I would like to present to you some DPS breakdowns that I took a screenshot of after a recent… memorable Heroic UK PuG (if enough people are interested, I’ll post the story about it. Hint: I think I’ll call it “The Fable of the Egotistical Death Knight.”)
Here’s the whole damage report… yes, after the entire run, which means rotations and the like aren’t gonna be super perfect:
And now a breakdown of my shots. I would like to point out that this was a largely Multishot-free run due to lack of Replenishment and some other factors:
“Why are you showing us this, Pike?”
Couple of reasons.
First Reason: Look how much damage your pet is doing. I have consistently found that ever since 3.0.9, my pet will come close to 50% but not quite surpass it. Still, that’s a lot.
Now, this is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, keep him alive (dur) and secondly, if you have to, kindly (kindly!) remind your resident paladins to give him Might* if they forget. That alone is a huge DPS boost. You shouldn’t have to worry about most other buffs unless said buffers are passing out the K-Mart versions. That includes if your pet died and you had to rez him. In my experience, 95% of people will fail to re-buff your pet after said pet rez (or will do their groupwide buff before you’ve rez’d your pet). I always hate having to point it out to people because it makes me feel like a whiner of some sort, but really, it’s that important to your DPS and thus to the group, so don’t be afraid to ask for those buffs for your pet. While we are on the subject, I always go out of my way to thank people who specifically remember to buff my pet after a rez. ’cause said people are rare. (If you are a buffing class and fall under said rare category, you have my undying affection and love as of… now.)
And yes, I also find it amusing that my pet and I have a different “most attacked” target. =P
Second Reason: Arcane Shot. I fired 186 Steadies and 113 Arcanes throughout the course of the instance, and despite that fairly sizable discrepancy in the number of shots and the fact that I’m using the glyphed Steady (10% more damage), Arcane Shot still was really closing the gap there. What this means is that it’s very important to fire off your Arcane Shot when it’s up; it’s an instant cast and you can use it while moving so it’s basically free damage. In fact, really the only shot that I think should have priority over it is Kill Shot.
Why do I keep pounding this into everyone’s heads, you’re probably wondering by now. Well, it’s because I’ve been running into a few BM hunters in instances who are still doing nothing but Steady. And they could be doing a lot better!
Third Reason: Mostly I just wanted to show what a good shot breakdown will probably look like for you as a Current-gen Beast Master. Gone are the days of having one shot doing as much (or more) damage as Auto Shot. Your Auto Shot is going to be sitting pretty at about 40%ish of your hunter-half’s total damage, because you have other shots to play with now that will be comprising the rest of that damage. And personally, I really, really like this change.
In closing: I am not a theorycrafter, and this is not a theorycrafting blog. I don’t know if I’ve said that before or not, but it bears saying again if I have. Sometimes I get comments or e-mails asking for more in-depth math and here’s the thing: I’m down with some math every now and again but I usually don’t dig into it. Most of my playstyle comes from observation, field testing, and common sense. My “numbers” posts are not meant to blow the Elitist Jerks folks out of the water, rather, they are here to spark inspiration in your head and possibly give you some new ideas to play around with or new things to think about. As always, feel free to take my post and add numbers to it on your own and do your own testing. I would be very flattered if you did that, in fact. But above all, remember that hunters are for fun! ^_^
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* I’m pretty okay with Kings too if the warriors really want it, since your pet gets whatever the warriors get. Hey, it’s better than nothin’!
I don’t tend to ask for pet buffs but I can see why it is a cool idea since the pet does do nearly 50%. I may well do it more often.
Yeah BM pets scale really well with buffs so get them whatever ya can. Even if you aren’t BM if you use your pet to any degree still try to get the pet buffed it’ll help in your damage.
