Thought I would take a look at my original list and see what all I actually got done. The list was overly ambitious and frankly… I got burned out and stopped playing for a while. How did I do? Well… I got maybe half of this done. MAYBE.

Raiding

• Heroic: Madness of Deathwing
• Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider
• Full best in slot gear on Zan
• I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am
• Finish all non-metas from Ulduar 10m (missing 2, and they’re both easy, I’m disappointed in myself here)
• Finish all non-metas from Ulduar 25m (completed May 8)
• Finish last Wrath dungeon achievements (missing 1)
• Finish last Cata dungeon achievements (missing Hex Mix, burned through about 30 hex sticks and I still do not have it. wtf???)

PvP

• 50,000+ HKs (thank you, account-wide achievements)
• Full Cata gear
  • Zanbon
  • Rogue
  • Pally (the only character I’ve really bothered to PvP on in the past ~3 months)
• Exalted with one PvP faction (close… but nope.)
• Master of one battleground (fairly close on WSG or EotS)

Misc

• 12,000+ Achivement points (sitting at 12430 as of September 17)
• 45 reps to exalted (43/45)
• Seeker
• Loremaster (ha)
  • Eastern Kingdoms
  • Kalimdor
  • Outland
  • Northrend
  • Cataclysm
• Salty title
• Chef title
• Finish leveling Archaeology (a truly terrible profession)
  • Bone raptor mount (it’s in the queue now, I just can’t bring myself to farm the fragments)
  • Professor title

Characters

• All primary professions to max level
• One of each class to at least 80
  • Druid (managed with RAF)
  • Death Knight
  • Hunter
  • Mage (rolled a mage… didn’t play it…)
  • Paladin
  • Priest
  • Rogue
  • Shaman (leveling with a friend who is new to WoW… currently level 17!)
  • Warlock (she’s in Outland, slowly chugging along, I’ll be lucky to hit 70 before MOP)
  • Warrior (no more character slots! oh well!)
• Restock alt bank with essentials
• Get back to 100k+ gold (sitting at almost 200k now)

• Thunderfury
• Hand of Rag
• Thor’idal
• Val’anyr (8/30)
• Shadowmourne (26/50)
• Legendary daggers (110/333)

What is the best pet for the DPS?

You see, my little hunters, there is no one “right” answer for this. There are many pets in our hunter arsenal that are the best pet for the situation. The best pet for your DPS is dependent upon what you’re doing. I wouldn’t use the same pet for raiding that I would use in a battleground. My arena pet might be different from my battleground pet. The pet I use for questing isn’t the same as the pet I use to run 5 man dungeons, and I certainly do not use that pet when I hunter tank or do some extreme soloing. Hunter pets are one of the biggest utilities we have to offer and the sign of a truly good hunter is one who knows which pet to use in what situation and why. Blizzard has blessed us with an overflowing stable in Cataclysm… we have TWENTY FIVE pet slots now! This is a fantastic opportunity, use those slots well.

Table of Contents

• Petopia
• Mists of Pandaria Changes
  • Pet talent specializations
    • Ferocity
    • Cunning
    • Tenacity
• When to use which spec
• The basic hunter stable
• Pets listed by buff, debuff, and ability

Change Log

• July 17, 2011 — Original post for Cataclysm pets
• September 4, 2012 — 5.0.4 update, added Mists of Pandaria info from beta
• September 10, 2012 — Added new Sporebat buff

Petopia is an AMAZING resource and a website EVERY hunter should have bookmarked. Petopia was the first WoW website I ever went to when I was leveling my first baby hunter and wanted to find a cool pet that not many other people had. Petopia doesn’t just index all the cool pets, it also tells you where to find them, what their abilities are and at what level you can tame them.

The information in this post is a consolidation of large amounts of information from Petopia and Wowhead, organized in a logical way for new hunters. A note about the pet list: Petopia indexes the abilities by pet, I list the pets by ability—if you know what buff you need, this list will tell you which pet provides it.

What’s different in Mists of Pandaria?

Any pet can be any spec now. Yes, you read that right. You can have a tenacity cat or a ferocity bear. In addition to the unique talents each pet family comes with, you’ll be choosing from one of the following talent specializations:

Ferocity

• Dash — Increases your pet’s movement speed by 80% for 16 sec.
• Heart of the Phoenix — When used, your pet will miraculously return to life with full health.
• Rabid — Increases your pet’s attack power by 25% for 20 sec.
• Spiked Collar — Increases the damage done by your pet’s Basic Attacks by 10%. Increases you pet’s haste by 10%, and increases your pet’s critical strike chance by 10%.

Cunning

• Boar’s Speed — Increases your pet’s movement speed by 30%.
• Bullheaded — Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your pet, and reduces damage done to your pet by 20% for 12 sec.
• Cornered — When at less than 35% health, your pet does 50% more damage and has a 60% reduced chance to be critically hit.
• Dash — Increases your pet’s movement speed by 80% for 16 sec.
• Roar of Sacrifice — Protects a friendly target from critical strikes, making attacks against that target unable to be critical strikes, but 20% of all damage taken by that target is also taken by the pet. Lasts 12 sec.

Tenacity

• Blood of the Rhino — Increases all healing effects on your pet by 40%, increases your pet’s armor by 20%, and reduces your pet’s chance to be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%.
• Charge — Your pet charges an enemy, immobilizing the target for 1 sec. and increasing the pet’s melee attack power by 25% for its next attack.
• Great Stamina — Increases your pet’s total health by 12%.
• Last Stand — Your pet temporarily gains 30% of its maximum health for 20 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.
• Thunderstomp — Shakes the ground with thundering force, doing X Nature damage to all enemies within 8 yards. This ability causes a moderate amount of additional threat.

You can change your pet’s spec at any time while not in combat, so don’t stress over which spec to pick. You can easily swap back and forth between tenacity and ferocity if you’re questing between dungeon queues!

When should I use which spec?

