bm>surv now o.O

[mercychan]

high haste would benefit Barrage greatly while GT doesn't scale at all with haste.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but barrage does same amount of hits regardless of haste, yes? Just slightly less channel time? I would assume by that logic that barrage output doesn't scale with haste at all.

Also someone please explain to me why BM stat prioritization is so up in the air. I regularly see Crit > Haste > Mastery, other people say Haste > Mastery > Crit, others say Haste > Mastery >= Crit. I'd like an answer other than "because the sim told me so". Aren't some sims (simcraft, femdwarf) notorious for overvaluing haste anyway? Besides, anyone who offspecs SV wouldn't want a garbage stat spread of haste > mastery > crit anyway.

That is not how the Explosive Shot mechanic works.

Explosive shot does not "refresh".... the damage just keeps rolling over, so a change in your stats (agi, AP, crit, etc...) does not affect anything that happened previously. It only affects what happens after the change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eVCz_eM4cA @ 1 hr 30min 20sec
is where I got that info from. I think he's saying that because the agi multiplier isn't rolling over, you're losing crit on your refreshing explosive shots, and subsequently doing less damage.

[Glurp]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but barrage does same amount of hits regardless of haste, yes? Just slightly less channel time? I would assume by that logic that barrage output doesn't scale with haste at all.

Also someone please explain to me why BM stat prioritization is so up in the air. I regularly see Crit > Haste > Mastery, other people say Haste > Mastery > Crit, others say Haste > Mastery >= Crit. I'd like an answer other than "because the sim told me so". Aren't some sims (simcraft, femdwarf) notorious for overvaluing haste anyway? Besides, anyone who offspecs SV wouldn't want a garbage stat spread of haste > mastery > crit anyway.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eVCz_eM4cA @ 1 hr 30min 20sec
is where I got that info from. I think he's saying that because the agi multiplier isn't rolling over, you're losing crit on your refreshing explosive shots, and subsequently doing less damage.

Barrage scales with Haste because it lowers the channeling time giving you more GCDs to fill during a fight.

Femaledwarf can overvalue Haste due to shot-shifting however that doesn't happen in SimCraft due to the differences in how each sim works (iterations vs calculated averages). SimCraft can overvalue Haste if you are using Dire Beast because it doesn't account for travel time in Dire Beast getting to the target and missed hits from a target moving so it will include Dire Beast breakpoints when calculating stat weights. However when Simcraft hits a Dire Beast breakpoint the value of Haste will shoot through the roof (almost as high as Agility) so it's easy to spot and easily fixable.

Aside from that SimCraft stat weights will be very accurate, however those stat weights are static for your current gear/stats so as you get different gear and reforge with a different secondary stat balance it will change. This together with the fact that all our secondary stats are very close in value and work together to amplify the value of each other, people will see a large variation in stat weights depending on their character.

But seriously, if you aren't willing to trust Simcraft then where else are you getting your information from? Reading tea leaves?


The only part of Explosive shot that doesn't roll over is Crit, yes. However I believe someone else did the math and you'd need to fire something like 27 Explosive shots back to back for that loss in crit chance to actually effect your damage.

[Thotor]

tbh I don't like BM at all. I don't like it to rely so much on my pet. And there is never a content where you can play BM on every single encounter without any bugs. E.G. Megaera, Immerseus, Dark Shamans (when you tank both bosses together) etc. For that reason I'm excited for the new "No pet" talent

The contrary can also be said. There is a lot of encounters where BM is one of the few spec to maintain a 100% uptime on boss.
Tbh every encounter on SoO can be played as BM. The only fights where a bug can occur is Immerseus and that's only if use Blink Strike (Pet would jump inside the pool and die). Thankfully AMoC has been fixed (which is the better talent anyway) so you should never use BS on Immerseus.

[Jeremypwnz]

The contrary can also be said. There is a lot of encounters where BM is one of the few spec to maintain a 100% uptime on boss.
Tbh every encounter on SoO can be played as BM. The only fights where a bug can occur is Immerseus and that's only if use Blink Strike (Pet would jump inside the pool and die). Thankfully AMoC has been fixed (which is the better talent anyway) so you should never use BS on Immerseus.

Aside from crap uptime on Amoc on the boss. Even from 100% to 0, it barely lives 30 seconds (depending on raid dps obv). I've never had my pet die on Immerseus, only despawn. Rather run BS and recall the pet once or twice than deal with Amoc on that poor excuse for a fight.

[Thursley]

You can also use the opportunity of your pet despawning to summon a different one with Rabid off cooldown. It's annoying but it's not the end of the world, and has to be better than AMOC.

