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| Reviewed 8/26/10 Patch 3.3.5 |
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There are several hunter talent builds that can be used for extreme soloing, and different situations will require different builds. The talent build below is what I consider to be the “standard” extreme soloing build. It gives you the pet damage mitigation and healing talents that you need, a good amount of pet threat, while still allowing for decent hunter dps.
I’ve taken this build to MC, to Onyxia, and to Nexus and even Violet Hold. Just about any time I’m going to try a new extreme solo this is what I start with. Now I should note right off that it is possible to get more pet health (and thus more healing) with a beefier build, but this build leaves you with enough dps to deal with mobs quickly, and is generally more enjoyable for most hunter extreme soloing situations.
Hunter Extreme Soloing Talent Build – Standard 55/14/2
View this Hunter Extreme Solo Talent Build on Wowhead.
As you can see we’re mostly interested in pet mitigation, pet healing, and pet damage – pet damage being our main source of threat. Let’s take a look at a couple reasons for specific talents:
Mend Pet
I only took 1 rank of this talent, instead of 2. Keep in mind that this talent does nothing to increase the healing of your Mend Pet. Instead it just gives you a chance to dispell debuffs from your pet with each tick. This is a great ability, however the base 25% chance from one talent is all you really need to keep your pet clean. On some specific fights where debuffs are applied very rapidly it might be worth taking both ranks.
Animal Handler
This talent changed in 3.2.2 and now gives us a nice pet AP increase (we don’t care about the Master’s Call effect).
Catlike Reflexes
It’s worth pointing out that this is probably the single best pet tanking talent there is. 9% dodge means your pet will take 9% less damage from all physical attacks. This is huge.
Go for the Throat
I’m only recommending one rank of GftT because we already have 2 ranks of Beastial Discipline (which is better for extreme soloing, because it gives our pet focus even if we aren’t attacking). With the Beastial Disciplin, 1 rank of GftT should be all you need to keep your pet filled up on focus.
Longevity
It’s worth mentioning that this talent does a lot more than let you big red pet more often – it will help heal your pet! By reducing the cooldown of all pet specials, it means that your pet can growl more often. And with the Silverback pet talent, you pet heals every time it growls.
Improved Tracking
This is a dump talent. It increases your damage nicely, but your hunter will do so little damage with a extreme solo pet tank build that the increase isn’t that huge. If you need points for Focused Aim, take them out of here. If you really feel like you need the Revive Pet Talent, take those points out of here (personally I feel like once your pet dies, you’ve usually failed anyway. If you have time to Imp Revive Pet, you usually have time to normal revive pet).
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Interesting – I thought Cobra Strikes may be part of the build – Pet crits=more damage=more threat?
Definitely a respec coming my way! Offspec BM solo extreme, Instance spec SV for now…
Admin
I’m not super worried about threat in extreme soloing. With FD (and the ability to just sit there and not shoot) it’s not usually a problem. When it comes down to cobra strikes, I’m more concerned about doing damage to speed things up than causing threat (very different story when you’re tanking 5-mans).
I am so going to grab a turtle and try this out… looks like good fun!
Contributor
Yeah, with soloing the main concerns are pet health and overall dps. Your pet’s threat is secondary, and shouldn’t really be an issue. Your pet’s threat will generally be fairly high anyway, and you shouldn’t be pulling so often from him that a simple FD can’t work.
How about an extreme solo pet talent spec.
It might be intuitive, but it’s something to consider posting.
Member
Nice guide, I’ll definitely look this up when I dual spec BM/MM. I agree with Zat, a spec for the pet would be a nice addition.
Admin
The pet spec is coming, as well as two more extreme soloing hunter talent builds, glyph guide, and maybe something about addons.
Very nice frost looks good can’t wait to respec BM and give it ago but i just picked up my bear for heroic tanking and are currently working on that but im still trying to stop the damage factor didnt realise how hard heroic dungeons hit for if i have a break through ill let you know but currently the pet is getting critical hit to much and the healer can’t constantly heal that much. Looks like the turtle is my next pet
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Dues Payer
Looks good – personally I might have bumped one of the dump talent points into Imp. Mend Pet (2/2) just for the added disease/poison/curse/magic cure chance — but I’m not sure if there are really situations where having to wait for 2-3 Mends in order to get the cure off are important.
Nice soloing Talent Build, nice guides and nice blog!! It`s simple and very complete, congratulations!
Only one question: all of guides in blog are for PVE? I would appreciate it if you could give us a PVP guide, please. Maybe with 2 parts, BG – Arena if diferent, and… maybe something about pet or glyphs.