When you quest, you’ll be using your pet as a tank, so you’ll want a solid pet with good defensive abilities at your side. Any pet can be a tenacity pet now, so if you want a tenacity sporebat, make it so! But keep in mind only certain pets have special abilities that lend themselves to the tanking role better than others.

Bears and turtles are my picks for the best tenacity pets and I use a turtle for all of my hunter tanking needs. I have tanked adds in phase one on Nefarian with my turtle. I have tanked Sunwell Plateau with my turtle. I have soloed Vortex Pinnacle and The Stonecore with my turtle. Why turtles? They have the ability Shell Shield, which reduces the turtle’s damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds every minute.

Pro tip! A cool turtle you can tame at level 23 is Ghamoo-ra in Blackfathom Deeps.

If you are not having problems staying alive while questing or prefer to level via Random Dungeon Finder, you will want to use a ferocity pet.

The most universally useful ferocity pet is the cat, for the Roar of Courage, which is a mastery buff. Cats are also some of the most common beasts in the game with dozens of different skins, so you can very easily find one you like. Wolves are also a really useful pet to keep on hand for their Furious Howl buff, which increases your crit chance by 5%.

Pro tip! A cool cat you can tame at level 19 is the spawned Ghost Saber in Darkshore.

If you plan to PvP at all, you will want to get a pet that gives you an extra advantage against other players. The best pets for PvP are the ones that can provide some CC for you, so you will want to pick up a spider, monkey, dog or crab.

Spiders have a ranged snare with their Web ability, rooting the enemy in place for 5 seconds. Monkeys have a move called Bad Manner which acts like a Rogue’s Blind and disorients the target for 4 seconds. Dogs and Crabs have a 4 second pin—Dogs use Lock Jaw and Crabs use Pin. I prefer Monkeys or Spiders because their roots are a ranged attack and do not require your pet to be right on top of the player to snare them. There are several other pets that provide great utility for PvP, these three types of pets are my recommendations for a universally good PvP pet. As always, choose the right pet for your play style and opponent.

• Spiders are everywhere, you can find them in Tirisfall Glades, Elwynn Forest, Teldrassil and Ghostlands all by level 10.
• Monkeys are in Deadmines at level 14.
• Crabs can be found in Westfall, Durotar and Eversong Woods, all before level 10.
• You can find dogs in Scarlet Monastery at level 32.

The basic hunter stable at level 90 is:

1. Cat — Mastery buff
2. Wolf — Crit buff
3. Shale Spider (BM) — 5% stats buff
4. Silithid (BM) — 10% stam buff
5. Hyena/Serpent — 10% attack speed buff
6. Boar/Ravager — physical vulnerability
7. Raptor/Tallstrider — armor reduction
8. Dragonhawk/Wind Serpent — magic vulnerability
9. Fox — attack speed reduction
10. Sporebat — spell haste
11. Goat — cast speed reduction
12. Bat/Porcupine/Wasp — stun
13. Nether Ray/Gorilla/Moth — interrupt
14. Turtle — best tank pet
15. Spider/Monkey — PvP

BM pets you should REALLY consider taming:

• Spirit Beast — HoT
• Quilen — Battle rez
• Water Strider — Water walking
• Core Hound — Bloodlust/Heroism
• Chimera/Worm — AOE damage

Use this flow chart to know which pet to bring to your raid:
http://forums.wow-petopia.com/download/file.php?mode=view&id=4688

Once you level a bit more, you might want to branch out and tame some pets based on the buffs or debuffs they provide your group. If you plan to raid, especially if you will be raiding in a 10 man, you will want to bring a pet that will benefit your raid group best. We have over 15 different buffs/debuffs/abilities we can provide, be sure you are prepared to fill a role should your raid group need it.

A full chart of every buff, debuff, & ability available and which pet provides it:

BUFFS

• +3500 mastery
  Cat (Roar of Courage)
  Spirit Beast (Spirit Beast Blessing) (BM)
• +5% crit
  Devilsaur (Terrifying Roar) (BM)
  Hydra (Bellowing Roar) (glitch pet, can not be tamed at this time)
  Quilen (Fearless Roar) (BM)
  Wolf (Furious Howl)
• +5% strength, agility, stamina, intellect 
  Shale Spider (Embrace of the Shale Spider) (BM)
• +5 spell haste
  Sporebat
• +10% stamina 
  Silithid (Qiraji Fortitude) (BM)
• +10% spell power
  Water Strider (Still Water) (BM)
• 10% reduced raid damage taken (5 yd range)
  Carrion Bird (Demoralizing Screech)
  Bear (Demoralizing Roar)
• +10% melee and ranged attack speed 
  Hyena (Cackling Howl)
  Serpent (Serpent’s Switftness)

DEBUFFS

• 4% physical damage increase
  Boar (Gore)
  Ravager (Ravage)
  Rhino (Stampede)
  Worm (Acid Spit)
• 4% armor reduction (stacks up to 3x)
  Raptor (Tear Armor)
  Tallstrider (Dust Cloud)
• 8% magic damage increase
  Dragonhawk (Fire Breath)
  Wind serpent (Lightning Breath)
• 20% reduced melee/ranged attack speed
  Fox (Tailspin)
• 25% decrease to healing taken (mortal wound)
  Devilsaur (Monstrous Bite) (BM)
• 50% movement speed reduction
  Chimera (Frost Breath) (BM)
  Crocolisk (Ankle Crack)
  Warp stalker (Time Warp)
• Cast speed reduction
  25% — Core Hound (Lava Breath) (BM)
  50% —  Goat (Trample)

STUNS/INTERRUPTS

• 2 second stun
  Bat (Sonic Blast)
  Porcupine (Paralyzing Quill) (.5 sec cast, AOE stun)
  Wasp (Sting)
• 3 second stun
  Shale Spider (Web Wrap) (BM)
• Spell cast interrupt
  Nether Ray (2 sec) (Nether Shock)
  Gorilla (2 sec) (Pummel)
  Moth (4 sec) (Serenity Dust)
• 3 second invulnerability
  Basilisk (Petrifying Gaze)
• 4 second blind/sleep
  Monkey (Bad Manner)
  Crane (Lullaby)
• Snare/root
  Dog (4 sec) (Lock Jaw)
  Crab (4 sec) (Pin)
  Silithid (5 sec) (Venom Web Spray) (BM)
  Spider (5 sec) (Web)
• 10 second disarm
  Bird of prey (Snatch)
  Scorpid (Clench)

SPECIAL ABILITIES
note all of these special tools require Beast Mastery spec to use! 

