In a very interesting coincidence, I got this email from a BM hunter yesterday:
Long time BM hunter and avid reader of your blog, listener of the podcast etc, firstly I would like to say a massive Damn you and Thank you! 
For so long, too long infact I have been one of those stubborn, dig your heels in types that refuse to respec in fear of leaving our first love the BM spec, that emotional tie we have with our pets and the simplistic shot rotation, the losing battle of a challenge to try and make it a viable spec to raid with. But after reading you blog for many months now your subliminal messages finally sunk in and I re-spec’d to MM. It was with heavy heart that I left BM behind full of fear and uncertainty when I took my new journey into the MM talent tree but those doubtful emotions soon turned to absolute glee and joy when I started to see the numbers on the damage meter inside heroics and in raids following some hours practicing my new shot rotation on the dummies to get the hang of a game I haven’t played since a small boy at the arcade amusements “whack a mole.” In short Thank you Frost you have improved me and gawd knows how many other hunters into better players and more valuable raiders to our guilds and Damn you Frost for making me see the error of my ways and helping me leave behind a sentimental spec which I can now see was never contributing as much as I could in the name of good teamwork to my fellow players.
This is a coincidence because my next WoW.com post — going live later today — is all about whether or not BM can actually raid, and just how far behind on the meters they really are.
So keep this email in mind when you’re reading that post 
I’m a BM hunter who is not sure about changing to the MM spec.
I raided in Vinilla as MM but when the changes to BM came about I switched and haven’t looked back since.
There are a few reasons why I haven’t switched to MM for raiding yet.
One is the cost of gemming my items. Most of my current gems are epic Attack Power and to change them to Epic AGI will cost me over 1000 gold. :S
Second is the numbers I’m currently pulling as a BM hunter.
Whenever I’m in a raid with another hunter I always inspect them to see what talents and gear they have, and normally I will out DPS a MM hunter with similar gear to me.
In fact I was in VoA the other day with two other hunters, both MM spec and I was about 400dps above them for the new boss and only a few hundred below them for the others.
Either way, I’m usually near the top for Damage done.
Thirdly, using Rawr, my theoretical DPS is actually higher as BM than when I change to MM and change my gems. (Which i found rather odd, but have run through it many times, always with the same result).
Now I have no doubt that MM is the best raiding spec, but when I’m pulling over 6k DPS in 25 man raids I think maybe its ok to stay as BM.
(I have decided than when I start upgrading to T10 that I will make the switch though).
“that emotional tie we have with our pets”
i will certainly allow for this, but i do not understand attachments to pets. not that i have anything against emotional attachments to digital things, but its this attaching to a pet i dont get.
when i was levelling, every time i would ding, id often abandon my current pet and tame one that was equal level with me. nothing more than a tool to me, like my ranged weapon. if i get a better weapon, my attachment is to my damage done of the weapon lol
oh well, i guess thats how individuals like playing. live and let live
Nice work as usual frost, I’m not a BM hunter never (and I mean never hell I even leveled marks lol) have I been. The work you do and the information you bring us in concise and easy to follow posts has been a god send.
I HATE trying to wade through the elitistjerks stuff cause there are so many conflicting opionions and no resolution and testing to a conclusion.
Cheers man,
Mumb’s
BM used for my leveling (and my spirit pets ^^)
SV ever since hitting 80.
I leveled as BM but once I was able to afford dual spec I set up MM as my secondary spec. (I tried SV for a while and just didn’t like it). I am one of those strange guys who does have an attachment to my pet. I still have the pig (“scutters”) I tamed in Loch Modan waaaay back when, and he is my uncontested favourite pet. I’ve spec’d him for as much single target dps and surviveablity as i can and he’s my constant companion when doing dailies and in BGs. I have a turtle for any time I try to solo something really tough and a bear for my occasional forays into pet tanking. I have a cat which hardly ever comes out and a wolf for when I raid. I raid as MM because it’s better for my guild and produces signifiacntly better dps.
lately though I have started doing the daily randoms as BM using my pig…..I get a few sarcastic comments now and then…….but more than once it’s been me and Scutters who have saved the day in some “less than stellar” PUGs.
I raid as MM but I still “like” BM better……there is no logic in that…but I’m a sentimental old Dwarf
With Dual Spec one doesn’t have to leave the BM spec behind just decide what you want and Spec for it. Personally I’ve got my MM Raiding Spec and a BM Tank Spec (of course it switches to Extreme Soloing from time to time). Its not out of being Sentimental but just the fact that I enjoy popping into a Random Heroic that I know I can tank and I start pulling and healing my pet while the rest of the group tries to keep up. We all have our interests and like I said, the best thing to do is to play what you like and if you don’t like change. Remember its just a game not a requirment to stay one spec or another, help your friends and have fun doing it.
