5.2 PVE BM or SV dominance?

[skitzy129]

just because some whiney bitches do not like it does not mean it should lose its viability, which with these changes it has.

If that's why you think it's no longer the go to spec then you're horribly misinformed.

It's losing its viablity because the other specs needed buffs and they got them.

Plain and simple.

Even still, it didn't really lose its "viablity". If nothing else changes right now we're looking at all three specs excelling on different bosses in heroic progression. This may very well be the best job Blizzard has ever done balancing all three specs.

[iggie]

that is typically true, however if all specs are within 1k DPS of each other then playing what you enjoy most will provide you with the highest DPS. Honestly that is what blizzard should of been pushing harder to do since the game went live 8 years ago.

Not quite. Aoe/cleave will still require survival, and I have a feeling MM will overtake BM later in the tier.

[Dracodraco]

By the way, one thing that's been bugging me - whenever people say "X spec scales better than Y spec", is it something you guys have confirmed with numbers? I haven't looked into it myself, and probably won't do (outside of simming BiS on femaledwarf when everything's functioning), but it seems to me like everyone's just living in the past when it comes to referring to the word "scaling". As far as I recall, there's not been made one post yet backing up that MM will scale nearly as heavily as it did in Cataclysm, and remember, every spec had their scaling models re-done for - you no longer get an incredible agility bonus for survival to scale with, nor do you get the heavy attackpower scaling that BM had in cata. It's all just shot-scaling from AP and weapon damage now, so realisticly, the only thing that specs can "scale" with, is the weapon damage and attack power modifiers on the signature shots.

Basicly, my logic is, MM should not "pull away" just because you get a better weapon anymore, because the REASON it used to do that, was that BM and Surv would get incredible modifiers on their AP and Agil respectively to scale with, instead of the weapon damage.

[Deleted]

While I'm not a fan of assuming things, and that I haven't done any math aside from BiS simming like you did. I think Marksmanship does scale faster compared to Beast Mastery and Survival with crit because of Piercing Shots. 1% crit will have more effect for Marksmanship compared to the other specs. But this is more or less an assumption.

[Dracodraco]

While I'm not a fan of assuming things, and that I haven't done any math aside from BiS simming like you did. I think Marksmanship does scale faster compared to Beast Mastery and Survival with crit because of Piercing Shots. 1% crit will have more effect for Marksmanship compared to the other specs. But this is more or less an assumption.

Yes, it gives marksmanship a 233% modifier on crits on aimed/steady shot, instead of 203%.
On the other hand, it's mastery, wild quiver, is an on-chance attack, and not a linear scale, which is one of the reasons MM has felt like it's a wet noodle - while BM and surv's masteries increases the damage of our current shots, MM adds a new ability to the fray.
Besides, Aimed and Steady shots damage will be scaled to assume the 30% extra crit damage in order to not get out of hand.
It's possible that MM will pull ahead at higher gearlevels, but realisticly, there's no longer any "scaling issues" between the 3 specs that should make one run ahead of the others, like we've seen the other expansions. It just isn't the way they do things anymore.

[Nemesis003]

By the way, one thing that's been bugging me - whenever people say "X spec scales better than Y spec", is it something you guys have confirmed with numbers? I haven't looked into it myself, and probably won't do (outside of simming BiS on femaledwarf when everything's functioning), but it seems to me like everyone's just living in the past when it comes to referring to the word "scaling". As far as I recall, there's not been made one post yet backing up that MM will scale nearly as heavily as it did in Cataclysm, and remember, every spec had their scaling models re-done for - you no longer get an incredible agility bonus for survival to scale with, nor do you get the heavy attackpower scaling that BM had in cata. It's all just shot-scaling from AP and weapon damage now, so realisticly, the only thing that specs can "scale" with, is the weapon damage and attack power modifiers on the signature shots.

Basicly, my logic is, MM should not "pull away" just because you get a better weapon anymore, because the REASON it used to do that, was that BM and Surv would get incredible modifiers on their AP and Agil respectively to scale with, instead of the weapon damage.

they do scale differently. Marks scales more then twice as well with weapon damage then BM or sv due to the mature of its mechanics. BM scales better then MM with secondary stats because all secondaries are nearly equal in power to BM. SV right now scales the worst of the 3 specs because hate does almost nothing or the spec weapon damage doesn't help the spec much because of how its damage is calculated.

