Being Dependent Upon Another Class Stinks
“Hey Brain?”
“Yes BRK?”
“We’ve been in front of the hunter-trainer for thirty minutes now.”
“Yes we have. That’s some good counting; proud of you.”
“Our point is… we’ve been here a long time.”
“By some standards, yes we have. “
“What’s the hold-up!”
“We have a talent point remaining.”
“We’re respec’ing?”
“Yes we are. And we have a talent point just sitting here, and we’re not sure what to do.”
“Why did we respec?”
“Because our guild’s resident ret pally hasn’t been in our raids, we’ve been going out-of-mana faster than Megs can count to her shoe size.”
“Now that you mention it, we have been spending way too much time in Aspect of the Viper.”
“We certainly have, BRK. That must change, and we think we have a good answer: Invigoration.”
“Why haven’t we used it before?”
“Invigoration requires a pet’s special attack to crit; melee-critss don’t count. When we take Hobbes to a raid, he has two special attacks: Claw and Rake. When they crit, and we have 2/2 in Invigoration, we regen 1% of our mana.”
“What’s our mana in a typical raid?”
“We’re averaging around 12,000 mana. So 2/2 in Invigoration will return 120 mana when our pet’s special attack crits.”
“Sounds snazzy! But you haven’t answered our question; why haven’t we used it before?”
“The reason we haven’t used it in the past is that our pet was Missing so frequently that our number of pet-special-crits was seriously low. If our pet is missing 30% of the time, that’s a massive number of crits we’re not getting. The guaranteed return from 3/5 in Efficiency – reducing the cost of our shots and stings by 6% — seemed to be at least as good as the small mana-return we received from 2/2 in Invigoration. But there was also the stigma of going overly-heavy in the BM tree. Do we really need more than 51 points in BM? Can we justify it? You always preach Balance, and going 55 points deep into BM certainly seems to fly in the face of that basic tenet.”
“So we’ve got some mathematical and psychological reasons why we’ve avoided Invigoration, yes?”
“Quite so. However, we thing we can overcome the psychological with a healthy dose of mathematical reasoning.”
“We’re going Invigoration?”
“As you would say, Darn tootin’,Foshizzle.”
“FOSHIZZZLE!”
“And here’s why. “Misses” are more than Misses. “Misses” are Misses, Blocks, and Dodges. When we analyze our WWS report, we’ve seen that by taking 2/2 in Animal Handler for the +10 to pet-Expertise, we’ve basically eliminated the enemy’s ability to Block or Dodge our pet-attacks, which were the vast majority of our pet-Misses. This has reduced our pet-Misses from 30% to 5%. We saw that with 2/2 in Animal Handler, against a typical Naxxramas boss, our pet would special-Crit 40-60 times per fight. If we add 2/2 in Invigoration to grant us 120 mana/pet-Crit, we’ll regen 4800 to 7200 mana per boss-fight.”
“That’s not bad!”
“No it’s not bad at all. The key, of course, is to keep our pet attacking even if we’re not, due to ranged-DPS having to reposition. Keeping our pet alive becomes, if you can believe it, will become even more important than ever. “
“What are we giving up to take 2/2 in Invigoration? Longevity?”
“Never. We’re not giving up anything in the BM tree; it’s all too good to lose.”
“So… we’re dumping Improved Stings?”
“Out the window, yes.”
“We’re sticking with 3/5 in Frenzy?”
“Data shows that 60% proc instead of 80% proc isn’t hurting us. So yes, we’re staying 3/5 in Frenzy.”
“We have 55 points in BM?”
“Yes. That seems like a lot, I know.”
“It really does.”
“And of course we sticking with the basic 15 points in MM, like every hunter should: Lethal (5) and Mortal Shots (5), GftT (2), and Careful Aim(3).”
“55 and 15… um…”
“That’s 70 points, BRK. Which means we have one point remaining. And it’s being trixy.”
“Trixy?”
“Yes, trixy. We’re not sure what to do with that point.”
“What are our choices?”
“Improved Tracking for +1% damage to everything we’re tracking, Hawk Eye for an extra two yards range…”
“We like that one, actually. There are some fights where some additional range wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“I agree, which is why I mentioned it. But we could also go 4/5 in Frenzy to ensure our pet’s Frenzy is always up. We could take a point in Spirit Bond for the +5% bonus to healing for our pet and ourselves…”
“Spirit Bond shouldn’t be sneezed at.”
