BM Raiders

[Saturo]

Depends on what's on CD. If Cobra is coming back within the next GCD, I go for a Serpent, and then instantly shoot off my Cobra. If not, I usually pop Aimed. No idea what SV does, tough.

[Slickrock]

Yeah, it's gem agility until you can get ~ 700 Arp passive, then gem Arp. If you are short on cash, just gem your 264 gear that you likely won't be replacing with Arp, and wait on the other slots until you replace those items.

[Quin]

This is a really fascinating discussion for me. I'm actually working to raid on my BM hunter.

[Nagathia]

Thx all for the suggestions. Still unsure if i want to switch my gems or not, as it's pretty costly. I do like how my pet can mow down a stray elite in ICC without me though. Maybe ill wait till cataclysm. As Blizz says haste will supposedly be a big part of BMs then. I am dual-specced MM, but without the ArP that spec is no different. Plus I don't have a non-BM pet, so I don't know how much that'd gimp my dps.
BtW Tahlian how much dps do you do in and out icc, if you don't mind my asking?

[Dizzy]

i'm very interested in this discussion too. xD

how much DPS do you generally pull in ICC, Acherontia and Tahlian?

I'd ask Saturo but i thought it was asked before and i don't think yous aid. xD

i do LOVE BM, it's very fun and one of the reasons i rolled a hunter was because of the pet.
but i also like doing a ton of DPS, and right now (ig uess because of my crappy gear and i dont' know about BM raiding at all) MM is better than my BM. xD
i never get to use BM anymore ; ;

[Acherontia]

Lol, I meant currently (WotLK), Saturo, but that'll do

For DPS comparisons, I generally pull around 9k-10k in raids. With the ICC buff, it's more-- ~13k is I think the best I've managed, on Rotface iirc, and it is usually hovering around 12k on bosses, a bit less with heavy movement & target switching, probably 10-11k.

Going to mention some things about my spec/glyphs/gear here, so you can compare my dps to other BM raiders and see where & why we differ.

I am not running the "proper" BM raiding spec. It has 5/5 in Frenzy (I saw a dps loss with the standard 3, for whatever reason, although I may test it again) and odd points elsewhere. I did not take the mana-regen points, as I rarely need them; some hunters take these & some don't. On the rare occasion there's no Replenishment in the raid, I do suffer if fights drag on, but this is VERY rare. I'm also spec'd & glyphed for fastest BW cycles; Kill Command is off cooldown twice (and a bit, may unspec 1 point here) for every BW. That means I do BW + KC, KC, BW + KC, etc. I've been meaning to drop a point from Frenzy and a point from Catlike Reflexes to try and get more crit/damage in the other trees, but haven't been playing much tbh--it may be worth a shot to check that out, though. Last but not least, I'm gemmed -agi-, which is also not the norm. Most BM hunters stack AP, and some high-end ones do ArP, although I've seen exactly 0 of these on my realm.

[Renle]

Very interesting discussion here. I'd heard that most BM raiders wanna gem AP, but I've gemmed agi forever now. Just recently I've switched out a few of my agi gems for ap and I'm hoping I'll see somewhat of a boost there.

I haven't heard of BM hunters stacking ArP yet though. However, with cata so close on the horizon, and me doing just fine dps wise-(a guildy just recently pointed out that I ranked #4 BM hunter in reg 10 man Festergut on world of logs, and I pooped bricks lol)-I think I'll skip that regemming bill for now xP

One of the reasons I picked up BM for raiding anyways (besides that it's awesome fun) is that my laptop is horrible, and I lag like crazy in ICC, especially 25 man. So I figured if I cant grind out a long rotation due to the lag, then a short 2-3 button rotation, and a pet that hits like a truck might work better for me, and it does. So I tend to wanna shy away from stats that take power away from my pet and give it back into my butterfingers

Here be my armory for any that wish to peruse it:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... s&cn=Renle

Though I will say I once again need to tinker with my spec slightly. I need to take that point out of imp. Mend pet and stick it into Catlike reflexes instead :/
It's just such a pain to completely respec for a single point shift lol.