SV will keep its use for multi target fights. However for single target by the end of the tier its looking like it will trail behind as MM scales tremendously with better weapons and BM scales with all secondaries. When SV lost its ability to scale well with agility it losts it ability to really scale with gear.

The big thing i hope blizzard worked on fixing was the mechanical buffs transfering to the pet, because regardless of the spec your pet is still a big chunk of your damage and hunters will again fall behind of those fights if the pet does not get the buff.

as far all classes as a whole go hunters are one of the worst scaling classes in game with the 5.0 changes. Blizzard needs to tear down and rebuild the class from the ground up instead of these band-aid fixes thy have been doing for 8 years.

[Windthorn]

Doesn't survival scale with RAP like BM and MM with weapon damage, kinda seems all 3 specs scale approx the same, with MM having the slight edge.

[Deleted]

Hunter
- Dismiss pet now has a 3 sec cast time (up from 2 sec). This is to discourage swapping pets in the middle of PvP to get a different form of CC.
- Powershot now cancels Camo when the cast begins rather than the shot landing. Powershot is much more effective in 5.2 since it is so reliable now.

Hunter
- Chimera Shot damage +25% (was +50%).
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +10% (was +15%).

And BM stay top

[Deleted]

By the way, one thing that's been bugging me - whenever people say "X spec scales better than Y spec", is it something you guys have confirmed with numbers? I haven't looked into it myself, and probably won't do (outside of simming BiS on femaledwarf when everything's functioning), but it seems to me like everyone's just living in the past when it comes to referring to the word "scaling". As far as I recall, there's not been made one post yet backing up that MM will scale nearly as heavily as it did in Cataclysm, and remember, every spec had their scaling models re-done for - you no longer get an incredible agility bonus for survival to scale with, nor do you get the heavy attackpower scaling that BM had in cata. It's all just shot-scaling from AP and weapon damage now, so realisticly, the only thing that specs can "scale" with, is the weapon damage and attack power modifiers on the signature shots.

Basicly, my logic is, MM should not "pull away" just because you get a better weapon anymore, because the REASON it used to do that, was that BM and Surv would get incredible modifiers on their AP and Agil respectively to scale with, instead of the weapon damage.

I always got Agi wight ~4.5 dps and wdps ~3.5 per point for SV and BM, while MM gets ~3.5 and ~6.5 dps per point respectively. Isn't that something that matters with scaling overall?

[Deleted]

Yes, it gives marksmanship a 233% modifier on crits on aimed/steady shot, instead of 203%.

Not really important or related to the discussion, but isn't it 236% because Piercing Shots double dip from the meta gem?

Regardless I agree with you, but then again I've never claimed marksmanship scales faster than the other specs. But I have always assumed crit had a bigger impact because of reasons you just went over. It's a little pointless to look at what spec scales faster than other anyway. If spec A scales 10 times as fast as spec B and spec B still sims way higher in BiS gear it's not going to change anything, as spec B still ends up on top.

EDIT:
Aaaand I'm an idiot. I have no idea what my train of thoughts was since I knew Piercing Shots wouldn't be increased by the meta gem itself, so I don't know why I thought it double dipped. Ignore that.

[Gunba]

Basicly, my logic is, MM should not "pull away" just because you get a better weapon anymore, because the REASON it used to do that, was that BM and Surv would get incredible modifiers on their AP and Agil respectively to scale with, instead of the weapon damage.

Here are the BiS scaling numbers for this tier. Keep in mind the buffs being applied to MM/SV are only in the ~10% range and won't have a drastic effect on scaling. The numbers for MM and SV will go up slightly as a result of the buffs but that's about it.



You can see pretty clearly here that MM will actually pull away when you have an amazing weapon and less than BiS gear.

[Orangetai420]

Calling survival harder to play than BM? What class are you playin lol. Lock and load is full retard ever since the change to explosive shot.

Can we stop with "full retard"? I've seen this far too many times on this forum and it's rather insulting to the mentally handicapped.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

@draco/bovan: its nither 233% nor 236% :-)
thanks to the meta, a crit (doing 200% damage) gets increased by 3%. 200% *1.03 = 206%
Piercing shots lets the target bleed for 30% of the critical hit. 206% *0.3 = 61.8%
Totalling the damage of a critical hit (that triggers piercing shots obviously) at 206%+61.8% = 267.8%

So yes, MM scales better with crit than BM, which scales better than SV. (BM has more invigoration proccs, SV crits only do 206% more damage and nothing else)
MM also scales better with haste. (more time spent casting [AiS] and, more WQ proccs)
I've got no clue where MM mastery stands though, I can only say that BM > SV in terms of mastery scaling.
The main aspect in terms of scaling is the AP vs Weapon Damage scaling though.
The only thing I can conclude at this point, is that BM will probably scale better than SV.
if MM scales better/worse is very much dependant on how much weapon DPS gets increased by on higher ilvls, and how much agi is on the higher gear.