“No it shouldn’t. We could take one point in Improved Stings for +10% damage to Serpent Sting….”
“We’re really tired of having to refresh Serpent Sting to keep the Glyph of Steady Shot working; it’s such a mana-drain.”
“Can’t disagree with you there, either, but +10% to Steady Shot is so good we have to use that glyph, and thus keep using Serpent Sting. Our final choice is taking a point in Rapid Killing, reducing the cooldown of Rapid Fire by one minute. This would allow us to use Rapid Fire more than once per-boss fight, if the fight is longer than four minutes.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut choice, does there.”
“No. And that is why we’ve been standing in front of the hunter-trainer for thirty-five minutes; that one point is trixy.”
“And this whole thing is a result of not having a second paladin in the raid?”
“Yes, the paladins are, once again, totally to blame for this. If we had another in our raid, we could just dump Invigoration forever and put those two points and our trixy-point back into 3/3 in Improved Stings and be done with it.”
“Cockroaches! All of ‘em!”
“If there’s another class more thoroughly reviled more so than paladins, we’re not aware of it.”
“Warlocks?”
“No. Warlocks are suffering their own Blizzard-induced h3ll right now. They don’t need any hate from anybody else.”
“Mages?”
“Hate? Nah. Although ‘give us bread and port us’ certainly isn’t the basis for a long-lasting relationship, that’s for certain.”
“Sporebats?”
“Bingo, chief. Sporebats and paladins.”
“Although if our guild’s ret pally shows up to our next raid?”
“…”
“Brain?”
“We’ll kiss his plate-covered, mana-regenerating toes, that’s what we’ll do!”
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Entertaining and now I need to look at my Talent points again….refining is difficult sometimes…. Thanks BRK!
Good luck keeping it alive in many of the Naxx fights, I found it very difficult on a lot of them.
The pushback reduction part of Focused Aim is underrated in this era of frequent splash damage.
That’s roughly the thought process I went through.
I put that last point into Frenzy myself, but that’s because I’m a completionist.
@anonymus, I think that Boar’s speed would help alot in keeping your pet alive in Naxx fights. Have you given that a shot?
If only there was a Cunning Pet that did decent damage, Roar of Recovery could keep us out of Viper a little longer.
@klin
if you have 25% crit unbuffed, you can go 3/5 frenzy and not see any significant decrease in overall dps. raid buffed, your cobra strike driven pet crits alone should be enough to keep frenzy procced consistently during dps time (not counting situations where movement, target switching, or aoe is necessary).
Well in Heigan its almost impossible to keep it alive (and do damage, which is required for this talent to work), it’s mainly dependant on how far the tank takes Heigan after each ‘eruption’, if hes too far back then the pet will be instagibbed.
Grobbulus was difficult aswell, I found myself rezzing it a lot in there too. Probably due to the tank moving too slow, unless Grobbulus does AoE damage, I’m not too sure.
Sapphiron, the pet was taking too much damage even with mend pet ticking constantly (I had frost res gear on).
Kel’Thuzad, the pet was getting hit for 140k randomly.
I’m so glad I copied this before I submitted it…
Is this for 10 or 25 man BRK?
3/3 in Careful Aim(3) gives the hunter +hit but nothing for the pet
2/2 in Animal Handler gives the pet +10 to Expertise. Expertise says that it decreases dodge and block rate for MELEE attacks but does nothing for the ranged or spell attacks.
a) What is a pets base miss rate for melee attacks? spell attacks? Are they the same as the hunters base miss rate for ranged? That would make sense.
b) If Careful Aim only helps the Hunter and Animal Handler only helps the pet then why not scrap all 5 of those points and put them somewhere that gives us more DPS and just stack more +Hit?
To hell with BOTH of you.
*feeds Oona some Kibler’s Bits*
Isn’t Replenishment provided by 1) Ret Pally’s Jo Wise, 2) Shadow Priest’s Vamp Touch, or 3) Survival Hunter’s Hunting Party?
You can go survival
quick question – could be totally wrong, but wouldn’t 1/2 SB and 1/2 Mend pet be a bit more useful overall? i know the mana reduction from 2/2 mend is nice, but having the 5% healing bonus could help keep the pet up. That being said i’m currently 2/2 in both.. so i’m debating how to redistribute those points
i ran the quick math and the mana cost (using 12000 mana) of mend pet is 9% so 1080, with 1/2 it is 972, and 2/2 gives 864 – a savings of 108 and 216 respectivly.
