I’ve been getting a couple requests for guides lately and one of the popular ones seems to be glyphs. So, Pike will go into teacher-mode and tell you about the glyphs she’s currently using and recommends for BM Hunters and why!
Part One: Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Steady Shot
What it does: Buffs your Steady Shot by 10%.
Why it’s good: If you are a BM hunter, then Steady Shot is a very hefty chunk of your damage. Boosting that all by 10%? Yeah. Yeah. The trick is to keep Serpent Sting up at all times in order to take advantage of this glyph. The DPS increase is huge. Even post-incoming-nerf I still think this is going to be important to help pull your Steady Shot back up to speed. Don’t leave home without it.
Glyph of Bestial Wrath
What it does: Decreases the cooldown on Bestial Wrath/The Beast Within by 20 seconds.
Why it’s good: Let’s talk about all the stuff that BW/TBW does. Firstly, it increases your pet’s damage by 50%. Secondly, it increases your own damage by 10%. Thirdly, it decreases the mana cost of all your abilities by 20%. Fourthly, it makes you and your pet basically immune to CC and Fear. Fifthly, it’s one of the most fun hunter abilities on the planet. Don’t you think? Now shave 20 seconds off the cooldown with this glyph. Now further decrease that cooldown with Longevity. If you are a BM fan and you aren’t drooling yet then I want to know who you are and what you did with the hunter that was previously reading this blog! D=
Those two are basically a given. Now let’s talk about the two contenders for the third spot.
Exhibit A:
Glyph of Aspect of the Viper
What it does: Increases your mana regen from ranged attacks when in Aspect of the Viper by 10%.
Why it’s good: The new Aspect of the Viper is a nifty concept, but not all good things are free and mana regen is no exception. When you are in Aspect of the Viper, your damage is nerfed by 50%. Now, us Beast Masters have it better than most. For starters, we have Aspect Mastery, which reduces that damage reduction down to 40%. And secondly, we have our powerful pet unaffected and still pounding away. So overall we lose less damage on this than others would.
However, we still want to spend as little time as we need to in Viper and spend most of our time in Hawk/Dragonhawk. Which is where this glyph comes into play. The more mana we regen the quicker we can hop back out to Hawk. It’s that simple.
Exhibit B:
Glyph of Serpent Sting:
What it does: Increases the duration on your Serpent Sting by 3 seconds (or 6 seconds, after a coming patch!)
Why it’s good: The longer your Serpent Sting is active, the more you can use your Steady Shot without having to spend a cooldown period refreshing your Serpent Sting. Six extra seconds would theoretically buy you four extra Steady Shots. Of course I imagine most of us are not D.A.R.Y.L. or living in a lagfree world and we’d probably only get in three extra Steadys, but still, that can make a difference.
So which of those two am I supposed to use, Pike?
The answer is… I’m still not sure. Today, in the name of science, I spent some gold on a couple each Glyphs of Aspect of the Viper and Glyphs of Serpent Sting and battered those training dummies silly, taking note of how much DPS I did with each after a set number of Dragonhawk/Viper cycles. The results were… inconclusive. Just as I was starting to think Serpent Sting was winning out, Viper suddenly came back with a big vengeance. Really it’s hard to say and I’m going to theorize that when you toss human error into the equation they’re fairly similarly good overall and you should either do your own testing, and/or go with whichover one is cheapest or more appealing to you. I personally am sticking with Viper for now. Warning though!: Results may change with the upcoming buff to the Serpent Sting glyph. I’ll get back to you on that. *nod*
Next time: Minor Glyphs and why Pike is only using two of them right now. Until then, as always, poke me if you have questions or if I have made some sort of dire mistake or ungodly typo. Hey, I’ve made those before.
Oh and before I forget again, thanks Brigwyn for making me the guest of honor and letting me be interviewed over at his site, The Hunting Lodge. And if you are absolutely insane and can’t get enough Pike Questions, there are rumors on the internets that she will be appearing in bigger venues soonish. Stay tuned!
