New BM Spec seems to do more DPS then MM and Surv... Big sup

[Sokujo]

Elitist Jerks have a good Surv shot rotation.

I've played all three and I've gone back to playing my BM now.

I don't do PUG's much anymore, especially with the new dungeon finding tool, I simply don't enjoy playing with people from another realm. So I'm not worried about "comments"

I'm in a casual RolePlaying/raiding guild and they totally don't mind what spec I have.

Sure...... when your raiding and you have Recount up and running, you do try to get top DPS slot, it's just being competitive. But at the end of the day...... it's not going to matter much if you got out dps'ed by a few hundred points. So what? Did the trash get cleared? Yes. Did the Bosses go down? Yes. Did you wipe? Yes . Why? because you didn't squeeze out an extra 300 - 400 dps? Pwwww...... no!


I enjoy playing BM because I love my pets and I don't want to run MM or Surv because I couldn't use my Core Hound, or my Spirit Beast or my Worm.

I also like BM because the shot rotation is easier.

When we're talking about the absolutely same geared spec at the target range, sure MM and SURV win. But that all changes when we all have different gear and are in a raid. How much AOE are we doing? How Mana efficient are you? Etc...... It really does depend on gear and play style.

Just one more comment, As a BM I tend to go for AP rather then AGI like the OP.

So it would be interesting to see if more AGI at the end game is better for BM then AP, I've always heard for BM AP was better so that's why I stocked up on that. I figure since my pet is doing most of the damage, AP for the win, but maybe I'm wrong?

[Sarayana]

All I can say is that different playstyles and shot rotations may work better for some hunters than for others. I found my dps went up when I switched to marks from surv and BM, but that's because I was happier playing marks than the other specs (minus the loss of my dear devilsaur). I have always preferred the marks shot rotation to the others.

So IMO, if you notice that BM works better for you than the other specs, go for it! If you know how to play the spec and it makes your personal dps go up, then you should play it (so long as you're not desperately needed as a particular spec for your 10m raid or something).

This is 100% true. I was rocking BM back when Naxx was all the rage, and I mean really rocking it. I went surv purely for the mana regen (we were short on mana batteries back then), but then strangely found that I liked it better. I'm dual specced and switch back to BM every so often, but I haven't even looked at my BM spec for a couple of patches now...

Nikkrosnil, as for a surv shot priority, I go with this:

Kill shot > Explosive > Aimed > Black arrow > Serpent sting > Steady

All my shots are macro'd with trinkets, Kill command, and rapid fire, like so:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip Kill Shot
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast [@pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

With a mix of new emblem of triumph/ICC5 gear and Naxx raiding gear (since my hunter was shelved for a healer when we hit Ulduar), I'm easily putting out 4.5-5.5k in 5-mans.

[Danielfboone]

Just one more comment, As a BM I tend to go for AP rather then AGI like the OP.

So it would be interesting to see if more AGI at the end game is better for BM then AP, I've always heard for BM AP was better so that's why I stocked up on that. I figure since my pet is doing most of the damage, AP for the win, but maybe I'm wrong?

It used to be that AP was better but currently there is little to no difference between the 2 except for how the dps is distributed. With AP, the pet will do more and the Hunter less. With Agi, the opposite is true. The end result is the same, or close enough to make dual speccing a lot easier since you can enchant and gem for Agi and use the same setup in whatever spec you currently are in. Gear choices can be different though because of tier set bonuses which are better for some specs than others. You also can get away with not being fully hit capped as MM or SV but you absolutely have to be capped as BM. (Actually you need to be slightly over the cap)

Remember as well that AP is going away as a stat in Cataclysm.

[Danielfboone]

I ran ICC 25 again last night and was in my MM spec up until we wiped twice on Festergut. we have downed him two times before and both times I did the fight as BM so I switched for the third attempt. My dps jumped up from just over 6k as MM to 6900 and we downed him with 11 seconds to spare on the timer. Don't let anyone tell you that BM is a dead spec for raiding.

[Chrizesu]

MM can be dead without the right gear and gem combination.

BM has really reached up in the dps with the last major content patches, but I personally still do more in survival spec. I also make sure to use femaledwarf to compute the best set-up for my hunter.

Sadly my mage still makes my hunter look like a noob.

[Danielfboone]

MM can be dead without the right gear and gem combination.

BM has really reached up in the dps with the last major content patches, but I personally still do more in survival spec. I also make sure to use femaledwarf to compute the best set-up for my hunter.

It had nothing to do with gear and gems. I use the Hunter DPS Spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks and I know what the best setup for me is. Festergut requires a lot of movement and consequent down time. There also is a debuff that you get frequently that takes you out of action temporarily. As BM, the movement doesn't cost as much damage since my pet is keeping up his 3.2k dps the whole time instead of the 1.2k he does as MM. I can also break the debuff by popping Bestial Wrath or even be immune to it if it hits me while I'm already in Wrath. Those are the reasons why BM is actually better in that one encounter.

I'm not saying that BM will beat out MM consistently, but in certain cases, it definitely can.

[Striv]

I love BM. I gem pure AP though but /shrug. Never tried to gem pure Agil. I heard AP is the way to go since your pet benefits from it. But whatever. I love BM and I'm content. I top meters unless theres a ret pally in the group. Then I fail miserably hahaha.

