Beast Master Opening Rotation Post Here, Need An Idea.

[Eutyr]

Well ive seen a lot of good openers for Surv and good guides for Surv but I think im going to be going BM for the most part now and never saw any posts about BM opening rotation and maybe a link to a good guide other then icy veins would be awesome and any tips you could give for BM would be coo. But mainly want a opening rotation for BM would be awesome thanks guys,

[Perrito]

KC->SrS->Stampede Macro->cobra shot (if 2pc t15)->cobra (if 2pc didnt proc or want to make sure it goes off)->BW+Arcaneshot macro->KC->spam AS until KC->KC->Fervor->Readiness->KC->AS->AS->SrS(should be about to falling off)->BW+Arcaneshot macro->KC->AS until KC->KC-> continue regular rotation, at this point you want to use rapid fire 2nd time and after that wears off focus fire.

[Eutyr]

Will try it and see how I like it.

[Kiea]

SpS
KC
Rapid Fire
Stampede
CS
DB
BW + GT
KC
AS
AS
AS
AS
AS
KC
Readiness + KC
CS (If you have more than 6 seconds or less than 5 on Renatakis trinket, add and additional AS between KC and CS, this is because if you have 6-7 seconds, you can get an additional KC in while still affected with Renetakis, making it hit for about double with the HC 2/2.
DB
GT
Bestial Wrath + AS
AS
KC
...
...
...
and so on

[cashzilla]

i'm not the best with my BM rotation and could definitely use some improvement, but the rotation i use at the start of a fight usually puts me between 360 and 400k burst dps initially (sitting at 520 ilvl with the 496 sha touched gun)

Rapid fire + stampede > beastial wrath > Kill command > sps > dire wolf > glaive toss > kc > readiness > bestial wrath > kill command > glaive toss > arcane shot spam like a mofo

sometimes i throw the second dire wolf after my second glaive toss. works pretty decently for me! i'm sure this can be improved on though

[Bullettime]

Gotten in the habit of

SrS
KC
Rapid Fire
Stampede
CS
DB
BW cycle
Readiness - KC
CS
DB
GT
BW

[Darkeye]

This has already been posted in several strings by Arktem. This starter makes the most sense to me.

Originally Posted by Arktem
I've put in a lot of time and effort into researching and testing the optimal BM opener. I've yet to find anything that comes close to

-10 Set up Traps
-5 MD/petdash macro (To give your pet time to regain the focus)
-2 Pre Cobra Shot or use a g1 Landshark if you're really pushing numbers
0 Prepot/SrS Macro
+1 MoC
+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire (Macro)
+3 KC/Cooldowns (Macro)
+4 Dire Beast
+5 Glaive Toss
+6 AS
+7 CoS
+8 AS
+9 KC
Readiness
+10 KC
+11 DB
+12 GT
+13 CoS (Get this in before your Rapid Fire Ends)
+14 AS/BW (First BW expires here)
+15 AS (Depending on the fight I will get rid of some focus and immediately pop my second RF)
+16 KC
+17 AS
+18 AS
+19 AS
+20 AS
+21 AS
+22 KC
Once BW Expires, find a good place to pop your second Rapid Fire. By this point you should also have 5 stacks of Focus Fire, which can also be popped (Not with Rapid fire though).

I've already written out the summary of this before, check comment history, but the opener is basically about using your longest DPC (Damage per cast) shots first so that they gain as much benefit from your pre pot as possible. Everything after that is just making sure that you do not waste damage by using abilities inside of your BW.

[Arktem]

This has already been posted in several strings by Arktem. This starter makes the most sense to me.

Sadly that opener is extremely out of date now. The idea behind it is still sound, but the actual rotation is most definitely wrong.

A good example being that it is now pointless to stack Stampede with any kind of haste cooldowns (Pets no longer have basic attacks/focus)

[Rabak]

Try to avoid casting cobra shot within the initial burst opening because of the cast time. Even though you may be extremely hasted, an instant shot (like Arcane Shot/KC) will still be more worth the time/focus (nerdy term for this is DPET, damage per execution time, if I'm not mistaken). Instead of giving a list of things to cast at opening, perhaps it would be better to offer some general guidelines, then you can play around and decide what you are comfortable with.

