TrevvyTrev

In the latest spreadsheet (v86d), Serpent Glyph edges out Hawk by a small margin (about 3 dps for me). The previous version had a bug that was using max mana for JoW instead of base mana, leading to enormous mana regen and zero Viper time. Serpent translates into higher dps because the mana saved from fewer applications over time translates into less Viper time.

I mention that because it's a metric people can use to decide which is better. If in actual gameplay, you don't find yourself in any mana trouble, then Hawk probably is better. Otherwise Serpent might have the edge. As always the spreadsheet gives a more definitive answer for any person.

 

Nooska

What we can conclude if I'm not mistaken is that 2 of our 3 major glyphs are "mandatory" Bestial Wrath and Steady Shot.
Bestial Wrath because this is our damage cooldown and Steady Shot because we want to have SrS up anyway, and is thus a 10% bonus to our spam shot.

The last one is open for Serpent Sting Glyph, Hawk glyph or in 3rd place (if you have greater dps in AotB than AotDh) Beast glyph. The better choce to be determined for the actual gear you have - though somehow I don't see SrS glyph actually providing a bigger dps increase over an additional 6% haste to our autoshots. (I refer back to the 105 seconds having to pass to gain 2 GCD's for extra steadies)
SrS glyph is of course still a very valid choice as it keeps up SrS for longer and is thus easier to keep up when moving - or when boss moves out of range.

 

Nooska

Glyph of Killshot

For some reason I have completely forgotten this glyph. Noone else has mentioned it and I assume thats because the rest of you have also forgotten this new glyph; Has anyone done any calculations on what value this glyph has for us? I would reduce steadies in the kill phase by a nice amount for our most damaging shot. I know that it can outperform the steady shot glyph - dependant on fight length and amount of time in the kill phase, but I don't consider that to be valid as we don't change glyphs on a fight - to - fight basis.
The question is, I think, how much time in the kill phase would we need for this to outperform SrS or Hawk glyphs?


Edit:

In my current gear, I show the crossover point to be a 10 minute fight (assuming 1% fight time per 1% health, so 2 minutes in the kill phase). at this point the dps is practically identical when I switch out the glyphs.

Looking at a wws of our last naxx run, the longest fight we have is Kel'Thuzad at 6.14, so with regards to live fights Kill Shot glyph doesn't outperform Hawk.
Also the kill phase is faster per % boss health than the other 80% simply by virtue of unlocking the big execution abilities.

Edit 2: Cancel that, I just noticed the default target in the spreadsheet is a target dummy with less armor then a boss. With the higher armor on the boss Kill Shot glyph and Hawk glyph are neck and neck at 6 minutes / 1.2 Minute Kill phase.

 

daragh

I'm a little bit skeptic about the kill shot glyph, sure it's something that would work well in an overall circumstance where when your carving your way to a boss, you'll actually use it alot more... well as in the boss fight itself the steady shot glyph comes into use alot more. Now using the serpent sting glyph you get an additional 6secs worth of damage and u still buff up your steady with 10% so what i'm interested in seeing is if in a long run through an instance, the combo Serpent sting/steady shot produces more DPS than having the killshot glyph instead of either one of the aforementioned.

 

Nooska

From my spreadsheet data, and the math I did over in one of the other threads, I'm not convinced SrS glyph is any sort of dps increase over the other glyphs we can take.

1. We need to take BW glyph
2. Steady Glyph is mandatory as our only other shot is Arcane shot, so we need to buff steady.
3. One major left, with 3 or 4 choices

1. SrS Glyph - this is what most of us are runnning with now, but its actual dps increase is very slight
2. Hawk glyph - this increases our autoshot frequency - a shot that does more damage than steadyshot. TrevvyTrev is completely right in the statement "don't underestimate autoshot" - this is also the best scaling shot as it scales by weapon damage and ammo, but gains 100% RAP scaling.
3. Kill Shot Glyph. The real value is left to be seen, but it has been demonstrated that the relative value of it compared to the others don't change with fight duration - barring the fights where you will only get off 1 killshot regardless.
4. Aspect of the Beast - very individual - it had a good increase in dps for me, but Hawk is better currently due to autoshots.

