Category Archives: respec

respec, specs

More 3.1 Beast Mastery Dee Pee Ess Musings

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I have really been trying to get in a lot of “DPS testing” so I can get a feel for how Beast Mastery is doing these days. The training dummies and I have become good friends, and I’ve even sometimes just sic’d Wash on the training dummies and sat there for minutes at a time watching him go (this is actually what inspired me to take a point out of Improved Mend Pet and stick it in Frenzy, pushing me back up to 4/5. It just wasn’t proc’ing enough to satisfy me as 3/5. Granted, that doesn’t take raid buffs and Cobra Strikes and the like into account, but it was bothering me.)

PuG’d a 10man VoA; the other hunter was a Marksman hunter who seemed to know what he was doing, and had a wolf (the hot new pet in town!) I am pleased to report that we were one-two on the meters, neck-and-neck, both of us doing somewhere in the ballpark of 3800 DPS on the new boss. On the trash pulls Wash and I were consistently well over 4000. In mostly Naxx10/heroics/rep gear. This rather satisfied my own curiosity regarding the viability of 3.1 Beast Master in your average raid situation.

Then something interesting happened. I was invited to a late night Naxx10 which I chose to attend (yes I know, this was my “break week”… yeeeah). There was another hunter there who was better geared than I and clearly knew what he was doing, and ya know what?

He was spec’d 53/11/7.

That’s right. I was in raid with another Beast Master. An Elitist Jerks approved spec, too, and one that I’d tried before but didn’t really like.

I might have to try it again, however, since he and his wolf roflstomped me on the meters… okay, mostly only on Loatheb. Oh my goodness did he roflstomp me on Loatheb. I blame his 3/3 Cobra Strikes when he had the spore buff, while I’m currently sitting at 1/3. We were pretty close on the other bosses though, and I was ahead a time or two. We didn’t hit Patchwerk, unfortunately (too many people decided to mysteriously disconnect about halfway through the raid)… I would have been curious to see those numbers.

Oh, another interesting thing about that hunter, he didn’t use Multishot. At all. Whereas I weave it into my rotation whenever it’s up. It might be a mana conservation thing because I’ve always had good luck with using Multishot, and I like using it because it gives us more to do. Still, I may have to look into that.

It’s still “Wash and me” by the way, although I’ve tamed a wolf to try it out, but since the wolf lacks a focus dump move I wonder if the new Furious Howl would be worth it for us Beast Masters. Reports in the aforementioned Elitist Jerks thread (which is a very good thread by the way) are putting wolves second to Devilsaurs, with raptors in third. So, we’ll have to see. I still maintain that you should strike a balance between finding a pet that is good to use in your situation, and finding a pet that you like and are attached to. In my humble opinion, that is just a part of reaching the Grand Pinnacle of Hunteriness.

Okay! I apologize for potentially boring my lovely non-raiding readers with babbles about numbers. However, there is a lot of curiosity for this type of thing right now if my site’s Google hits are to be believed, so I figured I’d share my musings with the hungry masses. You will be redirected shortly to typical Pike stories and guides. For now, for lack of anything else to say, have a picture I made for my guild a year or so back:

Medieval Curator

If you guess what it is without looking at the alt text, you get a cookie =P

(Thank you, Historic Tale Construction Kit!)

beast mastery, marksmanship, respec, specs

Spec'ing Back… for now.

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After spending a good few levels and over a week as a Beast Mastery hunter, I’ve returned to Marks. What do I miss the most from the BM tree? Believe it or not, probably Improved Mend Pet. I hate it when poor Tux contracts a disease or something and I can’t do anything to help him out. I also miss Intimidation, and of course, Serpents’ Swiftness and “The Big Red Button”. But I’ve found myself wishing for IMP back more than anything else.

Thoughts on returning to Marks: I thought for sure “Oh, my poor pet won’t be able to hold aggro anymore”, but actually he’s still an aggro-holding machine, possibly even more than he was as BM. I believe that this is thanks to two things: Improved Hunter’s Mark, which gives him a melee boost, and Go For the Throat, which gives him more focus and more chances to use Growl. These are two things that a normal 41/20/0 build would probably have, but mine didn’t because of lack of talent points, and it made a big difference. I also think my Trueshot Aura helps out a little, but obviously it’s not going to make up for the lack of a Beast Mastery build in the pet-power department.