• Targeted heal over time
  Spirit Beast (Spirit Mend) (BM) 
• Water walking
  Water Strider (Surface Trot) (BM)
• Battle rez
  Quilen (Eternal Guardian) (BM)
• Bloodlust/Heroism
  Core Hound (Ancient Hysteria) (BM)
• AOE damage
  Chimera (Froststorm Breath) (BM)
  Worm (Burrow Attack) (BM)
• Knockback
  Rhino (Horn Toss) (BM)

FUN NON-COMBAT PET SKILLS

• Birds and Cranes will do a flip on command
• Foxes will dance on command
• Bears and Porcupines will take a nap on command

Exotic Pets

So as you should know, Patch 5.0.4 hit live realms Tuesday morning. And by Tuesday morning, I of course mean Tuesday afternoon. And by that, I of course mean a little closer to “early evening.” I think we can all take solace in the fact that while World of Warcraft handles its classes like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippo in which the class that eats the most of Ghostcrawler’s attention orbs gets all the buffs and the losing classes are all nerfed into “Cataclysm Holy Priest PvP” status, Blizzard Time remains the same.

Anyways! The new patch brings one or two minor changes to everyone; those minor changes being less minor and more “dear God NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS ANYMORE.”

TO LIST A FEW:

• The removal of the ranged/relic slot. That’s right—the third weapon slot has disappeared overnight. While all your little Horde and Alliance characters were sleeping, Little Crabby Ghostcrawler hopped through and bopped them all on the head with his nerfbat. We’ve all forgotten how to carry around daggers, and folks like Paladins and Priests have decided that carrying around sacred texts of the Light in their third slot is just so tiring. For hunters, this means that our ranged weapon now lives in our Main Hand slot. Congratulations! The Kiril that you swiped from the bear tank is now absolutely useless. Have fun linking it in /2 and crying. And no, you don’t get a refund for your 3400 Conquest pike (or your 800 point magic Paladin book). Don’t you hate it when Blizzard?
• The PvP 4-Set change is in effect. Our PvP 4-Set increases Focus regeneration by 25%, up from 5% in 4.x. I’ve been testing the improved 4-set in Random BGs and so far, it seems more than sufficient. For all of you that were rocking the Wyrmstalker 2PC, you can finally go back to enjoying your full PvP Resilience levels.
• PvP Resilience and PvP Power. I don’t know of any good way to explain it, but PvP Resilience/Power combined is probably one of Blizzard’s better ideas. First and foremost, all PvP gear now has two “useful” secondary stats (ie Crit/Haste instead of just Crit/Resil) in addition to Resilience and PvP Power. Essentially, PvP Power is the counter to Resilience; its addition makes PvE gear more or less obsolete in competitive play. For example: my hunter has 66.3% PvP Resilience in live right now. This is a 66.3% reduction to all incoming damage- it sounds insane, certainly. However, he also has 26.12% PvP Power. If Strelok were to fight himself in a schizophrenic fit, he would only have a 40.18% reduction to damage dealt. From what I’ve heard/seen, that’s roughly equal to what PvP-geared players were doing to other PvP-geared players pre-5.0.4. Because PvE gear lacks PvP power, the DR makes them hit like crap on PvP geared opponents. Hooray! PvE in PvP is dead.
• In addition, the Legendaries in MoP are currently legendary-tier gems, not weapons. These gems can only be placed in to PvE items, which prevents another Legendary crisis like the one we had with Tarecgosa/FUCKIN’ DAGGERS. As much as I’m going to inevitably go on an “I HATE IT WHEN BLIZZARD” rant, this is one of their better changes (and long overdue).
• The Forsaken racial changed. We can no longer breateh 233%—yes, 233%—longer underwater (boo!). Instead, we now have a passive ability that periodically damages our target with shadow damage and heals us for the same amount (OH MY GOD YAY). At 85, this ability hits for about 4.3k from what I’ve seen—that’s a passive 3% heal. With this and Will of the Forsaken, Forsaken are looking like the new fan favourite race for MoP PvP. I can reliably say that as a hunter with kind of nothing when it comes to self-healing, a 3% heal at random is very, very welcome.
• The removal of stat sticks from hunters means we no longer have any weapon chain. Yes, hunters are now sitting in 8 second disarms with more or less nothing we can do about it. It’s as bad as it sounds, believe me, but all we can do is hope Blizzard changes weapon chains to be usable on Ranged weapons. Ha.

I said I would list a few, not that they’d be short.

In all likelihood, you aren’t here to listen to me regurgitate class notes like a semi-witty MMO Champion. You want to know hunter PvP—what are the best talents, glyphs, pets, places to AFK, et cetera. How are we going to be in competitive? What makes us good/bad? What are some tips and tricks to woo your Battlegroup sweetheart into sending you nudes?

Fortunately for you, I have some vague answers. Unfortunately for you, they’re all coming from a sub-1550 hero (I’m 1650 in Rated BGs DON’T HATE DON’T HATE) whose only 2.2k rating was in untamed anti-Blizzard fury. As such, take what I say with a grain of salt—or an entire barrel, if you like.

With the disclaimers aside, let’s get down to business.

Beast Mastery.

That’s it. Beast Mastery.

Survival and Marksman have both been nerfed into the ground and rendered near-unrecognizable. To best explain how hard the nerfbat hit MM PvP, the place where Marksman hunters once stood has been thoroughly nuked into the ground, paved over, and turned into New Jersey. RIP, Marksman. RIP.

