Alex400

I´m getting some weird results here. How much dps you guys doing on heroic dummy with only Hawk aspect active ?

My armory

SV - 3300 (3000 me - 300 cat) 0-15-56 - KS/ES/SS glyphs

BM - 2900 (2000 me - 900 devilsaur) 53-11-7 - BW/SS/IAoH glyphs

Latency 140 ms

All my slots are filled with AP gems, so shouldn´t my BM dps score be closer to SV´s ?

My rotation for SV: KS - ES - AS - SrS - SS

BM: KS - ArS - SrS - SS

 

Vanadizzle

I`d recommend using the Killshot glyph instead of the Hawk glyph. Also try to weave in Multishots. More damage at the expense of some mana. I was able to pull off 3.2- 3.3k dps with my, slightly different spec than yours.

 

bish73

Hey Vanadizzle,

You and I are similarly geared, although I have nothing from Ulduar yet. We also seem to be gemming a lot of Agility against what the spreadsheet says. I just switched to the Hawk glyph from Serpent Sting and was using the new Spirit Beast, Gondria. I was able to pull down about 3150 dps, I did use multi-shot in my shot rotation as well. Going to try Killshot glyph when the prices drop on my server a bit.

I am curious, since I'm on a Mac and don't have a Windows copy of Excel to be able to use the Spreadsheet, how much of a boost will gemming for AP give and how much AP should we aiming for especially at the expense of Crit. I haven't seen any really straight forward discussions on this (please point me to it if I missed a good one). I know pet's inherit AP but my theory has always been that the Crit I get from Agility is going to make Cobra Strikes more effective thus causing my pet to Crit causing FI to go off more causing more damage from Arcane Shot and so on. (just a note: I'm terrible at Mathematics so I'm not basing that on any real world data heh) I'm happy with where I'm at but I'd like to try switching to AP gems to see what it would do. Just kind of an expensive experiment hehe.

I've also found that I tend to top Damage and DPS over most of the Survival Hunter I've run with. Not sure if that is because they are just bad Survival Hunters or not. I tried Survival when 3.1 came out and just couldn't wrap my brain around the Shot Priority (getting too old I think :P) but I'd much rather be the best Beast Master Hunter I can be then a bad Survival Hunter any day. Since I have not made it into Ulduar I'm anxious to see how pet friendly or unfriendly it is.

 

Keruen

That would make sense except for the fact that we HAVE to put 10 points into MM in order to get GFTT. And the choices in MM aside from Careful Aim and Lethal Shots are Mortal Shots and Focused Aim. Focused Aim is easily the superior DPS talent of the two - how is choosing 2% more hit for both yourself and your pet inferior to a talent that only increases crit damage of non-auto shots (when auto is a huge portion of our damage)? The answer is: it isn't. Now that Focused Aim applies to pets, it is by far the better talent. That 2% hit from the talent means that you could switch gems/enchants around to provide more AP, which will give a better DPS benefit than Mortal Shots.

Unfortunately, the reason a lot of people don't take Focused Aim is that sometimes you just can't get rid of enough hit on your gear. It's incredibly easy to reach the hit cap for a hunter, especially if you're a Draenei. So yes, if all your gems/enchants are already AP and you're still hit capped, then taking Focused Aim will do nothing for you (except the pushback reduction on SS). However, if you can get gear upgrades that do NOT have hit on them, it's better to do that and get 2% hit from Focused Aim. Mortal Shots is nothing but a filler talent, and should definitely be avoided if you can remove enough hit from your gear to make taking Focused Aim possible.

 

Ritalian

Well I've been in Ulduar 4 nights now and so far (we haven't downed Ignis):

Flame Leviathan - just dismiss your pet and live without it. You don't need it in vehicles.
Razorscale - as long as your tanks keep the mobs away from the blue fire so that your pet isn't in it then you will have no problem. Mine even ran through it to reach targets and although hurt, never died.
XT - No problem at all - I found pet very handy to leave on the heart whilst I Volley'd any incoming scrapbots.
Ignis - can't survive long enough to find out. Okay that's a lie, but even getting caught in the odd scorch it doesn't seem to cause a problem.

Maybe I've improved, but I am definitely finding it easier to keep pet alive so far than I did in Naxx initially.