My current thinking is to run with hawk as my 3rd - having to reapply SrS 2 more times in 105 seconds isn't a big hassle, and the increased rate of autoshots make up for the 2 lost steadies.

Also increased RoF increases the value of a trinket that works like Fot5F because we build up the stacks faster.

 

Kinetics

I would have to also agree with Nooska on AotH glyph. Somehow it just seems more viable throughout the fight having increased autoshots. Seeing that our autoshots are a good majority of our damage, then it would make the most sense to keep this glyph. AotB's 2%, on top of the 10% from the aspect, doesn't seem like that much of DPS for taking the major glyph position. Maybe instead if it was like 5-10% more then I'd probably take it. Kill Shot will be the defining kicker I'd think due to the amount of damage output in the last 20% of the boss with the glyph reducing 6 seconds off of the 15. From there if someone can come up with the math if you would wind up getting more DPS in that last 20% of the fight with Kill Shots. Or would you get more DPS throughout the entire fight by having the 6% increase for AotH? IMO Hawk would be more beneficial because it is throughout the entire fight and not just the last 20%. Any other thoughts?

Your answer is in there, just stare down the barrel.

 

Mattaos

Just to keep things on the up and up about our roles. A more hardcore raiding hunter is going min/max his toon to produce the very thing he/she is in the raid to do primarily... DPS. The added benefits of TSA, FI or HP are ancillary benefits of our specs. Typically FI and TSA have been staples of BM and MM builds respectively. SV used to provide EW, but that has now changed to HP. Most well formed 25 man raids include plenty of replenishment resources from classes that already have themselves accustomed to providing that benefit to the raid. Hunters are not accustomed to this.

Also, consider that we are a pure DPS class. DPS is the main focus. Replenishment in most cases (for a raider) is an after thought and usually only going to be an option if the raid comp is lacking enough replenishment. We find this more in 10 man raids, but 25 man raiding is whole other ball game. Just remember that hunters bring DPS first. Think of it like this... What is your duel spec going to be and why? What will most raiding hybrid classs duel spec?

Back on track, as to not derail the BM focused thread... BM does need to bring a certain degree of DPS power to be a viable raiding spec. From the things I am reading and playing with the spreadsheet it appears that BM is a decent DPS raiding spec. It may not be the primo choice for more hardcore raiders looking to squeeze out 1 more point of DPS on any given boss encounter, but certainly has enough firepower between hunter/pet synergy to be competitive.

A good topic to start rolling with might be what stat, gem and gear choices will be most beneficial to max DPS potential for a BM hunter?

Attack Power has definitely been a focus stat. But, as gem stats increase, as well as, item budgeting increases are going to see more benefit from agility? Honestly, without seeing or attempting any math I do not see an advantage strictly focusing agility for BM.

Crit is also a key stat since several talent hinge on our ability to crit, i.e. Cobra Strikes which in turn sparks Frenzy to keep FI and Invig up more often. Agility provides both of these stats, but AP transfers to pets and crit does not. I have always seen (in WotLK) more benefit from stacking AP and supplementing straight crit thru gear or gems.

 

Nooska

On the stat discussion:

From playing around with the current spreadsheet and fictively gearing up I se that agility (per budget point) gets closer to ap.

This makes sense from the perspective; The more AP you have, the more crit, arp, haste etc is worth as they all go together.

AP is still the clear winner, but agi gets pretty close. The main reason I would prefer to not take agi is that I gain more pure ap from ap and that in a raid environment I have enough crit to keep up cobra strikes most of the time.

The combination of cobra strikes and my pets own crit rate keeps up frenzy 100% in all practicality, and FI too.

FI is not a thing we can spec out of - its an all or nothing talent, and there is no other place to really put those 3 points. If they adopted the suggestion I made to change Mend Pet (linked in pet management thread) I could possibly see us putting 2 of those points in mend pet with the last going into a possible monkey. This would of course require that someone else had the FI effect (thats retridins improved aura, isn't it?) but I don't see anywhere else those points could go anyway.

