HuntsmansLodge.com

WoW Hunter Guides, News, Resources and Musings

  • Home
  • Forum
  • Hunter Macros
    • How to Set Up a WoW Macro
  • Spirit Beast Guide
  • About
    • Gar UI
    • Contributors
  • Links
  • Contact
  • Facebook

Patch Day

September 23, 2009 By Garwulf 23 Comments

Beast Mastery Nerf

This about sums up how I felt after participating in one WSG and one Wintergrasp battle as a BM Hunter.

The reality of the change was about what I’d expected, but I was still holding out hope that maybe it actually wouldn’t be quite as bad as I’d previously thought. Sadly, It was as predicted… a complete neutering of the Beast Mastery spec as far as PvP is concerned.

I had a terrible time in Warsong Gulch. Where normally I’d be tearing classes to bits while in big red, I was having difficulty finishing anyone off, even cloth. Having only ten seconds to maintain pressure is just not enough as far as BM goes.

In addition to that, I used to be a pretty decent flag runner, but now… forget it. The CC immunity nerf from 18 seconds to 10 is actually the worst part about it. Losing our burst capabilities is a huge disappointment, but where the spec really suffers is from the reduced effect of the immunity. After 10 seconds we got nothin’.

I really hope Blizzard is pleased with that 2% overall DPS buff they gave to the legions of Raiding BM Hunters out there. 😡

As indicated in my previous post, one of my first reactions to this crime was to abandon my 2 exotic PvP pets, as I’ll no longer be needing their services. I’m definitely planning on going either MM or SV for PvP. As for raiding… I’m not sure. I really want to remain a MM, but then that would mean having 2 exotic pets I can’t bare to part with left rotting in the stable; those being King Krush and Loque’nahak.

For the first time possibly ever, I’m thinking of avoiding Beast Mastery altogether until it hopefully gets fixed in a future patch. That’s a bummer for me, since it’s arguably my favorite of the Hunters specs, but it’s come to a point where it’s just not that much fun for me to play anymore.

…sigh

Filed Under: General, Hunter Pets, Talents Tagged With: beast mastery, exotic pets, nerf, patch 3.2.2, pvp, raid

Beast Mastery Changes: Acceptance and Ponderings

September 13, 2009 By Garwulf 7 Comments

Rather than continue my diatribe against the probable upcoming changes to the Beast Mastery tree, I’ve decided to shift my focus towards finding ways to adapt to the new mechanics.

First, let’s rewind a bit and recap this week’s announcement(s) and the ripple effect it had at HuntsmansLodge.com…

On Wednesday, MMO Champion posted news of a change to the Beast Mastery tree that was data mined from the Patch 3.2.2 PTR patch notes.

  • The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all times.
  • Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)

My initial opinion of this change was somewhat favorable. Although the shortened duration for The Beast Within and Bestial Wrath left me a little sad, the 10% passive damage bonus seemed like a fair trade-off. From a PvPer’s standpoint, it wasn’t the change I’d hoped to see, but I was OK with it. I liked the idea of upping the spec’s damage as a whole by 10%, even if it did mean losing some time in god-mode.

Then, the other shoe eventually dropped…

Not long after this announcement came out, it had the PvP Hunter community in an uproar over the 8 second reduced duration nerf to TBW. This prompted GC to make a formal post in the Damage Dealing forum detailing the change.

In my opinion, the news was not so good…

I love data-mined patch note day.

It should be no surprise to anyone who has been on these boards for long that we’re trying to chill out abilities that convey offensive and defensive bonuses with the same button press. At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet. With this change, hopefully, Bestial Wrath becomes more of a defensive ability while taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.

I call it more of a defensive cooldown because it now breaks all CC like a PvP trinket.

[…] “Send your pet into a rage causing 50% additional damage for 10 sec (down from 18). While enraged, the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.”

The tooltip doesn’t say this, but it now breaks all forms of CC that a PvP trinket would break (including Cyclone, Sap, etc.).

“Increases all damage you deal by 10% and while your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing mana costs of all spells by 20% for 10 sec (down from 18). While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.”

So the changes are:

  • Duration lowered.
  • Passive hunter damage buff added.
  • Now breaks all forms of CC (whatever a PvP trinket breaks, including Sap and Cyclone).

