Batch86

I'm not sure if this is the place for this question or not, so apologies in advance. Has anyone ran any kind of numbers on the T9 set yet to see whether or not BM will be the optimal spec once you can get your hands on that 4 piece set bonus? I can't seem to find much information on this. My apologies if it has been covered already.

 

zeroKFE

Yes, for my talent spec and equipment set, the T9 4 piece set piece (with either the 232 or the 245 set) is finally enough to be worth dropping the T7 2 piece bonus.

What I have NOT run numbers on (since my guild is currently only running 10 man content) is whether some of the 25 man heroic gear (including the 258 T9 set pieces) are good enough to be worth dropping T7 2 piece for, but given the big gains that the 245 stuff gives me, I would expect that to be the case.

 

Tagbone

So, Would you say that you should continue having 2 pieces of T7.5 until you have 4 pieces of T9 or would you say T9 equivalent would be an okay time to get rid of the T7.5 set bonus?

 

Sindrel

I found the best combo to use with 2*7.5 and my 55/11/5 was the 8.5 helm and chest with the 7.5 shoulders and gloves. I didn't check your armory, but with such easy access to conquest badges, if you don't already have them, step up to the 8.5 helm and chest, even if the 2-piece bonus is not idea for BM.

Next, I saw a significant dps jump swapping the 7.5 shoulders and gloves to even the conquest T9 pieces for those slots - and that's just 60 emblems of triumph. In the meantime, you might get a trophy and grab a 9.25 piece to fill one of those slots for 45 badges. Even better: push Koralon down weekly and take the T9.25 gloves/pants from him. The pants are big upgrade if you can shuffle your hit cap around their stats.

My suggestion is to abandon 2 pc 7.5 as soon as you can get 2 of the T9; the stats are just that much better along with the 2 pc T9 bonus. As I mentioned, even using the most direct route to the lowest level T9+T8.5, I think you are bound to see better results than T7.5. For a benchmark, check my armory: in current gear on Shandara's sheet version 91d, totally unbuffed I see 3706dps. Our guild seems to be on average pace, so I am confident you can at least hit that mark, if not surpass it.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

 

Mr Tazza

From latest PTR build

 

Sean

I went and tested it myself - it gives you a permanent 10% bonus *and* you get an additional 10% while Bestial Wrath is active.

Exact text reads:

Increases all damage you do by 10% and while your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing the mana costs of all spells by 20% for 10 sec. While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.

Also, your pet does not need to be out and active for you to get the 10% permanent bonus.

 

KraxisSingular

BM has been too weak for too long since The Big Nerf(c).

This is an attempt at addressing that obviously (I mean 10% personal damage all the time is pretty hefty). But it is also an attempt at balancing the spec back towards the hunter. Nothing sucks more than losing on the order of 50% of your DPS because a boss has a nasty petgibbing mechanic it uses constantly. That will still suck, heck it sucks for MM and Survival too, but losing 38% (arbitrary lesser number) instead of 50% is more forgiving.

But if we assume that the spec is 50/50, then this buff is less than 5% (perhaps no more than 3.5%). Nowhere near enough to get the spec back on track. But as with the other recent buffs, they all add up and they are not neccesarily finished. Will be interesting to see what the future holds for BM, for I'm sure these unfinished PTR lists will contain more goodies for BM when they are finally finished.

 

fearstalker

Ironically, these are the types of buffs that they've stated they want to get rid of for the big C, so clearly it's a stop-gap to tide us over.

But if they can give our pets some of our other stats, or do some of the other pet-damage reduction changes they've hinted at, then BM might just be viable again, even if not tops.

 

KraxisSingular

Well, Bestial Wrath is one of the 'fun' talents. It does stuff and you use it. I doubt that will change in Cataclysm, but that it is just way way out there still, so let's not go deeper for now.

Harking in the same direction though. BW is a big part of the fun about the spec. The lack of a signature shot (and harder shotprio) is sort of offset by the big red button... ehh pet. This only serves to reduce that ever so slightly. Good or bad overall I think it will detract slightly from the fun of the spec. So I'm putting a little faith in Blizzard that whatever it is I'm expecting, it is something a little more fun.

