reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
All specs are good for leveling, BM continuing to be the easiest. The wolf is the best non-exotic raiding pet, so it'll be fine.
Also, Survival is the best raiding spec onky at lower gear levels. At Ulduar levels MM starts to slowly put surely outperform it, but Survival remains very competitive none the less.
7/57/7 is the cookie cutter MM raid spec. I'd ditch the points in SV before the ones in BM for leveling, if you're masochistic enough to carry 20 stacks of water and burn through all of it in a single level. You're lucky, you only have to level that wolf from 65 because of the recent change to pet leveling (pets are automatically only 5 level below you, regardless).
All specs are good for leveling, BM continuing to be the easiest. The wolf is the best non-exotic raiding pet, so it'll be fine.
Also, Survival is the best raiding spec onky at lower gear levels. At Ulduar levels MM starts to slowly put surely outperform it, but Survival remains very competitive none the less.
in and out of raids I completely love survival
my questions are why would MM overtake SV, and at what level would MM take over SV assuming you're hitcapped
What numbers would you be looking at?
the reason i ask is because i know another hunter who is comparably geared with comparable stats (mostly naxx25 epics). I regularly double his dps. Of course, there is skill involved, but even if he is just spamming steadyshot-aimed shot i don't think that should be happening (although i do notice he never uses his pet either, so this probably isn't a fair comparison)
i'll just switch my dualspec to sv/mm and take it for a ride, but i definitely feel like the boss dummy isn't going to give a reliable comparison
edit: I did a bit of testing with MM and SV, and doing close-to-perfect rotations on the boss dummy, MM was doing 2600-2700dps unbuffed, while SV was doing 2900-3000dps unbuffed
so i guess my gear is too shitty for MM, or something, but i'm not quite sure what would make MM overcome SV
(oddly enough, my crit rate for MM and SV is exactly the same)
Although i've had more experience with SV, I actually found MM to be quite a bit easier.
My reasoning:
With MM, all you have to worry about is cooldowns, which are right in front of you. You never have to reapply serpent sting, so your shot rotation gets reduced to a handful of shots.
With SV, your shot rotation is often interrupted with lock and load, and you have to keep serpent sting and black arrow up (instead of just chim)
Unrelated: does anyone know any addons that would have a larger indicator than cooldowns are alittle note over my head for when my cooldowns are up or when lock and load procs? It's not a huge probably but i occasionally won't optimize my shots
We have a marksman and survial hunter in our 10 man groups for ulduar. They both pull about the same dps while one gives the raid a ap boost. They work well together.
Laonar on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
Yeah, I'm not saying Surv is bad or anything, they're pretty even, but the way Marks scales with gear is ever-so-slightly better than the way Surv scales with gear.
They're both good specs so, y'know, choose what you like. Me, I like the super-hasted autoshoot pewpew that Marks gives, and also, I hate refreshing DoTs and all that shit so that's another point for Marks. The guild seems to be low on classes/specs that give Replenish, though, so I'm constantly tempted to go Surv for that. It's only an issue for 10mans, but seeing how our only hard mode attempts are in 10mans it kinda sucks.
The "number crunching" for top of the line specs have MM being top-dog, but the requirements are severe. You need to be in the neighborhood of 550 Armor Pen, have a Mjolnir(spelling) Runestone, and basically just be geared to the teeth. At that point, MM has a distinct advantage over SV.
I do like the mechanics of MM, it's fun, but not willing to give up the deeps
and i'm in naxx epics, not ulduar 226ers or anything
also, i heard that marksman feeds better off AP, and survival feeds better off agility
this makes sense to me since i know a marksman that tried out survival and he was doing substantially less damage than he was with marks, and he was completely gemmed for AP
also why is there no marksman slide in Maxdps :[ i'd really like to compare the two
Cunty on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
i just looked it up, and evidently survival off the bat works best with Agility, marks works best for AP if you're shittily geared, but soon benefits more from agility, while BM profits most off AP until you're geared very well (since pet gets more benefit from AP than agility, afaik)
so people were probably told that AP was beneficial when they were doing heroics and nonheroics with shitgear and then they stayed with it into naxx
We have a marksman and survial hunter in our 10 man groups for ulduar. They both pull about the same dps while one gives the raid a ap boost. They work well together.