With that being said, the new top dog spec is BM. The burst damage a BM hunter can put down is frankly frightening, and having that stun via Intimidation along with something like Silencing Shot is simply amazing. As it stands, no spec even comes close for PvP.

So, what IS a BM hunter? We just don’t know.

Beast Mastery…

• …does damage primarily through your pet. This seems fairly obvious, I know, but I say this to remind everyone that your pet can’t just be farting around doing whatever while you fight someone. Your pet is an extension of your hunter- a clunky, inefficient extension of your hunter. Kind of like it’s some extension arm on Inspector Gadget, only it’s incredibly rusty and made of tin foil and all the plastic party silverware you bought to be disposable but your grandmother insists on washing and taking home with her. With that said, you need to pay attention to your pet, what it’s doing, and its cooldowns. You can get away with not macroing things like Bullheaded in Marksman, but having your pet stuck in a 7 second fear as BM? You might as well just throw your pre-Cataclysm ammo at your target. In short: YOU ARE A SUPER-PET SPEC. CONTROL YOUR PET ACCORDINGLY.
• …does cray-cray damage when bursting. While hunters have always been frightening while bursting, BM is by far the de facto “beat the blood out of him” spec. To that end, however, our sustained damage isn’t quite as good. The bright side is that we get cooldowns like Dire Beast every 30 seconds (and if you don’t take Dire Beast as BM I judge you harshly), so we’re seldom just mashing Kill Command/Arcane Shot and hoping we’re making the other guy hurt.
• …still feels about as fluid as trying to shove a square peg into a small dog’s ass. Even with the range change on Kill Command, Beast Mastery doesn’t feel as fluid as Marksman. It could just be that I’m just picking BM up for the first time in nearly a year, but whatever it is, it’s not very efficient.

In short, BM is big on burst, but has poor sustained damage and doesn’t feel as fluid as MM did. If you’ve never played BM before, you can expect the change to feel super duper awful, but once you pick up on it you’ll get to enjoy being just plain scary while a Shadow Priest destroys you in less than five seconds.

At least you tried.

Talents are rather interesting in Misty Pandaland. Rather than picking a spec, filling the tree, and then allocating points to the other two trees, we earn one talent point every 15 levels that can be put into one of three skills. Though there’s certainly some talents on some tiers that shine above the others, there does remain a considerable amount of personal choice in talents now. A foreign notion, I’m sure. Try not to panic while we look these over.

For those playing at home, here’s the Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator.

Tier 1: Disengage

On Tier 1, Blizzard gives us a choice: what sort of mad tomfoolery would we like to happen with our ability to miraculously fly backwards? It’s also quite nice in that at this point in MoP/5.0.4, you do have a choice. Hooray!

Posthaste

Your Disengage frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 sec.

Posthaste works much like it did before—however, it now frees you from any movement impairing effects on use, not unlike a druid using Dash. The fact that it removes movement impairing effects and increases movement speed is wonderful—it’s a bit like having Master’s Call combined with the old Posthaste in Cataclysm. While minimum range isn’t an issue anymore, getting punched in the scrotum by warriors and paladins is still very, very bad. I’ve had great results with it in random BGs right now and couldn’t recommend it enough for quick getaways.

Narrow Escape

When you Disengage, you also activate a web trap which encases all targets within 8 yards in sticky webs, preventing movement for 8 sec.

Where talent one in this tier is all about making you Speedy Gonzalez, talent two is all about immobilizing your foes by shooting your stickiness all over them. Spermicide jokes aside, Narrow Escape has the potential to be excellent in PvP. The loss of Entrapment means that hunters are fairly lacking in roots these days, which makes Narrow Escape very attractive. That being said, however, the 8 yard range does make it a bit situational—if you aren’t disengaging in the very midst of your foes often, you’re wasting a talent you could otherwise put into Posthaste or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera

Reduces the cooldown of Disengage by 10 sec, and the cooldown of Deterrence by 60 sec.

IT RETURNS.

As much fun as I’m having with Posthaste right now, I’d say with quite a bit of certainty that Crouching Tiger, should it stay as is, is going to be THE competitive PvP choice. A Disengage on a 15 second cooldown is fairly nice standalone, but this talent puts Deterrence’s cooldown at 1 minute. That’s a 30% damage reduction and 100% attack reflection every 60 seconds. You’d either be a fool or someone who really hates your healer to pass it up.

Tier 2: Crowd Control

Tier 2 offers you two familiar CC abilities as well as one new one. You still get to pick and choose on this tier, but imho your choice will change depending on the kind of PvP you’re doing.

Silencing Shot

A shot that silences the target and interrupts spellcasting for 3 sec.

If you’ve played Cataclysm hunter, you’re already familiar with Silencing Shot. It’s the same shot you know and love, only available to every spec. I’m currently rolling with Silencing Shot in random BGs and loving it—it’s everything I wanted in 4.2, but kind of nerfed and with less kawaii-ass polearms.

Wyvern Sting

A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 sec.  Any damage will cancel the effect.  Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.

Wyvern Sting is… still not great for PvP. Though Blizzard did the right thing and removed the pointless DoT effect from it, it still breaks on any damage. In addition, Wyvern Sting lacks any glyph that makes it remove pre-existing DoT effects; in order to effectively use it, you would have to waste a glyphed Freezing Trap or Scatter Shot before applying it, and even then something like Unholy Frenzy can break it easily. Though you could theoretically take it for Arena play, it’s simply not a good idea for Battlegrounds, and I would argue that a Silencing Shot or Binding Shot would benefit far more in either form of gameplay.

Binding Shot

You fire a magical projectile, tethering the enemy and any other enemies within 5 yards of the landing arrow for (11 sec) sec.

If targets move 5 yards from the arrow they are stunned for 5 sec (3 sec PvP) and will be immune to the effects of Binding Shot for 10 sec.

