“Dear BRK, I have gone beastmaster and want to go with the best spec possible for grinding the last few lvls and doing 5 mans. Thanks, Septeis and Sephim.”

You should spec according to your crew.

Got a Pally-tank, then don’t worry about the Survival tree and improved traps. He’s of the “Crowd Control is Overrated” school of tanking and you won’t be trapping at all. Full BM-spec, baby.

Got a mage and a rogue, then your trapping isn’t going to be critical, regardless of your tank. Again, full BM.

Warrior or Druid tank and no crowd-control classes, then you will need super-traps. A MM/SV or hybrid build will be heavily appreciated. Your crowd-control skillz will be essential. You can do this as a BM, but super traps makes it much easier.

Now when you get to heroics, super traps in heroics are huge because the trash hits so f-ing hard. An SV-based talent spec makes those trap-resists not so guaranteed to wipe your party.

Quick heroic story. We were doing our first heroic Blood Furnace: Warrior tank, rogue, priest, warlock, and us, BM Hunter. Got to the second boss, the big eye thingy and the waves of orcs that pour out of the cages. We couldn’t survive the waves; healer kept getting add-aggro and one-shotted. After four or five tries, we had had enough. We left the group there, respec’d 0/21/40 with super traps, came back and triple-trapped the adds. The DPS focused on burning one orc down at a time while we handled the crowd-control. Properly played, SV is a very effective heroic-spec.

But remember that taking super trap talents in your build does not automatically grant you the skill in using them. Practice, practice, practice. You’re not a mage; it takes some real skill to effectively crowd-control as a hunter.

“Dear BRK … I like to do BG’s and arena more than I like to raid. While you have spec’d a BM hunter for raids, is there a way to spec a BM hunter for PvP mostly arena and some BGs? Or should I just listen to everyone else and Go Surv/Marks.

“I need help. I love my BM but people are saying that I should switch, and that BM isnt a PvP build. Riojin and Akira”

If one took the best PvP-hunter out there, made him rotate his spec BM->MM->SV, we have a very strong feeling that he’d do pretty darn well using all three.

If one took a splendidly noobtard hunter and gave him a nice set of PvP gear and a solid spec, we likewise believe he wouldn’t become a tremendously better player overnight.

Gear matters. Spec matters. Mad Skillz matter just as much.

After only seventeen arena matches, we are in no position to offer any advice on the proper and improper specs for arena-PvP. We’re just not! We can logically analyze and make arguments about talents, but we’re going to need much more experience before So Sayeth BRK, So Let It Be Done can be commanded. Like, years.

Our 41/20/0 build is doing well for us, we have a great deal of experience with this spec, but we’re still noobing it up in unexplored and vastly tragic ways. Witness our experimentation with Spirit Bond in 2v2. Tried it, it was not good, and to our credit, away it went. We know how to analyze, we just need more matches under our belt before we can give you Do This posts.

But we can say the following with complete confidence: One can use any talent tree as a primary and perform well in PvP.

If you like to PvP as a BM, do it. Yes, you’ll see a whole lot of MM PvP hunters, but oes that mean that spec is best for you? No, no it does not. Should you try it? Probably, sure. Should you spec something just because your guildie, your buddie, or some slack-jawed yokel tells you to?

Well? Of course not!

Now, just because all the trees are viable, does not mean that you can place your talent point willy-nilly all over your screen. 0/20/41 is a experienced-blessed PvP spec, 5/5/41 is not.

While there may not be Right or Wrong when it comes to talent trees, there most certainly are Good and Bad when it comes to talent builds.

“Dear BRK, my guildies don’t believe that BM hunters can do great DPS in high level instances and raids. Also, they refuse to heal my pet because of “mana wastage”. They say that many online statistics say the MM hunter is better for raiding and that the BM spec causes the pet to die a lot. Could you please help me to convince them that BM hunters can be viable in endgame raids? Sincerely, The Frek”

“Frek, if almost 1000 posts on the power of BM hunters on our blog doesn’t convince them what will? How about directing them to a WWS report?

non-anonomous WWS report URL given here

“Make them visit that, show them BigRedKitty and [X] - who are both BM hunters - are #1 and #3 for total DPS in a Gruul’s Lair clear. We particularly like the Gruul kill where we hit 1056DPS.

