BM - need a little help w/ stats and talents

[Attractive]

Hello!

I'm a casual raider, and my guild is starting it's first heroic content here soon. I've played survival prettymuch the whole tier, but I'm switching to BM for a nice change of pace, loving it so far. Anyways, I'm hoping some people can help me out with some stat weight and talent advice for my specific situation.

Most everything I've read for BM has been split. The one conclusion I've actually been able to form is that most hunters simply go Crit>Haste>Mastery because they switch between specs often during raid. However, my offspec is MM for PvP, so I'll only be playing BM during the whole of raid every week. So for this reason, would Haste>Crit>Mastery actually be a better stat weight for someone like me who won't be playing SV? I've also seen some people say it might be best to balance out Haste and Crit too.

Second, it seems like every BM hunter that I've looked at uses Dire Beast, which makes a lot of sense because that scales with haste too. My question regarding this would be is that totally conclusive? I enjoy the playstyle of TotH (albeit a little spammy), especially for AoE heavy fights. Does dire beast pull significantly ahead in single-target situations?

Anyways, thanks for any help you can provide!

Here's my armory.

[Keleytu]

I recently asked the same question about stat priority and the answers I got here were pretty much the same. Crit>Haste>Mastery is pretty much universal for BM/SV. Of course you will want to tweak it a little to fit your desires and playstyle, but that is the fun part! I myself went Crit>Haste>=Mastery where Haste was only slightly ahead of Mastery.

Dire beast does do better than TotH because the damage it does is modified by your Mastery thus, doing more damage in the long run. I do not really have logs to show you as I myself am starting to dabble into BM and have not gotten any logs yet. Looking at your armory though you will want to go for the Ticking Ebon Detonator in place of your Harrom's Talisman, as your pet attacks do not proc the multistrike.

If you use askmrrobot, the weights I set are:
Agility: 9.17
Exp: 5.45
Hit: 5.45
Crit: 4.45
Haste: 3.5
Mastery: 3.25
AP: 2.4

These numbers were based off of the post by Joyful in the "bm bis list?" thread. I took the ones Joyful posted and messed around a bit and found where I was comfortable. Hope any bit of this post helps you out.

[Deleted]

To your question about Dire Beast, don't use it on fights where the beast will have to move. IE, thok, Dark shamans, etc. It loses swings when it is forced to move, and won't yield as much dps as Toth/fervor. Also, in an encounter with a lot of aoe, I wouldn't choose it over Toth/Fervor as well.

[anjan011]

I personally go with haste > mastery > crit. i m at 565 ilvl, and i love the haste build personally. Dire beast is good for single target, but its really poor choice for AoE. remember BM aoe is beast cleave, beast cleave doesn't crit as far as i know, but its damage scales with mastery and attack speed/swing gets affected by haste very nicely. I also prefer ToTH, more AS spam, and better uptime on rapid fire. The builds really r ur personal comfort lvl and r prevalent based on the fight. but all of them tends to be close to each other on single target. but for aoe, haste build hits really hard.

[Deleted]

Beast cleave itself cannot crit, but the melee swing of the pet can. It is always 75% of the actual melee swing damage. So, if melee damage doubles, beast cleave does too.

[Tehterokkar]

I personally go with haste > mastery > crit. i m at 565 ilvl, and i love the haste build personally. Dire beast is good for single target, but its really poor choice for AoE. remember BM aoe is beast cleave, beast cleave doesn't crit as far as i know, but its damage scales with mastery and attack speed/swing gets affected by haste very nicely. I also prefer ToTH, more AS spam, and better uptime on rapid fire. The builds really r ur personal comfort lvl and r prevalent based on the fight. but all of them tends to be close to each other on single target. but for aoe, haste build hits really hard.

Wrong. Beast cleave does "crit". The damage is based off the damage your pet does. So if your pet crits for 600k, beast cleave does 450k to all targets around it(before AoE DR).

Stat priority means fuck all for BM(poor scaling of secondaries overall and they are all equal), you can go with all 3 stats and still do same DPS, going for crit > haste > mastery build and simming it will make Mastery and haste seem better, but going with haste > mastery > crit build and simming makes crit look better. Balance all 3 stats and you will be good.

But if you want specifics:
AoE/Cleave: Mastery > Haste > Crit
Burst: Mastery > Crit > Haste
Single target, "all around good": Haste > Mastery > Crit

Crit is not that valuable for BM as we already have reached the point where we have over 50% agility in raid buffs(I have 55.8%). Value of Crit goes down considerably as we get more of it, but Mastery scales pretty linearly and raises in value very quickly, same with haste. And since BM AoE is 95% Beast cleave, Mastery scales very well.

[Attractive]

Thanks for the responses everybody, very helpful.

Looking at your armory though you will want to go for the Ticking Ebon Detonator in place of your Harrom's Talisman, as your pet attacks do not proc the multistrike.
.

Yes, sadly I am still waiting for it to drop for me. Hopefully soon!

[Keleytu]

Me too man, the dang thing wont ever drop!

[Kissthebaby]

Wrong. Beast cleave does "crit". The damage is based off the damage your pet does. So if your pet crits for 600k, beast cleave does 450k to all targets around it(before AoE DR).

Stat priority means fuck all for BM(poor scaling of secondaries overall and they are all equal), you can go with all 3 stats and still do same DPS, going for crit > haste > mastery build and simming it will make Mastery and haste seem better, but going with haste > mastery > crit build and simming makes crit look better. Balance all 3 stats and you will be good.

