Ouch That hurt

Yup... also went survival, and its good to be back in the top half of the dps list. BM is dead, completely vrek / dood gebliksem. Survival is completely different playstyle to get use to, but hell it ROCKS.

Even in PVP, Freezing trap shot into allie mobs, L&L proc, 16k burst damage on some allies skull makes me go hard in my pants.

Granted for PVE it takes quite a lot of getting use to, but once you get the hang of it, and you get your shot rotations sorted, its friggen amazing.

So far I am loving it. Also no more worrying about pet micro management, and if he dies... so what, Tiny DPS loss.
 
I feel a survival hunter nerf incoming! Tried some PVP last night (first time in a few weeks that I did some PVP) and talk about over powered! Explosive shot is really awesome! One on one I am yet to loose a battle against anyone with this spec. And sniping a horde player was never this easy.
My most fun moments were taking out restoshamans in the middle of a group of 5-10 horde before they can get one heal off ;) I die in the process but so does my target...
Eating through Death knights, have never been this easy!
Having scored 30 more killing blows than anyone else in AV did make me feel just a bit guilty though ;)
 
They better not nerf survival as well... damn we did'nt even survive the BM nerf. Its one dead tree now. Its absolutely completely useless junk. Survival is pretty much the only viable dps raiding tree we have now.

Also learning to use freezing arrow shot to proc LL is soooo imba. I can pretty much keep my LL proc up and ready every 30 sec's.
Sniper training I have mixed feelings about... I am using it now, but I am not convinced its such a imba talent... might be moving the points out of there and put them elsewhere... just gotta do tha math to see what the gains / nerfs will be first.
 
I find sniper training useful in PVP a lot since I like staying well away from my target and the extra crit on Kill shot is gravy.
I think I have gone with a pretty standard survival/ MM build. Feel free to check it out, you have my char name ;)
I however do think off dropping all my points in the raid mana regen for something else. Having 3 survival hunters per raid is a bit redundant for mana regen.
 
Yes sniper training is indeed awsome for PVP.. however for PVE I have my doubts. Gets me more into trouble than anything.

I dont get what Blizzard are doing... Pre TBC ALL hunters were MM, so they decided... no lets buff the BM tree, since we want hunters to take care / put effort into getting and using pets... I mean thats what we are suppose to be do, tame wild animals and use them and rely on them to forfill our stats + dps output. So all the hunters flocked BM... now they nerfed BM so hard, no hunter that takes his dps serious will bother staying BM... now you see all the hunters flocking to survival, meaning BM is dead again... no pet love, pets are now what they use to be pre-TBC. Instead of nerfing the tree's slightly to compete against each other, they nerf them so hard, its a worthless broken build.

We also sit with the same problem... 3 progression hunters all Survival spec.
 
Thanxx to the Pornman i went survival and because of him his own kind is getting killed.

Doing my rounds in wintergasp, gathering ore, on my bike minding my own business and this pally decides its time to jump me, so i decide lets give this survival BS a go, wyverm sting him, place a fire trap, disengage, sting him, explosive shot he runs through my trap, wham next 2 explosive shots are free, crit with the 1st, 3 x 5.5k hits next one hits him for 3 x 4k , i'm still at 99.9995% health and pally lying on the ground - so this arrogant @ss thinks this was luck, so he tries it again, and i slam him quicker this time round.

But to be fair, i just think i was lucky and this dude was a nub
 
Heheh ty for those kind words ! Now I feel like a horde traitor hehehe :D
I have been speaking to a lot of BM hunters and every single one of them are smiling from ear to ear once I convinced them to go survival... Its a hard thing to do, to press those reset talents button once you got use to the BM playing style. Almost think I shed a tear turfing my beloved BM build.

But you will also find, the more you play survival the better you get at it... learn to use your Freezing shot to proc LL... save your burst Dps for selective periods and you will rip those damage meters apart. I had explosive shot ticking for 10k per tick at one point in time last night.
 
Has BM really been hit that hard?

I haven't played my Hunter since Wrath hit and I haven't been looking at the changes for Hunters so I don't know whats changed to hit BM so hard.
 
The idea around the hunter nerfs:

BM was too common, no-one used any of the other specs. If everyone starts going survival, it will most likely cause them to nerf it to the point each tree is viable

EDIT: there was also a factor that BM scaled 'too well' with just blue gear
 
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Shogun... I knew it was gonna be hard. I told myself, I WILL make BM work.. I will tinker with the specs and the talents. I was fooling myself.
On the first raid night after the nerf, my jaw was on the ground watching other DPS classes nailing / pounding me into the floor.