“Now you’re tasked to write us back and let us know their opinion, yes? Thanks for reading! BigRedKitty”

“Dear BRK, thanks for replying to me and the WWS report. My guildies say you’re biased and they refuse to heal my pet. They also want me to give them a convincing argument on why BM hunters are good, and unfortunately a “biased” blog like your’s ain’t gonna cut it. Please help me! I love this guild but I need a good argument. Thanks again, The Frek”

Frekster, a WWS report is as unbiased as it gets. It’s pure math, statistics, no opinion or “bias”. Although data-collection practices can be biased and stastics can be misleading, a careful analysis of a WWS report can provide answers to many of life’s most important DPS-questions. One answer that has been solidified is that BM-spec is raid-viable. That is indisputable. Claiming otherwise because the sourse is “biased” is, frankly, pathetic.

Here’s the other thing, Frekkie. The reason we’re biased for BM spec is because we’ve done loads and loads of research into why this spec works and how to make it the most effective destruction machine that can exist in WoW. And now because of that, our opinion can’t cut it? That makes no frickin’ sense, Frek-baby!

You want opinions, we’ll give ‘em. You want facts, we’ll provide ‘em. You want us to provide a method of convincing your guildies that BM spec is raid-viable without using our opinions and our facts? Frekalicious, we can’t help ya. Sorry. Enjoy Marksman, hope you saved that Desolation gear.

/surrender to save sanity

And just to attempt to alleviate all the slings and arrows that The Frek is going to receive for the “The” affectation, we’ll head that off at the pass.

Drop the “The”, it isn’t helping. While a very select few can get away with it, like The DCoE, and The Squeekie Priestie, and The The - although Johnny Marr went “Marr” on us which of course totally didn’t work, idiot - the tremendous and overwhelming majority of us can’t slap a “The” on our nom de guere. Stop it now, Frek. We’re just trying to save you some pain.

Even Leroy Jenkins doesn’t go “The”.

“Dear BRK, Hi. A bit of background - I’m 61. Physically, anyway.

“I’ve played online games for a number of years - starting with “The Realm” through “Meridian 59″, through EQ and SWG and finally a huge number of hours per week of WoW. What I don’t have is the reflexes/hand-eye of someone who grew up in the Nintendo Generation. This means I suck at PVP but I don’t play on PVP servers too much.

“My main love in WoW is rogues (mine is 63rd level currently) and hunters (mine is 61). I’ve always been MM specced but someone where I work said BM rocks and gave me your web site.

“OK, I admit that after reading a lot of the posts there and replies and so on, I’m befuddled. Last night I dumped all my talents and re-did everything. Now I sit and stare at the things I have and am frankly at a loss as to how to play her now. I do solo quite a bit and I always used traps. I’m not a numbers cruncher and I guess I’m just not keeping up with what the changes are and the “WTF do I do now” part.

“Can you give me a bit of help here, please? You have lots of examples of builds - I just want something that will let me solo BUT help my guild in instances/raids, too. I want to take things down quickly but I’m not a 19-year old who is going to grok the stuff you say as easily as I might have when - well, when I was 19. Thanks, Chenaya.”

Chenaya, we do hereby relieve you of any perceived obligation to roll a Beastmaster hunter. If one wants to solo and help in instances with minimal fuss, one rolls a Marksman. Specifically, a MM with at least 17 points in Survival for the supertraps. But if you’re going to re-respec MM, we want you to do it properly.

The 0/41/20 Marksman Build

What’s distinctive about the Marksman tree is not the great numbers of awesome talents, but the tremendous number of crappy ones. While the BM tree is a great feast of lovely talents from among which we must work hard to choose, the Marksman tree is filled with dungbombs of disgusting talents we must work hard to avoid. Talents that can ruin an otherwise adequate spec.

Concussive Barrage, Barrage, Improved Barrage, Combat Efficiency, and Improved Stings. Junk, from one end of the list to the other. Avoid ‘em at all costs.

This is a cookie-cutter 0/41/20 build that gives nice DPS and supertraps. Your pet is significantly diminished, your ability to complete with a BM hunter in terms of sustained DPS is too. But you are very nicely equipped to provide excellent crowd-control and significant ranged damage for instances.

