This Isn’t Totally Scientific, and So What
This Recount report is the result of a 5/15/51 SV built that is as glass-cannon and non-trapping an SV-build as we can make. We fought the level 80 target dummy with Hobbes, (he’s a cat!) We fired from extreme-range until we went OOM, AotV’d back to full mana, then drained our self again. Notice the total damage of 291,042 and the combined 1987 DPS.
This is the result of a 55/15/1 BM build that we are testing out, giving an extra two yards to our range with the trixy-point. We did the same thing here with the duration: down to OOM, back up, then out again. Notice the total damage is now 297,621 and a combined 2456DPS.
We used Serpent Sting in our BM-rotation and Explosive Shot in our SV-rotation. In terms of damage/mana, the two builds/rotations seem to be the same. However, in terms of DPS, the BM spec/rotation seems to destroy the SV.
Is everything kosher here? Can we really makes any assumptions from our data?
Problem #1: Glyphs. Our Glyph of Steady Shot boosts our Steady Shot damage by 10% when we have Serpent Sting applied. However, we didn’t use Serpent Sting with our SV rotation because we were concerned about mana consumption.
Problem #2: Gear. SV is an agility/crit/haste spec and we’re geared for agi/rap/crit. If we changed our gear and gems to more closely match the ideal SV stats, our SV report would’ve looked better.
Problem #3: Inexperiece. Should we have used Arcane in our SV rotation? Serpent? We don’t have enough experience or data to support any conclusion. We’re pretty well attuned to DPSing with BM, but not at all with SV.
So why should we do this testing at all?
Change.
Patch 3.0.8. is going to nerf BM and boost SV, that much is a fact. Before the new stuff comes and flies in our face, we should all experiment with that current versions of the talent trees so we can each make a personal observation as to their respective changes. We like the SV tree, but we’d never raid with it in it current form. However, we have now gone out and played with it some, acknowledged its advantages and detriments, and are in a better position to judge the new SV tree’s merits when it arrives.
We have always said, and continue to espouse, that nothing can do more for your performance than trying the talents and spells out yourself. Get out there, the target dummies are waiting. Try two talent specs you’ve never considered. You can make 100 gold in fewer than 10 quests; lack of funds is no excuse. Don’t make dumb specs; make things you haven’t tried.
Try. Learn. Analyze. Remeber that you’re not attempting to find The Best Spec and Shot Rotation Ever. You don’t have to re-gem and re-glyph to do some experimenting. You’re learning. You’re practicing.
You’re having some fun.
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BRK ur spec makes me cry =[
ur missing a key surv talent Lock n’ Load
this is the spec i use and suggest
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cxZ0eVoZe00i0cIhxdAhcd
u need 5/5 master tact
1 more poinr for 2% crit is rly good
and u only need 2/5 hunting party because as surv ur crit rating should be good enough u can keep it up 100% without it and if its not 3/5 will be enough
and as surv u want serpant rolling for lock N’load procs
As a lifetime survival hunter I’ll admit we’re not the kings of DPS. With my fairly top-end non-raid gear I put out around 2000 DPS in 5-mans. I’m frankly shocked how much DPS I see you posting up, especially on your pet alone. My pets rarely get above 300 DPS. Then again, I don’t have a single point in BM (0/17/54).
Can’t wait to see the supposed Survival buffs, though.
Survival will probably never be a DPS king. The general idea is that it doesn’t need to be — the raid utility the spec provides (formerly in the form of expose weakness, more recently in the form of mana battery-ness) makes up for the lack of raw numbers. The question is, how much DPS are you willing to trade to help your raid out?
Oh, and also, someone give the poor survivalists a 41-point talent. Trap mastery? Really? Pathetic.
I *still* think giving SV hunters access to something like the ZF-1 would be a perfect way to balance everything.
