Scattered Shots: Dual specs mean double the fun for hunters
by Jessica Klein 
Feb 26th 2009 at 5:00PM
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be diving into what hunters will have to look forward to from the world of dual specs.
So far the uproar about the dual spec feature coming to us in patch 3.1 has been predominantly from classes that are able to fill multiple roles in a raid environment, giving them more flexibility to swap between tanking, healing and dealing damage based on the needs of their group at the time. The 1000g price tag on this feature may seem a bit daunting to some, but the benefits of being able to swap between tanking and healing at a moment's notice without costly respec fees or inconvenient trips to the nearest not-so-nearby trainer are obvious. This all begs the question, though: what's in it for us pure DPS folks?
The easy answer to that is being able to swap seamlessly from a PvP build to your raid build when invites start going out for the night. And lets not forget that Survival Hunters are the new Shadow Priest, right? If you're missing one of your friendly neighborhood mana batteries one night, you can swap into a spec for that at the drop of a hat. There are also plenty of opportunities for enterprising young Hunters looking to farm old world raid bosses solo, and there's a spec for that, too. There's plenty of fun to be had for us Hunters, and this new dual spec feature will make the transition from conquering the wilds of our world as a lone tracker to wiping the floor with the deadliest of raid bosses that much easier.
So, we'll kick off today's festivities with a couple of the most popular activities in-game and the builds that make them possible: raiding and PvP. Of course, these builds are bound to change once the final touches are made to the patch 3.1 talent adjustments, but for now we'll work with what we've got just to get the ball rolling.
Survival (PvE - Raiding)/Marksmanship (PvP)
Since patch 3.0.8 thwacked the Beast Mastery tree with the nerf bat something fierce, the Survival tree has become the "flavor of the month" for raiding and one of the most popular builds currently making the rounds is this 06/14/51 build. This build takes advantage of the superior damage output of Explosive Shot along with some standard boosts from the early Beast Mastery and Marksmanship trees that are essential for pimping out your pew pew, such as Improved Aspect of the Hawk, Lethal Shots and Mortal Shots. When you're ready to make the switch into battleground or arenas, there's a definite advantage to sporting this 0/51/20 Marksmanship build for some serious burst damage with both Chimera Shot and Lock and Load.
Beast Mastery (PvE - Solo)/Survival (PvE - Raiding)
A few enterprising young Hunters have braved the depths of old world raids alone for fun and profit (or snazzy tiger and raptor mounts), and dual specs will make it that much easier for you to take on the bosses of old before running in to challenge the new bosses on the block. If you're looking to solo ZG, for example, there's definitely a build for that. The folks at Elitist Jerks have suggested this 57/14/0 Beast Mastery build for taking down good ol' Thekal and his pals, along side a trusty Gorilla sporting this Tenacity build geared towards maximizing your pet's survivability through talents like Pet Barding and Blood of the Rhino. If you've got them, pull two pieces of your Tier 5 set out of the bank to help keep your furry companion alive and kicking. You can pair this spec with the 06/14/51 Survival build to bust out when you're ready to bust heads in more contemporary raids.
Survival (PvE - Raiding)/Survival (PvE - Mana Regen)
I'm sure you're noticing a pattern here. As the "next big thing", the 06/14/51 Survival build is getting a lot of love all of a sudden, so it's no surprise that it has been featured so prominently here. This time, we'll be pairing it with a variation for mana regeneration for those occasions when you're sans Shadow Priest or Retribution Paladin. This 5/14/52 build with 5/5 Hunting Party will give your raid a much-needed boost to mana regen when you find yourselves short on more traditional mana batteries.
Pet (PvE)/Pet (PvP)
As you swap specs, you'll want to swap pets to suit the occasion. According to Ghostcrawler, in patch 3.1 the talent respec cost for pets will be completely removed, making it that much easier for us to tailor our pets to suit our needs. Cats have long been a favorite for Hunters seeking high damage pets, and this Ferocity build is great for maximizing your pet's raid DPS through talents like Spiked Collar and Spider's Bite. Scorpids have proven their worth in the arenas time and again, and this Tenacity build sports some great utility for all types of PvP with talents like Charge, Boar's Speed, and Lionhearted. So far the details pertaining to how pet talents will behave when we swap specs are unclear until we see more information coming from the PTR, however, with the new Call Stabled Pet ability we'll be able to switch pets with relative ease.
Of course, that's just for starters; I'm sure there are as many possible combinations for specs as there are Hunters out there to use them, but this should serve as a solid jumping-off point. There are a ton of Hunter and Pet talent changes coming in patch 3.1 so for now, in the words of Blizzard, everything is "subject to change". We should have more information coming as new information is released from the PTR, including new Pet talents to spice up our bestiary. What two builds are you most looking forward to using when dual specs become available?
Let Scattered Shots help fill your every Hunter need with columns on everything from handling Your Pet to setting traps to speccing your Hunter for WotLK and choosing which Wrath reputation to grind. Also, don't miss our Hunter Wrath information roundup or BRK'S Wrath commentary and pet videos!Filed under: (Hunter) Scattered Shots, Hunter, Tips, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cleer Feb 26th 2009 5:13PM
You fail!
"This 5/14/52 build with 5/5 Hunting Party will give..."
