Hunter talent discussion

[Ruvanal]

I do agree with your thoughts on the first three levels of the beastial talents. After that though I do have some different thoughts on some of the matters.

At level 4 on the comparison between Thick Hide and Improved Mend Pet; I would consider the Thick Hide far more important for many builds over the Improved Mend Pet. My pet is regularly being beat upon by one one or more mobs and the constant no-mana cost of this skill at helping to keep the pet going is very valuable. I am usually cycling through various specialty shots to increase my overall DPS output and that will leave me with little mana to spare to be mending the pet in many cases. Also with the pets downtime between fights, this can usually be tolerated since I often use bandages for the quick fix then so that I recover my own mana for the next fight. If I also have extra pet food supplies (which I all to often do) I can readily tolerate the unhappiness ding of just letting the pet use its natural fast hit point recovery.

Now for the comment on the Ferocity. I consider it probably the best of the three talents at this level. I also consider one of your conclusions on this to be rater flawed.

Ferocity

Rank 1/5: Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 3%.
Rank 2/5: Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 6%.
Rank 3/5: Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 9%.
Rank 4/5: Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 12%.
Rank 5/5: Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 15%.

Critical strike pumping talents always seem kind of questionable to me.  It just seems to be odd to be going out of your way to pump something that only happens some of the time.  Its like you are increasing the inconsistency of your character.  Its a big part of the game though and talents that do it are everywhere and are in fact very useful.  Its the same with this one.  Basically, if you have come this far into the tree then you probably did so with the plan of getting this talent and the one that requires it.  Like I said earlier for another talent, more damage is good.  So yeah, if you have come this far then you will probably be getting this.

This talent is in fact decreasing the inconsistancy of your character. Most chances for a critical strike are falling in the 5% to 10% range unless modified in some way. Say your pets crit chance is 10% and that it can expect to get 20 strikes in on a mob (or multiple set of mobs) in a short fight. At this point you might get 2 crit hits in this time spam but it could easily be anywhere from 1 to 3 crit hits. That is fairly inconsistent. But if you have the Ferocity at max, then the chance of crits on those ~20 attacks is now up to 25%. This yields an average of 5 crits in that same span of time time with the distribution still mostly in +/-1 spread for 4 to 6 critical hits. This is far more predictable in what you could expect to see for the pets damage output. This also can help at the pet holding the aggro due to the higher damage output and in getting the through the mobs faster by the DPS boost.

This higher chance of the crits happening will also help with the Frenzy at level 6 since with a more consistent rate of getting the crits, it is far more likely that once the pet gets its first crit, it is more likely that the pet will stay in Frenzy mode until the end of all the fighting due to the more frequent kick-offs of the process.

I do agree with your thoughts on Intimidation and Frenzy.

On the Spirit Bond, I would find it more useful to what I have been encountering in play than you seem to be encountering. I am fairly regularly having to off-tank an add or one of the mobs in a group while still firing at a primary target. I do not consider this bad if I can pick to make sure the mob attacking me is not a fast and/or high DPS damage dealer. If my hit points and armor damage mitigation are not getting used, then one of the aspects of the hunter/pet duo is effectively not being used for maximum effect. I too can do some hit point recovery after a fight at the same time as my pet when taking the food->hit point recovery route. This is effectively giving a double recovery rate for being able to go to the next fight along with the effectively larger hit point pool that was used to get through some multi-mob encounters. With the Spirit Bond regularly giving me 20 hit points per pet hit, this can greatly extend my capacity to off-tank an add in many fights.

So with what I am looking at, a build of :
Improved Aspect of the Hawk
Endurance Training
Unleashed Fury
Thick Hide
Ferocity
Frenzy
Spirit Bond

Beast Mastery Total: 31

This would save 2 points off of what doing for being put into another tree. With the game currently and for anytime in the forseeable future having an overall limit of 51 talent points at level 60, this allows a full 20 points for being able to max a 4th level talent that requires 5 talent points in one of the other trees.