M+ build

[Hunterforlife]

OK, so if you're a slacker casual who has no intention of raiding Mythic, like me, and is only going to do M+ dungeons, what is the current recommended build and rotation? Appreciate any inputs, thanks in advance.

[PewPewArrowz]

I'm basically using LnL, Explosive Shot, Volley and Piercing for 7-9 boosting, not sure if its good for lower keys. God AoE shit ST, but at least its skittish and Blizzard still left us MD so yeah I'm useful this week yay.

[Hunterforlife]

Cool. I read Az's revised guide but am curious on how things are actually working out. Is anyone still using Sidewinders? I'll give it a try tonight. Thanks.

[PewPewArrowz]

I literally tried every single talent combo I could think off, this works perfectly with the pulls my group does. ST is ~500k too so not that horrible, but if you need to move for 1 inch, rip.

[Sazda]

1 1 1 1 1 3 3 - is a lot of fun, probably not the best I assume :P

[PewPewArrowz]

Nah, mobs die too fast for Trick shot imo, better off spamming Multishot and Marked Shot when it procs.

[Effinhunter]

If you're wanting to push 15+, focusing on single target over AoE is going to help much more. I tend to go BM to provide more utility (brez, lust, pet taunt if tank gets in trouble with tenacity pet for last stand if you have legendary Apex ring). MM has also gotten a bad reputation due to the old SW/Barrage build that people were running before 7.1.5 pulling extra adds. Because of this, higher key pugs often reject MM hunters (has happened to many of my guild hunters, despite the 895+ bag ilvl they are shown in as group finder). BM is almost always an autoinvite if the ilvl is appropriate (I can do both specs so I respond with my traits in both artifacts if asked). I've never once been asked to come as MM over BM. Not once.

As BM, I'm running my stock raiding config with Blink Strikes for 7.1.5 with no changes. Single target traits, not furious swipes. No volley. Stay at ranged, especially this week, and focus on single target because that is what is going to make bolster far easier. It's all about adjusting your dps during AoE to do dps triage and get higher health mobs lower quickly and killing them as close together as possible.

If you're running MM, I would stick with LnL, PS and Trick. If you want to go Volley, sure why not. But do not neglect your single target. It's one of the most important parts of pushing 15+ keys. It's even more important during Tyrannical weeks, but it is just as important for Fortified because of target swapping and how all packs have some mobs that are more dangerous than others. I'm 44/48 MM/BM, and I've done 14+ dungeons with both specs.

Talk to your tank, and tell him what you need. If you're BM, ask him before the run starts if he can clump things together quickly (caster mobs can get spread out if the tank and others are not helping with interrupts). Equip Sephuz (if you have it) for trash and use freezing trap on CD on non-immune mobs to proc the minilust. Use CDs on trash and bosses. Do not save CDs for bosses only. Ask for 3-5s pull timer before each boss pull for potions or changing equipment if you need it, and ask for this before the run, not during. Use 2 pots per boss fight, and if you're a real try hard, use potions during harder trash packs too. Prolonged Powers are generally cheap. Bring flasks (use the Sargeras vendor to get mats and ask someone in guild to make them).

As for rotation, keep beast cleave up during trash and focus the important targets down. Help with interrupts. Using binding shot and let the tank know it's down so he can move to stun. If tank starts getting low, I tend to taunt off him and he taunts back when he's good (talk to him and make sure this is ok, but every tank I've run with has been ok with this if not humored by the fact that my pet with last stand is at 5M health). I tend to use Quilen for brez and the fact that he also takes reduced damage at low health when I do the taunts.

[Finbezz]

If you're wanting to push 15+, focusing on single target over AoE is going to help much more. I tend to go BM to provide more utility (brez, lust, pet taunt if tank gets in trouble with tenacity pet for last stand if you have legendary Apex ring). MM has also gotten a bad reputation due to the old SW/Barrage build that people were running before 7.1.5 pulling extra adds. Because of this, higher key pugs often reject MM hunters (has happened to many of my guild hunters, despite the 895+ bag ilvl they are shown in as group finder). BM is almost always an autoinvite if the ilvl is appropriate (I can do both specs so I respond with my traits in both artifacts if asked). I've never once been asked to come as MM over BM. Not once.