Spirit bond, 1/2 takes your mend pet, and buffs it 5% (and all other heals) giving you 262.5 more HP per mend, or 87.5 per 3 sec tick, not to mention the 100 or so HP the pet will regen passively every 10 sec (assuming 10k health)
so… for me the 1 point problem isn’t the one you put in rapid killing, its 2/2 mend or 1/2 mend, 1/2 SB…
any ideas?
its not replenisment that brk is talking about. while its nice, judgement of wisdom is what hes really talking about. with that up on the boss, autoshot returns mana faster than it can be used. prot pallies arent going to use that judgement. holy pallies can, but often dont bother.
that leaves ret pallies.
Or you could get a shadow priest?
ahh just read previous post… nevermind my noobyness.
And lack of dps skills
I don’t know how your pets are dying on those fights.
Maybe Grob – just pull him back once and a while then reposition.
As for mana.
I use Viper every once and a while. I’ve found that popping one mana potion during the fight helps a lot.
As it is. We are downing bosses so quickly in reg Nax (full clear in a few hours or less) that mana isn’t really an issue.
In 25 man with a pally, spriest, and sv hunter – I never go oom
I think 1/2 gfft should be enough to keep your pet focus stuffed… take a look at him next time you rand and see if he is using all the focus you give him, or whether he’s usually capped.
I play bm right now but when the nerf comes I’m gonna switch to surv because its also high on dps. The survival tree has something exactly like that called hunting party which helps a lot in non-retadin groups. It gives the same .25% mana second for 15 seconds. It happens when the hunter crits with certain move and i will put three points in it. Thats another way to do it and it is not laugable at. Problem: its located near the very bottom of the surv tree. And thats my spec for when pets become harder to control on these fights so thats my opinion but ten there would have to be the surv hunter. (That is the rarest hunter in game and ill play that spec because its on par with bm right now.)
If it’s JoWisdom that you’re craving and not Replenishment, then after 3.0.8 patches in, you hunters should be okay. Right now, prot paladins are using JoLight because they get credit for all the healing threat it causes. After 3.0.8, JoLight heals will cause no threat, freeing the threat-hungry prot paladins worldwide to use JoWisdom. Unless your healers are so strapped that they need the extra JoLight healing, you should start seeing JoWisdom more often.
Unless of course it’s really Replenishment you’re after. If so, then bow before your new mana overlord. I sorta like being the Shadow Priest of WotLK.
Just so every one is clear, it’s not replenishment from an SPriest/Surv Hunter/Pally. It’s Judgment of Wisdom, as Doom noted. If you don’t have a Ret judging wisdom, then an additional mana feedback, i.e. invigoration, is pretty sweet.
@anonymous:
Expertise is not the same as hit. The 2/2 animal handler cuts the boss’s dodges of your pet’s attack by half, giving your pet an additional 2.5% damage. This is different from hit.
Ideally you’d love to have hit capped through gear because that passes trhough to the pet. The pet shares the same miss rate as the hunter based on the +hit rating on the hunter’s gear. However, FA does not pass through to the pet. If your hunter ranged DPS is not hit-capped thru gear, then FA is a great way to make up the difference (but it won’t fix the pet misses.)
So, yes IF you have the gear to stack enough +hit, that’s great and the points can go somewhere else. But the Expertise from Animal hanlder is not replaceable.
BRK, on a different note your post infers that pet attacks use a 2-roll system (check if it hits, then check if that hit crits) rather than the one-roll system melee classes use (crit % + miss % + dodge % + parry % + hit % = 100%). In the latter, for the vast majority of cases crit % and miss% are independent.
Are you sure that Pets use the 2-roll system?
*hugs Rilgon*
Don’t worry the sporebats are special, the common folk can’t understand our love for them, but that makes it all the more special!
…And then there was a loud, hollow knocking sound together with a sharp pain in the head, both happening at exactly the same time.
“Hey, you!” shouted the hunter trainer, a voice loud enough to break through the glazed expression of Teh BRicK. “Hey!”. Her knuckles made contact with his head again, and hey there was that sound, and the pain!
“Listen, there’s other things I have to do you know, I don’t necessarily have to be present to WATCH you re-position your talent points. Here’s my advice, go to an inn, have a drink, mull it over. THEN come back in a day when you’ve changed your mind, preferably to one less chatty, ‘kay? Kay!”
Another mystery solved.