Now Silencing Shot can be tricky. Most Marksman hunters won’t trade it for anything, but there are those who understand that it has limited uses in PvE and are willing to sacrifice it to build a Hybrid Hunter. Let’s take a look at that.

The 0/31/30 Hybrid Build

We lose Silencing Shot but gain more Agility and Crit. Properly configured - re-gemed, re-enchanted, and re-focused from the high-RAP of a MM hunter to a more pure-Agility SV hunter mode to compensate for the loss of the +10% RAP from Careful Aim and Master Marksman bonuses - a hunter with this build can do more damage-per-shot and crit more frequently than a traditional MM, but still keep the supertraps for those 5-man instances.

The 0/31/30 is called a Hybrid Raiding Spec, but with practice and a good threat meter, it will do fine for soloing, too. It will be a little harder to solo as you’ll crit mobs off your pet much more easily than a Marksman will, but your damage in instances should be significantly increased.

And if you made us choose, we’d go Hybrid over Marksman every day of the week.

Merry Christmas to all! We’ve forwarded BRK’s Naughty and Nice WoWers List to Santa. To all those who didn’t bribe us sufficiently, yes, you made the wrong list. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

And yes, we made our own Nice-List twice! It’s good to be the Editor.

Here is the standard twenty-point marksman configuration we recommend for all BM hunters. If you’ve got a hunter in your raid who has Improved Hunter’s Mark, Efficiency can be used instead, but be sure to let him do the marking.

But what are some of the variations in BM hunter specs? We can talk about those, sure thing.

Well, let’s start with the pre-Kara, level 70 hunter.

You’re running 5-man instances getting your Beastlord gear, working your way towards revered with Cenarion Expedition and your Glyph of Ferocity. Here’s our recommended talent spec.

We don’t think Improved Aspect of the Hawk is as critical as maxing your pet’s ability to off-tank, so we’ll go max health and armor with Endurance Training and Thick Hide. Generally, in both normal and heroic-mode, 5-man instances have harder trash mobs than bosses. Using your pet to save your healer, or off-tank that one un-crowd-controllable mob, is more important than the bonus DPS from IAotH.

Why only 4/5 in Frenzy? Because with Serpent’s Swiftness, your pet will be attacking so quickly that even if only 80% of your pet’s crits result in a Frenzy proc, Frenzy will be up all the time.

Must you have Animal Handler? The pet +Hit isn’t critical in normal 5-man instances, but the bosses in heroics are considered level 72; the pet +Hit from Animal Handler will be quite helpful against these mobs. And the increased mount speed is handy for completing those level 70 quests you haven’t yet finished.

Poof! You’re invited to Kara and the rules change. Now the bosses are the big challenge, not the 5 or 6 or 7-mob pulls in the 5-man instances. Your pet is not going to be off-tanking and the boss fights are going to be much longer than you’ve seen before. You’ll need some modified talents to maximize your damage potential now.

Here’s our recommendation for a Karazhan-raiding BM hunter, Attumen through Prince.

We’ve added IAotH for those long boss fights. You’ll proc that frequently and it’ll make a very nice addition to your DPS.

You’ll have to learn how to manage your mana so you don’t have to switch to Aspect of the Viper, though. Learning this skill is critical and we cannot emphasize that enough. Running Aspect of the Viper all the time hurts your Ranged Attack Power and eliminates your ability to use IAotH.

Notice that we’ve lost the two points in Bestial Discipline. Once a BM hunter’s crit rate hits 20%, his Go For The Throat talent should be providing enough Focus that BD isn’t necessary. Your pet cannot store excess Focus; there’s no point in over-generating it.

Once you’ve cleared through Prince, you might go for Nightbane and Netherspite, and you’ll definitely want to think about getting into your first 25-man instance, Gruul’s Lair.

Once you go to these bosses, pet-survivability is going to go down and there’s little you can do about it. But you can adjust your talent points to get your pet and his Ferocious Inspiration buff back into the fight quickly.

Improved Revive Pet is highly recommended for the 25-man raiding hunter. Yes your pet will come back with a loss of Happiness if he’s rez’d, but he needs to get back in the battle, start fighting, and provide his 3% bonus damage buff. IRP will also reduce the rez-time from ten to four seconds, bring the pet back with 30% more health, and reduce the rez mana-cost by 40%. All of these are critical for the BM hunter to continue to deliver massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS.

