So I’ve done a bunch of heroics so far today. One of them was Heroic Violet Hold, which I’ve done a lot and frequently use as a sort of DPS test strip.
Ya know what I was getting when everything (Bestial Wrath, Call of the Wild, etc.) was popped, and with otherwise no outside buffs? 3800 dps. Ya know what I normally get on ten-man Patchwerk when fully raid-buffed? 3800 dps. All and all I was consistently seeing between a 400 and 500 dps increase simply from the buffs to Animal Handler and Wild Hunt. (I don’t think the new Catlike Reflexes will be worth dropping points from other things to put points into… but I’ll probably test it and/or spreadsheet it at some point.)
Eeeeeeee I can’t wait to see what I’d get on ol’ Patchy now O_O
In other news, have you ever seen your pet crit for well over 1000? Multiple times in a row? You’re about to.
It feels so good to be a Beast Master again and not feel like I’m dragging everyone down. No more having to spec Marksman– as much as I did enjoy it, it wasn’t the same– in the name of the raid. We’re Big, We’re Red, We’re Back.
*happy Pike*
Of course, the big question is whether we still lag behind the other two specs in a raid situation. My initial inkling is that we do, however, I don’t think we will as substantially as before. It all remains to be seen, though. I was invited to a guild 25man Ulduar on Friday, but I work that night, so I’ll be unable to go test. All’s well, though, I’m probably way undergeared anyway… best get my feet wet in a ten-man first. *nod*
Preemptive Edit: Because I have a feeling people are going to ask, here’s my spec.
In other news, have you ever seen your pet crit for well over 1000? Multiple times in a row?
Yes, quite often. >_>;
@ Rilgon >.>
Okay, when you are in a five-man and your gear sucks like mine does? xD
We’re back? Huh?
I never left, tyvm. 🙂
@ Splat –
By “we” I meant my pet and I. Sillyhead~! =P
Oh my God you just made my day. I haven’t had any time to actually hop in-game and watch Rags (my pet Wolf) tear things to shreds, but it sounds to me an awful lot like Beast Mastery may finally be competitive again! Thanks for highlighting this!
Congrats! I’m really happy for you and all the other BM hunters out there. Hopefully this means BM is back to being a good raiding spec.
Personally, I’m frightened about what will happen to my mana management in raids. Without loads of replenishment I am a sad panda. Stupid MM spec, eating mana like candy.
Pike-san! I’m at Shanghai Pudong Int’l airport, and about to board a plane to Tokyo via Hong Kong! I can’t wait to get back and try out all the 3.2 goodness! I’m glad you’re having a blast, and reading your blog is absolutely driving me insane! I WANT MY WOW DAMMIT! =(
I sincerely hope that the imminent wave of cute Japanese girls will tide me over until I get back.
It’s a shame that this didn’t make it into the patch notes, since I’d totally forgotten about these changes. It also means that, unfortunately, I have no idea what the change to Wild Hunt was 🙂 (I found the change to animal handler was changing the Expertise boost to an AP boost of 5%/10% for the pet, and wild hunt was a change in AP boost from 10%/20% to 15%/30%. Overall, I think this means our pets will be doing about 20% more damage than they were before the patch (assuming your spec includes animal handler) — Does that sound right?
I played last night for a while, but wasn’t specced into animal handler… and my DPS meter (and combat log) was broke anyway 🙂 So we’ll see how it goes when I get a chance to run something that I’ve been running consistently, and see what happens to my DPS.
Either way, I’m sticking with BM. Maybe one I get Epic Flying, I’ll make dual speccing my hunter next on the list, but until then, I’m going to be all BM, all the time.
Hey, Pike … ? I’m almost ashamed that I have to ask this, but … Where is “Wild Hunt” in the Hunter Talent Trees? I checked my character’s spec but can’t find that talent listed anywhere.
I’m gonna agree with your assesment on Catlike Reflexes. On top of being something minor (and much less convenient in terms of synching cooldowns) it’s stuck to a talent that’s been considered for the most part useless since forever. I honestly don’t see where you can pull three points to put there without cutting your dps sharply. It’s good to hear BM is coming back up there in terms of output. If I wasn’t the Imp. Hunter’s Mark and glyph bitch, I’d fire up the BM spec and give it a whirl (after getting hit capped through gear again).
Badget-Wild Hunt is a pet talent, requires Call of the Wild for Ferocity pets and Roar of Sacrifice for Tenacity/Cunning. Gogo lack of editing.