Viper for raiding, Serpent for 5-manning.
If you’re raiding, and there’s even one MM Hunter who’ll be maintaining a Serpent Sting indefinitely (via Chimera and our 21-second stings, because we WILL be using GoSSting), you will always have that 10% bonus from GoSteady. In a 5-man, you can’t always be so sure of a MM Hunter being a comrade-in-arms, so it’s up to you to maintain the stings.
(And if there’re any MM nuts in the crowd other than me, you want Serpent Sting, Viper, and Steady Shot. Steady Shot’s bugged and doesn’t stack with Marked for Death, but it’ll get fixed… eventually. /hope)
I’d say that serpent would be more useful in raids, where trash doesn’t die as quickly. The thing is, I’m pretty sure that the serpent sting that matters is your OWN, not theirs. This makes you actually do work.
I’m considering getting the serpent sting buff myself, as less applications mean less mana used for more damage. If I really need mana, I will rapid fire-viper to full. That should do it for me.
The viper glyph seems to be very useful, but I would think more so for MM and Surv, as they need the bigger AotV bonus to make up for their slow attack speed (in comparison to BM).
Thank you for making the list of Glyphs Pike! I really don’t know what to do witht hem yet, and now I do thanks to your post.
Not so. Did extensive testing on Beta with a BM Hunter and he found that my sting powered his Steady Shot glyph.
D.A.R.Y.L. looks like a good movie. I’ve never heard of it before… It seems I have to find a place to watch it.
(Sorry, very non-constructive comment. XD)
Thanks for posting this Pike! I’ve really got to get my glyphs sorted out before I start raiding – right now I’ve just got whatever my dear inscriptionist tossed me while he was leveling. 🙂
I think I’m going to try going with the Viper, since I’m still doing a lot of soloing, and things tend to die too quickly for the Serpent Sting to need more duration.
Minor glyphs – teh suxxors. Look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say on them.
Well, in that case thanks for pointing that out Rilgon!
I think that for BM, I will take the Viper glyph, so I can stick to damage talents instead of having to get invigoration or something.
For MM and Surv, this isn’t a problem though, at least from this list. GET BOTH! HAHAHAHA!
*cough*
Pike? BRK made a comment that might make the decision a little easier. He pointed out that the longer sting meant less mana usage. IE longer before you need to go to Viper. I had not thought of it in that light but I think that is the way I am gonna go…..just thought I would pass on what he had posted.
Gunsnbutter Excelsior/Uther
@Gunsnbutter: And like I said in my first comment, the Serpent glyph is only worth using if you don’t have a MM Hunter posting stings for you. If you’re the only Hunter in your raids or EVERY Hunter in your raids is BM, then yes, use it, but otherwise, use the Viper glyph to further reduce your Viper time.
Regarding the discussion about another hunter providing the Serpent Sting for you:
There seems to be some debate as to whether or not another hunter’s Serpent Sting will affect your Steady Shot. For the time being I am going to assume it can because that seems to be the more general concensus.
With that out of the way, thanks Rilgon for bringing it up. I’d been so hard-wired into solo/five-mans mode that I had forgotten about the whole having-another-hunter-with-you thing. I am going to go ahead and agree that yes, if you are a raider and you frequently raid with a good MM hunter then you are better off with the Viper glyph. For five-mans or maybe even ten-mans if you tend to be the only hunter, then Serpent Sting may be the way to go.
When it comes to trash; if it dies fast I usually don’t bother to toss up my Serpent Sting. Same goes with solo’ing. But if it is in an instance and takes more than ten seconds to kill you’d better believe I go into raid-boss mode. I’m crazy like that.
@Pike: I go into raid-boss mode on everything.
Even when farming.
Kongsecrate hates me, I think. 😐
Teacher mode already??
I raid boss mode everything too. Just kills stuff faster.
Makes stuff more fun anyway.