Its important to know that some DoT shots update dynamically, and some snapshot your stats at the moment of cast, and tick accordingly. eg. Serpent Sting is technically a snapshot DOT, but cobra shot updates the damage of your Serpent Sting tick based on your stats at the moment of your cobra shot cast. Ideally, you want your Serpent Sting ticks to be from you applying it with the best procs you have (superluminous from vicious talisman of the shado-pan, juju madness from bad juju, engineering gloves, lord blastington etc etc). For a list of "snapshot" abilities, there are a couple of good ones already in the forum. So for example, while casting SS early in your opening leads to consistent ticking damage right from the start, at the time of application you may or may not have your procs active. Add the fact that you will be super hasted and focus capped, chances are you won't get a really good chance to update that initial SS with a Cobra Shot. You can experiment with this; either drop an early SS to get your gear to proc, and then manually reapply SS again when you see that you have all your procs active before subsequently spamming the shit out of your Arcane Shot and KC (so that your ultra buffed SS ticks for the full duration of its application, without being updated by Cobra Shot which may be unbuffed).

During Bestial Wrath you obviously want to make the best out of the 10 seconds you have it active for. This means using high damage spells (preferably with instant casts with no cast-times) that usually cost focus (to benefit from the 50% focus cost discount during BW). KC is BM's hard-hitter, and since its on a 6sec CD, you want to get 2 KCs in one BW. Of course with Readiness available at the start (on your encounter's first BW), you want to squeeze in a 3rd KC at the end of that BW. You also want to avoid wasting GCDs on spells that do no damage on their own or don't cost focus (like Dire Beast, Focus Fire, Rapid Fire, to quote a few).

You also don't want to stack Rapid Fire with any other haste buffs (Lust, consuming 5 stacks of frenzy using Focus Fire). The only exception is at the beginning of the fight (if your raid lusts at the start), where you can have your RF up anyways after a Readiness. Also don't use Focus Fire when you are about to cast Bestial Wrath.

During your opening salvo, assuming high haste and BW, you will probably not cast Cobra Shot. This is a problem because you won't proc your 2pc. How I get around this problem is to pot and PRE-CAST cobra shot, to hopefully proc your 2pc before you start with your proper opening salvo.

That's all I can think of for now, hope it helps.

[hareu]

This is what I do.

SrS
(BW+RF+Stampede)
KC
Dire Beast
Glaive toss
Arcane spam till KC is up
KC
Readiness
KC
Dire Beast
Glaive toss
Cobra Shot (to refresh Srs)
BW
KC
Arcane spam
Rapid fire when BW drops off

with 537 ilvl this gets me about 380k-420k burst dps at peak, rarely see 420k+(usually depends if you get lucky with rppm trinkets and get 2 procs one after another in the opener on a single trinket.)

[Eutyr]

SpS
KC
Rapid Fire
Stampede
CS
DB
BW + GT
KC
AS
AS
AS
AS
AS
KC
Readiness + KC
CS (If you have more than 6 seconds or less than 5 on Renatakis trinket, add and additional AS between KC and CS, this is because if you have 6-7 seconds, you can get an additional KC in while still affected with Renetakis, making it hit for about double with the HC 2/2.
DB
GT
Bestial Wrath + AS
AS
KC
...
...
...
and so on

Thanks everyone for your input and rotations really helping me a lot. This one I have found to be the most appealing to me makes the most sense as well especially having the 2 set you get the early cobra in and your doing before entering BW so loving this opener for sure thank you for posting this.

[Glurp]

Prepot + Serpent Sting
Stampede + Rapid Fire
Dire Beast
BW + KC
GT
Readiness + KC
Arcane
Arcane
GT
KC

from there I just continue using KC > GT > Arcane as a focus dump priority. I refresh Serpent Sting after the first and 2nd BW has ended, use 2nd BW when the first ends and KC is >2 second cooldown and rapid fire once first one ends, pop FF when 2nd rapid fire ends.

I could list out every GCD for the first 40 seconds of the fight while all cooldowns are rolling but it'd be a bit of a hassle. The main point is to just get off all your cooldowns as quickly as possible without wasting them and following your basic shot priority.

[Teucer]

Prepot + Serpent Sting
Stampede + Rapid Fire
Dire Beast
BW + KC
GT
Readiness + KC
Arcane
Arcane
GT
KC

from there I just continue using KC > GT > Arcane as a focus dump priority. I refresh Serpent Sting after the first and 2nd BW has ended, use 2nd BW when the first ends and KC is >2 second cooldown and rapid fire once first one ends, pop FF when 2nd rapid fire ends.

