TrevvyTrev

Anything less than three points in Catlike Reflexes doesn't seem to be helpful. Currently many BM hunters coordinate Kill Command with BW for maximum effect. Taking 10 seconds off means you either never sync them up your you wait 21 seconds instead of 11 seconds every BW cycle. Maxing CR, however, makes it possible to use KC with every BW while also having it available again 30 seconds into your BW cooldown.

Investing in CR is more tricky overall. You have to pull points out of other dps talents in the other trees to get it, particularly if you've invested 5+ points into SV. These will at least partially offset the CR gains. Even in the build you posted, you can't max Cobra Strikes and CR, which means the missing point there will also offset the gains, and that's before you even consider missing out on Improved Tracking.

 

Juneko

If you take a 5 second attack speed and give it 10% haste the result is the same as a 2.5 second attack that does half the damage with 10% haste both will do the same amount of damage in a 4.5 second time frame. Saying "well they already have enough" usually isn't a good justification.

Catlike reflexes is only a dps increase with 3 points since that gives you enough time to get 2 kill commands between each bestial wrath, though you will have to delay your bestial wrath by a little. All and all it is an incredibly poor change that makes no sense at all.

Also an aside I recently learned that ghouls scale with haste. Isn't that crazy that death knights have better scaling pets than us?(especially with glyph of the ghoul)

 

TrevvyTrev

Or you don't delay the BW and instead delay your second kill command, giving you one KC in between each BW, in addition to one used with BW. Either way you need 3 points for this to happen.

 

Juneko

You only get 1 kill command between bestial wraths with 3/3 CR. 30% reduction puts it at a 42 second cd so it looks like this:

TBW+KC #1 at fight start

42 seconds later KC #2

then either you use TBW as soon as it comes up and KC partway through the duration(eventually clips off your TBW), or you wait 84 seconds between each TBW.

If you delay your second KC until the second TBW.. then you are gaining nothing and might as well not have put any points in CR.

It's still bizarre that they stuck this on a tanking talent that offers no utility and no survivability in raids. At least something like endurance training gives your pet more health to survive aoes, 9% dodge is useless since it only gets physically attacked by whirlwinds which do minor damage thanks to avoidance.

 

TrevvyTrev

It's not a 30% reduction. It's a 30 second reduction. If you max it, your KC will have a 30 second CD. It looks like this instead:

TBW + KC at fight start

KC #2 at 30 seconds

KC comes off CD at 60 seconds

Either use KC again if you're lazy and macroed it to a shot like an MM or SV hunter, or wait 11 seconds so you can use it with TBW again.

Rinse and repeat.

Catlike Reflexes was always useless except for when you're gimmick tanking something with your pet, so no argument there. The reason they attached the bonus to it, however, is so that MM and SV can't get it, which would at least be possible if they put it on Endurance Training. Plus Endurance training is a 5 point talent so that's even more points that BM would have to scrounge to find. It's also a talent that is "under budget" in that adding damage to it won't bend the rules about talents adding too much dps per point. It currently adds zero dps per point, so there's no harm in adding more.

 

zeroKFE

What I don't understand is why they don't add it to Animal Handler. The addition of pet expertise being determined by the hunter's hit rating now makes that talent only useful for PvP anyway, so why not swap out the expertise boost for a 15/30 second decrease to the KC cooldown? I suppose that's maybe a bit too powerful on a per-point basis for that tier in the tree, but it would achieve the apparent goal of keeping it of reach for MM and SV hunters while not being quite so disruptive to the BM tree (not to mention requiring us to take a pet tanking talent in a raiding spec).

 

Pikestaff

Regarding Animal Handler, there are basically two possible outcomes:

1.) The Expertise bonus from Animal Handler is changed to something else
2.) It stays the same and sort of acts as a Focused-Aim style talent for non-hit-capped hunters.

Assuming the latter is the case, then I see something akin to this as being a reasonable talenting option for Beast Masters.

Assuming the former is the case, well... we'll just have to see how the talent is changed. It actually would surprise me if the talent didn't get changed due to new scaling, since it already has in the past. (Hit -> Expertise)

I would also like to add that Ghostcrawler recently stated they were still looking into having pets benefit from our haste/ArmorPen, and if they can get that figured out before the patch then Beast Mastery may very well become a spec to be reckoned with. My only fear in that regard is that they'd do the "Pets are too powerful, /nerfbat" thing again. And to be fair, I don't want to see my pet doing over 50% of my damage, so I'd be more than okay with some rebalancing around that. Nerf the pet a bit (taking into account new scaling) and boost the hunter's personal damage.

