Need help with the BM hype train

[buster2211]

I just really suck at bm never played the spec till last night and i read the guide over and over feels like i am doing something terribly wrong

Currently i do not have any logs but i will get some up after tonight
I am at 677 ilvl
character/bleeding-hollow/Luzan/simple

1st question would be, what kinda numbers should i be pulling on something like gruul and something like kromog?(haven't simed myself cause i suck and hardrive crashed recently so lost a lot of programs)

2nd what's your priority when BW is active?

3rd how often do you have SF active?

4th let's say everything is on cooldown and your sitting at 50 focus sf not active do you cobra kc cobra or do you arcane shot to dump the last of your focus

If you guys have any tips anything from my gear or focus management that would be awesome

[Deleted]

Without 4p I think you should be able to get 33k+ on gruul and 36k+ on Kromoh with good play - not perfect play (granted you don't have 4p - if you do I'd say 35k on gruul and 38-40k on Kromog.

This is purely from own experience thus anecdotal. I can't sim as I'm not at home but your sims would probably get you around the latter numbers without 4p and with perfect play (resp. 35 and 38-40k).

2. KC > Barrage > Arcane shot during BW. Pop Focus Fire right before you go into BW

3. no idea, I play Dire Beast on most encounters!

4. First choice is the winner here. Not that bad being on high focus as long as you don't cap. Especially if you still need to get the SF buff up

[galaxyquest]

Without 4p I think you should be able to get 33k+ on gruul and 36k+ on Kromoh with good play - not perfect play (granted you don't have 4p - if you do I'd say 35k on gruul and 38-40k on Kromog.

This is purely from own experience thus anecdotal. I can't sim as I'm not at home but your sims would probably get you around the latter numbers without 4p and with perfect play (resp. 35 and 38-40k).

2. KC > Barrage > Arcane shot during BW. Pop Focus Fire right before you go into BW

3. no idea, I play Dire Beast on most encounters!

4. First choice is the winner here. Not that bad being on high focus as long as you don't cap. Especially if you still need to get the SF buff up

DPS depends entirely upon gear level.

I was using 680 ilvl gear (w/ 4 piece) last night and did 41k on Gruul and 45k on Kromog.

[SlippyCheeze]

I just really suck at bm never played the spec till last night and i read the guide over and over feels like i am doing something terribly wrong

That pretty much reads "I assumed that the BM buffs were good enough that I don't need to know anything about the spec to perform better than the spec I know well and have practiced for ages". This is a terrible assumption to make because, in truth, skill >>>> spec DPS for most players, because Blizzard are doing a pretty solid job of delivering all specs and talents as viable, even in progression content.

1st question would be, what kinda numbers should i be pulling on something like gruul and something like kromog?(haven't simed myself cause i suck and hardrive crashed recently so lost a lot of programs)

2nd what's your priority when BW is active?

3rd how often do you have SF active?

4th let's say everything is on cooldown and your sitting at 50 focus sf not active do you cobra kc cobra or do you arcane shot to dump the last of your focus

If you guys have any tips anything from my gear or focus management that would be awesome

Azorthian's guide, in this forum, is pretty good about priority. BW is basically what Gaeral said: KC > Barrage > Arcane for single target, keep up beast cleave for AoE.

You should generally have fairly high uptime on SF; the sims hit around 84 percent, without paying any attention to it at all you should generally be around 65 percent. The higher the better, obviously, so try and stack two cobra shots back to back (or with BW, KC, or FF in between them) to gain uptime when that will not cap you.

In anticipation of the 2PC, which will reset BW, for which you really want to have a good pool of focus to spend quickly, you should probably stack focusing more on pooling than spending focus; the last thing you want to do is delay BW because you spent all your focus on AS just before it reset.

[Thano]

My sim shows me 34k single target dps patchwork as BM, but I only did 29k on Gruul. I'm staying on SV for single target until I have 4p bonus. But had an awesome experience with BM for AoE bosses like Thogar, Darmak and the blast furnace. Tried BM with Blink Strikes on Maidens but sucked with it, did far better as SV there, most probably cuz my rotation was not correctly done during all fight (kinda like maintain beast cleave, used barrage on CD and some kill commands). But I think BM will really shine once you reach 4p

[Nythiz]

I just really suck at bm never played the spec till last night and i read the guide over and over feels like i am doing something terribly wrong

Currently i do not have any logs but i will get some up after tonight
I am at 677 ilvl
character/bleeding-hollow/Luzan/simple

1st question would be, what kinda numbers should i be pulling on something like gruul and something like kromog?(haven't simed myself cause i suck and hardrive crashed recently so lost a lot of programs)

2nd what's your priority when BW is active?

