Hunters herded to the next top dps spec. MM, anyone staying SV?

[Rukah]

Prolly go MM, staying with SV for tonight and tommorows raid until I get rotations and such sorted.

[Kyira]

I always prefered MM, what your thread title implies is what happened when I went surv.
Now I'm just going back to my fav spec.

This sums it up for me

[The bearer of truths]

i stay, i like the playstyle.

[Zanitus]

I stuck with SV through all the nerfs in Wrath, will stick with it now as well. Its the spec I prefer and enjoy. I seriously hope that most will play what they LIKE playing, not the spec of the month. Personally, I think that enjoying what you are doing makes you a better player overall.

[Kidoeng7]

I am having both MM/SV (ty dual spec), personally i love the hunter mechanics not just a spec so gief BM top raiding and ill enjoy it too said that, depending on missing buffs hunters can switch specs.

[Deleted]

I have always prefered MM spec over any spec, ever since vanilla. But obviously when it's about raiding / progressing, you just have to pick the best spec for that encounter and during 4.0.3, survival was just way better for me at least. For single target, soloing and PvP I'm going to stick MM but aoe worries me. I loved the new survival aoe mechanic, but apparently bombardment won't compete with serpent spread in any scale. Have anyone tried mm aoe in fights where aoe is required? We are currently on cho'gall and we really lack ranged classes so my dps on the adds is very important. Concussive barrage + multishot looks pretty nice for kiting aoe packs, but I guess the damage is going to be just awful.

[jlrm365]

"Hunters herded to the next top dps spec. MM, anyone staying SV?"

Marksmanship will not be the best dps spec, until raiders have the highest possible levels of gear. That won't be the case for most players, at least for a while.
Your statement appears to assume that everyone was SV to start with. "Hunters" are not being herded anywhere. Fools, who don't know any better and who can't / won't do anything other than follow, might be.
Individuals, however, might be choosing Marksmanship. They might also be staying with whichever build feels best.
Don't squeeze yourself into a build, because someone told you to. Take that which feels best and make it better.

[Black Label]

I tried MM and SV last night on Argaloth, Halfus, and Valiona/Theralion. Argaloth was okay. I pulled 18.7k which is about 3k lower than I usually do in SV. I think alot of this was due to unfamiliarity with the rotation as well as the Fel Storm movement mechanic which really hurts due to losing Aimed Shot for that time. I went MM again on Halfus and pulled 34k with two dragons up. Still decent, but again the lack of mobility compared to SV is noticable.

Finally I went back SV for the dragons for increased mobility and did 19.4k which is SLIGHTLY less than my usual pre-patch. Overall until I get comfortable with MM in a raid setting I will be rolling SV for the mobility and AoE potential. Anyone else in the same boat?

[Paulosio]

Only spec I can even tolerate playing at the moment is survival but i'm not going to enjoy struggling to do decent dps in comparison to my guildies with a gimped spec.... I just can't see the reasons for the nerfs to Survival because in average raiding gear it certainly wasn't 1 of the top dps specs/classes. They nerf survival but buff shadow priests and other classes who were already doing more dps. If things were still as they were for the 1st month or so i'd totally agree with these nerfs but survival has been sliding backwards in comparison to other classes for a while as people gear up more.

Been playing since a hunter main since Vanilla and i've never felt so disappointed in the state of my main class. There's always been at least 1 spec I really liked playing and when there were nerfs I nearly always felt they were fair but not at the moment.

Marksman is going to be too annoying to play on most of the hard modes where you need to be able to move constantly. Survival is going to be lower than it was before the patch while others classes got buffs which means you are probably going to be competing for a middle placing at best. BM is just dull and i'm not convinced the numbers will be particularly good for the spec.

Will try my 1st raid tonight and will be going BM for it.... lets see.

[imagine]

Did some testing on a heroic dummy, SV highest DPS was around 13k, while MM made it too a whole 18k on a dummy.

So MM i will be.

[Tahkmaul]

Born an SV hunter and staying. I am going to off-spec MM just to try it out and see what all the fuss is about, but SV is my favorite spec. I just love the utility with shorter trap CDs, Wyvern Sting, Entrapment, Thrill of the Hunt, and Hunting Party.

[Steelyorc]

I raided SV in wrath...still raiding SV...last night I still outdamaged the MM hunters....the differences arent all that great...good play style will win in the end

[Biggiej]

My hunter is an alt, but always checking out different dps specs for the best performance, I went with MM single target, this spec is going to rock the socks on bosses, Id still keep a survival OS for AoE fights. As for BM, from what I have been reading, it still falls short compared to survival, and even then compairing it to marks, BM just falls down a cliff there <_<.

I love all 3 specs, I was one of those OMG BM easy mode hunters in BC lol, and I liked survival in wrath, and I was cool with it in cata(It was even easier in cata) And in All 3 expansions I always went marks for certain periods of time.

I never let pride get in the way of whats best, if a spec becomes the best way possible to do the maximum dps, then I will pick it! Because if I do whats best, then I am doing everyone else a favor by making things easier.

