• Intermission

Yeah, Wolf.

The damage difference according to the spreadsheet wasn't huge, and every other factor favours a wolf:

- When you swap to a different spec for a fight, your wolf still works, without having to rely on a 30 min cooldown.
- Hitbox isnt stupidly large. So for fights like Sarth(flame wall), Mimiron(shockblast), Assembly of Iron(overload), etc, the pet can be more easily moved out.
- He is nice and small. A big pet in the way of melee would not just be an annoyance, but a serious problem to melee in some fights. On Mimiron, we even went to the degree of kiting certain mobs and killing them in a particular place, so the melee could have a better view of the ground (land mines). Every bit of visibility helps.

 

Forage

What about this for a pet DPS spec?

Heart of the Phoenix

I run a lot of PUGs, and must say that not having to wait for Revive Pet + Mend Pet is very useful

 

Nova442

Giving up 6% pet damage as BM for HotP is madness.

 

Nooska

Pre 3.1 I had HotP in my ferocity pets - I hardly ever used it. Yes thats me being stupid, but 3.2 seconds of casting (2 gcds) and send pet in while casting mend pet seems a lot better as long as the pet isn't sent straight in to damage of course.

I haven't done any math on it - and won't as it will vary from fight to fight how often your pet dies, but I am pretty sure 6% increased damage overall will outweigh losing 2 gcd (2 steadies) plus the autoshots for a talented and glyphed revive pet.

 

Nebelwerfer

Keeping your pet alive is more useful.

 

Fetknopp

I've read a lot here over the time, now it's time to do my first post.

I have seen a some spreadsheet tests between wolf and devilsaur, but no real world data.
So i figured i could add my 2 cents to the discussion. The calculations will be made on my gear which is a bit low, all pre naxx, hitcapped, AP 3.6k, crit 25.45%.

First off: The Wolf will definately be better the lower your gear is, straight +320AP vs +9%.
On my gear, infinite time, game data, average.

Devilsaur:
Main Attack: 417,7 dps
Mounstrous Bite: 15,3 dps
Total: 433 dps
Total with MB bonus over time: 471,9 dps

Wolf
Total: 417,7 dps
Total with Furius Howl: 494,8dps
FH bonus uptime: 71.4%
Total with FH bonus over time: 472,8 dps

So the wolf is better allready here with my gear.
Add to this the 320AP increase for me which is 8.9% and the choice is really simple.

You also have to take into account how a fight looks. The MB bonus needs a minimum of 14 seconds to reach 9%, FH is up directly. This naturally means that on short fights the wolf will be better.

I tested this on a heroic training dummy. It's a 1 minute fight with the standard human errors, hit SS to early there, missed AS there... The results are very obvious though.

DPS with Wolf (tinypic)
DPS with Devilsaur (tinypic)


I think i noticed this in 5-man heroics too, the Devilsaur only shines when the fights are long. If the group is good and the tempo is very hectic i tend to do very bad, dps as low as ~1800. If i'm running with a group with bad dps my personal dps is higher ~2200.

I will start to use the wolf from now on, see how it feels.

My only objection is how it looks, the Wolf i plain ugly. Might have to go for the Vargul in ZD, looks a bit better.

 

Landais

Yeah the stormspike wolf is ugly but it's a 80 pet :p

I'm agree with Intermission, the devilsaur is nice on paper but it's very noisy and big especially when bw is up.

 

Squinky001

I'm not sure if it's intended but on live swapping between your dual specs resets the CD on Call Stabled Pet. That said, I don't know if it would function the same with an exotic pet though I imagine it would as your pet is auto-dismissed when you change specs. (Likely for the very reason of a BM hunter with an Exotic pet switching to another spec and needing to swap out pets without tracking down a stable master.)

