Archive for December, 2009

Playing a Beast Mastery Hunter for raids is probably one of the easiest things to do.  The rotation is simple and there’s not all that much to it, besides the fact, that the typical Beast Mastery Hunter is not capable of doing as much DPS as a Survival/Marksmanship Hunter; it can still put out an okay amount of DPS.  Even Shandra’s sheet at Elitistjerks has Beast Mastery lagging way behind in DPS.  If you still want to play Beast Mastery on raids for whatever reason, this is one of the better ways you’re going to want to do it.

In the older days, when you could easily lead raid DPS with a Beast Mastery Hunter, (this was even possible toward the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King), the challenge was in keeping your pet alive.  Now they’ve standardized all the pets, gave them some buffs, made the game really easy, it’s really rare that your pet dies unless it gets direct aggro, and it’s can be really easy to get your pet back into combat with instant resurrection abilities you can take inside the pet talent tree.

There are many variations of the Beast Mastery Build you are going to use for raiding.  The best one that’s been tested is 53/14/4 but the one that I use and have had the most luck and best results with is this 53/18/0 talent build.  Yes, I actually weave in Aimed Shot, for the gear I had at the time it netted the best DPS results, infact, my DPS was as much as 500 higher in most cases just from Aimed Shot being in the rotation.

So then that gives us a Beast Mastery Shot Rotation Priority of:

Kill Shot > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot

Always make sure serpent sting is up.

The glyph choice then puts us at:

Bestial Wrath, Steady Shot, Serpent Sting; and you could put in Kill Shot instead of Serpent Sting if you wanted.

For Beast Mastery Macros I actually have a one button Macro I spam, this is the only tree that you can kind of get away with this and be efficient at the moment, although I’ve created some pretty efficient, and I am still working on macros for the other trees.

The best talent build for Marksmanship Hunters has been 7/57/7 as I discuss in my Best Hunter Raiding Builds guide. I’ve really not seen anyone else with a spec different from that doing any significant amount of dps on raids.

There are 57 points in Marksmanship that you will have available to you, the 7 in Beast Mastery and the 7 in Survival seem to be almost mandatory, you may have some flexibility in the marksmanship tree.

The shot rotation order you’re going to want to take with your Marksmanship Hunter will be:

Kill Shot > Aimed Shot > Chimera Shot > Serpent Sting > Arcane Shot > Steady Shot as shown below in the image.

Now, before you go and get ahead of yourself, I want to point out that you want to have Serpent Sting applied before you use Chimera Shot.  The reason it appears to the right of Chimera shot is after the first application, you won’t ever really have to use it again until you switch mobs, so I gave it position 4, easy enough to reach with one hand but not up there in the first 3 shots.  You’re going to actually end up pressing 4, 2, and then 3 to start a fight and then spam whatever comes available (besides serpent sting) from left to right.

You’ll also notice all 6 of the shots in the image are macros, that’s because each one contains something similar to the following text (Swap the correct tooltip/cast for the proper skill):

#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Chimera Shot

This allows me to not have to worry about any cooldowns ever.  Rapid Fire, both my trinkets, and whatever else you might have can go into these macros.

Marksmanship Glyphs

Major: Serpent Sting, Hawk, Kill Shot

That’s it, have fun raiding in patch 3.3!

I’m currently specced into a 0/18/53 build that focuses on improved stings as I mentioned in my other Hunter Raiding Builds post.

Some people will use a slightly different or an altered shot rotation priority on their Survival Hunters and it’s perfectly okay to do so, however, I’m going to tell you the one that works best for me for just about every situation. Sometimes I start the fight differently though (situational) but once the fight is started I’ll work back into this rotation.

Kill Shot > Explosive Shot > Black Arrow > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot

What I do for raids, because I haven’t created an automated macro yet for the survival rotation because of the changes to castrandom in a recent patch (don’t worry eventually I’ll create a nice macro), is I mirror 6 macro buttons to the first 6 positions of my hot bar to emulate this rotation, as you can see in this picture.

The priority simply goes from left to right, I always choose the furthest left skill as it comes available (minus serpent sting obviously because it has no cooldown). It’s fairly simple. You’ll notice all 6 of these keys are custom named macros, that’s because each key contains the following macro text:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Steady Shot

For every key you make, change the name and skill out of this macro and place it on your hot bar.

Survival Glyphs

The glyphs I’m using are: Kill Shot, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot. The alternatives are Improved Aspect of the Hawk (if you take talents) or Steady Shot. That’s pretty much it, so good luck to you and have fun raiding in patch 3.3

Most of you are anxious to raid the Ice Crown Citadel in the Fall of the Lich King patch 3.3 and you’re looking for the best Hunter talent build you can find to use, well, I’m going to give you the main specs that are used in Raiding and you can tweak them from there.

Beast Mastery

Beast Mastery is rarely ever used for raiding, however, I’m still going to provide you with the best spec that has been tested out there.

53/14/4 – Highest DPS Beast Mastery Raiding Build Patch 3.3
Pet Choice: Devilsaur
Shot Rotation Priority: Kill Shot -> Serpent Sting -> Multi-Shot -> Steady Shot

That’s it, it’s actually very simple, but I doubt you’ll want to raid as a Beast Mastery Hunter. Depending on your playstyle you can move the 1 point in catlike reflexes into Improved Tracking.

Survival

This build is usually the most popular raiding build for Hunters out there. It allows for a high output of DPS while you are working on building up your raid gear, once you have a decent set of gear, most Hunters will switch to Marksmanship but this build is great for a Hunter that is gearing up or even one that is fully geared.

5/15/51 – Highest DPS Survival Hunter Talent Build Patch 3.3
Pet Choice: Wolf (for buff)
Shot Rotation Priority: Kill Shot -> Explosive Shot -> Serpent Sting -> Black Arrow -> Aimed Shot -> Steady Shot

This shot rotation get’s a little bit more complex and also situational. This is the recommended shot rotation order, but honestly I do it a bit differently. I usually open up with Black Arrow, then Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot. I try to time my Aimed Shot to hit just before I launch Explosive shots.

I also do not use this build on my Hunter, I use a 0/18/53. I moved all the points out of Improved Aspect of the Hawk and put them into Improved Stings and Hunting Party for replenishment because I don’t always raid. You can tweak this to how you play.

Marksmanship

Marksmanship is typically used by higher geared Hunter’s that stack a lot of haste. It seems to underperform Survival builds without high end gear, but Survival doesn’t seem to scale as well as Marksmanship. It’s also a little bit different of a play style.

Highest DPS Marksmanship Hunter Talent Build Patch 3.3
Pet Choice: Wolf (for buffs)
Shot Rotation Priority: Kill Shot -> Serpent Sting -> Aimed Shot -> Chimera Shot -> Steady Shot

Remember that when you use Chimera Shot it automatically refreshes your Serpent Sting. This shot rotation is almost as boring as the Beast Mastery rotation, but hey it works. You can also throw in Arcane Shot if you’re bored, it’s going to depend on your gear and how good you are at pressing buttons. I’ve not seen many variations of this Marksmanship Build, but I’m sure you can be creative and figure something out.