Thanks for all!!
Best hunters blog never seen!!
*Sorry my bad english
Dues Payer
wtb triple spec so i can try this :\
Where’s the best place to pick up a high lvl turtle, i’ve been trying Onyxia with a bear and its a bit tricky?
And anyone know any tricks for speed leveling a pet?
There seems to be no high level turtles – it has been pointed out somewhere in another thread, but I cannot find it now! – I tamed a low level turtle in Southshore and levelled him doing my dailies. Took a week, I think, as I do limited dailies. I really like him now and use him whenever I solo. For those of an RP style Ethala is Nightelf for Turtle.
Contributor
Let’s see:
- Yeah, no high-lvl turtles. I went and tamed Kresh from way back in WC though. It was fun.
- Triple spec would indeed kick ass, quivering. I was BS’ing with a Pally friend of mine, and we figured out that we could use up to 7 specs each. I won’t be happy until Blizzard gives us 5.
- Luc, Frost has vetoed in-depth PvP guides. He doesn’t PvP enough to be an expert. You won’t find a better PvE hunter site on the web, however.
- And as someone who’s done a fair amount of soloing (and tanking, actually), I’m wasting that 2nd point of Imp. Mend Pet in my spec right now. I’ve just been too lazy to change it. My own BM spec is more adapted to holding threat off of others than Frost’s build, but I agree with that particular point regardless of the build.
Do you use the 2 piece T5 bonus, which gives you 15% heal per damage? I’m particulary interested in mount bosses – did you ever try to solo Attumen?
Dues Payer
im curious why you took 4 points in frenzy in this spec, when you only took 3 in the normal bm spec. seems the logic behind taking 3 in the other spec would apply here as well. does the pet have less critical strike chance or something? just curious.
Thanks, Arthemystia
Contributor
Ulukai, the t5 bonus is awesome for soloing. Frost doesn’t have it yet, but plans on getting it. I’ve seen others on the net who use it regularly for their soloing work, though, so it has a precedent for use.
The t7 bonus doesn’t hurt either, and is less of a nerf to overall dps.
any chance for a hunter to solo kael in magister’s terrace? i know druids and pallys have it down.
Got T5, the bonus is a little imba.
One point, you gotta watch your aggro a bit, as i think the healing counts towards your aggro, effectively damage causes 115% aggro.
Sorry if this comment does not go here. I was dividing among posting it here and posting it in the BM glyph article.
Since this BM spec is about dmg mitigation and heal, should not be advisable to replace one of the mayor glyphs with “Glyph of Mending”?
If you think this glyph is more important than one of the other mayor glyphs for the BM, could you pleas advise which one to replace?
Thank you very much.
Dues Payer
well i want to thank you again. due to this build, i am going to finally get my raven lord mount. i have a drood on another account so i run both accounts and just use my hunter. i buff the turtle with thorn and mark, but other than that, its a fairly easy encounter, just takes a while to get there but its nice gold and items to DE.
but yeah, thanks, i finally will be able to do this by myself and not have to beg druids for runs (which never worked anyway). plus, since im by myself, dont have to roll against anyone else.
I’ve found that in many cases I can rez my pet even if it dies in the fight. This requires the Revive Pet Glyph, and two points in Improved Revive pet. When your pet dies, immediately activate Deterrence, then Rez Pet. Follow this with Mend Pet, by which point you’ll be getting hit by the boss. Feign Death and your pet will retake aggro. Then healing potion or bandage if necessary and get back in the fray. Chances are that if you were unable to keep your pet alive the first time around, you’ll struggle to keep your pet up after the rez, too. But this can cover for a mistake, or get you a final minute of dps on the boss to finish it off in a close call. For this option, just take two points out of a MM or SV talent and invest in Improved Revive Pet.
Question for Frost on this Build:
In your “Best BM Build” you say that Improved Tracking provides more DPS per point than Improved Arcane Shot. Yet here you’ve put 3 points into Arcane Shot instead of Improved Tracking. Can you explain your logic? Are you assuming more jump shotting in extreme soloing vs. normal raids, and thus Arcane shot is more valuable than Improved Tracking in this case? Or is this contradiction a mistake?
Admin
In a BM raid build you, as the hunter, do a lot more damage than you do in the solo build. Thus increasing your damage by 1% is a larger increase. In the tank build, and assuming at least some tank gear, you’re going to get more benefit from arcane shot.