Well, I for one dislike being forced to make a particular choice just to be succesful. I suppose that stems from the fact that I’ve played Guild Wars for so long (getting max gear is extremely easy there, the difference there comes in player skill level). I’d love for the different specs to be within a few % of eachother. If its such a big deal that BM can also be used in raids, then why not make a full fledged tanking spec out of it? We all know we could use more tanks in the game anyway.
That’s also one of the reasons I’ll be very happy when they spearate pet spec and looks. Can’t wait to start raiding with my rhino instead of being forced to take ‘the popular pet’.
I look forward to seeing actual numbers in this article. I’ll be watching for it.
I’ve been BM forever, in fact, I just recently totally committed in terms of gems and gear to being THE BM hunter in the guild. I had a MM spec that I played with in raids from time to time, but there were also times when I’d raid as BM and do comparable DPS to our guild’s resident MM hunter. (Hi Thieren!)
Recently I acquired an NES and decided I’d give MM another shot. I had also checked my gear and spec over at FemaleDwarf and saw I’d get at least 2000 more dps as MM (even with my AP gems in) in a raid with full/optimal raid buffs. So I gave it a test run through a few heroics, and while I missed my Devilsaur, the DPS gain was pretty large. I haven’t kept track of exact numbers, but there were quite a few times that I looked down at my Recount and was amazed at the number I saw next to my name.
I won’t be switching to MM full-time, but I do feel better knowing that I can handle a second spec should my BM dps not quite hit the mark in the future.
I have a feeling that BM isn’t quite as terrible as the world at large might think. When I went from SV to MM mainspec, I eventually decided to switch my 2nd spec back to BM just for fun in heroics. The results were actually kind of surprising, in a good way.
I’m not gemmed or enchanted for BM at all, and I use a Spirit Beast in that spec (otherwise… why bother?) and it performs pretty well. Not as well as MM, but not embarassing either, by a long shot. I haven’t raided with it in a long time, but I might try that on some easier raid content just to see.
Hey Frost, I hope you get this message soon… I’ve been planning for the last several months to write you and Blizz a letter making the case FOR BM Hunters as viable raiders. I have spent a LOT of time over the past year trying to perfect BM Raiding, and although I won’t debate that MM is still significantly ahead, there are a number of things that can be done to narrow the gap substantially (mostly because BM is well-suited to stacking multiplicative buffs). More importantly, I want to disagree with you about whether BM should be redesigned to be a viable raid spec. I think it should, because controlling fearsome beasts is one of the main reasons many people choose to play a hunter in the first place.
This note is a placeholder, hoping to get you to hold off a moment on posting your BM article on WoW.com while I try to speed-write a more comprehensive letter… coming in the next couple of hours.
I recently abandoned my BM spec for MM (still have SV but haven’t used it since) and I noticed a good 400-600 dps increase in “hunter friendly” situations, though not much of an improvement from SV in every day scenarios. Considering I’d been doing SV for a year and had a lot more practice, and I still find myself doing bonehead moves in my new MM rotation, I’d say there’s good things ahead for me.
But going over 4K dps for the first time in pug heroics was exciting for me.
Kaz — alas I do not have the ability to “pull” articles from the queue. Most of my articles are written days, and sometimes weeks in advance over at wow.com.
One request however — please try to keep emails as short as possible. I get a *lot* of emails, and long multi-page emails are the bane of my existence.
Im in a similar situation to the writer of the letter, though you weren’t the one to coax me out of BM, it was my girlfriend dealing with my bullheadedness and getting me into Survival instead, emphasizing her wish for replenishment as my main healer.
How can I really argue with that?
But I still dug my heels in, for this was the first time I was going to hit level cap in any stage of WoW despite playing for four years (yeah, casual player, but finally got beyond duo and soloing thanks to a bunch of friends getting together and forming a guild.), and during all those years before, I was stubbornly BM. This was okay with her (who’s much more dps minded than I am) during it’s heyday in BC, but when Survival started becoming viable instead of the red-headed stepchild that it had been previous, she started to prod at me and I whined and fussed, gave in to Dual Spec, and started running SV. Im so glad I did. I’m not quite the dps monger that you are, Im not comfortable with managing timers in MM due to latency issues and feel SV has just enough wiggle room I dont have to worry about it, but I -do- feel pretty good at seeing myself up top meters or just below a good mage.
Good luck with the wow.com article, I’m pretty sure you’ve hit the hunter community right where it polarizes the most.
Making a short and sweet post.
How much of a dicrease iis BM over MM? I have heared rumoprs of 20-30%. I just find that hard to believe.