The nerf was so hard and overdone, I cant see any BM hunter staying that spec.
 
@ optioncard - That theory is flawed. EVERY single class, has a cookie cutter build. When warriors tank, they have a special cookie cutter tanking build. Same with priests... when they go healing spec, they have a specific build. Same with PVP spec priests.

Hunters are DPS... so naturally we go for the highest dps build. Even classes like warlocks + mages have high dps builds. Thats the nature of the game. Certain builds just work better. And just because people do a bit of homework and they notice certain builds are better and start using them, is no excuse to batter the build into the ground... people adapt, they use another viable spec.

They have put BM exactly where it was pre TBC. Its like a circle of evolution.

Oh well... lets hope they come to their senses and just see how bad they have murdered BM's.

Edit - As for the scaling issue... its actually more of a exploitation issue. Hunters were using the scaling bugs to their advantage. They could have only fixed the bugs, and hunter dps would have been trimmed down.
Things that come to mind... Call of the wild stacking. Hunters doing 6k dps because they synchronised their Call of the wild proc's. Ever seen 3 / 4 hunters all proccing their Call of the wild buffs at the same time during Bloodlust ?
I still say they went way overboard on the nerfs.
 
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Pornolio said:
@ optioncard - That theory is flawed. EVERY single class, has a cookie cutter build. When warriors tank, they have a special cookie cutter tanking build. Same with priests... when they go healing spec, they have a specific build. Same with PVP spec priests.
Click to expand...

Sorry for being a blunt with that post, I understand what you mean

i took my comment from what blue had said

Blue said:
Beast Mastery over-nerfed?
As many of you pointed out, the hunter class does have a lot going on and we don't think everyone is going to be operating near their max potential with all ofthe changes after less than a week of raiding and Arenas turned off half the time. If after that time BM continues to lag behind, we’ll buff it. We just don’t want to do it in such a way that sends every hunter stampeding back to that spec. If that happens, I will have no problem admitting we over-nerfed BM.
Click to expand...
 
Yup not attacking you :) sorry if it sounded like that.
I know you were referring to the blue post... Its a crap excuse they are using.
The whole "everyone is using it" excuse. The hunters are only dps... we dont offer healing, we dont offer tanking really. So killing the one thing we do offer, is pretty stupid.
 
I must say, thats one of the truly awesome things about DK's.
You can spec into DPS or Tanking in each of the tree's.

There is no Tanks spec only X and DPS specs only Y.
 
Pornolio-sensei lured me into Surv as well (was also a die-hard BM Hunter) and just from the tiny tests I did I can definitely see the improvement in DPS. I really tried making BM work post patch but you just can't get past some nerfs and this is one of them.

Will do some heroix tonight to get used to Surv and then we'll see how Naxx.25 goes tomorrow.
 
Awsome stuff Ferret... :)

Think I should just post a few tricks here to avoid a bombardment of FAQ's with regards to survival dps when you guys have played around with it. I have a few people asking me some of the survival basics.

When it comes to trash mob farming / Dailies / Questing, I do the following :
(Even in PVP :D )
You see mob / allie or whatever standing there... opening shot is a freezing trap shot a few yards in front of the mob. (not enough to aggro him though)
Then once trap is in place, aggro the target with a opening explosive shot...
Mob runs to you taking a ton of damage... as he runs to you, serpent sting, he runs over the trap... this in turn proc's Lock and load. Now you have 3 fat explosive shots ready to nuke this add. He will fall dead WAAAAY before he reaches you. Mobs die 10 times quicker than what they ever died when you killed them as BM.

Now this method works on **certain** bosses too from what i have discovered. Your freezing arrow shot even though its resisted, it still proc's the LL. So I fire a freezing arrow shot into the boss or at least in the area his adds spawn. This will ensure your LL is proc'd and ready assuming its not on its internal hidden 30 sec's cooldown.

As survival I found the things that optimizes my dps with my crappy limited gear setup that I have is :