Cobra Strikes is what make Invigoration viable. (imho) That forced crit is extra mana.
Looking at our WWS for the arachnid quarter- I got a grand total of 1,071 mana back from Replenish, and I got 43,461 from invigoration. Maybe our spriest isn’t specced into it correctly or was too far away or was picking his nose- but whatever the reason, I get a ton more mana from Invig. than replenish.
Even better is having my double shammy whammy. Mana Tot + windfury makes for a happy hunter.
(That spam filter is Fail.
I’m glad i picked up the habit of copying my posts. maybe it’s having a website that does it?)
Poor sporebats, such a bad rap. Hey, my main hunter still has an empty pet slot! After the awesomeness of getting Loque’nahak, I have not looked at any other pet in a while. I think I am gonna go get a sporebat, just for the humor of it, and to show some love for the poor things…
“judgement of wisdom is what hes really talking about. with that up on the boss, autoshot returns mana faster than it can be used. prot pallies arent going to use that judgement.”–Doom
“Right now, prot paladins are using JoLight because they get credit for all the healing threat it causes”—Josh
Wow, I (ret pally) actually learned something about ret pally dps cycle from a hunter forum. You see, I’ve been judging light instead of wisdom, because light feels cozier. I didn’t think about the unnecessary threat I’m generating (by using JoL) and gimping the mana using dps’ers (by not using JoW).
Sweet
@Kunukia
you should get the queen wasp thing from sholozar basin, before it goes untamable.
@ all
heres a talent sspec based on this post:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents.html?tal=052030015052122331025313510053052000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
So what happened, BRK? How was the raid?
“Right now, prot paladins are using JoLight because they get credit for all the healing threat it causes. ”
That was hotfixed, our prot pallies have noticed a significant change in threat as a result.
All the internal confusion here is pretty meaningless though BRK…50/21/0…beastial wrath + readiness = top of the charts every time.
@ David:
“All the internal confusion here is pretty meaningless though BRK…50/21/0…beastial wrath + readiness = top of the charts every time.”
For one more week.
Or maybe two….
Dang it…ah well, was planning a re-evaluation of my points anyway this evening, and this is great food for thought.
I love the Pallies, but BoM always overrides my wolf’s Furious Howl, so it’s made me less dependant on that pet.
On the subject of hunter + other classes…I’ve learned to love coordinating traps with competent deathknights. Why shoot a Freezing Arrow into or near a distant mob when you can drop a Freezing Trap at the DK’s feet and have them deathgrip the target into your trap? It’s a beautiful thing.
Holy Pallies should be judging, too, because of that one talent they have. It increases their haste by 15%, is it? Or 10? I don’t remember.
In any case, two Pallies of any spec should be covering your judgement needs.
Suicidal Zebra, I think the idea is that the Miss percentage pushes part of the Crit percentage off the attack table. Also, there is some evidence that in attacks by players against mobs, special attack crits can be blocked, which suggests that at least in certain circumstances, there are two tables when special attacks are used by a player against a mob.
Also, you meant “implies”.
50/21
As of the rollout this morning is no longer working with dual BW.
However, there are new arrows available for purchase.
Box of Heirloom Arrows/Bullets. (150 Emblems of Heroism)
Produces 200 heirloom arrows when you click on it. I had 20 slots on my quiver and all are filled. (and i still have the box) (soulbound items) The DPS is 63.5 which is slight lower than the mammoth cutters.
So really i need to buy both boxes. UGH!!!!
*one thing i said in this post is a lie*
This is my brain on crack.
i hope the spawn rate does not get nerfed for the secret penguins (the place where you can stand in the center of the room and drop 12 – 15 mobs every 20 seconds.
[quote][quote][i]“Sporebats?”[/i]
“Bingo, chief. Sporebats and paladins.”
[/quote]
To hell with BOTH of you.
*feeds Oona some Kibler’s Bits* [/quote]
tehehehe, I lol’ed.
This has a ridiculous amount of sporebat love!
Has anyone tried looking into the bug that Spore Cloud had? Where it would only cast manually?
I’m going to guess it was fixed.
Given that Invigoration allows you to depend on your pet’s crits will generate more mana for your toon. And then related situation, that you now need to pay even more attention to your pets health to facilitate sustained mana generation during a fight. What would make it reasonable to put more talent point in Endurance Training or Spirit Bond and where would you take those points from if you did so?
Why not take Aimed Shot? Useful in PvP and for an extra burst when multi shot isn’t useful.