The other guy offers Replenishment, don't forget that.
I'm curious to see where the new 30-second Kill Command + the 600 AP-for-pet proc T9 4-piece leaves BM raid DPS. Probably still not on par with the other two specs, but the gap clearly won't be as huge as it is now.
Hamurabi on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
Well, the problem with the Kill Command talent is that where are you gonna get the points for it?
Well, the problem with the Kill Command talent is that where are you gonna get the points for it?
Yeah I'm unsure about the worth of throwing points into the kill command talent. But animal handler being changed to +10% pet AP with two points seems interesting.
I don't think BM deserves a spot in raids, it's too easy. Its main function is to be awesome with leveling, and it is, but i think making MM and SV difficult within reason allows blizz to seperate the skilled from the unskilled
I don't think BM deserves a spot in raids, it's too easy. Its main function is to be awesome with leveling, and it is, but i think making MM and SV difficult within reason allows blizz to seperate the skilled from the unskilled
I don't really get this viewpoint. Please elaborate on how MM and SV are soooo much more complex or difficult compared to BM. Back when trapdancing was a big thing with SV maybe, but nowadays the difference in complexity is infinitesimal.
-SPI- on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
Survival and Marksman are both fairly easy to play. Do they have more shots to keep an eye on than BM? Sure, but that's not something that's excessively difficult to do. I'd say BM is, in fact, the hardest spec to play because of all the micromanaging of your pet that you have to do. If that sucker dies there goes your damage output down the drain. With Surv and Marks, if your pet gets gibbed it's kind of a bummer but not all that serious.
-75% AoE damage helps a lot. Other than that, you're basically just going through the fight once or twice, having the pet die, then memorizing when it's safe to sic it, and when you need to recall it to keep it from getting gibbed.
Unless you're doing KT, in which case you're better off just letting it sit right on your ass during P2+.
Hamurabi on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
Well, the problem with the "let the pet sit on you" strategy is that the pet is a fairly significant chunk of your DPS as BM, in the 30-40% region depending on how many melee buffs your raid has. "Letting it just sit there" is analogous to "let's replace the Hunter with a real DPSer".
with survival you have more shots and the rotation is more complex - survival has to worry about lock and load, keeping both serpent and black arrow up, MM has a lot of short cooldowns to worry about and organize. It is easy to recognize the difference between a good SV/MM and a bad SV/MM.
BM has bestial wrath which is a slow (read: easy) cooldown. It is mostly comprised of keeping serpent sting up, using aimed shot when available, using steady shot, using killshot when available. That's really it
Keeping your pet alive by knowing the fights is more important with BM but it is still very important with other specs, it's usually a 320AP buff half the time, and is still significantly adding to your dps. If my pet dies i usually see my dps drop from top 5 in raid to 7-10th (i should go test damage with and without pet, though, i'll do that when i get home)
I would say if they gave BM some specific pet abilities that you had to juggle in order for your pet to be effective, then it would be much more even.
abridged:
For *most* of a battle, all BM has to worry about is serpent sting, aimed shot, and steady shot
Survival has to worry about serpent, black arrow, explosive shot, aimed shot, steady shot, lock and load
MM has to worry about silence shot (although you can macro this in, count it if you wish), chim, serpent, aimed, steady, arcane
bestial wrath and rapid shot's cooldowns are slow so you don't really have to worry about them in your shot rotation much, and are best if saved for heroism after the initial pop, depending on the length of the fight. That and i'm pretty sure BW isn't tied to your cooldowns anyway, although my memory may be faulty here
MM and SV are harder to master, an optimal hunter in any of these specs will need to keep their pet alive to max dps. I don't really see how anyone would not understand this if they played all the specs
Also, if you don't have attack/follow hotkeyed to your scroll button, do it. if you're wondering "but how then do i change perspective?" make it ctrl+scroll. Having pet attack/follow keyed to my scroll, combined with actually paying attention, results in my pet almost never dying.