These are the things that bothered me about this explanation…

  • Since when does a pure damage-dealing class need a 41 point defensive ability..?! Especially one that is currently bringing up the rear as far as DPS and burst damage is concerned. Sure, BM has the highest burst within its 18 second window, provided the pet is active, but overall it’s lacking.
  • “…taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.” Ouch. 10% passive damage doesn’t sound so hot anymore does it..? 😕

Once I realized that the damage bonus was exclusive to the Hunter, this change left me reeling. Considering the factors involved, I quickly deduced that the PvE buff would only be realized in the form of a 2%-3% boost to DPS, but the collateral damage to BM PvP would be catastrophic. [Read more…] about Beast Mastery Changes: Acceptance and Ponderings

Filed Under: Blue Posts, Hunter Pets, Hunter PvP, Talents Tagged With: arena, battlegrounds, beast mastery, bestial wrath, dps, furious howl, hunter's mark, patch 3.2.2, pvp, raid, the beast within, wolf

Raid Ready: Serpent Sting

September 3, 2009 By Drackmire 7 Comments

Drackmire, Dwarf Marksman HunterAs a marksman hunter, one of the shots you are going to have on your target at all times is Serpent Sting.

Useful Glyphs With Serpent Sting (all are self explanatory for the most part):

  • Glyph of Arcane Shot – Your Arcane Shot refunds 20% of its mana cost if the target has one of your Stings active on it. (useful if you have mana problems)
  • Glyph of Serpent Sting – Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 sec (adds two ticks of the normal damage of your SS. It does not decrease the amount per tick to accommodate the extra 6 seconds, damage is applied using the 15 sec rate, but for 21 seconds).
  • Glyph of Steady Shot – Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when your target is afflicted with Serpent Sting. (increasing steady shot damage is always good)

In a marks build I recommend Glyph of Serpent Sting, and Glyph of Steady Shot, with your third major being Glyph of the Hawk.

Serpent Sting

Serpent sting is one of two ranged damage over time (DOT) abilities we have and has many things going for it:

  1. It scales with ranged attack power (RAP). Regardless of how you increase your RAP, you will increase the damage of your Serpent Sting.
  2. It does nature damage, which ignores armor so you will get the full damage specified in the tooltip. Of course if the target has enough nature resist, it will resist some of the serpent sting damage.
  3. As a marksman hunter, as long as you keep Chimera Shot going, you only have to pay mana for it once.
  4. Serpent sting is not limited to a single target, so you can have it up on multiple targets which is great for packs of elites in heroics or raids.
  5. It is a core ability and doesn’t require any specific talents or builds (see Wyvern Sting); it can be used in any hunter talent spec.

Some things that need to be known about Serpent Sting:

  1. Serpent Sting is not affected by ranged haste or weapon speed. You can change from a 2.0 speed weapon to a 3.0 speed weapon and the damage on Serpent Sting will not change.
  2. Serpent sting is not affected by the target’s armor. All the armor penetration in the world will not affect the damage on Serpent Sting.
  3. Serpent Sting remembers damage modifiers of the initial application; it remembers RAP of the current application; both can be modified on further applications via recasting Serpent Sting or from Chimera Shot (more on this in a minute). There is a difference which I will hopefully clear up.
  4. Hunter’s Mark increases Serpent Sting damage.
  5. Anything that increases your attack power, whether permanent (gear) or temporary (buff or item proc), affects Serpent Sting but only on for the current application. Increasing attack power after applying Serpent Sting will not increase ticks of your current Serpent Sting application.

Serpent Sting and Aspect of the Viper

I will start by saying, DO NOT apply Serpent Sting on your target while using Aspect of the Viper. This does not include reapplying using Chimera Shot, only the actual ability Serpent Sting as described in the initial post. As I said before, Serpent Sting remembers the 50% damage reduction while in Aspect of the Viper. This means that if you cast Serpent Sting on your target while in AotV, your ticks will do half damage until Serpent Sting ends or is dispelled. This includes reapplying using Chimera Shot.

If you already have Serpent Sting on and are using Aspect of the Dragonhawk, then switch to AotV for mana regen and use Chimera Shot, when the Serpent Sting reapplies it will remember the damage modifier that was used on the initial application. It will however notice that you have less attack power and the ticks of the reapplication will be slightly less, even if you switch back to AoTD until Serpent Sting is reapplied.

Example…

My normal ticks for Serpent Sting are 619. This is using Trueshot Aura and AotD only. Each tick will tick for 619. If I let the SS run its course, or if I reapply it using Chimera Shot or the regular ability it will continue to tick for 619 if there is no change to my RAP. If I have on AoTV, my normal ticks are 300. This includes the 50% damage reduction from AoTV as well as the loss of RAP from not using AoTD.

