Lethal Shots

Well, I specced Marks a few nights ago to try it out. I’ve got to say it has changed a lot since the last time I used it. The spec I went with was a 16/55/0 build. I know it’s far from perfect, but it was for testing purposes only.

Damage wise I didn’t see much of an increase over BM. I will admit, that may be due to technique, or a lack thereof, on my part. I opened with Serpent Sting and the followed a priority rotation of Chimera > Arcane > Aimed > Steady. After playing with that a while I dropped Aimed Shot to try and improve my mana efficiency.

Overall I have to say it was fun, though I kept forgetting that Rapid Fire had a shorter cooldown. And Readiness was almost constantly forgotten. I’m sure with practice things would come more naturally to me.

I think I am going to keep the spec for a little while longer, and then on to Surv to try it out.

Ghostcrawler announced yesterday that Blizzard recognizes their screw-up trying to balance Hunters and that they plan to fix us before 3.1 hits. Now I’m not going to analyze everything he said, Brigwyn already did a great job of that here. One thing that I wanted to tough on was brought up by one of the commenters on Brig’s post.

Dave mentioned that one of the largest problems with the BM tree is its reliance on your pet. Some fights are downright nasty for pets. Think the Keristrasza in The Nexus or Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum. He brings up a good point that when a BM’s pet dies, he loses 35% to 45% of his overall DPS.

Now Ghostcrawler has said that BM is the “easy” Hunter spec. Well I don’t know about you, but any Spec that can lose almost half its DPS from one whirlwind or AOE does not fall in the easy category. Pet management while maintaining DPS can be tough thing to master. If he really wants BM to be the easy spec he needs to make a few changes to pets, mainly in the area of durability.

One idea would be to let Hunters re-spec their pet in the field. This would allow us to custom tailor our pets for each specific encounter. Stack DPS talents for some fights, survivability talents for others. While this would be nice, I don’t see it as the optimal solution.

I’m thinking more along the line of buffing pets back up. Along with buffing BM pet damage back up some (not like they were, just enough to make them competitive with Marks and Surv), talents could be changed to also give extra health, armor, resistances, ect. Not necessarily flat numbers though. Maybe Kindred Spirits could be changed to also provide a higher conversion rate of the Hunter’s stats to the pet. If done right, this method could also be used to bring pet DPS back up.

Now I know balancing would be extremely important, and it would be easy to put the BM tree back in the OP range, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

Anyway, that is just my $.02, what’s yours?

Tier 7 bonus that is.

That’s right, last night I managed to snag myself a new pair of gloves, the Heros’s Cryptstalker Handguards. And unlike my T7 chest piece that I bought with emblems, I got this one from a legit Obsidian Sanctum raid with my guild last night.

Which gives me that sweet, sweet 2 piece bonus.

During the same run I also snagged a Crimson Steel, which I have paired up with a Fang of Truth. Not the best option Attack Power wise, but this combo puts me at 8.30% +hit.

Now tonight I get to gem and enchant my 2 new pieces of gear and then hit the target dummies to see how I do. I might also take the time to play with different specs. More on that later.

I have noticed lately, via Twitter and the blogosphere, that a lot of Beast Master Hunters have had trouble getting into PUG heroics and raids. Luckily I have not run into this myself, but I do recognize this as a huge problem. Ghostcrawler himself said that you should focus on bringing the player not the class. And in the case of a pure DPS class, I would assume he means spec also.

The numbers prove that people leaving out BM Hunters on the basis of low DPS are wrong. Just last night in 10-man VoA and OS with my guild I put out between 1900 and 2000 DPS. That put me in the #5 spot on the meter, only ~300 DPS behind #1. Also note that the other players in the runs have seen a good chunk of Naxx and are better geared than me.

Now correct me if I am wrong here, but doesn’t that mean I am just shy of the required DPS needed to clear Naxx? As a Beast Master no less. Sure, I could switch to Marks or Survival and see a jump in numbers, but is it required to raid? No.

In the blogging community, there seems to be somewhat of a split reaction. Some Hunters, such as Amava and BigRedKitty, have switched to Survival. I understand why they did it, and I can’t fault them for it. On the opposite side of the spectrum you have Hunters like Rilgon and Mirshalak who have stuck by their Spec through thick and thin. Then in the middle you have those like Pike. They tried the other specs, but went back out of pleasure instead of numbers.

Me? I am also one of those Hunters in the middle. I thoroughly enjoy Beast Master, and I can produce sufficient DPS to Raid. But I also enjoy being at the top of the damage meter. So what I plan to do is try out the other specs and see if I enjoy one of them as much as I enjoy BM. And also hope Blizzard introduces Dual Specs soon.

What’s your plan?

Another week, more maintenance. And for once I am actually awake when the servers go down.

• Man, I am tired.
• I like being a Beast Master Hunter.
• I like topping the damage meters slightly more.
• I am looking into trying both Marks and Survival specs. See previous line for reason. Know know if I will stay as one, But I feel it is important to try them out now that everything has changed so drastically.
• A tank complained that he couldn’t target mobs when Yoshie (my Devilsaur) went all Big Red. I told him to learn to tab-target.
• I’ll sure miss a Big Red Devilsaur when I spec into Marks and Survival.
• I am 2/3 of the way to having enough badges for my T7 gloves. Hopefully I will get them this week.
• Big Red Yoshie will definitely be a large influence on whether I stay a Beast Master.
• I feel like I am rambling.
• Yes, I am writing this at 3:15 PST. Not because I can’t sleep, but because I have been at work for the past 22 hours.
• Man, I am tired.

Well, there’s my thoughts. Leave me some of yours.