It would seem you're the one who doesn't understand all the specs if you still think BM is just steady shot. You managed to completely ignore arcane shot in your summary despite it being the primary shot for BM. Also timing call of the wild/KC/BW is easily analogous to lock and load procs so let's take that into consideration too.
So now.
BM: Arcane, Steady, Serpent, Aimed, KC/BW
SV: Exp, Steady, Serpent, Aimed, L&L And the only added thing is black arrow. One more thing to worry about which is just hit on cooldown.
MM: chim, serpent, aimed, steady, arcane and silencing shot. So 2 more things, but keeping serpent up is much easier and you admit silencing just goes into a macro. Let's count that as one.
So ONE more thing to worry about. Easily equal to extra consideration given to pet micro, all hunters want to keep their pet alive but it's much more of a difference to a BM hunter and they get the extra kick in the guts on encounters that fuck over pets while the other 2 specs can carry on less impeded.
Alright alright, calm down ladies. Bottom-line: BM is the easier shot rotation -- not by leaps and/or bounds, but it is.
Also, I know letting the pet just sit next to you is excruciating as BM. I brought up KT as an example of somewhere where aside from the adds in P1 and P3, there's really no good time to sic the pet. He's almost guaranteed to eat an Ice Block, get no heals, and die.
I admit i accidently left out arcane shot and kill command. Kill command is a nonfactor, though, because everyone worries about that. I use it in survival and MM as well, but it can (like silence shot) just be macrod in or just be used when you are "popping cooldowns". It's not tied into other cooldowns so there's no juggling
All of them use serpent sting, steady shot, rapid shot, kill command, and aimed shot, so let's compare the differences:
SV: Explosive, black arrow, and L&L awareness
MM: chim, arcane, let's say silence is macrod and serpent sting counts as a "slow cooldown" because you only have to hit it once per target
BM: arcane, BW although BW is a joke. It doesn't share cooldowns and has a long cooldown, there's no juggling there. I don't think "hit it whenever it's up" is considered in a rotation when you're not sacrificing anything.
number of shots isn't even a huge factor anyway. With BM you're not really juggling anything much. Your pet generates focus and automatically uses that focus, that's where your damage is coming from. There's a lot of juggling with MM and SV. With BM you have a much shorter shot priority list, and then some non-cooldown-sharing-moves. SV and MM have to worry much more about priority and which available shot to click in what situation.
and thanks for adding a nasty remark to an otherwise civil debate, appreciated
Ultimately if BM was comparable to MM or SV, then why would anyone go MM or SV for PvE ever? Why play something more difficult for the same result?
I'm sorry about that. I guess I overreacted to thinking you were intentionally leaving things out to make a point. It wasn't needed or helpful.
But I still feel that you're underselling the actual complexity of BM and overselling what the differences for MM/SV actually adds to complexity. BW is a consideration because you want to be timing that, KC and Call of the Wild every second BW all together.
Black Arrow isn't adding much apart from another button and Lock and Load only requires some timing for the exp ticks. And MM has... Chimera shot. BM isn't super complex, but honestly neither is MM or SV.
That said I STILL think BM needs a new shot, not that much because it's hugely behind in complexity (one shot would put it completely on par) but mostly because look at the BM rotation. It's all OLD shit. Which adds to the perception it's simple, because it's like the "default" hunter shot priority, there's nothing NEW in there from Wrath while SV/MM has a bunch of new cool stuff. I don't think BM is boring because it's so much easier or more simple, I think people find it boring because there aren't any new toys there to play with.
I'll put it this way, and i think it agrees with your point
I played BM a bunch as most hunters, it was easy, the only difference between leveling and raiding was i had to throw on a serpent sting and learn the fights. When I started running heroics I tried out SV and I was shocked by how much more involved it was. That was my experience. Recently I tried out MM and I think it's easier (and more fun) that SV, but my SV build does more damage so i'm sticking with it.
Even now, as an experienced SV, when i switch back to BM i feel that it is much easier, and if i could do the same damage I would be running around with a dinosaur. Also consider this, Since most of BM's shit is on predictable cooldowns, you can basically get it down to a rhythm of sorts and not pay as much attention, SV's L&L ability really means you have to stay on your toes. That's my experience, i'm trying to simplify it in terms of shot rotation and cooldowns, but when it gets right down to it i feel like it's much easier.