[Danielfboone]

I love BM. I gem pure AP though but /shrug. Never tried to gem pure Agil. I heard AP is the way to go since your pet benefits from it. But whatever. I love BM and I'm content. I top meters unless theres a ret pally in the group. Then I fail miserably hahaha.

Like I said , AP used to be the way to go. I suspect that a big reason why AGI is now equal or better has to do with the recent increase in gear that has a proc effect. Some of it will only proc on a crit and you certainly have a better crit rate gemming AGI.

[Silvarain]

im BM proud, but i did have to make a switch to SV to get picked up for raids. same gear/gems/even using 1-2 attack macros (yes, im a one botton masher), my damage was higher as SV than BM sadly, but then again i was never really allowed to raid as BM. so i used some spreadsheets and saw my BM setup damage not that far behind my SV setup. after some better raid gear, i raided 10mans/low end raids as BM and still came out in the top 5. lots of things make a good hunter, like which spec one is great at. i hate when others say that raiding BM is like asking others to carry him when that BM could just be sitting in the back doing nothing and there looks to be other raiders that BM (and other top dpsers/healers) is carrying. is seems like the more one spec is on top of the others the closer it get to a good o'fashion nerf bat beating (looks at MM).

[Acherontia]

I'm another BM raider. I am consistently top dps, or top 4 in VERY good groups. The highest I've hit in a 5-man without AoE is 9.1k. With the current ICC buff it's usually over 10k. I can't remember the last time I've seen another hunter out-dps me, and for that matter, I can't remember the last time I saw another BM raider in-game. That said, my gear is quite good and my realm is bad.

My Armory

You can see my gear/gem choices here. I go Agility. Wolf gives me the best dps, but due to lack of stable slots I'm currently running raids with my devilsaur (Valak, Krush). My pet generally does ~4k of my dps.

I post this in case anyone is doing some number crunching and would like more examples of high-output BM raider setups.

(I have had this spec since hitting 80, and it is quite similar to the OPs spec. I do take full Frenzy because I saw a dps drop without it, for whatever reason. Was thinking about switching a point out of that and one out of kill command timer for more crit, and for improved tracking over in surv, but haven't bothered yet)

[Malackai]

mm this seems interesting i might actually try this out the next raid.

I have swapped from Surv to MM since on heavenly movement based fights Surv tends not to cut it sort of speak

but after a couple of raids i find MM really boring i never raided BM before so sounds pretty interesting

[Silvarain]

MM boring?! lol that's something i thought i'd never heard someone say. you may/will see some dps loss but with your good-o'-boy doing better dps itself you can move around a *bit* more than you could as SV/MM. start with small/familiar raids and as always have fun

[Unggoy]

I know this holds true for PvP, but as BM, isnt gemming AP the way to go?

[Silvarain]

it still *may* be but the agi stat gives ap plus other stuff that goes to the pet. i, being cheap lol, never tried ap gems and always thought that the ap from the gems themselves where around the same if not less than the over-all dps i got from the agi gems (but thats just my way of thinking!). plus if you ever duel theres no need to re-gem.

[Malackai]

MM boring?! lol that's something i thought i'd never heard someone say. you may/will see some dps loss but with your good-o'-boy doing better dps itself you can move around a *bit* more than you could as SV/MM. start with small/familiar raids and as always have fun

Well I was MM during Vanilla and start of BC
I tried out Surv for fun during the lovely SSC raids and tbh I never looked back.

I guess I just like the procy nature of the spec.

with MM i just have the felling the only thing I am doing is refreshing Serpent sting with chimera :S

[Kalliope]

with MM i just have the felling the only thing I am doing is refreshing Serpent sting with chimera :S

You're not using aimed/steady/silencing and juggling readiness/rapid fires? O_o

[Malackai]

with MM i just have the felling the only thing I am doing is refreshing Serpent sting with chimera :S

You're not using aimed/steady/silencing and juggling readiness/rapid fires? O_o

well yea of course but like i said it "feels" like i am only refreshing the whole fight >_>

Silence is pretty much macroed in to my "shots"
so its basically steady aimed (arcane on the move) the whole readiness/rapid thing is in the start of the fight or near the end of it.

With surv you have to keep a mind on serpent, black arrow, and proc's, EW, lock and load and going machine gun mode when it proc's

but i am gonna try BM as well cant say i have experiences with it but dint had the same with MM either

[Saturo]

Those process you love about SV are what I hate with the spec. It makes it far too random and complicated for me. I like my rotation with few distractions, thankyouverymuch. :P I'm not a fan of the short, incredibly boring BM rotation either tough. I'm weird. Huge surprise, eh? :P

[Malackai]

Those process you love about SV are what I hate with the spec. It makes it far too random and complicated for me. I like my rotation with few distractions, thankyouverymuch. I'm not a fan of the short, incredibly boring BM rotation either tough. I'm weird. Huge surprise, eh?

everyone his/her fun right :3

I hope in cata that all 3 specs are gonna be useful/competitive tho
I really don't like being pigeonholed in to one spec for a whole exspac >_> (tho i am not counting on it )

[Saturo]

One spec will always be better. Let's just all hope it's the one we like.

At least, the difference really shouldn't be as great as it has been so far.