1 - ensure you got the right glyphs... turf those old BM glyphs. BM is dead, all hail survival as the new raiding spec !!!
2 - stings... ensure your stings are ALWAYS up and ticking. You NEED mods to watch your sting timers.
3 - Get a mod to alert you when Lock and load procs. You need it. You really need it.
4 - When you run around a lot, place traps on the ground... everywhere you can. Best examples I can think of... Thaddius in Naxx, when polarity shifts, and you run to the other side over the boss, drop a nice trap under his bunghole. By the time you are on the other side, Lock and Load is ready for sweet opening present.
5 - What shots to use when LL procs... ok, from what I saw, and some people might disagree. I nuke explosive shot 3 times in a row, dont worry about the ticking / dot effect you will be loosing out on. With our crappy latency, you still manage to get ticks in, even though you hammer the Explosive shot on your pc side. My ES still ticks even if I hammer my ES 3 times in a row. Hell who would believe that our sucky latency helps us a bit here ? :eek:
6 - Does my pet dps matter ? Yes and No. Still use your pets on bosses, but if he dies, dont bother. You loose more dps time getting him up and running, than just continuing to nuke on. You have to re-learn yourself not to worry about your pet too much.
7 - I save my rapid fire, trinkets and call of the wild to use in conjunction with bloodlust.
8 - I never use arcane shot... never ever. Arcane shot cooldown is linked to Explosive shot, and Explosive > arcane every day of the week, unless you are fighting mobs / bosses which are immune to fire.
9 - FD a LOT. You will be critting like crazy, and ES is a threat hog, not too mention if adds spawn on top of your explosive trap. You will be getting loads of adds coming to you... so FD as much as possible. Pray your pally's / DK's are good with picking up the adds.
10 - if you are new to survival.... Go PVP... AV to be more specific. It forces you to react / think faster. Dont get put off if you dont like the spec initially. Give it a day at least. You will die a lot in the beginning till you master it. Hide behind a tree if you must, have traps out and practise burst dps on a mobs skull. Survival is all about massive burst.
11 - Even though your pet does sucky dps, dont forget to feed him pet food to boost him a little bit (strength + stam ). Every bit counts, you are a dps class, so do what it takes to squeeze every bit out !

As I think of more things, I will add them here... Also no flaming me if you dont have success with my tips and tricks... its on a pure "use it dont use it basis"
 
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I let my ES finish ticking by fireing an Aimed shot in between the L&L tics. And when up a Kill shot. Some say a steady shot should be sufficient, but with that I tend to think our latency will be an issue.
One thing I am not too sure about yet is the choice of raid food ;) I am using haste food at the moment, though Agility food my be a better option? Sitting at 430 haste buffed with food. Making my Steady shot almost as fast as with BM. But since most of my damage is from ES, how can I boost that even more?
 
The story from Bliz is that the BM nerf was because BM was easier to play.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14578748409-hunter-bm-and-mm-are-broken.html

Well put, and that's what we want too. BM was the highest spec before by a considerable margin (and has been for a few years). If it is too low now, we will buff it. It is challenging with dps classes to get the numbers within 1% of each other. But if they are close enough, then it won't matter for the majority of players, who can then play whatever matches their playstyle the best.
Click to expand...

BM is an easier spec to play. We tend to reward specs that are a little tougher to play if played very well with higher dps. Affliction and Mutilate are good examples, though we went overboard with Mutilate's dominance over other specs. If BM was simpler and provided the same or higher dps, then you would see 95% BM hunters (which, no suprise, is exactly what we had). Some players will try SV or MM, decide it's not for them and go back to BM. If they couldn't make SV work, then their dps may be just fine as BM (or else the drop will be so low that they don't care). At issue is how much lower BM can be than MM and SV before it isn't worth spec'ing into. Combat for rogues is too far below Assassination so that you take too big a hit if you choose to opt out of the more demanding Mutilate play style. Make sense?
Click to expand...
 
Whatever their reasons are, there are numerous :

I have seen the blue posts : BM hunters are doing too much dps...
Then that post where they claim its the easiest build to play, then there was a post about the scaling for hunters are not correct etc etc etc.

Personally I found BM to be a lot harder since you have to think for 2 characters, not just one. The pet micro management was painfull at times... eg. Sarth.

In answer to your question... Werries : I cant comment on the aimed shot. I am not familiar with the aimed shot in the shot rotations. Most of the theory I have read stated that aimed shot is not very advisable due to its mana efficiency / dps returns, so most of the survival guys tend to not use it, however I have seen some guys use it, even in my guild the two survival guys have it. I would first play with it myself to see just how much truth there is to the rumour. What I do know is that aimed shot is damn heavy on mana usage and if you have any mana issues, its best to not weave it in.

I do know as survival, you shouldnt have to worry to much about crit since crit is pretty much incredibily high. However, MM + Survival benefits big time from haste, and since you are pretty far off from the haste cap it's a damn good stat to aim for. The cap for surv / MM is around 523 but after that the returns are minimal. I would put more focus into haste / AP.
 
I hardly have mana issues, so the aimed shot mana cost is irelavant to me. What I do not like about it though is that it resets the autoshot timer. And you can have a dps loss from that. But, a 4k avg aimed shot vs a 2.5k avg steady does make a difference in the long run for me ;)
 
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