BTW, Awesome Site….
That was quite the co-een-kee-dink
. I read the wow.com article first, but had already gathered what was written there from experience.
BM is great for leveling sure, but when gear gets better at 80 the dps difference is pretty staggering. I hung on for a while trying BM in heroics, but the difference in dps compared to MM made me decide to drop it. It wasn’t empirical or scientific by any stretch, but I found I could only do about 65% of the dps when BM as I could as MM.
I switched to MM/SV and still love my pet. I just can’t make him swell up and go red anymore. I’m sure Wolfy, Stinger and Tiger understand though
As the writer above said, thank you (no damn yous though)! I was one of the biggest huntards on the planet before finding WHU.
There’s still a lot to learn, but finding my way to the top of the meters and semi-competency is mostly because of grandpappy Frostheim!
/bow
/salute
“Most of my current gems are epic Attack Power and to change them to Epic AGI will cost me over 1000 gold. :S”
Or maybe just run chain heroics for a few hours and cash in some badges (and honor). Also, 1K comes and goes in a day. If that. Currency isn’t hard to acquire in this game.
Whenever I’m in a raid with another hunter I always inspect them to see what talents and gear they have, and normally I will out DPS a MM hunter with similar gear to me.
In fact I was in VoA the other day with two other hunters, both MM spec and I was about 400dps above them for the new boss and only a few hundred below them for the others.
Either way, I’m usually near the top for Damage done.
Impossible. First, VOA doesn’t mean anything. Don’t use it as a basis for comparison. If you are out DPSing a MM hunter than BOTH yours and their gears are horrible AND the MM hunter is just plain terrible – no way around it.
Thirdly, using Rawr, my theoretical DPS is actually higher as BM than when I change to MM and change my gems. (Which i found rather odd, but have run through it many times, always with the same result).
And you are using an application that is made for Druids, which has only recently gotten a Hunter working on it’s dev side. It values Haste higher than femaledwarf.com no matter what. Everything possibly wrong with Rawr for hunters, is wrong.
I am sorry but this is the attitude that doesn’t belong in raids. Maybe pugs. WE were doing 6k in Ulduar. How can you possibly justify and rationalize doing the same amount of damage two tiers later? You cannot. It is unacceptable, and you are being carried by 24 other people no matter how you look at it.
NEVER use Rawr. When huntards learn to stop ignoring the obvious and thinking critically for themselves, is I guess when we’ll finally get rid of the stigma.
I love this site, and it has endless opportunities for information and discussion. A great work you do here, Frost, et al.
I have posted this before. This will be my last mention of it.
I do not understand why there are so many cookie cutter enthusiasts out there. My wife and I both raid hunters. Both are hit capped, she has 100+ more GS than I. She has always been loyal BM, and I have always been more experimental. I have raided as both MM and SV, but have nto done any raiding as BM. We each use different DPS-meters. I have Skada and Recopunt, she has Violation and Recount.
(BTW – off topic- recount is less reliable. It continues to count down long after battle is over. I only use it to compare notes with everybody else who uses it. The only reason to use it is because it is ubiquitous.)
We just did three hours of respeccing, reglyphing, regemming (and luckily my wife is a JC with lots of stock), working down the shot optimization, and research. Both of us on Boss dummies. Both of us using identical ammo, unbuffed, etc. Each spec got three trials, going till OOM.
And the results are……
MM and SV came out fairly even, though Sv was higher. MM does bring some other utility that make it a viable choice.
SV and BM were within 5-8% every time. Usually BM won out, by a small margin.
Get over it.
Data does not lie.
I dont understand how so many people are seeing so much loss of DPS in BM. Given our data, I have to assume operator error. Sorry.
A few Caveats –
These were dummy tests. Raids, mobs and Bosses will all be different.
BM damage is heavily dependant on pet, SS, etc.
In any fight that requires a lot of movement, SV wins. In fights were your pet DPS is not optimal, due to flying or burrowing bosses, whatever, SV wins.
BM also used up about 10-15% more ammo.
Anyway, Optimise your WoW character the way you enjoy playing. You should not be playing a game in order to impress others or validate your own self-worth. You dont subscribe to a game to let other’s tell you how to play. And if you are being greifed, or getting stressed out over your choices : Stop. Take a DEEP breath. Go for a run. Watch a movie. And remember ITS A FREEKIN GAME.
Be the best you can be, always, …but don’t bother being the best someone else tells you to be.
Just to clarify a common misconception: data can lie, depending on the way in which it is presented.
Just listen to any political debate where people use statistics as arguments, and you’ll knwo what I mean.
Data does not lie, but some sets of data can be interpreted differently.