Azortharion's 6.2.2 MM Hunter Guide

[Msa 1]

Wrong talent tiers.  Dire Beast is on the same tier as Steady Focus and TotH.

 

Your opener should look like this:

Pre-pot > Stampede + Racials + On-Uses (all on pull) > DB > BW > KC > Barrage > Proceed.

lol, I meant Steady Focus :) Thx

[Ghuerilla 2]

Thank you!

[zvr 0]

Hello, I have small problem.

 

Recently I had an argument with another hunter in my guild about Focus Fire usage.

 

Right now I'm using WeakAura that is recommenced in Azor's guide, and according to it FF is always used together with BW at any stacks, or at 5 stacks when not under BW buff.

 

My guildie says, that it's totally wrong and FF should be used AFTER Bestial Wrath, because "under BW your pet does more damage with full Frenzy stacks and this is why you shouldn't consume it with FF, so use it after BW expiration".

 

I'm a noob with BM and I'm still learning to master this spec with help of Azor's guide, but just to be sure I would like someone to clarify information I wrote.

Edited March 7, 2015 by zvr

[Azortharion 65]

Hello, I have small problem.

 

Recently I had an argument with another hunter in my guild about Focus Fire usage.

 

Right now I'm using WeakAura that is recommenced in Azor's guide, and according to it FF is always used together with BW at any stacks, or at 5 stacks when not under BW buff.

 

My guildie says, that it's totally wrong and FF should be used AFTER Bestial Wrath, because "under BW your pet does more damage with full Frenzy stacks and this is why you shouldn't consume it with FF, so use it after BW expiration".

 

I'm a noob with BM and I'm still learning to master this spec with help of Azor's guide, but just to be sure I would like someone to clarify information I wrote.

 

Tell your friend to (kindly) stick it and/or read tooltips.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=19623/frenzy- 4% increased ATTACK SPEED * 5 is 20% ATTACK SPEED at 5 stacks.

 

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=82692/focus-fire- 6% increased HASTE (same effect as attack speed PLUS focus regen to pet PLUS focus regen to hunter PLUS instant focus surge to pet) * 5 is 30% HASTE at 5 stacks PLUS 8% * 5 ATTACK POWER = 40% attack power and 30% haste.

 

Ask your friend in a gentle fashion why he'd rather have 20% attack speed rather than 30% haste and 40% attack power.

[Orthios 272]

So, question is: now that CS > KC/FF > CS has been nerfed, what would the optimal opener be (and would this maybe affect talent choices)?

[Azortharion 65]

Won't affect talent choices in the slightest. Sims didn't even model the "bugged" behaviour before, so it was always a tiny bit better in real life than in the sims, but nothing changes decision-making wise.

 

The new opener is in the guide. Do discuss, though.

[Valtix 0]

For the opener, I notice Azortharion says "use FF as soon as it becomes available." Does this mean during the opener we use FF as soon as we get one frenzy stack?

[Azortharion 65]

That is what it means, since you pop Stampede immediately and one is supposed to expend any amount of Frenzy stacks when Stampede is up. This is mentioned elsewhere in the guide but people don't make the connection by themselves unless they use my WeakAura so I made it clear there.

[Niix 169]

I'd be curious to see the benefit in practice of waiting to use our first double cobra until after bw is over. Isn't the regen inside of bw kinda wasted anyways? I suppose it gives your pet focus regen right? I'll toy around with it later but I'm curious to know the different openers you tried and how they compare with one another. I've never been one to mess around with openers on simc so i'm not entirely sure how one would even do that.

 

However thinking about it, if you haven't already done it that is, would be curious to see how this opener compares to your double cobra opener.

 

Stampede

BW + On Uses + KC

Barrage

Arcane

Arcane

Arcane

Kill Command

Arcane

Arcane

Cobra

Cobra

Kill Command

 

I'm not even home at the moment and I'm somewhat tired so my thinking is likely incorrect but i'd just be curious to see the actual loss in DPS from waiting to get steady focus until after the real meat of your focus spending is over.

 

because in reality the double cobra opener

 

1. generates no focus, and is only really there to get the steady focus buff up quickly. however it seems odd, because we don't spend enough focus from the cap in BW to really require the steady focus during the opener, no?

 

2. possibly wasting 3 seconds of MDT in the opener outside of BW seems counter-intuitive.

 

I feel like I could be wrong in the sense that i can't remember if steady focus does anything for our pet other than increased Focus Regen, or frankly if it even does that. i haven't played BM since the early days of ToT so the way some of our spells interact with our pet are fairly lost on me.

 

just stirring up possible discussion anyways. cheers.

