1. #1

    Tough Call on Pet Buff

    Long-time lurker, first time poster. I put this up on the blizzard forums but didn't get much solid feedback:

    TL;DR at bottom.

    I'm trying to decide between two pets for their respective buffs: 10% physical haste (haste from hereon) and 5% spell damage debuff (spell from hereon). I'm not sure which is more beneficial overall. My raid has every other (de-)buff covered.

    Here is the comp (minus healers):
    Guardian and Blood Tanks
    WW and Fury Mdps
    Elem, Fire, and SV (+ spriest on 2 heal fights)

    The haste afaik only affects auto-attack damage. The spell is obv nice for casters, but it's actually better for me as SV as well, and affects varying amounts of the melee's damage too.

    I haven't simmed everyone, but I know it's better for me and the casters, worse for the monk (and almost certainly worse for the war). With vengeance as crazy as it is, I can't easily dismiss tank damage either.

    Anyway, the other thing I've been kicking around is running both. If I did, what would be the most efficient way to do it?

    It would mean having the spell pet as my default, but having the haste one out pre-fight to cast the 2 min buff. I could then save stampede for the 2 minute mark, or just manually dismiss spell pet, summon haste pet, cast buff, dismiss haste pet, and resummon spell pet. (The spell pet needs to be out more because he puts his debuff on the target and it only lasts 45 seconds.)

    Any thoughts? My initial thoughts are that saving stampede is the best way to rebuff haste, even if it means losing some personal dps (stampede doesn't get an opening bloodlust, may miss out on a stampede cast at the end of the fight, etc). With appropriate macros and such, off the top of my head I'd think I'd lose less than 5 seconds or so.

    Btw, this is my first tier raiding as a hunter, so I welcome any pointers or stuff I'm missing. Thanks in advance.

    TL;DR-Bring 10% physical haste buff or 5% spell damage taken debuff or both? If both, what's the best way to reapply haste buff?

  2. #2
    I'd say it depends on what you're doing. If you're having a hard time progressing on something it's almost surely worth keeping the 5% magic damage debuff pet out and swapping to a hyena or serpent to put up 10% haste when it falls off. Your loss in switching will definitely be outweighed by the raids gains.

    It might be worth using stampede to reapply haste once, it might not. Basically its between having stampede up with all your cooldowns at the start of a fight and having to cast dismiss twice to put up haste, or using stampede to save from having to do that 2x dismiss one time. Fights probably long enough to use it again to reapply later, no harm in that. And if you have to push off stampede long enough that it prevents you from using it twice, definitely don't do that.

    I'm leaning towards stampede up with your cooldowns + pre-pot being the better option, but it would be difficult to say for sure what's better. And if you're not struggling with progression I'd just stick with one, or just cast cackling howl at the start and swap before the pull (with a pull timer) like we used to do with CotW on a second pet, and just do it once and forget about it. But if you are going to try and keep them both up I'd make a poweraura or something to show when haste falls off.

  3. #3
    I would go with the Magic debuff, You have 3 people always and sometimes 4 that benefit from the buff, whereas with the Melee Haste, you'd have 2 Melee and 2 tanks(tanks already do retarded DPS with vengeance) benefitting from it.

    Increased Auto attacks is not the best benefit for Fury or WW if you compare it to a flat 5% DPS increase for the casters

  4. #4
    The magic debuff has a ridiculously long CD for however many tiimes you may need it, so if there's a lot of switching in the fight, I'd go with melee haste, because lightning/fire breath won't be up on the target you need it to be up on anyways.

    In general, any of the debuff pets will be worse than the buff pets on any target switching fight.

  5. #5
    Honestly, your raid might be better off if you tried to convince the DK and Warrior to flip roles, but that isn't always possible.


    I would go with the Magic debuff, You have 3 people always and sometimes 4 that benefit from the buff, whereas with the Melee Haste, you'd have 2 Melee and 2 tanks(tanks already do retarded DPS with vengeance) benefitting from it.
    Haste affects the hunter too, and it's pretty much equal with the crit buff as the most important raid buff for us. I'd say it depends more on where most of your DPS comes from. If your casters are good, go with the magic debuff, if the melee are pulling the weight, give them haste.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Aertea View Post
    Honestly, your raid might be better off if you tried to convince the DK and Warrior to flip roles, but that isn't always possible.

    Haste affects the hunter too, and it's pretty much equal with the crit buff as the most important raid buff for us. I'd say it depends more on where most of your DPS comes from. If your casters are good, go with the magic debuff, if the melee are pulling the weight, give them haste.
    I would agree with this. One thing you can do is keep both buff pets in you active pets slots so that you have both the buffs active during stampede. My 10 group is able to clear w/o the 10% physical haste buff, as an example, but we've had much practice etc and our firemage/affli lock demolish everyone else in the group on the damage meter.
    Last edited by ttak82; 2012-11-05 at 04:39 AM. Reason: minor clarification

  7. #7
    Stood in the Fire Daieon's Avatar
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    Definitely the spell damage. There are more casters than physical DPS and as survival you're doing quite a bit of magical damage yourself. I had to make this same choice the other day and felt bad for our warrior.

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