The wolf's special ability Furious Howl is the reason why.
Currently (as of 3.1, I believe? maybe 3.2?), all pets have the same base stats, and only two things differentiate the pet families. First and most obvious is which talent tree they have. Obviously, the ferocity talent tree is designed to be the DPS spec, and as such a raiding pet should always have that talent tree. Second, each pet family has a unique special ability that they can use on top of the standard skills (bite/claw, growl, etc) and the skills they get from their talent tree (Call of the Wild, Dash/Dive, Charge, Wolverine Bite, etc). Many of the pet specials are simple attacks, but lots of the are designed to bring versions of buffs/debuffs you might be missing in a party or raid -- for example, worms can sunder armor -- or they provide extra CC (spiders can web, crabs can pin), or AoE threat (bears can swipe), some some other kind of interesting utility.
Ah, I see now. This is really helpful. I've been playing around with my son's level 73 hunter and the subtler difference between pets has confused me. I've been comparing only the attributes and the tenacity/ferocity differences when looking at different pets.
The general rule of thumb is:
Cunning for PVP. Cunning pets are generally those that fly and/or sting.
Ferocity for DPS and raids. These are your wolves, raptors and cats.
Tenacity for soloing. Bears, boars and rhinos go here.
Your catch-all source for all things pet-related: www.wow-petopia.com
I've tried browsing through petopia before, but I didn't recognize the significant bits with regard to the special attacks. Interesting stuff.
Looking on MMo-Champion I found the Blizzchat from Twitter and I ran across this nugget
Q. Will rogues/hunters ever be able to dual wield hand-crossbows or pistols?
A. The pistol idea for hunters gets suggested a lot. It could either be an alternate to the gun / bow / crosssbow or something they use for short-range attacks. Rogues probably have plenty of weapons at this point.
I think we should be able to dual pistol since Warriors get to dual 2H weapons. That would be so badass but it would feel so Dante from Devil May Cry and I hate Dante. So I am kind of torn about it.
I think more interesting than considerations of dual-wield or not is the idea of having sidearms that could be equipped in the melee weapon slot instead of stat sticks, thereby giving hunters a legitimate way to do away with minimum range requirements.
On one hand, part of the flavor of the class is having to worry about movement and positioning more than other ranged DPS classes (since they have no minimum range), so despite the fact that it's mostly just an annoyance there is definitely a part of me that would be sad to see this kind of change. That said, it IS a massive annoyance to be the only class that can't continue to DPS when encounter designs call for everyone to collapse into melee range, and there are lots of interesting things that could be done if "melee guns" were introduced to the game, so the part of me that would be sad is probably somewhat small. 
I have a funny story being on my Hunter in a random HoR. We were going along fine killing down the waves till the last wave before boss 1 and you get like 5 mobs attacking you at once. I took the initiative to trap the Hunter ghost turned around, used my Readiness and then trapped the Mage. We burned the Priest, Rogue, and Warrior down in no time and focused on the Hunter and finally killed the Mage. Everyone was so impressed with me trapping that, that is all they could really talk about the rest of the run.
Where did the role of the Hunter fall by the wayside and become this person that sits in the back and pew pews while everyone else has all these different roles. I used to love pulling mobs to the tank before MD or being one of the main CCs in the group/raid. I feel now that Hunters are almost considered second class players to most everyone else.
Every other class brings something to the table that is uniquely them, but what do Hunters bring? I mean it can be argued that Hunters do bring CC or threat allocation (but Rogues got that too and Warriors can take it from anyone they want) so what really do we bring. And when did we become reduced to this pitiful existence that we are in now? The other 4 people being amazed that I can trap two mobs while still helping to DPS down the other 3. That is one of the easy things I can do. I used to play aggro ping pong in Heroic Mech with those Golem dudes between the other Hunter and I. We got so good at it people would group with us just to watch it. But it was fun.
I want the fun to be back in the class again.
That's very smart, Demonic to double-trap like that. I'll have to remember that one. (Which reminds me: I've got to see if I can get my Freezing Arrow to work effectively in PvP. That could be fun. But I digress.)
