I did a good portion of 10-man Naxx today. I was overall satisfied with my performance considering my relatively non-spectacular gear level and the fact that I spent approximately 33.3% of the boss fights face down in the dirt because apparently it’s not just Heigan that I completely fail at. (Hey, I actually survived three of those green lava waves this time! Three! That’s… um… that’s good right? Right? Bueller?)
Is BM the ultimate zomg highest DPS hunter spec? No, go Survival.
Is BM gonna do good on pet-unfriendly fights? Not so much. Not only does our flat pet DPS go away but all our pet buffs and benefits go away too.
Is BM as super overpowered as it was before? Oh heck no; my Patchwerk performance has been eviscerated literally by over a thousand DPS (though to be fair, my DPS was always higher on 25man, so it’s a skewed comparison)… but despite that large difference, I was still second place in the meters for that fight.
The point of this post is to answer a Google search that hit my blog the other day. That search term was literally “Is there any hope for BM hunters?”
Yes.
If you are weaving non-Steadies into your rotation, keeping Serpent Sting up, and you and your pet are decently spec’d and glyphed, there is no reason why you as a Beast Master should ever be shut out of your average everyday raid or heroic. If you’re in Nihilum or Death & Taxes or something then maybe it’s different but for the most part, you as a well-played BM hunter are valuable to a group. You provide a lot of DPS, you provide an excellent buff in the form of Ferocious Inspiration, you provide solid AoE and you have Viper for overly intensive fights.
Oh and you’re just plain fun to play, natch.
So yes, Virginia, there is hope.
And with that said I’m going to go back to sobbing in the corner while Heigan points and laughs. What a meaniehead. Not all of us did Mousercise when we were kids, not all of us are as coordinated as he is. /sob
…o.0
Small children… tight spandex.
Pike, you’ve scarred me for life
=D
I haven’t had problems providing DPS to groups, even when SV was allmighty… There were a number of times I out DPS’ed SV hunters because the player plain and simply sucked.
It’s back more twords a balance of “How good is the player” vs FOTM Specs. Except Marksman. We all still laugh at them. 😉
I did a 10 man naxx last week with my new guild. they are all ususally doing 25 mans so they are much bettere geared than me. I had respecced BM and I was coming in th top 5 for DPS.
I am very happy with that given that I am not great geared for Naxx and they were all over geared for 10man.
<3 love having my spirit beasty back.
Did 10 man Naxx as BM this weekend, ended up number 2 in front of a SV spec hunter.
BM is surely raid worthy again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUlliMso570 might help you out. He explains the fight quite nicely.
Because I have a horrible obsession with learning every single way to do a fight, I spend alot of time watching youtube videos on them. Ciderhelm is definitely one of the best at explaining how things generally work for everybody. (He’s got explanations up for other Naxx fights, as well.)
Its fun though, right!
I dont do much in the way of instances, but have done a few lately.
The 25 man Naxx was a hoot, as I would be one of the first to hit the mat, what with my lag issues. I would be dead before I saw the wave, hehe.
My gear is mostly (read 99%) Swiftarrow crafted gear.
Thanks Pike!
An inspiring post. :] I plan on staying bm through thick and thin.
Love reading your blog Pike, but for future reference, Nihilium is no more. Kungen (Nihilium guild leader) merged them with SK Gaming. The new guild is Ensidia. Still on Magtheridon EU server.
We BM hunters need to do more theorycraft, or even ancidotal evidence. Please for the love of god stop posting “I was Xth place in the raid”, it means nothing. What is meaningful is saying “I did 100 more dps than last time using X rotation”. Numbers matter, ranking does not. If there was a bunch of ret palys in the raid it’s possible or likely they out dps you even if they suck. Meanwhile if there is a lock you can be reasonabley sure you you will out dps them. Compare yourself to yourself.
(Sorry to be harsh, i love this blog, but this really annoys me).
@ Rob – while I appreciate the sentiment, what you have to understand is that I am not a theorycrafter, and this is not a theorycrafting blog. When I make posts discussing my position in the raid it is not meant to be a theorycrafting post. Rather, it’s meant to be a post saying “I had good results with this, perhaps you should try looking into it as well.”
My DPS does not exist in a vacuum, I only ever PuG things so it’s hard to make raid-by-raid comparisons because the raid composition is vastly different each time. I can’t analyze my DPS under those circumstances. Nor do I want to spend much time doing so. I fear that if you want lots of math and theorycrafting you will have to look elsewhere, my friend =(