 

Ritalian

I think I agree as well. I am pretty okay at keeping my pet alive (use on passive in Heigan/OS) but when it does die it's because things aren't going so well in the raid so the last thing the raid needs is for me to stop DPSing and start casting revive

That's my gut feeling on it and is why I always take it for my ferocity pets.

 

kabes

Last night I was mostly neck and neck with another hunter in my guild who was swapping between MM and SV. He is also slightly better geared so BM held up pretty well!

On XT-002 attempts I varied between 4500-5200 dps depending on how many gravity/light bombs I got. I was using a Wolf. Spec was 55/15/1 (wanted aimed shot and invigoration). [Saronite Mesh Legguards] dropped from Razorscale before that

 

Janna

If the tamer lvl 80, the lvl 70 pet will automatically become lvl 75. No pet will be more than five levels behind you.

 

Nooska

The text you quoted was in response to me asying you had to go to un'goro crater to get a devilsaur - which is incorrect (it probably the easiest to do, but that wasn't what I said).

Your post is also correct, but not in contradiction to the quoted text.

 

Melkunie

The only fight where i would consider HotP is Mimiron. And even there you have time between phases to res them back to life, even as survival/mm.

 

Hogharr

What about Glyphs for BM? Bestial Wrath, SrS and Kill Shot?

 

Homarid

Spreadsheet for me is showing SrS, Kill shot, and Bestial Wrath glyphs as the best combo.

 

Tekino

SrS? is Glyph of Steady Shot not better?

 

Nooska

Steady shot is a must for BM as its our most spammed shot being upped by 10%.

KS is nice on paper and equal to SS but its only really at full potential when you kill the bosses consistently

SrS is a bad glyph as it only provides for more steadies, Hawk is better as it gives you more autoshots which consistently hit harder than steady. Try switching SrS with hawk, you should see a dps increase on teh spreadsheet (and in real life raid situations)

BW is a no brainer though.

 

Homarid

Ok I figured out what was going on. When I set latency higher than .2 Kill shot glyph becomes better than steady shot. My normal latency is 300-350.

I am not sure what to make of this. On one hand I agree that I am using steady shot alot and buffing it is a good idea. On the other Kill shot is amazing, it does over 4x what steady does and might make up for the lost damage.

I guess the real answer is to test it out and see what works best for me. Or fix my latency

 

Nooska

The higher your latency the bette rKS becomes compared to SS, thats true.
Reason being that the higher your latency the less SS you will fire (losing them to latency) while in an environment where you track cooldowns you won't loose out on KS, as 9 seconds is enough to time your KS properly.

 

cammyboy

Im currently specced MM as my primary spec with BM as my secondary. I have found that as MM my dps is better with no points in the BM spec at all (i use a 0/61/10) then the traditional (7/57/7). I use a wolf as my pet, and was wondering if the 20% extra critical strike chance from the focused fire talent applies to the wolf's special attack, since the wolfs special attack is in fact a buff to the hunter and cant actually crit? Or is a pets special attack actually any of its attacks such as a bite or claw? For me, a distinction is worth drawing for if i am to pick the talent up later (perhaps if i spec into the 16/55/0 Unleashed fury MM spec), it has to be worth knowing that the pet i am using is going to benefit from focused fire as much as possible. If focused fire doesnt buff bite and claw, then something like a Raptor is obviously going to be much more worth while. I'm assuming that focused fire does buff all attacks but it is something that i have had difficulty testing myself.

 

TrevvyTrev

Simple answer: Yes, focused fire works on Bite, Claw and Smack, and it does not (it cannot) work on Furious Howl. It should work on any damaging ability that the pet uses (abilities are distinct from normal melee attacks) that is capable of being a critical strike, but I can't admit to having tested everything (I couldn't tell you whether it works on a crocolisk's family special, for example).

 

Nooska

Remember FF also increase your damage done by 2% for 2 points when your pet is active. This is the cookiecutter 1% dps per talent point - and then some from the increased crit on KC.

 

Kurkis

Lets talk about 25 man Ulduar and BM.

