If we get 2 legendries, what's best with Serpentstalker's?

[derekmmorgan94]

If we are eventually able to eventually use a second legendary, which other legendary should you use for single target/overall damage? Hopefully we get new legendries by that time because nothing else seems too useful.

[KrayZ33]

I'd build two additional ones.

one more ST. I heard the Nightfae's "Niya's Tools: Burrs" counts as a trap.. so maybe - Nesingwary's Trapping Apparatus. But more likely than not something else. At least for MM

one more for AoE. Secrets of the Unblinking Vigil - that's for sure.

[Huntsmang]

i would go for rapid fire one

[Blackmist]

Surging shots looks to be the second best right now.

However, I'm pretty sure this is purely academic, since the current legendaries are so mind-bogglingly underwhelming.

More legendaries will be added in each major patch, which is why they're all so bad right now. I doubt we'll even keep Sepentstalker tbh. I think they'll save 2 legendaries equipped until the final patch of the expansion, and the last legendary they add will be so good that it will be one of them.

I want the tier 18 MM set bonus back. That shit was bananas.

[Rajej]

Rylakstalker's Confounding Strikes and Wildfire Cluster, of course.

[Ghost10491]

With current legendaries for multitarget id go unblinking vigil and surging shots, single target Serpent Stalker and the Trueshot one

[DazManianDevil]

Rylakstalker's Confounding Strikes and Wildfire Cluster, of course.

Of course!
I could be wrong but I'm quite sure BM will overtake MM for most PvE content by then, love it or hate it; especially with the current PTR changes for 9.0.5. :/

[Tanis]

Of course!
I could be wrong but I'm quite sure BM will overtake MM for most PvE content by then, love it or hate it; especially with the current PTR changes for 9.0.5. :/

I really hope you're joking. Have you looked at the Warcraft logs at the higher ilevels? BM dps sinks harder than the Titanic as ilevel goes up. Filter Mythic raid logs for the last 2 weeks by ilvl, 227-229. BM looks awful, MM is close to top tier.

[DazManianDevil]

I really hope you're joking. Have you looked at the Warcraft logs at the higher ilevels? BM dps sinks harder than the Titanic as ilevel goes up. Filter Mythic raid logs for the last 2 weeks by ilvl, 227-229. BM looks awful, MM is close to top tier.

I guess I should clarify my post.
Historically speaking, as in BFA til now, BM out-scales MM pretty hard. Right now using Bloodmallet profile sims, they're within 100dps of each other with perfect 226/233 gear.

To your point of MM damage at the high end of ilvl vs BM, I did some digging and wouldn't you know it, a fair % of the top parsing BM logs, are MM players using MM itemized gear/trinkets, gems etc.
You're not wrong, but I'm taking current tier logs with a grain of salt. Specifically the 3 logged kills for Sire, are MM hunters who went back in later on BM to goof off using the wrong trinkets for the spec, which I don't consider real useful data.

Now that's not a huge sample size, sure. However with Rylak's being buffed from 20% pet crit damage to 35% crit damage, this isn't insignificant from a scaling perspective.
The spec itself already works off Haste and Crit to a higher degree than most given the synergy between these stats as they relate to Wild Call resetting Barbed shot, which in turn creates higher uptime of Bestial Wrath yada yada yada.

Right now yes, MM is clearly better; not even an arguable point. That being said, with the current legendary tuning on PTR and stat inflation that comes with a new raid tier in 9.1.0, don't be surprised if our ol buddy "Beast cleave go brrr" spec is back to being flavor of the month.

The post I was responding to was making a Surv hunter joke, that spec needs some love.

[Eapoe]

I guess I should clarify my post.
Historically speaking, as in BFA til now, BM out-scales MM pretty hard. Right now using Bloodmallet profile sims, they're within 100dps of each other with perfect 226/233 gear.

