Hunters: What pet are you going with after patch 3.0.8?

[Velodrome]

Since cats took a beating from the nerf bat with this patch, I'm curious what others are going to pick up for raiding?

The initial write-ups I seen from BRK and EJ are leaning towards either the spirit beast or devilsaur. Thoughts?

[OttoRitter]

How are dragohawks now?

Were they modified or are they still just a novelty?

Otto.

[Velodrome]

I haven't seen anything yet where dragonhawks were impacted.

The big hits that I know of went to cats and scorpids.

[Luryn]

For raiding? Ill still use the cat.

[Voltrond]

Luryn wrote:

For raiding? Ill still use the cat.

ehh, do you raid on your hunter?

[Luryn]

Voltrond wrote:

Luryn wrote: For raiding? Ill still use the cat. ehh, do you raid on your hunter?

Never say never My main raiding char is my Death Knight, i'm slowling building Luryn. Who knows, he might be my main again at some point.

[Fideous]

For raiding as BM (51 point talent) the devilsaur is tops from what i hear. For MM and Survival, cats are still top.

[Velodrome]

Thanks for the info, Fid. I am off to grab a devilsaur and level that bad boy. I may some day try out a glass-cannon SV build with a cat, but we'll see how things shake out for the time being.

[Velodrome]

Ran a test using the currently nerfed cat with a BM build (53/12/0) against a MM (11/53/0) build with the same cat. The BM test used a rotation of arcane shot, serpent sting, and steady shot x3. The MM test used a rotation of serpent sting, chimera shot, aimed shot, arcane shot, and steady shot x3. The stings were re-applied when necessary. Each rotation was used until oom. Ran each build a series of three times. The BM build still performed better for my level (74), gear, and using the recently nerfed cat. Most posts have the devilsaur performing better than the cat post patch, but I'll run the test again when I get mine leveled up.

Have any other hunters tried a SV build post patch? Any recommendations?

[Phidelis]

Devilsaur > Raptor > Spirit Beast > Cat > Wasp iirc

this is assuming you have all raid debuffs up, mangle/trauma and the spell dmg debuffs for spirit beast. spirit beast would perform better if it didn't use spell crits (1.5x dmg vs 2x dmg) and spell hit, over 2x the hit rating needed.

As BM 51/x/x go with devilsaur or go home.
As MM or SV you really only have 2 options if you're really trying to min/max, although the cat is better than the wasp, not by much, and the minor armor debuff really makes peoples lives easier depending on raid comp, so imo its > cat + from what I've seen, without mangle/trauma, it out performs the cat from a pure dps standpoint.
So your options are, raptor or wasp at that point, and this also depends on raid comp, if you dont have a trauma/mangle from dps war/druid, then you may want to choose wasp, especially if you have no locks or they prefer to use other curses, and if you have lazy druids or no druids, from what I've seen no druids except bears use faerie fire in raids these days, cuz its just not worth it to most, misery from shadow priests (iirc) provides the same spell hit as imp. faerie fire, and for anything less than a bear (threat modifier), it's otherwise not worth it.

That's my take, I've personally abandoned my scorpid (sorry trinket) and tamed a wasp, and will be abandoning one of my two cats for a raptor, as I am Survival atm, for some ES goodness.


-my 2 cents

[Desrike]

Oh joy, 2-4 Devilsaurs in a raid, happy day.

/wrist

[Velodrome]

Thanks for the info Helly. Glad to see some input from a SV hunter.

Will be dropping the cat and going devilsaur for a bit, while still leveling as BM. I'll probably change it up at 80, since there will be more info out there on what the most beneficial raid spec's are.

[Darkmithoron]

Out of curiosity, if you're BM and get an exotic pet like Devilsaur, then switch specs, do you still keep the pet?

[DrRon323]

I tamed the Ironhide Devilsaur last night and then stopped by the trainer to respec. The pet will disappear when you reset your talent points and you can't summon him back. However after you've got the 51-point talent in BM, you can summon your exotic pet back. Bonus, the exotic pet will have its talent points reset.

Just after a few Strat runs I was noticing a difference in my DPS thanks to the new pet. Too bad they nerfed our kitties.

[Darkmithoron]

Interesting...I wonder if he still keeps a "slot" as a pet if you respec and try to tame another and all your pet slots are filled...