I am in the process of updating the original post for 3.3 -- if anyone has things they especially think should be revised or added that aren't already updated, please comment. (I do intend to summarize the discussion regarding Rowan's.)

Using the latest version of the spreadsheet (93g), I ran hours worth of various talents specs, pets, glyphs and buff combinations.

What I found a bit unbelievable was the major glyph selection for Beast Mastery spec of 53/11/7, of Hawk, Serpent Sting and Steady shot yielded the highest dps when the rotation was tested. The dps came out to be 8525.56 versus 8440.69 using the major glyph of Bestial Wrath (replaced by Hawk). After this, I tried a mixture of the various glyph combinations. All rotation tests showed low to mid 8400's. The rotation included Kill shot, Arcane shot, rapid fire, Serpent Sting and Steady Shot. Each time I added Multi-shot or Aimed shot into the rotation, dps went down even more, regardless of which of the aforementioned glyphs was used.

This was using the standard 25 man raid buffs with blackened dragonfin and flask of endless rage, wolf pet with 20 points (20th point in stamina over using it for 2 in bloodthirsty) and buffed with spiced mammoth treats. My hunter's gear was used (Zetath, Earthen Ring as of 1/25/10) - if anyone involved with development cares to run the numbers themselves.

The spreadsheet basically discounts the major glyph of Bestial Wrath in a large way. This glyph in conjunction with 3/3 in longevity reduces the Bestial Wrath cool down basically to half it's normal cool down timer. It was hard to believe this glyph would be such a bad choice, since the page 1 guide recommends it. I felt this was worth mentioning.

Beastial Wrath itself is a fairly lackluster spell since the last set of changes to it, so reducing its cooldown isn't all that useful anymore. You found that glyphing the 3 primary sources of damage to a BM hunter yields the highest damage. This isn't particularly surprising. Not using aimed at all might be slightly surprising.

I wrote the part about glyphs before the changes to Bestial Wrath and the Beast Within that alienangel mentions -- looks like that part needs more review, so thanks for your comment.

I have not raided as BM since Ulduar came out and my guild needed me for Replenishment, but I am taking it back as my second spec and I wanted to update things for anyone who was interested.

If you're finding that excluding Aimed/Multi results in higher dps, you may want to confirm that the spreadsheet isn't modelling you as going OOM. Additionally, you may want to check the expected damage of the three shots, Aimed/Multi/Steady, to really see why the spreadsheet is modelling using Aimed/Multi as DPS losses for your setup.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the highest dpsing spec I've found so far using the gear that is available.

EDIT: Also, it shows Multi being a dps increase for me, it hits harder than Steady, which is pretty much the only requirement for our "rotation" these days.

This being true might merit the expenditure of points elsewhere than longevity. If Beast Mastery has become a lackluster cool down, then a talent tree like Zerlu has linked, yet move points out of longevity to something that significantly increases critical strike or plus "%" of a per shot damage or a plus "%" of overall damage may also result in higher dps. I will be playing with this on the spread sheet and see what happens.

I ran a quite a few simulations with the spreadsheet and come up with better than I had hoped. Using a spec of 52/14/5 , wolf pet talented with this ferocity spec a shot rotation that DID include mutli-shot looking like:
Shot Priority
1)Bestial Wrath
2)Kill Shot
3)Arcane Shot
4)Multi-Shot
5)Serpent Sting
6)Rapid Fire
7)Steady Shot

Gear used was the same as the tests I ran a few posts above, with the following exceptions added (got some new gear): Neck - Charge of the Demon Lord and Wrist - Scourge Hunter's Vambraces.

Personal food buff is: Blackened Dragonfin and elixir/flask is Flask of Endless Rage.

Final best dps: 8926.45! A vast improvement.

I put 2 points in invigorate. I took this as the pugs I get into using the daily /random end up moving at the speed of "faster than mana can regen" and I spend half of the instance on Viper.

*Apologies, I forgot some information last evening and transcribed another piece of information incorrectly. It was brought to my attention by a PM from another member.

I thought his was an interesting idea, so I tried it in the spreadsheet with my gear.

I tried taking 2 points out of Longevity and putting them into each of the following (Note that 1 point must remain in the BM tree, and there is not a better place for it in this experiment than 1/3 Longevity.):
4/5 Imp Tracking
2/3 Imp Arcane Shot
2/3 Imp Hunter's Mark

None of them gave better results than 3/3 Longevity, and I was not able to find a better build for my current gear than this:

53/16/2

As you can see, I have taken 2/3 focused aim to fill out my hit rating; I found it very slightly better to take the points from Imp Tracking than from Mortal Shots, and I would expect the difference to continue to increase in favor of Mortal Shots as my crit goes up.

Bestial Wrath isn't what it used to be, but Longevity also affects Call of the Wild and Furious Howl (or other pet special), which are useful sources of damage for both hunter and pet.

Invigoration is a good choice if you are running out of mana -- I was testing in a raid situation and thus mana is not an issue.

I'll agree with you, but I think Rowan's is still a viable choice for those whose only other option is 232-lvl weapons. I've seen a ~80 dps increase from using Rowan's over the 232 heroic weapons.

Tinkering with the spreadsheet, 550 static ArPen seems to be the cut-off for BM to start thinking about using ArPen gems. They are a small upgrade after 550 ArPen, and scale up with more ArPen.

Also, it seems that about 3500 AP (with DragonHawk) is the ceiling for using AP gems -- above that and agility starts to be better. Given the gear available now even to non-raiders, it's probably not ever worth gemming with epic AP gems, since it would be such a short time until Agility would be better.