/agree with Sonvar
I took aimed with my hunter, so now I use aimed shot=single mob, multi shot=groups
Heigan is not pet friendly, I agree…two tricks: One, have a tank that knows the limits and always goes to the extreme limit in the safe zone, as you mentioned…the other is to pull your pet out and send him back in after every splash…you lose out on some DPS, but a lot less then if your pet were to die on every splash.
I blame your tank on this one…the tank should move Grobbulus so there’s at least a poison cloud’s diameter between where he’s at and the last one…this will give plenty of room for all melee to stand behind and dps…the only AoE damage in this fight is those poison clouds, and if the tank isn’t moving enough, give him a tactful bit of feedback after the fight…”/w Tank just a little feedback for next week: The back of hit hitbox was in the last poison cloud almost the whole fight…if you move him a bit further when he drops the poison clouds, it makes it a lot easier for melee and pets to keep DPSing.”
I’ve only had this problem in 10-man, when heals are short and going to people with more priority. What’s killing your pet most likely isn’t the aura, but the multiple blizzards in melee range…either that or you’re pet is in the tail-swipe. Pull your pet back a bit, you lose out on some DPS, but your pet stays alive.
This one is so easy…you know those red circles of doom you hafta move out of during the KT fight? Well…those circles sometimes are on the tank or the melee DPS…meaning if your pet is in the same group, he’s in the circle and when it explodes your pet dies…Key is to keep an eye on your pet and watch for those red circles in melee range, and be ready to pull him out if your pet is in the circle…your pet should take almost no damage in a KT fight…
Hope the above comments help someone…if anyone has a better idea, feel free to share it.
My approach to pet survivabilty in Naxxramas is simple:
2/2 in Spirit Bond + Resto Shaman on raid heals
My pet catches enough heals chained from raid members, that with the extra 10% healing from Spirit Bond, I hardly have to hit mend.
Talents that keep your pet up are a good investment.
All I can say is, thanks for the laugh. That was great!
@ Klinderas
Sporebat love is never a bad thing, and people have looked into the sporebat’s bugs.
Well I say people, I mean me… I’m a walking repository of sporebat knowledge, but I’ve written the same information out on about 5 different sites in the last week, to save me cluttering up the comments just check the wowhead comments for sporecloud (rank 6)
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53598#comments
But in short, it mostly works now, and it fully works on the upcoming PTR patch.
As a pally and an onwner of a sporebat, I can say:
Stop spreadin’ the hate!
*tenant* — a paying occupier of land or property
*tenet* — any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc. esp. one held as true by members of a profession, group, or movement
(Sorry, can’t help it, used to work as a proofreader)
Unfortunately, my Alliance Ret Pally is only 77, and on a different server. Otherwise, I’d offer to help you with your mana problems (*cackle*Divine Plea*cackle*)
@ Gemini
Your brain is on crack but that might not be far off from what Blizz actually does.
The latest GC manifesto implies that we will so a lot more hunter changes in 3.1, one of the major ones being ammo. Something is going to change there, he’s talking about ammo too much for it not to change.
Assuming they do that, and they don’t give new engineering helms, then it may be bye-bye engineering…
If Blizz would let us bottle the Drakkari Blessing you wouldn’t have to respec because of the cockroachs, I mean Pallies.
“The 10% stats and the 91 mp5 blessings are identical to the Paladin blessings of Wisdom and Kings, in every aspect other than duration. Paladin blessings will overwrite them, and you should expect them not to stack with other effects if the Paladin blessings don’t.
The AP buff is weaker than Blessing of Might, and you won’t get it if you already have BoM cast on you.”
Last edited by Randomsalad on 11/24/2008 (Patch 3.0.3)
Teaakius is on the money for keeping a pet alive. Imo only toughish one can be Heigan dependant on tank positioning. I’ve got a point each in mend pet and spirit bond and keep mend up as often as possible for the remove disease. A little mana intenisve but rarely have to rez pet and usually pop into viper when dancing if necessary
Yes, I forgot about mend pet during that fight…my current spec has 2/2 Mend Pet and I try to keep it up for that fight merely to help the healers…as I feel my pet should be last priority on decurses, heals, and everything else.
Mana’s also barely a problem that fight…during phase 1 the tank is dancing and you’re dpsing your heart out…when phase 2 comes and you need to dance while he’s on the platform, switch to viper and you’ll be 100% by the time you can go back up on the stage…or at least that’s my experience.