 

fearstalker

I was actually referring to just adding a 10% damage bonus on top of what was there already. :-)

 

Arkad

As an orc hunter I'm really keen to see the outcome of buffs to BM right now. I was never a big fan of BM throughout the course of TBC, I loved MM at this time, but now that MM-Armorpen- and Survival-Hunters are in the majority, I kind of fell in love with BM again. I like to go the way of the outsider, as it seems.

Unfortunately I've not had that much of contact with BM raiding since the Big Nerf (c) and would like to hear some seasoned BM-Hunters on the matter of my ideas of a Spec to try out.

My first drift would be this 51/15/5 spec. Dropping Longevity is what concerns me the most. is the 3/3 Imp.Arcane Shot really worth that loss in cooldowntime? Or is the 9% Bonus from Ferocious Inspiration enough for the Arcane Shot? I thought about maxing this one shot out, because I really don't have a lot of shots to work with. Plus I would stay kind of valuable if my Pet gets killed and can't be resurected on the spot.

 

Sindrel

Arkad, while I can't provide exact numbers/formulae for you on why these talents are huge, I can say without a doubt that they are vital to a great BM raiding build: Longevity and Go for the Throat. Reducing the cooldowns of Beastial Wrath and pet specials is a very big deal, not to mention having enough focus with which to perform those attacks. Also, your suggested build adds more to Frenzy than is currently recommended.

While some BM hunters may disagree with me here, I have not been able to successfully substitute other dps talents for Invigoration. In my experience, the 53/11/7 build offered 15 more dps but only over short boss fights. When a fight lasts longer than a couple minutes, invigoration comes in handy unless you are guaranteed stellar mana regen. I have yet to find a 54/12/5 build that calculates to better damage over boss fight time than the 55/11/5 I currently use. That goes for the recent found gushing over arcane shot builds. It's a great shot for BM since it's mobile and does good damage per mana, but not at the expense of other talents.

I strongly suggest you either download Shandara's worksheet or log your gear into Rivkah's Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer so that you can try different specs out. Those are indispensible tools that can really help you maximize your role. I plugged your suggested build into my current setup in version 92PTR of the worksheet and saw a 415 dps loss. That's unbuffed, so imagine the effect in a raid situation. Please check those out.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

 

Arkad

Thank you very much for your time and information, Sindrel. Largely appreciated.

I did use Shandaras Spreadsheet to try and optimize my Idea, but as it seems Arcane-Shot builds are below par to what you suggested and/or are using. I'll look into it in theory more carefully then. My DPS-loss (if your actual Spec and my idea would be compared) was around 300 DPS (using my idea). But then again your gear is definately a better fitting for a BM Hunter then mine, which still isn't even maxed out as it should be.

Thank you anyways! I'll call in back when I had the time to test things on PTR. While Spreadsheets are a cool thing, I like to see a build live, and how it works in an actual encounter. I'll take your information into account though and will build more around Invigoration, Longevity and the obligatory GftT Point.

All the best,
Arkad/Gorlakk

 

Brughe

I wonder at the overall affect on DPS when you offset the gain of a +10% Hunter damage boost from the loss of 8 seconds of +50% pet damage every minute. Without crunching any numbers yet (I will have to do so after work), I assume this is an overall DPS boost. The question is: By how much?

However, I don't see it as a trend to shifting the focus from the BM pet to the BM Hunter in terms of DPS or any attempts to fix the BM spec for the sake of the BM spec. Sadly, as I see it, we're watching the result of Arena balancing.

There has been alot of complaining about the so-called "Beast Cleave" arena teams. While I admit it is speculation, I do not think it a far-fetched opinion that it is no coincidence that the updated patch notes now include a reduction to BW/TBW's duration and a redesign of the Shaman's Earthern power to remove the snare immunity. As such, I personally will not take this upcoming change a sign that Blizzard is trying to put BM Hunters back on the cutting edge of raiding, though I hope that is the overall effect at the end of the day.

