One thing I noticed with your build is that it has Wolverine Bite. Would it actually make more sense to be slightly under the hit cap so this would proc more often? Just a thought, but if your hit cap is 7.95, your pet will only get the 7% hit chance. So the pet will miss quite frequently then, so wouldn't Wolverine Bite proc more often? Looks like a good solid build for a RoR type of build though.

Edited for grammar.

Just to check in the spread sheet.

6 minute fight, changing to Chimera from wolf; pet dps delta: -619; total dps delta: -496
10 minute fight, changing to Chimera from wolf; pet dps delta: -420 total dps delta: -490

So overall you lose more personal dps than you gain from extending the fight and using RoR - with my gear and with 2 data points.

Well, I'd expect that in our usual optimal max-buff spreadsheet-fu. But I wonder about when we are in a 10-man, (or even a 5-man) where there is little or no replenishment available to us. (And we'd probably want points in our own mana recovery as well). Any chance RoR would be worth it then?

There should be enough folks in 25-mans with replenishment that an RoR build isn't worth looking at.

I'm headed back to BM as soon as this patch hits, so I'm looking at options for pets and builds. I'm hoping there's at least one aspect of the game where cunning pets are worth it (other than PVP).

Several of the points in this build seem odd to me. I've seen the logic for the 1/3 Imp AotM spelled out in this thread.

What was the logic stream for the 2/2 Spirit Bond and 3/5 Frenzy over the (what I've seen as conventional) 1/2 Imp Mend Pet and 4/5 Frenzy.

Also, I've seen a lot of runs with 1/3 Cobra Strikes coupled with 4/5 Mortal Shots. Again, I'd be curious to see how those choices play out in the spreadsheets.

Since I never do any kiting, putting a point in monkey is useless. My guild never has hunters kite, not even on Gluth. We have either DK's or Pallys do it. I hate kiting and I don't think I've done it since Drakkisath way back when. I also would rather have points in improved mend over spirit bond. The bloodthirsty talent has pretty much made spirit bond obsolete in my opinion. I also run with 5/5 mortal shots, 3/3 cobra strikes and 3/3 improved arcane with no points in survival at all. I don't want to have to keep switching tracking which I know I will often forget to do therefore rendering the points useless. They would also be semi-useless in groups of mobs made up of different types.

The increased healing from Spirit Bond applies to the hunter too, which makes raid healing more effective on you. That's another reason people take it. Improved tracking doesn't require you to switch tracking. You can set it to one type (say, giants) and it will give you the bonus against any type of mob that you CAN track, even if you aren't actually tracking it. It is fine in groups of multiple mobs. The only time it underperforms is against non trackable mobs like mechanicals and the ones without a listed type. However, it outperforms mortal shots on serpent sting and auto shot, neither of which is affected by mortal shots. And auto shot is the bulk of BM hunter shot damage so it can't be ignored.

Imp. Monkey isn't limited to kiting only. It's about which actually increases survivability more -- a 1% health increase or a 2% dodge increase. The health increase probably doesn't make much difference in a raid healing scenario, and the dodge may make a difference when you get aggro from some add that spawns. Neither choice is very compelling for hunters, so leaving it a personal preference is a pretty good place to take the subject.

51-13-7 will be my 1st test build... I must say I cant understand some of Rosamond choices on his build especialy about the mortal shots. U are loosing almost 12% crit damage to have BW 20% faster? I see damage decresing there, not the other way around...
About spirit bound, we just get it because we dont have nothing better to choose to go up the tree, u cant loose dps to choose this talent, doesnt make sense in normal raiding.

Longevity lowers the cooldown on pet specials, including family specials like rake and monstrous bite, and even tree specials like Call of the Wild and Rabid. These add up.

As for mortal Shots, it's not a loss of 12% crit damage, but the crit BONUS is lower by comparison. At 2/5 Mortal Shots a crit hits for 212% damage. At 4/5 it is 224%. A 1000 damage shot is 2120 and 2240, respectively. The 2/5 Mortal Shots crit is only 5.4% lower than the 4/5 one.

But the reason people don't always max mortal shots is because mortal shots doesn't apply to most of the damage that BM hunters do. It doesn't apply to pet damage (which is why longevity can be a better option) and it doesn't apply to auto shot or serpent sting. It only is a factor on crit damage (which is a factor of crit rate, naturally), whereas some other talents increase certain damage all the time.

If people bothered to actually test out different builds in the spreadsheet, then they might understand why people make certain choices. There is a lot of math that the spreadsheet does for you, and sometimes a talent can be better than another at one level of gear or buffs and worse at the next. It's one thing to theorycraft the numbers yourself and seek clarification when the results show something you didn't expect, but it's another to just ignore several pages of math and analysis and just post off the cuff.

The spreadsheet shows Rosa's posted build as more dps than yours on every character that I have imported into it, including yours.

According to the patch notes "Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect."

Does anyone have the slightest idea of what this new spell effect is? I have yet to go onto the PTR to check.

I believe this meant a new graphics effect, but I can't really say I've noticed a difference on the PTR yet.

This is very similar to what I used as BM pre- (and briefly post-) nerf. It has another variant that I have not seen mentioned in this thread. If it has been, I apologize.

With my gear and using Shandara's pre-loaded 25-man raid buffs, I've found that the spreadsheet can produce an acceptable, and sometimes even advantageous, variant in the form of a 54/11/6 spec: You shove one of those points in Survival Instincts over to Invigoration. I suppose this depends on what level of mana regen your raid can provide. Your mileage may vary.