Heroic Spoils - Hunter PoV

I recorded last night's Heroic Spoils kill from SoO.  Then I tossed in a whole bunch of annotations that may help you.   Click, then make it full screen, and push it up to the glorious 1080p HD.  If you don't then I wasted time uploading. ;-)  Enjoy.

Kheldul on Episode 189 of the Hunting Party Podcast

I'm the big eye beholder guy.

Nice Immediate Changes for SV and MM

Hot off the presses!  Some very nice immediate changes for MM and SV.

• Hunter
  • Marksmanship
    • Chimera Shot's damage has been increased by 50%.
  • Survival
    • Explosive Shot's damage has been increased by 10%.

SV has been considerably lower for me.  Including "AoE fights" (e.g.- Galakras and Dark Shaman).   You'd think with the slimes that an unlimited AoE SV multishot would rule the charts.  It's not bad, but it's not like Tortos bats.  The ExS change is probably not enough to change things until we get into 4pc T16 set bonuses.  I may flip my second Specialization to a pet-tank setup just for the bars and what-not for a bit.

The Marksmanship change has been LONG overdue.  Again they probably need more but it's great to see attention there.  It's also very nice to see it in the right ability.


It's a great way to close out the second week of Siege.  Well in related news, our guild killed three new bosses tonight.  That brings us to 9/14 in normal.  We weren't planning on doing the last boss, Malkorok, but we cleared trash (there's a lot!) while one person watched a video.  I believe we got him on our second try, so I'd call him pretty damn easy.

Making Hunter Aspects Great in WoW 6.0

Current State
The current state of Hunter aspects is meager.  There is not a clear need for them.  We have our Hawk/Iron hawk attack aspect and we have travel aspects that are not normally of any use during PvE or PvP encounters.  We also have an aspect we can glyph for: Aspect of the Beast.  It would be a fairly simple matter to get rid of aspects; Hawk could be our default baked-in state and the remaining travel "aspects" could just be spells.  There isn't a need to toggle off Hawk while in a travel state.  This makes me sad.

History
In the past, we had other aspects which made choosing an aspect meaningful.  We had Aspect of the Fox.  We had Aspect of the Wild.  And long ago, we had Aspect of the Monkey.  Aspect of the Wild provided a large amount of Nature resistance as an aura and had a PvE use in about 1/5th of boss encounters.  Aspect of the Fox was short-lived.  It allowed for casting many cast time spells on the move and provided greater focus regen.  Aspect of the Fox wasn't successful as a design because people macro'd it into Steady Shot or Cobra Shot and then macro'd in a switch to Aspect of the Hawk before signature shots.  This was a predictable automated form of "aspect twisting" and not in any way desirable, so it was retired and SS/CS were redesigned.  Aspect of the Monkey was an early defensive CD hunters got long ago.  You could flip to Monkey mode and it greatly increased your Dodge percentage.

General Principles
I believe hunter aspects are an interesting part of being a hunter, but they should be meaningful again.  I believe aspects should allow a hunter to make a choice in their gameplay that doesn't require a re-spec or re-glyph, and which can be chosen while in combat.  I believe aspects shouldn't be something that is switched to often and should be a manual effort, such that they don't make sense to do within any form of rotation or regular activity.  Generally, I believe hunters should want to be in their normal Hawk aspect because when they are not, they should not be able to do as much damage.  Each hunter specialization should provide access to one unique aspect to increase specialization identity.  Glyphs affecting aspects should be changed.  Level 45 talents should be tailored to improve a particular aspect.  Only one aspect can be active at any time.  And finally to reduce aspect twisting, there should be a minimum three second cooldown on changing aspects.

Kheldul's New Hunter Aspect Dream Lineup
Hunter aspects can be great.  Below, I start with the basics and work my way up to the specialization-specific aspects.  Your comments and ideas are definitely welcome.

Aspect of the Pack
Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a pack of cheetahs, increasing movement speed by 30%. (No daze effect exists anymore.)  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Cheetah
Removed.  (A personal travel aspect is no longer required.)