I can think of two hunter players I know (one guildmate, one IRL friend) who aren't that skilled at the game (get hit by/die to avoidable boss mechanics somewhat regularly and don't play optimally). Both of them get better results from BM than the other two specs, presumably because their bungling is masked by the extra forgiveness of BM.
There, that's my anecdotal "BM is easier to play" story.
if you are getting better dps from BM in raids you suck, really, really bad
Sort of like if you die twice to spin-up on the same Mimiron attempt? Like I said, these are not great players here, and the relative ease of BM allows them to compete in the middle of the pack instead of being complete drag-asses like when they play the other specs.
I believe one of them has even boiled the BM rotation into a macro or two fairly effectively. I can't imagine doing that with either of the other trees.
The only reason BM is easier to level with is because your pet will keep aggro a much larger % of the time so there is no need to worry about conc shot or getting hit yourself.
None of the 3 specs are much easier to use in a raid. You can easily mitigate worrying about L&L by setting a warning for when it procs. Any spec is simply press the buttons as soon as you can; use steady shot when there is nothing else to press. The specific rotation doesn't matter very much.
The only reason BM is easier to level with is because you can go afk and still expect your mob to be dead and your pet to be totally fine
Any spec is simply press the buttons as soon as you can; use steady shot when there is nothing else to press. The specific rotation doesn't matter very much unless you are trying to maximize damage and top the damage meters while competing with other hunters geared similarly. If that's the case, then hitting steady shot before black arrow too often decreases your dps to a noticeable degree, especially during heroism.
Hunters who can learn fight mechanics and consistently perform deserve spots in raids. Yeah, so BM isn't top of the charts. So what? Are you really so desperately close to losing fights that one person's (minor) difference in DPS is causing failure? Good luck on proving that BM hunters are dumber or worse players than others, especially when blizzard inevitably releases a new patch that changes tree balance again.
tldr; Quit mucking up this normally useful Hunter thread with pointless spec snobbery.
Q&A is up, I like the idea of possibly moving Hunters off a mana based system.
All in all, I'd say its one of the better Q&As so far.
Yeah. I like:
Q: Additionally, do we plan to expand upon the number of pet action bar slots? Due to the current number of slots available for pets, hunters frequently have to swap pet abilities in and out of their spell/ability book.
A: Yes, we definitely want to do this. The whole pet bar needs a little work. There are still some bugs relating to which abilities can be moved on or off the bar and whether they default to autocast or not. We want the bar to work much more like character action bars.
Finally.
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
I wonder if we'll ever get a pet stable akin to the mount/non-combat pet system (that is, a MUCH larger pet stable - dozens of slots rather than five). They obviously have the mechanic in place for it, though it could cause some problems switching to multiple specs (since your pets lose their talents each time you switch, or at least they did), but I'm sure that can be resolved without too much trouble.
Halfmex on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Hunters who can learn fight mechanics and consistently perform deserve spots in raids. Yeah, so BM isn't top of the charts. So what? Are you really so desperately close to losing fights that one person's (minor) difference in DPS is causing failure? Good luck on proving that BM hunters are dumber or worse players than others, especially when blizzard inevitably releases a new patch that changes tree balance again.
It's not a minor difference in DPS, it's a huge difference in DPS. That's the problem.
Hunters who can learn fight mechanics and consistently perform deserve spots in raids. Yeah, so BM isn't top of the charts. So what? Are you really so desperately close to losing fights that one person's (minor) difference in DPS is causing failure? Good luck on proving that BM hunters are dumber or worse players than others, especially when blizzard inevitably releases a new patch that changes tree balance again.
It's not a minor difference in DPS, it's a huge difference in DPS. That's the problem.
Not that I've seen, and the difference is being addressed in the next patch.
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
Yesterday we lost to heroic XT when he was 80,000 health
Yes, have lost several >5%, and I didn't point fingers because some guy didn't take the recommended raiding spec. We beat the content after more tries.