 

TrevvyTrev

Maybe it is because of haste. I have no idea whether Serpent's Swiftness affects Volley, but if it does, then that could explain the difference. With channeled spells, haste just compresses the same damage into a shorter time period, which would allow you to fit more volleys into a given timeframe as BM than Survival.

 

Homarid

This is not true for me according to the spreadsheet. I am getting more dps from mortal shots than re-gearing for less hit. It could just be that I have inferior dps gear(doubtful), but that is the results from my research. How are you reaching your conclusion?

 

Iru

As you pointed out yourself, this is a gear dependent situation. If you were aggressively gemming hit to make the cap, swapping to AP gems could make a difference, particularly if you didn't have very high crit levels.

 

Keruen

Something I noticed as I was playing around with the spreadsheet last night:

For me, 2/2 GFTT makes a *huge* difference over 1/2. Never having played with the spreadsheet before, I just took the CW that once your unbuffed crit is over 25% (which mine is), that you can drop a point in GFTT. But according to the spreadsheet, that's simply not the case, at least for my gear. Granted my gear is nothing special - mostly Naxx gear, with T8 legs - so that may be why. But every time I heard the 25% unbuffed crit comment, there was never really any comment about gear level.

And I don't just mean that it upped my DPS (which it did, significantly). Putting 2/2 GFTT put AP on top as the prime stat that I should gear for. Well sure you say, that makes sense since you're BM - right? But when I dropped down to 1/2 GFTT, the prime stat was...agility.

So not only was 2/2 GFTT a huge DPS boost for one talent point, it also completely changed what stat I would want to gear for. Personally I always assumed any BM spec would go for AP over anything else, but for my gear, 1/2 GFTT means I would want to gear for Agi instead. It takes 2/2 for me to actually want to go for AP.

So there you have it, unless the spreadsheet is screwy. This is why I'd suggest to everyone to not just take the CW floating around on these forums - download the spreadsheet, and try it out for yourself.

 

leonardofelin

Keruen, Agility will give you more crit. I think that's why, for your current gear, the spreadsheet points you to Agility for 1/2 GFTT. You would be increasing your crit, and therefore increasing GFTT focus regen.

 

Rosamonde

What did you take a point out of to get 2/2 GftT? (Your profile shows a priest.)

EDIT: I tried moving a second point to GftT in the spreadsheet, but no matter where I took the point from, it was a dps loss. I have about 31% crit unbuffed in my BM spec, and 41% in the spreadsheet with full raid buffs. (The armory doesn't seem to reflect crit and AP from talents any more, I suppose as a result of the dual-spec feature.)

As BM you should have 2/2 Bestial Discipline, which makes the second point in GftT less necessary than for the other specs. However, with the change in pet focus regeneration, we should review the "conventional wisdom" on how much crit is needed to drop to 1/2 GftT.

EDIT #2: The "change" in focus regeneration is actually a correction in the way it is calculated by the spreadsheet; the actual mechanic for focus regeneration has not changed.

As an aside, I have been playing with an SV/Replenishment spec as my second spec, and I found that 2/2 GftT was necessary to keep my pet from becoming focus-starved even with raid-buffed crit around 48%.

As always, I heartily endorse trying everything out in the spreadsheet for yourself. The things posted in the forums are guidelines and generalities, not hard and fast rules.

Cave canum...

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

 

Ritalian

Good post Keruen

I am mainly in Naxx10 gear (no blues) and GFTT 2/2 is showing a DPS loss if I try and free up the point from anywhere in my spec (54/11/6 - I took the 2nd point from Survival Instincts and put in to Invigoration as I was having mana issues). In fact if I cheat and give myself an extra point in GFTT without taking it from anywhere at all, then I still only see a 3dps increase.

My stats:

Hit vs. Level 83 100.05%
Crit vs. Level 83 32.51%
Agility 1275
Intellect 667
Attack Power 5669
ArP rating 145
Hit Rating 264
Crit Rating 851

And as for most valuable stat:
Attribute DPS Per Item Budget
Agility + 1 0.933 0.933
AP + 1 0.467 0.934
Int + 1 0.769 0.769
Crit + 1 0.706 0.706

So yes that definitely backs up your comment that you really need to use the spreadsheet rather than just accept what is written. Look how close my AGI/AP comparison is!

