Nothing Better Than a BRK-SmackDown
Go read Lienna. Nothing better than getting BeLF huntresses all a-flutter.
/sooth SV hunters everywhere
We know we didn’t pick the best SV talent spec; that was kind of the idea. By not going to EJ and blindly accepting an SV-spec as The Best, No Questions Asked, you’ll enjoy the freedom of trying out stuff out for yourself and learning a lot more in the process.
For example, what we would’ve done next with our SV build is go more Sting-heavy and see how that worked. Then we’d do some trap-based specs. Then perhaps we’d mix the two. Then a trip to EJ or Lienna and read what they have to say. Then start all over again.
We didn’t come up with our BM-spec overnight. Heck, we’re still playing with it now.
We don’t want people to feel that their analysis and opinions are worthless, that anything they do in terms of talent-investigation is worthless. Far, far from it.
Failure is often the greatest teacher.
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24 Responses to “Nothing Better Than a BRK-SmackDown”
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Umm, what happened with the BRK website downtime the last 3 or so hours?
I suppose in the sense of “find what works best through course of action” instead of looking up “cookie-cutter” builds…I agree.
I suppose if you wanted to be immediately viable on all aspects to a cookie-cutter filled raid, then you’d go to the pro’s and just copy their spec. They’ve tested it. They’ve written about it, etc. The homework is done in more ways than one.
But I like the idea of “figure it out yourself dag nabit”. Though, I like Lienna and a woman’s wrath is nothing I want misdirected on me…so I agree with you both! =P
@ Zanpher, worked fine for me.
@BRK, props for trying a new spec (and being open to suggestions). People talk a big game at the EJ forums, but they spend so much time with talent calculators and Shandara’s DPS Spreadsheet that they never try their ‘perfect’ specs in game, to see how it plays.
Recount > Calculators
The error was the webhost error saying this site was suspended from overusing the CPU (aka, very shady host
).
May I suggest a http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cbZ0eVboZe00i0cIhxdAhcu
What you missed previously was Lock and Load, the passive serpent sting goes off often enough to make it worthwile. You also missed Noxious Stings in your previous build which is a mistake, 3% damage increase while serpent sting is up is nice. As previously mentioned 2 pts in Expose weakness and 2-3 in Hunting party should be sufficent to keep the buffs up.
In the other trees I would suggest anywhere from 1-4 pts in IAotH. Also from my rudimentary testing, Aimed Shot is a damage buff on fights where you don’t have to worry about mana(short fights or most fights in 25 man{having wisdom and judgement of wisdom makes mana a mostly non issue}). Also you may only have to put 1 point in Go for the Throat as survival crits quite often and I never find my pet focus starved(then again I have an owl, and run with Owl’s focus).
Glyphs: Steady shot, Serpent sting, Improved Aspect of the Hawk
Rotation: Serpent, explosive, aimed, steady when others are on cd.
BRK, I agree completely. If you aren’t afraid to try out new stuff, you won’t find out your playstyle. And you always play better when you enjoy it.
Keep it up BRK.
P.S I think Hobbes enjoyed the time with you =P
My personal tactic is to go check what the “experts” say and then change it to my whim, I’m running a 0/16/55 build which would probably get me laughed off the EJ forums, but it works for me because it gives me enough pve ability to be on the higher end of the dps meters on heroics but enough pvp ability to actually kill someone.
Even now I’ve just realized I’m over talented on a couple of points, there is *no such thing* as a perfect spec for everyone, your gear determines how much of which talents you need and what rotation you can effectively use, so every time your gear changes you should at least have a cursory glance at how your spec is affected.
I don’t think we really disagree about finding out talents, we just come at the problem from different perspectives, we *do* disagree about sporebats though
While I agree that it’s best to see what works for you, you’ve gotta at least look at the talents and think, “Hmm, how did Blizzard intend for these to work? How can I use these abilities to their fullest?” Not stinging with Surv makes the tests pretty meaningless, because the whole tree is designed around stings.
BRK,
I appreciate the spirit of experimentation that led to you trying out an uncommon spec.
But I don’t think it’s the best way to achieve what you intend.
As you say yourself, there are several more stages to your tests (a sting trial, a trap trial) that would have validated your data. I suspect that you are too busy to do these (or you would have done them already), so why bother with the initial trial?
Far better to see what EJ are recommending and test THAT against other theories. Advance our collection knowledge by exploring and challenging current established thought, or otherwise it will take forever to find out something that we already know.
Anyway, love the blog.
im presently experimenting with 24/24/23. initial tests are poor, but i believe i can make it work.
The best way to avoid making mistakes is to exercise wisdom.
Wisdom comes from experience.
Experience comes from making mistakes.
Heh appears she got a lil upset…that mail thong musthave her slightly chaffed!
Ok ok nuff lame jokes. It appears some people dont understand trial and error…..
<3 Lienna
(and BRK)
No point in arguing builds right now.
Back channel rumor has it that,following the nerf,Patch 3.1 will have a whole new set of hunter skills of Unprecedented Power.
Blizz intends to replace the entire BM tree with esoteric and potent cooking and food fight skills beyond compare.
You guessed it. We will all want to be
YEASTMASTERS
I would like to thank all hunters out there that are diligently working to perfect their skill and letting the whole hunter community know about their efforts via blogs and forums.
