So I was going over a bunch of different BM set-ups and gear levels in the spreadsheets and doing some target dummy tests and number crunching the past couple of days. With 3.3.3 going live I needed to review and update the BM guides on the site, and I thought it’d be nice to include the crossover point when BM should gem ArP, and when to drop arcane shot from their rotation.
And I gotta say, BM has changed a bit with the awesome gear we have easy access to now combined with the steady shot buff.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about overall dps numbers — we’ve looked at that every way possible and the results are as conclusive as they will ever be in WoW. But when you look closer and smaller at the mechanics at work within the BM rotation and gear, a lot has changed since the beginning of wrath.
How Gear has Changed BM
In early Wrath BM was the leading hunter spec. BM pets made up over 40% of hunter dps, AP gemming was the way to go because it lent more to our beefy pets.
As the expansion progressed we got better and better gear. Our new gear gave us more AP to lend to our pet, but it also gave us more crit, more armor pen — stats that do not transfer to our pets. Suddenly where our pets were once over 40% of our dps they’re now much closer to 30%.
This means that our hunter dps is more and more important than our pet’s. And for BM, that means armor pen.
BM and Armor Pen
BM hunters get a larger percentage of their hunter dps from physical damage than any other hunter spec — more than even MM. That means they get more benefit from armor pen than any other spec. And the larger percentage of damage that comes from the hunter (rather than the pet) the more important that stat becomes.
The value of armor pen, like all of our stats, depends on our other stats. Ranged weapon dps plays a big role as well as our overall attack power, our crit rating, and everything else. But now that a brand new hunter can be in ilvl 232 gear within weeks of hitting 80 and without setting foot in a raid… well, it’s a very different gear spread than it was back in the naxx days.
Much like with MM specs, BM eventually prefers armor pen to all other stats, and also like MM, BM eventually wants to drop arcane shot from their rotation. However BM does this at very different armor pen ratings than MM.
Again, as always, these crossover points vary depending on what gear you have — not just your armor pen, but your crit, ap, raid buffs, and ranged weapon dps. However almost no hunter has these stats as low as they were back in Naxx days, so these estimates should be pretty close for you.
Gemming Armor Pen
Like MM, BM eventually wants to gem for armor pen. As soon as one point of armor pen rating is going to give us more dps than a point of agility, or two points of attack power, then we want to gem for armor pen instead.
Where MM needs very high armor pen levels, with current gear BM needs surprisingly low levels before it’s the way to go. With only around 400 armor pen rating, a point of armor pen is better than a point of agility or 2 points of attack power.
This means that BM will want to start gemming for armor pen rating very early and should start considering it at around the 400 armor pen mark.
Note that this only applies is you have decent gear levels (around ilvl 230) and a good ranged weapon and again, the exact crossover point depends heavily on the rest of your gear. With very good gear, armor pen could be better for your significantly below the 400 arp mark.
Dropping Arcane Shot
Where MM can drop arcane shot pretty early in their gear progression, BM needs a lot more armor pen before dropping arcane. The reason is that MM gets additional benefits from steady shot in the form of Piercing Shots.
Without piercing shots, BM doesn’t want to drop arcane shot until the damage from Steady Shot is greater than the damage from Arcane Shot. In general this happens somewhere around 750 passive armor pen rating.
At that point BM hunters get to enjoy the delightful rotation of BM back in the day — serpent, aimed, steady, steady, steady, steady, steady…
Keep in mind that this point of dropping arcane is assuming that you have full raid buffs, steady shot glyph, and a debuffed target with armor debuffs. Also you’ll still want to use arcane shot, of course, whenever you’re on the move and usually on targets that don’t have debuffs.
Thanks Frost, i finally like a your post for 100% of what you say
i am biased towards BM just as much as you are towards MM … but deep inside i believe the truth in general on this subject lies in between our points of view, maybe a little more towards your Point of view than mine, but this article i like it entirely.