As far as being second-class citizens, well, that's your opinion, I suppose. I don't feel second class when I play my hunter. But maybe folks are whispering behind my back. Who knows?
Relatedly, what this exercise in Armory data mining shows is that hunters are not as popular as folks might think.
Back in the day, it seemed like everyone and their brother (and sister and mother and father and dog) was playing a hunter. Now it's paladins, death knights and druids (!). There are apparently more lvl 80 shamans than hunters, which surprises the heck out of me.
Maybe these two things (these numbers and your feeling of underappreciation) are connected? Dunno.
After 3+ years as a MM hunter, I picked up the Survival spec last night. Figured it won't hurt. Of course, I have questions.
What shot rotation do you use? Initially I'm thinking Explosive-Black Arrow-Aimed-Arcane-Serpent-Steady-lather/rinse/repeat (with Kill Shot, as necessary)
What's the best way to proc Lock-n-Load? Is it worth it to bother?
Any must-have glyphs?
I'd appreciate any PvP-related tips because that's 90 percent of the reason I ponied up the gold for the dual-spec.
What shot rotation do you use? Initially I'm thinking Explosive-Black Arrow-Aimed-Arcane-Serpent-Steady-lather/rinse/repeat (with Kill Shot, as necessary)
No rotations, only priorities.
The basic priority list is like this:
Kill Shot
Explosive Shot
Black Arrow
Serpent Sting
Aimed/Multi Shot
Steady Shot
Depending on your talents, glyphs, and gear (particularly set bonuses) it's quite likely that you'll want swap the priority of Black Arrow and Serpent Sting.
What's the best way to proc Lock-n-Load? Is it worth it to bother?
Black Arrow is your primary tool for proccing LnL -- always use your fire trap cooldown on it unless you have the chance to drop an explosive trap in a large AoE pack. Use it every cooldown unless a higher priority shot is available. You can also situationally get free LnL procs with freezing or frost traps, but you need to be sure you won't screw up the people you are playing with by doing so. In PvE fights I'll use frozen arrow -> LnL -> ExS x3 instead of volley when there are two or three targets (four or more is still volley) or when there is a specific target that needs to die before you can switch to AoE.
Incidentally, I use Power Auras both to track when LnL procs happen and to time the explosive shots when they do happen, and you probably will want to have something to do both of those things if you are running an SV spec. (ExS puts on a dot that ticks for 2 seconds. Using the next ExS exactly when the GCD is up wastes the last tick of the dot, so you want to time your LnL shots to avoid that waste.)
I'd appreciate any PvP-related tips because that's 90 percent of the reason I ponied up the gold for the dual-spec.
I don't PvP much, but the best tip I have for you is to get free LnL procs when you need the burst by hitting a target with an ice trap of some sort. The slow/CC is certainly useful, but the real win is putting out a shitload of hurt in a short period of time.
Oh, and don't forget that you get Wyvren Sting in the SV tree, which is a very powerful form of CC.
Any must-have glyphs?
Depending on your gear and spec you will most likely want three of these four:
Glyph of Explosive Shot
Glyph of Kill Shot
Glyph of Serpent Sting
Glyph of Steady Shot
Some people will also consider Glyph of the Hawk if they've put 5 points into the BM tree, but the above four are probably still better.
Thanks, Zero. Your post was super helpful.
Survival is a lot harder than it looks. The cooldowns seem to take an eternity (I'm looking at you, Black Arrow), and my keybindings were a problem. Seems that Survival gives me one extra big move that MM doesn't have (because I picked up Aimed Shot from the MM tree), so I spent about 30 minutes shuffling around keybinds and buttons so I can (a) use them and (b) keep track of the cooldowns.
I still have to wrap my head (and my fingers) around the shot rotation/priority list. I'm so used to MM, but I'm excited about trying something different.
Forshay said he was curious about my UI setup, so here it is. It's almost offensively ugly at this point since it's just sort of grown over the years, but so far it's worked well for me.
