so, in TBC hunters want to be BM and either have a ravager, scorpid, or cat (Some debate about the last one) for raiding. Obviously, these pets are the best for raid or dungeon dps.
But what about other tasks? Standard farming (elemental platue or the like)? or soloing old school dungeon content (farming dark runes in scholo)? What about PVP (BGs or arena)? Is it still one of the three above for these tasks, or is it worth taming a second pet type for content other than raids?
In classic i used a bear early on to solo mara princess with brute force rather than kiting her (took the same amount of time with more room for error) but I never found a use for a second pet outside of that. Is there one in TBC?
I think warp stalker has a slow, which could be good for something.
Is BM really the raiding spec? Does that change at some point?
Soloing and PvP, yes.
It is. Because pets got massive buffs (they scale with your stats and are stronger as a base), and you get a steroid for you and your pet on a relatively short CD, BM is the way to go until very late TBC - where Survival can actually overtake it under some rather specific circumstances. But generally every Hunter is BM.
This changed in Wrath, where at least early on Survival was the best and I think MM overtook it later. But I honestly don’t remember.
1 Like
Right on, thank you for the info. I don’t know why I just figured it was marksman forever. Do raids have a token MM hunter for Trueshot Aura, or does it not matter?
From what I remember MMs pDPS is trash, and they’d rather just have BM for the raw personal DPS. TSA is 125 AP which is nice, but it’s much better to just have higher pDPS, and more BM means higher uptime on the +3% damage boost from deep BM.
There’s also an argument for having a Survival from the start for Expose Weakness (boosts the AP of anyone attacking the target with the debuff by a % of your Agility) but I’m not entirely sure how valuable that is against just another BM Hunter. Probably one token SV and that’s it, like Arms.
I had two dps pets with difference elemental resists because each raid is different.
Fire/Shadow pet for most things.
Nature/Arcane for SWP (kalec and felmyst).
Farming is meh, you will pull agro from your pet pretty easily anyway so don’t expect it to tank much.
PVP Is prob just scorpion for poison dispel protection for your stings.
The AP buff for SV is raid wide so it’s always good to have 1 in a 25 man. Also, you need a wind serpent for high end raiding as bm. It’s the only pet that can dump all the focus you generate at good gear levels. Even ravagers focus cap at a certain point. Also, having your pet die is a massive loss of dps in tbc so being able to park your pet next to you is handy as well.
Pet wise for raiding you want a ravager, maybe 2 if you don’t want to constantly retrain resistances for different raids. Scorpion is usually the pvp pet and for open world/solo you can go bird for screech aoe aggro, or even a turtle for those extream solo tanks pets or as an off tank for heroic farming (it will still die fast after defensive CD is used).
For open world if you plan on fighting 4+ mobs at once a bird is best (multi shot hits 3 at once and screech should out aggro it) and you have one mob on yourself to hit with your melee swing timer (possibly just for raptor strike once you have steady shot, or don’t have a mob on you at all because of push back on steady, it hasn’t been simmed yet) if the pushback isn’t worth it for one pet to be melee hit you can still have 3 on the bird and move the one step in to raptor strike move back out to continue steady/multi shot. And keep mend pet up (its a hot now)
Different pets have different uses. Heck you could have your raids SV hunter running a bird for the screech debuff if none of your warriors are talented into the improved demo shout.
But raw dps for a bm hunter is ravager, once you reach 30% crit it might go to wind serpent, but that is still in discussion due to the wind serpent ability going off spell hit and not melee hit (so doesn’t benefit from the extra hit chance talent for pets)
Until late game, then you go for Wild Serpent due to Focus dump.
For PvP I remember some hunters using the warp stalker because its teleport.
1 Like
If you read all the way through you would see the wind serpent comment below lol, and as for BG pvp boar will be better because it has similar blind distance with its charge and a root.
Thanks for all the info guys. I never thought about 2 pets for different resistances. And definitely a few other suggestions i hadn’t thought of.
For BG’s I’m definitely going a boar. Boar’s are the only pet that can learn charge and that instant gap closer and 1 second immobilize are amazing. Boar’s also can learn gore for a focus dump.
speaking of gore. I read that gore is what makes ravagers better than cats, but why exactly is that? Better damage? faster usage?
It has a chance to do double damage that can then also crit.
The meta will be 3 BM hunters 1 surv hunter as a support role. Hunters mark and expose weakness.
Trueshot aura isn’t needed because another class buff gives the same buff. Forget which one.
Warp stalker was fun in BC for pvp. They have blink. I believe they blink behind the player and perform a back stab
The reason its either ravager or Wind serpent is because you get the Marksman Talent “Go For The Throat” which gives your pet 50 focus EVERYTIME you have a ranged crit.
So those 2 pets have better focus dumps, the wind serpent being better once you get higher crit which is around 30% like Red said.
Them 2 pets have the best damage focus dumps.
Clearly with that talent you will have tons of focus for your pet.
That makes alot of sense. tyvm
1 Like