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Ok, here I want some intelligent discussions about spec vs. spec and pet vs. pet.

As a senior player I know the 'best' in both cases often really only are a simplification to help us get on with our lives here on the forum.

First off: I've played BM quite a lot lately, and I like it. I've heard that BM is still more or less superior to other specs, hence my first question: Am I missing out on anything too good with this spec? I'm quite new to the patch so I have some concerns about, for instance, Animal Handler vs. Invigoration, missing out on Longevity, and Imp. Aspects and Beast Mastery really being worth it.

Any input on these questions are greatly appreciated. Also, Spirit Bond looks just as **** to me now as pre-patch, its only buff being MAYBE in arenas... can anyone confirm this?

If you think you have a better build, or another suggestion for a tree for me to spec in, please post arguments.

Moving on, we have pets. There are a lot of best pets, although not as many as everyone of them, I'd say at least. When I soloed I used to prefer Owls for their high damage and AoE tankage ability with Screech, not to mention the versatility with being able to switch from AoE threat/mitigation mode (Screech) to Max dmg mode (Claw). Now they're not what they used to for soloing though, and the only time I'll ever use one in the future will be for PvP.

Now, what I absolutely loved about them, and what I'll continue to look for in solo:ing pets, is the AoE threat. Looking over the pets really quickly, it seems to me that with new improved (reduced) CD it's the gorilla that is the king of AoE threat. Anyone care to contradict or confirm this?

I might post back about other pet roles and specs, but it's just this spec and the gorilla I'm interested in for the moment.

Any input is very welcome!

Cheers.

I just tamed a Dragonhawk last night and he seems to hold plenty of aggro from multiple targets. Didn't do as much damage as Morris does, but the fire breath seems to hold several targets on him. I decided to name him "NeedsMentos".

I guess a gorilla might be better, I haven't heard one way or the other though. It might depend whether you want stun or damage on the AOE attack.

I don't think anyone can even begin to lock down a solid 'best' spec yet. We are in a gray area where we can't level up from 70 and if you go the full 51 in a spec, you can't split heavily into a second tree. I'm seeing a lot of builds that stop short of max spec's, mine included. I like the spec I'm using but so far, it's the only one I've used and it's a TLAR spec so I can't even begin to argue any direction.

I'd love to go full 51 BM or MM but I think I'd miss out on too much at my wimpy level 70.

Thank you for that! That'll help me a lot with getting more talents I wanted :)


Is an AP boost based on your int better than a scaling 8% extra damage to your pet? My gear isn't the best, but even so I havn't even got 200 int..

While Mortal Shots is a good talent, it only increases the dmg from your crits by 15% (maxed out). While I've made a build to get both of them, if I had to choose I'd prolly pick inceasing the pet's dmg. The reason for this is crit rates are low in the gear progression I'm talking about (prolly around 20-25%).

I realize your crits scale better with your gear than your pet does though. In any case I managed to get both talents :P

Ok, now for the tricky question:

Which DPS pet is the best?

I've been over this a lot, and I've settled on Devilsaur. Cats and Raptors both have similar 'racial' abilities. Before all multiplyers they do a maximum of 50 dmg. The Devilsaurs' ability does 57 pre-multiplyer.

Again, I've thought a lot about this, and so I thought "Maybe it's better to have a DoT-based abilities, due to partial ressists (ie. block for melee attacks)". Well, yeah... and no. I looked at Recount for my last heroic, and Rake had been dodged once. That's it, never parried, never blocked.

Can anyone confirm that Devilsaurs are slightly better for DPS, even if it's only theorycrafting, like mine?

Pets typically attack from the back and thus should never be parried or blocked.

the point about GftT is absolutely correct. You won't see the dps with an exotic because you can't get it. However, if you want an exotic, you might want to play with one, just to get it to 70, so you don't start off with a pet 5 levels lower then you.

A point about mortal shots, it increases crit damage by 30% not 15%, but that is in the end a 15% increase to dps overall. sort of an important distinction. 300AP from careful aim vs 9% dps for that, so I'd say MS is better then careful aim. (remember personal dps, without pet) it's probably relatively close, I don't think most hunters would reach 300 intellect.

My spec would be something like this Cobra strikes, longevity and invigoration are pretty much up in the air right now. Do what you think feels better. You're still 70 so it doesn't matter anyway.

Edited, Oct 26th 2008 9:50am by Xsarus

Well, all we lose by going 51 BM is GftT. That is the most important talent for us to reach in the MM tree. And throwing more talent points at our pets doesnt alleviate the cost of said talents.

I know this, but I haven't seen pets change in mid-fight. So, if the tank suddenly desides to rotate the mob, you'd get blocks.

It was just an idea I had to prove wrong to see if you might benefit more from an unblockable bleed effect. I don't kling to it, but I want you to understand why I looked it up.


I hadn't stopped to think about GftT... I recall it being amazing, but I thought I lost too much with not getting Kindred Spirits. Looking at it now, GftT looks worth the lost 4% pet dmg.

On the leveling point: I disagree. I went to Un Goro and tamed a Devilosaur. I also tamed a Gorilla there, for grinding and the likes. The Gorilla is 70 now, and the Devilosaur is either 69 or 70. It's not even remotly hard to level pets anymore. I was just grinding Marks of Sargeras for my main, to get exalted with Aldor, eventually my Gorilla turned 70. Then I just switched pet.

I can almost always find something I need to grind. If you just use your pet to do it you'll level it up without even noticing it.



Eh? I'm not sure you got what I mean, and I'm not sure you're right (or rather: I'm not sure I know what you mean...)