Out of combat:
In combat:
So, the basics first I guess. Xperl unit frames, Bartender buttons, SexyCooldown for the cooldown bars, MiksScollingBattleText for the floating text, PowerAuras and IceHud for the combat overlays. I also have AzCastBar installed, but it's currently only providing a GCD and swing timer since I'm trying out the IceHud cast bar.
I have MSBT setup to run outgoing damage (or healing on the shaman) in an arc on the left, incoming damage and heals on the right, and aura changes and other miscellaneous info flowing down (this sometimes gets in the way of DBM bars, which is something I've been too lazy to fix).
For PowerAuras I have four main areas where things happen.
1. Above my head is where I collect various auras that signify when I have important short term buffs, such as trinket or set bonus procs. This is also where an aura shows up when I get a lock and load.
2. Immediately below that I have a row of bubbles for my my short term shot cooldowns. The red one on the left is kill command in BM, Explosive Shot in SV. For SV there will be a red outline circle with a dot timer around the cooldown timer when the ExS dot is on my current target so I don't accidentally overwrite the ExS dot during a lock and load proc. In the middle in green is Serpent Sting -- its timer is for the dot on my current target. On the right is where I used to have an aimed shot/multishot timer, but currently it basically just indicates when I've got enough focus to fire an Arcane Shot. This isn't terribly useful to be honest, but I'm currently trying to come up with a better idea for it.
3. On the bottom is a row bubbles for long term cooldowns. On the left is Rapid Fire, in the middle is Bestial Wrath in BM and Black Arrow in SV, and on the right is the new BM ability Fervor (I don't have anything to put there for SV right now). This is also where I bake in cooldowns for on use trinkets when I have them.
4. You don't seen it in this picture, but dead center is where a big cross shows up when kill shot is usable (it's cooldown timer shows there too). This is also where I had a big colored blob to show which aspect I was in, but since we only have one in combat aspect until we start leveling again, that's disabled for now.
As I mentioned in game, I'm currently leaving on the new Blizzard spell effect notices too, since they don't interfere with my existing setup. And anyway, the only noticeable one is the Focus Fire one you see in the picture, and it basically lights up only when it is the opportune time to use it, so it basically goes away as soon as I see it (except in special situations where I might want to save it a few extra seconds).
All of those auras are laid out in ways which to my brain logically correspond to the configuration of my hotkeys for them, but that internal logic really has more to do with what I am familiar with than anything else.
So, the new addition with 4.0.1 is IceHud, which is drawing the arcs to the left and right of me. I initially got it because I wanted a way to work a focus meter in with my power auras, but I'm giving it a trial run on for some of the other things it does. To the far left about where the focus fire marker is will be a threat meter, then just inside that is my cast bar (replacing the AzCastBar I used to have below the power aura stuff), then the small arcs are my pet health and focus, and the big arcs are my health and focus. To the right are my target's health and resource pool, and then their cast bar.
Currently I'm feeling like it's a bit too much clutter, and I need a way to emphasize the focus bar a bit more, but I'm feeling like after a bit of tweaking it's going to be a good addition to my setup.
Below my auras you can see my swing and GCD timer provided by AzCastBar, and below that is where my ACB castbar used to be. By the way, I highly recommend ACB if you have grown frustrated with the unreliable nature of Quartz, although IceHud seems to be doing a good job as well -- I just wish it had a swing timer.
Finally, to the right you can see a small vertical SexyCooldown bar (currently slightly obscured by the focus fire marker). While I have a bigger cooldown bar down by my buttons that tracks various abilities, the one up in the combat area just tracks the internal cooldowns for procs, to help me time the usage of big on use abilities like Rabid Fire, Bestial Wrath, or haste potions. Not essential, but still helpful for squeezing out that last little bit of extra DPS when it is called for.
Your UI looks a lot like my paladin's did before the patch, only without all the CD monitors for obvious reasons.
What is the info bar at the bottom of your screen called? I'd like a simple display of my wealth, JP, rep, etc.
What is the info bar at the bottom of your screen called? I'd like a simple display of my wealth, JP, rep, etc.