Well .. almost entirely, drop aimed shot, efficient BM raiding is not using it anymore since quite a while
It is not even worth spending a point on it for PvE .. PvP is a different subject obviously …
I also liked your point on the other post where you say BM needs another shot in the rotation, that maybe buffs arcane shot so we can get back Arcane in the rotation and this new shot would be fantastic. Then Blizzard can buff BM on par with MM because it would not be significantly easier to play and hence they would not have to worry about making a spec easy to play outperform another one which is more complex (the situation today) because then BM and MM would become pretty equally difficult (or easy depending on point of view again) to play !
I don’t have a MM bias so much as a dps bias. I ditched MM in a heartbeat back in patch 2.0 when BM pulled ahead. Then I dropped BM for SV when SV was ahead. I’m a dps whore — I’ll go wherever the damage is
I do think aimed shot is an important shot for BM to use — certainly multi-shot would basically do the exact same damage, but aimed shot can be used on the run. BM suffers in movment fights because they have only 1 instant shot that can be fired on the move. Using aimed shot gives BM more flexibility to maintain their dps while dashing around.
I really don’t understand the point of min-maxing BM spec. I guess I kind of do, but if your min-maxing I tend to think it should be class overall, and that essentially eliminates BM.
I know the BM hunters will be happy to have a good post on how to get the most out of BM. It’s really a great write-up.
I might just go BM spec to a raid to try it out, since we’ve got the first ICC 25 night on farm now.
So, if I theoretically had a matched set of gear for my MM set and BM set (let’s say iLVL 245+) but was gemmed Agility for MM and gemmed for ArP at the levels you mentioned I wonder how much closer that pulls BM on the meter?
I do not forsee myself carrying two sets of PvE gear but is it reasonable to think moving to an ArP build and my BM spec will out-dps my current “agility-centric” MM spec?
No, agility MM will still stomp arp BM, alas.
It’s very interesting how the changes are playing out. I’ll be curious to see how the EAP values change for BM with this.
Zat the point is, touse a sentence used by ghostcrawler on the Blizz forum “Overly-worrying about the best SV hunter being at 10,600 dps when the best MM hunter is at 12,000 dps doesn’t make a lot of sense when your dps is at 7000. You will see a far greater gain by closing the gap to that 10,000 dps hunter than you will ever see from a buff that we make. Players often tend to put too much emphasis on class mechanics and not enough on skill and gear, which is where the real dps gains stand to be made.” .
Similarly to the example Ghost made between SV and MM i can guarantee you that there are similarly geared hunter in MM that pull is raids 30% less DPS than similarly geared BM hunters. We talk about theoretical potential when we look at max DPS in a given gear and spec, not actual raid performance. In this game a good gamer in a lesser spec can pull more DP than a bad gamer in a greater spec given the same equip. On the other hand a good gamer in bad gear will have harder time to pull more DPS than a worse player in a much better gear given the same spec.
Hunters should stop worrying about what is the best spec, real DPS gain comes mainly from gear and skill and i can guarantee you that playing BM well in the right gear will earn you a raid spot over badly geared or less skilled MM hunters.
Reading this makes me wonder.. as it stands right now, in my current gear and mind you I have really crappy trinkets and still have a blue ilvl 175 boots, my Armor Pen is 321. I regem all my gear to agil and crit with 2 of them being 20 agli a while ago and mostly go in Marks in heroics/weekly pug raids. Some times I go in SV. My off spec is still BM however and some days I have been lazy and just run in my BM spec in the same gear I use for marks and I don’t regem them to AP. (personally I do about the same DPS no matter if I use all ap gems or agli gems). Being everyone says, that BM uses attack power, attack power attack power. The whole Armor Pen thing is confusing to me, now this late in Wrath, we want to be going Armor Pen gems once we hit around 400?? If I read that right and I wanted to say run BM, does that mean I should be using Armor Pen Gems?