 

Rosamonde

Regarding glyphs, I have been using Bestial Wrath, Steady, and Hawk all along. I tested out Serpent Sting and didn't like what it did to my rotation, and the spreadsheet also showed these three as the best for me.

In the spreadsheet, I tried adding the Kill Shot glyph in place of each of the others, but it did not out-perform my original set-up. Like Trevvy, I find in the very latest spreadsheet (v.86d) that Glyph of Serpent Sting gives about 2 more dps than Glyph of the Hawk. Given the small difference I will not be replacing it at this time; if gear upgrades increase the gap, I would of course rethink. Quick shooting is one of the hallmarks of the BM hunter, and I feel Glyph of the Hawk better fits the spec's synergy.

Cave canum...

Florimel (hunter) / Argent Dawn
Rosamonde (mage) / Argent Dawn
Lisieau (priest) / Argent Dawn

 

Anindor

But, since BM hunters are already at haste soft cap, doesn't the Glyph of AotH provide a much lesser benefit than to a hunter not at soft haste cap?

 

Nooska

I hate browser caches not retaining form data...

Well I'll try to type it again:

I agree that Hawk glyph fits the BM more than the SrS glyph.

But My intuition says that increasing gear would benefit autoshot, and thus hawk glyph more than it would benefit steadyshot and thus SrS glyph (2 more steadies in 105 seconds)


Steady shot: (Weapon damage + RAP *0.1 + 252) * 1,1 (the glyph)
Autoshot: Weapon damage + Ammo dps * weapon speed + RAP / 14 * weapon speed

Both shots benefit equally from weapon damage upgrades (well steady glyph gives steady a slight advantage here)
For all other gear upgrades the only thing that matters is the factual RAP.

If you gain 1000 RAP from gear upgrades other than ranged weapon

Steady shot gains: 1000 * 0.1 * 1.1 = 110 damage
Autoshot gains 1000 / 14 * 2,9 (Envoy / Giants Bane) = 207 damage

Autoshot gains 88% more from RAP increases than steady shot while Steady gains 10% more from ranged weapon upgrades than autoshot. Since the larger part of our damage comes from RAP, rather than weapon damage, Autoshot wins on this count. Not that this is very important though.


The question of which glyph is generally better (and which way they scale comparatively) requires us to see what the difference is between them

SrS glyph allows 2 more steadies in a timeframe of 105 seconds.
Hawk glyph adds additional 6% haste to our autoshots (as everything else is already capped - and we aren't looking at volley)

As a beastmaster hunter we have the following modifers:

I will work with a 2.9 weapon speed from envoy of mortality or giant's bane from ulduar. Siren's Call has 2.8 speed, but the difference is negligable.
I will also use my own hasterating which doesn't seem excessive either way; I have 336 hasterating, translating to roughly 10% haste at 32.79 rating per haste rating point.

Weapon speed: 2.9
15 % Haste from quiver / autoshot ability
20 % Haste from Serpents Swiftness
10 % Haste from gear
15 % Haste from Improved Aspect of the Hawk
--
60 % Haste total.

at weapon speed 2.9 with 60% additional haste (60% more shots fired in the same amount of time) I get 2.9 / 1.6 = 1.81 as the shot speed.
This is our basis for comparison as this is without the hawk glyph.

At 1.81 speed we fire 58 autoshots during the 105 seconds we use as a frame.

Adding an additional 6% haste results in a speed of 2.9 / 1.66 = 1.75 (1.7498..) for each autoshot.
With this speed increase we fire 60 autoshots in the same 105 seconds.