[Azortharion 65]

I'd be curious to see the benefit in practice of waiting to use our first double cobra until after bw is over. Isn't the regen inside of bw kinda wasted anyways? I suppose it gives your pet focus regen right? I'll toy around with it later but I'm curious to know the different openers you tried and how they compare with one another. I've never been one to mess around with openers on simc so i'm not entirely sure how one would even do that.

 

However thinking about it, if you haven't already done it that is, would be curious to see how this opener compares to your double cobra opener.

 

Stampede

BW + On Uses + KC

Barrage

Arcane

Arcane

Arcane

Kill Command

Arcane

Arcane

Cobra

Cobra

Kill Command

 

I'm not even home at the moment and I'm somewhat tired so my thinking is likely incorrect but i'd just be curious to see the actual loss in DPS from waiting to get steady focus until after the real meat of your focus spending is over.

 

because in reality the double cobra opener

 

1. generates no focus, and is only really there to get the steady focus buff up quickly. however it seems odd, because we don't spend enough focus from the cap in BW to really require the steady focus during the opener, no?

 

2. possibly wasting 3 seconds of MDT in the opener outside of BW seems counter-intuitive.

 

I feel like I could be wrong in the sense that i can't remember if steady focus does anything for our pet other than increased Focus Regen, or frankly if it even does that. i haven't played BM since the early days of ToT so the way some of our spells interact with our pet are fairly lost on me.

 

just stirring up possible discussion anyways. cheers.

 

1) 50% focus regen is way more focus returned than what you -don't- get casting those Cobras. The focus is not for us, it is for the pet, and the pet can -always- use more focus, even if it gets its Basic off on cooldown, because of the Wild Hunt mechanic making 50+ focus Basics do double damage.

 

2) What would you rather have, a trinket proc with the main value being pet focus regen.. Or Steady Focus, the main value being pet focus regen? Specifically, 50% focus regen vs however much the 2k-or-so haste is gonna give you - about 20%?

 

 

Problems with your opener:

 

1) On a multitude of fights, Stampede will lose attacks due to repositioning. Especially Blackhand Mythic, but it's no non-issue on Hans&Franz, Beastlord Darmac, Blast Furnace depending on what you open on, Iron Maidens, Operator Thogar..

 

2) There's a pretty real chance that your first KC will be un-trinketed, as will your first couple of attacks within that strong BW, same with Barrage which is our highest DPE ability outside genuine cooldowns.

 

3) You are gonna have to do the dual-Cobras eventually. Any lost uptime in the opener (and noting that Haste scales multiplicatively, and Bloodlust will likely be up) is a lot of wasted pet focus when you combine Haste from Bloodlust, potentially troll racial and the fact that you'll cash in 6% haste very early from Focus Fire.

 

The main counter-argument to my method is "why not just Arcane Shot, instead"? An Arcane Shot is a bit under twice the DPE of a pet basic.

 

Okay, so, how many Arcanes do we lose with the method, for the entirety of the fight?

 

Well, base hunter regen is 5 focus/sec, Bloodlust + Haste buff puts that to 5.82 (such scaling), at least with my shitty levels of Haste because Mastery build (594 rating).

 

Precast Cobra loses you 14 focus but no regen since you wouldn't have regenned anything anyway it being a precast.

Next Cobra loses you 14 focus + ~1.75s of 5.82/s focus regen assuming Hero wasn't popped RIGHT on pull this is about 24.2 focus. Or just 24 focus, so barely an Arcane Shot's worth of focus is actually lost.

 

I vaguely recall hunter pets regenning at a higher rate, but Wowpedia says they do at 5f/s baseline too, do the same calc.

 

By not getting Steady Focus up early, and only doing it after ~13 seconds if we use your opener as a baseline for this, that's 5.82f * 13 = 75,66 (76) focus lost from the pet, that's 3 Basic Attacks completely LOST, effectively, or about 12k * 3 = 36k damage whereas by doing the precasting stuff we lost 1 Arcane Shot of about 20k damage.

 

Since that Arcane Shot would've landed within BW, we can add 2k damage to the loss to make it 22k, there, but the Basic Attacks get 20% more damage, meaning we're talking 14.4k * 3 damage lost from not getting the Basic Attacks instead, or 43.2k damage.

 

So we can conclude that the difference barely exists. There's probably some more micro-adjustment that could be made, such as you losing 1.8s of pot uptime, effectively.

[Niix 169]

1) 50% focus regen is way more focus returned than what you -don't- get casting those Cobras. The focus is not for us, it is for the pet, and the pet can -always- use more focus, even if it gets its Basic off on cooldown, because of the Wild Hunt mechanic making 50+ focus Basics do double damage.

