Make sure that your 3% buff to the group is more of a DPS gain than you sitting at the bottom of the meters.

Example
If you give everyone else 500DPS, that's 2000DPS (4 other DPSers, 2 tanks, 3 healers, and you) for the other DPSers, so if yours is lower than 2k of MM/Surv, it's not worth doing.

@Twill

Like I said, I'm not lagging behind by much, and whether it's because I'm really good or they're not as good, we all tend to be pretty neck-and-neck on the meters, including a warlock with Dragonwrath. Wow, that sentence was long. I guess my point is that I go BM to make sure every possible buff is covered and I still play it with enough skill that I'm not a complete detriment to the raid. Not to mention the Raid Leader likes me, my best friend is the Healing Lead, and I'm not an Elemental Shaman, so I have those three points working in my favor.

Just recently, my guild was doing a fresh clear of DS, hoping that the momentum would allow us to down Spine of Deathwing on 10N as well as get some gear for everybody. Right from the start, I knew that the raid was missing Heroism/Time Warp/Ancient Hysteria because of my addon Raid Checklist (this is rare because one of the other core raiders is a shaman, but they couldn't make it that day). Some of the other raiders wanted me to switch to BM but since I had never, ever played BM before in my 3 years of playing WoW, I had no clue what I should do. Plus, I would have to research what spec and glyphs I should have, my rotation, and I'd need to tame a Corehound. Seeing as the raid was already starting later than scheduled, the raid leader decided that the gain of Ancient Hysteria wouldn't outweigh the loss (effectively) of one of their top DPS. We cleared all the way from Morchok to Ultraxion easily. So what I want to ask my fellow hunters here is what I should do to prepare for a similar situation? Should I switch my offspec (MM for PvP) to BM, even though the guild is preparing to start a RBG team? Or should I just stick to SV and hope that our shaman shows up?

@Harvoc:

Head for WHU, learn BM. Practice it on the dummies in your off time and in heroics until you feel you're competent at it. Go get a core hound, stick it in your stable, and go back to your PvP off spec.

Since it's a rarity that your shaman is gone, just being able to flip and do alright should serve your raid just as well as maintaining a BM off spec and giving up your pvp spec.

If you go all out on respecs and include reforging, I'd get ReforgeLite or some other reforging addon and let it handle that aspect of it for you. No thinking from you once you get the addon set up. In the case of ReforgeLite it's 5 mouse clicks to reforge all your gear exactly how you want it for each spec.

@Harvoc: Learning BM will help with your raid! Knowing a little more helps specially if there are times when you miss so important buff as BL. I had to go in BM too at the start of FL as we didn't have any mage, shaman in our 10 man group. I always had to switch talents for PVE and I always had 4 specs for game (MM PVP, MM PVE, MM AOE, BM) switching when raiding or killing trash ... It takes some time but it's worth it. Specially for helping other 9 men to kill another boss. You can always then respec to MM PVP after raid :)

@Arrowsmith: BM is in a competitive place right now. It probably can't top SV, but MM generally won't either until you at least get the ilvl 403 bow from Madness. However, if you go BM and use a cunning pet for a specific buff, the damage you lose over a ferocity pet will probably outweigh the benefit to the raid. BM pretty much requires a ferocity pet.

@Harvoc: In your spare time, set up a BM spec/glyphs, set up your buttons, and practice on the dummy until it feels ok. Grab whatever exotic pets you want and to keep in your stable for quick switches. Go do a raid finder run and embarrass some MM hunters who still think it is the "best" spec even though their gear doesn't support it. Once you're at least comfortable with BM, you can switch in a few minutes if needed by your raid. If you like the play style, you may even play it when you don't have to. If you have good pet management, there aren't even any fights I can think of in this tier where you're at a severe disadvantage by playing BM.


BM is all about cooldown management. I personally don't like it as much, it feels a lot more random than the smoothness of SV or MM. Just like 60K+ aimed and chimera shot crits feel good, seeing your pet knock off a 50k+ kill command is nice, especially when Killing Streak lights up your Kill Command button and you know you'll get a crit.

If you set your gear up for a low haste (1250-1500) arcane shot focus dump MM build, you'll be able to run well as SV, MM, or BM. The secondary stats don't have drastically different values anyway, so reforging for anything beyond the hit cap is almost irrelevant unless you're trying to hit a particular haste point.