As BM, I'm running my stock raiding config with Blink Strikes for 7.1.5 with no changes. Single target traits, not furious swipes. No volley. Stay at ranged, especially this week, and focus on single target because that is what is going to make bolster far easier. It's all about adjusting your dps during AoE to do dps triage and get higher health mobs lower quickly and killing them as close together as possible.

If you're running MM, I would stick with LnL, PS and Trick. If you want to go Volley, sure why not. But do not neglect your single target. It's one of the most important parts of pushing 15+ keys. It's even more important during Tyrannical weeks, but it is just as important for Fortified because of target swapping and how all packs have some mobs that are more dangerous than others. I'm 44/48 MM/BM, and I've done 14+ dungeons with both specs.

Talk to your tank, and tell him what you need. If you're BM, ask him before the run starts if he can clump things together quickly (caster mobs can get spread out if the tank and others are not helping with interrupts). Equip Sephuz (if you have it) for trash and use freezing trap on CD on non-immune mobs to proc the minilust. Use CDs on trash and bosses. Do not save CDs for bosses only. Ask for 3-5s pull timer before each boss pull for potions or changing equipment if you need it, and ask for this before the run, not during. Use 2 pots per boss fight, and if you're a real try hard, use potions during harder trash packs too. Prolonged Powers are generally cheap. Bring flasks (use the Sargeras vendor to get mats and ask someone in guild to make them).

As for rotation, keep beast cleave up during trash and focus the important targets down. Help with interrupts. Using binding shot and let the tank know it's down so he can move to stun. If tank starts getting low, I tend to taunt off him and he taunts back when he's good (talk to him and make sure this is ok, but every tank I've run with has been ok with this if not humored by the fact that my pet with last stand is at 5M health). I tend to use Quilen for brez and the fact that he also takes reduced damage at low health when I do the taunts.

effin volley is only a tiny bit behind amoc even on single target. you act like it's a huge single target loss.

[Effinhunter]

effin volley is only a tiny bit behind amoc even on single target. you act like it's a huge single target loss.

For MM, I said "If you want to go Volley, sure why not." I'm saying Volley is fine in single target, so why not. Take it.

For BM, your usual AoE rotations are fine. Volley is a significant hit to single target for no real necessary gain. Focus on single target relics and talents, for the most part.

[Hunterforlife]

Thanks Effin, great response, much appreciated.

[Doffen]

I'm basically using LnL, Explosive Shot, Volley and Piercing for 7-9 boosting, not sure if its good for lower keys. God AoE shit ST, but at least its skittish and Blizzard still left us MD so yeah I'm useful this week yay.

Tried this one just now, and it was awesome. Looks real good for m+ up at least 10+. Fun and good damage, thanks

[Dracodraco]

Still pushing consistent 700K-1M aoe dps throughout dungeons with the old sidewinders / barrage build (depending on the dungeon and how big the pulls are - kara tonight was over 1.1m up to nightbane, and obviously nelts has bigger and more aoe pulls than CoS etc). While I haven't tested any of the other builds out, I'm not sure I see much point in changing; Our aoe dps has *barely* been touched in dungeons. Remember, marked shot is "only" down by 12%, while the frequency of marking procs is up, which all in all means that we do get an extra marked shot out on aoe occasionally where we wouldn't before, thus pretty much negating the entire nerf.

The issue isn't hunter AOE being bad, it's just that we're no longer miles ahead of everyone else, and our single target still sucking comparable.

Considering I'm one of the hunters unlucky enough to not have the legendary boots, I don't *think* I'd get better mileage out of the arcane shot build, if I'm being honest. And if it IS better, then we're more than good enough to push +15, because our dungeon damage is largely unchanged with the old build.