[thejeremyftw]

The contrary can also be said. There is a lot of encounters where BM is one of the few spec to maintain a 100% uptime on boss.
Tbh every encounter on SoO can be played as BM. The only fights where a bug can occur is Immerseus and that's only if use Blink Strike (Pet would jump inside the pool and die). Thankfully AMoC has been fixed (which is the better talent anyway) so you should never use BS on Immerseus.

Anytime I read something like this, my immediate reaction is "hunter specs are in a pretty good place overall". You're absolutely right. You can effectively play BM on every fight in SoO. You can effectively play Surv on every fight in SoO. If you want to switch it up, you can change specs between fights. Would it be nice for MM to be better in PvE overall? Yes. Would it be nice to have surv be better overall in PvP? Yes. However, I'd rather focus on the good of what we have. Two viable PvP specs and two viable PvE specs.

As many posts as there are about BM vs Surv, just play what you enjoy. Others have said it many times. If you enjoy it, you'll play it better.

[Squall]

Just stay pretty close to the boss and your pet won't despawn at all, there is no reason you have to stand behind your melees, the hitbox is huge. Blink strikes is so much better on that fight mechanic and damage wise.

[Deleted]

only me that gets higher sim dps when using bm now? with AoC and TeD

BM can put up nice numbers if you are on farm and your guildies don't mind you playing like shit to get ranks.

[Deleted]

BM can put up nice numbers if you are on farm and your guildies don't mind you playing like shit to get ranks.

In what sense do you mean?

[Kifimbo]

BM and Survival are very close in terms of dps. i currently do about 15% more dmg as survival than i do as bm but that is because i typically run as survival, i only recently got enough BM gear to start running it regularly. Once i get up to the same gear level, i suspect it will be much closer.

[MrWolly]

The irony is, before this xpac, I hated BM as a noob spec that bads played in BGs.

Now I prefer it to SV.

I just wanna play MM again!

I amost completely in agree with you, only I prefer Surv over BM. MM is my favorite, though =/

[Kissthebaby]

I amost completely in agree with you, only I prefer Surv over BM. MM is my favorite, though =/

Play MM then nothing is holding you back.

[Sylvari]

According to SimC MM pulls ahead of BM in bis. I've had similar results in my gear.

[Kissthebaby]

According to SimC MM pulls ahead of BM in bis. I've had similar results in my gear.

Just stop posting stuff like this because you are wrong. MM is still the weakest of the 3 spec in full bis but is not bad.

[Sylvari]

Just stop posting stuff like this because you are wrong. MM is still the weakest of the 3 spec in full bis but is not bad.

Not sure how its wrong. Its on the front page and I didn't say it's for everyone. If I said SV is horrible at AOE maybe you could toss a fit. When I sim my toon it does beat BM.

- - - Updated - - -

Dammit I read it wrong its says BM>MM>SV. But MM still sims higher for me.

[eschatological]

I amost completely in agree with you, only I prefer Surv over BM. MM is my favorite, though =/

I actually liked SV before this expac. But BM now feels far more fluid to me, and idk why. Maybe because I haven't played anything else since the Beast Cleave buffs.

[Thotor]

Dammit I read it wrong its says BM>MM>SV. But MM still sims higher for me.

If you are talking about simcraft t16H ranking, those are wrong for Hunter. They put an ilevel of 588 on the BiS.
The real value are (using the same settings but with the corrected profile) :
BM 409k > SV 404K > MM 403K
And on shorter fight (5min) BM DPS outranks the other 2 by more than 10k DPS. (SV and MM remains at 1k difference)

The only reasons MM could parse higher for you is that either you did not reforge according to the spec and/or that the piece you have are better suited for MM.

[Selindae]

There's an awful lot of hate on BM in this thread. In high gear levels, BM outshines SV in nearly aspect except fights with high movement. Haste stacking BM is one of the best dps specs in the game. The spec scales so much better than SV and is very light on the RNG. Playing SV can be a headache if you dont get a lot of 4pc procs or LnL doesn't line up with trinket procs, or TotH takes forever to proc in your opener or LnL just doesn't proc in general.

[jayman80]

Haste as BM in my gear (561) is simming the worst stat. Crit > Mastery > Haste. I guess priorities change as your ilvl goes up.

[Littlepinch]

Haste as BM in my gear (561) is simming the worst stat. Crit > Mastery > Haste. I guess priorities change as your ilvl goes up.

My hunter atm is ilv 565 and iv been running Haste>Crit>Mastery All xpac and im happy with the results ( it's all about ur play style i guess )