[Shirohibiki]

My hunter is, and always will be, BM. <3 I love BM more than any other spec. My offspec is MM, and I'll never go SV because I really hate it. BM has always been my favorite, and I don't care what people say about it. I'll always love it.

[StendhalSyndrom]

"Hunters herded to the next top dps spec. MM, anyone staying SV?"

Marksmanship will not be the best dps spec, until raiders have the highest possible levels of gear. That won't be the case for most players, at least for a while.
Your statement appears to assume that everyone was SV to start with. "Hunters" are not being herded anywhere. Fools, who don't know any better and who can't / won't do anything other than follow, might be.
Individuals, however, might be choosing Marksmanship. They might also be staying with whichever build feels best.
Don't squeeze yourself into a build, because someone told you to. Take that which feels best and make it better.

Well please explain to me how staying w/ what feels better and making it better can change what BLizz intends to be the top dps spec.?

It's not like all three were neck and neck it was clearly SV>MM>and lolBM mind you depending on gear SV n MM could get close SV was still tops by a k or two so when your guild is at the cusp of doing something how are you not going to maximize when you are equally as skilled in all specs.?

Edit: I have to argue w/ you on the point of MM being better only w/ current endgame gear as most people are finding w/ the same gear they have a few hundred to a k dps up w/o reforging...

When I started as this x-pac as BM (cuz it was the spec. I wanted to raid w/ as having extensive experience already as BOTH SV/MM back and forth for almost 4 years now... I was looking for something new) and there is no way that I could reach the numbers SV was putting out at the time as BM now matter what I did or how much I "tried to make it better" as you so coyly put. This is a game not the real world where you can achieve more the harder you try, unfortunately there are preset limits here defined by others.

So sorry but no if you want to do all you can for you guild as far as dps goes you are pointed in a very certain direction.(w/o going too far out of you abilities of course, as you will still do less dps as the top dps spec. if you don't have your rotation/priorities down) And that to me and a few others as it seems feels like herding atm only time will tell if Blizz is really telling the truth and all 3 specs. are close enough to each other to be raid viable.

Good to hear people are sticking (somewhat) to playing what the enjoy!!

[kidsafe]

Marksman is superior on single-target fights, period. The only heroic mode fights where SV is clearly better right now is Maloriak and maybe Cho'gall. Magmaw is Marksman territory unless you feel compelled to kill the parasites (you don't have to). Once your raid gets to the point where everyone is pulling their weight and you have excess AoE, SV becomes obsolete for the current tier.

[Dch48]

The difference between MM and BM and SV (which are essentially equal now) is nowhere near 3-4k, It's more like 1k or about 8% in a single target, no movement fight. I personally am staying with BM since I still do more damage with it than as MM in real in game action. I also feel strongly that once Blizzard sees that Aimed Shot is bugged to the point that people are hard-casting it, it will be nerfed. It's doing way more damage than what just doubling the weapon damage would give you. It's doing twice what the game tooltip suggests.

My hunter is, and always will be, BM. <3 I love BM more than any other spec. My offspec is MM, and I'll never go SV because I really hate it. BM has always been my favorite, and I don't care what people say about it. I'll always love it.

Right on! I agree with every word and I have the same spec setup.

You also can not take the raw numbers you get from MM on a target dummy because of the Careful Aim factor. You need to adjust the crit rates for aimed and steady to about 12% higher than what the other shots are critting at. Run the numbers, subtract out the extra damage you wouldn't get in a real fight where the targets health drops and then redivide the total by the seconds spent on the dummy. You'll see at least a 2k drop in the dps number when you do it.. For me, with hardcasting aimed, it dropped 2.2 k when crit adjusted and wound up only 600 dps ahead of my BM spec.

[frejborg]

I will stay Survival.
Then again my original Hunter back in TBC was Survival as well. ;D

There was SV nerfs, but overall I can't see its damage changing much in PvP, because of the Hunter !buffs.

[Dch48]

Simulated results, femaledwarf to be exact. And this is without reforging to optimize the gains of switching to MM.

femaledwarf shows a difference of 1315 dps between MM and SV and only 535 over BM. I got about the same results on target dummies after adjusting the crit rate from careful aim. This is with Aimed only being cast on the proc however. If you set it to hardcast and on proc and remove arcane shot, you get a 4K difference which is why I'm convinced Aimed is going to be quickly nerfed because it's obviously bugged. Fixed would probably be a better term than nerfed.

I'm sure they never intended to make it so that people would hard cast it in a rotation. Of course it's going to be much harder to actually do it in real in game action.

I tried running as MM and I was actually only able to hard cast it a few times without running into focus problems--I wound up with more proc casts than hard ones. I really didn't do any better than I do as BM, Just got a few pretty crit numbers. I predict that we'll soon be back to the usual MM rotation with Arcane in it and aimed only on proc or as an extra focus dump during RF. That rotation has MM nicely in line with the other 2 specs, even in the sims.

[StendhalSyndrom]

Once your raid gets to the point where everyone is pulling their weight and you have excess AoE, SV becomes obsolete for the current tier.

AKA you all outgear the place... Obsolete? Please QFT.