 

zeroKFE

Yeah, assuming nothing else changes before this patch is released it's either going to be a 55/11/5 spec like that or a 53/11/7 spec that will be best (in a replenishment rich environment, of course). It feels like it'll be a close call on whether adding an extra Kill Command in between Bestial Wraths will really be worth as much as the DPS gain from 2/2 in Survival Instincts, but I suppose now that the PTR is available there will be an opportunity to test the difference.

Of course, it may not be worth investing much time in investigating the trade-off between those two specific talents this early in the patch cycle. After all, it's still much more likely than not that we'll see further changes that will effect the question which we are ultimately interested in here -- that is, what will be best BM spec come 3.2.

 

aCynic2

You're using hunters in the general sense and MM and SV outdo BMs by a more than a margin.

For the most part, all BMs have are the very basic shots all hunters have, so if they boost those, they simply maintain MM and SV's place far ahead. It's the same for what they plan to do for pets. It's not boosting BMs, per se, because it will boost SV and MM equally and BMs will remain far behind in last place.

The BM final spec is exotic pets and those pets simply don't make up for the lack of hitting power of the basic shots. Anything they can do to even the playing field is fine, but I just don't see it happening in this next patch. The tie in of KC's cooldown to catlike reflexes seems to benefit PvP and not end game raiding. That might be ok with me, because I like playing in the BGs and WG. If it helps to boost pet survivability in PvP, I will then call it a buff, even if only situaltional, but not until it is seen as relality and not mere speculation.

I like playing BM. I like managing my pet and I like the two exotics I have (chimera, formally Nuramoc and Gondria). I simply wish BMs were not a joke anymore.

 

Mondas

It would seem to me that the T9 set bonuses are a back door buff to BM Hunters:

* Hunter T9 2P Bonus (Class: Hunter) -- Reduces the focus cost of your pet's abilities by 50%.
* Hunter T9 4P Bonus (Steady Shot) (Class: Hunter) -- Increases the critical strike chance of your Steady Shot ability by 5%.

Source: MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

 

Ritalian

Hmmm. Is that 2pc bonus really a buff? I don't think my pet is often focus starved if ever...I might be wrong, but my raid buffed crit rate is high enough that even 1/2 GFTT seems to generate enough focus to stay on top. Is your thinking that with this equipment buff we could ditch GFTT and then spend that spare talent point better elsewhere?

 

Mesmer

Yeah, quite a shame that the set bonuses are so BM oriented, the other speccs hardly get a bonus off them. Not to mention that the 4p bonus is copied from t5

 

Duckki

Keep in mind that both might be placeholders.
The 4p bonus especially looks like that to me.

 

Aevitas

This could go either ways, the focus cost reduction may be a good bonus, since you can probably leave even that one point out of GFTT, and the 4-set bonus is not too shabby either, a solid 5% steady shot on crit - which every spec uses as their filler - is always a good thing.

 

Criven

The armour model is definitely a placeholder, but take a look at the stats for the three versions.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hunter_232.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hunter_245.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hunter_258.jpg

There's a single piece of the tier 9 with haste now - the gloves. Even the 258 set has about 80 less haste than Tier 8.

Weirdly, Mondas seems to be right in that this set and the set bonuses seem better for BM (on paper at least) as opposed to the other two specs. Back door BM buffing through gear would be an unusual route for Blizz to take though since they'd have to keep doing it every time they released gear.

As far as focus regen goes, halving the cost of our pet's focus abilities is bizarre.

Taking the Devilsaur for example. Current focus expenditure over 12 seconds is the following:
One Monstrous Bite@20focus
Seven Bites@25 focus

12 second expenditure: 195

Half this for the set bonus: 97.5 focus

12 second untalented regen (5/sec): 60
12 second 1 bd regen: 90
12 second 2 bd regen: 120

(Incidentally, one point in GftT would also supply get you 180 focus regen per 12 (depending on your crit chance) without BD, but BD is pretty much unavoidable to pick up while GftT can be put somewhere else useful for DPS)

 

kronchev

I don't mind the pet doing majority damage (assuming BM is viable in 3.2, which I will test as soon as the damn copy goes through). What I do mind is how the pet can be taken down so easily unless I'm specifically speccing him to survive. Meanwhile, for instance, unholy DK ghouls have an inherit 75% avoidance just for being able to summon a pet ghoul, AND their revival is instant. Don't even get me started on how some AOE attacks don't count as AOE, for instance Sarth's Lava Wave.

Anyway, this is what I'm looking at for the pet. The Cower damage reduction brings the AOE avoidance to 85% when it's up (about half the time) which isn't bad. I would've maxed it but a point in Bloodthirsty is probably more useful. I tried to grab every damage talent I could while adding as much survival after I grabbed them. No speed utility but I can live with that.