If you ever do Gruul’s Lair, your pet dies and you don’t rez him because it’ll take too long, and your raid wipes with a boss at 4%, you’ll wish you had had IRP. Believe us now and listen to us later!

Do you need IRP before Prince? Not really. If you want to train it for Shade of Aran we won’t get upset, but with proper pet-control Aran probably won’t nuke your pet.

Is there ever a time to train Spirit Bond? Now that we have a Heal Over Time spell, we say No, not even when grinding.

Is there ever a time for Bestial Swiftness? For leveling, you bet. If you’re running lots of Zul’Aman, go for it and snag a point from Endurance Training. Yes, Zul’Aman is an “outdoor” instance and Bestial Swiftness allows your pet to run 30% faster in there.

Is there ever a time for Catlike Reflexes? Unfortunately, taking that talent requires too great a sacrifice for hunters who wish to do anything that isn’t solo. Giving up Ferocious Inspiration just cannot be justified.

“Dear BRK, the WoW hunter board is discussing how to fix the mana usage problems that many hunters (especially MM/SV) have. Do you as a BM hunter have any mana problems and how do you deal with them? Sedenya and Yinkiz”

First off, notice these things about this email:

1. Short and to the point.
2. Good capitialization, punctuation, lack of l33tspeak, etc. It’s not a legal document; your use of parenthesis, brackets, and bracers aren’t at issue. but if u rite 2 us lik this dont axpect a response, kk?
3. It’s not one the same questions we get everyday, (the addon is RatingBuster!)

Granted, it’s hard to avoid #3 if you don’t know what questions we get every day, but #1 and #2 should be something you should strive for in almost all your communications, especially when you’re attempting to elicit a worthwhile response.

And that’s a lesson from your Uncle BRK.

Now then, about this rubbish concerning MM/SV mana issues…

What does a Mage do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Shadow Priest do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Boomkin do? Stand at range and DPS..

What does an Elemental Shaman do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Warlock do? Stand at range and DPS, (and play with their minion, or kick dirt on it, whatever.)

What does a Marksman Hunter do? Stand at range and DPS AND use his pet in melee combat.

Hmm.

We’ll say it again. Hmm.

Hunters, regardless of talent spec, have an flexibility in their attacking style that the other classes just can’t match. Can those others do more damage or more DPS? Sure. But do they have a two-pronged attack capability? Not really, no.

(Tell ya something, we have never understood why any hunter would complain about how powerful warlocks or any other caster classes are. Hunters should destroy these people by the truckload. Go ask Renoobed/Mabd or Shifttusk how they feel about going one-on-one with a squishy. We think they’ll back us up on this.)

So what does Blizz do with the Hunter talent trees?

They make one of them mana-inefficient but blazingly burst-deadly at range.

They make one of them more dependent upon their melee-attacking pet and thus more difficult to fight if the enemy ignores one of the two-pronged assaults.

They make one of them less deadly from range, but if played properly, a ridiculously difficult target to kill.

There are positives and negatives in every class and talent spec:

With MM, the positive is that this is most massive burst-damage capable spec, bar none, end of story. The negative is that this massive burst-damage is massively mana-inefficient.

With SV, the positive is that, played properly - we feel we have to say this over and over because SV-playstyle is greatly different than MM/BM - can be one of the most elusive and tricky targets anybody has ever tried to kill. The negative is that the ranged and pet-melee DPS suffers without a lot of people to pick up a buff from Expose Weakness and it’s harder to get the gear necessary to make the spec shine.

With BM, the positive is that we can produce massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS and bring a terrifyingly destructive pet into battle, simultaneously. The negative is that our burst-damage is heavily constricted and keeping one’s pet alive become much more critical than the other specs.

How mana-efficient are we as a BM hunter? Let’s take the Bear-Boss in Zul’Aman as an example of our mana-efficiency. Our guild can take him down in approximately 5-7 minutes. We haven’t timed it exactly, but we can complete the 20-minute timer pretty easily, so 5-7 minute estimate should be satisfactory.