(about to commit a cardinal sin)
I, myself, have a job, have a family, have another hobby outside of WOW, and (last but not least) am lazy. So I would like to thank you all for helping me find an optimal cookie cutter design that will help me out dps my buddies mage who actually does tons of research on how to get his dps up. Thank you all.
sure, after a look at her armory profile, she clearly have more raid experience as we and brk have! she must have the wisdom!
Being Surv right now is definitely not cause for confidence in Hunter-knowledge.
Nevertheless, she’s right, at least in this case.
The issue many people had with the survival test post isn’t the attempt at a spec other than BM, it is the way it was done. The addendum at the end had partial apology for what happened, but failure goes beyond what the experiment resulted in.
If I had set up an experiment testing BM and Survival, and for Survival I went all out and used a proper rotation while for BM all I did was spam multishot and volley without even using a pet the results would of course be horribly skewed and I could make some explanation maybe it wasn’t completely right but hey I tried!
For the vast majority of the posts, concepts are well explained for virtually any person to understand, and BRK easily can be commended for doing it well. Problems like this are very detrimental because they produce false information. While I do not know the difference in readership between EJ forums on this blog, I can assume that there are plenty of people who read this without ever looking or the EJ forums. If nothing else some who go visit them are probably put off by the statistics and urge to be at all times the best always no exceptions.
There is a difference in doing something in a fun manner because you enjoy it, and attempting to show data about a given spec and posting the result when massive experimental holes are obvious.
“By not going to EJ and blindly accepting an SV-spec as The Best, No Questions Asked, you’ll enjoy the freedom of trying out stuff out for yourself and learning a lot more in the process.”
But this is the wrong way of approaching EJ info.
Instead of just looking for the talent spec they have found to be the best, you need to read their threads on why they think it is the best.
This is also how these specs appear there in the first place. People put together their theories on what they deem better, with tests to back them up. Then they try to recreate eachothers results or prove them wrong. The result is a theory which has been found valid by the others.
For example, one poster on the EJ rogues found out about the mutilate bug (where the off-hand has a double chance to proc poisons compared to the main hand). People ran tests and verified this was indeed correct, and the info was changed (faster weapons should go in the offhand for more poison applications). Before they knew about this bug, the community agreed that your fastest weapon should go in your main hand (because using instant attacks like mutilate produced more poison applications).
Now Blizzard is fixing the bug so the info will be reverted again, heh.
Anyway .. like Terriblename above here remarks, experimenting is good, but make sure you do it right.
..
“Nothing better than getting BeLF huntresses all a-flutter”
Aren’t they born that way?
i wouldnt have even gave this an answer or wasted my blog space over it
Well BM nerf or not, I will stay BM simply because I find it the more enjoyable spec to play? I think that some have lost the whole reason we play this game and that is to have fun. DPS meeters are not what it’s all about guys.
Civil disagreement and debate can ONLY help us all become better hunters. I embrace and celebrate it! Plus BRK’s humor adds needed levity. In the end it’s all about enjoyment.
Let’s see BRK’s linked BM build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ctbMzgxRfuMest0eVbZz
It’s not bad at all, but maybe you get get away from Invigoration, if you got a paly with Judgements of Wisdom. Then get away from Bestial Discipline, you got 2 GftT, why BD? Then forget Hawk eye.
)
Now you got 5 points.
Put 1 point into Spirit bond (you need it to go further in BM).
Then put the remaining 4 points into Imp. tracking.
This would be a good BM-build. Not the biggest DPS, but one of the bests.
(Currently the 50-21 Readyness build rules the DPS-charts, but I don’t really like that, but in raid you have to make things for bigger performance which you don’t likes.
But BRK’s SV-build… It’s crap. (Sorry, BRK.
)
)
Hawk Eye + Sniper Training? Oh, my god. Since the new boss-mechanics you have to stay very close to boss and/or very close to others, so you can’t place yourself far enough to get any good from these talents. (plus you can get out of the totems (etc.) range. This is NOT worth it.
Surefooted for PvE? You’re kidding.
Scatter shot is not a must for PvE. (could save your life with trash/adds, but what kind of a hunter are you if you got aggro? You got FD, not aggro.
5 points in Hunting party? NOWAI! If your crit is under 20%, you put 3 in it, if you got over it, 2 is far enough.
In Expose Weakness, it’s enoguh 2 points.
Now let’s look at the missing talents.
SV hunter without LnL? Explosion shot is the BASE of the Surv-hunter, so you NEED LnL for more ES. (now it will got 30sec CD, but anyway, 3 point in it.)
Noxius stings! 3 point! Since you HAVE TO keep serpent up on your target, it’s flat 3% more dmg.
You should get Aimed shot, since it has bigger dmg then steady, so you should use it when you could.
Now, you could decide that if you want or not do trap dancing. If you want, you could get Trap mastery and/or Savagery strikes. When you run under the boss to place a trap to a LnL, you should hit him hard with melee and get some more dmg from your Immolation trap.
The remaining points? Focused Fire? Imp. Stings? Even Resourcefullnes? (With low mana-regen and trap-dancing) It’s up to you.
(I’ve cleared BC content till Felmyst before 3.0, and now we are done with current content, HC+norm Naxx, Malygoss, Sartharion with some drakes too, so got a little explerience.
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