Binding shot is a new skill added to MoP, and… wow. I haven’t played around TOO much with it, admittedly, but just reading the tooltip leads me to believe that in Battlegrounds, a well-placed Binding Shot could easily mean the difference between a win and a loss. Binding Shot in Arenas could also have some very interesting effects, but it would be at the sacrifice of a Silence. When it comes to Arena play, I’d imagine that the choice between Binding and Silencing will come down to your composition.

For BGs, though? Drop a Binding Shot right in front of Drek’Thar’s room in AV and enjoy the 20+ stunned players.

Tier 3: Hunter Heals Tier

You read that right. Hunter. Heals. It’s okay to freak out a little.

Admittedly, I haven’t looked around too much about the healing tier or seen what’s being said about it—I’m more speculating than offering sound advice as to where to go, here. Again, grains of salt for everyone!

Exhilaration

Instantly heals you for 30% and your pet for 100% of total health.

You read that right. A heal. An actual, bona fide heal for your hunter (and his faithful, albeit rather stupid, companion). I wasn’t making that shit up.

While I’m not running it in random BGs (at least, not yet—give it a few more days of screaming “I WISH I HAD A HEAL” and I’ll inevitably change), I can’t imagine wanting to take anything else in Arenas right now. A 30% heal is fairly significant, and that 100% heal on your pet certainly ain’t nothin’ to scoff at. Combine it with your Spirit Mend and cackle wildly, for at last you understand what it’s like to be a DPS with a self-heal. Too bad you aren’t a hybrid.

Aspect of the Iron Hawk

The Hunter takes on the aspects of an iron hawk, increasing ranged attack power by 10%, and reducing all damage taken by 15%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.

In theory, Iron Hawk is awesome. In application? Not so much.

As of right now, Blizzard intends to remove Aspects from the GCD again. However, as it stands hunters don’t get to spend too much time hanging out in Hawk—we move a lot, and apparently adopting the aspects of a motherfucking hawk does not lend itself well to shooting steadily (or shooting… like a cobra).

Like I said though, a 15% damage reduction on Hawk should be excellent, but at the cost of an instant heal and a passive 2% heal? I wouldn’t recommend it, personally.

Spirit Bond

While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 2% of total health every 2 sec.

It’s like old Spirit Bond, but not as crappy. MoP Spirit Bond is 2% every 2 seconds—while this does sound kind of crazy, I know, it’s 2.8k every 2 seconds. My autoshot hits at 85 right now are hitting for around 2k. It’s pretty good when combined with the healing done by the new Forsaken racial, but you’ll probably fare better with that instant 30% heal.

Tier 5: The Focus Tier

Tier 5 Focuses on returning Focus to you. Focus regeneration was nightmarish for PvP Hunters in Cataclysm—however, Tier 5 makes Focus readily available to us in 3 ways.

Fervor

Instantly restores 50 Focus to you and your pet and an additional 50 Focus over 10 sec.

How it’s like old Fervor: Instantly restores 50 Focus

How it’s not: Generates another 50 Focus over 10 seconds.

In short, Fevor is a pretty damn tasty talent for the Focus-hungry Hunter. The Availability of Fervor on a 30 second cooldown means that you can pop Fervor and enjoy a never-ending pool of Focus while you blow your burst cooldowns. It’s also reset by Readiness, so you can easily pop that for a second, full-Focus burst terror phase.

Dire Beast

Summons a powerful wild beast to attack your target for 15 sec.  Each time the beast deals damage, you will gain 5 Focus.

This is a talent new to Mists, and my personal favourite of this tier. Though you can’t pop it to instantly restore Focus, your new beast friend does quite a bit of damage and hits very, very often. Popping Dire Beast with your other damage cooldowns will give you an effect fairly similar to Fervor’s Focus-over-time: endless Focus to tear apart your foes.

Unfortunately, the Call Beast bug is long-fixed, so you cannot camp the Alliance/Horde starting zone with the entirety of the forest at your backs. Boo, you whore.

Thrill of the Hunt

You have a 30% chance when you fire a ranged attack that costs Focus or Kill Command to reduce the Focus cost of your next 3 Arcane Shots or Multi-Shots by 20.

It’s basically Cataclysm TotH—it procs very often and it’s very useful when it does. I’m personally not a fan of proc-based things in PvP, but it’s certainly not a bad talent for BGs. I wouldn’t recommend it for Arenas but hey, preference.

Tier 5: The Only Thing A Murder of Crows Can Murder is Your Framerate

It’s so sad, but so true. The choice essentially comes down to Lynx Rush or Blink Strike: do you want to make everything in a 10 yard radius of your pet hurt a lot, or do you want one guy to have his entire digestive tract fall out because of your pet’s shiny new Shadowstep?

A Murder of Crows

Summons a flock of crows to attack your target over the next 30 sec.  If used on a target below 20% health, the cooldown is reduced to 60 seconds.

Two minute CD? 60 Focus to cast? Next to no damage?

Blink Strike

Causes your pet to instantly teleport behind an enemy target up to 40 yards away from your pet and inflict 600% normal damage.

Ouch. Blink Strike is an incredibly painful ability when used against a single target, and considering it’s a 20 second cooldown, you can use it almost as often as you can use Dire Beast, essentially letting you Dire-Blink your foes into a pool of their own fear and excrement. The trade-off is that while Blink Strike might do 600% damage on a 20 second cooldown, it doesn’t have the AoE capability of its tier companion, Lynx Rush.

Lynx Rush

Your pet rapidly charges from target to target, attacking 9 times over 4 sec, dealing 200% of its normal attack damage to each target.

The pet must be within 10 yards of the target to Lynx Rush.

If Blink Strike is the BM hunter’s Shadowstep, then Lynx Rush is Killing Spree. The damage is less than Blink Strike, naturally, but the ability to jump between targets makes this a very attractive talent for BGs. Mind you, all your targets have to be within 10 yards of the pet during the rush for it to hit them, but a cleverly-placed Ice Trap or Binding Shot before your Lynx Rush will benefit you greatly.

Tier 6: Like I Play MoP Beta

From what I understand, Barrage and Glaive Toss are basically no-gos because their Focus cost doesn’t justify what they can do. Powershot is meh because of the long cast time, but the knockback has the potential to be hilarious.

