I don't like this patch anymore..

[Tahlian]

However, it also took place a day or two before the additional buffs to Burrow were put in on beta, so either they'd already planned it, or the conversation led to some quick adjustments being patched in over there.

[Kalliope]

I assumed the additional buffs had already been planned, since when Burrow came in, it was ridiculously low damage. The subsequent buff may not have been enough.

[Worba]

Did some additional DPS testing with my BE in BM spec; her burst DPS was very good, but once she settled in for the long haul she finally ended up about 10% lower than she'd gotten with MM spec. Not sure how I feel about that, since I never used BM for anything besides solo'ing...

[Slickrock]

Did some additional DPS testing with my BE in BM spec; her burst DPS was very good, but once she settled in for the long haul she finally ended up about 10% lower than she'd gotten with MM spec. Not sure how I feel about that, since I never used BM for anything besides solo'ing...

Live, PTR, or Beta? since Beta has more changes to shot damage and coefficients. Also, which pet? Yes, there are still differences with the pets. I'm seeing a dps increase with cats that the spreadsheet is showing as well.

[Kalliope]

Did some additional DPS testing with my BE in BM spec; her burst DPS was very good, but once she settled in for the long haul she finally ended up about 10% lower than she'd gotten with MM spec. Not sure how I feel about that, since I never used BM for anything besides solo'ing...

Live, PTR, or Beta? since Beta has more changes to shot damage and coefficients. Also, which pet? Yes, there are still differences with the pets. I'm seeing a dps increase with cats that the spreadsheet is showing as well.

Of course cats and spirit beasts are going to give a big advantage when you're solo: the agility buff is extremely helpful in terms of pure dps.

It's not so much that there are differences between pets as it is that "Horn of Winter is an EXTREMELY good hunter buff."

[Slickrock]

Did some additional DPS testing with my BE in BM spec; her burst DPS was very good, but once she settled in for the long haul she finally ended up about 10% lower than she'd gotten with MM spec. Not sure how I feel about that, since I never used BM for anything besides solo'ing...

Live, PTR, or Beta? since Beta has more changes to shot damage and coefficients. Also, which pet? Yes, there are still differences with the pets. I'm seeing a dps increase with cats that the spreadsheet is showing as well.

Of course cats and spirit beasts are going to give a big advantage when you're solo: the agility buff is extremely helpful in terms of pure dps.

It's not so much that there are differences between pets as it is that "Horn of Winter is an EXTREMELY good hunter buff."

True, true. Was curious about the testing, since pets still do matter.

And after you go past the Horn of Winter buff, some of our other buffs that the pets bring really don't benefit us that much, so that's a consideration as well.

[Kalliope]

Live, PTR, or Beta? since Beta has more changes to shot damage and coefficients. Also, which pet? Yes, there are still differences with the pets. I'm seeing a dps increase with cats that the spreadsheet is showing as well.

Of course cats and spirit beasts are going to give a big advantage when you're solo: the agility buff is extremely helpful in terms of pure dps.

It's not so much that there are differences between pets as it is that "Horn of Winter is an EXTREMELY good hunter buff."

True, true. Was curious about the testing, since pets still do matter.

And after you go past the Horn of Winter buff, some of our other buffs that the pets bring really don't benefit us that much, so that's a consideration as well.

Well, that's the point. Some pet buffs are not there for us. (Rhinos, I'm looking at you, with your bleed increase in a tree that has no bleeds.) The increased spell damage taken debuff isn't really going to benefit hunters who are soloing; even survival hunters aren't going to see a big increase in solo dps. Those pet buffs/debuffs are there for our raid, not for hunter min-maxing soloing pleasure.

My point is that if you walk over to a dummy with only self buffs, you SHOULD expect to see a difference in dps based on which ONE buff you have with you. It's testing in a vacuum.

[Worba]

Did some additional DPS testing with my BE in BM spec; her burst DPS was very good, but once she settled in for the long haul she finally ended up about 10% lower than she'd gotten with MM spec. Not sure how I feel about that, since I never used BM for anything besides solo'ing...

Live, PTR, or Beta? since Beta has more changes to shot damage and coefficients. Also, which pet? Yes, there are still differences with the pets. I'm seeing a dps increase with cats that the spreadsheet is showing as well.

Live

MM / wolf
BM / spirit beast.

Still fiddling with pet talents so that may be a factor but at the moment spirit beasts seem to get the best results (on target dummies, so take that for what it's worth - I totally get that target dummy results are by no means 100% representative of actual performance).

[Worba]

As an additional note - whilst reforging into mastery seemed to help my MM hunter, it actually seems to make things worse for BM spec - my 2 night elves have the same ilvl; Dougal reforged just his excess +hit into mastery, whilst Velocity reforged everything (primarily crit) into mastery, and Dougal seems a few hundred dps ahead.

