a BM hunter's goals:Follow

We've all heard of the 2000 attack power, 20% crit, 7k health goals for hunters. I've tried. I also realized it was never going to happen.

A question arose in my mind: Does a BM hunter need that much attack power?

I don't think so.

Currently I'm running a 41/20/0 spec, and I like it. Nice crits with all the bonuses of a Beast spec. Loss of range is slightly annoying, but not a big deal.

My attack power with AotV (what I almost always use) is 1440.

Does that sound ridiculously low? I think it's about right. Gear will obviously improve with Kara loot and so on, but right now I've got about as good as you can.

So my question to debate over is: What should a BM hunter's attack power be?



Keep in mind the other goals, 20% crit and the health.

lawl tauren hunters have no problem maxing the 7k. @ 63 I was @ 6.5k

I't sound pretty good.
I had set my goals (based on what I thought I could reach at the time) to be 1500ap (without hawk) and 20% crit.

The crit part was easy to obtain, and I'm at about 1450 ap as well, and can easily bump it up to 1500 if I switch out my gear. But I don't want to turn in my cool looking beast mask until I get my second piece of desolation (the shoulders) to go along with the 2 piece beast lord that I already have (sitting in the bank for some reason :p)..

Kompera, are you really talking about Beastmaster?

I've got 4/5 beast lord, good blues, my exalted shoulder enchant, cobrahide leg armor, CE helm enchant, enchants, good gems - and 1448 RAP without Aspect of the Hawk.

Where my gear falls down, I know, is my helm - I've got the Earthwarden's Coif (oops) with the non-functional crit metagem (double oops). I'm planning to replace that with the engineering goggles when the patch is released.

Still, I don't expect to get 150 attack power out of it.

It's true I could have about 100 more attack power by using +AP-on-equip trinkets, but I have two Bladefist's Breadth and Hourglass of the Unraveller at the moment.

There's also crit and hit rating to consider too.

Maybe we should have "rate the Beastmaster above you" thread. :) This is me currently:

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&n=Aylfric

Edited, May 2nd 2007 11:12am by seroster

Edited, May 2nd 2007 11:12am by seroster

My current hunter is level 60 and hunting in Outland. His gear is made up of quest rewards and what I picked up in the auction house. And much of it is outdated for his level. The only exceptions are his crossbow and his helm, both of which are quest rewards from Outland. And I’m not having any trouble completing quests.

Obviously, the better your gear/stats the easier it is to kill things. But in all honesty I don’t think it really maters for hunters, at least not for PvE. As long as we have a decent ranged weapon and both our skills and our pet’s skills are up to date, we can have crappy gear and function just fine.

Here’s his profile:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Vanyal

He’s carrying a white battleaxe because he’s just learning the skill. It’s a 2H axe with a speed of 1.8. He leveled up his skill from 1 to 200 on level 16 mobs in about 15 minutes. Just 100 points to go. A shame they won’t come so quickly. *grins* His normal 2H sword is about a level 45 weapon so its rather out of date. But I believe he’ll be getting a slow 2H axe as a quest reward soon with some nice stats on it.

I'm currently focusing on the PvP pieces as opposed to any of the dungeon sets since I very rarely do raiding.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Spirestone&n=Grefin

Although a little low in the AP department (1317 ranged with AotH), I think the extra armor and stamina more than make up for it. It might take an extra arrow to drop a mob out in the world while farming, but that's ok. :)




Edited, May 3rd 2007 9:50am by Grefin

I'll admit i'm a little low right now, 46, but I love my BM hunter, mainly because of my pet, Humar, which i've had since I turned lvl 23. The main stats I look for are Agility and Crit chance, as those affect my pet's DPS as well and since i'm BM i'm trying to increase my pets DPS as well as mine. I have about 1140 AP without AotH on and a tooltip DPS of about 120-160 depending on what kind of mobs i'm fighting (things that can be poisoned/ higher armor/ etc...)

I have been told on many occasions that I am a good hunter, simply because of how well I manage my pet, but also do really decent DPS, not great, but really decent, I am usually equal to a mage or rogue 2 levels below me on a damage meter, and sometime on the top of the chart.

Attack Power is awesome to have and can't hurt, but I would take +crit or Agility over it unless the AP bonus is huge. +crit and + agility means more DPS moves from your oet because of Go for the Throat, which means YOUR DPS goes up too, without having to use ANY mana.

By the way I checked it the other day, not sure if anyone was wondering or not, but the tooltip DPS (the DPS recorder that comes with cosmos, not sure what its called) records pet damage and adds it to yours. I tried just letting my pet attack without putting a sting on the mob and his damage registered.

2k rap is for a lvl 70 pre raid.
1.5k if your bm
and the gap is from 69-70 ;) you go from a well geared 69 to a crap geared 70 in a second.
and then it is time to gather mats for crafted things (if you can), farminstances for drops, grind rep for gear, get enchannts on the good pieces etc etc.

my current list of stuff to farm is huge... need to farm mechanar for the trinket and Headpiece of the last boss, steamvaults for the shoulders and leggings from the last boss.
get a ring from botanica's 3rd boss, get the 3rd key fragment from arcatraz, get revered with aldor for another ring or buy world drop epic or badge of justice one...
get sonic spear from the last boss in shadow labs as well as manage to grind out
Primal Nether: 5
Primal Fire: 50
Primal shadow: 36
primal mana: 10
Nethercale: 96
H. Knothide: 26
cobrascale: 4
primal air: 8
so i've got a ******** of instances and grinding to do

Absolutely nothing to laugh about. You have agility on every piece of gear and a sensible build.

Katchii, was there a typo there? 1140 attack power at level 46!? Um... how?

Don't feel bad. At Lvl 46, I only have 363 RAP and 9.99% crit. At lvl 41, I was running a balanced build (points spread evenly across all three), but, after a reading a couple guides, I respec'ed BM. I played almost exclusively solo up to lvl 24, by choice. After I joined my current guild, at lvl 34, I started running instances, but, didn't get very lucky with rolls on leather. So, I also had to rely on the AH and Drops (mostly seemed to be mail, plate and cloth). After hitting 40, I have been trying to replace my leather with mail. Here is my current armor:

Jagoth on Dentarg

As for your setup Shalloe, given my limited experience, the only change I would make to your talents (Keeping with your choice to stay all BM) would be to take the point out of Bestial Swiftness and put it in Frenzy. My thinking on this is that a 100% chance at 30% attack speed (after your pet crits) would mean that your pet will do more damage in the long run. You can train your pet with dash and get a better speed increase than Bestial Swift. As for your equipment, you have more agility than I do, so, your base RAP is higher than mine.