The crux of Surv-DPS is Lock ‘n Load. Assuming Blizz is truthful when they say Explosive Shot is going to be hugely improved, you’ll want to maintain Serpent Sting and Immolation Trap the boss (stupid, I know, but that’s the way the proverbial cookie has crumbled) to maximize the number of times Explosive Shot becomes available. It will be doing massively more damage than Steady (as will every special) and LnL makes it mana- and cooldown-free.
On the current PTR, it is.
In my personal opinion, Lock and Load ought to be changed to increase its chance to proc on Serpent Sting SIGNIFICANTLY so that the best target-dummy DPS doesn’t involve a lot of silly acrobatics.
Might I suggest this SV build BRK: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cZ0eVb0hZe00i0cIhxuAhcd
2/5 or 3/5 Hunting Party is about all you will need, as after that the points become wasted. Serpent Sting has so much synergy with the SV tree that NOT using it will drop your damage. +3% to all damage via you with Noxious Stings, Lock and Load allowing mana-less, cooldown-less Explosive Shots (Arcane will take a back set once 3.0.8 drops I believe), and with Improved Stings, you should see the damage go up.
Yes, Improved Hawk is nice, but lets be blunt: we have enough haste to reach the 1.5 Steady Shot cap with gear alone.
Hope this gives you some help there BRK!
I am not a surv hunter and when I read thru the talents under surv, I can’t help but wonder…. In a raid situation where mobility and positioning is a concern, wouldn’t it be impractical to have to constantly run up to the boss or mob to drop a trap in order to achieve the increase dps effect under surv trees? I prefer the TBC version of surv spec cos don’t really have to bother about trapping boss/mobs to get the best dps possible. Or am I wrong in this aspect since I have never play WOTLK surv hunter before. Any surn experts can advice me pls? Tks.
one thing you need to keep in mind with your survival build is that you dont need 5/5 hunting party to keep it up. take 4/5 if you are paranoid of it dropping (otherwise take 3/5).
also sniper training is highly situational, so you would find more dps per talent points elsewhere.
Hey everyone!
I’m currently spec’d 51/15/5 and I’m using the following Shot Rotation..
Serpents Sting, Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot spam until arcane shot and aimed shot, refresh serpent sting… and so on. With this (changing aimed shot with multishot/volley when needed) I normally do 2100-2300 damage in 5 mans and in 10 man raids 2000-2300. I honestly can say I haven’t been paying attetnion close enough to patch notes and what not, but I’m having trouble understanding if my shot rotation will completely die after the patch and if I’m going to have to spice it up somehow. Any help is appreciated.
Hi BRK
)
As mentioned earlier Survival is all about Lock’nLoad to have as many Explosive Shots as possible. As soon as it procs you have to go like Explosive-Steady-Explosive-Steady-Explosive-Steady until next cd for explosive. It’s a bad idea to do 3 explosive in a row because you may end up refreshing the dot before it runs out so you would loose up to 2 ticks of explosive (it does 3 ticks in total, doesn’t it? not sure
So it is required to keep Serpent Sting up to proc LnL and I would even go that far, that you should use our oh-so-stupid freezing arrow as soon as its up to get a LnL proc =)
Hi all,
I would like to ask BRK and others to comment on the pet’s ability to hold aggro with the two proposed builds. I have never tried a SV build (started out as MM, switched to BM at around lvl 30), but from the above statistics it seems that while the hunter’s DPS does not suffer significantly from the switch (and could probably be the same if gear was SV-oriented), the pet’s DPS is on a free fall (and little can be done to fix it I guess). Now, given that a ferocity pet builds most of its threat on the damage it produces, doesn’t switching to SV “force” the hunter to use a tenacity pet (especially with such an “as glass-cannon and non-trapping an SV-build”)? I am just wondering if switching to SV will limit our options in choosing a reliable pet for leveling and PvE in general.
Best wishes for the new year!
Skoundouflis, Bloodhoof EU.
The test is massively flawed and you do not give survival due credit. While the gear set-up problem is acceptable, the fact that you don’t use serpent sting is absurd. If I were to perform a test between Survival and BM and not use my pet during the BM test, I wouldn’t just write it off as deem that to be acceptable explanation.