 

2) What would you rather have, a trinket proc with the main value being pet focus regen.. Or Steady Focus, the main value being pet focus regen? Specifically, 50% focus regen vs however much the 2k-or-so haste is gonna give you - about 20%?

 

 

Problems with your opener:

 

1) On a multitude of fights, Stampede will lose attacks due to repositioning. Especially Blackhand Mythic, but it's no non-issue on Hans&Franz, Beastlord Darmac, Blast Furnace depending on what you open on, Iron Maidens, Operator Thogar..

 

2) There's a pretty real chance that your first KC will be un-trinketed, as will your first couple of attacks within that strong BW, same with Barrage which is our highest DPE ability outside genuine cooldowns.

 

3) You are gonna have to do the dual-Cobras eventually. Any lost uptime in the opener (and noting that Haste scales multiplicatively, and Bloodlust will likely be up) is a lot of wasted pet focus when you combine Haste from Bloodlust, potentially troll racial and the fact that you'll cash in 6% haste very early from Focus Fire.

 

The main counter-argument to my method is "why not just Arcane Shot, instead"? An Arcane Shot is a bit under twice the DPE of a pet basic.

 

Okay, so, how many Arcanes do we lose with the method, for the entirety of the fight?

 

Well, base hunter regen is 5 focus/sec, Bloodlust + Haste buff puts that to 5.82 (such scaling), at least with my shitty levels of Haste because Mastery build (594 rating).

 

Precast Cobra loses you 14 focus but no regen since you wouldn't have regenned anything anyway it being a precast.

Next Cobra loses you 14 focus + ~1.75s of 5.82/s focus regen assuming Hero wasn't popped RIGHT on pull this is about 24.2 focus. Or just 24 focus, so barely an Arcane Shot's worth of focus is actually lost.

 

I vaguely recall hunter pets regenning at a higher rate, but Wowpedia says they do at 5f/s baseline too, do the same calc.

 

By not getting Steady Focus up early, and only doing it after ~13 seconds if we use your opener as a baseline for this, that's 5.82f * 13 = 75,66 (76) focus lost from the pet, that's 3 Basic Attacks completely LOST, effectively, or about 12k * 3 = 36k damage whereas by doing the precasting stuff we lost 1 Arcane Shot of about 20k damage.

 

Since that Arcane Shot would've landed within BW, we can add 2k damage to the loss to make it 22k, there, but the Basic Attacks get 20% more damage, meaning we're talking 14.4k * 3 damage lost from not getting the Basic Attacks instead, or 43.2k damage.

 

So we can conclude that the difference barely exists. There's probably some more micro-adjustment that could be made, such as you losing 1.8s of pot uptime, effectively.

 

Interesting points. I didn't take into account the 50+ basic dealing extra damage. That is very huge.

[Azortharion 65]

It is great because it means that there is no real point of DR for pet focus regen. 'Excess' just becomes more damage.

[Orthios 272]

First off, base focus regen is 4 focus per second.  Second, Cobra Shot will always regenerate 22 focus, 14 from the ability, and then 8 from (4*(1+Haste)*(2/(1+Haste)) - or, 4*2=8 since the 1+haste factor cancels out, unless you have steady focus up, in which case the 4 base becomes 6 and you get 12 from the cast time.  

[Azortharion 65]

Doesn't matter since both methods spend no focus in the opener anyway meaning that cast/passive regen is 0 for both situations since the idea was to compare the openers. His uses a free Stampede, mine does a Cobra. Regen is 0 in either case so honestly it might not make sense to even include the direct regen from Cobra in the comparison but it's 4 am soon and I'm tired.

Fair on the focus regen base though, although it didn't end up being relevant because I checked the 5.82 in game.

[zvr 0]

Everyone is talking about BM now, but I have one question about SV :)

 

Some time ago I've read here that for single target fights it was good to spam Arcane Shot instead of wasting focus on Glaive Toss or Barrage.

Is this option still viable?

[Niix 169]

Everyone is talking about BM now, but I have one question about SV

 

Some time ago I've read here that for single target fights it was good to spam Arcane Shot instead of wasting focus on Glaive Toss or Barrage.

Is this option still viable?

 

Glaive Toss on Single, Barrage on >1.

 

ARcane Shot spam can be good without any set bonuses if you get a MS proc, as far as I remember.

[Orthios 272]

So, Bracers of Callous Disregard is still missing from the BiS list, and considering that it's haste/mastery, I'd say it's BiS for BM.

[f0nZi3 7]

So, Bracers of Callous Disregard is still missing from the BiS list, and considering that it's haste/mastery, I'd say it's BiS for BM.