Glyphs are very, very different now in comparison to how they were in Cataclysm. First and foremost, Prime Gylphs are gone—most Prime Glyph effects have either become part of the class/spec or are Major/Minor Glyphs now. They also offer very different effects. While most of Cataclysm’s Glyphs increased healing/damage by a percentage, or increased the duration of something/reduced CDs, MoP glyphs have a myriad of effects. There are far too many glyphs for me to list off the pros and cons of them all in one sitting—I recommend you check out Wowhead’s Hunter Glyph List to see all of them.

Major Glyphs

Major Glyphs are, technically speaking, the new Prime Glyphs; the biggest changes to your abilities will come through these. Hunters have a variety of Major Glyphs that have the ability to make PvP very interesting (and PvE a nightmare).

Glyph of Scattering — Your Scatter Shot also removes all damage over time effects from the target.

Glyph of Icy Solace — Your Freezing Trap also removes all damage over time effects from the target.

PRAISE METZEN, AT LONG LAST. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why these glyphs are amazing for PvP hunter—no more will Scatter Shot or our Freezing Trap be broken by some accidental DoT effects! Personally, I’d take Scattering over FT instead of doubling up, but the existence of both (at long last) is wonderful.

Glyph of Endless Wrath — While Bestial Wrath is active, your pet cannot be killed, but can still be damaged.

After watching my poor Spirit Beast keel over and die to 3 Shadow Priests over and over again, I’m seriously considering this glyph. It’s not a permanent fix to the “OH SHIT DYING DYING DYING dead lol BM Hunter GL mate” crisis, but it’s hilarious to watch your pet get a KB on someone with 1 hit point.

Glyph of Disengage — Increases the distance you travel when you Disengage.

This glyph is rather amazing in PvP right now—you literally sail across the map. As an Engineer, the new Disengage has carried me from LM to more or less the Gold Mines graveyard. As mobility is everything in PvP (sorry Ghostcrawler), this glyph is very much worth considering.

Glyph of Mirrored Blades — When attacked by a spell while in Deterrence, you have a 100% chance to reflect it back at the attacker.

Remember looking at the Mirrored Blades talent in the Survival tree, cackling at how evil it could be, and then weeping when Survival was not even a little PvP viable?

NO LONGER. Mirrored Blade is arguably the funniest Major Glyph we have right now—because other classes are hitting for insane numbers (and self-healing for twice those), Mirrored Blades is causing people to kill themselves left and right, literally. It also bounces back ranged CC and grips—if a Death Knight Death Grips you in a Deterrence, it’ll grip him to you and slow him. Mages will Polymorph themselves; I’m pretty sure I watched a Paladin HoJ himself earlier today as well. It could have potential for amazing Arena play, but I don’t know if it’ll be worth taking given how situational it is.

Glyph of Explosive Trap — Your Explosive Trap no longer deals damage, instead knocking enemies back from the trap when it explodes.

This glyph, however, is amazing in EVERY situation. Explosive Trap’s damage means nothing in PvP. However, another Hunter knockback is beyond amazing. For best results, Scatter onto an Explosive trap at Lumber Mill and enjoy the carnage. Alternatively, if you’re Zumio, you can just reverse-Death Grip them with a Deterrence onto your Explosive Trap. I promise it’s as amazing as it sounds.

Glyph of Master’s Call — Increases the duration of your Master’s Call by 4 sec.

It’s the same Master’s Call you know and love, back in MoP to collect the tears of all the DKs who try to root a hunter.

Glyph of Black Ice — While you move through the area affected by your Ice Trap you gain 50% movement speed.

Kiting, ho! Where Black Ice was once part of the now-defunct trap tier of Hunter talents (R.I.P. Transmorph Trap), it lives on as a Major Glyph. If you know how to kite, then Black Ice is a very, very good glyph for both random BGs and more competitive play. It’s definitely one to keep in mind.

Glyph of Animal Bond — While your pet is active, all healing done to you and your pet is increased by 10%.

What once was a BM talent is now a Major Glyph. I personally haven’t taken it because I don’t think it’s as useful as something like Explosive Trap or Disengage, but combined with the Glyph of Deterrence and other glyphs, you could turn yourself into the most frustrating bastard to kill in BGs with the correct talent/glyph combination. Completely ineffective? Maybe. But frustrating? Oh, definitely.

Minor Glyphs

Where Major Glyphs tend to be big changes, Minor Glyphs are more fun/quality of life deals. Here you’ll find glyphs that change your MD/Hunter’s Mark and summon little critters whenever you swap Aspects—fun things that don’t have too much effect on gameplay. As such, it’s hard to recommend “YOU MUST HAVE THIS!” glyphs for your Minor slots- beyond Revive Pet, everything is more or less up to you.

But if you don’t take Fireworks for any reason, I’m judging you. Just keep that in mind.

With Beast Mastery as the best spec, obviously pets are very, very important. There are a few changes that have happened with pets, so let’s break those down first.

Pet Talents

Pets no longer are set to a certain tree (Ferocity/Cunning/Tenacity) anymore. You can have a Ferocity Bird of Prey, a Cunning Turtle, and/or a Tenacity Wolf now, if you like. The most important talents from each tree have more or less stayed through the Pandaria change- Cunning pets keep Roar of Sac and Bullheaded, for example. Pets of all specializations receive a passive ability that causes them to do 50% more damage when given a talent tree- make sure to set that.

In general, you’re going to be Cunning for PvP—Roar of Sacrifice and Bullheaded are just too good to pass up. However, with random BGs being the only real PvP beyond Wargames, duels and WPvP right now, you can easily go Ferocity to squeeze the most damage out (not to mention that Ferocity keeps Heart of the Phoenix).

For random play, Ferocity is fine. For structured PvP? Cunning is your best bet.

What is the best pet? For the DPS?

Get a sporebat.