Noxious Stings and Lock n Load are two important parts of a dps survival spec and you do not have either of them. A Survival hunter can easily get by with 2/3 expose as well as 2/5 hunting party. Also at the crit level most survival hunters will have, 1 gftt will be acceptable as well. Getting Noxious Stings and LnL would be essential and the final point I would use to finish of Master Tactician.
Even if you aren’t trapping when you can, Using serpent gives the 10% steady boost as well as 3% from NS. The LnL sting proc would exist as well, but not be as significant.
A portion of the current dps difference you found would be made up be a better spec and use of abilities that make sense.
A suggestion for improving SV DPS and beefing up Trap Mastery too:
What if trap mastery (in addition to what it currently does) allowed the hunter to use any the traps in the same way freezing arrow is used.
An SV hunter could them fire immolation traps at range, which would result in more lock ‘n’ load procs.
Granted there may be some UI ramifications that might make this impractical.
Seems that explosive shot is losing its AOE according to the latest patch notes.
I agree with Terriblename 100%
I have been using a survival build for the last couple of weeks and frankly have been surprised with how much damage I do.
I have run a few tests on my survival build and always found that my shots that done the most damage has always been Explosive, so I was surprised to explosive at the bottom of BRK’s recount data. I guess not using serpent sting would explain that to a degree as he would not have had L&L proc.
Anyway, don’t write survival off as a viable raiding build, I always find myself in the top 3 of my 10 man naxx guild, with the buffs from the next patch I expect myself to be pushing for the number 1 slot.
This is my armory link http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Turalyon&n=Takrill I have a couple of dodgy items, but im working on them
No way I abandon my Spirit Beast. Yes, BM spec will be nerfed (but Loque’nahak will be buffed). To be honest, if being the top-DPS of the year is your main concern (I say in general, not YOU brk
, another class should be much more interesting. I still feel it’s “cool” playing and running around with my Spirit Beast, that required patience and some effort to tame it.
I do not care if my DPS will be lowered (we’re not being totally killed as we’re actually the TOP dps class, so we need a nerf it seems). I love our class for what it offers on PvE side. I’m sure if hunters will be completely ignored in raids after patch 3.0.8… Blizz will re-buff us.
Surv spec looks cool but is SO different from MM and BM that I really have not so much desire to re-learn my class and re-gem or regear my toon.
On a side note….
BRK, WHERE IS THE *SPIRIT BEAST* shirt??????????????????
Well damn, there’s your problem. SV needs stings to ignite L&L.
And I don’t know why you aren’t firing Arcanes in your BM rotation. Same mana cost as Steady + more damage as Steady = feels good man
BRK, 1st of all you are right when saying that SV test is not at all ok.
1. You havent used any spells to improove the dps as SV hunter:
Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, etc except steady and explosive
2. If you look at the number of hits made, you are missing arround 30 hits vs BM
considering an average of 15 Explosive, 7 auto and 8 Steady (with haste stacked up) = another 30k damage
So total will be 297k for BM and 320k for SV. And this is only from gear.
I say SV>BM at this current point, mind the fact that BM will be nerfed.
A couple of thoughts on these sort of experiments for those that might want to do their own:
1. Would it not be better to evaluate both specs over the same length of time? By waiting to go OOM twice, is this not counting against the more mana efficient spec? For example, perhaps if we had run the experiment for exactly 2 minutes for each spec then maybe one spec would not go OOM and never have to use AotV. I don’t know which spec if more mana efficient but if it it is survival then this might be another reason for its poor performance.
2. The number of actual crits obtained will have a signficant impact on results. To remove this variability I think the experiment will have to run over a fairly substantial length of time – probably far in excess of 2 minutes. The actual length of time required will depend on the level of accuracy required. For example, a quickish test may reliably indicate that SV does less DPS than BM but a much longer test would be required to show whether 1 point in expose weakness is better than 1 point in master tactician.