When you were figuring this out, did you have anything equipped that procs ArP? If so, then the 550 number is relevant to having that ArP proc. Also, does your raid have someone providing the sunder armor (or equivalent ) debuff on the target? If not, this can affect when to start gemming ArP as well.

Actually, it's not so much a function of AP, but rather one of how much crit you have as well as AP. It takes a certain percentage of crit to guarantee full synergy with your pet. At high crit, the spreadsheet can show AP is better than agility. For my build (and gear), high crit seems to be in the 45 to 50 percent range unbuffed.

Basically what it boils down to is each person needs to check which is better for them of AP, ArP or agility. Or maybe it's a mixture of AP and agility.

Wild Hunt increases the AP contribution by 30 % (not 20) and I would suggest a similar not on the stamina (where its 40%)

BM stuff that needs to be noted:

1) As of 3.3, Devilsaurs are now the same as all other pets - no stompy noise, no mega hitbox and no super large model with a full stack of MBite and BW.
2) BM hunters can cause some serious damage in Icecrown 25, especially on fights with any sort of movement. WOL of early Icecrown bosses, Patchwerk and Toravon. Troll, using a 53/14/4 build with a Devilsaur. AotB during BW/lust. Armory. Will have data from other bosses later on in the week.

Thanks for the update on Devilsaurs -- the changes to the hitbox, sounds and model were not mentioned in the patch notes. This will make Devilsaurs a very attractive option. Added to OP.

Nooska's correction also made to OP.

A followup on the last post:
WOL from Dreamwalker and Putricide. Same gear and spec as last time. Pets were: Acidmaw (Worm) and Devilsaur (Devilsaur)

Dreamwalker was done exclusively with a Worm. Once the learning attempts were over, the Worm did quite well despite being a tenacity pet thanks to Thunderstomp and its ability to place the sunder armor effect on critical adds with Acid Spit. Putricide attempt 2 was an almost kill using a Devilsaur with BM DPS roughly on par with the other hunters in the raid. Putricide kill was using a Worm. My effective DPS dropped by about 1000 due to the Tenacity pet's ineffectiveness on a single target, however raid effective DPS went up by about 7000 from the Worm placing full stacks of Acid Spit on oozes before melee could DPS them.

Hunter pets do not benefit from Essence of the Blood Queen, so I won't be testing out Lana'thel right now. Looking forward to Sindragora and Lich King tests, if possible.

I finaly tried BM raiding by myself. Although I can't get my BM dps as hugh as my MM dps on patchwerk-like fights, it seems that beast mastery is a viable, and even a better solution under certain circumstances, because of a few very strong points :

-high chunk of dps coming from pet, which means that:
a) solid dps on movement fights
b) smaller reliance on latency and fps
b) bigger margin for human mistakes

-Bestial wrath+TBW a nice cooldown (even post-nerf) with two effects :
a) controlable burst (especially when used together with CotW, RF, etc)
b) cc-immunity, which I have'nt see yet any use for in ICC, but is quite helpful for faction champions for instance.

All in all, I suggest the use of BM spec for marrowgar and rotface in early ICC, due to heavy movements and marrowgar visual effects blowing your graphic card, but unlike above posters, I tend to prefer a spec with Aimed Shot, as you can fire it on the run, wich is, imho, the best use for BM spec

Beast mastery's simple rotation and high pet dps also make this spec the best option after 2 a.m. (or the fith wisky for the alcoholic raiders around here)

EDIT : And watching your pet outdps warlocks in random heroics is awesome.

What spec are you using for your Tenacity pet in a dps role? Armory doesn't show your worm as any talent points spent.

Hunter Pet Calculator - Wowhead is about the only way you can spec a tenacity pet and get all the damage abilities.

There are two points left over for personal preference. I would choose intervene and last stand myself.

I'm definitely not convinced by Invigoration : imho mana isn't a real problem for BM. I didn't found myself running low on mana in the few fights I did in ICC as BM; As of the bosses I tried in MM (I play in a very casual guild, so we're still trying to bring Rotface down) the only encounters where my mana reach zero are Deathwhisper, where snake sting on the lady is quite ok, and saurfang.
For the latter, and any other fight where you get in the same situation, I suggest to stick to the 53/15/3 template, and simply sacrifice the haste pot, as we poorly scale with this stat, and instead drink Runic mana pot/injectors (engineering is once again pure win)
I also tend to use, instead of the usual 180 AP flask, a double-elexir combo : 45 Int and 45 ArPen (Or agi, or AP, or hit, depending on what is the best for you). It is cheaper, close or equal (depending on your gear level) in terms of pure dps stats, as int=AP, and is quite good for your mana pool : 45 intel is 742.5 mana with BoK, almost 5% more mana !

EDIT : Although above comment is true for 25-man-raids, I have finally been able to raid a 10-man in BM spec, and it is true that mana goes down fast if you don't have every raid buff.

Interesting update to the official patch notes.


A buff to sustained damage but a nerf to pvp/damage on the move.

Kind of funny that they mentioned being hesitant of buffing BM but this change will push arcane shot out of the rotation for BM (besides movement), making it even simpler to play.

Indeed.. in the latest spreadsheet once I add 9% to steady shot dps (dropping arcane shot obviously) this puts BM almost right in line with Survival for me. Also makes ArP a no brainer for BM.

MM - 12.1k
SV - 11.1k (regemmed to Agility gems)
BM - 11k (using ArP gems) 10.6k (using AP gems)

Real world damage is still gonna fall behind by a larger margin than MM and SV because of poor instant damage.

A lot of BM's damage is from their pet though so that will help make up for the poor instant shot damage.