To check the gear haste I will do 3 additional calculations here: 0% gear haste, 5% gear haste and 15% gear haste to see the trend:

0 % gear haste : 54 / 56 autoshots
5 % gear haste : 56 / 58 autoshots
10 % gear haste: 58 / 60 autoshots
15 % gear haste : 59 / 61 autoshots

Thus; we have the choice of 2 additional steadies or 2 additional autoshots in 105 seconds between these glyphs.
(the 15% gear haste was almost 60/62 but cut due to rounding to 2 digits before calculating the amount of shots fired)

Unless I'm mistaken Autoshot wins out over steadi except at exremely low gear levels.
I have calculated the uptime of Quick Shots to 100% for this purpose as it is my intuitive understanding that QS will reproc off itself; it lasts 12 seconds and I have 1,24 shots per second = 14 shots per QS proc. QS has a 10% proc chance, so it should reproc during these 14 shots. (Caveat; this is for napkin math)

I assume the SrS glyph showing slightly better than the hawk is due to the actual chance of QS to proc and reproc (my spreadsheet shows a typical average uptime of 57.76%)

 

Nooska

Yes and no.

BM hunters don't gain an increase in steadies fired from IAotH, but that doesn't matter so much, as we gain the same increase in autoshots, which hit harder than steadies anyway.

So while it is correct that BM hunter sonly gain 1 advantage from IAotH, it is not truly correct to say that we gain less than someone not at soft haste cap - because our talents are set out for a different job.

 

Rosamonde

Well, the point is not whether BM hunters gain as much from Glyph of the Hawk as other hunters do; the point is whether BM hunters gain more from Glyph of the Hawk than they do from other glyphs. We may gain less from the glyph than other hunters do, but it is still one of our 3 (or 4) best glyphs.

Cave canum...

Florimel (hunter) / Argent Dawn
Rosamonde (mage) / Argent Dawn
Lisieau (priest) / Argent Dawn

 

Dch48

I get slightly different results using my 53-18-0 build which I plan on keeping. I use the beastial,steady, and hawk glyphs as well.

5484 Devilsaur
5465 Wolf
5424 Raptor
5368 Core Hound
5365 Spirit Beast
5362 Cat
5351 Moth
5349 Wasp
5295 Silithid
5293 Tallstrider
5286 Carrion Bird
5235 Hyena

Cats rank higher for me. My 3 main pets are a Devilsaur, a Wolf, and a Cat. The wolf will be my main raiding pet in the early progression through Ulduar but the cat will probably also see some use. The devilsaur is just too big and clunky.

 

Rosamonde

The more attack power you have, the higher the moth will be for you. I did some checking in the spreadsheet, however, and found that the moth does not scale as well as I had hoped -- at least not in the current PTR build as reflected in v.86d. The moth closes the gap with the wolf as attack power increases, but it would take a ridiculous amount for it to actually catch up.

Using my current gear, I hand adjusted the amount of AP in the spreasheet. Here is the result of a comparison between moths and wolves (dps is combined hunter and pet):

GEAR ----------- Wolf ---- Moth --- Difference
current gear --- 6068 --- 5952 --- 116
+1000 AP ------ 6559 --- 6451 --- 108
+2000 AP ------ 7026 --- 6926 --- 100
+3000 AP ------ 7504 --- 7414 --- 90
+10,000 AP ---- 10828 -- 10860 --- 32
+15,000 AP ---- 13256 -- 13267 --- -11
+20,000 AP ---- 15651 -- 15704 --- -53

I would need to get 15,000 additional attack power for the moth to scale ahead of the wolf, so unless the specials are changed, it doesn't look like the moth will become the pet of choice for damage in this expansion.

Cave canum...

Florimel (hunter) / Argent Dawn
Rosamonde (mage) / Argent Dawn
Lisieau (priest) / Argent Dawn

 

Mattaos

This is interesting since the Moth has not even been on the hunter radar from the start. For one, it is not a very beastly pet and the special ability was fairly lackluster. Even the name of its special was kind of silly Serenity Dust?

But, your numbers are interesting considering the Moth is even or better than the Wolf around the 10k AP range. This is certainly a number we could reach (raid buffed) by the time Icecrown is released. I think the only caveat here is that achieving such high AP numbers requires certain raid buffs to be procing all at the same time or at least consistently enough to maintain that high of a AP range. Furious Howl has a pretty consistent up-time.