3. My gut feel is that we may be overestimating the extent to which different gems and enchants will have an impact on the experiment. Crit and agility are no longer as important to SV as they once were given the expose weakness nerf. (Note: I’m saying “not as important as they once were”. I am not saying “not important”. ) Also, serpent sting (now important for SV) and expose weakness scale with AP.
All I want to say here is that I now have a WWS report where my sporebat has outdpsed hobbes
this makes me happy, oh so very happy, I know its not a scientific comparison, but if BRK’s not going to care neither will I >:-)
Dear BRK,
Did you do this on the PTR or on the live server, perhaps you have mentioned and I have missed this.
If this is on the live server then im really not sure how useful the comparison is as there are so many changes coming in the new patch.
Ive been trying to do this exact thing on the PTR with my hunter and I am finding quite the opposite. Firstly with my BM spec my DPS after the patch decreases by some margin, but this is not unexpected. When I change to SV however (also taking Lock and load and weaving in serpent sting) my i can get my DPS back up almost to what my current BM spec gives me on the live server. This is without changing any gems or enchants on my gear which im sure could optimise things slightly further.
My point is that on the PTR anyway it would appear to me that a good SV spec with an optimised shot rotation appears to not only out DPS the BM spec, but also should give some valuable raid benefits as well.
Hi there BRK and all readers!
I used to play 56/15/0 BM (Lethal 5/5, Mortal 5/5, CA 3/3, GftT 2/2 from MM) and was topping the damage tables left and right in both 5-mans and 10-mans. Still, I got so bored to the play style and the upcoming nerfs are really unsettleing, so I decided to respec Survivalist to check it out. Reasons were that our guild currently don’t have retri pala or shadow priest in our raids, so I’ll provide Replenishment and also to make Gluth’s Zombie Chow kiting easier with Trap Mastery and 2/3 in Resourcefulness.
Almost from the first minute I fell in love with Surv-tree! It’s so much fun and I really enjoy proccing talents like Expose Weakness, Hunting Party, Master Tactician, TNT and most of all, Lock’n'Load. Managing all those procs gives a lot to do instead of just spamming Steady-Auto macro. Triggering LnL proc with Immo or Xplo traps is crucial, also with 3/3 in Noxious Stings plus of course Glyph of Steady, keeping up the Serpent Sting is also crucial for increased damage. Rotation being Serpent-XShot-SS-SS-SS-XShot and refresh Sting when necessary.
Anyway, I love Survivalist. I’ll definitely recommend Beastmasters to at least try it out sometimes – granted, you can’t expect to be on top of the damage table all the time but the utility you provide to the raid and yourself is nice. Yesterday our guild did a Naxx-10 full clear in a bit over 5 hours and overall raid DPS of mine was about 2.6k, so it wasn’t so bad and I’m still usually in the top2 or 3 in 5-mans or 10-mans with ~2k DPS constant. Things work out well if you have the patience to pull of all the “tweaky things” in Surv-tree like dropping a trap every now and then to create LnL proc, refresh Serp Sting all the time and so on.
That’s my short novel, hope you don’t mind.
dear brk
Just a little update as arcane shot does share cooldown with explosive shot, im thinking you did use the good rotation for your test.
I did myself try for this raid week to switch to survival to try and test my new haste gear and compare with my last test on sunwell at lvl 70, i was kind of surprised to see that on lots of encounter, my dps is not that lower than the other bm in my guild and still i did not really stack agi stuff yet at around 1100 self buff. If your interested in this i could supply you with wws data.
And i can now enjoy some game aspects more than with my old bm template:
I won’t ever have in a 25 man raid to switch to viper aspect, mana regen is absolutely not a problem anymore, and my hunter party mana regen clearly benefits my raid, especially if no pal retrib is avaiable to fullfill the roaster.