Currently, most (if not all) BM hunters are opting for Spirit Beasts. On top of the heal it brings via Spirit Mend, Spirit Beasts now give a Mastery buff of 893 at level 85. Considering how wonderful Mastery is for BM hunters, Spirit Beasts are pretty fantastic right now.

If you’re having difficulty finding a Spirit Beast for whatever reason, it’s not a bad choice to go Devilsaur. Though they don’t bring the Spirit Beast’s Mastery buff, Devilsaurs do have the 5% Crit buff in their arsenal. In addition, Devilsaurs apply a 25% heal reduction via Monstrous Bite, which is wonderful because bloody pre-patch self-healing.

As of 5.0.4, hunters now need Expertise on top of Hit Rating. Don’t ask me how that works. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball/bullet, I guess. Fortunately, the required Hit/Expertise cap for PvP has gone down from 5% to 3%. Go ahead and reforge all of that Hit into Expertise, my gun-toting friends.

That being said (QQ INC!), the Expertise “cap” doesn’t actually mean you can’t be Dodged or Parried. While you won’t be dodged or parried by anyone with the base Dodge/Parry rating, things like Rogues, Druids, etc. will still be able to Dodge your attacks. Warriors will Parry you and your pet more often than not. Since you can’t always  be behind your target, you’re going to get Dodged and Parried a lot. I’ve got my Expertise up to around 6.29% and am still shaking my tiny, dead fist in anger whenever a Warrior manages to parry a God damned bullet.

Is it stupid? Yes. Will you need Expertise either way? Unfortunately.

As such, here’s the BM PvP stat priority.

Hit Cap > Expertise Cap > Agility > Mastery > Crit > Haste

That’s really that simple. Agility will outweigh secondary stats in any instance, but Mastery severely outweighs Crit because the BM Mastery increases our pet damage. Haste is Haste and should be reforged into a better stat whenever possible.

BM is the hunter spec, period. Although we are doing (in my personal opinion) fine damage, most other classes are pulling outrageous numbers and most hybrids can self-heal right through us. It sucks, but all we can really do is sit on our hands until it’s fixed.

That being said, hunter remains similar to how it did in Cataclysm- if you’re good at your class, you’ll survive. If you can’t, well, Warlocks are thataway.

Other Useful Stuff to Check:

• Braindeadly’s YouTube
• Zumio’s YouTube
• MMO Champion’s MoP Beta Hunter Thread

 

A few notes:

• I was peaking at over 70k DPS with all my CDs up in the initial burst of BM. I can only imagine how much more I’d be doing with Stampede to add into the mix, plus I’m forging OUT of crit to hit EXP cap (which I’m slightly below due to my hasty and shoddy reforge job 10 mins before raid).
• You can’t Kill Command on Ultraxion and I’m told it bugs out on Warmaster drakes and Madness arms.
• I am told Lynx Rush bugs out on Spine.
• Lynx Rush is so much better than A Murder of Crows.
• Raiding seriously as BM is amazing.

I look forward to finishing the raid tomorrow night. I’ll have some notes on SV raiding since I’m prolly going to have to do 75% of the last half of the raid as SV due to KC bugs.

Anyone notice anything weird that I didn’t catch tonight?

JS posted this comment on the addon’s page a couple weeks ago:

I left Serenity in other people’s hands when i stopped playing.

When i got back, I did not want to interfere with their work, if they decide to continue.

Also, Serenity has had issues with the curse downloader and conflicts with an old (dead) priest addon.

JSHB was the logical choice for which I maintain.

I for one am thrilled JS is back, he’s the original developer of this all-in-one hunter addon and Flippy did a great job maintaining it for the last year while JS was gone, but it’s awesome to have the original dev working on it again. Welcome back to the game, JS! We missed you!

You can download JS Hunter Bar on curse here: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/js-hunter-focus-bar

Old news, but it’s new to me… I only just noticed this thanks to one of my followers, Mistressmorbid. Thanks a ton for the heads up! I’ve edited my 5.0 post to include this new information.

The pre-MOP patch is dropping tomorrow and a LOT of things are changing. It isn’t as big of a change as it was from Wrath to Cata, so you’re not literally re-learning how to play your class from the ground up, but there are some pretty substantial changes that will take some getting used to, especially if you haven’t been tooling around on the beta. Thinking back to how big of a change 4.0 was, this new 5.0 patch should be a cake walk in comparison. When you think about it, we don’t really have THAT much that’s changing… but the stuff that did change will be changing in a pretty big way.

What to do before you log in:

Update your computer’s operating system and run a software update. Your game will be more stable if your system is up to date.

Turn off all your addons until you know they are for sure going to work. Some addons cause fatal errors with the game, Recount is often a culprit for this. If your game is broken, turn off Recount. It’s always Recount. Addons to update first: Deadly Boss Mods, Serenity JS Hunter Bar.

Alright. You’re logged on. The game isn’t crashing. GREAT. What’s next?

Reforge.

You only need 7.5% hit now, but you also need 7.5% expertise. Your gear is going to need some changing since you can be dodged now if you’re not EXP capped. It’s also worth noting that your pet can be parried while tanking. This doesn’t effect normal PVE gameplay, but it’s going to matter when you solo.

Respec.

Your talents will be wiped and the trees are completely different anyway. BM has been showing as the top spec in the most recent beta builds with SV pretty close behind. MM is still faring poorly. I suggest BM, but SV will be a good choice, too, if you’re afraid to try something new.

Which talents should you take?