We go full-out on this boss. We power through Rapid Fire and trinkets and drums and Beastial Wrath and keep a solid Auto/Steady/KC sequence going, and we break 900DPS consistently. With Aspect of the Hawk active, without totems or a shadow priest, we need to pop three Fel Mana potions throughout the course of the fight to keep our mana above zero at the time the boss dies.

But if you give us a totem or a shadow priest, we can leave the Fel Manas in the bank; we won’t need them.

What does a MM hunter have to do in terms of mana-regeneration in order to achieve similar results? Well, we have no direct experience with this spec in this fight, but we can assume that their mana-consumption is going to be tremendous if they want to try to keep up that degree of DPS.

But does that mean that the MM/SV specs are broken because of their mana-inefficiency?

We don’t think so. That’s the cost of doing business, the price one must pay to go down those trees. If you want to be a MM hunter, you’re going to be mana-inefficient, period, end of story. If you want to be a ranged DPS class and not have mana-issues, perhaps you should put away your pet and roll an Elemental Shammy.

It’s like complaining that your motorcycle doesn’t seat four comfortably. Or your 3/4-ton pickup truck doesn’t get 100mpg. Or that if you eat 1000 cookies a day, you’re going to gain weight.

Follks, learning to work with and around your spec’s limitations is what makes playing this game so hard and so rewarding.

“Dear Blizzard-Claus, this Christmas, please make my class and spec not have any negatives or drawbacks. Thanks, Hunterboy and Petmeister”

Can you guess what B-C is going to do with this letter?

/crumple

/roundfile

“Dear BRK … I never was anything else than MM, not even for a week. Until I found your blog and until I really began to understand how BMs work, I just thought along the lines of so many other hunters: ‘BM? Yeah, nice joke. Go and respec.’

“I know, you already told several people that you can’t say BM is best for everyone but I wonder if you could tell me, how I could “forget” about those two skills or something like that. I just don’t know how I should spec my little hunter so she will make as much damage as possible. And yes, in my opinion, Serpent Sting makes a lot of damage, as long as it’s skilled and you are a MM. With friendly regards, Nayamé and Styx”

Fact: The highest PvE-DPS spec is Beastmaster.

Fact: Survivalist-spec provides more utility in heroics than BM because of the longer-lasting and less-resistible traps.

Fact: Properly employed, Scatter Shot is massively useful in PvP.

Fact: Serpent Sting, in it’s current pre-patch-2.3 incarnation, does extremely-poor damage.

Feeling: You love Hawk Eye. We can tell you until we’re blue in the face that you don’t need it and it’s a waste of three talent points, but if you love it you’re probably going to ignore our opinion.

Fact: We’ve pulled everything in every 5-man regular and heroic instance, Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, and Void Reaver without Hawk Eye. For PvE in Outland, Hawk Eye is completely unnecessary.

Feeling: You love Improved Stings. We can tell you until we’re blue in the face that Stings - other than Scorpid - are a total waste of mana and Improved Stings are a colossal waste of five talent points. But if you love them, you’re probably going to ignore our advice.

Fact: Serpent Sting is one of the worst shots we have in terms of Damage vs Mana-Consumption.

Feeling: Bows sux, Guns rox. (We happen to agree with this, in a fashion. We love guns but we want ever other hunter in our raids to use a bow. Thus we can easily identify our shots by sound and adjust our shot-rotation that much more easily.)

Fact: If you’re a dwarf, a gun is usually your best choice because of the racial bonus. If you’re a troll, a bow is. All other hunters should use the highest-DPS ranged weapon they can find that most effectively enhances their talent spec.

Nayamé, if you were to say, “I’ve done some research and Hawk Eye improves my DPS by 5%,” then that would be a fact we could challenge and perhaps convince you was inaccurate. But instead you state that you love Hawk Eye. Well that is an emotional issue and we probably aren’t going to be unable to sway you otherwise, but here we go.

If you want to to inflict the most damage possible, you’ll respec to 41/20/0 and ignore Serpent Sting. Just take it off your action bar entirely. Also, dumping three points into Hawk Eye for a 41/17/3 build reduces your Mortal Shots talents to 3/5 and decreases your bonus crit damage from 30% to 18%. This is truly a terrible trade-off.

Should you respec? Depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want to do max-damage, then yes you should. If you just want to do more damage while keeping the spec and talents you love, then no you shouldn’t.