Pet Calculator - Wowhead

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It was a question of how the abilities of the fight are handled. I did not know the answer so I come to the place where I expect to see well formulated, concise and correct answers. Not snotty comments. - eclectic778

Vent is only necessary because of bad players. - ebbv

 

Mondas

I think you're right about the 4piece. Looking at the other classes' T9 many have 5% crit bonus to their bread and butter nukes.

 

zeroKFE

Hopefully others will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you are better off with this pet spec:

Pet Calculator - Wowhead

1. You shouldn't really need cower in most fights anyway, so unless there is a gimmick limiting your tank's threat you are better having your pet save the focus for damaging attacks.

2. Personally, I prefer to take dash in the first tier rather than stamina. Much of the time your pet's status is going to be binary: either you left him where he shouldn't be and he's going to die, or you pulled him out of a situation and he's going to live. Dash helps him get in and out of situations faster, where the extra stamina probably won't make a difference in whether he lives or dies if he ends up eating a big attack.

3. I suggest 2/2 in Bloodthristy as that will help your pet keep himself topped of after eating incidental AOE and the like, and if he does die, it will help him get back to happy where he is doing the damage he should be.


Beyond that, which fights are you having trouble keeping your pet alive in? I've found that most of Ulduar is actually quite pet friendly, with Mimiron being the only real sticking point, but other than that you just need to be Johnny on the Spot on pulling your pet out of nova attacks and the like and he should generally stay alive.

EDIT: Sorry, just realized that you don't currently run BM. The MM/SV hunters I run with definitely have a bit more trouble on a few fights with keeping their pets alive -- I think the real difference comes in with elements added by the standard BM spec.

 

TrevvyTrev

He's not getting Improved Cower for the threat, he's getting it for the damage reduction. Tank threat has nothing to do with it -- in fact I use Improved Cower most often in situations where threat is meaningless, like PvP. The idea is that if you pet spams Cower, then it will take even less damage during the raid, at the cost of one GCD every 20 seconds or whatever it is based on Longevity.

My experience with Improved Cower is that even on autocast, the pet won't use it unless it grabs aggro. So I had to macro it to a shot. Just something to keep in mind.

As for maxxing bloodthirsty, the second point doesn't increase the value of the heal, only the chance that it triggers. Since it refreshes itself often even at one point, 2/2 usually is unnecessary unless you are building toward Heart of the Phoenix.

 

Lerastes

One issue with this is if you need to retreat your pet. When you use a macro that forces your pet to use a skill, in this case Cower, he's going to run into melee range to use it. You can re-Passive it to pull it back but you'd have to do this every time you use that macro. This is bad if you retreat him from AOE damage or something like Mimiron's Shock Wave.

 

TrevvyTrev

This is exactly right. It's one of the reasons I found Improved Cower to be more useful in PvP. The AI for Cower isn't robust enough to make it useful in the PvE situations where you would want it. It's a skill that theorycrafts well, but is lackluster in practice. The points probably are better spent in Great Resistance, even though that doesn't help with physical damage.

 

Juuni

Well back in tbc high end raiding with bm was kind of difficult on some fights regarding pet survivability. Now only the damage output need to be higher.
The bonus on t9 seems to favor bm builds but still need to know if we can drop gftt ..

 

Criven

Focus out max=50 over 6 seconds (4x25*.5 for focus dump & set discount)
Focus in =60 over 6 seconds (5x2x6 for BD 2 points)

Yes. GftT is not necessary with the set discount

 

zeroKFE

Yeah, I understand what the talent does. The point I was trying to make (and clearly did so poorly ) is that the damage reduction from Improved Cower isn't terribly meaningful, at least when specced BM and raiding Ulduar.


Understood here as well. Essentially, though, you have a floater point to work with that either goes into stamina/damage mitigation, boar's speed, bloodthirsty, or charge. Of the four options, I find the stamina/damage mitigation talents to be the least compelling choice since in Ulduar I find my pet only dies from attacks where mitigation would have no appreciable effect. I choose to put a second point into bloodthirsty because if my pet DOES die, the faster he can get a bloodthristy proc after being revived, the faster he is back to dealing full damage, and more frequent procs mean a lower likelihood that I have to spend a GCD casting mend pet. Honestly, though, charge or boar's speed may be more compelling still if you are content with the proc rate of 1/2 in bloodthirsty.

 

TrevvyTrev

This is the point I was trying to make, too. Bloodthirsty is a fine talent, but it's like GffT in that the second point doesn't do nearly as much as the first one. 2/2 just means it refreshes more often, but it still has a very high uptime with a single point. I'm sure the uptime is higher when maxxed, but when actually playing with them both I haven't been able to notice one.

My pets have dash, which is almost always up when needed, and when it isn't up they have the speed boost from Kindred Spirits. I usually drop the extra point in Charge. It technically adds dps (although not very much) and it gets the pet to target faster.