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
I wonder if we'll ever get a pet stable akin to the mount/non-combat pet system (that is, a MUCH larger pet stable - dozens of slots rather than five). They obviously have the mechanic in place for it, though it could cause some problems switching to multiple specs (since your pets lose their talents each time you switch, or at least they did), but I'm sure that can be resolved without too much trouble.
Blizzard would first need to abandon the we-want-you-to-value-pets idea (wish I could find the GC post this statement was made), which seems completely ridiculous.
The value hunters place in their pets is either mechanical (dps/ability), or because you have an attachment (emotional). If its emotional, you would level it with your main and hit 80 at the same time, and then maybe you wouldn't bother to tame another animal cuz this one's your main squeeze (ew). But wait! If you do want mechanical utility/dps, you've still got to go through the five level gimped time sink. If anything, you'll resent the effort spent and the pet since your character is already maxed. And if you're a min/maxer, really, do you give a crap about the pet outside how much dps/utility it contributes? You'll ditch that thing when another animal comes along with demonstrably better attributes.
If Blizzard really wants to give pets value, they could implement an achievement system for pets, with tangible game play benefits... but that's yet another time sink (yay mmos). The best thing would be abolishing pet levelling because its not adding anything positive to the game.
To give even more stable slots would trivialize the choice, and as GC has stated, they want it to be a conscious I-get-this/I-give-up-that in pet selection.
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
Along with getting rid of pet leveling I wish they'd get rid of the exotic pet category and just make all the tameables available to any hunter spec.
And then do something a little different with the 51 point BM talent. Maybe in addition to the 4 extra talent points it could also give a really cool and unique ability to BM pets(one ability for each type of pet....ferocity, cunning, tenacity).
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Also, Survival is the best raiding spec onky at lower gear levels. At Ulduar levels MM starts to slowly put surely outperform it, but Survival remains very competitive none the less.
edit: Oh god, like 3 mobs and my mana bar is goooone.
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in and out of raids I completely love survival
my questions are why would MM overtake SV, and at what level would MM take over SV assuming you're hitcapped
What numbers would you be looking at?
the reason i ask is because i know another hunter who is comparably geared with comparable stats (mostly naxx25 epics). I regularly double his dps. Of course, there is skill involved, but even if he is just spamming steadyshot-aimed shot i don't think that should be happening (although i do notice he never uses his pet either, so this probably isn't a fair comparison)
i'll just switch my dualspec to sv/mm and take it for a ride, but i definitely feel like the boss dummy isn't going to give a reliable comparison
edit: I did a bit of testing with MM and SV, and doing close-to-perfect rotations on the boss dummy, MM was doing 2600-2700dps unbuffed, while SV was doing 2900-3000dps unbuffed
so i guess my gear is too shitty for MM, or something, but i'm not quite sure what would make MM overcome SV
(oddly enough, my crit rate for MM and SV is exactly the same)
Although i've had more experience with SV, I actually found MM to be quite a bit easier.
My reasoning:
With MM, all you have to worry about is cooldowns, which are right in front of you. You never have to reapply serpent sting, so your shot rotation gets reduced to a handful of shots.
With SV, your shot rotation is often interrupted with lock and load, and you have to keep serpent sting and black arrow up (instead of just chim)
Unrelated: does anyone know any addons that would have a larger indicator than cooldowns are alittle note over my head for when my cooldowns are up or when lock and load procs? It's not a huge probably but i occasionally won't optimize my shots
They're both good specs so, y'know, choose what you like. Me, I like the super-hasted autoshoot pewpew that Marks gives, and also, I hate refreshing DoTs and all that shit so that's another point for Marks. The guild seems to be low on classes/specs that give Replenish, though, so I'm constantly tempted to go Surv for that. It's only an issue for 10mans, but seeing how our only hard mode attempts are in 10mans it kinda sucks.
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I do like the mechanics of MM, it's fun, but not willing to give up the deeps
and i'm in naxx epics, not ulduar 226ers or anything
also, i heard that marksman feeds better off AP, and survival feeds better off agility
this makes sense to me since i know a marksman that tried out survival and he was doing substantially less damage than he was with marks, and he was completely gemmed for AP
also why is there no marksman slide in Maxdps :[ i'd really like to compare the two
i just looked it up, and evidently survival off the bat works best with Agility, marks works best for AP if you're shittily geared, but soon benefits more from agility, while BM profits most off AP until you're geared very well (since pet gets more benefit from AP than agility, afaik)
so people were probably told that AP was beneficial when they were doing heroics and nonheroics with shitgear and then they stayed with it into naxx
The other guy offers Replenishment, don't forget that.