Now, say that I apply Serpent Sting while in AoTV. SS will tick for 300, and during SS I switch back to AoTD. Even though I no longer suffer the RAP and damage penalty, my SS will still tick for 300 because it remembers the initial damage modifier. If I then cast Chimera Shot, my SS will reapply; it will remember what the damage modifier was when I first applied SS, but it will also notice that I have more attack power. After the Chimera Shot, my SS now ticks for 309. So it kept the damage modifier of the original application, but it now ticks at the new RAP. The only way to get rid of the damage modifier is to reapply SS using the actual ability, and not Chimera Shot.

That was long but I hope it emphasized why it is important to not use SS while in AoTV.

Serpent Sting and Chimera Shot

Chimera Shot damage is based on the damage your Serpent Sting does, not how much it has already done. This means that if you cast Chimera Shot right after you use SS, or if you wait until right before the final tick, Chimera Shot damage will still be the same. The reapplication of SS from Chimera Shot will…

a) remember any damage modifier already on the SS, and…

b) recheck RAP and recalculate damage based on the RAP at the time of casting Chimera Shot.

All ticks of the new application will be based on the RAP at the time of casting Chimera, even if your RAP drops after casting Chimera Shot.

It would be beneficial to save Chimera Shot for when any RAP boosting abilities proc, but for the sake of DPS it’s best just to use it when it is up and should always be on cool-down. The best way to nerf your own DPS is to cast SS while in AoTV. I discovered this while farming one day, and was curious as to why my SS was ticking so low. Now I know, and hopefully… so do you. This applies mostly to raiding, as halving your SS on a 6-7 minute boss fight is a tremendous DPS loss.

If you got nothing else out of this, just remember… don’t cast Serpent Sting while in AoTV and you’ll be fine. Micromanaging SS to maximize its DPS could result in a loss of overall DPS as you wouldn’t constantly be keeping your abilities on cool-down. Now get out there and DPS!

– Drack

Filed Under: General, Raiding, Talents Tagged With: aspect of the dragonhawk, aspect of the viper, chimera shot, hunter's mark, marksmanship, serpent sting, steady shot

Haste and the Hunter… Demystified

August 27, 2009 By Garwulf 26 Comments

ChuckAlright, so with all of this new gear that has been introduced in 3.2, this past week I have been taking a hard look at haste and its value as a Hunter stat. After sitting out 3.2 for almost two weeks, I finally got back in the game and have amassed a few upgrades either via badges or instance drops. While staring at the Emblem of Conquest Quartermaster’s item screen in Dalaran, one stat has had me particularly curious as far as how to weigh it. This is of course, haste.

Since a lot of the gear that I’m either replacing or obtaining involves a large amount of haste, I decided to investigate this so called “Hunter Haste Soft Cap” and find out how much of this stat is necessary. For those of you privy to this information, you may want to skim through for a refresher, read it and check for accuracy, or perhaps just move along and wait for tomorrow’s topic. For you other Hunters out there such as myself, who are viewing haste as that gray area in your item tooltip, read on…

Haste and the Hunter

We know that haste shortens the duration of casting speed, which is good of course. A quicker casting speed means more attacks going off in a shorter amount of time. However, Hunters only have two damaging attacks that utilize a cast timer. Those are: Steady Shot and Volley.

Volley benefits from haste in that it causes the spell to provide the same amount of damage in a shorter period of time, due to the hasted casting speed and more frequent damage ticks. Yet, Steady Shot is really the only spell we’re concerned with as far as haste stacking is concerned. Volley is primarily used to AoE down trash, and DPS isn’t quite as important in those situations. How fast we can get the boss down is what’s important, thus the emphasis on Steady Shot.

Why do Hunters need haste?

Steady Shot has a base casting speed of 2.0 seconds. Our goal is to get that casting speed down to 1.5 seconds. The reason for this is that we want Steady Shot to match the value of our global cooldown, which happens to also be 1.5 seconds. The reason this is so important is because it creates a smoother shot rotation, which in turn allows for a higher damage output overall. The tighter you can weave your shots, the more damage you will do. It all boils down to simple mathematicals. 😉

By paring down the cast time on Steady Shot, you are ensuring that you will have at least one shot available every single time your GCD is up.

How much haste does a Hunter need?

Beast Mastery Hunters specced 5/5 into Serpent’s Swiftness are already haste capped. No additional haste is needed for BM Hunters in order to get down to the magical 1.5 second casting speed for Steady Shot. Since Steady Shot is such an important part of the Beast Master’s arsenal, it stands to reason that this mechanic exists for the Beast Mastery tree.