 

Rosamonde

I should clarify that "+10,000 AP" means 10K on top of what I already have raid-buffed in near-BiS (spreadsheet gives me 7000 or so with trinket procs, etc), not 10K total AP. This would be more in the neighborhood of 22,000 AP (7000 + 15,000) before the moth could overtake the wolf under current PTR conditions. I think the numbers are far higher than what could be achieved in Wrath.

PS I would love to use a moth as my raiding pet!

Cave canum...

Florimel (hunter) / Argent Dawn
Rosamonde (mage) / Argent Dawn
Lisieau (priest) / Argent Dawn

 

KraxisSingular

While the numbers are pretty academic they are nice to know.

You didn't happen to try out a Raptor and/or Devilsaur *shudder* with these numbers? I would assume they would scale even better than the Moth.

 

Selmarix

The extra crit, haste and armor penetration you would have with that much better gear would increase the value of the wolf AP buff on the hunter so likely even in that gear the wolf would be ahead.

 

Namarus

Something you forgot in your calculations. You not taking critical strikes into account.

Assuming that an average BM hunter will have around 40% crit, and autoshots only crit for 203% damage vs the 234%. This in my opinion would put greater weight on steady shot.

 

Nooska

@ Namarus

My calculations do not take crit rate into account that is true. This is due to a couple of things.
The first is that crit rate is highly rng dependant, and we are looking at a realatively low number of shots.
The second is that crit rate is highly variable and therefor even more difficult to incorporate into anything meaningful here.
Thirdly most BM builds don't have 30% increased crit damage to steady shots - most only spend 2 points in Mortal Shots together with 3 in Careful Aim to unlock GftT, so its not such a big difference.
Fourth and lastly, it is 2 shots auto or 2 shots steady - crit rate won't figure in except as 0 / 50 / 100% in this napkin size. Since crit rate is the same for both autoshots and steadies, the worst case scenatio for autoshots and Hawk glyph would be 100% crit for the 2 shots:

As this was an exercise in scaling I will use the same 1000 ap gain as I listed in my original post:

Steady gained 110 damage this crits for both shots (worst case scenario for autoshor / best case for steady)


Steady shot crit damage gain from 1k ap gain with 2/5 MS = 110 * 2 * 1.12 *1.03 = 254 damage
Steady shot crit damage gain from 1k ap gain with 5/5 MS = 110 * 2 * 1.3 * 1.03 = 295
Autoshot Crits from the 1k ap gain = 207 * 2 * 1.03 = 426 damage

So even at 100% crit rate Autoshot benefits more from ap gain than steady shot both with 2/5 MS and with 5/5 MS. Since the difference we are looking at is Hawk glyph versus Serpent Sting Glyph and both provide 2 extra shots over 105 seconds, Hawk wins on scaling as the 2 extra autoshots will gain more damage than the 2 steadies regardless of crit rate with an increase in AP.

 

Rosamonde

OK, I took a look at the Devilsaur vs the Wolf as well. The Devilsaur is already a bit above the Wolf, but you can see how it pulls away with more AP. Bear in mind that +1000, +1500, etc means *in addition* to my current gear, without consideration of any other stats I would be acquiring along with better gear that would make the wolf's contribution to the hunter's AP more valuable. (thanks Selmarix)

GEAR ----------- Wolf ---- Devilsaur --- Difference
current gear --- 6068 --- 6085 -------- 17
+1000 AP ------ 6546 --- 6582 -------- 36
+1500 AP ------ 6786 --- 6828 -------- 42
+2000 AP ------ 7026 --- 7077 -------- 51
+2500 AP ------ 7266 --- 7326 -------- 60
+3000 AP ------ 7504 --- 7574 -------- 70

Now, I am comparing the Wolf to the Devilsaur, hand adjusting AP and also adding 1% crit (46 hit rating) per 500 AP.