I’m sure once I get some good trinkets and upgrade my boots (if I ever) my Armor Pen I could see going past 400 passive. So then that makes me wonder if I would do better in BM with all Armor Pen gem then I would in the same gear with Agil/Crit gems as Marks/SV. I guess I’ll have to do some numbers on a spreadsheet to see if doing those small upgrades to gear would be worth going back to BM and geming Armor Pen (Thats to say if I end up doing more DPS in BM then I do in Mark/SV with my gear level) As of right now I only do BM for soloing and PVP.
The thing that bothers me the most about this, is they are removing Armor Pen form the game because it was a confusing stat and yet right now it seems to becoming the biggest stat in the game for hunters at least.
@ Urkraft
“Hunters should stop worrying about what is the best spec, real DPS gain comes mainly from gear and skill and i can guarantee you that playing BM well in the right gear will earn you a raid spot over badly geared or less skilled MM hunters.”
A skilled player is a skilled player. If a player is skilled and raiding BM, then one can assume they have what it takes to learn and perform the mechanics of MM just as well. Sure there might be a little lag in the learning curve to switch specs, but persistence pays off.
What’s the point of arguing a skilled BM can take a spot over a lesser skilled SV or MM? A skilled BM will never replace a skilled MM in similar gear at the current i232+.
If you aren’t a skilled raider you are not raiding with me, period. So, that factor really doesn’t matter.
If you’re min-maxing, then actually min-max and take the 15-30% DPS increase by playing in the highest DPS spec.
Switching between ArP, AP, and Agi gems or knowing when to drop Arcane shot will not increase your DPS by the same proportion as the gain from switching specs and raiding as MM.
It’s your game, and play it as you see fit. That’s the beauty of it all, but if you want to maximize something, why not actually maximize it? You can have your uber paint ball gun, but it’s just not the same as using an M16 no matter how you look at it.
Play the game you want to play, and I’ll play the game I want to play. It’s just my OPINION that min-maxing is for end-game raiding and not really much else.
I do have a question then about the changes for BM … Would it benefit a raid group to have a BM spec hunter in their group? Does the changes boost the raids dps enough to compensate for the hunter dps loss going from MM to BM?
The changes don’t really affect the raid buff, which existed before. Ultimately if you don’t have a ret pally *or* an arcane mage (which provide the same buff) in your 25-man raid, then BM is worthwhile. In a 10-man it’s usually not worthwhile.
Yeah that is what I don’t understand here.. I can see why they would maybe give the boost form FI to steady over it being for arcane.. being I think even Blizz sees as you put it, higher level gear BM wants to go armor pen.
But why make FI an aura? I mean why don’t they lower it to only giving 2% to the whole raid or even 1% but let it stack on the pally or mage one. Would that really be overpowered? And would it really scream for every raid to get a hunter to roll BM just to give the whole raid 1-2% more dmg? Meh dont think so.
Damn… Remembering the machine gun steady shots back in the day… almost makes me want to go back to raid as BM. But for now, the versatility of agi-MM is too fun for me.
Which brings me to another point. I’m currently agi-MM with 5-600 passive armor pen, and I know I can increase that to about 800 if I’m willing to use some off-set pieces I have that have haste. However, I’m really not seeing a huge DPS increase (only about 300dps) on the spreadsheets if I were to gem for ArP at that stage.
I keep hearing about the exponential scaling of ArP at high levels, but does that make agi-MM less competitive? Sorry for going off-topic. Bad habit of mine.
Hey Frost i was wondering if you can help me I am a little confused with the Marksman Armour Build , I noticed you said once pretty well geared switch to armour pen once around 400-450 mark I am guessing you mean the talent build only as you gone on to say that dont gem armour pen till you reach around 800 rating. How do you pick up the other 400 rating if your already geared in 2 piece tier 9 and 2 piece tier 10 as im am currently sitting on around 450 passive so it appears that i need another 3.50 at least yet .
