Focused Fire
2 Point Talent
Description: All damage caused by you is increased by 1/2% while your pet is active and the critical strike chance of your pet’s special abilities is increased by 10/20% while Kill Command is active.
Overview
Focused fire impoves your DPS as long as your pet’s alive. Your damage is increased by 1 or 2% and your pet’s specials will crit a lot more often while under Kill Command.
Why take it?
It’s cheap additional DPS. It’s pretty much a given that all BM builds will grab this. It provides a nice burst for BM PvP as well, due to the increased pet crit during Kill Command.
Raiding MM Hunters will probably want this talent as well.
Why not take it?
Raiding SV Hunters rely upon their pets the least of the three specs and most likely will not dump points in here. SV Hunters will benefit more from ranged damage buffing talents in the MM tree.
MM and SV PvP Hunters will probably not pick up this talent either. If either spec dropped more than 5 points into BM for PvP, they’d most likely grab Improved Revive Pet and ignore this one.
Improved Aspect of the Monkey
3 Point Talent
Description: Increases the Dodge bonus of your Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Dragonhawk by 2/4/6%.
Overview
This talent improves the Hunter’s dodge rating by up to 6% while Aspect of the Dragonhawk or Monkey is active. This talent lends itself more to PvP than PvE, as it only increases the Hunter’s dodge % and does nothing for the pet.
Why take it?
Some arena Hunters put points in here to increase survivability against melee classes. Before the AotM Glyph was removed, this talent was pretty spectaculous. Oh how I miss that glyph…
Why not take it?
For PvE, this talent is kind of a waste. Your pet will be tanking most everything when you’re out questing, grinding, etc.
Raiding Hunters move along… nothing to see here.
Thick Hide
3 Point Talent
Description: Increases the armor rating of your pets by 7/14/20% and your armor contribution from items by 4/7/10%.
Overview
Thick Hide improves your pet’s armor by up to 20% and your armor by up to 10%. If I’m not mistaken, the armor gain your pet receives from this talent should exceed the tootltip %, because it will also receive additional armor rating from your bonus of 4, 7 or 10%.
Why take it?
It’s a good talent for BM Hunters who want a durable tanking pet for PvE. It’s also a decent place to stick a point in order to advance to the third tier of the BM tree. One point is actually not a bad value, because the talent has diminishing returns.
Why not take it?
It’s not going to be beneficial for raiding. The additional armor your pet gains from this talent is not going to prevent it from dying in a raid. It also amounts to fewer points available for dps-improving talents.
For PvP, you can drop a token point in here in order to advance to the third tier talents, but any more than that is a waste. The additional armor is not going to save your pet from the majority of damage-dealing attacks in PvP. One point in here is sufficient for a tad more mitigation vs physical attacks.
Improved Revive Pet
2 Point Talent
Description: Revive Pet’s casting time is reduced by 6 sec, mana cost is reduced by 20/40%, and increases the health your pet returns with by an additional 15/30%.
Overview
This talent reduces the time it takes to revive your pet if it should drop during a fight. It also lessens the mana cost of the Revive Pet spell and increases the amount of health your pet has the moment it’s revived.
Why take it?
This talent is pretty essential for raiding BM Hunters. As hard as you may try to micro-manage your pet, there is always a chance that it could die during an encounter. Without this talent, it’s going to hamper your DPS something fierce. I used to get away without using it in TBC, but in WotLK it seems pretty invaluable.
MM Hunters going for Aspect Mastery will want 2 points in here as well. While MM and SV depend upon their pets a lot less than BM, losing it still amounts to an incredible DPS loss.
With 2/2 in this talent, you can have your pet back up and in the mix within about 5 seconds. Without it, you’ll have a 10 second cast time for your Revive Pet, increased mana drain, and your pet will return with a sliver of health. Depending upon your available mana pool when you revive, it could take awhile longer before your pet’s mended and ready to get back into the fray. This talent turns your pet dying from a catastrophe into a minor hiccup.
For BGs and arena, you’re probably going to want to grab 2/2 in here if you rely upon your pet’s DPS or utility. If you’re BM, then you definitely want this talent. While one of our priorities is to keep our pet up in PvP, sometimes things can go bad. Without this talent, getting a pet back up in arena is nearly impossible. However, with a 4 second cast time you can probably buy yourself the necessary time with a well executed trap, or with the help of a teammate.
Note: If you do go 2/2 in this talent, make sure you also grab the minor Glyph of Revive Pet.
Why not take it?
Raiding SV Hunters probably won’t go much further into the BM tree than a few points into Improved Aspect of the Hawk. They’ll have better places to spend points within their own tree and in the MM tree. Any build that will be focusing on pet-unfriendly encounters will probably skip this too.
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