• Level 15: The Disengage tier.
  No DPS benefit here, pick which one you like best. I’m going with Posthaste, as this was one of my favorite things about playing MM. Narrow Escape will be great for PvP, replacing the Wing Clip + Disengage macro since we no longer have melee weapons. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera will be amazing for PvP as well as fights where you find yourself using Deterrence a lot.
• Level 30: The CC tier.
  No DPS benefit here, pick the style of CC you want. Silencing Shot still kind of sucks since the CD is so long, I liked Wyvern Sting in 5 mans, but I have had fun with Binding Shot‘s AOE CC on the beta. Hard choice here… very situational.
• Level 45: The healing tier.
  Still no DPS benefit, pick the style of healing you want. Do you want targeted burst heals with Exhilaration, constant damage reduction for unavoidable damage with Aspect of the Iron Hawk, or constant heals with the old BM standard of Spirit Bond? I recommend the Sprit Bond talent unless you know for sure one of the others will benefit you more. Exhilaration is likely more of a benefit to PvP, but I am considering taking this since I’ve already got Gift of the Naaru keybound. Combine this with the heal from a spirit beast and you’ve got a pretty beefy self heal going! Could be quite a game changer on some fights and your healers will thank you.
• Level 60: The focus tier.
  How do you want to regenerate focus? Fervor works like it always has, restoring focus instantly, but it also restores another 50 focus over 10 seconds. This is some insane focus regen, at level 85 you likely won’t EVER find yourself focus starved enough to need this talent. At 85, there’s really no reason to pick anything other than Dire Beast, which gives focus back while giving you a slight boost to your DPS. Thrill of the Hunt has a chance to reduce your next shot’s cost. I don’t like talents that have a chance to help you, I prefer to choose when something happens, so I’ll likely never take this and stick with Fervor and Dire Beast.
• Level 75: The crazy pet damage tier.
  A Murder of Crows is my recommendation for the standard choice for SV and MM. Also because it’s a pretty ridiculous talent and I recommend yelling CAW CAW CAW!!! whenever you pop this cooldown. I’m pretty sure that’s what the devs wanted us to do. Lynx Rush will be great for BM, especially in AOE situations. Blink Strike is a great choice for single-target burst damage.

You’re going to want to keep a stack of Dust with you at all times, especially while you try out the new talent system and find out which talents work best for you.

Your rotations will change since we’ve got new cooldowns which means more buttons to push. Something to keep in mind is you NEVER want to push back your main rotation for a cooldown. Don’t delay Kill Command, Explosive Shot, or Chimera Shot for anything, ever. Ever, ever, ever. This is a rule that does not change with the new talent system. Use Dire Beast/Lynx Rush/Murder of Crows on cooldown, but only if it doesn’t delay your normal rotation. Zeherah’s beta build has recommended shot priorities for each spec, you might want to double check with her site, if for no other reason than to make sure you REMEMBER all the new stuff you’ve got in your toolbox now: http://beta.femaledwarf.com/

Other stuff to keep in mind:

• Kill Command now has a 25 yd range and will cause your pet to charge the target. Lock and Load no longer clips dots, so spam away. No more graceful shot weaving for you SV hunters.
• Reminders of the standard rotations: Beast Mastery, Survival, Marksmanship.

And don’t forget… no more minimum range!

Glyphs to make sure you have:

Major

Animal Bond
Deterrence
Disengage
Distracting Shot
Marked for Death
Mending

Minor

Aspect of the Cheetah
Aspects
Direction
Fetch
Fireworks
Marking
Revive Pet
Stampede

Really, you want to have all the glyphs since, like the new talent system, glyphs are highly situational now. But these are the ones I can see being the most useful in PVE.

Pet Changes

You can use any pet for anything now. Tenacity cat? You got it. Ferocity turtle? You bet. Unless you’re specifically tanking or soloing, you should probably just stick to Ferocity. You can respec your pet at any time while out of combat, should you ever need to.

Please, for the love of god. Turn off Growl. It’s becoming a true taunt. Turn it off. Just… turn it off. I should honestly put this as the first thing you do when you log in. Growl should already be turned off, but if you’ve got it on, just turn it off. Keybind it, macro it, use it to intentionally taunt, but do not let your pet auto-taunt.

Other stuff that’s changing

Trueshot Aura and Readiness are now class abilities and not tied to a spec.

Trap Launcher is now a toggle. It’s either on or off.

No more helm enchants. No more forced rep grinds for your alts! Yay!

No more spell pen! This only matters if you PvP, but… yay for those of us who do!

Simcraft has us bringing up the bottom. Don’t expect to top charts tomorrow.

These numbers are accurate as of Mon Aug 27 15:27:48 2012. Ouch. Just, really…. ouch. Be prepared to be doing shit damage. There’s really nothing else to say here. Just mentally prepare yourself to be at the bottom.

5.0.4 cheat sheet for those of you who just want a list of what to do:

Spec: Beast Mastery
Talents: Posthaste, Wyvern Sting, Spirit Bond, Dire Beast, Lynx Rush
Glyphs: Marked for Death, Animal Bond, Mending, Aspects, Direction, Stampede

Hit cap: 7.5% (769 rating, 666 for draenei)
Exp cap: 7.5% (769 rating, 666 for dwarf/troll)

TURN OFF GROWL.

Your lazy aspect macros don’t work anymore, learn to use the abilities properly! Ha ha ha!!!

Trap Launcher = toggle.

I decided to set up a channel to stream content so I can work out all the bugs before MoP comes out. I plan on live-blogging my progress to level 90 and this channel is going to be a huuuuge part of that. In the meantime, I’ll be doing broadcasts of raids and possibly broadcasting as I level one of my hunter alts. Who knows! There’s not much to do in game right now, but I’m gonna find something to broadcast and blog about, damn it!

Possibly will stream something tonight, but I for sure want to stream my raid tomorrow night! If you’re not following me on Twitter, you should probably start… I’m going to be posting there whenever I start streaming!

http://www.twitch.tv/zanbons !!!

I have just added Hunter POV videos for every fight to my Hunting Heroic Dragon Soul guide! These videos should help clarify any questions regarding fight mechanics or positioning and give you a good idea of what your role in the fight will be if you’re new to the fight as a hunter. Enjoy!

To directly view the videos on my YouTube, you can jump directly to the playlist here: Dragon Soul Playlist

Update your bookmarks to http://aspectofthemurloc.com!

I’m still working out the bugs on the new site, so if you find anything that is broken or not working properly, please let me know! I went through all my old posts and updated the links, so things SHOULD be linking properly within the blog. But I may have missed something. Who knows!