If you are a Beast Mastery hunter, chances are good you have at least one or two talent points floating around in one of these two talents. In fact, if you are doing a fairly common 53/x/x build, then you really only have one point to spare.
So, where do you put that one point? Some people choose Endurance Training, but for me, I prefer to keep the choice between our good friends Spirit Bond and Improved Mend Pet. Let’s take a look at what they do:
1/2 Improved Mend Pet: “Reduces the mana cost of your Mend Pet spell by 10% and gives the Mend Pet spell a 25% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the pet each tick.”
The mana cost reduction is relatively minute (though I suppose it would add up if you were using it a lot), so the big benefit here is mostly the shot IMP has at cleansing things off of your pet. This can be handy when solo’ing/questing to get rid of those nasty debuffs things will occasionally chuck onto your pet, and it can also be handy in a select few raid encounters. *coughHeigancough* Final verdict: Only has a very situational use, but very helpful in said situations.
1/2 Spirit Bond: “While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 1% of total health every 10 sec., and increases healing done to you and your pet by 5%.”
I’ve had people debate me on this before, but I see the regeneration part of this talent as being, well… lackluster and ignorable. =P What we like this talent for is the flat increase on healing done to you and your pet. This could help a little on pet unfriendly fights, and also on player-unfriendly fights. May or may not be enough of a healing boost to save your/your pet’s life when crap hits the fan, though. Final verdict: Goes to waste on stuff like Patchwerk, but may make the life of your healers a tiny tad easier on stuff where there’s lots of AoE damage going around. Also makes your life a tiny tad easier on pet unfriendly fights.
And the Oscar goes to… Look at your situation and decide which one you’d rather have. Currently I am using Improved Mend Pet because I find it to be invaluable on Heigan; I am in Naxx more than most other raids combined at the moment and I pride myself on being able to keep my pet alive through the encounter. If I ever move on from Naxx I may very well move the point over to Spirit Bond. Both talents have their uses and I wouldn’t knock you for using either.
Bonus History Lesson:
Check out the final Beast Mastery talent back in World of Warcraft Beta:
Survival’s final talent back then…? We shall not speak of it… >.>
Ha, I remember those talents. I even used “when hunters had lacerate” as a time reference once when I was explaining to someone just how long my main had been a feral druid and they had no clue what I was talking about. 😛
And my vote goes for Imp. Mend Pet, just because cleaning those debuffs off your pet is so useful. Bit more healing on you is nice yes, but healers actually pay attention (at least sometimes) to hunters if only to yell at them for taking so much damage; pets don’t get much attention at all and as BM they need it. (Though in Bond’s favor, hunter alt I used to know survived a Maiden fight in Karazhan while AFK out of healer LOS because of Spirit Bond’s regen ticks… True story!)
I never liked Spirit Bond in a raid situation. It gave me healer aggro on large pulls many times.
As a Soloer I loved Imp. Mend Pet. Some of the Diseases you get can be nasty, and when they have a duration of 30 minutes it’s a real buzz kill. Pop IMP and within seconds your Pet is Healthy and Disease-free. The best thing Blizzard ever did for Mend Pet was making it a HOT instead of a Channeled spell. I hated Mend Pet when it had to be Channeled.
Imp. Mend Pet and I have a history and it’s partly that history that caused me to spec Marksman. The stupid RNG ticks would never, ever cleanse that disease off and my pet died a good 90-95% of the time. When I do get around to speccing BM again, I’ll be going with the 1/2 Imp. Mend and 1/2 Spirit Bond. Best of both worlds.
I have one point in each because I couldn’t decide–I can’t live with less than one point in Mend Pet, it’s the second point that ended up giving me trouble. xD
Where can you see those beta talents?
There’s a new kid on the block in 3.2 which will hoover up one of the standard spare MP/SB point: Catlike reflexes.
Basically, it’s a low DPS boost talent, but it’s still more DPS.
Is it me, or does Catlike reflexes seem like an odd place to tack on a reduced kill command cooldown? Personally, I still won’t put any points in it because I like the synergy between the KC and BW cooldowns. (assuming specced/glyphed)
It’s a very strange place to tack it on. I guess they realized how few hunters actually had that talent and tried to make it more enticing.