Since the idea here is to keep your pet up with as much healing and hp as possible would it be worth pulling your MM points and putting them into survival to get the survivalist talent? That would give you 10% more stamina, which would translate into more pet HP…
Yeah, I clicked around some more and realized that is your “extreme solo max health build” so yeah nevermind the previous post
Great post, look to you guys for all my hunter questions now. Now to try to find a way to get those T5 pieces, don’t know much about raiding, always been a solo’er.
So what’s the verdict after patch 3.2? We dumping Animal Handler? And for what replacement talents?
Admin
Good call — updated now (we still use the new Animal Handler).
Ah yes, I should have known that due to the AP increase. Thanks so much! Can’t wait to try this out now that my raiding has calmed down. Also, do you have any suggestions for the best soloing glyphs? (I didn’t see em anywhere)
Admin
Hmm, can’t believe I never put up a glyph guide for soloing… will have to put that on the to-do list.
Glyph of Mending is the vital one that you must have. Glyph of Bestial Wrath is also nice. I usually just use steady shot as my 3rd glyph.
Given what you have stipulated as being necessary for extreme solo’ing Frost would it not make more sense to invest more points into the Survival tree? In particular it seems like there is a great deal of benefit in picking up 3 levels of Hawk Eye for the increased range. That way there is only a 4 yard difference between the 45 yards for Mend Pet and your shooting range. It also seems to have the benefit of allowing you to avoid certain AOE and spells that some bosses cast altogether simply because you are out of range. It also seems that Survival Instincts might be a good way to go as well for the decreased damage done to you as the hunter and if it is good then it might be good to go ahead and pick 5 levels of Imp Tracking and then 5 levels of Survivalist as well. This of course has to be done at the cost of everything other than 5 levels Lethal Shots in the Marksman tree. Please bear in mind these are just thought based on the information presented here since I have never tried any extreme solo’ing though after reading your information on it I would like to give it a try.
This is the build I came up with:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cVbhztgRddheot0xZe00i:cViMzc
And I included the Minor Glyph Possessed Strength because well it seemed a better option than most Minor Glyphs and if you are in a fight where the pet is doing a majority of the damage to the boss it may come in handy, though you would have to leave it fairly often in order to recast Mend Pet so I am not really sure how much good it accomplishes.
Admin
Sounds like you’re thinking of this: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/07/extreme-soloing-max-health-build/
Member
What BM glyph should I use to solo instances?
Please Reply! anybody!
Admin
You should use the Glyph of Mending (this is the key) and Bestial Wrath. The third major glyph is pretty much up to you — I just use whatever happens to be in that glyph slot at the time (I change specs and glyphs a lot).
Yes i am a noob and i have been reading your articles for a while now.. I have a problem with my hunter as to which way i should spec it. I have just reached lvl75 with croclist. I need to spec it for solo lvlin but be able to do group raids with high dps and keep aggro on croc.
Skip – just stick with a tenacity pet. At your level I wouldn’t bother with 2 pets and a tanking pet will allow you to solo every group quest. At 80 then just grab a wolf and do dailies to level it.
which elixirs, scrolls, flasks ect… should be used when tryin to solo instances..
Admin
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/08/extreme-solo-hunter-gear-supplies/
Frost, I’ve found this http://www.wow.com/2010/02/15/scattered-shots-extreme-soloing/ nd was just wondering if its the updated version of this?
I also have a solo BM specced hunter lvl 80. i also use 2 parts tier 5 for extra healing.
and i have maxed stamina for me and my pet so that every silverback heals more.
my pet has about 40k hp drums and scroll/cooking buffed. instead of MM i took more Survival talents to max my and my pets hp even more.
Hello and Howdy.
How big a difference is Improved Arcane Shot vs Mortal Shots or Improved Tracking? Right now, while leveling Arcane Shot is about 15% of my damage. 15% of 15% is 2.25% damage increase for 3 talent points.
Mortal shots affects only special attacks, which are about half my damage. 5/5 would take crit from 200% to 230%. Since we have 2/5 already, going from that to 5/5 would be going from 210% to 230%, an increase of 9.52%. Assuming a generous crit rate of 40%, then multiplying by another 50% since it doesn’t affect autoshot, we have 1.9% dps increase for those 3 points.
Improved tracking is 3% for 3 points.
It seems based on my napkin math that going 5/5 improved tracking would be better than Improved arcane shot.
Is my math off?
Hello,
I just wanted to ask why dump points into imp. tracking when you could put it into Rapid Killing. I just thought that the extra burst would out-beat a 3% blanket buff.