But if you want specifics:
AoE/Cleave: Mastery > Haste > Crit
Burst: Mastery > Crit > Haste
Single target, "all around good": Haste > Mastery > Crit

Crit is not that valuable for BM as we already have reached the point where we have over 50% agility in raid buffs(I have 55.8%). Value of Crit goes down considerably as we get more of it, but Mastery scales pretty linearly and raises in value very quickly, same with haste. And since BM AoE is 95% Beast cleave, Mastery scales very well.

actually bm aoe is probably about 60 percent beast cleave and bm mastery is shit infact all 3 hunter specs mastery are lazy and shit.

[Thursley]

Pet contribution to AOE is definitely a lot closer to 60% than 95%, especially with the legendary cloak and barrage. However, mastery as BM, even in a single target situation, is simming around the same level as haste in my gear (578) and for most other people I've talked to. What makes you think it's weak?

[Kissthebaby]

Pet contribution to AOE is definitely a lot closer to 60% than 95%, especially with the legendary cloak and barrage. However, mastery as BM, even in a single target situation, is simming around the same level as haste in my gear (578) and for most other people I've talked to. What makes you think it's weak?

The fact is that all hunter secondary stats are "weak" and the IMO all 3 specs have a lazy mastery that needs to be changed to actually make it useful. By lazy i mean lets give the pet spec a mastery that increases pet damage and the elemental spec a mastery that increases magical damage. That is blizzard being lazy. Marksman's mastery is at least a little different but still is nothing game changing. Since cata its been agility is our main stat by a landslide, no secondaries come close and for the most part crit has been the best of the rest. This is something that needs to changed next expac.

[Namor of Muradin]

Since cata its been agility is our main stat by a landslide, no secondaries come close and for the most part crit has been the best of the rest. This is something that needs to changed next expac.

Why does this need to change? Perhaps I am being obtuse, but I don't see what it actually matters if there is a strong value in any secondary stat as long as a class's overall damage is balanced.

[Zirke]

I posted this in a thread not long ago.

SimCraft:

The thing I like about SimCraft is that you can find your simulated stat priority compared to the exact items you are wearing. No more looking up stat priorities on websites and reading a lot of different opinions, because SimCraft will help tailor the stat priorities to your character. Let's begin!

1. Load your character by clicking on the import tab and then either manually enter the address (easy way), or go top options, find the "Armory Region", set it to your region, go back to Import, search for your character, click on your character after search so you can see all your gear and then click "Import!" in the bottom right corner: http://2.ii.gl/40fPqg.png

2. Go to the "Options" tab, and the "Globals" sub tab. Set "Iterations" to 50000 if you want a thorough simulation, although this can take some time, but it is worth it. If you want a quick scan set it to 1000: http://2.ii.gl/fKJzhP.png. (Everything else should be set to default, unless you want to simulate a specific boss fight, but then you can fiddle around the the settings in both "Globals" and "Buffs / Debuffs", as it is quite self-explanatory). PS. If you only want to simulate your DPS, you can go ahead and click "Simulate!" in the bottom right corner. If you want to simulate stat weights as well, proceed to the next step.

3. Next, go to the "Scaling" sub tab of "Options", and tick the stats you want to weigh. I rarely include Hit and Expertise as these outweigh all secondary stats 99% of the time. The first time you simulate stat weights, it might be a good idea to include Hit and Experise to get a grip on how much they outweigh your other stats: http://1.ii.gl/cQ75a.png

4. After the simulation is done, you will get a nice looking HTML page that shows in the "Results" tab (will open by default when done) and this will show you your stat weights (as well as other very useful information): http://2.ii.gl/Nz-ca.png

5. You can now use an addon like ReforgeLite or a website like AskMrRobot to input these weights and get a personalized reforge/regem/re-enchant for your current gear set.

6. Done!

tl;dr:

Download Simcraft, import your character and add scalings. 50k iterations for most thorough simulation. Stat weights for your current gear.

[Kissthebaby]

Why does this need to change? Perhaps I am being obtuse, but I don't see what it actually matters if there is a strong value in any secondary stat as long as a class's overall damage is balanced.

Its not though thats the whole point. What has been the common theme after every patch? a hawk buff. If our secondaries stats were worth a little more they wouldnt need this fix every patch. Our scaling sucks. There is no theory crafting or min mixing as long as our stats remain this crappy. The truth is 2 players with equal gear but reforged for a different secondary lets say crit vs haste, can easily have different results on each fight just simply based on rng. (cloak procs, trinket procs, if your trinkets proc at the start of a fight. etc.). Go look at the top parses and look at their cloak proc's its insane rng.

[Deleted]

Second, it seems like every BM hunter that I've looked at uses Dire Beast, which makes a lot of sense because that scales with haste too. My question regarding this would be is that totally conclusive? I enjoy the playstyle of TotH (albeit a little spammy), especially for AoE heavy fights. Does dire beast pull significantly ahead in single-target situations?

Hi Attractive, nice to see you wanting to try out BM.

Dire beast will do more damage since it benefits from BM mastery. But, as said before it will not be optimal on fights like Thok and Shamans. Reason TotH does so well as Survival single target is that as Survival, your 2-set (reduce RF cooldown) will reduce the cooldown on Rapid Fire by 8 seconds, but as BM Arcane Shot only reduces cooldown by 4 seconds per cast.

Regarding the stat weights I'm using Haste>Mastery>Crit as BM, and Crit>Haste>Mastery as Survival. As BM, Mastery and Crit is extremely close, and the numbers don't differ that much. I'd recommend downloading SimCraft and play around with it to see what stats you want to go for.

I hope this was somewhat helping you out. Best of luck with your Heroic progression!
~Cuddles

[Phaz3d]

When should you switch to haste tho? around what ilvl?

[femur68]

All three secondary stats are fairly even as BM. They are all good in some way.