

---what is the chance that your pet will survive the rest of the encounter
-Is the death something you can avoid for the rest of the fight?

---What percent of your DPS does he generally do (for me it's usually about 12-13%) vs how much time is left in the fight?
-basically, is it worth the ZERO dps time for you to add 10% or more to your DPS the rest of the fight (this threshhold is lowered considerably if you have Improved Revive Pet)

---Is this going to make you go OOM at any point during the fight?
-If you go OOM, that cuts into your DPS a LOT. If you're single targeting with a Pally judging wisdom you might be fine. Some fights there is significant time in which you can regen mana (e.g. Mimiron in Ulduar or Sapphiron in Naxx)

As I said, if you're confident you can keep your pet alive for the rest of the encounter, and you won't be affected severely by the mana loss, just look at the other numbers. Pet's are not insignificant so if theres a couple minutes or more left on a fight where you have no mana issues, it's definitely worth considering even without Imp Revive Pet talented.

Another thing to take into consideration is pets like the wolf, with its special ability. This ability (I believe) triggers regardless of whether the pet is actually fighting or not, so just keeping it passively at your side is a free AP boost.

Agreed. I did forget to mention the fact that, in addition to the pet's DPS, he does buff you with his abilities (Furious Howl, Call of the Wild, etc.) and he boosts your DPS by 2% when he is alive (if you're talented into that of course); not to mention abilities like Master's Call.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There are two low level filler points, barrage is probably the best place to use them, FA, Imp H Mark, 2nd Pt in GffT are other possibilites. You're trading pet dmg for hunter dps. Very likely once you lose the T8 bonus that may be the tipping point where you dont use UF.