As far as Pally buffs go it seems Kings is the most asked by everyone and understandable in a lot of cases. However, like ya said Might is a better buff for the pet as they should never be the target of attacks most of the time and with their resistances now Mend Pet should easily keep them up when AOE from mobs occur. Though watch out for those whirlwinds from bosses those always seem to hurt my pet the most.
Pets tend to get Kings if I’m running with a warrior tank. If I could buff the pets with GMight and NOT over write the warrior buff, I would, but I can’t so… D: I am TERRIBLE at remembering to keep up the baby buffs, and I figure that having kings all the time is better than having might only some of the time.
If I know someone is a BM hunter I’ll show a little extra consideration-and I TRY to heal pets-but it’s rare that you see a healer was once a BM hunter herself. 😉
I’d still be one, but people want healers for some reason. Bah!
When my hunter GF looked at the picture with 53% melee damage of your pet, her first question was “Did she miss go for the throat?”. But you don’t and you also have Beastial Discipline 2/2, so we were kind of lost here until I noticed that Arcane Shot critted only 24%. Her cat DPS 8-900 in 25 raid without a single point in BM and only 1 point in Go for the throat. Of course with 60% Explosive and 39% auto crit, that means that the energy of the cat is often close to top and usually does 44-46% melee, the rest is claw and rake.
While it’s highly unorthodox, she mostly ignores hit rating and gems for crit for the following reasons:
* a crit does 230% damage due to mortal shots, a miss does 0. So crit+miss is 230%, while hit+hit is just 200%.
* the pet gets nothing from your hits, but gains energy from crits. 20-25% of her damage comes from pet, for you it’s 45-50. So the value of hit must be scaled down.
* the pets gets 1.2 extra crit from your crits through cobra strikes.
So if you have some money to waste you could replace some gems for experimenting. I guess your pets would be most than grateful.
@Gevlon
The issue I have with stacking crit is that your pet inherits your Hit Rating not crit rating. And so while their specials may have a good chance of critting they may end up missing altogether. I’ve never read or heard of people getting crit up high enough to push misses off the table. Along with that being BM your pet’s white damage is going to be significant because of the buff to straight damage and speed in the tree.
I always forget to ask for pet buffs during an instance (thank you for reminding me to do so @.@). I seem to get them all the time just running around the world though. This might be because it’s a more “individual” setting though.
Also, I love silly little instance/group stories with a moral to them. Do please tell away.
@ Gevlon – Sonvar is correct, BM pets are very heavy on the white damage due to the speed bonus from Serpent’s Swiftness and frequent Frenzy procs. BRK’s pet does nearly 2000 DPS and he has similar results from what I’ve seen him post on his blog; very heavy on the white damage.
One reason why I love my guildies. My cat Samurai seems to have become a favorite with some of them, and she always gets buffed. 😀
And yes, would love to hear the story! ^_^
At most, I usually only ask for stamina buff for my pet – it’s not my top priority, being a Marksman hunter, though I am aware that my pet does about 25% or 30% of my damage, BUT I keep in mind that 1) I rarely run with pallies in my guild and 2) my guild aren’t too enamoured with hunters (except moi, nautrally. I’m the lovable hunter. LoL) thanks to the slightly elitist jerk a year ago.
That being said, I found myself buffing hunters’ pets everytime I’m on a Druid. I like to buff people (and on my mage, too, but intellence doesn’t help pets much, huh? Hehe. I still toss ’em on hunters, especially if I see the tellmark TSA – most MM hunters spec for that int = rap talent) and I would usually do the following:
Riverwater casts Mark of Wild on [insert hunter here]!
Riverwater casts Mark of Wild on [insert hunter’s pet here]!
Riverwater casts Thorns on [insert hunter’s pet here]!
I remember from my own experiences that I disliked having Thorns on me if I’m soloing because sometimes it’s just enough to tip the aggro into [un]favor of me, so I never toss them on hunters.
…I like buffing people. 😀 It’s fun. 🙂
Aha! Took me a moment to remember the “int=rap” talent: Careful Aim! XD