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| Reviewed 2/2/2012 Patch 4.3.2 |
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This guide will detail the best dps spec for your tenacity hunter pet for BM hunters at level 85 in Cataclysm. The only situation in which you’d be trying to dps with a tenacity pet is if you’re a BM hunter using the worm pet to aoe your way through trash, or BM hunter bringing the Shale Spider because your raid needs that buff. Every other raid buff that is provided by a hunter pet is available through ferocity or cunning pets, after all.
Thus this guide is set up for beast mastery hunters only. Using a worm to burn through all the trash pulls is absolutely a valid BM strategy — in fact it’s the reason the tenacity pest have the abilities they do (and the reason the worm is tenacity and not ferocity is because otherwise you’d never use any other pet for boss fights).
Just be sure to switch from your tenacity to a better single-target dps pet for the single-target boss fights, unless the boss fight mechanics require significant AoE. Some hunters prefer to actually switch pets mid-fight for boss AoE phases: I don’t recommend it — the dps loss of dismissing your pet multiple times during a fight is very large.
Best BM Worm Tenacity DPS Pet Spec
We are easily able to pick up every dps option available to the tenacity pet tree for our worm pet. We’re then left with a lot of extra talent points, what with the BM extra 4.
Keep in mind that in the situations in which you’ll be dpsing with a tenacity pet — in groups and raids — your pet should never be attacked directly, and should never have growl turned on. That means that Guard Dog, Silverback, and armor talents are completely useless.
I chose to dump the extra talent points into stamina boosts (since aoe is still a danger to our pets) and movement increases. We did, however, after to take a bunch of otherwise useless talents in order to access Wild Hunt, which is a dps increase.
The Chimera Pet
It’s worth noting that the Chimera pet also comes with an AoE ability and is a cunning pet rather than tenacity, which means it does great damage for the single-target portion of the fight as well. The Chimera’s AoE does less damage, but has a smaller cooldown so it can be used more often. However, the Chimera has a conical AoE rather than a target circle. In practice it can be very difficult to actually get all of the mobs in an AoE cluster targeted by the Chimera. As a result I recommend the worm for AoE fights — you’ll reliably dps everything that you need to, while with the Chimera you’re almost certain to have several mobs that you are not dpsing at all.
That said, with good micromanagement the Chimera can work, and it will do more dps on the single-target portion of the fight.
what about if you have a bear for mm or sv, what tenacity spec would be best?
You don’t want to raid with a tenacity pet, unless your BM and are clearing trash with a worm.
I did it just because the pet looked cool… it only affected my DPS in the very slightest and it was a warpstalker. XD XD
~Lycantis
I know you have Frost , but just on the off chance that you have not.
have you looked at the chimera AOE attack as a alternative to the worm AOE.
I find it easier to use mysleft , and there is no cooldown to wait for like the worm AOE.
plus the frost breath just looks plain awesome.
as always thanks for the awesome work you do for us hunters.
Frost, I’d also be curious if you’ve checked this recently. They tweaked the Chimera’s breath in the most recent mini-patch, and I believe it is no longer just a hard-to-aim cone effect, but a AOE. But I haven’t checked it, nor tested DPS. Do you happen to know the status of this?
In the highly unlikely event that I raid 10 man without a Pally or Druid, would bringing the shale spider with this spec be a better option than Drums? Similarly, do runescrolls make the silithid pet unnecessary, except to reduce the cost of wiping?
Also, I made a typo when I first registered, so KalvenandHobs is under someone else’s e-mail.
So would this be the same spec I would want to use if I’m raiding with my Shale Spider, since that is Tenacity too?
If you are using it as a DPS pet, then yes. Use the same spec. The Shale Spider is an exotic, so it’s BM-only. Remember that the only reason you should use a Shale Spider in a group is because of it’s buff. So if you have NO druids or paladins, you could bring a Shale Spider.
For a raid…it’d be interesting to see if the 5% stats boost is worth the loss of a better DPS pet. I expect it’ll be very rare for a raid to have NO paladins and NO druids though.
It seems to me that shale spiders and silithids aren’t what they’re cracked up to be, when compared to drums and scrolls. One can say that these pets save time and money, but the hidden cost is not stacking an additional buff. Consider that the silithid and scroll buffs are equivalent. Using a silithid is not as advantageous as popping a scroll and bringing another buff or debuff. With the shale spider, the comparison is +5%stats and less personal dps, or +4%stats and another buff or debuff.
I’m considering losing my silithid and ingoring shale spiders. Also, given that I rarely run without a mage, (who keeps me in the #2 slot most of the time) I’m also considering benching my corehound. He needs a break from chewing the LK’s face (to no avail).
This is, oddly enough, kind of freeing. Now I can choose 2 raid specs based on their merits, instead of feeling like I have to have a BM spec. It’s still my favorite, though.
Will wait as long as it take – but still :O))
waiting for BM tanko/solo spec and tenacity pet build for it :O)
What is the best tenacity pet spec for SV hunters? Which points to drop compared to the BM one?
I’d like to know this as well; how come turtles aren’t the top tank now? I can’t see how the worm can be a better choice.
This spec, pet and article all deal with the worm being used for BM DPS trash pulls. Turtles are likely the best tanking pet, due to their Shell Shield. I’d avoid using a worm because burrow causes the mobs to drop aggro.
I have found that the warpstalker surpasses even the most tenacious of turtles and have since refused to ever tame and use a turtle, the outbound of healing your pet in a fight is enough to keep them capped while taking down even heroic adds in a situation with a dead tank, and I always use my black warpstalker with acid green stripes.
This is just something I have noticed and helped my guild with, I don’t have any spreadsheets or anything on it I just used several tenacity pets and came to the conclusion myself.
~Lycantis
One other thing…we are allotted 17 points to spend here; in the referral worm spec above, there are more than 17 points. That changes things just a bit as to where one would spend the points if we were to use that talent spec tree.
“We’re then left with a lot of extra talent points, what with the BM extra 4.”
BM is allocated 4 additional points that both MM and SV do not have.
Oh ok! I didn’t even notice that…d’oh…X_x
I feel obligated to point out that the best straight interrupt available to sv is the gorilla ability, another excuse to bring a tenacity pet.
My raid needs the “4% increased physical damage” buff/debuff. Which is better for single target boss types? The Cunning Ravager, or this Tenacious Worm? Thanks!
marksman + ravager >>> bm + worm
I was requested by tanks to use my rhino up until the last patch …now its all about the worm. I am the top hunter on my server….I use the worm for aoe groups and single target…it increases the damage done to enemy-ies by 4% for 25 sec….once up pop beastial wrath…then aoe rinse …repeat!
What, your rhino?
I would assume for the knockback (which just confuses me more since tanks hate when stuff moves). Because, the Hyena is the dps bleeder.
Same confusion about the worm. what’s been said is that as BM for AOE trash only, the worm is reccomended. If you’re fighting a boss and the raid needs it’s 4% buff, then you should be fielding a ravager.
Since my guild started to do some heroic runs in Bwd and BoT… i made some research about this Roar of Sacrifice pet ability cause we sometimes had problems to keep some members alive like on Maloriak 10 man heroic on freez thingy..it almost instantly killed our ppl.. iwanted to ask what do u say about it..
/wave
Chimaera is a cunning pet not tenacity. So you could maybe update this to say worm / shale spider. (Also WoW spells it Chimaera not Chimera.)