That is my beloved Fubar, which hasn't been maintained in a very long time and relies on some very outdated libraries. It was actually broken by 3.3.5 but thankfully a few other fanatic users managed to cobble together versions of the libraries that worked just barely well enough so that people could keep using a few of the more useful plugins. 4.0.1 has broken it even further, to the point where config tool doesn't work, but I love it so much that I managed to edit the config lua file and patch together an even more barebones setup than I used to have, now with just the things I find essential.
From left to right there you see:
GuildFu, which I can quickly mouse over to see various status details about who is online
GroupFu, which on mouseover shows you information about the makeup of your group or raid (who is leader/assistants/loot master, what is the loot method, etc) and on left click triggers a roll.
RecountFu, which displays just my DPS for the current fight on the bar, shows some statistical breakdowns on mouse over, and on click toggles open and closed the main Recount window.
ExperienceFu, which shows all kinds of data about experience status and gain rates for me and my pets
ReputationFu, which shows my status with my currently selected faction, and on mouseover shows all factions.
CharmsFu, which applies a raid marker to the currently selected target.
ProfessionsFu, showed various info about professions but is currently broken -- it's still installed on the off chance it gets updated.
CharacterInfoFu, opens CharacterInfo, a tool that keeps track of the inventory and bank contents for all your characters. Also broken (the main mod, that is), but I'm keeping it on there right now to remind me to find a replacement.
DurabilityFu, shows my overall durability, and on mouse over shows the durability and repair costs for each item.
BagginsFu, shows my current used and available bag slots. Used to also show my ammo, but ammo is now gone. Hurray!
GarbageFu, shows the vendor trash in my bags with their values, has click commands to drop the least valuable items.
ClockFu, shows server and local time.
There are a few more modern alternatives, and I tried playing with them when 3.3.5 destroyed much of my old setup (I used to have a second bar on the top of my screen, and had a few more plugins that now are completely broken), but I had trouble finding plugins to do everything I wanted and the aesthetics and interface of everything I tried felt lacking, so I decided I'd find a way to keep using Fubar as long as possible. So far so good, but I'm afraid I just might have to give alternatives another look sometime soon here.
EDIT: Huzzah for Fubar fanatics! A new post on the Curse page today says there should be an alpha stage update available.
@Zero: I found a working version of FuBar here: http://www.wowace.com/addons/fubar/files/. Look for version r38.
By "working" I mean it handles GuildFu and DurabilityFu. LocationFu, however, is borked at the moment. I don't know if it'll work for the other Fus you listed.
By "working" I mean it handles GuildFu and DurabilityFu. LocationFu, however, is borked at the moment. I don't know if it'll work for the other Fus you listed.
Yeah, LocationFu is one of the ones I dropped. All the other ones I mentioned (except ProfessionFu) are working, it's just that the configuration screen is currently broken so I have to quit the the game and edit the text config file to make changes. But yeah, looks like a new alpha was just uploaded today that might address that problem.
Thanks for the screenshot. I was curious as to how you had your timers set up.
As a side note, I specced in to Beast as my second one, and boy howdy was I lost. Seemed like there was something going off all the time and no focus to spare. Of course I kept forgetting to use Bestial Wrath. Is there any word on what to convert to mastery in regards to haste and crit? As far as I can tell, MM is leaning to converting crit. I'm wondering if Beast is compatible.
As a side note, I specced in to Beast as my second one, and boy howdy was I lost. Seemed like there was something going off all the time and no focus to spare. Of course I kept forgetting to use Bestial Wrath. Is there any word on what to convert to mastery in regards to haste and crit? As far as I can tell, MM is leaning to converting crit. I'm wondering if Beast is compatible.
I don't know about MM, but rough tests seem to be indicating that at least for BM and SV haste is still our least powerful stat on a per itemization point basis, and so that's the one to reforge unless you are approaching the crit cap. At this point though its hard to say, and even harder to predict how it will change in the near future. Personally, I did hit from a piece or two to help get down to the newly lowered hit cap, and then haste from almost everything else. (Although I'm still not done tweaking things, especially with gems. I had stocked up on mats for alchemy transmutes expecting the cooldown to go away. It didn't, and in fact it actually increased, but I'm still stubbornly waiting to make the gems with the mats I prepared. 