I dont have to manage my pet survavibility as before, really boring on many lk encounter, with 15% haste bonus, my cycle runs at 2.14 in opposite to my 1.92 bm template, so guess what, less ammo consumption… well its bonus
and last but not least, less dependent on pet damage and encounter bonus, like the thadius encounter where the pet does not benefit from the stacking damage bonus.
one think to remember is in the patch, kill shot cd will be lowered to 15s too, and you benefit in your sv template of 15% more crit rate (already high in sv: ~37%nonopti for me) critting for 14k at ~6k rap, clearly to add in your rotation when possible
i’ll try mm template next week, but, im already believing than having one survivabilty hunt in raid is a must and enthusiast about the next patch changes, cause i really was playing the bm tree since kara to be at best for my guild needs, but never enjoyed it.
im just hoping that blizzard wont make mistake in the steady nerf, because im starting to find a lot of concurrence in other classes already before the nerf.
On a only vaguely related note on learning… Might I recomend a good read? A online friend of mine who made a post about a presentation she made to her son’s health class in High School. She’s an EMT in Richmond VA, I think its a wicked good post about learning in general, and I think it could being spread around a little.
Whups, like didn’t like me: http://degeneratelyre.livejournal.com/909163.html
You need to drop master tactician, surefooted, and scatter shot, for noxious stings and lock and load, then add serpent sting to your rotation. The benefit from the Steady Shot Glyph, the Free Explosive Shots from Lock and Load, and the 3% damage buff from Noxious Stings make the build far more potent.
I played with it all on the PTR, see my build ideas here.
@ Gringott
I tried to comment on your blog itself, but for some reason it’s not giving me the option. You suggest there that a survival hunter would use Arcane shot, which is clearly not the case. The only time (currently) that a survivalist should use arcane is when you cannot use explosive due to its AoE effect. Explosive will always do more damage, and seeing as they are on the same cooldown, there is no reason not to use it over Arcane shot.
Some people advocate an Explosive-Arcane-Explosive combo when LnL procs, simply to avoid clipping off the last tick of the first explosive; but my testing suggests that Explosive-steady-explosive-steady-explosive works better.
Personally, I’d be reticent to spec away from Master tactician, as crits are the stock-in-trade of survivalists. Surefooted is a pointless waste tho! Noxious and LnL are vital.
Myself, I intend to go to a trap dancing spec, dropping some points in IAotH and then glyphing it to help out. Something like I have detailed here
I deleted my Hunter. Don’t have the energy or desire to rebuild all my gear/gems/glyphs to push a 180 turn around in direction for my toon.
I levelled to 80 gearing a specific way for BM and most of the good haste trinkets and so on, I;ve already gotten and vendored.
Go to SV? Not a chance.
We arent going to provide massive quantities of sustained ranged dps anymore. We will be lucky if we are even mediocre.
Buh bye Hunterdom.
atm if everything stays like it is in the current build surv. will be the king of dps as was mentioned before.
ES just scales so well right now, too well in fact, that I think it will probably be nerfed before going live.
Like some people that have mentioned before, some of your talents could be changed around for better results aswell as some of your rotation for surv.
One thing is for sure serpent sting is pretty much a must. This is because of several one most notably being the noxious sting talent which is also very important. You could try combining this with improved stings and see how that goes too. Of course this means that you would have to skip IAotH, if at least partially, not sure if that is worth doing need to do some more testing on the PTR.
I am not sure about sniper training as was mentioned before many fights require specific positioning and I am not sure you could get the full benefit out of it. On the flip side of the sniper training talent point is resourcefulness and now this may not seem like the most obvious raid dps talent because of the procs from L&L this could potentially be very useful. Again it suffers from the fact that you need to be in a certain area to use it, in this case melee range, and that getting into melee range is not always viable in certain fights.
Also with the nerf to steady you might want to think about adding aimed to your rotation. I don’t think mana will be a big issue since your effective crit rate in raids should be about 50% anyway and with a pally and all the other replenishment buffers you should rarely need to even go into viper.
BM is just toasted really by this next patch, the nerfs kinda went to far and I don’t think they will really be raid viable if everything stays the same. MM looks decent but is the most mana intensive of all three specs and you will definitely be going into viper on long fights.
So to sum up this looks like the dawning of the age of the survivalists.
