BM Spec, Kara and beyondFollow

Well, your specc is.... well, kinda weird. 3/5 Imp AotH but no Mend Pet. And then hitting Surv talents after spending five points in MM. Sure, Lethal Shots is a well spent five points, but I wouldn't put five points in a MM tree without following it up.

If you wish to DPS better in 25 mans, and for that matter 10 man raids, you oughta do a full BM/MM build. Too lazy to build it right now, but if you check the preraid gear list made by Aethien (should be somewhere on the front page of this forum) there are three cookie cutter raid builds. One of them is a BM build. That will net you far more DPS, but it WILL lose you some Survivability/Utility. You won't be able to Trap as well as now, and you will have to consider if you really want to lose that Utility. If DPS is what you want, you will get it.

With your low Agility, I wouldn't go for a Surv/Expose Weakness build at the moment. You won't be doing the raid much of a favor until you get at least 500 agi unbuffed. I am myself riding on 630ish at the moment, with only three Kara armor pieces. And I am still considering myself somewhat low both on DPS and Expose Weakness.

Marksman, I would never recommend to anyone at the moment. Much less sustainability, and thus lower overall DPS. And you won't be contributing much to the raid. Trueshot Aura is in fact our worst party buff at the moment.

Go BM/MM (check the Pre Raid Gearlist thread for the build) or regear for Agility and go Surv/MM.

Your Talent spec isn't so very odd. If you're only putting 5 points into MM, Lethal Shots are the place to put them. And your SV points only differ from mine by a single not terribly important point. You put the point needed to get to the next level in the tree into Monster Slaying, while I put it into Imp. Wing Clip. Neither are terribly useful, save that they are mandatory for moving up a rank on the tree. And the enhanced Trap Talents are very handy in Kara.

Here's my Talent spec as a point of comparison. I trimmed my BM points down to the bare minimum in order to afford a few point in Efficiency. My prior spec had no SV and the rest in MM, and I do miss GFtT, but I and my raid crowd agree that a little less DPS is a fair exchange for a little more CC.

We have two other Hunters who raid Kara, both MM spec and both better geared than I, and I lead them consistently in DPS as reported by WWS reports. Situationally they beat me, such as against the Mana Flares at Curator, but this is only because they have a bit higher front loaded damage and the Flares die fast. Against any long lasting target I blow them away in both DPS and total damage inflicted.

So tell your MM Hunters that you're concerned that their spec isn't going to be very effective in 10 and 25 person raids. :) But don't even think about respeccing based on their remarks. You might lose the SV trap Talents if your Guild drops Kara down and picks up more Gruul runs, but otherwise keep your BM build and you'll be set to contribute more than any pew pew MM Hunter with no improved traps can hope to. Between your superior Pet and your superior Traps you should be able to both out-DPS and out-CC them.


Edited, Aug 6th 2007 7:01pm by Kompera

Thanks for the input and the backup.

What do you think makes BM that much more powerful? Do you think the uberpet, along with SS is what does it?

I've little experience of 25 man raids, how pet-friendly are they? I've found that avoidance and the new mend pet seems to do well in Kara to keep my pet alive against most bosses, does it change a lot?

Pets should not offtank in Raids, that is just not viable on > 95% of mobs, but they are a very strong buff to the hunters DPS and pets can survive many fights in raid instances. Some fights are just melee unfriendly, but most fights are quite ok for pets.


Nope, improved stings are not worth the mana at all.
Their damage is inferior to using the GCD to fire another steady shot and mana consumption is higher. Except scorpid sting all stings are worthless in raids.


In groups silencing shot is nice; in raids you won't need it and most mobs are immune anyway (and those rogues, mages and warriors can interupt more often).


Equally geared and skilled a BM spec has the highest damage (thanks to weapon speed and serpent swiftness), SV runs a close second, MM will be a litle lower still.


This is true for 5mans, for raids however you won't need a point in SV.

Kompera, you can look at my build if you want. I haven't been to gruuls yet, as our guild disbanded and we just got a new crew together to farm Kara yet again, but my deep SV has wicked utility for 10 man (and higher from what I'm told). Main thing is EW, and readiness for me. The bonus to health and crit is very nice and I still have lethal shots for mm with eff as well. The EW during any given 5 or 10 man stays up on target non stop as I go well above 35% crit buffed/pots and with MT when it procs, that dumps another 10% chance to crit. What I mean to say is that so far a deep SV has proven rather nice to me and I'm still in some dire need or more agil gear. I should be over 570 agil by next week pending some decent bg's and if I ever score that damn legacy main hand! With 3 ups I can push 30% unbuffed crit and never fail at keeping up EW for the whole raid group. At that point who wouldn't want an extra 150ish agil for those tanks and melee party members!