=D
I am using the hunter’s mark glyph for most of my hunters, any thoughts on that?
I’m using it mostly because I start fights with my /cast hunter’s mark /petattack macro, so it’s nearly always on the mob. And it’s cheap. :/
Another glyph I am considering trying out is the glyph of arcane shot, your arcane shot will return 20% of its mana cost if a sting is active on the target. Given the steady shot nerf and the reduction in mana cost of arcane shot that is being mooted for 3.0.8 this may be a useful glyph to have.
I’m right there with you on Glyphs of Steady Shot and Beastial Wrath, these two puppies are very nice.
Regarding the choices for the third Major Glyph:
Rapid Fire – using Glyphs of Steady Shot, Bestial Wrath, and Rapid Fire, and a mix of Naxx-25 and blue quest/heroic gear, I’m able to sustain 4200 DPS on a benchmark fight like Patchwerk-25. In other fights where there’s brief periods of buffed DPS output (such as Malygos when you stack sparks for 50% damage boost per spark) I love the ability to burst some damage by triggering BW, RF and trinkets to take advantage of the temporary buff. Sure, people say that haste is not really useful for Beast Masters, but in practice, I’ve been loving this glyph.
Viper – I find that I dip into Viper very rarely in 25 person WotLK raids so far (having cleared all 25-person content with this weekend’s Malygos kill). When we first entered Naxx, I was a Glyph of the Viper kind of guy, however I don’t use it anymore. I do take big advantage of the “passive” regen part of Viper by ensuring I flip on Viper during every spare moment of a boss fight (as boss switches between phases, a few seconds of DPS pause during aggro wipes, or when the raid leader calls for a DPS halt to wait for a special boss ability, etc).
Serpent Sting – I also had this glyph in place when we began 25’s in WotLK. I was liking the extra 3 seconds of not having to waste a GCD or just mentally remember to reapply the sting, but the benefit ended up not being enough. If it gets changed to 6 seconds, that really is pretty nice, so I will reconsider, but not sure I’ll change.
The MM hunters that I know don’t use GoSS because they’re working Chimera Shot into their rotation such that SS is always refreshed anyway – they don’t get the benefit out of the extended life.
For BM, I’m not sure how to theorycraft the Viper advantage, but Serpent Sing is easy:
We’ll assume a 5 min boss fight (’cause trash doesn’t matter – it dies anyway):
Normally SS lasts 15 sec; to keep it up we have to apply it 20 times over the course of the fight. If we extend the duration by 6 sec (since we know that’s coming we’ll use that), then we have to apply it only 15 times over the course of the fight.
That means we gain 5 global cooldowns. We get to spend those hitting Steady Shot rather than Serpent Sting. If we say that Steady Shot averages 1k damage per shot, then we are gaining 16.6 dps. If we say our Steady Shot averages 1.5k damage per shot, then we are gaining 25dps.
Of course this is DARYL best case scenario on timing, your actual dps returns will be 10-20% lower. And it’s assuming that it’s to your benefit to apply serpent sting (no one else is – and your glyph actually applies off another persons serpent sting — and if it does it’s not a bug that will be fixed).
I had Serpent sting up for the longest time and recently got rid of it to try out the Arcane shot mana refund. Am now going to boot that one. I don’t see enough mana difference, at least not to kick out another larger Major glyph.
Argh why do we only get three majors? There’s a few I want and it’s hard to single them out.
Hai!
Uhm, I didn’t know which of the post to leave a note in – So this one it is!
Thanks a bunch for them all (the guide posts) .
I just hit 80 last night on my hunter. I left him in Outlands when WOTLK hit, since I felt BM had been gimped too much.
But now the hunter and his cat is back with a vengeance … except I realized that I had no clue about anything anymore, besides that my gorilla and the leveling spec I build around keeping him alive, was most likely not such a good choice to venture into a heroic with.
But already this morning I am now up to date on spec, pet spec, glyphs and rotation.
So thank you very much for helping suck less 🙂