[GT4]

Still pushing consistent 700K-1M aoe dps throughout dungeons with the old sidewinders / barrage build (depending on the dungeon and how big the pulls are - kara tonight was over 1.1m up to nightbane, and obviously nelts has bigger and more aoe pulls than CoS etc). While I haven't tested any of the other builds out, I'm not sure I see much point in changing; Our aoe dps has *barely* been touched in dungeons. Remember, marked shot is "only" down by 12%, while the frequency of marking procs is up, which all in all means that we do get an extra marked shot out on aoe occasionally where we wouldn't before, thus pretty much negating the entire nerf.

The issue isn't hunter AOE being bad, it's just that we're no longer miles ahead of everyone else, and our single target still sucking comparable.

Considering I'm one of the hunters unlucky enough to not have the legendary boots, I don't *think* I'd get better mileage out of the arcane shot build, if I'm being honest. And if it IS better, then we're more than good enough to push +15, because our dungeon damage is largely unchanged with the old build.

If you're going the old SW/Barrage build, your single target is not "still bad", it's way worse than it was pre-patch. Meanwhile most other range DPS actually got single target buffs.

[Dracodraco]

If you're going the old SW/Barrage build, your single target is not "still bad", it's way worse than it was pre-patch. Meanwhile most other range DPS actually got single target buffs.

On short dungeon fights where you can stand entirely still without an issue? Not really. People who say that our single target damage has tanked is both right and wrong - our single target damage hasn't moved at all, but everyone else has had it move significantly.
In fact, if you look at Nythendra and Ursoc from 7.1 to 7.1.5, you can see that the damage for 75th percentile has both increased - to give you numbers:

To reach a 75th percentile in 7.1 (pre patch) you needed to do:

396.5K on Nythendra.
441.7K on Ursoc.

Post patch, you need to do:

403.8K on Nythendra.
446.7K on Ursoc.


Arguments can be made that this is because kills are quicker because everyone else has been buffed, but that'd hold true in dungeons as well - the net result, either way, is that hunter single target and AOE are almost entirely unchanged between the two patches. If people are telling you they're doing shittons of damage less than before, that's them not having adjusted to the new playstyle yet (or attempting to use the arcane shot build without knowing how it works / having the legendary boots).

TL;DR - our singletarget damage is the same as pre patch, if not slightly better. Our AOE is very slightly lowered, but frequency of procs makes up for the lowered damage fairly easily. The net result is that hunters overall damage, both AOE and DPS, are pretty much the exact same as before the patch.

What HAS changed is what everyone else are capable of. In comparison to everyone else, we went from bottom-mid tier single target dps, to rock bottom, and from top-tier-maybe-a-bit-over-the-top AOE dps, to "a bit above average/good" AOE dps.

[Doffen]

On short dungeon fights where you can stand entirely still without an issue? Not really. People who say that our single target damage has tanked is both right and wrong - our single target damage hasn't moved at all, but everyone else has had it move significantly.
In fact, if you look at Nythendra and Ursoc from 7.1 to 7.1.5, you can see that the damage for 75th percentile has both increased - to give you numbers:

To reach a 75th percentile in 7.1 (pre patch) you needed to do:

396.5K on Nythendra.
441.7K on Ursoc.

Post patch, you need to do:

403.8K on Nythendra.
446.7K on Ursoc.


Arguments can be made that this is because kills are quicker because everyone else has been buffed, but that'd hold true in dungeons as well - the net result, either way, is that hunter single target and AOE are almost entirely unchanged between the two patches. If people are telling you they're doing shittons of damage less than before, that's them not having adjusted to the new playstyle yet (or attempting to use the arcane shot build without knowing how it works / having the legendary boots).

TL;DR - our singletarget damage is the same as pre patch, if not slightly better. Our AOE is very slightly lowered, but frequency of procs makes up for the lowered damage fairly easily. The net result is that hunters overall damage, both AOE and DPS, are pretty much the exact same as before the patch.

