Just speced survFollow

I'm very seriously considering respeccing for Survival. I've been BM pretty much my entire Hunter "career" up to this point, but I'm finding that the solo content is becoming less and the group content is becoming more. By the time I finish my dailies tomorrow, I'll be Exalted with Skyguard and anything I do after that (at least until WotLK comes out) will be geared to super-casual solo stuff (don't really care so much about Netherwing rep) and grinding instances for rep towards heroic keys and rep vendor rewards.

I'm a little nervous about the switch. Silly though it may sound, if I do respec I'm going to miss Improved Mend Pet. The investment of talents in that ability alone has saved my *** more times than I can count. Piggles and I have come a long way together and the idea of demoting him to third-rate dps torpedo for the sake of better traps and group functioning isn't altogether appealing.

My motivation for the switch has come from some pretty embarassing instance runs of late. Shadow Labs and Botanica were rough; traps resisted all over the place, broken traps shutting down my dps while I tended to my mob, and even a few deaths in Botanica when my trap broke early/was resisted and there wasn't a whole lot I could do to salvage the situation. It's all well and good to talk about BM spec dps potential, but when things go sideways and all of your resources go to containing your CC target for any length of time, you're not really doing a whole lot of damage.

I was in my first ever Durnholde party with a well geared Survival hunter. All I saw were traps all over the place, and only 1-2 of them were mine at any given time. The player behind the toon obviously had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, so I have no expectations that simply shelling out the gold to reset my talents is going to mystically transform me into the CC god of WoW.

The more I look at it, however, the more it becomes apparent that BM is a solo spec. Yes, we can put out respectable numbers, but I'm itching to get started on Heroics (only CR key so far) and my pet isn't likely to be doing any off-tanking in those anyways. My guild currently has 3 BM Hunters in Outland (including myself), and one MM Hunter not far off. Frankly, I think it would be fun to respec and then head out to Nagrand and mess around with all the new toys.

What won't be fun is shelling out a few hundred gold to replace my AP gems with Agi >.<

uuurgh...the dreaded weapon enchant. I have Terokk's Quill, currently with no enchant on it. I have neither Savagery nor +35 Agi so I've been hording Large Brilliant Shards to throw +20 Agi on it and be done with it. I hope to be upgrading to a Sonic Spear soon, since I'm going to be grinding a lot of SL for rep. Based on that, my melee weapon will likely to be the first enchantable piece of gear I upgrade, so forking out mats to have either of the "good" ones done is not a top priority.

I feel kind of gimp without one, but it's amazing how quickly you can burn through gold when it comes time to socket/enchant gear.

Why not go for the cheaper, more easily aquired +35 Agil to 2h? It would make more sense to have somebody else do that for you.

If your on Stormrage my Shammy has that chant available.

I have Improved Traps as well. I'm not all that impressed.



(bold for emphasis)

That's actually my point. There are a lot talent points tied up in things that make my pet a more versatile tank for solo purposes. My pet does not OT same-level elite mobs in 5-mans. If I send it in to do that, he's either a delay tactic or a healer mana sponge. Then he's nothing until the fight is over and I rez him. Since a Hunter's role is primarily CC and dps, it makes sense that I would optimize my ability to CC. The trade-off in decreased dps from my pet would likely be mitigated by the group AP buff that would kick in fairly frequently if I maintained the 30% crit rating recommended for SV Hunters. I'm not going to claim any expertise on this, but from reading here it seems that most non-SV Hunters are too thick to factor in how much added damage the group as a whole does when the SV crit buff kicks in. I know I certainly didn't consider it before I thought about respeccing.

As I've mentioned...I've seen a good SV Hunter in action, and it was truly impressive.

As a side note, I've decided to hold off on respeccing for the time being.. I'm going to wait until my guild gets a little more caught up in terms of their ability to run level 65+ Outland instances and evaluate where we are at that point. If we find ourselves needing more CC, Survival it will be.

I've found 2 people on my server with +35 agility to a 2-handed weapon. Damn expensive enchant, I got it on my twink 49 Druid.

It's such a rare drop, only has a chance of dropping on Eredar Deathbrings in Arc, and there's around 3 of them in the instance.

They sure didn't make it easy to get this enchantment.

I have respec'd to Surv as well.

i find that the quicker cooldowns on traps is extrememly helpful in CC for heroics.
Also in my Kara Raid...every dps is in love with EW now.