Marksmanship and Survival Hunters need 523 haste rating to reach the desired haste soft cap. “Haste soft cap”..? What is that..? I’ll get to that next.

The Hunter Haste Soft Cap

Since haste is not an exact science like hit rating is, there is no hard cap for it. When a Hunter reaches 8% or above with their hit rating, then there is absolutely no value for the stat beyond that point. Haste however still has value beyond its so called soft cap. The reason for this is that although Steady Shot cast speed cannot be reduced any further, auto shot can can be fired more frequently.

As I’d said a moment ago, Beast Mastery Hunters are inherently soft capped already, so no need for them to stack haste. Marksmanship and Survival Hunters need almost 16% additional haste, which translates into 523 haste rating in order for them to be soft capped. [Read more…] about Haste and the Hunter… Demystified

Filed Under: General, Hunter Guides, Talents Tagged With: glyph of the hawk, haste, haste soft cap, improved aspect of the hawk

Out With the Old: Spirit Bond

August 27, 2009 By Drackmire 3 Comments

DrackmireMany players may not remember what some of the Hunter talents looked like at release date, as Blizzard has made numerous changes (too many to count) to try and keep us balanced, and in line with other DPS classes. One talent in particular that I would like to look at, is Spirit Bond. A talent which provides passive and continuous healing to you and your pet, while the pet is active.

Allow me to take you back to November 2004, when World of Warcraft was brand new, and Hunters were gods among men… also they were a dime a dozen (now it’s Death Knights).

Spirit Bond as it looked in the early days of WoW

Now come back to the present.

Spirit Bond as it is now

As you can see they made not only a huge change to the talent, but completely redesigned it. This change occurred in patch 1.7 (this was the huge Hunter overhaul patch), and used to be the final tier talent in the BM tree. While it wasn’t incredible, it was definitely worth that last talent point. It only required 1 talent point (instead of 2 now), and had three ranks. Ranks 2 and 3 were trainable at levels 50 and 60, respectively. It healed for 20/30/40. It took very little mana to cast (around 200), and did not have a cooldown. You could always keep this buff up, and never have to worry about your health. Combine this with a very fast attack speed pet, and you have a healing machine.

I was actually a little miffed at Blizzard for making such a huge change to the talent. This talent was fantastic for raiding since the healers wouldn’t have to focus on you as much. For leveling and grinding, it lessened down time (not that we ever had a problem with that). For pvp, I only really ventured in Alterac Valley in those days, but I hardly ever died because of this talent unless 2-3 enemy players were focusing on me. I could send my pet on someone to disrupt casting, and focus on another person, all the while getting healed.

There were numerous times while farming in Burning Steppes that I would aggro 2 mobs while farming Thorium. One would focus on my pet, and the other would come to me and start wailing on me. Spirit bond would keep me healed (often out-healing the mobs damage to me) until I was able to focus on the second mob. It was also incredibly helpful when I was trying to solo Volchan when he was around.

Spirit Bond was such a brilliant talent, and probably belonged in the survival tree (that got Lacerate instead, lol). Why they nerfed it as badly as they did, I’ll never really know, but damn I miss the old Spirit Bond.

– Drack

Filed Under: Talents Tagged With: beast mastery, spirit bond

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 8
  • Go to Next Page »
Spirit Beasts Hunter Macros Hunter Forums

Recent Comments

  • Isadora on Spirit Beasts: Where to Find Them and Tips on Taming
  • Ilyad on Spirit Beasts: Where to Find Them and Tips on Taming
  • jose waldo on Hunter Keybinds and Macros – Pt. 1

Recent Posts

  • Major FOMO
  • Still Around
  • Legion is Really Quite Good

From the Forum

  • Forum: General Hunter DiscussionTopic: Hunter DPS issuesBy: speedbu - 4 years ago
  • Forum: General Hunter DiscussionTopic: [A] Calling All Hunters New & OldBy: Jarans - 4 years ago
  • Forum: General Hunter DiscussionTopic: Help with Skoll, If Possible.By: Ultinin - 6 years ago

Categories

Archives

Sponsored Links

WoW TCG Loot Cards

© 2008 - 2022 HuntsmansLodge.com
World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
This site is in no way affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Infolinks 2022
Hosting provided by Flywheel
Home | Forums | Hunter Macros | Gar UI | Hunter Power Auras | Buy Ads | Contact | Privacy Policy