Marksmanship Hunter?

[orange_gamer]

First off, I apologize if this is too soon. I noticed the last topic on this is from November of 2011 or so. My mind is foggy as to if that is before 4.3 dropped, which, I'm kinda thinking it is but I'm unsure

Comments

[ausmac]

I honestly think that whatever spec you like is the one you should play. Apart from BM not being as good for randoms, either MM or Surv does equally good to my mind.

I've solo'd BC dungeons such as Auchindoun and Hellfire on BM but I think its just as easy on the others. Really a well set up hunter can handle them in any spec. And 370 is more than enough to do that. Probably BM has a bit of an edge, especially if you have a good tanking pet.

[orange_gamer]

Very true- I go by that logic with all my other classes, but since I have no clue on hunters, I figure I'll start somewhere, and just see where it goes.:)

Thank you for the soloing advice.:D I'm not a hardcore solo-person, but I do like clearing Karazhan oftentimes.:)

[sharks_teeth]

I've leveled 2 hunters to 85 and I have another baby atm. I always have a BM spec with a tanking pet for questing and soloing. With glyph of mending and a solid tenacity tanking build, your pet is almost indestructible - as long as they keep aggro with intimidation and kill command, you'll stay alive.

Dual spec is so cheap now and hunters can change back & forth with ease. I would take BM and pick up an MM or Surv as secondary. You can re-spec multiple times without losing too much gold these days so it's not like you're locking yourself in.

[orange_gamer]

That sounds like a great plan! The whole having BM as a 2nd spec, no matter what I do- since I figured the talents to beef up pets would be in there.:D

It really is nice that Dual Spec exists now. It used to be what you picked was so serious in BC, since it was your only spec to do everything with.:X

[windfury]

Re where the specs sit relative to eachother here's what's current: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#s0

Survival is one of the top DPS specs in game, the other two lag a long way behind, but MM is further behind than BM in pve (marks is second lowest in game right now, Blizz really killed the spec last patch). If you're looking to do pve I'd suggest going Surv/BM, as BM is very useful for soloing content. However for pvp MM is the dominat Hunter spec, so if you're going to pvp a lot MM is worth taking, up to you really.

[orange_gamer]

Oh, wow. I never knew that existed! My poor Shaman, haha. Though that makes me feel better about getting in the top 4-5 on LFR, haha. I can definitely see what you mean- I figure most people in LFR/Heroics are running Survival then. I know nothing about hunters, so I thought that Survival was the PvP spec all this time. :X Thank you!

[chilayse]

The three specs are closer than they've ever been before. Yes the potential dps can be different but the numbers are in a perfect world usually. You probably want to play the one you like the most as your reactions and comfort playing that spec will definitely affect the dps. Try out all three. They each have a different feel.

Many hunters have two specs for just the reason of they prefer one spec on one situation and a different one in the other.

[windfury]

The three specs are closer than they've ever been before

That's simply not true. I don't understand how people can believe/say that.

If you look at parsing sites such as Raidbots/World of Logs etc, i.e. those that are using 'real world' numbers from aggregates of all actual logs as opposed to theoretical numbers (and are thus showing what's actually happening in practice), Survival is leaps and bounds ahead and incredibly strong, and Marks is literally right at the bottom of all possible DPS specs right now. They've been further apart than they have been in a long time since 4.3.

I'm not saying someone shouldn't play what they like or whatever, but just that there's no point pretending they're close, when the reality is that they aren't. Especially if you're comparing MM and Surv right now. Where are people getting that from?

[chilayse]

Unfortunately the numbers for raidbots and world of logs are really skewed based on the amount of people playing the class. An even sample of all three would likely make the numbers a lot closer together, but wouldn't you say the majority of raiders are playing Survival now? Statistic sites that take the top x amount are even worse, because the top 50 of 5000 is going to be higher than the top 50 of 200. You're going to have more really good players in that larger sample. I'm not explaining this well without coffee but that's where we get that, or at least where I do. The perfect world numbers are very close with some small variation, but it's definitely not the insane gaps I remember from when I started raiding in BC

[windfury]

Any of those sites can be adjusted to parse in different ways, including looking at all parses (i.e. not just ranked), and taking even samples from each spec and so on, and every single possible adjustment/parse option shows the exact same thing, SV dominating and MM being terrible.

Yes raiders are primarily playing Surv right now, but that's because Surv is so much better and they'd be gimping themselves to play MM. Regardless if you look at the top MM reports, which should be a decent indicator of what is the possible maximums of the spec, they don't compare to even average SV reports. Are you seriously suggesting the problem is that everyone playing MM is just bad?

The difference is so vast that a bad SV hunter should be out dps'ing a good MM hunter right now. I agree that it doesn't matter in 5 mans though. But to pretend their isn't a clear difference right now is pretty insulting to Hunters imo. It suggests that there's not a legitimate balance/scaling issue there when there actually is.

[e_mily]

So, please take my advice with a boulder of rock salt cause I haven't played since last august, but last time I played, MM was the better solo spec, with some pet like a turtle or something (cause of the shield skill), because of the self-healing % of damage you do thing.

BUT SERIOUSLY it has been a goddam long time since I even looked at my subscription. So idfk.

[orange_gamer]

Heh, I know the feeling. I came back to the game a few months ago, so I had forgotten a lot, and a lot has changed, etc.:)

Turtles are also cute. This is a win win win. :D