@ Badger – what Shagrat said… Wild Hunt is a pet talent, not a hunter talent! *nod*
So Darkspear blows up on us last night after everything seems to be running okay (and my guildies were in the middle of a coliseum run too, more’s the shame). I’m bored, and think to myself, “Hey! I could roll a toon on a new server! That’d be fun! It’ll kill time while I wait for Darkspear to heal itself!”
/looks at server list
/trembles with the difficulty of decisionmaking
“Well,” says I. “NOT ANOTHER PVP REALM, for the love of Elune. These RP servers… hmmm…”
/remembers that Pike said her server was pretty cool
/agitates
/rolls a nelf chick hunter on Silver Hand
/plays idly while waiting for Darkspear
/keeps waiting for Darkspear
/keeps waiting for Darkspear
/dings 10 and gets a kitty while waiting for Darkspear
/logs off quickly in the hopes that she hasn’t already gotten invested in yet another alt
Smoke approves and will be happy to be big, red and angry again.
NomNom is just looking forward to getting some time out of the stables.
@ Pike, @ Shagrat: Thanks for clarifying! Rags, my Wolf, is (obviously) a Ferocity pet, so I may very well have this one marked already. Good to know!
I went and did DPS tests with my raptor (OY) vs my Spirit Beast (Fea) and boy was I happy. unbuffed except for BW, my Fea rocked 1100 DPS at one point…whooo!
BM have finally received a nice little buff to DPS but I still think BM hunters will lag way behind in 10 mans without the optimal buffs. I’ve entered 10 man Ulduar once and was pushing out a good 2800 DPS, hitting second on the DPS meters. And then the next time I went in as a BM I did a woeful 2100 DPS, getting 5th on the charts, with slightly better gear. So unless you have at least 2 pallies, 1 drood, and 1 shaman, I’d still advise you to do MM or SV in 10 mans.
@ clra2 – Obviously I don’t know how it works in Ulduar, but I was pretty consistently pushing out 3500+ in ten-man Naxx as BM, and that was pre-Wild Hunt and Shark Attack. So I’m eager to see how much more I do now…
KUDOS to PIKE!!!
I went through all the normal sites looking for the animal handler and wild hunt change and you are the only one reporting on it. i love this site cause you always have the “info”. I finally hit 60 just before the patch and tamed me a devilsaur. After the patch his damage went up quite nicely which equals one happy BM dwarf hunter!
@ Kia Feathers:
Welcome to Silver Hand. ^^
In one of the instances I ran with my guildies, I pulled 1.7k dps.
1.7k dps with only Blessing of Might.
/jawdrop
I was thrilled! And even more so because my pet was… drumroll please…. Skoll!!!
I was flying over Storm Peaks farming ores for my guild and I recalled that there was supposed to be a new spirit beast around here… somewhere… So on a whim I hit Track Beasts, glanced around, saw a yellow dot, and moused over it: Skoll!
He’s an elite 80 so I put down a freezing trap, and zapped him with a Concussive Shot. The CS seemed to slow him down for a bit but my trap didn’t faze him at all! He put up a heck of a fight; got me down to 1 third of my health before he was tamed. I named him Skoll because after all he already has a name, so why mess with a good thing? 🙂
BTW, is it pathetic that my hands were shaking from adrenaline the entire time? >.>
“Of course, the big question is whether we still lag behind the other two specs in a raid situation. My initial inkling is that we do”
Who cares when the pet is out-damaging the low-end rogues in pugs ? :>
Pike, just a quick little addition here since I read your site a fair bit but have never posted was running 58/11/2 if you armoury my character you’ll see it, was running my devilsaur in 10 uld tonight before the shutdown was consistently sitting on about 4.3k dps…raidwise your initial inklings are definately false we are back and redder then ever:D
also picked up my realm first skoll….all my pets are rares now…and and thanks for writing an awesome blog:D sorry I’m a wall of text person! *takes a breath* anyhoo hope that helps! (ps:I hate 10mans for checking dps, wtb more raid buffs:X)
@Pookii- nope I was about to piss on myself while I was taming Gondria
@clra2 – oh good lol, that makes me feel better! my heart was thumping like crazy! a guildy of mine said that yes it did make me pathetic but he’s no hunter so his comment doesnt count lol. everyone else in my guild called Skoll sexy lol. and i can’t tell you HOW many whispers I got about him. I felt bad for one hunter in particular who wanted him but he was a MM/SV hunter 🙁
I love my Beast Mastery! <3
Just ran the new 25 man on normal difficulty with the guild; fully raid buffed I was pulling on average 4500dps as BM. Quite impressive I must say. I was startig to feel the urge to actually raid as one of the lesser specs. haha.