Screech wont help in raids for several reasons:
1. If you are using screech, you are not using claw. Meaning you're doing less damage.
2. The warrior should have 2/5 imp demo shout anyway, at which point the mob is "AP-reduction capped." Unless the mob gets curse of recklessness put on it (and warlocks are likely to use CoS, CoE, CoA, or CoD instead) screech will do NOTHING to lower the mob's damage dealt.
3. Birds, while being great solo pets, sort of take up a lot of space on the screen. In raids, that can be a problem. May not be as bad with an owl, but it's absurd with a bat. I should not bat's the only bird I'd tame.
Thus, for raids, a +10% DPS pet with c/g would be better.
As to ravager vs. cat, the difference is about 13.5 damage per 25 focus (before crit, miss, or talents are factored in). Assuming 15% crit and 5% miss chance, and using c/g on each GCD except when bite is off CD (so c/g 6 times every 10.5 seconds...6-to-1 c/g-bite ratio), and 20% increased damage, gore should do about 10.18 more DPS than claw. While it may not seem like much (just 10 DPS), if you're at the point where you should be doing 1000 DPS, then 10 DPS is 1%, the same as putting a talent point in Lethal Shots. For an MM hunter, the difference would be 7.4 DPS (9% miss and 5% crit). Numbers may be off as I'm not paying too much attention to the attack table, but the point stands.
Wind serpent vs. the c/g pets...the difference is more than just macros and knowledge, it's also gear. A WS can dump focus faster than a c/g pet. So, when using GFtT, if your crit chance is high enough you will build up excess focus on a c/g pet, while a WS can dump it all. I haven't done the math, but elitistjerks ranks it at 43% (varying on spec could be 43-50%) raid buffed crit chance before a WS is better than a c/g pet. By this gear level marks shouldn't be considered if you're going to be this elitist, and survival and BM both have their advantages and disadvantages: SV will get more crits, but BM has the steady focus from BD. Shot rotations should put about the same amount of shots into the mob during the same time (both the 1:1 BM and 1:1.5 SV are about 1 shot per second).
As to the macro and knowledge, all you do is put a "/castrandom lightning breath" (or something to that effect, not sure the exact command) in your shot rotation macro. If you dont do that, the WS can do wierd things such as stopping to cast LB, or flying out of melee range to cast it.
Quote:
I had a hunter last night fighting slaag tell me I was a fool, we had no tank so one of our pets was going to tank, WalkingChair had less armour/health than his pet even though I was BM and he said "get a better pet".
I told him ravager was a dps pet to which he replied "omg cats are best dps pet noob"
He's wrong. Ravager is the best up until your crit chance makes a WS better. Claw averages 60 damage, gore 73.5, and like I said above for a BM hunter the difference is about 10 DPS. That being said, just because a ravager/WS is the best, does not mean that other pets are NOT DPS pets. Cats, ravagers, owls, etc. are still DPS pets. Just not the best DPS pets.
He also probably had more armor due to having a "tank" pet, speccing his pet for armor, and/or having more armor himself. If you really want a pet that can tank, my recommendation is a bat. Boars lost their edge this patch, and screech is incredible for AoE threat gen. With screech you wont use claw, and as bats can do bite they get that extra little damage while screeching away.
Said above, 10 DPS shouldn't make or break your raid. But if you find ways to squeeze out 10 DPS here and 5 DPS there (and so do the other dozen+ DPS that can) easily add up to 100-200 DPS for the raid.
Edited, Apr 29th 2008 10:44am by skribs