Basically, as I see it, we are getting a buff, but for all the wrong reasons.

I guess I can live with that.

 

zeroKFE

With my current spec and gear, Zeharah's shows the 3.2.2 changes resulting an overall gain of roughly 130 DPS, but a drop by about 150 DPS from my pet (reducing his contribution from around 46% to 43%).

I'm not going to complain one bit, but I definitely agree with Brughe's assessment of some of the motivation behind this change and honestly I'm a bit disappointed to see the duration of BW drop. That said, with the shorter duration proper timing of the usage of your cooldowns and shots will now become a bit more important, adding a bit more differentiation between people who know how to run the spec and those who don't.

 

TrevvyTrev

Ghostcrawler actually said what their motivations were, so there's no need to speculate. For reference:

Emphasis added. As you can see, there are multiple motivations, as there are with a great many things in life. One of them, however, was to improve BM PvE dps. At this point our best approach is to do some number crunching, to identify points where it might actually not be an increase, if there are any.

 

saillaw

The posts I've seen so far of the change are somewhat ambiguous. From what I can tell they are reducing the duration, but the hunter gets a permanent 10% dps buff (i.e. a buff even when the pet is dead and/or when the hunter is not under BW) and an additional 10% while under the effects of BW. (I have no idea if these increases are multiplicative or additive.) PVP aside, if my understanding of the change is correct, this would most certainly be a strong buff to BM hunters.

I don't have access to the PTR so I I can't test it. But, using the spreadsheet, MM on the current live build is only a 13-14% dps increase for me over BM (with best raid buffs and debuffs). If we add 10% to that, plus the small buff to BW (assuming its a buff having 10% hunter dps gain despite 8sec shorter duration) plus the minor nerf to ArP on Marks, might we actually be seeing BM become a viable raid spec again?

 

sefren

This 'buff' isn't going to be enough to bring the spec into competition with MM or even SV. Even if it were within even just a few hundred DPS of either spec it would still be the inferior spec due to pet survivability. A few fights in heroic ToC have some AOEs that can knock a pet out pretty quickly and you're just that more vulnerable as BM than either MM or SV. I think the biggest buff that BM hunters need is a pet survivability buff.

 

Zerlu

The duration was nerfed to 10s to bring it more in line with other CD currently in game. Most defensive CD last no more than 10s, and the 18s of TBW/BW were enough to force a team to burn multiple CD just to try to react to the (nearly) unstoppable damage.

I would expect another slight dps buff in the BM tree before the patch goes live though, as this really doesn't do a lot for our damage, which is a fair bit lower than MM/SV trees.

 

Brughe

We'll have to agree to disagree regarding GC and his intentions. I have not found him credible for some time and the timing of this nerf does not say "We're trying to fix BM" to me, but "here's an Arena nerf along with a buff to take the heat off us for such an obviously kneejerk move." But, that's just me. I'm ornery that way. Don't get me wrong. I'll take my PvE buffs, even if the supporting reason for them isn't "pure." And, it seems a buff so far for PvE. See below.

However, I do agree that now is the time for number crunching to see what this will do. I've taken part of my lunch hour to drop into Shandara's lovely spreadsheet, for both Live and PTR. Here are my results presented as the spreadsheet's calculation of my DPS potential:

PTR BM – 7500.89 w/ Devilsaur
PTR MM – 7902.37 w/ Wolf

Live BM – 6807.75 w/ Devilsaur
Live MM – 7835.60 w/ Wolf

As my personal results show, while BM still remains inferior on paper to MM, the gap seems to have substantially closed between the two. My BM spec is showing an almost 700 DPS improvement based solely on the new BW/TBW. Oddly enough, my MM went up a little on the PTR speadsheet and I cannot figure out why at a glance. I have not time to see if it's a bug or a change to one of the raid buffs I'm not factoring in.

I'm curious to see what other people are coming up with on paper. I didn't have time to see about Survival. I hope to see some numbers for it too.

