what spreadsheet are you using? link or something plz?

Even if BM is lower dps, all is not lost.

There have been some threads popping up in other places about CC actually being needed, and the lack of trapping that SV hunters can do, since they are using their trap cooldown for BA. So there just might be a place for BM in raids, even if the dps isn't the same. (Or we might be a lot closer to a SV hunter, maybe even passing them, if trapping is required, and they hurt their dps by doing so... )

sorry, in advance, if this has been addressed elsewhere, but with 3.1 here has the general concensus concerning the overall dps as far as cats for sv/mm and dino for bm changed? and if so what to?

BA is not a must and survival hunters will surely trap on cc needed pulls, and have wyvern sting for added cc in a pinch.

First 25 man done tonight. Not a lot of progress sadly, but some interesting numbers.

We only had 1 of our SV hunters there (the other had too low attendance to get in on the first go) so not a whole lot to go by.
On both trash and specific boss fights I was doing equal too, sligtly better or slightly worse. With the new components of SV priority that might be the case for a while till it gets firmly stuck under their belts, but we aren't far off, thats for sure.

I will update with WWS for tonight when I get it up (just waiting for 1 more combat log to be transferred) and post a comparative wws from one of the last 2 weeks.

(I did suck in cntinualy forgetting my AotDh after wiping, so I could have done better dps)

Edit:

Too bad WWS doesn't show boss fights right now, so only a total is available. But here is 1 pre and 1 post patch as requested. They aren't very informative as they include me and 1 sv hunter in both (the same) and an additional sv hunter in the older one.

Tonights run compared with the other hunter; Wow Web Stats
A run 2 weeks ago from most of naxx (including patch): Wow Web Stats

I don't think I got any upgrades between these 2 runs as I've been thoroughly unlucky on rolls, so they should be more or less comparable. I did switch from core hound to wolf with 3.1 though.

Not really, since traps proc LnL which is a nice source of burst DPS, whereas BA is a pain with lots of quick dying mobs. SV builds also generally have a shorter trap CD. Then there is Wyvern, which is great on the rare occasions one gets to use it

Now if pet OTing is ever viable, that'd be a great BM niche.

I'm not so sure.

I've been BM mainspec so far in Ulduar - our guild does not have a ret paladin at the moment, and we wanted the 3% dmg buff slot filled - and I've been not only competitive but usually quite a bit ahead of my Survival counterparts. Our WMO parses dont seem to be loading*, so I'm afraid this post is simply anecdotal, however I believe it's still worth mentioning because it feels like far too many people are simply assuming one spec is going to be dominant.

*Will edit when their servers are back up, and post an actual dps figure.
[edit]An update on the dps figures, they weren't really anything special. Then again, the fights had phase change breaks, target swapping, etc. So it was 3.5 to 6 depending on the fight.

On P1 Mimiron, which we did heaps of times due to melee failing in P2/P4... my dps was only roughly 5.0. Having said that, you need to pull your pet out for ~5 seconds every ~30 seconds, and I was out of range of SoE. Seems 5.1 or 5.2 would be an average BM number for a typical fight (plus the 3% raid buff, which is very very important obviously, if you have no ret paladin).
[/edit]

Last night we killed Auririairuya, Freya, and Thorim. We didnt have PTR experience, so we had a few attempts on each of the bosses too, including Thorim (a stand and nuke boss phase pretty much). And I was consistently ahead of the pack. On Thorim, the dps order was roughly: BM, Rogue, SV, SV, other classes. This was for all 3-4 pulls where we made it to the boss phase. The gap between myself and the first SV was a good 15% or so. On some of the other bosses, BM and the rogue were usually on top, with the SV's anywhere from 2-6 on the list.

The previous night was similar:

Flame Levi - vehicle fight.
Razor - while the damage meter showed an even spread, BM did more damage on Razor. The other specs seemed to knock the adds over quicker though.
XT - similar to Razor, BM did more damage on XT and the Heart, however SV/MM would kill bombs easier.
Kologarn - pet doesnt work, I swapped to Marks.
Council - I dont remember to be honest. I think I was still mucking around with Marks because my pet talents were bugged after I swapped specs. There was only the one pull anyway.
Hodir - Hard to tell. We only had one pull, and a lot of us hadn't done it on the PTR, so we were still learning how and where the buffs worked. Damage would of varied a lot.


I know SV does not have its Explosive Shot glyph yet, and there are also a few bugs (ES not proccing mana regen or GftT, some Black Arrow prolems too?). That might bump it back up again. Or maybe my SV guildmates weren't performing top notch. Perhaps it's because of the unfamiliarity of fights: BM is far easier to play than SV, so a BM hunter can really perfect everything they do while still also learning and discovering new tactics for boss fights - whereas SV might lose a lot of potential damage while they focus on important aspects of the encounter instead.

Regardless, don't write off BM is all I'm trying to say. And it's stupid not to be BM if there is no ret paladin online. No difference in spec is ever going to make up for 3% of total raid damage done.

edit: this is all 25 man.

Thanks mate. I also saw your other post about this issue in the other thread, but unfortunately it was after the fight.

The workaround should no longer be needed:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Recent In-Game Fixes - 4/16/09

Has anyone given Spirit Strike a shot since 3.1 hit? Curious how the new spell hit works and hoping it's as simple as "pet spells use physical hit table, so they also cap at 263".

Picked up Gondria this evening after (too) much camping over the last three days; never levelled my Loque to 80 but think I'm going to be using this ghost cat 4 a lot of fite.

Do you use a wolf in bm spec ?