Look closer at the tooltip for Mortal Shots:
What you need to look at here is the word 'bonus'. Misses are 0% damage. Hits are 100% damage. Crits have a 100% damage bouns, which will land this at 200% if added with hit. Now, if you increase that damage with 30% you'll have your crits do 230% damage. Since counting hits as 100% is rather messy for calculations and other pratcical reasons, you want it from another perspective: 230 / 2 = 115. (ie. Mortal Shots increases your critical strike BONUS with 30%, but your critical strikes with merely 15%)



Increasing your critical strikes with 15%, and (in my case) having a crit rate of around 20%, I'd raise my crit rate from 20% to 23% (basically, even though +crit dmg isn't extra crit it's comparable in the end since it equates to the same dmg increase). That's an increase of 3% of your total dmg, not 9%. Correct me if I'm wrong btw! I reach around 100 +int... and I don't feel it's worth to build my whole gear around ONE of my talents, so to me this talent isn't of much use.



About your build: There are some points that I don't understand why you picked. Looking back at all the wonderful input in this thread (Thanks guys!) my build will probably look a bit like this.

I'd take Invigoration over Longevity any day of the week, simply because (unlike GftT) you'll ALWAYS be below 100% mana in a normal fight in raids today. So to ensure that all crits give you 1% mana is a lot better than an extra 12 sec less on BW CD. If you can manage just a little while longer without having to gimp your dmg with AotV, it's worth it. Your CD on BW and other DPS CD's cool inbetween fights anyhow.

Also, I don't really see the point for you picking Spirit Bond, unless maybe you PvP much.. But then again, as you say, you should spec what feels best for you.

What I'm not sure about is if my pet will be Focus capped if I put two point in GftT. If I get two subsequent crits, he'll get a boost of 100 focus. I have a hard time believing not even one focus point will be lost in that transaction. However, it should be a major increase to the pet's DPS since it'll be able to focus dump pretty much all the time. Can anyone confirm or contradict this, or just shed some light!

Thanks a lot for all the input guys! You might not notice I appreciate it, but I do. I'm terribly lost after the patch, though I'm getting back on track again.. slow and steady!

Edit: About builds at 80, I think I'd go for this if I'd go full BM. Don't really know about an MM/BM or SV/BM mix, or any mix for that matter. I'd have to look closer into those trees.

Edited, Oct 29th 2008 11:03pm by Utarius

I don't like to refer to crits as two normal hits. This confuses things, at least it confueses me.

I'd simply look at it like this:

Say that your average dmg is 500. You do 500 with 100 shots. My crit rate is 20%, so I'll use that. 80 shots are 500 dmg, 20 are 1 000 dmg.

[80 * 500 = 40 000]

[20 * 1 000 = 20 000]

The easiest way to look at it from my point of view is to simply take 20 000 times 1.15:

[20 000 * 1.15 = 23 000]

So, you'll go from 60 000 to 63 000. That's a 5% increase.

So, I was wrong about 3%, I was lazy and didn't do enough maths. Can't see a flaw with this though, and I'm sure I'd get your results if I did your numbers, but this is according to me an easier way of looking at it.

Yeah, using my formula generates exactly 1.05

That's why I didn't actually use any numbers, they were all variables. I did that because this talent becomes way better the more crit you have. The reason I used 100 is because of 100% being everything. I could have just as easily used one and made the percentages .3 instead of 30. I don't quite understand your comment about two shots, but it worked out so whatever :)

EJ forums is a fantastic resource, although the threads get way to long, and if they don't have a summary post at the top become less and less useful. I find I spend more time at tka something then the EJ forums. Both places that hunters should be following anyway.

interesting side note:

40% - 8.6%
50% - 10%
100% - 15% <- this is what I was referring to. My quick head math just applied the % to all the damage, rather then the damage affected by your current crit rate.

Edited, Oct 30th 2008 12:41am by Xsarus

That's what I did. Only I used

100% = 100

no difference :)

But 100% isn't 100, it's 1, at least that's what my grade school teachers taught me.

If you do 300 points of 'white' damage. 100% (as 100) x 300 = 30,000, which is NOT true. 100% (as 1) x 300 = 300 IS true. Therefore, 230% (as 2.3) x 300 = 690. If you want to eliminate the white damage out of 230% you need to subtract 100%, not divide by two. However, it would have more meaning if you actually give some real white damage number and then multiply the bonus and subtract out the white damage afterward. Say that same 300. So take 690 and subtract 300 and you get 390. If you want to remove the crit damage, pull out another 300. Then you get MS adding 90 pts of damage to a 300 white damage crit. Easily comparable to other damage bonus talents and skills.

All I'm saying is that when working with percentages, it's easier on me reading math equations done in a standard manner. I have a hard enough time following the calculations as it is. Sorry if I'm being a pain in the *****

My personal preference would be to do away with dps calculations altogether and stay with straight single shot percentage calcuations. I understand how the damage over time calculations came into prominence but in essence they tell you very little until you actually need to factor in combat length, and given the randomness of the game, dps doesn't always play out correctly.

The time stuff, generally, doesn't mod damage at the same time, just firing rate or a booster over a given length of time and that's nothing more than a factorable percentage of time over an arbitrary time cycle (boost + cooldown), so even that could be reduced to a simple damage percentage addition to the base damage bonus percentage.

If I could influence the way damage was done in theorycraft; damage would be expressed as: (minwhitedmg or maxwhitedmg) x damage bonus percentage = final mindmg or final maxdmg. Those numbers should be fully proveable in the game against target dummies (now that we have them). Of course each shot would be different but when calculated and tested, it should work out that we could optimize shot cycles with just that information.

I don't know, maybe I'll bite the bullet and go through and figure this out and put it into a spreadsheet or .NET app for ease of use... I don't have enough game time as is and my wife will kill me if I start diving into this... LOL! Sorry guys, don't mean to upset the traditionalists here. Again, trying to approach things differently, see if anything sticks.