GEAR -------------------- Wolf ---- Devilsaur --- Difference
current gear ------------ 6068 --- 6085 -------- 17
+1000 AP/92 crit ------- 6604 --- 6640 -------- 36
+1500 AP/138 crit ------ 6877 --- 6921 -------- 44
+2000 AP/184 crit ------ 7153 --- 7202 -------- 49
+2500 AP/230 crit ------ 7430 --- 7488 -------- 58
+3000 AP/276 crit ------ 7710 --- 7776 -------- 66

EDIT: Redid second table to correct Devilsaur numbers.

Taking additional crit into consideration (and I may have been too conservative on how much I added) the gap between the Devilsaur and Wolf does not widen quite so fast. Additional haste and armor pen on better gear should increase the value of the AP wolves give to the hunter slightly more, keeping wolves as a smaller, quieter alternative to devilsaurs.

Good news for dog lovers and dino haters everywhere.

Cave canum...

Florimel (hunter) / Argent Dawn
Rosamonde (mage) / Argent Dawn
Lisieau (priest) / Argent Dawn

 

Keruen

Question regarding pets that I haven't seen answered anywhere, at least in this thread:

I know that Ferocity pets are better straight-up DPS than Cunning pets. However, what I haven't seen modeled here (as least as far as I can tell) are the effects from Roar of Recovery. Specifically, it would seem to me that at least some of the straight DPS loss from using a Cunning pet would be made up for by the fact that if you use RoR, you don't need to use Viper as much. And not having to use Viper much is obviously a DPS increase.

The other reason I bring this up is that RoR is having its cooldown reduced to 3 mins in 3.1, which means fully talented, it will have a CD of 2.1 minutes. Now, to me, getting 30% of my mana back every 2 mins seem pretty powerful. For hunters not having mana issues I guess this is a non-issue, but at least for me (especially since I only do 10man raids and don't have access to all the extra buffs you get from 25s), mana is still an issue.

So has any modeling been done regarding RoR before, or especially recently taking into consideration the 3.1 changes?

 

Dragondarch

Something else to consider in terms of which pet is top: Forcing Savage Rend crits via Cobra Strikes.

The spreadsheet doesn't emulate this situation properly. It's showing the uptime on the Savagery buff at ~35%, which would be correct if it was left on autocast. When forcing crits, the uptime should be closer to 60-65%. Of course it's prone to streakiness if a dry spell comes up and you have to wait a while before Cobra Strikes is up again.

/petautocasttoggle Claw
/petautocasttoggle Savage Rend

I click that macro when Cobra Strikes procs and if there's less than 5 seconds left on the Savage Rend cooldown, since it's entirely possible my next proc may not be for a bit.

I've done some limited testing on the training dummies. In all cases there was at least a 5% DPS increase on the Raptor when forcing crits, even considering the fact that I wound up with about 20% less uses of Savage Rend thanks to bad luck on Cobra Strikes proccing.

 

Nooska

RoR definately seems like a good investment as full BM if mana is an issue - its the reintroduction of the mana pot - except its better because its mana over time meaning no less chance mana will be wasted.

For DPS with a cunning pet I would say something like this: Pet Calculator - Wowhead would be my choice. This setup even has your pet doing a constant 80% movement increase.

@ Spreadsheet vs pet dps

No, the spreadhseet doesn't model dps quite as effectively as we can make it as BM.
Another example is that the psreadsheet has your KC going off every 60 seconds and your BW going off every 72 seconds. In reality you get much more from delaying KC 12 seconds every time and setting it off with BW (I have these 2 macroed together with an on use trinket if I have one).

KC without BW: 1.6 * damage from special (1.4, 1.2)
BW without KC: 1.5 * damage from specials (and everything else)
KC with BW: 1.5 * KC (1.6, 1.4, 1.2) = 2.4, 2.1, 1.8 * damage

In a cycle where you pop each on every cooldwon you get the first one with a BW, and the next 4 without, and then the cooldowns realign.

KC on CD: (2.4 + 2.1 + 1.8) * 1 + (1.6 + 1.4 + 1.2) * 4 = 23,1

KC with BW: (2.4 + 2.1 + 1.8) * 4 = 25,2

So even losing 1 full KC over the course of 5 minutes, you come out with more damage done by the multipliers (yes this is very napkin math)