I'm curious to see where the new 30-second Kill Command + the 600 AP-for-pet proc T9 4-piece leaves BM raid DPS. Probably still not on par with the other two specs, but the gap clearly won't be as huge as it is now.
Yeah I'm unsure about the worth of throwing points into the kill command talent. But animal handler being changed to +10% pet AP with two points seems interesting.
I don't really get this viewpoint. Please elaborate on how MM and SV are soooo much more complex or difficult compared to BM. Back when trapdancing was a big thing with SV maybe, but nowadays the difference in complexity is infinitesimal.
Unless you're doing KT, in which case you're better off just letting it sit right on your ass during P2+.
BM has bestial wrath which is a slow (read: easy) cooldown. It is mostly comprised of keeping serpent sting up, using aimed shot when available, using steady shot, using killshot when available. That's really it
Keeping your pet alive by knowing the fights is more important with BM but it is still very important with other specs, it's usually a 320AP buff half the time, and is still significantly adding to your dps. If my pet dies i usually see my dps drop from top 5 in raid to 7-10th (i should go test damage with and without pet, though, i'll do that when i get home)
I would say if they gave BM some specific pet abilities that you had to juggle in order for your pet to be effective, then it would be much more even.
abridged:
For *most* of a battle, all BM has to worry about is serpent sting, aimed shot, and steady shot
Survival has to worry about serpent, black arrow, explosive shot, aimed shot, steady shot, lock and load
MM has to worry about silence shot (although you can macro this in, count it if you wish), chim, serpent, aimed, steady, arcane
bestial wrath and rapid shot's cooldowns are slow so you don't really have to worry about them in your shot rotation much, and are best if saved for heroism after the initial pop, depending on the length of the fight. That and i'm pretty sure BW isn't tied to your cooldowns anyway, although my memory may be faulty here
MM and SV are harder to master, an optimal hunter in any of these specs will need to keep their pet alive to max dps. I don't really see how anyone would not understand this if they played all the specs
Also, if you don't have attack/follow hotkeyed to your scroll button, do it. if you're wondering "but how then do i change perspective?" make it ctrl+scroll. Having pet attack/follow keyed to my scroll, combined with actually paying attention, results in my pet almost never dying.
So now.
BM: Arcane, Steady, Serpent, Aimed, KC/BW
SV: Exp, Steady, Serpent, Aimed, L&L And the only added thing is black arrow. One more thing to worry about which is just hit on cooldown.
MM: chim, serpent, aimed, steady, arcane and silencing shot. So 2 more things, but keeping serpent up is much easier and you admit silencing just goes into a macro. Let's count that as one.
So ONE more thing to worry about. Easily equal to extra consideration given to pet micro, all hunters want to keep their pet alive but it's much more of a difference to a BM hunter and they get the extra kick in the guts on encounters that fuck over pets while the other 2 specs can carry on less impeded.
Also, I know letting the pet just sit next to you is excruciating as BM. I brought up KT as an example of somewhere where aside from the adds in P1 and P3, there's really no good time to sic the pet. He's almost guaranteed to eat an Ice Block, get no heals, and die.
All of them use serpent sting, steady shot, rapid shot, kill command, and aimed shot, so let's compare the differences:
SV: Explosive, black arrow, and L&L awareness
MM: chim, arcane, let's say silence is macrod and serpent sting counts as a "slow cooldown" because you only have to hit it once per target
BM: arcane, BW although BW is a joke. It doesn't share cooldowns and has a long cooldown, there's no juggling there. I don't think "hit it whenever it's up" is considered in a rotation when you're not sacrificing anything.
number of shots isn't even a huge factor anyway. With BM you're not really juggling anything much. Your pet generates focus and automatically uses that focus, that's where your damage is coming from. There's a lot of juggling with MM and SV. With BM you have a much shorter shot priority list, and then some non-cooldown-sharing-moves. SV and MM have to worry much more about priority and which available shot to click in what situation.
and thanks for adding a nasty remark to an otherwise civil debate, appreciated
Ultimately if BM was comparable to MM or SV, then why would anyone go MM or SV for PvE ever? Why play something more difficult for the same result?