5/5 hunting party should never be needed, when I raid I have it 2/5 and its pretty much up at all times.
Euripides Feb 27th 2009 12:54PM
This.
The uptime on replenishment given by the next point in hunting party is a fraction of the point before it.
Also, that spec (while popular) is wildly flawed. It doesn't take advantage of frost trap lock and loads, and it has two points in melee strikes.
I've posted the proper PvE raiding survival spec on my blog- http://outdps.wordpress.com/
Lichbane Feb 26th 2009 5:25PM
As I have limited funds on all my characters, I see little benefit to Dual Speccing my Hunter. It will ve of far more use on my Priest and Druid ..... and at 1K each, that will empty the bank.
Thander Feb 26th 2009 5:15PM
I think Blizzard's idea is for you to have one pet per spec, so it would be a simple visit to the stable to switch pets. I guess you could have problems if multiple specs share the same pet.
xBxKnoland | M Feb 26th 2009 5:21PM
Actually as of 3.1 hunters have a spell called "Call Stabled Pet" that will, well, call a stabled pet.
Flib Feb 26th 2009 5:17PM
For the Survival-Raiding/Survival-Mana Regen, Hunting Party is changing to a 3-point talent in 3.1, so this probably wouldnt be worth dual-speccing for as you have 2 talents free to play around with.
Chaosskull Feb 26th 2009 5:19PM
You Forgot somthing for raiding Marksmen Hunters =[
Mr Magoo Feb 27th 2009 3:31AM
ahahahahah...snort.
Raiding MM? snigger..snort...ahahahaAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
Gnosh Feb 26th 2009 5:21PM
This is kinda retro.
By which I mean the post is like 2 weeks late.
Aona Feb 26th 2009 5:24PM
Let us also not forget this article was about Dual Specs, and when they arrive, Hunting Party will not be a 5 point talent.
Kurai Feb 26th 2009 5:28PM
The pet specs on here though don't inflect the new pet talents. Which I have SS of here. http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newpettalents.jpg
Sorry none of them have their TPs in Dalaran kept crashing so I just had to take pictures of what I could in between crashes on the PTR.
elstor Feb 26th 2009 5:34PM
^ First to be donwrated
Falcio Feb 26th 2009 7:29PM
My personal dual spec will probably be BM and focusing on a Marksman build for raiding. My guild is working on a nice little Hunter synergy where we'll have the best of all 3 worlds. Considering the fact that I'm getting very nice results from it on the PTR testing dummy, I chose MM as the build to be. We'll have a Hunter that still enjoys the power of Survival as Survival with the Replenishment, and we'll have a BM with a Spirit Beast for that 3% damage increase.
We'll then start a rock band together.
Cleer Feb 26th 2009 5:44PM
@ Aona
"these builds are bound to change once the final touches are made to the patch 3.1 talent adjustments, but for now we'll work with what we've got just to get the ball rolling."
He was not talking about the speccs as how they would look after 3.1, but as how they would look now.
Read the whole article before posting please...
obarthelemy Feb 26th 2009 5:52PM
Regarding how many points to put in hunting party:
- let's assume you have 40% crit
- the mana regen bugg lasts 15 seconds, during which we fire at lest 8 shots
What are the chances of dropping the buff ?
We have 96% chance of the buff NOT dropping with just 1 point in Hunting Party:
- 33% chance of re-applying it per shot
- NOT reapplying it in 8 shots hence has a probability of 0.67 ^8 = 4%
To me, that enough, I'll put only 1 point in Hunting Party. Going 2 points lowers the probability to 0.33^8= essentially 0%, but 1 talent point is a lot for just 4% extra chance of the buff not dropping.
That's assuming we have enough haste to fire 8 shots in 15s, and assuming we keep firing during these 8s (no running around).
Hau Feb 26th 2009 6:20PM
with 1/5 HP and 60+% raid buffed crit rate on explosive, my replenishment regen for the raid sits between the SP and Ret pally.
Dch48 Feb 26th 2009 6:25PM
As a confirmed BM hunter, I have little or no interest in dual specs and I'm 99% sure I will never bother with it. For me, it 's the best all around for soloing,raiding, and PvP (never do arenas though). My trusty cat pet is always with me as well, I never have used different pets for different things.
Norcallights Feb 26th 2009 7:09PM
@Dch48:
I encourage you to play around with other specs, even if they all focus in the BM tree. There is a lot of customization to be had even within one tree! For example, you could have one spec that is for max DPS in a raid (which might work pretty well for PvP als0) and one spec that maximizes your pet's survivability for soloing. With a solid pet survivability spec, you should have no problems soloing most of the old-world raid bosses like Ony.
And as far as multiple pets, give that a go also. A tenacity pet (like a bear or gorilla) is great fun for soloing (or even tanking TBC instances!) and your cat is great for raid DPS and PvP.
Tharien Feb 26th 2009 7:06PM
I think dual spec options for pure DPS is f'ing r'tarded. Give them the DPS margin over hybrids and leave the dual specs for those with dissociative identity disorder.
I would rather just be able to raid effectivly as BM again FFS.
Norcallights Feb 26th 2009 7:14PM
I'm not sure why topping the DPS meters and having dual-specs are mutually exclusive... I mean it's not like they're giving pure DPS classes the ability to heal instances or anything.
Sounds like you've got two different issues in your head.