My specs are BM/MM.

This is the WWS parse from Tuesday's Ulduar run - Wow Web Stats

Our spreadsheets say that Survival and MM should be doing the most damage but from my perspective this is not the case.

However, the spreadsheet is usually pretty accurate at defining which spec (Survival, MM or BM) is the way to go.

On Hodir all of us were spec'd MM. As you see hunter damage was much tighter. This is most of what we saw in Naxx when we were all spec'd Survival.

Aside from the Auriaya you will see that when I switched to BM it clearly outperformed the other two specs.

I'm saying to myself the optimal way to play a hunter in Ulduar is to dual spec and switch to MM only for Hodir, Auriaya and possibly for Ignis, General and Mimiron. I've been having success on Mimiron for P1-P3 but trying to leave my pet in on P4 fulltime is causing deaths which is skewing any good testing. Next week I will pull the pet from shockwaves (I don't in P1). General/Ignis I am indifferent about atm.

As far as Yogg Saron goes, I suppose whether you are BM or MM depends on if you are taking portals or not.

So my questions for you guys - There are alot of guilds killing Yogg, are any of you guys testing these different specs? What are your results?

We have alot of different people based on the fight now doing well on the meters. Namely, our Shadow Priests are extremely successful on General. Are you guys seeing the same stuff here or are Mages/Hunters still topping on almost every fight?

So, I would ask for some feedback on how you guys are doing in Ulduar thus far and whether you as BM or a guildmate spec'd BM is doing well compared to the other hunters and members of your raid.

As always, I only care about results in 25 man content. What you've found in 10 mans, pug VoAs and the dummy's in IF is irrelevant to me.

 

erest

I am specced BM/Surv

We ran 25 naxx as guild to get some last pieces of gear for new members, and I have always been on top of the damage meter along with two other hunters. Since the patch went live, a few days later I was able to tame Gondira, knowing that BM still wasn't pumping out the dps compared to MM or Surv. I showed up to that quick 25 naxx run not expecting to be on top of the recount because the other two hunters were surv spec and had their wolves ready to go. To my surprise, I was able to still be top dps which shocked me. What was going on, was that on trash mobs laying a explosive trap hitting BW and volley I did some nice damage and dps. Volley is alot stronger for BM than it is for Surv (Haven't looked into why it is) but even with out BW still does more dps that surv spec'd volley. Now, before the boss fights I was well ahead of the surv hunters (There isnt much of a gap between our gear scores) once we got to the boss fight like thadius they pulled in 7k and I only did 5k dps on that fight and other boss fights I was not on top of the surv hunters.

So in the end to me BM can do more dps getting to the boss and do well on the boss fights where as the surv. spec hunter is the opposite. In the end it all comes down to what you like to play and HOW YOU PLAY. Gear score cant make up for skill. Now, to pump out the DPS I think using the duel spec and switching spec's according to the fight you will see Hunters pulling well away form the other classes.

Gondria isn't top dps pet but looks cool and is a perfect raiding pet. Small (compared to other exotics) decent dps and its see through lol.

 

torii

All the top DPS hunters in 3.0.8 Naxx runs were some variation of SV.

While they may post better individual numbers - wouldn't Ferocious Inspiration (nearly 100% uptime, 3% damage increase for all damage done by all raid members) outweigh the roughly +500dps SV hunters have over BM hunters? In the top guild parses, swapping a BM hunt for an SV hunt would add around 1500-2000dps for the raid. This obviously scales better in 25 man raids rather than 10 mans where you might only break even.

Obviously you wouldn't bring more than 1 BM hunter, but if you only bring 1 hunter it ought to be BM?

How much DPS does hunting party mana re-gen or True Shot aura (which is only AP not SP) bring in comparison?

I guess what I'm saying is that from a game design perspective it shouldn't be true that all specs pump out equal individual dps when their raid buffs are not equal.