new spirit beastFollow

But I thought you loved having Aethien as a pet...

You're ugly >:(

No.
I'm an orc dammit

I will agree with browningguns somewhat, adding in my 2 cents that the laserkitty can, indeed, be used by a BM doing decent damage. In a recent 25 man Naxx run (you know, those runs where my /random nets nothing above a 20), being a moderately equipped BM, I pull 3.75k on Patch. Then the next night, I managed a respectable 3.2k in 25 man arch, evan having to dance around a bit to avoid clouds, etc. Sure, I might be able to pull out a few more DPS by switching, but I'm proud of my kitty, and being an avid PUGger, a lot of people have come to connect me and ToneLoque.

Just the other night, in fact, while running through Dal with King Dred at my side instead, I actually received a PM asking where ToneLoque was. HA! He's become part of my identity, and not a single person has complained about his presence during a raid... The changes in 3.1 are sure to help a bit as well.

Then, scratching all that, I just can't resist saying...

GO GET A FREAKIN' BOAR!

Heh... I'll admit, I do get PM's in a lot of instances from "best DPS build" hunters, similar to...

"Wow, Loque, nice pet! Too bad BM's are ANTIQUES!"
"Wow, a BM, REALLY!!!??? zOMG!!1! I haven't seen one of those in 4ever!"
"LOLZORS, ur a BM! Hahahahahaha. stoopid"

and then, at the end of the run, it's usually... "How the hell did you out DPS me? You some kinda hack?" or "Wow, man... great job." or something similar. Any player, of any build, that knows his job and does it well, will get the same response, period. And the respect. And the invites to raid PUGs. And... ok, I'll quit now.


I am not an 8 hour a day player, nor am I part of a huge guild that schedules their raids. I'm the casual sort that is sometimes lucky to get in 8 hours per week of play time, and the type who relies on PUGs to fill our raid roster. Part of my pride/enjoyment in the game is the collection of *rare* pets that I have, AND the fact that, even as a casual BM with the less than perfect pet, I'm better than your average "let's just fill the spot and go" player. Perhaps, even with your same gear and spec and pet, I wouldn't be able to match your DPS, but it's not just the meter that determines whether I "drag my raid down" or not. Survivability and consistency determine that, and in that area, I think I rank. If someone dismisses or overlooks me because of a disco kitty... it's their loss, not mine.

I don't feel that I'm an elitest; I have no problems with someone under geared tagging along occasionally. IF, they do all in their power to play their job to the best of their ability. The only ones I don't like are the leachers--players that spec odd ball because they want to be unique, come to raid in greens and quest blues with no sockets filled or enchants because they think they will upgrade to epic immediately, players that skip heroics and go right to 25 man raids with less dps than the tanks and expect to roll on the 213 gear. Show some effort in playing proper and I have no problems with you.

It really is a simple concept;

When raiding with other people, try to obtain the max dps for your class, not the max dps for the style you think you're happy to settle with. You are part of a team in a raid and others depend on you to perform the best you can.

You don't see a basketball player saying, "I prefer to shoot 3 pointers only, cause that is the style I like. And I score 15 points per game, so I think I am doing good enough for my team. I don't need to worry about shooting free throws or lay-ups, its not what I like."

More dps= faster kills
Faster kills= less time for others to make a mistake (a healer missing a heal, a player lagging when trying to avoid damage, healers running low on mana because of whatever reasons).
Faster kills= less time spent in the instance. (less people having to leave half way through because "mom agro", "have to get up for work in morning", or just making excuses because they are tired of spending to much time in one sitting.)

I have seen 1 or 2 BM hunters doing ok dps compared to the raid, but awesome for their spec. If these people put as much energy into playing a SV spec they would have buried the other raid dps. You may enjoy playing a less efficient spec, but you know what? I bet the tanks (and everyone else for that matter) don't enjoy the repair bills because the mob hit an enrage timer a few seconds before you would have won. I bet they don't enjoy the time wasted wiping, repairing, re-gathering, and re-buffing before trying again.


Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 12:04pm by RobbyFaces

Because it's always the hunter's fault, no matter how badly the rest of the raid fails, amirite?

When a guild is going for serious progression, I do agree that going for maximum possible DPS is the best idea. On the other hand, for Heroics and easier content like Naxxramas, insisting the everyone go for the top cookie-cutter build is a little silly, and I really don't believe that one player can make enough of a difference to pick up the slack if the rest of the raid is doing that poorly. Me speccing Survival isn't going to keep Bobby Shadowpriest from dying on Heigan, and it sure isn't going to be enough to make up for his 500dps in Outland greens. If no one else is expected to put in a significant amount of effort, why should I?

I haven't done much raiding since I gquit, but I did log on for a bit last night and was invited to some guild's VoA and OS (no drakes) runs. I was second on DPS for VoA, and that's with me being BM and my pet catching the choking cloud a few times (of course, that fight really wasn't fair on any of the melee with how the tanks were positioning him), and first in OS. I did die, but that was to the fifteen or so enraged fire elementals running amok after the aoe tank died, not the flame wall. My pet didn't die once. I would say these raids were pretty bad--the tanks were either extremely fuzzy on strategy or possibly just winging it, the other Hunter was SV but had his Gorilla along, there were two pallies and it was still my wolf putting out the raid's AP buff, and we lost a third of the raid the first time the lava came up. Hell, we managed to lose 4-5 people on Archavon--I have no idea how you manage that. But you know what? We got the bosses down (although thank goodness they weren't ambitious enough to try with even one drake) with only one wipe, and that was before I even got there. It wasn't good, but for those people, it was good enough.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, certainly BM can bring the rest of the raid down, but to do that the rest of the raid has to not suck to begin with. I'm having a lot of trouble finding raid groups that don't suck and make me feel like there's a point to working harder.

See, I should transfer to your server so you can yell at me all the time. Around here, no one actually cares.



Fair enough.

I'm BM because I do well with it. I'm loving the new, slightly more complicated rotation, and I like having enough attention to spare so that I can actually see what's going on around me. I was a healer before I leveled up my hunter, and that was more than enough of not seeing the fights for me.

I've tried SV, and with practice I could probably get good with it, but I find that I end up watching my cooldowns more than anything else, and it drives me crazy. I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I have time for a steady shot or no wait maybe a multi, meanwhile my pet is dying and I don't notice, the polarity is about to shift, or someone's been webbed and the raid leader is yelling at me to stop being such a huntard. I'm not yet comfortable enough with SV that it is an improvement for me, just because I have to put so much attention into it that I have trouble doing the other things that are expected of me. BM requires much less concentration, though I'm sure that's partly because I'm so used to it, and that makes it easier for me to pay attention to what's going on outside of my action bars.

I'm not much of a gamer--anything much more complicated than Pokemon is not for me, at least not yet. I'm getting better, but slowly, and right now I do in fact suck badly enough that SV is difficult for me.

Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 1:57pm by isyris

I hadn't actually tried a SV build with Aimed Shot before, I just used multi... anyway, I'm trying that out now, practicing the rotation. I *think* I'm getting closer to doing it right, I've got a few things I'm not quite sure of but I'll go stick those questions in the helpme thread and stop hijacking this one.