Latest Simulationcraft T17N shows Beastmaster and Surivival wihtin 100pts.

[diggitydug]

Hello all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

So at the end of Pandaria, I have gotten tired of my mage. I kicked around several character classes, leveling up a monk, a DK, a Warlock, and a Hunter. While I can do great damage as a mage, im tired of the "Stand on your glyph" and pew pew" aspect of the character. I really liked Warlock when it was all move and shoot, but it got nerfed. So I tried the hunter.

The hunter was the first character I "Got into", since the mage. Meaning, I felt a personal connection with the character. I think its because I named the pets. I very very much love the playstyle. Leveling my mage up to 100, you have to pew pew, blink, put down your glyph, turn around, pew pew some more, blink, put down your glyph, turn around, pew pew, hit your rocket boots, turn around, kill the boss, and then spend 10 seconds eating your pudding recovering your health.

The Hunter you just send in your favorite tanking pet, and sit back and pew pew. (Although I have to admit, I tend to run around my targets in circles, just for the sheer joy of moving and shooting.

I like my Beastmaster pets. I will keep questing as beastmaster. For Raiding, I will probably go Survival, thinking Multistrike gear will switch pretty good between the two.

But the latest patchwork fight simulations show Beastmaster within 100 dps of Survival for 665 gear. My guild is an average guild, and we dont really get to mythic. Flame away if you want about my lack of l337, but it is what it is.
( go to simulationcraft dot org and look at T17 665. I cant post links since im a lowlie new user)

I would think the fight being patchwork, and single target, that BM should be close to SV, with player skill making up much of the difference between the two, and once you throw multiple targets in there, you should have some solid performance.

Has anyone else seen this in real life. I know simulations can be flawed, and I dont want to get my hopes up that I can keep my big Dinosaur in the raid.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas all.

Diggity.

[Littlepinch]

I have been running only BM so far this xpac and i;m doing just fine in our raid ( I'm competing with 2 other hunters and it's a toss up who wins at the end )
Take this with a grain of salt, for this is just my personal experience ( small sample )
If you enjoy BM you can stick with that and not be hindering your raid so enjoy your big Dino
Most fights atm i pull 20k-22k Dps as BM with a 630 Wep and decent trinkets ( Lucky Coin and Doom )

[Argotar]

I personally haven't seen any BM hunters. Everyone is either still marks or survival. But yes, everything is pretty close to each other now you can probably play BM.

[Aertea]

Last I looked the default profiles were using some goofy settings, like sub-par talent choices and probably priorities. That said, they really aren't that far apart, maybe within a few percent.

The problems you're going to have with BM in practice are typical to the spec - pet dependency. It's a little more exacerbated now because SV/MM have the option to completely ignore the pet in fights where it doesn't work well. That said, BM is very good at burst AE now.

[Littlepinch]

Last I looked the default profiles were using some goofy settings, like sub-par talent choices and probably priorities. That said, they really aren't that far apart, maybe within a few percent.

The problems you're going to have with BM in practice are typical to the spec - pet dependency. It's a little more exacerbated now because SV/MM have the option to completely ignore the pet in fights where it doesn't work well. That said, BM is very good at burst AE now.

Not many pet ai problems this tier. So BM isn't hindered by that as much as in Soo. I guess Soo taught them something.

[spinner981]

Effinhunter on elitist jerks says that steady focus now increase pet focus regen as well. Is this true? Was it a stealth buff?

[Azortharion]

It always did, SimCraft just didn't reflect it cuz #GG.

[Repose]

I would quite enjoy it if BM was seriously competitive with the other two specs. I know at my current gear level (650) I can't seem to get it to perform quite as well for me as Survival (or even MM, when I was using it). It always seems to lag about 1-2k behind, sometimes more.

I feel like something is missing. I have played BM since cata, raided with it all through mists, so I feel like I know how to play the spec. But if they're really that close, then either it's a gear/scaling issue or its a l2p issue in terms of making the most of the new talents. I do have some questions--if I'm using Steady Focus, how important is it to keep 100% uptime of the buff? Is that even feasible?

It also seems to me that the Lone Wolf talent puts BM at a disadvantage for just about every fight that isn't patchwerk (boss doesn't move drastically, no target switching) or just an AOE-fest. Lone Wolf and SV/MM are strong enough such that even minor loss of pet uptime means it's probably going to pull ahead of BM. To some extent that has always been true, in SoO there were definitely fights that I liked SV on because it simplified things to just put the pet on passive and leave him on the boss, but with the ability to dispense with the pet completely in return for a hefty buff, there are even broader situations where its just much more clearly an advantage to lose the pet.

It would be nice if BM's damage was compensated to make up for the fact that pet uptime is almost always going to be imperfect for most fights, similar to how caster dps is somewhat balanced (in theory) to compensate for interruptions caused by movement in real raiding environments.