This depends on what spec you are. As a BM hunter taking 3 pts in this seemed pointless cause it lowered my hit cap but did jack for the pet. Considering my pet is my major DPS factor, these points were wasted. I would rather invest them in talents like "go for the throat"

in WotLK you can find enough of gear that has hit in it to get you past 200 in hit rating. However with the new patch 3.1, the hit from FA is meant to impact our pets too... if this holds true, then there will be reason to reconsider the 3pts here...

Hi all first time posting

Anyone know from the PTR if Furious Howl stacks mulitple times? ie more than one hunter in a raid group

Furious howl only affects the pet and hunter him-/herself in 3.1, so the question of stacking doesn´t really pose itself.

How much hit talents are worth to a class depends on:

a. (most important) what other talents you could take if you didn't take the hit talents

b. (less important) what your current tier of gear offers in terms of itemization for you - not just in terms of actual items, but also things like "is the 4 piece tier set bonus so good that we want to wear it, but the tier set has a 0 hit on it (or 8% hit on it)"

In our case on Live, I'm not sure FA affecting pets would yield higher dps by speccing into it, since our highest DPS spec happens to be survival which does have better talents to sink points into than FA, and which already gets hit from items that are better than the alternatives (e.g. frosted adroit) even aside from the +hit advantage. Also, our 4piece set bonus is not useful, so we have lots of room to pick up any good off-set hit piece we want.

The situation is definitely different in Ulduar, especially for MM, but I don't think we can make any conclusions about the results until we see how much hit Agalon 25 and YS25.Hard loot have on them, since they're likely the pieces we'll want to wear, and adjust our hit around with talents and other slots.

Ah thanks for that Midnight. I thought it took on same principles as Warriors shout. Effecting everyone in the raid

If possible, could the original post please be updated so we don't have to scroll through 40+ posts to find useful information?

Also, I remember reading something about leveling pets. Isn't it supposed to become easier?

I'm trying to level a wolf for pve now. Without running heroics it's a real pain.

There are lvl 80 wolfs in storm peak for those who don't want to level one.

For one, DW builds benefit from a lot more hit than 8% (sure, it softcaps, but we hardcap), and casters need more hit rating in the first place - even with their talents, most are still looking at well over 300. I've had problems not overgearing on hit, and looking at the avaliable gear in Uldular, I doubt I'll have major problems remaining hitcapped without FA.

For two, as MM, the majority of shots I'm going to be firing - SrS, Arcane, Chimera, Aimed - are not affected by pushback in the first place. BM, where you're using a lot more steady shots in the first place, has a far better argument for taking FA.

For three, if you look at the hit talents that other classes use, they tend to have secondary effects which are better than pushback resistance - mana efficiency, threat reduction or, like Druids, simply 2% hit/talent point.

I'm not saying "don't take it", I'm saying "it's a choice to take it".

I completely agree. Though SV benefits very little from FA (as they would be speccing out of very useful talents in the MM tree in order to get it) I think these changes are going to end up as a buff to MM. FA is a very good way to get farther down the MM tree (thought I'll probably end up speccing 7/57/7 anyway) and the pushback resistance is great because, with glyph of Chimera shot, any time loss during our rotation throws a huge wrench in the gears. As it stands though, the hunter tier set has a lot of hit on it, so by the time I get Ulduar geared, I'll probably only use 2/3 FA

I don't remember reading that. Perhaps you're confusing it with the change to the BtA shoulders, where they are adding +10% quest XP to the XP bonus.

He is probably referring to the fact that low level pets become your level - 5 when tamed. Also as mentioned, there are many wolves in the level 78-80 range that you can tame. And if not, 5 levels can be done in a few hours of grinding in Wintergrasp when you control it. The revenants give a healthy portion of exp.

i have a few questions about the new changes.

i played myself on the PTR and the way i see it now is that survival still will be the best for dps pve
yes they nerving ES but i think with BA the damage will still be awsome
would like to get a few opinions of you guys about it cause i hear so many diff things

secondly about the armor pen in 3.1.howmuch of a diff will it be and were in line of the stats will it come ( agility,crit ,AP)??

It's hard to tell what kind of damage boost we can expect from Black Arrow because there are so many bugs with it at the moment (see previous page). However, it does definitely look like Survival will be the highest damage spec (barring further changes on the PTR)

The effect of Armor Penetration will be comparatively low for hunters than other physical dps centered classes as in each spec a large portion of our damage is not affected by ArPen (i.e. Explosive Shot, Chimera Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, Black Arrow and Pet Damage). However, the more Armor Penetration you have, the higher effect you get from it, so it should still be a fairly decent boost to Auto Shot, Steady Shot and Aimed Shot. For more detail, see the post by Esoth titled Hunter Stats and Scaling and also look at the spreadsheet.

I've been on the PTR, but I haven't been able to get any real testing done aside from a few minutes at a dummy, but I have played around with the new spread sheet and after a lot of messing around with that I've found that 0/14/57 is the best DPS spec for me. I Just load my gear, change my spec, leave buffs alone, change pet to cat, fix pets talents, and shot rotation. Glyphs are Kill shot, steady, and explosive. Shot rotation/priority is Rapid/SrS/BA/kill/explo/multi/steady
I'm getting 6542 DPS for that. Anyone Have a better spec right now?

This is the spec I'm looking at for 3.1 http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...5&version=9757

Edit: Changed Cat to Wolf and got 6591DPS

It's also worth noting that a lot of Hunter off-spec gear is steeped in ArPen, so including Grim Toll, it shouldn't be too difficult to stack ArPen in 3.1.

Unless I've missed something in the last few pages, I believe that the changes to pets and numbers off of the PTR would indicate that wolves are the best non-BM pet (albeit by a slim margin), not to mention, they aren't reliant upon a feral druid or arms warrior for the bleed bonus.

EDIT: Fixed wording, brain on CD

With your glyphs, do you think killshot glyph is a dps upgrade over serpent sting, if it is, what is your shot rotation with keeping Serp up.

Spreadsheet is showing slightly better dps by replacing steady glyph with serpent glyph. Kill Shot glyph is worth more than either serpent or steady.

serp over steady? now im confused

Mostly because by having to refresh Serpent Sting less often you are getting to steady shot more.

I'd be curious to see some figures on the DPS output by replacing the steady shot glyph by the serpent sting one. Sure 6sec more on serpant sting could be benificial but then again serpent sting goes for 15secs and with the steady shot glyph in place, thats 15secs worth of steady shot with a +10% damage. Well as extending the time on serpent sting is only extending the nature damage it does... Unless you have both these glyphs slotted in and here I see alot more use of the two of them playing off each other cause that spells out an additional 6secs worth of increased damage from steady shot before re-applying S-sting.

I tend to use the "Hunter's mark glyph" to give my hunter's mark an additional 20%ap. The glyph of bestial wrath which is a no brainer for BM hunters, thus leaving me with one major slot to fill in, in which case I'd used the Steady shot glyph.

The problem i see with the Hunters Mark glyph is that its basically a static +60 AP, which doesnt scale with gear. As your gear gets better, other glyphs that add percentage gains become way better. In your case for BM, you'd be better off using Bestial Wrath, Steady Shot , and Serpent Sting glyphs. Glyph of the Hawk isnt too terrible an option (+6% haste on Imp Hawk), but those other 3 glyphs are still better.