[Atroxe]

Based on my experience during PTR testing

Jin'rokh: BM
Horridon: SV
Council: SV
Tortos: SV
Megaera: BM
Ji-Kun: SV
Durumu: If pets behaved appropriately, probably BM, otherwise SV. Also depends on how important killing walls becomes.
Primordius: Honestly I have no clue, but I guess BM.
Dark Animus: SV, mainly because pets are going to used for positioning the small adds.
Iron Qon: BM
Twin Consorts: Not really sure, it depends on whether or not their P3 heal was actually taken out of the game, making cleave possible.
Lei Shen: If the adds are particularly important, then definitely SV. Otherwise, BM.


It feels pretty even, though I have a feeling SV will be better on more fights.

Sounds about right. Though I think that Survival will surpass BM on Primordius. My testing comes strictly from 25N but I didn't notice 2pc T15 / DB / stampede / pet / AMoC benefiting from being fully transformed. If this is the case, it will definitely be better to be survival / MM on this. Could very well just be a bug though (I hope)!

[Deleted]

(BM has more invigoration proccs

This is something people mention all the time, but is something I don't understand. What does crit have to do with Invigoration?
The passive in-game says: ''When your pet does damage with a basic attack, you have 15% chance to instantly regenerate 20 focus''.

It used to be on pet crits, but it doesn't mention crits anywhere currently. Is this a tooltip bug?

[Deleted]

This is something people mention all the time, but is something I don't understand. What does crit have to do with Invigoration?
The passive in-game says: ''When your pet does damage with a basic attack, you have 15% chance to instantly regenerate 20 focus''.

It used to be on pet crits, but it doesn't mention crits anywhere currently. Is this a tooltip bug?

I think people are referring to :
Go for the Throat
Requires Hunter (Beast Mastery)
Requires level 20
Your auto-shot critical strikes cause your pet to generate 15 Focus.

[Nemesis003]

Here are the BiS scaling numbers for this tier. Keep in mind the buffs being applied to MM/SV are only in the ~10% range and won't have a drastic effect on scaling. The numbers for MM and SV will go up slightly as a result of the buffs but that's about it.



You can see pretty clearly here that MM will actually pull away when you have an amazing weapon and less than BiS gear.

but if you lack the weapon and have near BiS armor BM is superior. Overall it seems BM is the best spec as far as scaling with gear overall. It scaled the best with every stat with exception of weapon damage, and weapon damage is 1 item.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

This is something people mention all the time, but is something I don't understand. What does crit have to do with Invigoration?
The passive in-game says: ''When your pet does damage with a basic attack, you have 15% chance to instantly regenerate 20 focus''.

It used to be on pet crits, but it doesn't mention crits anywhere currently. Is this a tooltip bug?

No, it's just me saying the wrong name, I meant "Go for the Throat" which lets your autoattack crits restore 15 of the pets energy. (which is 3/5 of the damage of a bite)

---------- Post added 2013-02-24 at 07:23 PM ----------

but if you lack the weapon and have near BiS armor BM is superior. Overall it seems BM is the best spec as far as scaling with gear overall. It scaled the best with every stat with exception of weapon damage, and weapon damage is 1 item.

it's only one item, but with the biggest influence by far, its still a question of weightage

[Nemesis003]

I know i will end up playing BM in 5.2 and learning the fights as BM and will change to SV if its required for heroics. With the amount of locks and ele shamans that my guild has i don't see hunters being super needed for multi target DPS. Keep in mind the best spec is not just cut and dry, its depends on your raid makeup. Running four locks make the AoE of an SV hunter almost pointless when you are talking 2-3 adds, you are sometimes better suited pooring more damage into the boss and letting the better AoEers do the AOE.

[Deleted]

I think people are referring to :
Go for the Throat

No, it's just me saying the wrong name, I meant "Go for the Throat" which lets your autoattack crits restore 15 of the pets energy.

That makes sense. But really it's not just this time someone said Invigoration. I was wondering if I missed something obvious.