)
Personally, I did hit from a piece or two to help get down to the newly lowered hit cap, and then haste from almost everything else.
...so that's the one to reforge unless you are approaching the crit cap.
Do you have a good reference site for the new Hunter numbers? I mean, hell, I didn't even know there was a crit cap now. Any help you can provide would be appreciated.
Do you have a good reference site for the new Hunter numbers?
Honestly, not yet. The usual spots (Elitist Jerk, and the good blogs like Warcraft Hunter's Union) are working on it, and the WHU has a lot of good guides, but it's still too early for people to have all the math set in stone yet. That said, WHU is definitely where I tell people to start these days, and then EJ after that if you can stomach the egos.
I mean, hell, I didn't even know there was a crit cap now.
Well, once every shot is a crit, you're capped.
It depends on your spec and glyphs, but there are also several soft crit caps points where various abilities (such as Explosive Shot) get crit capped well before 100% crit. Generally speaking, though, it's not something you are going to run into unless you've got at the very least a full set of ilevel 264 gear, probably even better.
Survival hunters are a blast!
Explosive shot is really good. The talent that adds a 30% dd at the front of serpent sting is really nice too.
That is all!
Survival hunters are a blast!
Explosive shot is really good. The talent that adds a 30% dd at the front of serpent sting is really nice too.
That is all!
How do the 3 stack up against each other? I loaded up my hunter and felt lost.
Which one does the most dps in PvE and how they rate in PvP now?
How do the 3 stack up against each other? I loaded up my hunter and felt lost.
As with all classes at the moment it's a bit too early to make strong declarations about what is best, and even if you did that could all change with a hotfix or a patch tomorrow.
That said, for PvE all specs seem to be about roughly equal if played properly at the moment, and all seem to be sitting around where SV was previously, maybe a bit lower. This means that folks who were running a previous top DPS MM spec are probably seeing a noticeable drop, people who still used BM before the patch are seeing big gains, and those who ran SV in raids (such as myself) are seeing more or less the same DPS, maybe more in some situations and less in others.
MM probably plays the smoothest since they have more or less all the tools they will be using at 85, but I can't say for sure since I haven't tried it yet.
SV and BM rotations feel a bit clunky, though, since the intention is for them to be using Cobra Shot instead of Steady, but we won't have that until level 81. As a result, BM and SV are having to bank focus to refresh serpents stings where they won't at 85. For BM this isn't a huge hindrance since they have pretty high focus regen and basically just fire one less focus dumping Arcane Shot to keep up the sting. For SV, though, this leaves you scrambling for focus much of the time, essentially never firing an Arcane Shot, not having ideal uptime on your Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, and occasionally delaying an Explosive shot for a GCD or two due to being low on focus.
That said, I'm still having a lot of fun with both SV and BM now that I'm sort of past the initial phase of readjustment, and surprisingly the feel and flavor of both still seems the same at the core. BM is still about intelligently managing the usage of cooldown abilities (now with twice the cooldowns to manage) and optimizing what your pet is doing, while SV is still about careful resource management and skillfully responding to the complex Lock and Load proc mechanic.
As for PvP, well, I don't know since I don't PvP, but I guess that just like PvE it depends on what flavor you want. BM has always been about optimizing your big cooldowns, and now also has a talent that helps give you higher availability of your defensive cooldowns (Deterrence, Disengage). MM is still the only spec with Silencing Shot, and now does self healing through Chimaera Shot, and has an excellent opener in Aimed Shot. And as always, SV is the king of CC with it's better traps and Wyrvern Sting (a sleep effect), and now has a talent to turn Deterrence into a spell reflect.
Yah, its pretty hard to tell since I rolled a newb hunter as survival and with a cat pet, I fire off concussion shot, explosive shot and the target has a sliver of life when it reaches me.
If I fire serpent sting in that rotation, I have next to nil focus left, but the target never reaches me.
I don't know if focus generation is going to be a problem for survival hunter more than the other specs. I do see it being something survival hunters will have to address. The interesting thing is that raptor strike costs no focus so I have not looked to see what talent boosts that skill gets.