Disclaimer: I ran these numbers based on my MM and BM specs, glyphs and my gear. Each spec had Shandara's default 25-man raid buffs. I used the same gear for each, that being my current Armory (I didn't regem more AP for the BM spec). I used the same BM rotation for both BM specs and the same MM rotation for both MM specs. In other words: Your mileage may vary.

 

zeroKFE

I posted the differences in my BM spec earlier, but for the sake of information gathering I'll post some more detailed information. Note: I run a Mac, so I only have access to Zeherah's web tool. Also, since I don't have an MM or an SV spec, I used the specs from another hunter in my guild. The MM one is very similar to Brughe's (ie, NOT an Arp build), and the SV one is a fairly standard one as well. For the MM and SV numbers it's very much worth noting that I kept my BM gear set to reduce the number of variables, but I'm certain I could cobble a set together from my bank that could deliver a much bigger punch with those specs.


Live -- BM with Wolf
Combined: 7225.73 100.00%
Hunter: 3893.08 53.88%
Pet: 3332.65 46.12%

PTR -- BM with Wolf
Combined: 7352.90 100.00%
Hunter: 4187.13 56.95%
Pet: 3165.78 43.05%



Live -- BM with Devilsaur
Combined: 7078.96 100.00%
Hunter: 3818.53 53.94%
Pet: 3260.43 46.06%

PTR -- BM with Devilsaur
Combined: 7204.18 100.00%
Hunter: 4106.87 57.01%
Pet: 3097.31 42.99%


Live -- MM with Wolf
Combined: 7643.80 100.00%
Hunter: 6454.59 84.44%
Pet: 1189.21 15.56%

PTR -- MM with Wolf
Combined: 7665.18 100.00%
Hunter: 6475.97 84.49%
Pet: 1189.21 15.51%



Live -- SV with Wolf
Combined: 7879.89 100.00%
Hunter: 6580.96 83.52%
Pet: 1298.93 16.48%

PTR -- SV with Wolf
Combined: 7903.43 100.00%
Hunter: 6604.50 83.56%
Pet: 1298.93 16.44%


Again, if I did actually switch to MM or SV, changes to gear, gems, and enchants would certainly make the numbers even higher, particularly if I tried to put together an arp MM build. That said, I'm not changing (I like BM, and my raid rarely has a ret pally these days), so at least under Zeherah's modeling of the current PTR changes I'm looking at a theoretical boost of about 130 DPS with my wolf (it's been ages since the devilsaur beat the wolf for me).

 

TrevvyTrev

Agreeing to disagree is the same as disagreeing. That said, I think you might have misunderstood my point with the quote. People have been speculating as to whether this change has anything to do with PvP, which is odd given that GC flat out said that it has something to do with PvP. When they say they are worried about combination offensive/defensive cooldowns, that is a PvP concern, as that issue doesn't come into play in PvE.

Still, it comes with a PvE buff, which plays into something that the designers said they wanted for BM, even before this recent arena flap came about. I was really just trying to offer an answer to the people who genuinely seemed confused as to whether arena had anything to do with this. That answer is yes. The more interesting question is how much of a PvE buff this is.

My own numbers show a much smaller buff for me personally, but I'm still tied to 2-pc 7.5 for the 5% pet buff. That skews things for me. What I suspect this change will do, however, is lessen the need to hold onto that for so long, as we'll see proportionally larger boosts by using gear that favors the hunter over the pet.

 

fearstalker

In real-world situations, is this potentially actually a dps loss, since our pet's special attacks are less likely to be going off during TBW with the reduced duration? Not sure how to calculate that with the spreadsheet, or is that factored in already?

 

Criven

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Beastial Wrath Change

Interesting. Considering that 18 seconds is 12 GCD's and 10 seconds is 6 to 7 GCD's*, a 50% reduction in mana cost would be another net dps increase if they introduce it.

*This depends upon whether an instant shot cooldown is up in time to take advantage of the 1 second gap or not.

 

Ketari

In theory, excluding the special attacks, it's - at 45% of damage being from the pet - a 1.59% damage increase. Which corresponds fairly well to what zeroKFE's data shows (~1.75%). (I believe pet GCD's are faster than 1.5s as well, unless they fixed that...)