Tux is back to doing about 35% of my total DPS instead of 45-50%. That’s still a considerable amount of damage. I really feel that a marksman hunter cannot and should not underestimate the power of his or her pet.

Overall going back to Marks sort of feels like “going home” to me, but that’s just because I was “raised Marks”, so I’m comfortable with it. I really enjoyed the time I spent as BM and I definitely plan on returning to it and playing with it even more once I get some more talent points. Next up, though, is Survival! I’ve been wanting to try that one out for a long time.

Anyways, one last thing: thanks to one of my jobs, I am going to be WoW-less for the next eight days starting tomorrow. I will have my laptop with me, (because I’m a geek with three computers), but my poor laptop isn’t capable of running WoW. Fortunately I will still have internet access, and thus I will still be able to read all my favorite blogs and also try and make a few posts for my two or three readers to enjoy. I have a couple ideas for things I would like to write about. =D

beast mastery, respec

Fun With Respec'ing and Initial Thoughts

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So today I respec’d from my normal “utility/PvP/marksman-ish” build into classic 41/20 Beast Mastery. It was a very incomplete build, however, because I’m not even close to level 70 yet, but I will go more into that later in this post.

My reasons for respec’ing were three-fold; firstly I was sort of getting bored with my current spec (not that I don’t like it, because I do, but I felt like spicing things up a little), secondly because I wanted to see Beastial Wrath/The Beast Within in action, and thirdly because I wanted to see if I can live without Hawk Eye, since it’s odd having those three points randomly in Survival if I don’t have anything else over there.

The initial verdict:

Stuff dies, and stuff dies fast. I seem to be critting a lot, which sort of amuses me because my crit chance % took a nosedive when I respec’d, thanks to not having enough points to put into the MM side of 41/20/0. But I seem to be critting left and right anyway. I think maybe because the Serpent’s Swiftness gives me more shots, that adds up to more crits. But I’m not sure, that’s just my initial thought. It could just be that I was getting lucky!

My trusty friend Tux has gone from doing about 30% of my total DPS to about 55%. Again, I’m sure I’d be doing more of the DPS if I had the points to put into MM but I don’t, so it amuses me that my pet is now my better half, so to speak. And is he a machine! He has gone from being my mild-mannered little pocket tank into a big red deadly ball of feathers. It’s an unusual thing which I’m not used to, but is it ever fun. Oh, and being a big red hunter is pretty fun too. ^^

Things that I am not too fond of: I miss a lot of my old marks talents. Granted I will get a lot of those back as I earn more talent points, but right now not having stuff like Mortal Shots, Lethal Shots, and Go For The Throat is a bit painful. I also sort of miss being able to put up those big crit numbers; even if BM does more overall DPS as I think it probably does, I’m a sucker for big crits. I’m an agility junkie so I’m still doing a lot of damage, but not as much as I enjoy doing.

I burn through mana even faster in BM than I did in Marks, and I’m not quite sure how or why.

Also the overall “feel” for BM is different than the overall “feel” for Marks in a way that I find hard to pin down and explain. It’s more… fast-paced, almost? More frenzied as opposed to calm and calculating, red as opposed to blue. Both specs require quick thinking, but they require it in different ways. It’s not bad, it’s just different, and different people will like different things and if you’ve been one spec for a long time it takes a while to get used to another, I think.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’ve decided to ditch Hawk Eye. If I ever start doing tons of PvP again or mess with a survival spec (which I know I will at some point), I’ll definitely pick that talent up again, but for a BM/MM PvE spec it doesn’t really seem needed to me. Better off putting those three points elsewhere!

Anyways, there you have it, my initial thoughts on my most recent respec. I think I’ll stick with it and play with it for at least a few days before I respec again, probably to something close to my “utility spec”. I’m definitely going to return to BM and try it out again later on down the road when I have more talent points, and I’m also going to give Survival a big test run at some point, but probably not right away.

I hope to be able to spend lots of time with and thoroughly learn each of the specs, because I feel that each spec has things to teach you and by spending time with each of the specs, you will become a better hunter.