What HAS changed is what everyone else are capable of. In comparison to everyone else, we went from bottom-mid tier single target dps, to rock bottom, and from top-tier-maybe-a-bit-over-the-top AOE dps, to "a bit above average/good" AOE dps.

Nailed it

[GT4]

On short dungeon fights where you can stand entirely still without an issue? Not really. People who say that our single target damage has tanked is both right and wrong - our single target damage hasn't moved at all, but everyone else has had it move significantly.
In fact, if you look at Nythendra and Ursoc from 7.1 to 7.1.5, you can see that the damage for 75th percentile has both increased - to give you numbers:

To reach a 75th percentile in 7.1 (pre patch) you needed to do:

396.5K on Nythendra.
441.7K on Ursoc.

Post patch, you need to do:

403.8K on Nythendra.
446.7K on Ursoc.


Arguments can be made that this is because kills are quicker because everyone else has been buffed, but that'd hold true in dungeons as well - the net result, either way, is that hunter single target and AOE are almost entirely unchanged between the two patches. If people are telling you they're doing shittons of damage less than before, that's them not having adjusted to the new playstyle yet (or attempting to use the arcane shot build without knowing how it works / having the legendary boots).

TL;DR - our singletarget damage is the same as pre patch, if not slightly better. Our AOE is very slightly lowered, but frequency of procs makes up for the lowered damage fairly easily. The net result is that hunters overall damage, both AOE and DPS, are pretty much the exact same as before the patch.

What HAS changed is what everyone else are capable of. In comparison to everyone else, we went from bottom-mid tier single target dps, to rock bottom, and from top-tier-maybe-a-bit-over-the-top AOE dps, to "a bit above average/good" AOE dps.

Uhm... my post was literally two sentences long and you completely ignored the first sentence and repeated the second sentence (that other range DPS had their single target buffed).

Here's the relevant first part again:

If you're going the old SW/Barrage build, your single target is not "still bad", it's way worse than it was pre-patch.

Basically now you can choose between having spread cleave and single target. If you go full single target, you're very slightly higher single target than pre-patch while losing all spread cleave. If you're going spread cleave, you have comparable spread cleave but significantly lower single target than pre-patch.

M+ involves both boss fights and (spread) AoE so having to choose between both is a direct nerf. The same is true for any fight that involves spread cleave because there's basically always single target phases as well. This shows clearly when looking at e.g. Helya where MM went from one of the better to one of the weaker specs (both compared to others but also in absolute DPS).

Aside from that, your methodology is flawed. You cannot compare absolute DPS from weeks ago to this week's because not only are kill times lower but average gear/traits are strictly increasing as well. Obviously it's even more flawed when taking my actual post into context because none of the top hunters is playing Sidewinders/Barrage on Nythendra or Ursoc since Barrage (or rather: losing AMoC/Volley) especially is now a huge single target DPS loss.

tl;dr: MM lost on AoE fights/Mythic+ because they now have to choose between single target and AoE and still lost slightly for single target fights because other similarly badly performing specs were buffed for single target.

[Dracodraco]

Uhm... my post was literally two sentences long and you completely ignored the first sentence and repeated the second sentence (that other range DPS had their single target buffed).

I didn't ignore anything, but you certainly did, judging by your post.

Basically now you can choose between having spread cleave and single target. If you go full single target, you're very slightly higher single target than pre-patch while losing all spread cleave. If you're going spread cleave, you have comparable spread cleave but significantly lower single target than pre-patch.

M+ involves both boss fights and (spread) AoE so having to choose between both is a direct nerf. The same is true for any fight that involves spread cleave because there's basically always single target phases as well. This shows clearly when looking at e.g. Helya where MM went from one of the better to one of the weaker specs (both compared to others but also in absolute DPS).

Aside from that, your methodology is flawed. You cannot compare absolute DPS from weeks ago to this week's because not only are kill times lower but average gear/traits are strictly increasing as well.

tl;dr: MM lost on AoE fights/Mythic+ because they now have to choose between single target and AoE and still lost slightly for single target fights because other similarly badly performing specs were buffed for single target.

