Looking for some opinions on spec. I'm actually leaning towards mm. I'm somewhat proficient with it and the DPS loss is not dramatic compared to my SV/BM play.
You can KC even while kiting Thok, though you may run into pet despawning issues if you kite far down the hall. I think the ability to KC while out of range is enough of a reason to be BM, all other things being equal.
you need to be able to rape those bats while still dpsing thok. One of the hunters in our guild tried it for a few pulls and he lagged behind quite a bit on bats or thok. I recommend go for surv or bm. I know its not to big of a difference but if you want to min max i dont think MM is the spec to go. GL HF!
Survival. your pet will not be able to stay 100% on the boss during kite phase due to his increased movement speed, same with dire beast.
Surv. I dunno how MM does, but BM is definitely not the best option.
Survival with TotH and aMoC. Especially on your first kill, you will probably be able to get off 1-2 aMoCs under 20% making it super valuable.
Also, SV > BM unless you dislike RNG(not Fire Mage kind of RNG). BM is more consistent in DPS but SV can do much higher than BM in cases of better than average RNG.
Lets just say all three specs are equal in single target. However, BM will fall behind when Thok begins running too fast, but will catch back up with awesome Beast Cleaveness on the Bats. Survival will do good throughout the encounter and pretty good with Bat cleave. MM will do good throughout the encounter and will do "meh" to "decent" on Bat cleave. The longer the bats are alive, the farther Survival and BM will outdo MM's AOE.
Need help cleaving because your group doesn't have 4 Warlocks and 3 Elemental Shamans? BM. Super cleave adds.
Group's cleave is average but needs a bit of help? Survival. Multishot once or twice and continue on Thok.
Group's cleave is OP? MM. Stay on boss.
My 2 cents.
I've been running SV with Fervor, Crows, Glaive and doing well against the other hunters/raiders.
Since you are in a 10 man I doubt you will be able to swing MM mostly due to the bat DPS required. MM AoE is terribad and you'll only be hurting your guilds progression. If you were in a 25man, the situation would be different for sure.
Your best bet is to go BM. Blame the bats.
Good news is that the next two bosses on your list are MM friendly. So you can look forward to that.
I'm with Conjor on this one, Beast Mastery's AoE on the bats is very strong along with single target damage on par with Survival and Marksmanship in the other areas. The bats really need to die quickly unless you overgear the fight by miles.
Bestial wrath lines up right around bats assuming you are going to 25 or so each phase.
The reason why SV is typically more favored on Thok isn't because of the bats. It's because of the traveltime you pet makes to reach the darn boss, it'll sum up to a substantial amount (i reckon, I have not done the math) of lost dps. The guild I am playing in now uses Heroism on bats to get them down, but it also depends heavily on your setup.
Imo. if you lack AoE on bats, it's fine for you to spec into more AoE, aka going BM. If you kill the bats fast enough, stick with SV for more dmg overall on Thok.
I missed out on my guild's downing of H Thok 25 this week due to reasons, but I desperately want Haromms trinket before I ever roll SV this tier again (last time was when I had H Renatakis). Currently stuck with N WF AoC and N TED :V
I thought most guilds are able to kill it before having to deal with the bat phase. atleast when my guild killed it a while back we didn't have to deal with bats the way we did it. fire>water> kill in kite phase before poison phase, every stack phase was about 26 shouts( or w/e theyre called) except for the fire which we push right away. idk why anyone would wanna deal with those bats, so much damage to the raid X_X
Survival is what has been working best for the hunters in my guild, but I have been running BM on this just for Bestial Wrath kind of pooling my DPS for when I have good uptime on the boss as well Bat aoe damage. I finally got Harromms so I will most likely be going survival for it this week. Just a tip, keep pet dash off of auto cast and activate it manually when the Thok is getting faster. Hunters should be toward the top of the meters for this fight.
The 1st / 2nd week landscape for boss killing is vastly different from the landscape now. Strats were different, available gear and cooldowns were different.
It is entirely possible to kill the boss in 2 phases nowadays with the insane gear that everyone has, but it wasn't 2 months ago when everyone still had mostly ToT gear. Back at 550-560ilvl you needed all the phases just to beat enrage.
Survival and BM do close to the same dps under normal conditions. On thokk BM will fall behind because the pet can't keep up with the boss a lot of the time during the kite phases.
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We've been doing it with 4 healers because ours mostly suck :| Have to do all phases...