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.
Like dalaila said, just tick the load out of date addons option and you should be set.
As far as an updating client for addons, I’ve been using the Curse client ever since WoWMatrix got the finger from Curse and WoWInterface. It works pretty good. It’s a lot more convenient than manual updating anyway.
http://www.curse.com/client/
@ Hung
I use PowerAuras for Mend Pet and trinket procs, I love it. In the addon interface (characters screen) just checl “load outdated addons” and it will work again.
Thanks for the info Gar. Got another question for ya if you don’t mind. Do you use powerauras addon? I use to use it to keep track of my serpent sting and when various skills are ready for use. However with update 3.1, it has been disabled and I have not seen a update on the powerauras addon. Is there any other addon you use and recommend to keep track of those skills.
thanks
– Hung
I usually pop Readiness near the beginning of a boss fight, just as Rapid Fire is wearing off. Then I’ll immediately fire off another Chimera, Aimed, Arcane, then pop Rapid Fire again.
Usually the CD will be up before the end of the fight, so then you can still get some juicy double Kill Shots and Chimeras, along with another Rapid Fire.
I only use those traps once in awhile in arena if I’m stuck in melee, have no escape, and am trying to finish off an opponents’ last few HPs.
You have the same exact two trinkets I was using for months. I recently just got Loatheb’s Shadow, which replaced Incisor Fragment. Loatheb’s would be about the best upgrade for you until you reach 25 mans.
Got another question for ya. How do you use the readiness talent. Do you use it to get 2 rapid fires in a boss fight or do you save it at the end and get 2 kill shots and 2 chimera shots.
Do you ever use explosive/immolation traps?
What type of trinket should I look for? Ones that give AP, crit, haste, or armor piercing?
thanks as always,
Hung
I figured as much, which is why I didn’t put much emphasis on your crit. I didn’t even look at your BM spec.
Thanks guys for the feedback. Woops I had posted my BM spec. I actually was farming for son of hodir rep at the time as BM. Here is my MM instance spec.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Meganchan
My crit is more like 28% when I am MM and when I have my +crit trinkets on.
– Hung
You’ve got it Hung. You’re going to need to start doing some 10 or 25 mans if you want to see bigger numbers.
Not only will you see an improvement from gear upgrades, but the additional raid buffs will boost your dps considerably.
2.4k isn’t bad at all considering you still have a half dozen blues, and the epics you do have are pre-raid anyway. You could probably pull about 2.8k in a 10 man with your current gear, and maybe 3.3k in a 25 man.
Like Dalaila said, group composition can play a huge factor. For instance, if you were to get into a raid with a Mage, Feral Druid and two Pallies, including a Ret, receiving: AI, GotW, LotP, BoM and BoK. That would be a pretty ideal situation, making your DPS soar.
In a 25 man you’re going to be receiving buffs up the wazoo, so don’t think that 2.4k is anywhere near your max DPS.
If I were you, I’d start pugging some Vaults of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum runs. OS is pretty quick and easy, unless you try for 1 drake or more. VoA used to be quick and easy, but it still can be a pretty fast clear when with the right group. That new boss is a toughy.
I pretty much always gem for agility, but AP is alright for MM since it scales nicely with TSA. However, eventually you should just gem for agil once you obtain more upgrades.
@ Hung
You’re missing Crit% (22 is way too low) and +AGI enchants (your gems/enchantments are +AP). Crit really helps boosting your DPS but even 2400 is not bad at all, it depends on party composition.
Hello Garwulf,
The max dps I can achieve in a heroic is around 2.4k. Any suggestions on how I an get it higher other than do Naxx/Ulduar raids to get better gear? Here is my current armory profile. I run as a MM build with a wolf.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&cn=Meganchan&gn=Faithkeepers
thanks
– Hung
Right here:
https://huntsmanslodge.com/contact
-OT-
Hey Gar, do you have a mail/message box where we can reach you? I did not see any contact stuff on the blog (but I could have missed that). Let me know!