3rd how often do you have SF active?

4th let's say everything is on cooldown and your sitting at 50 focus sf not active do you cobra kc cobra or do you arcane shot to dump the last of your focus

If you guys have any tips anything from my gear or focus management that would be awesome

1) You have slightly better gear than me, slighly higher ilvl and you have the 2p; I have no tier yet.
I can pull around 29-32k on Gruul. Haven't tried BM on Kromog yet. I can do roughly 33-35k on a patchwork fight according to the sims; but I have yet to master BM.

Also keep in mind that BM is very RNG bound; it has a lot of procs that just have to align to do top dps. You can easily see up to 10% difference between attempts based on lucky Frenzy procs, lucky 2p procs, etc.

2)
BW priority is:

a) Make sure I'm high on focus and that my Steady Focus is running as much as I can.
b) Make sure Focus Fire is up
c) Make sure I can KC right into BW
d) Barrage
e) Dump focus with Arcane shot

Generally what I do is keep an eye on the BW timer. What I want is to fire off the last KC before BW and be on roughly 40-50 focus after that.
After that I do Cobra Shot -> Focus Fire -> Cobra Shot -> Bestial Wrath -> Kill Command -> Barrage -> Arcane Shot dump

Or something in that trend. It changes a bit based on haste buffs and procs. But this rotation gives me:
- Focus Fire right before BW (if it's not up already, if it's already up i weave in an arcane shot or something)
- Steady Focus right before BW so it's up for most of its duration
- High Focus going into BW so that I can burn all that focus

Thing is, like you I haven't played much BM in raid situations (didn't play hunter in SoO); so I'm still trying to catch the flow of the spec.

3)
I haven't really tracked it much, but the logs from my only gruul attempt have a 75% uptime. I think are between 65-80% uptime you're solid, any higher is generally a bit harder to accomplish as overcapping focus or missing out a certain cooldown generally hurts you more than you gain from having SF up.

4)
This isn't SV with Focusing Shot. There is no reason to dump all your focus.
At 50 focus you can easily do a double cobra shot without capping your focus. IF you have KC up weave it in, if it's not up yet do Cobra -> Cobra -> KC or Cobra -> Cobra -> AS -> KC
You generally want to hover between the 50-100 focus mark as that gives you a nice buffer to play with; but also not too much that a random raid event could make you cap your focus.

Remember there is no DPS difference (assuming the fight doesn't end and you don't cap focus) between
AS -> CoS -> CoS
and
CoS -> CoS -> AS

The only difference is that the latter is often favorable if you're on low focus as that gives you a better position to adjust your rotation on. You can more easily weave in a KC should you misjudge the timer and it comes off cooldown.

This is something I'm still having to readjust to as with SV + Focusing Shot your general train of thought was: Dump all focus then use FS to regen it.
Whereas with BM CoS you generally want to juggle your focus to sit around the 80 focus mark as much as possible.

A good thing to remember is if you are below ~95 focus, you won't overcap from a single cobra shot and below ~70 focus you won't cap focus with a double cobra shot.
That gives you a lot of room to maneuver in. Because if KC is 2 seconds from coming off CD and you have <90 focus you can simply cobra shot. If your KC is still 4 seconds away but you have say 50 focus; you can easily do a double cobra shot, refresh Steady Focus and have plenty of focus whenever KC comes up.

[SlippyCheeze]

FWIW, I'm still experimenting with aiming for 90, and aiming for 70, in terms of focus. 90 is great for KC and Barrage never being delayed, and pretty damn solid when I go into a cleave phase without too much prep time (because even MS/CS/MS/CS rotation will keep things up for a long time if steady focus is down and I don't want the downtime to CS/CS to bring it back up, such as bursting short-lived cleave targets like spears)

The big problem is that sometimes using FF, or a lucky pet focus boosting attack, means that I cap despite never, ever being in a position where I would have capped from CS alone. I'm not sure if that is better or worse, because at 70-90 focus I don't have that problem, but it is *much* tighter to be able to cast both KC and Barrage if they come off cooldown. If I was a perfect player, though, I would probably stick to the 70-90 range, rather than the 90-110 range, if possible.

[webwierdo]

To be honest, I don't think hunter specs have ever been closer. Because of this, personal skill is going to make so much more of a difference than spec potential. If really don't enjoy BM, or you think you aren't pulling the numbers that you should be, just stick with whatever spec you were using before. It hasn't been nerfed and mid tier is not the time to learn a new spec.