2nd try to get everything spelled right : (So if the Mod wouldn’t mind deleting my previous two posts? Thanks)
On a only vaguely related note on learning… Might I recommend a good read?
A online friend of mine who made a post about a presentation she made to her son’s health class in High School. She’s an EMT in Richmond VA, I think its a wicked good post about learning in general, and I think it could being spread around a little.
http://degeneratelyre.livejournal.com/909163.html
@ Azlen: Well aren’t you the pefect blend of pessimism and ignorance.
@BRK: Check out the elitistjerks forums and read the survival threads there. My DPS is better on PTR as SV than it is on live as BM. I expect after you do a bit more research you’ll be jumping on the bandwagon with the rest of us.
Looking forward to seeing an update with the numbers after you’ve corrected your rotation.
@Jalen
Whats your Talent Tree setup?
And What pet do you use?
Or better yet.. can you post your armory so i can look?
@Jalen – Pessimism, you bet. What do you expect when you lose 30% of your ability in one nerf.
Pessimism, you bet. What do you expect when the pet you trained up from 0 is useless and a complete waste. Took him on the PTR and he couldnt even hold aggro on a simple yellow mob.
My hunter was no longer a hunter. He was embarassingly bad.
Thus he is no longer my hunter.
And you sir, are the perfect blend of retard and total dick.
I’m still BM till the nerf, of course.
Jalen-Whisperwind
Also, take a look at Xumio’s newly stickied SV thread on the hunter forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=8F6DD339EF7A1A9484639EB499C1085E.app23_02?topicId=14132915697&sid=1
His armory is here:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Khadgar&n=Xumio
@ ChainTrap
Thanks for trying to comment anyway.
On the PTR, fully raid buffed without Master Tactician, I was sporting 41% crit (this assumes you run with a feral druid, I usually do). I think choosing Master Tactician is a case of diminishing returns.
Of course the choice of which will largely be dependent on itemization and raid composition.
As to the AOE effect of explosive, it’s not an issue as Explosive Shot is a single target shot in 3.08. I did try both the Explosive – Steady – Explosive and also the Explosive – Arcane – Explosive LnL combos in my testing and settled on the Arcane combo.
With my current itemization I’m not hasted back to the GCD, so when LnL would proc in the middle of a Steady Shot cast I would have to wait on the GCD to pop Explosive Shot then by the time I finished my Steady Shot, had sometimes missed the LnL window to squeeze in the second Explosive Shot.
So I settled on the Explosive – Arcane – Explosive combo, for Arcane’s instant cast time. But from a pure calculation standpoint Explosive – Steady – Explosive is higher DPS, provided one has both the reaction time and haste to make it work.
BRK said
“You’re learning. You’re practicing.
You’re having some fun.”
Completely agree
You deleted your level 80 toon based on a patch that hasn’t even hit yet? Wow. Talk about over-reacting!
That’s what I always say. =) Test it your damn self and come to your own conclusions, and then keep an open mind with them. That’s how you get better.
Hey BRK if you go Survival what will your name change to?
LnL?
Raowr!
I’ll mirror some other comments and say while BRK didn’t do his best according to “Proper Surv Protocol” , he tried. I’ve been a long survival hunter myself, and switching to a test BM build I did the same kind of thing. Looked at the BM trees from a SV perspective, and got it “wrong”.
Still, was educational.
Good to see the dwarf’s got potential to turn to the dark side. (If only for two bursts of mana-depletion testing.)
My hunter (leveling as Survival) general uses this rotation:
Serpent Sting -> Explosive Shot -> Aimed Shot (Arcane works too) -> Steady Shot -> Explosive Shot -> Whichever is available and makes the most sense
While mana consumption is definitely a concern, Serpent Sting definitely needs to be up at all times, both for Lock and Load and Noxious Stings; they both help the Survival build do more DPS.
While it’s currently doing a fair amount more DPS on the PTR, I’m guessing that at best, it will be equal to Beast Mastery, but will likely end up lower than it by a little by the time they are done.