It's listed as "Trash Drop" on the main page, but you are right... it's missing from the "BRF BM" tab.

[Azortharion 65]

Not listed because it is worse because of lower stat budget, my spreadsheet-gnome tells me.

[Orthios 272]

Well, that makes sense.  Though why they have a lower stat budget is beyond me, when the trash boots have the same budget as the rest of the boots.

[rtfhnrfthn 0]

Hi Hunter bro, 

 

I'm using Azor guide, and then the Gear calculator in order to calculate the best item. But, the new version can't be save ? i mean i can't make a copy to put the stats and to calculate, Is it me or the owner of the doc disable it ? 

 

Thanks 

 

(sorry for my english, not native)

 

Edit : talking about that : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1njDdB3WUA5vsZcGhlf2W0HYpQ1KBde6ThFeCwntiVtk/htmlview?pli=1&sle=true# 

Edited March 12, 2015 by Raveroo

[Selessys 0]

I have a question wich trinket combination is better for BM hunter Beating Heart of the Mountain(heroic) +  Captive Micro-Aberration(mythic

 

OR  Beating Heart of the Mountain(heroic)  + Humming Blackiron Trigger(Normal Warforged)

 

Thanks for advice

Edited March 13, 2015 by Selessys

[Ulgratron 4]

Wanted to share some Beast Mastery advice on pet management. 

 

Pet's assist stance is an easy way to make your pet always attack something. But, due to it's crappy logic, it will often cause your pet to run around indecisively, wasting time and DPS, and to switch targets when it's not necessary. 

 

So, it's better to keep your pet on passive. But that requires you to manually manage your pet, and assign a new target when the old one dies. It's a chore, and it's easy to mess up. 

 

You could simply macro a /petattack to all your abilities, making sure that pet will always attack your current target. But it's not always optimal. You don't want your pet running 40m just to kill a 100k health add. 

 

The solution is this elegant macro:

#showtooltip Kill Command
/startattack
/petattack [@pettarget, noexists]
/cast [@pettarget] Kill Command

What this does:

1) Starts autoattack at your current target.

2) If your pet has no target (i.e. isn't attacking anyone at the moment) it will send your pet to attack your current target.

3) Casts Kill Command at pet's target.

 

The idea behind this macro is that now you can switch targets all you want, but your pet will keep attacking the target you last assigned to him.

 

For example, you can keep your pet on the boss, and cast Kill Command on cooldown, while doing ranged damage to some squishy adds far away. And when the need arises, you can send your pet to attack another target manually with a /petattack macro or Ctrl + 1 hotkey by default. 

 

Naturally, to get the most benefit from this macro, you should keep your pet on passive.

 

It's also a good idea to add the line:

/petattack [@pettarget, noexists]

to all your other abilities, like Multi Shot and Arcane Shot, to make sure your pet is always attacking something. 

 

The best part about this system is that it automatically manages your pet for you in an optimal manner, yet allows you to manually manage your pet when necessary for added benefit.

 

Of course, there are problems: you need to be mindful where you left your pet, because if a target becomes immune to damage, but still reachable, your pet will keep attacking it until you manually tell him to attack something else.

 

I use "/use [nochanneling:Barrage]Kill Command" to keep my KC from clipping barrage during button spam.  Do you happen to know the specific macro string that will combine your @pettarget macro with the nochanneling command?

 

Using "/use [@pettarget][nochanneling:Barrage]Kill Command" still clips barrage.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Ulgratron

[Iridar 80]

I use "/use [nochanneling:Barrage]Kill Command" to keep my KC from clipping barrage during button spam.  Do you happen to know the specific macro string that will combine your @pettarget macro with the nochanneling command?

 

Using "/use [@pettarget][nochanneling:Barrage]Kill Command" still clips barrage.

I haven't used "nochanneling" command before. 

Have you tried this?

/use [@pettarget, nochanneling:Barrage] Kill Command

EDIT:

You can also always try /stopmacro

#showtooltip Kill Command
/startattack
/petattack [@pettarget, noexists]
/stopmacro [channeling:Barrage]
/cast [@pettarget] Kill Command

Edited March 17, 2015 by Iridar

[Reap 0]

Hello!

 

First of all I just want to say that this guide/thread is a great source of information.

 

I have some questions about Blink Strikes vs Stampede.

If I am on the boat crew on Iron Maiden should I go Blink Stikes or Stampede (we skip last boat phase)?

Should I go Blink Stikes on The Blast Furnace (we don't kill Feldspar on pull)?

Is there any point of using Blink Stikes on Beastlord or Operator if the rest of the group is doing good AoE?

 

Thanks!