Just don’t ask us to convince you that your feelings are wrong. We’ve been married for over eleven years; we know a trap when we see one.

“Dear BRK, just wanted to write and say thanks. I recently switched to a new guild and last night scored a last-minute open DPS spot for Gruul’s.

“So thanks BRK, your hard work on this site has helped me walk into my first 25 man raid and not only walk away with epic loots, but more importantly set me up to show my stuff as a hunter. Thanks again BRK! Ripcat & Silence”

Quiz Time! What do you think the most important aspect of this email is?

A. BRK’s ego swells massively with such missives.

B. The BRK Hunter-Guide movies are getting great reviews.

C. Ripcat’s raid leader understands the tremendous benefits of BM hunters to raid-DPS.

Even though that raid had multiple Marksman hunters, when they have a DPS-opening they said, “h3llz yeah, bring your BM-hunter bad@ss self to Gruul’s”. They slapped him and his 3%-to-all-damage Ferocious Inspiration buff with the DPS-machine rogues, and we’re sure they celebrated mightily. That raid leader did a great job of recognizing how to maximize the DPS of his group.

Also, Ripcat kept his pet alive, ensuring that FI stayed up the entire fight. Keeping your BM-pet alive is critical because FI is what your rogues, mages, warlocks, boomkins, druid-kitties, arms-warriors, non-resto-shaman, ret-pallys (all three of them), and other hunters crave. If you’re BM, keep that pet up. Respec him for every instance, get Improved Mend Pet and Improved Revive Pet. Ask for pet-buffs from your druids, priests, and paladins. Let the pet-love flow.

As for being in the middle of the pack DPS-wise, we would love to see if Ripcat was running DamageMeters and was including his pet in his totals. That would be nice to know; we’d place a wager that Silence was not included.

WoW Web Stats, folks. We cannot emphasize enough how tremendous a tool this is. Get it, learn it, love it. Grab CLSaver while you’re at it and automate your combatlog. The next time you’ve got a story like this to tell, send us an email and include your WWS report link, the anonymous report if you prefer is fine.

Someday we’ll get to our “How to WWS” blog post, we promise.

Dear BRK, I need you to convince me. I’ve been looking at beast mastery, and I’m likin’ it, and I like everything you’ve written so far. I agree with all your points and have put long thought into the things you’ve said, chosen my pets on your list, reworked my shot rotation a lot of things, and now I think about spec’ing away from MM. All you need to do to have me is convince me that it’s all worth losing silencing shot over, for I love Silencing Shot more then I love my pet and armor; it tells casters where to stick it. If you can do that, you have another conversion. Amiia.”

“Is it worth it” is a feeling, a non-quantitative measurement. We cannot tell you you’ll feel better as a BM, that’d be stupid on our part.

We encourage you to try Beastmaster. If Bestial Wrath and the highest potential DPS output doesn’t make you happy, go back to MM. If Silencing Shot makes you happy, good on ya. Our goal is not to convince you that Beastmaster is better, but that it’s viable and awesome.

We still get emails from hunter who are being told to respec MM because that’s “The Raiding Spec”. Bullpucky. Every hunter-spec is viable if properly played. What makes Beastmaster so great is Serpent’s Swiftness and our pet’s ability to survive AoE attacks and, with healing, off-tank like a champ.

Beastmaster is not for everybody, but don’t knock it until you try it.

“Dear BRK, I’m a pretty avid reader of your blog, and i have learned quite a lot from your posts. However, until just recently, I was a MM spec hunter with just enough SV to get improved traps. This worked out great for what my guild was running, the normal 5 man instances and the occasional Heroic mode.

“Anyway, thanks for showing me around the BM tree and how to use it right. Dancinglion.”

Hallelujah, brothuhs and sistahs! We’re talkin’ ’bout DPSSSSS-en and puttin’ the smackethththth down! Spec-thumpin’, voice-a-raaaaaasin’ and praaaaaaisen’ the almighty Powerrrrr that is Beastmassssstah!

Why oh why have you not convurted, yee Mawksmen and Suhvivulists?! Praise be to the Powah, come join us in our shangri la! For there is always room here for Hunters… who desire to fullfill their Destructive Potennnnntial.

Hallelujah!