I could list out every GCD for the first 40 seconds of the fight while all cooldowns are rolling but it'd be a bit of a hassle. The main point is to just get off all your cooldowns as quickly as possible without wasting them and following your basic shot priority.

This is the same opener I use. I'm wondering if you've tried this with casting serpent during the first BW instead of the first arcane and refreshing it during the second once its fallen off due to the snapshotting effect it has. I've tried it but I couldnt really tell if it made a difference, probably not - as you say the main point is getting off all the cooldowns while maintaining priority which this has with the opening SrS.

[Cutsman]

One thing I have seen while looking through these threads is that some of these openers do not take into account which spells are on the GCD and which ones are not. The whole point of creating an opener is to stack as many DPS increases with your pre-pot, and casting spells consecutively which could be macro'd in together is a waste of a global during your precious pre-pot time. The following spells should pretty much never be cast on their own:

BW
Fervor
Rapid Fire*
Readiness
Racials
Item-based on-use enhancements (Engineering gloves, on-use trinkets)
Pet abilities such as rabid

*Rapid fire has trouble with the spell queueing system, and thus spamming a macro with rapid fire in it may not trigger rapid fire unless if you continue spamming after the GCD from the previous spell has elapsed. It is still fully macro-able however.

I'd also like to refute the notion that including one cobra shot during the opener is a dps loss. If you have your tier 15 2 piece, it will be a dps gain if your 2 piece procs off the one cobra shot.

One final note: If you can afford to use a spirit beast (which you should use if all raid buffs are covered and you are BM, as it is a raid healing increase if used effectively), you can get a slight damage boost by pre-casting spirit walk, which is a special ability that grants a 20% bonus to damage for the first attack dealt by the pet.

[Rabak]

#showtooltip Rapid Fire
/use 10
/use virmen's bite
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Rapid fire
/cast Stampede
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Rabid
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

the last line "/script UIErrorsFrame: Clear()" is crucial, this allows rapid fire to be macro-ed with all the other good stuff without having to use another GCD.

The above macro is what I use in my opener as well as my burn phase. I have a separate macro that looks exactly the same but without virmen's bite/stampede, depending (eg fights where you may not want to cast your 2nd Rapid fire and first stampede until certain buffs like Conducive Water on Jin'rokh/Primal Nutrient on Ji-kun/Fully Mutated on Primordius).

[Deleted]

Nobody using Cobra Shot before the pull for the Thunderhawk?

Also couldn't you use GT before BW, so that it gets the Dmg-Bonus of BW when it hits, without using a GCD during BW?

[Rabak]

During your opening salvo, assuming high haste and BW, you will probably not cast Cobra Shot. This is a problem because you won't proc your 2pc. How I get around this problem is to pot and PRE-CAST cobra shot, to hopefully proc your 2pc before you start with your proper opening salvo.

That's all I can think of for now, hope it helps.

yup @Ohai I think a decent number of hunters pre-cast CS before their real opening salvo.

[Feanoro]

#showtooltip Rapid Fire

the last line "/script UIErrorsFrame: Clear()" is crucial, this allows rapid fire to be macro-ed with all the other good stuff without having to use another GCD.

Sorry, but that line simply suppresses error messages from appearing at the top of your screen. What's actually happening there is you're suppressing the messages where RF is a bit wonky with the spell queuing system.

[Arcanimus]

My opening as BM goes something like this:

Respec back to Survival or Marksman.
???
Profit.

Hate BM, have hated it since the braindead one button BC days.

All seriousness though:

Prepull>
MD
@1, Prepot
SrS
Stampede
RF
BW
KC
Arcane until focus below 40/KC is up
KC
Fervor
Readiness
BW
Arcane/KC on CD
Reapply SrS on last second of the most procs w/ BW
After BW, Fervor
RF
Delay refreshing SrS as long as possible without dead gcds
Rotation as normal

It's decent.

---------- Post added 2013-06-15 at 06:50 PM ----------

One final note: If you can afford to use a spirit beast (which you should use if all raid buffs are covered and you are BM, as it is a raid healing increase if used effectively), you can get a slight damage boost by pre-casting spirit walk, which is a special ability that grants a 20% bonus to damage for the first attack dealt by the pet.

The same thing can be done as non-BM and Cats. Spirit Walk is Prowl.