WoW Petopia Community

After finally unbugging my game-freezing Beta hunter (atleast for now), I decided to do a little bit of pet dps testing. These tests are very rough, so dont take this to the bank. Each test is roughly 4min I believe, I went off the Hunter's mark duration vaguely. I was mostly testing to see the damage on Kill Command and BM in general after the recent nerfs, and to see if Arcane Shot was again the better attack to use over KC (it isnt, KC remains on top).

I'll post screens of the dps meters for seperate pets, preferably lvl 85 ones. I've split up my dps from the pet's to show how much they are contributing to overall dps (almost 50% of my damage surprisingly)

First test was with my Devilsaur: (Kill Command was critting more than hitting, 17k was the highest)

Second test was with my Spirit Beast: (the damage on Kill Command was higher than the devilsaur, but crit was much less. 19k was the highest KC)

Shale Spider: 13k was the highest KC, the pet "kings" buff wasnt enough to offset it being a Tenacity pet. Still, it wasnt abyssmally behind in dps.

Spider: First cunning pet, didnt fair as well as I'd hoped. 13k was the highest KC, pet dps was about the same as the shale spider, which is tenacity but has the Kings-type buff. Still, it feels low for not being tenacity.

Wasp: Back to Ferocity, but this time no dps-increasing pet buff. 17k was the highest KC. Behind in damage compared to the earlier Ferocity pets, but dps was fairly close, buff difference noticeable.

Raptor: The raptor, not surprisingly to me, topped the charts of my testing thus far in pet dps and damage. The 20% armor pen buff proved to be better than the stat increase pets, although not so much as to be THE pet. One hiccup, however, is that the raptor doesnt automatically renew the debuff stack once it reaches 5, I did it manually throughout my test. I'd suggest tying it to Cobra Shot or something with a macro.


I'll keep updating this with different pets, not just Ferocity pets either. Feel free to add on with more legitmate testing, this is mostly for a glimpse at pets dps comparison. I'm aiming to stop around 990k-1m self damage done each test for a bit of a constant.

Out of curiosity, could you also link the specs you're using for your pets?

*tries very hard to focus on the numbers and not coo over the sheer adorableness of the shale spider*

must have...shale spider.. aaargh. i love the green one...to bad he's going to be camped for but hey i'll like the challenge as long as it isn't added in such an achievement to kill all rares.

Lol I'm still a bit torn between the green and yellow ones. And yeah, I'll post screens of the pet builds I'm using, I use the same across each type mostly. My Tenacity pets differ a little, but Cunning and Ferocity are all spec'd the same.

Ferocity: Tenacity: For raiding, you could swap the 3pts in Guard Dog/Taunt into Culling the Herd (3% dmg increase for 10sec after a Basic Attack crit)

Cunning:

Were you doing a full rotation? And, what is your gear like? 7k overall dps at 85 doesn't look too good if you are geared out and doing a full rotation.

The pet dps is looking pretty good, but I also wonder about the gear there... (gemming enchants and scaling in general) since pets will be more effected by it

Yes, I was testing each pet for 4-5min, full rotation. And BM did just get nerfed pretty hard last build in several ways, plus most melee/physical dmg classes are low right now, I think Unholy DKs are the exception. Most of my gear is blue/green from questing, standard stuff you will have, and most of it does not have sockets, the ones that do are gemmed. Also, with the gear being the same for each pet, it's less of a factor. At the start of testing I was usually at (pet/player combined) 8-9k dps, one test was at 10k for the first minute (with cooldowns) before dropping it may have been the wasp, I forget.

In general, DPS across the board isnt going to skyrocket right away from leveling, the crit/hit/haste/etc stats get hit very hard from leveling and crit is very low.

I'm working on leveling a raptor right now, I think they'll be a popular raid pet.

Yeah, the hit to those secondary stats is huge exponential one. (I think blizz put themselves in a corner with that, it's gonna be silly in the next expansion)

That's also why those ptr tests and videos were misleading in a way. I am near 70% crit on the ptr...

Even when you get just to 81, those stats take a big hit.

I've noticed this as well. Blizzard stated they brought bm back in line with the other two specs, sv out-dpsing by a small margin, and from testing on this end I end up around the same ballpark as yourself. A little lower, but my pets aren't quite 85 yet.

Interesting to see the direct comparison between SBeast and Devilsaur. Looks like you gained a lot more personally from the Agi buff than you did the Crit.

Well, for those of you in beta, give them feedback!

Especially on annoyed pink kitten mode

Rulah wrote:Interesting to see the direct comparison between SBeast and Devilsaur. Looks like you gained a lot more personally from the Agi buff than you did the Crit.

Yeah, the Devilsaur had much more crits, critting more often than hitting with KC. But the Spirit Beast had better base damage and higher crits because of the BS/HoW buff Cats/Spirit Beasts provide, so I'd guess that the Spirit Beast would probably be better in the long run. I'n my little 4-5min test though, they were very close to one another, making either viable

Yeah, that's what excites me most. While I will always prefer my spirit beasts, I wouldn't mind busting out the king on occasion as long as he's just as raid-worthy.

Doth777 wrote:

Rulah wrote:Interesting to see the direct comparison between SBeast and Devilsaur. Looks like you gained a lot more personally from the Agi buff than you did the Crit.

Yeah, the Devilsaur had much more crits, critting more often than hitting with KC. But the Spirit Beast had better base damage and higher crits because of the BS/HoW buff Cats/Spirit Beasts provide, so I'd guess that the Spirit Beast would probably be better in the long run. I'n my little 4-5min test though, they were very close to one another, making either viable

The agi brings AP and crit, while the straight crit is higher crit, so these results are exactly as you'd expect them to be.

That's pretty cool. I'll enjoy hearing my SB's screeching, horrific roar in raids. That is, if they fix BM for raiding in time.

Numbers are in. Even currently, Beast Mastery is still raid-viable. I've asked. heh

Yeah, from what I've read/heard, Surv is the top spec currently, BM was right behind it before the latest nerfing, and MM is dead last. I havent tested Surv much yet, I've been enjoying BM too much and/or I've been too bugged to play my hunter lol

So SV is the new MM, BM is the new SV, and MM is the new BM? Cool! This is great - I adore the pets of BM, but I love the slightly more chaotic gameplay for SV.

Seriously. I doubt it. I have my thoughts about what'll happen in the end. But anyways the expansion isn't out. This is the Cataclysm beta. The "numbers" aren't "final".

Protego wrote:Numbers are in. Even currently, Beast Mastery is still raid-viable. I've asked. heh

I'd love to see actual numbers... I suspect bm and mm are both gonna need work.