To your point of MM damage at the high end of ilvl vs BM, I did some digging and wouldn't you know it, a fair % of the top parsing BM logs, are MM players using MM itemized gear/trinkets, gems etc.
You're not wrong, but I'm taking current tier logs with a grain of salt. Specifically the 3 logged kills for Sire, are MM hunters who went back in later on BM to goof off using the wrong trinkets for the spec, which I don't consider real useful data.

Now that's not a huge sample size, sure. However with Rylak's being buffed from 20% pet crit damage to 35% crit damage, this isn't insignificant from a scaling perspective.
The spec itself already works off Haste and Crit to a higher degree than most given the synergy between these stats as they relate to Wild Call resetting Barbed shot, which in turn creates higher uptime of Bestial Wrath yada yada yada.

Right now yes, MM is clearly better; not even an arguable point. That being said, with the current legendary tuning on PTR and stat inflation that comes with a new raid tier in 9.1.0, don't be surprised if our ol buddy "Beast cleave go brrr" spec is back to being flavor of the month.

The post I was responding to was making a Surv hunter joke, that spec needs some love.

I think the issue lies with scaling itself. While BM scales better at higher percents is true, the problem comes with the fact that Blizzard put DR to stat gains to combat highly inflated stats.
That said, specs like MM that scale more based off of agility and weapon DPS than BM does, will probably get stronger as the xpac goes on while BM stays pretty stagnant.

[DazManianDevil]

I think the issue lies with scaling itself. While BM scales better at higher percents is true, the problem comes with the fact that Blizzard put DR to stat gains to combat highly inflated stats.
That said, specs like MM that scale more based off of agility and weapon DPS than BM does, will probably get stronger as the xpac goes on while BM stays pretty stagnant.

That could certainly be the case, I'm not opposed to MM being better when played well. In my guild, I comfortably keep up as BM with both our MM players. That's less of a spec issue than a "they still make some rotational mistakes" where it's tough to play BM wrong.

For fun I just ran a droptimizer sim for my BM and my guildies MM. We both have the 226 Huntsman weapon, getting Sire weapon would be a 1.2% dps gain for him and a 1.8% for me, so weapon dps scaling at this gear level seems about the same, which makes sense considering a lot of BM damage was baked into Cobra shot.

I'm still confident BM will still out-scale MM by the end of 9.1, as main stat scales in a very smooth linear fashion. As Dazar'alor going into EP showed us, BM takes off with it's crit to haste ratios where as to my knowledge, MM doesn't scale exponentially with any stat.

At the end of the day I'm just a BM Hunter main who probably can't even read let alone breathe through my nose, tis just my 2 cents.

[Nythiz]

Historically speaking, as in BFA til now, BM out-scales MM pretty hard.

I mean, in BFA it was true, but not for the reason many people think.
In BFA BM scaled insanely hard, but that was almost entirely due to Azerite gear.
Having Primal Instincts / Rapid Reload / Dance of Death increased the scaling of secondary stats by a landslide for BM.
On top of that a lot of the fights favored BM and MM was limited by the target cap (which BM now is as well).
All of that made BM scale better than MM.

Currently you can simply sim it and it shows that MM scales quite a bit better than BM. Simply sim your stats and you will see that you get more DPS per point of secondary stat for MM than for BM.

The reason it looks like BM scales harder is that MM and BM weren't that far apart on single target and the 5% buff to BM brought that close enough that people suddenly think that BM scales good. That's hardly the case. MM just isn't much better on pure single target fights.

The legendary buffs for BM don't change a whole lot right now, other than that a lot of people that were already using Rylaks / Dire Command will get closer to people using SFE.
BM might overtake MM at some point, but then that will most likely be due to other changes (much like the SST fix with is quite a big nerf to MM hunter in 9.0.5).

I'm very much looking forward to the new Rylaks after buff, since I much prefer Rylak/DC over SFE.
That said, Rylaks does require you to play a bit better to get as much out of it on the sim as SFE does.
(SFE has a high chance to fudge up due to movement; but Rylaks require a perfect rotation in BW to get the same result as sims)

[FossilFree]

Rylakstalker's Confounding Strikes and Wildfire Cluster, of course.

