Patch 3.0.8 Research Results

Okay, so it took me longer to get all of the results than I had hoped, and I apologize for that.

I’ve respecced about 5 times to try variations of MM and SV specs, and just ran a 25-man Naxx in which the guild top hunters were split between BM, MM, and SV. So let’s take a look.

All dummy dps was tested on a lvl 83 Heroic Target Dummy. No one else was attacking it, I had only self-buffs, and I did not use rapid fire or beastial wrath (which yield super variable results). I shot until I was out of mana, recorded the result. I did this 5 times for each spec and averaged the results. I’m reporting only the best spec of each build. Here we go:

BM Hunter
The fall from grace seems pretty complete. I first compared BM to exactly how I was shooting before, and saw my dps drop to about 1700. However, I was able to reclaim about 100 dps with arcane shot in the mix, for an 1800 dps round. This recorded as the lowest of the builds I tested (used the devilsaur, btw).

MM Hunter
Right off the bat I saw a healthy dps increase with a standard MM build. I used a full shot rotation for max dps, and ended up at an average of 2012 dps. An improvement!! For the non-BM builds I used the wolf for the pet. His dps is equivalent to the cat or raptor, but he has a raid-wide AP buff, making him the clear dps pet of choice.

Survival Hunter
I was frankly a bit surprised to see reports confirmed and the highest numbers from the SV build — 2102! Admittedly not a ton higher than MM, but survival is also mucheasier to play, and the mana regen abilities were really quite amazing. So Suvival is the winner in the hunter dps contest.

The Builds in Practice
Of course the target dummy is one thing, and raids are another. Not all abilities scale equally with the crazy raid buffs applied. How would SV look in 25-man Naxx?

Well, we hit Patchwerk right off the bat, the perfect test raid boss. What we saw surprised me quite a bit. First of all, we had an excellent raid composition, better than past attempts enjoyed, so we had rockin’ buffs. Overall, the performance of our hunters was surprisingly close. I was a bit over 4400 dps with the BM and MM hunters following at around 4100 dps. Over the course of many boss fights I saw the same effect mirrored. The BM would out-damage the MM, sometimes the reverse, and everyone was clustered pretty closely. Basically it seemed like Blizz had done a good job with the nerfs: all hunter specs were viable, and no longer that huge dps discrepency between all the hunters and everyone else.

By the end of the night, the overall raid damage looked like this:

Obviously the spread was a bit different from boss to boss, but every boss had a mixture of BM and MM and me (the only survival on the raid). I was generally on top, but usually not far ahead.

So overall, Survival seems to be the best raid dps spec at the moment. However, any tree, if played well, is a perfectly viable choice! In fact, your raid will perform best with all three present, so they can take advantage of each others’ buffs.

Some Totally Awesome Things About Survival:

• Survival is easy to play (MM is a bit complicated without macros to do your heavy lifting)
• You crit all the time, and it’s always fun to see the big numbers
• The mana regen is shockingly good. On Patchwerk with a shammy and ret pally, I was literally at full mana the entire fight. On other fights, I never had to go into viper or drink a mana pot. That was really nice! And the other hunters liked it too

In closing, survival has gotten the shaft from Blizz since day one, and I’m happy that they finally have their day in the sun. Being the dps whore that I am, I’m also happy to join their ranks. Sure I made fun of survival hunters for years — but that’s only because they sucked for years and I couldn’t understand the desire to play a dps class and then choose a crummy dps spec. But now they are on top.

So congrats survival. You’re going to see a ton of hunters speccing your way now.

PS: Note that Blizz has said they will be “reblanacing” hunters in patch 3.1. So we’ll have to hold tight and see what else is coming!