I’ve got something on my mind, that may be worth looking in to – dungeons/raids on farm.
Sure.. dps is great to have, no doubt about it. But to me it seems most of the time in dungeons/raids is spent killing trash. Bossfights on f.ex. heroic last 1 min at most while the entire run easily lasts 15-20 minutes.
So isnt it about time to forget about single target dps and instead find out what spec kills trash the fastest?
That is fantastic news for people like me that are MM/BM. I always keep BM as my offspec being I like to do some soloing from time to time. It will make playing around with the BM offspec a hell of a lot easier as there would be no need for a second set of gear to be at max effectiveness. (Still do not think it will be of any use in extreme soloing but for basic simple stuff it should be fine)
Might just try that BM/MM thing. Dropped BM for MM/SV when I got the gear and really miss the *BIG RED KITTY KILL* moments…LnL never seems to proc when I can really use it anyway…
Buh bye SV, hello again ol’ fren
@Zat
but people are willing to let me shoot them with a paintball gun, they would run in fear of my M-16
hey frost. excellent news sir!
how does this change scale with surv and MM damage wise? is BM still at the bottom of the dps charts?
It doesn’t change the scale. BM just got a 1.5% boost, and it was way more than 1.5% behind. In the absolute BIS gear out there BM will now be about equal to SV on some fights (behind on others) but still far behind MM. In average gear, BM is behind both SV and MM.
Yay
Frost is agreeing with what i was saying already 2/3 weeks back – on another blog – me and the boost was not just 1.5% 
Although i am sure he doesn’t agree with the 4%/4.5% I advocate .. and he is maybe right … as i am still testing.
I am also happy Frost recognize that SV and BM are today so marginally apart (SV ahead) but well below the threshold of human error which means that given same skill and equip SV and BM will be pretty much equal overall.
Frost, about Arcane i did run already 2 nights of testing. First one in ICC 25m 6/12 and Average in 2 hours of raiding my Arcane hit for about 700 dmg less than Steady and crit for 1000 dmg less. Second one (unfortunately not comparable as i could not re-do ICC 25m 6/12 ) i ran without Arcane and see overall a slight DPS drop (although SS still hit harder of Arcane by the same amount of the night before). I believe this is due to the fact i am used to shoot AS while moving and having now to wait for steady to finish then move and restart costs me overall DPS in the fight. I do not have Aimed (and don’t want to take it).
At next reset next wednesday hopefully i will re-do the run without Arcane and then will have some data to compare.
I am unsure whatever Arcane can be dropped at 758 ArP, not because doesn’t hit harder than Steady – which indeed it does and by far, but because influence the overall DPS due to shoot and move mechanics.
I quite like the fact that this has become the situation.
Mainly for boredom’s sake I’ve been playing BM in non-progression raids and fun runs and it never fails to amaze me the amount of stick I get from random players who think they know better. The amount of times I’ve had whispers in VOAs informing me I’m a scrub is hilarious.
Being mostly based on MM-Arp on my main set means I merely swap a couple trinkets around and adjust my hit values. I kinda had to make BM my offspec when I realised my Surv Gear had been corrupted with arp gems (600+arp :s ). I’m in the situation a lot of hunters are in – waiting on DBW before they finish gemming arp!
There’s one obstacle stopping me from going back to BM more often that I blogged about recently (it’s still a little raw to talk about it). Much love to my fallen homey, Gaylord the Devilsaur who survived since the TBC exotic patch until 2weeks ago.
Urkraft: For a breakdown of BM vs SV see this post: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/03/happy-patch-day-horse/ The short version is they’re only close to equal in BiS gear. In starting or average raiding gear, BM is still substantially behind.
The dps boost for most bm hunters from the patch was about 1.5% — this is crazily easy to calculate! It was a really simple tweak. Percentage of damage done by hunter * percentage of hunter damage steady shot does * 9% = total dps gain.