On a related note - does anyone regularly get anywhere near their theoretical DPS? Spreadsheet = 4520 for me, realistically I get around 3200 on WWS. Sure I can spike at 4200+ but nothing long term like a whole boss fight.

 

Seoman

Forgive me if this is well known, but when switching specs from a BM 20-pet talent point spec to, say, an SV spec, can you resummon the same pet and reallocate the talent points? Or do you absolutely need to have a second pet for the 16-pet talent point spec?

 

Danrith

When you swap specs away from a spec with 51 pt Beastmastery, your pet automatically unlearns all of its talents before despawning. As long as it's not an exotic pet, you can resummon it immediately in your new spec and reallocate its (now 16) talent points.

 

Vanadizzle

Well that is what I was concerned about too. If I swap out all my gems and use AP instead, my pet obviosly has alot more attackpower. However the critchance will go down by ALOT and since cobrastrikes is sucha huge dps gain, especially in a raidsituation where you push 39 or 40% with common buffs and class synergies (propably even more with hidden debuffs), I cant see that happening. Somebody mentioned GFTT.

And in my case I just dont play BM as mainspec right now . Still using MM on most fights and for that I really need agi instead of straight AP. Piercing Shots is highly dependent on critrating.

 

Koralath

For Razorscale I've been firing arbitrarily, keeping my pet at my side. Mostly, I've been used on spear gun duty.

XT - Exact same. My raid knows as BM I'm better kept single point than AOE, so I'm just a frost trap thrower for scrap bots. But we have like 4 mages per raid so we have AoE to spare.

Ignis - Downed him 3 times now. He's a joke, really. Especially now with the nerf. Your pet wont have any issues.

Assembly of Iron - Commonly known as the Iron Council. We haven't downed them yet, best we've had is two down, with the caster left up and we wipe. Again, no real issues keeping the pet up. You may have to nudge your tank a little to get him further from the Death Runes so your pet isn't clipping it. That was the biggest issue I had, and I use a Devilsaur. I've found that calling and resending gets your pet to adjust his location on the mob, so if you're quick with pet managment, Death Runes won't cause much headache.

All in all I have to say they did a great job on BM in 3.1. They definitely made us competitive again. Went from mid range on the DPS charts to top 5 every time.

 

Kinetics

Agreeing entirely with this. I can keep up with a vast majority of survival hunters. I believe if you know how to play your spec correctly than you can keep up with any other hunter out there. BM isn't the "worst" spec, its just not preferred by most players because of the constant pet management, but if you get over this barrier then you can keep up SV and Marks hunters.

I absolutely love the fact that I can raid as BM in 3.1, and it breaks up the vast group of hunters that were all SV pre-3.1

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

 

Lerastes

We've cleared most of Ulduar 25 and I've had good experience with the instance for pet survivability. Here are my experiences so far for the fights not mentioned already.

Kolagarn: Doesn't seem to have any damage on the pet whatsoever. I don't think my pet ever took a hit from anything. The eye beams may hit it though if someone were to drag it across your pet

Auriaya: The Void Zone seemed to hit him a little bit, but since it's not the instant death Void Zones we're used to, it was almost ignorable. You may have to watch for your pet standing in one though depending on what it's hitting. I don't think the Pounce hits pets either.

Freya: Again, no pet damage as near as I could tell unless my pet was tanking an exploding add for me. Even then they don't hit very hard and a Mend plus occasional heals from AOE was enough to keep him topped off. I don't believe the Seeds in phase 2 hit him either.

Hodir: Again, no real issues. The falling icicles on melee would hit my pet a bit but I'm fairly certain it was reduced by AOE damage reduction. I cast Mend I believe once during the three attempts it took to down Hodir last night but it was a cautionary Mend, not reactionary.

Thorim: While we haven't downed him, this is the only fight where you have to be careful. The melee mobs and large collosi in the tunnel will kill your pet VERY easily from the AOE damage, stun, and DoT effect. If my pet got the DoT, it required Mend and a few Druid HoTs to keep up. I usually didn't send him to melee the small melee mobs, only the colossus, though I had to watch for the Lightning Shield thing to pull my pet out. It's not as bad in the arena, the Challenger's WW doesn't hit the pet very hard, but with the huge amount of adds you'd have to be careful to not let your pet tank something big. The Commoners barely hit for anything but the Evokers might be a different story.