Not sure yet how mastery fits in with SV spec.

On a kinda similar note, my fury warrior hasn't reforged any pts into mastery, and her DPS is very good... which seems to be confirmed in the online buzz, that haste/crit>mastery for fury warriors...

[Kalliope]

Sounds like Dougal's gear was better itemized to begin with, since dropping hit is easier than dropping crit.

And as always, what sort of rotation are you using for BM? Also, as Slick and I had discussed earlier, spirit beasts and cats should perform best on dummies, simply because they're the pets that give the biggest agility buff for solo buffing.

[Worba]

Yeah, you're right about courageous roar / target dummies - in re: stats yes Dougal definitely seems to have more optimized stats and I'm fairly sure it's because mastery is not that great for BM spec... but it's early to say and my testing is far, far from comprehensive...

Both nelfs used the same prioritizations

Serp > KC > arc/steady (according to focus level)

Incidentally after some more research I went ahead and redid some of the reforges (re- re- re- argh) on my MM hunter Khitsune away from mastery > haste > crit and into haste > mastery > crit (e.g. ensure every slot has haste, one way or the other) and this time was finally able to get my 3.3 DPS on the target dummies.

Obviously, that's with careful aim being up 24/7 and all the other fairyland aspects of target dummy DPS, but still promising; will try and run another heroic as soon as I can.

EDIT: Ok I see what you're saying - as far as being better optimized before the reforging... don't think so, as I've always been careful to keep it as close to hit cap as possible - my toons' hit % is usually somewhere in the 5.0-5.4 range (as you may guess, I do not currently raid)?

[Kalliope]

Well, it was just the idea that if one toon was reforging out of hit and one was reforging out of crit, the one who had had the excess hit should theoretically be losing "less" in the way of dps than the one who lost crit, assuming that both are still hit capped.

I'm guessing that you're testing on the non-boss heroic dummies due to being short on hit? Cause potential misses would make a huge difference in your numbers too.

[Worba]

Well, it was just the idea that if one toon was reforging out of hit and one was reforging out of crit, the one who had had the excess hit should theoretically be losing "less" in the way of dps than the one who lost crit, assuming that both are still hit capped.

I'm guessing that you're testing on the non-boss heroic dummies due to being short on hit? Cause potential misses would make a huge difference in your numbers too.

I probably could have been clearer about what they both were reforging out of.

Yes I am testing on non-boss target dummies, but is 5% "short" outside of raids?

Also my DPS testing is very sloppy - when I talk about "dungeon DPS" what I really mean is, "this is about where recount stood throughout". Why? Because meaningless as trash dps is, I've found (for the most part) that the darn bosses tend to move/interrupt/otherwise interfere with your rotations to the point where their numbers become equally meaningless.

[Kalliope]

Well, it was just the idea that if one toon was reforging out of hit and one was reforging out of crit, the one who had had the excess hit should theoretically be losing "less" in the way of dps than the one who lost crit, assuming that both are still hit capped.

I'm guessing that you're testing on the non-boss heroic dummies due to being short on hit? Cause potential misses would make a huge difference in your numbers too.

I probably could have been clearer about what they both were reforging out of.

Yes I am testing on non-boss target dummies, but is 5% "short" outside of raids?

Also my DPS testing is very sloppy - when I talk about "dungeon DPS" what I really mean is, "this is about where recount stood throughout". Why? Because meaningless as trash dps is, I've found (for the most part) that the darn bosses tend to move/interrupt/otherwise interfere with your rotations to the point where their numbers become equally meaningless.

5% works on random level 80 trash, but anything higher than that, you'll see misses. 5% is the PvP hit cap, 8% is for PvE - and yes, that's outside of raids too. Anything above your level is going to require higher hit to actually hit.

[Worba]

Okay, it looks like vs a (non-raid) boss, you need +6% to have a zero miss rate? (at 5.14, it shows miss chance of 0.86 vs lvl 82)

This sounds familiar actually - didn't they bump miss chance up by 1% in 4.0? Or am I misremembering?

[Kalliope]

Sounds right.

[Worba]

Did a quick random heroic - my MM hunter's "actual DPS" is better. Not back to 3.3 levels (didn't want to get my hopes up too much back at the target dummies...) , but at least good enough that she no longer looks like a scrub. Given that many on the wow forums have reported seeing a 1k or so drop in overall DPS I feel this is probably about as good as it's going to get for Khitsune until cata.

[Kalliope]

Things will get better when we get more actual mastery on our gear, not just the reforged stuff. Glad you're already seeing improvements!