Feedback on BM/Mark Template?

[ShadoweSpirit]

Ok, this is my planned build for my Hunter...Any feedback is appreciated...









Beast Mastery Talents (31 points)

Endurance Training - 5/5 points
Increases the Health of your pets by 15%.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk - 2/5 points
While Aspect of the Hawk is active, all normal ranged attacks have a 2% chance of increasing ranged attack speed by 30% for 8 seconds.

Thick Hide - 3/3 points
Increases the Armor rating of your pets by 30%.

Unleashed Fury - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your pets by 15%.

Ferocity - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your pets by 15%.

Improved Mend Pet - 2/2 points
Gives the Mend Pet spell a 50% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect from the pet each tick.

Intimidation - 1/1 point
Command your pet to intimidate the target on the next successful melee attack, causing a high amount of threat and stunning the target for 3 seconds.

Bestial Discipline - 2/2 points
Increases the Focus regeneration of your pets by 20%.

Frenzy - 5/5 points
Gives your pet a 100% chance to gain a 30% attack speed increase for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike.

Bestial Wrath - 1/1 point
Send your pet into a rage causing 100% additional damage for 15 seconds. While enraged, the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.



Marksmanship Talents (20 points)

Improved Concussive Shot - 5/5 points
Gives your Concussive Shot a 20% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds.

Lethal Shots - 5/5 points
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 5%.

Improved Hunter's Mark - 2/5 points
Increases the Ranged Attack Power bonus of your Hunter's Mark spell by 6%.

Hawk Eye - 3/3 points
Increases the range of your ranged weapons by 6 yards.

Mortal Shots - 5/5 points
Increases your ranged weapon critical strike damage bonus by 30%.



Survival Talents (0 points)

None

[swirly]

In my mind, the BM tree has very little room for deviation. There are alot of 5/5 points that pretty much all BM hunters get. You, of course, have those as well. The only real choices are the 2/2 skills (revive pet, mend pet, beastial discipline) and improved aspect of the hawk. You basically end up with 6 points to spread out between them and its mostly preference which way you go. So thus there is nothing wrong with your choices there. Some would put more in IAoH, some would put less. My personal choice is none in IAoH and then getting all the 2/2 ones I listed. Only difference between us here is I put 2 in revive while you put 2 in IAoH. My thinking is that being able to revive my pet in 4 seconds can occassionally prevent a wipe while the added damage from IAoH probably isn't going to make a difference. Thats my choice though and as I said...with these points it seems to be mostly preference. So you look fine in the BM tree.

In the MM tree you also look fine. I went with efficiency over improved concussive. I tend to notice myself conserving mana all the time with my hunter and so the talent works right in with that. I also never PvP which is one place where improved concussive shines. In addition....I have an irrational hate for improved concussive so yeah...I've always hated that talent, but everyone else loves it so your choice is probably the correct one. : )

Otherwise, some would say to get aimed shot. Some would say not to get aimed shot. I haven't even decided this one for myself yet, though I am like you and leaning against bothering with it. So overall I would say your MM tree is just fine as well.

So yeah...not really much to say about your build other than that it looks fine. Couple of choices different from what I would make, but they are all perfectly fine choices as well.

[VoiceMan]

Yes, I agree pretty much with Swirly. I have Improved Aspect of the Hawk on Gorkuk, and therefore go without the improved mend pet/revive. However, since Swirly and I two-manned RFK the other day, and I watched his Improved Revive Pet in action, I think I may respec and go for that. I haven't needed it much, because Gorkuk is built for a 5 man party, where the pet is not the tank, so reviving him quickly has never been an issue for me, but I can certainly see the advantages of it in solo/pug groups. I have Aimed Shot, and frankly, I like it. With my agility up over 315 with all my agility gear on, I get some doozy crits out of my aimed shot. However, it's slow to fire, and has a fairly long cool-down, so it's not terribly useful unless you like to get big crits. Without looking at my char, which I can't do at work, I would guess you're pretty safe with your build you've outlined here. I MIGHT suggest you put your points you've got in Improved Aspect of the Hawk into the Improved Mend pet and Improved Revive. My reasoning for this, is you and Flash do alot of duo-ing, and therefore Jagger plays main tank. Being able to revive him quickly in combat at a higher level of health than normal could be a bigger advantage to you than the small extra damage from Improved Aspect of the Hawk. Just my two cents worth, if it's worth even that. :)

[ShadoweSpirit]

The Improved AotH was just a place to dump some points...I have at the moment 2 in Revive and will prolly end up keeping it. I don't see any reason to waste 5 points in AotH for the poor return when I can use it elsewhere...

More than likely I'll go with this but without the 2 in AotH..instead in Revive....

[Brista]

Ok, this is my planned build for my Hunter...Any feedback is appreciated...

31 BM/20 MM is an amazingly strong spec, especially for those of us who remember the much more fragile class before the talent revision

First let me say you've got every important thing right. Bestial Swiftness, Frenzy, Ferocity, Unleashed Fury, Bestial Wrath and Intimidation from the BM tree. Lethal shots, Mortal shots and Hawk-eye from MM.

So what I'm offering is just fine tuning on what is a very good, very fun build

BM tree

With BM my view is that the pet tanks just fine and that you should optimise for damage and not worry about making it tougher with talents. In PvP the pet is so tough that you can often get away with sending it alone into a raid full of people, even a cat pet like mine. In PvE solo it tanks an elite or two my level fine, sometimes I'll mend pet but it's pretty tough. In PvE group your pet won't tank and will only off-tank if the tank can't grab AoE aggro. Very rarely will its capacity to survive matter

So let me point you to a very obscure dps talent: Bestial Discipline 2/2 increases focus regeneration of your pet by 20%

Claw 8 costs 25 focus and does 43-59 damage. Focus regenerates at about 20/2 seconds (iirc) so 2/2 Bestial Discipline gives you approx one extra claw attack per 12 seconds, working out to about +4 dps. This is a decent boost for 2 talent points

This assumes you are using Claw as your only auto-cast attack, possibly supplementing it with manual uses of other pet skills (Dash is an awful skill to leave to the AI)

You could perhaps drop to 1/2 Mend Pet - casting Mend Pet will still probably decurse your pet without needing 2/2.

The other choice I would make is to put less points in Endurance Training and go for 5/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk. I like this buff a lot

Remember that as well as the pet talents you get pet skills too. I maxxed frost and shadow resists and took a lot of extra life and armour on my cat. That's part of the reason why I'm comfortable without the tanky skills from the BM talent tree

MM tree

I really like Aimed Shot. I have the timing down now so that the first split-second an opposing player knows about me is when the pet arrives and the Aimed Shot lands. There is no finer way to open a fight against an unsuspecting player

If you're not worried about pvp then it's more marginal. However +3% Hunter's Mark isn't a lot. It's just over 3 ranged attack power which is about 0.23 dps to your ranged attacks.