(This is my current leveling build, if anyone is curious: 0/12/53)
Edit: I meant “Multi-Shot works too”, not Arcane.
@ BRK: Many of the comments here are on target, many are not. I did not see you mention glyphs however! I am in pretty decent gear, but on live servers with a 6 minute test I did 2.6k dps as Survival. PTR I did 3.3k [they're talking about scaling back down ES though :'( ]
What is your haste as survival? Survival wants to meet the soft haste cap, or as close as you can get without gimping yourself, in order to bring steady back down to the 1.5s cast. This can be accomplished with imp aspect of the hawk.
How do you afford IatH without gimping your other trees? Simple [Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk]. This gylph adds 6% haste to your proc, which is the equivalent of adding another 2 talent points. You want to decide the amount of points you use based upon your unbuffed haste.
My current spec is thus: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cbZzeVbMZe00i0cIhxuIh0t
Arguments and caveats about this build: I have 1/3 focused aim because I am currently below hitcap. I replaced my Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood with a Darkmoon Card: Greatness and lost a decent amount. I have a accuracy enchant waiting my The Undeath Carrier for when drewd staffs become stat sticks.
People argue that you don’t need 5/5 Hunting Party, or 3/3 Expose, and it’s true. However, I hate relying on a % proc
You may find yourself using a few talent points elsewhere.
Glyphs: Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Improved Aspect of the Hawk
My Gear: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&n=Corr
I do NOT like the Trap Dancing that some have put into practice, to me it’s not a hunter’s playstyle. However, there are many Naxx and 5 man bosses where trapping adds to proc L&L is completely viable. I even put a immolation trap infront of my tank before they pull patch (with Misdirect up, of course).
Good luck, BRK. Right now Survival lacks the dps of BM, but not by a huge margin. On the PTR with it’s current build, Survival tops all my tests.
Anyone interested in more info on survival there is a great thread going on the hunter forums, it’s got builds, gear, glyphs shot rotations, ect. A great place to start.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14132915697&sid=1
Can an SV Hunter tame a Spirit Beast? Just wondering, because I’d get a kick out of seeing an SV Hunter with a Spirit Beast called Loqnload.
/groan
It’s the raspberry latte things that are screwing him up.
Actually deleting a level 80 hunter because of panic that BM will suck after a patch that’s not even here yet = foolish. IF it turns out on live that BM is really suffering, you can bet the ACTUAL outcry will get more attention than the kneejerk “patch notes leaked oh noes!” panic-attack that’s been happening. BM wasn’t very good before, so I hear, and became one of the top-ranked PVE DPS specs by the end of BC. It could happen again, in a few months (if it really suffers as much as predicted at all), and then you’ll be without an 80 hunter because you deleted it instead of just playing some other class for awhile.
Spirit Beast’s exotic, so no SV Loqnloads.
On that subject (since I don’t switch out of BM spec often, so can’t comment much on all this), I finally saw Loque’s mate in ZD 2 nights ago en route to my first Heroic Gundrak run… and then last night I finally saw Loque himself for the first time.
Dead.
I mourned, then skinned the poor corpse… and got his pelt! “Of the Bandit”. Might get some nice cash on the AH for it; if not, it’ll wait for my feral druid or enhance shammy to level up.
Why don’t you use a private server or PTR when reaching some of these conclusions? It seems to me you could remove some of the variable in relation to gear with a private server.
Deleting a level 80 toon = fail
From an SV-turned-BM-hunter, if you were geared and gemmed for SV , with a much more efficient spec(shame shame mister kitty!), you’d probably have faired a little better dps output wise.
Excluding the upcoming changes, currently SV is the little sister of the 3 specs damage wise, we all know this. But in a regen spec, raid buffed I’ve pulled 2800-3300dps.
It’s a far cry from the 4800 I’ve seen from geared BM hunters, but it’s fairly respectable nonetheless. I went BM for Loque(best 51 point gimmick ability ever!), but I’d part ways with my leopard god pal to go back to SV in a heartbeat. here’s to hoping, right?