Yeah, I was mostly discussing hunters at level 80 there. Generally speaking at any level though you wouldn't want to bother putting up a serpent sting on an enemy that will die before the serpent sting runs through the majority of its duration (although several talents in the SV tree make firing a sting on a soon to be dead target a bit more worthwhile than for BM or MM).
The interesting thing is that raptor strike costs no focus so I have not looked to see what talent boosts that skill gets.
Ah, it's a shame they didn't go ahead and remove the melee skills as they were considering -- they really are a trap that only serve to confuse a new hunter about what they should be doing. Giving hunters a pet at level 1 was a good step towards alleviating the HUGE amount of confusion that levels 1 through 10 used to generate, but even having one skill you can use in melee range still is a problem.
As a hunter you don't want to be in melee with anything ever; when you are soloing, you'll want to let your pet be your tank. The best use for your two melee abilities is to macro them together (and add in disengage once you hit level 78) and only ever hit the button as you are running away on the rare occasion that you do accidentally pull aggro.
It seems like with all the extra tutorial text they've added to the tooltips for other abilities they could have added something on the melee skills to the effect of "only use this ability as you are trying fight your way back to range." Ah well. 
Its really interesting because they've made ranged dps classes hit much harder, but much more frail. (without being completely weak) This makes adds much more serious because you really can't take hits from more than one monster and having 1 monster in melee range that is focused on you will put some hurt on.
In these instances, when you've just killed off the primary and have switched to the add, where just one or two hits from another add would spell death, raptor strike and kill command? are very valuable. You want to fight in close quarters because you can't risk stepping back 5 yards and getting another add.
I know things will be totally different by say level 30 or 40. I don't even have any traps yet. And there is that juicy talent that makes the next 2 arcane or explosive shots cause no cooldown and cost no focus on monsters caught up in frozen trap. (Lock and Load)
I haven't even fired up my 50 something hunter on another server. I feel like I'm learning much more from the 2-5 hours of leveling a new character than trying to figure out where everything went at high levels. My high level characters are so confusing.
I found this Hunter Focus Bar on EJ today. Haven't given it a shot yet, but this is what I was thinking about when I mentioned a little focus bar that I'd used for rogues. This has more features too.
I found this Hunter Focus Bar from EJ today. Haven't given it a shot yet, but this is what I was thinking about when I mentioned a little focus bar that I'd used for rogues. This has more features too.
Looks like a nice option for sure, especially if you don't want to deal with the hassle of setting up up a combination of power auras and something like IceHud like I did. At the moment, though, I think I've finally configured IceHud to a place where I'm happy with it. I had to make further tweaks to the skin, color, transparency, position, and the direction the focus bar grew, but now I'm very happy with it. I'll try to remember to take another screenshot...
Do we no longer get dual wield? I don't see it in the skill/spell list anywhere...
Kinda a bummer if its true if only for a cosmetic reason.
Rogues get it from the start IIRC. Do only fury warriors get it now like enhancement shaman?
Maybe you learn that at 40? Dual wielding is definitely still a thing you can do at max level, that's for sure. Have you tried just throwing on two one handers to see?
(And it is a tiny bit more than cosmetic -- it gives you more options for how to configure you stat sticks.)
Yes I have at level 5 and 16 and it doesn't work. I think Hunters used to get it at 10 or 20? My newb hunter is only ~18.
I know rogues used to get it at 10 and I think warriors got it at 20. I just find it odd that it is no longer in the general skills section (or any of the other trees for that matter).
So I guess fury warriors will get it at 10 (through spec ability) and the other spec'd warriors at 20...?
I have to say again that this new leveling system is very well thought out and instructive. Its does not seem at all like they arbitrarily and randomly assigned some of your spells at every other level. The leveling experience seems to stay consistent if not get more exciting in the 20's and 30's.
I haven't had the chance to level from 1-30+ completely in the new experience. I have gone from 1-18 (hunter) and have gotten a few levels on a bunch of "off spec" alts in the 17, 21, 23, 27, 33, 37 and 62 range. The sense of discovery was really exciting and something not expected at all in a 6 year old mmo.
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