But I still feel that you're underselling the actual complexity of BM and overselling what the differences for MM/SV actually adds to complexity. BW is a consideration because you want to be timing that, KC and Call of the Wild every second BW all together.
Black Arrow isn't adding much apart from another button and Lock and Load only requires some timing for the exp ticks. And MM has... Chimera shot. BM isn't super complex, but honestly neither is MM or SV.
That said I STILL think BM needs a new shot, not that much because it's hugely behind in complexity (one shot would put it completely on par) but mostly because look at the BM rotation. It's all OLD shit. Which adds to the perception it's simple, because it's like the "default" hunter shot priority, there's nothing NEW in there from Wrath while SV/MM has a bunch of new cool stuff. I don't think BM is boring because it's so much easier or more simple, I think people find it boring because there aren't any new toys there to play with.
I played BM a bunch as most hunters, it was easy, the only difference between leveling and raiding was i had to throw on a serpent sting and learn the fights. When I started running heroics I tried out SV and I was shocked by how much more involved it was. That was my experience. Recently I tried out MM and I think it's easier (and more fun) that SV, but my SV build does more damage so i'm sticking with it.
Even now, as an experienced SV, when i switch back to BM i feel that it is much easier, and if i could do the same damage I would be running around with a dinosaur. Also consider this, Since most of BM's shit is on predictable cooldowns, you can basically get it down to a rhythm of sorts and not pay as much attention, SV's L&L ability really means you have to stay on your toes. That's my experience, i'm trying to simplify it in terms of shot rotation and cooldowns, but when it gets right down to it i feel like it's much easier.
There, that's my anecdotal "BM is easier to play" story.
I believe one of them has even boiled the BM rotation into a macro or two fairly effectively. I can't imagine doing that with either of the other trees.
None of the 3 specs are much easier to use in a raid. You can easily mitigate worrying about L&L by setting a warning for when it procs. Any spec is simply press the buttons as soon as you can; use steady shot when there is nothing else to press. The specific rotation doesn't matter very much.
All in all, I'd say its one of the better Q&As so far.
tldr; Quit mucking up this normally useful Hunter thread with pointless spec snobbery.
Yeah. I like:
Finally.
It's not a minor difference in DPS, it's a huge difference in DPS. That's the problem.
Yesterday we lost to heroic XT when he was 80,000 health
Not that I've seen, and the difference is being addressed in the next patch.
Yes, have lost several >5%, and I didn't point fingers because some guy didn't take the recommended raiding spec. We beat the content after more tries.
Blizzard would first need to abandon the we-want-you-to-value-pets idea (wish I could find the GC post this statement was made), which seems completely ridiculous.
The value hunters place in their pets is either mechanical (dps/ability), or because you have an attachment (emotional). If its emotional, you would level it with your main and hit 80 at the same time, and then maybe you wouldn't bother to tame another animal cuz this one's your main squeeze (ew). But wait! If you do want mechanical utility/dps, you've still got to go through the five level gimped time sink. If anything, you'll resent the effort spent and the pet since your character is already maxed. And if you're a min/maxer, really, do you give a crap about the pet outside how much dps/utility it contributes? You'll ditch that thing when another animal comes along with demonstrably better attributes.
If Blizzard really wants to give pets value, they could implement an achievement system for pets, with tangible game play benefits... but that's yet another time sink (yay mmos). The best thing would be abolishing pet levelling because its not adding anything positive to the game.
To give even more stable slots would trivialize the choice, and as GC has stated, they want it to be a conscious I-get-this/I-give-up-that in pet selection.
And then do something a little different with the 51 point BM talent. Maybe in addition to the 4 extra talent points it could also give a really cool and unique ability to BM pets(one ability for each type of pet....ferocity, cunning, tenacity).