Mimiron: I've only done this on 10 man but this is another fight to pay attention to. The Nova in phase 1 can one-shot your pet and it's rather hard to pull him out of in time if he doesn't have Dash up. He survived the hit a few times but I usually pulled him out of melee after the Plasma Beam just to be safe. Phase 2, 3, and 4 didn't seem to hit the pet for much. The instant-death beam in phase 2 may or may not hit the pet; I never bothered to let him stay in to find out. I did however use him as bait on bomb bots during phase 3 so he did take some AOE damage there.

Vezax: Again, only downed him on 10 man, but this one was easy on my pet. The only damage he took was the occasional bad Crash on melee but it didn't hit very hard at all. The life leech debuff may hit them as well.

Yogg: We haven't downed Yogg on 10 or 25 man yet so I haven't seen the entire fight. Phase 1 posed no issues though. Phase 2 may be a different story with the tentacles and beams.

 

Sindrel

Looking for some opinions on Animal Handler for BM in 3.1:

I nabbed the Strong Handed Ring last night and was able to regem a bit away from hit for other stats: went from 256 hit to 268. I realize that the pet won't miss but will still have some attacks dodged and/or parried. Shandara's worksheet reflects me unbuffed around 2925 with 2/2 Animal Handler, but moving both points out of there and into Invig should theoretically bring me around 2940 and certainly keep me out of viper longer.

Gang, when - if at all - are you finding it valid to move pts out of AH? Normally I run a standard 53/11/7, but I do find that mana goes faster than I'd like, and have been considering moving into 55/11/5 for the B Spec, just in case. With regard to new Uld gear, I expect to lose the 4pc T7 bonus soon, so Invig may be even more relevant for non H raids.

Pls chime in with your thoughts and experiences regarding NOT taking AH. For that matter, have any of you gone the BM Invig route?

As always, thx in advance for your help.

Regards,

Sindrel

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Supericy

I'm not a pro or anything, but wouldn't putting 32ap gems in all of your gear, and not going for socket bonuses raise your dps by quite a lot?

 

Lerastes

After doing some testing in Ulduar 25 last night, it looks like the Laser Barrage on Mimiron does indeed hit pets and pretty much insta-kills them. So, Ulduar is generally pet friendly, though later fights can be difficult if you're not paying attention to your pets health and certain AOEs.

 

Juneko

I was a die hard BM hunter all through bc, but I've been sticking to survival in ulduar after doing week 1 as bm. It starts out great, ignis and IC in particular are both very hunter(any spec) friendly fights for some reason. I think bm tappers off a lot after that though, on buff fights like hodir we lose a lot of ground, and mimiron through yogg really feel like I have to be survival and I don't even use my pet for entire portions of yogg/mimiron because it is more useful buffing me. Just some ideas I had for improving beast mastery that could really help:

Right now they are too dependent on raid buffs, which makes even one pet death a disaster that costs you hundreds of dps. Instead they could not be affected by any raid buffs, but have a much higher portion of our ap shared. This can allow blizzard to implement haste, arp, and crit sharing between us and our pets. Weaker stats for hunters also become far more attractive(arp in particular)

Secondly there are going to be times when it's just not a good idea to use your pet(laser barrages, runes of death, crusher tentacles, lightning tendrils etc). Maybe pets can offer buffs they can give us while not attacking, so hunters do not have a large disadvantage over other ranged in some situations. Furious howl is a great idea that works like this.

 

Kharthus

It's a little weird. Some AoE stuff they're immune to and some they're not. They take damage on Council from the AoE explosions (not that much to worry about), but the green circles of death don't affect them.

It's a huge pain when they're standing in something bad due to boss positioning and you have no way to move them since they always attack from the rear now.

 

Lerastes

Yes, it's rather inconsistent. The Laser Barrage will kill your pet almost instantly but the missiles he fires in phase 2 and 4 don't hit pets.

 

alienangel

I am fairly sure the Missiles do hit pets, unless Rocket Strike is some other effect: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

(Turtle is a pet)

It is usually pretty easy to avoid though if someone is calling out when a missile is targetting melee, or whenever a missile is launched at all (although I imagine that degree of caution would be pretty bad for BM).

Anecdotally, I'm also pretty sure I've seen my own pet get oneshotted by a rocket before I started pulling out, although I can't verify since those nights I uploaded to WMO which doesn't seem to parse out pets individually.