None of this is true. I already said exactly what we're seeing happening right now: Sidewinders builds are doing roughly the same single *and* AOE dps as they were pre patch. If you go for full single target, you MIGHT be able to pull off something a little better, but in both the fights I mention, there's multiple sidewinders logs parsing right alongside the trick shot builds at the very top. There's far more trick shot logs, likely because it's new and exciting and people want to try it out - but to say that Sidewinders are doing significantly less damage now compared to before the patch is just asinine, because it simply isn't true. Fuck, compare my old EN logs over many weeks of farm:

https://gyazo.com/d8027b15eef5fa287c47a3ea550e8854

To a single night of killing bosses without being adjusted fully to the changes with the new sidewinders yet:
https://gyazo.com/e0ea1716e1ce0c7b0048fc93cbd6e6da

pretty much a significant DPS increase across the board except for Renferal (I didn't want to spend 1.5K gold getting Barrage to pad on spiders, only to change to AMOC again on Ursoc), Ilgynoth (I never pad the ichors - the best log is from one of our SUPER early kills, as indicated by me having only one legendary, back when you actually needed to do damage to them ichors) and Xavius, that remained relatively the same. Also, compare the times - all of the fights are either almost identical or ENTIRELY identical in speed, the only outliers being Renferal and Ilgynoth, the only two fights I *didn't* do better on.

I also saw a significant dps increase on Odyn, but can't comment on Guarm as it's the one boss I tested out Trick shot on this reset (and decided I could probably do better just rolling with sidewinders). This is all on a one-week-to-another week basis, and it takes my best performance over MONTHS of farming (some of those parses from 7.1 are more than a month old, giving me multiple resets to try and beat them).


This is, of course, my personal observations - but it fucking irks me when people say "HURR DURR MM BUTCHERED WE DO SO MUCH LESS DMG OMG" right now, when all evidence points to the contrary, looking at both logs and ingame performance. It's not fucking true. What *IS* true is that everyone else got fucking leapfrogged ahead of our performance because their buffs were far bigger. But MM didn't get "nerfed". The playstyle got screwed up, but the damage is still a houndred percent intact if you can adjust to having a little less focus in your flow. Saying that I can't compare absolute damage because gear/speed increases is dumb - gear/speed increases all the time. The difference between last week's gear is almost nill at these levels (everyone's been 890+ for weeks now). Speed may have increased, which I already conceded - but then again, we also did see damage go UP slightly, which can easily be attributed to that speed. I'm just arguing that it hasn't gone down.


So, for a TL;DR -

No, you're wrong. Trick shot might do better single target dmg, but choosing sidewinders doesn't mean you lose out on single target damage. It's the exact same as before, if not a little better. Picking AOE cleave is perfectly fine if you could justify doing it last patch, you bring the same AOE damage now and a small bit extra DPS, a long with more utility (AOE slow/CC).

[PewPewArrowz]

Trick Shot + Patient Sniper + LnL is really good for 10 and above.

[GT4]

I didn't ignore anything, but you certainly did, judging by your post.






None of this is true. I already said exactly what we're seeing happening right now: Sidewinders builds are doing roughly the same single *and* AOE dps as they were pre patch. If you go for full single target, you MIGHT be able to pull off something a little better, but in both the fights I mention, there's multiple sidewinders logs parsing right alongside the trick shot builds at the very top. There's far more trick shot logs, likely because it's new and exciting and people want to try it out - but to say that Sidewinders are doing significantly less damage now compared to before the patch is just asinine, because it simply isn't true. Fuck, compare my old EN logs over many weeks of farm:

https://gyazo.com/d8027b15eef5fa287c47a3ea550e8854

To a single night of killing bosses without being adjusted fully to the changes with the new sidewinders yet:
https://gyazo.com/e0ea1716e1ce0c7b0048fc93cbd6e6da

pretty much a significant DPS increase across the board except for Renferal (I didn't want to spend 1.5K gold getting Barrage to pad on spiders, only to change to AMOC again on Ursoc), Ilgynoth (I never pad the ichors - the best log is from one of our SUPER early kills, as indicated by me having only one legendary, back when you actually needed to do damage to them ichors) and Xavius, that remained relatively the same. Also, compare the times - all of the fights are either almost identical or ENTIRELY identical in speed, the only outliers being Renferal and Ilgynoth, the only two fights I *didn't* do better on.