I think it's funny how the Icy Veins guide tells everyone to use the M+ build for raiding, even though the BoP/Nessingwary's Trapping Apparatus build is better (viper's venom, guerilla tactics, steel trap, mongoose bite, and birds of prey). It's not even hard to execute, but the writer acts like it's impossible to even write about . It simply does more damage in raids, check the sims. I was top dps in my last run using it, and the MM hunters weren't happy at all lol.

It makes me wonder if THAT is the reason for SV being at the bottom of the charts: everyone running aoe dungeon builds in CN.

[Aureli]

I think it's funny how the Icy Veins guide tells everyone to use the M+ build for raiding, even though the BoP/Nessingwary's Trapping Apparatus build is better (viper's venom, guerilla tactics, steel trap, mongoose bite, and birds of prey). It's not even hard to execute, but the writer acts like it's impossible to even write about . It simply does more damage in raids, check the sims. I was top dps in my last run using it, and the MM hunters weren't happy at all lol.

It makes me wonder if THAT is the reason for SV being at the bottom of the charts: everyone running aoe dungeon builds in CN.

Take a look on logs, there is no big difference between surv leges on ST.

[DazManianDevil]

I mean, in BFA it was true, but not for the reason many people think.
In BFA BM scaled insanely hard, but that was almost entirely due to Azerite gear.
Having Primal Instincts / Rapid Reload / Dance of Death increased the scaling of secondary stats by a landslide for BM.
On top of that a lot of the fights favored BM and MM was limited by the target cap (which BM now is as well).
All of that made BM scale better than MM.

Currently you can simply sim it and it shows that MM scales quite a bit better than BM. Simply sim your stats and you will see that you get more DPS per point of secondary stat for MM than for BM.

The reason it looks like BM scales harder is that MM and BM weren't that far apart on single target and the 5% buff to BM brought that close enough that people suddenly think that BM scales good. That's hardly the case. MM just isn't much better on pure single target fights.

The legendary buffs for BM don't change a whole lot right now, other than that a lot of people that were already using Rylaks / Dire Command will get closer to people using SFE.
BM might overtake MM at some point, but then that will most likely be due to other changes (much like the SST fix with is quite a big nerf to MM hunter in 9.0.5).

I'm very much looking forward to the new Rylaks after buff, since I much prefer Rylak/DC over SFE.
That said, Rylaks does require you to play a bit better to get as much out of it on the sim as SFE does.
(SFE has a high chance to fudge up due to movement; but Rylaks require a perfect rotation in BW to get the same result as sims)

Fair points, though I'm still convinced BM's biggest problem is the exponential scaling and domino effect of Wild Call.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but MM at a base level doesn't have a scaling x factor. As in, your CDR is always the same, the only reason you do more damage is Crit Vers and Mastery make you hit harder while Haste allows more ability presses over a time period. There's also the bleed passive talent which would scale off a factor of weapon damage and crit % for uptime but that seems like a small outlier.

BM is quirky because, while it doesn't scale quite as well with base stats on paper, Wild Call is an annoying factor; as it scales exponentially along a crit/weapon speed axis.
Every free barbed shot, played properly gives a higher probability of maintaining pet frenzy 3 stack, and 12 seconds off Bestial while giving better focus pool for Cobra's which feed into KCs, not to mention how unpredictable and stupid the passive can be with reset drought.

The issue I see, is that the current 3 BM laggos with a passive component (Cobra shot making KC free, summong dire doggo and Rylak's) all scale and multiple off this factor, since we're very likely to switch back to Killer Cobra talent by the end of 9.1 for ST scenarios, along with Bestial's uptime going up, mine's around 48-49% on the bosses I checked, this will likely approach EP levels where it was over 60% in most cases.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong and shown how and why MM will stay above BM at the top end, but for now I'll continue with my tinfoil hat and predict a lot of MM players will make the swap to BM by the end of 9.1 and not look back.
Cheers!
PS: I feel only 2 kinds of players made SFE. Genuinely good players, and people who read Icyveins. I'm a mediocre mythic progger so I made Rylak's day 1.