I also saw a significant dps increase on Odyn, but can't comment on Guarm as it's the one boss I tested out Trick shot on this reset (and decided I could probably do better just rolling with sidewinders). This is all on a one-week-to-another week basis, and it takes my best performance over MONTHS of farming (some of those parses from 7.1 are more than a month old, giving me multiple resets to try and beat them).


This is, of course, my personal observations - but it fucking irks me when people say "HURR DURR MM BUTCHERED WE DO SO MUCH LESS DMG OMG" right now, when all evidence points to the contrary, looking at both logs and ingame performance. It's not fucking true. What *IS* true is that everyone else got fucking leapfrogged ahead of our performance because their buffs were far bigger. But MM didn't get "nerfed". The playstyle got screwed up, but the damage is still a houndred percent intact if you can adjust to having a little less focus in your flow. Saying that I can't compare absolute damage because gear/speed increases is dumb - gear/speed increases all the time. The difference between last week's gear is almost nill at these levels (everyone's been 890+ for weeks now). Speed may have increased, which I already conceded - but then again, we also did see damage go UP slightly, which can easily be attributed to that speed. I'm just arguing that it hasn't gone down.


So, for a TL;DR -

No, you're wrong. Trick shot might do better single target dmg, but choosing sidewinders doesn't mean you lose out on single target damage. It's the exact same as before, if not a little better. Picking AOE cleave is perfectly fine if you could justify doing it last patch, you bring the same AOE damage now and a small bit extra DPS, a long with more utility (AOE slow/CC).

How did you manage to write so much while once again not reading the very first sentence of my initial reply?

Once again (for the third time):

If you're going the old SW/Barrage build, your single target is not "still bad", it's way worse than it was pre-patch.

All you're talking about now is SW but your initial post stated you go with SW and Barrage. The former is a small single target DPS loss, The latter is a rather big one. Absolutely nobody in the top 50 or so uses Barrage on Nythendra/Ursoc/Guarm post patch. Previously, it was close enough to AMoC for single target that you'd have some people with it even in the top 50 for single target fights. Now that's not the case at all.

By the way, even your logs show this. You switched to AMoC for many fights. You cannot just swap to AMoC for bosses in M+ when you're specced Barrage as you stated previously.

Oh, and by the way, EN is practically irrelevant at this point and your DPS will to a large degree depend on how quickly the other players in your raid kill adds. Just as an example, I took a look at your logs and the main reason you have more dragons DPS this time is that you had fewer players DPSing the shades, fewer players DPSing the dread horrors and more dread horrors in general (45 instead of 37 to be precise). Even though you had 884 average for your best log pre-7.1.5 (compared to your 892 average now), you had significantly more DPS on the dragons themselves. Edit: And you were still missing 16 artifact traits compared to now back then (35 vs. 51) which is a loss of 8% total damage.

That's why personal anecdotes aren't a good measure to go by.

Edit:
More on topic, SW and Trick Shot both seem fine now. The former is slightly weaker for single target but allows spread cleave instead of stacked AoE only. Volley, however, comes with a fairly steep single target DPS loss now so taking it for boosting will generally still be fine but you might want to look into the other options for pushing and boosting tyrannical +10-12 keys.

[ydraw]

Not sure why you'd go anything but BM for M+ at this point given it got significant buffs to its AOE and is in a better position to make use of hunter utility.

BM has gaps in the rotation where you can use things like Binding Shot, Traps, Interrupts etc with no loss of DPS. It also brings battle res and pet taunt. It only lacked slightly behind MM pre-patch, then got significant buffs to Blink Strikes, Volley and Multi-shot.