Aspect of the Hawk
The hunter takes on the aspects of a hawk, increasing ranged attack power by 35%.  (Not being in this aspect will greatly diminish your damage output.) Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Prowl
The hunter takes on the aspects of a stealthy cat and becomes untrackable.  (Previously known as the rarely used Aspect of the Beast.)  Movement speed is reduced by 40%.  If the hunter is under the effects of Camouflage, their movement is in stealth. (Folds a Glyph-for-only ability into a situational ability.)  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Spirit
The hunter takes on the aspects of the natural interdependent web of life, increasing his and his pet's health regeneration by an additional 2% every 2 seconds.  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Protector
Party and raid members within 15 yards of the hunter take on the protective aspects of the turtle, reducing damage taken by 20% but also reducing movement speed by 40%. This aspect may be used until canceled, but has an activation cooldown of two minutes and imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Monkey
Available only to Survival hunters.  The hunter takes on the aspects of a monkey, reducing the cooldown of Counter Shot by 12 seconds, increasing agility by 10%, and increasing dodge by a total of 10%. (The agility increase should always be worse than the Aspect of the Hawk RAP increase, including when under most proc effects.)  Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Beast
Available only to Beast Mastery hunters.  The hunter loses themselves in their pet acting as one, taking on all aspects of the current pet, improving all forms of pet damage by 40%, and increasing run speed by 30%.  If the pet dies, the hunter is stunned for five seconds. (The hunter mounts the pet like a vehicle and controls all pet abilities similar to the old spell Eyes of the Beast.  Tenacity pet abilities like Taunt should work on bosses.) Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Eagle
Available only to Marksmanship hunters. The hunter takes on the aspects of an eagle, increasing ranged attack power by 50% but increasing all damage taken by 10%. (A glass cannon that will irritate theory-crafters.) Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Comments and ideas welcome!

Gearing Up Pet Tanking Sets

I re-did the video with much better audio this time.  Click thru for HD and better proportions.

Frenzy Appears Broken

BM Hunters,

I don't have scientific data to understand exactly what is going on here.  But I do see that Frenzy buffs are not happening hardly at all.

I did Durumu Normal 10man last night (5.3) and on Monday (5.2). I always try to do it as BM.   I went from 66 frenzy stacks in 5.2 to SEVEN frenzy stacks in 5.3.  Details below.

On Monday my pet had 163 melee attacks and 72 bite attacks.  I was using a boar.  The fight lasted 8m39sec.  This resulted in 66 frenzy buffs with a total uptime of 89.3%.  I hit focus fire 10 times and got 270 focus total.  This is pretty good.

Last night, my pet had 155 melee attacks and only 8 claw attacks.  I was using a spirit beast. The fight lasted 7m27sec.  This resulted in only 7 frenzy buffs with a total uptime of 13.6%.  One time I saw it stack to two and hit focus fire (once) and got back 12 focus.  Once.

Yes, I had a few variables different in the fight.  Different pet.  Different raid (3 heals vs 2 heals).  But both pets had full autocasts on except for Growl.  I had the same talent choices.  aMoCs and Glaive Toss.  So no Dire Beast(s) talents were in play.  I also spent 3k valor on upgrading gear.  I reforged and stayed hit and expertise capped.

Monday's 5.2 worldoflogs.
Wednesday's 5.3 worldoflogs.

I've added to a Blizzard bug thread on the issue.  Check your logs!

BM Hunter's AoE Future - Maximizing Beast Cleave Damage

Current State of the Union
In MoP 5.2, we have one big AoE choice with a few small variations.  You run as a Survival Hunter.  You lay down Multishots and get Serpent Spread.  You drop an Explosive Trap.  If you're rigged for AoE, you run with Thrill of the Hunt and slam those multishots in and toss in Barrage fire.  You also toss in free LnL ExShot procs.  If you are BM you do what you can, but you don't see the enemy health bars drop very fast.


BM's AoE Future
It is very likely that BM will have it's AoE buffed in MoP 5.3.  The big buff is coming from an increase to Beast Cleave damage.  It's going from a +30% to a +75% damage application.  This isn't going to require BM to have special builds to better AoE.  But you will want to do things a little better to maximize your AoE damage.

Maximizing BM Beast Cleave Damage

1. Beast Cleave is a buff put on your pet that is short lived.  Have a timer bar to see that buff duration!  I recommend a NeedToKnow.
2. Don't let the buff drop!  Multi-shot starts the buff.  Ensure that you have enough focus to multi-shot again so you can keep the buff up on your pet.
3. Make sure to have your pet in range of the AoE mobs!  The redesigned Blink Strikes may help squeak out a bit less travel time.
4. If you read the tooltips, Beast Cleave's damage makes the " pet's melee attacks also strike all other nearby enemy targets for 30% as much".  Soon that will be 75%.  So I currently pop Bestial Wrath to boost the pet damage by +20%.  DISCLAIMER: I don't know if this is applied only once to the pet's melee attacks or if it double-dips and is applied to the melee attacks and the bonus cleave attacks, or if it is applied to neither.  I've looked but only spent about twenty minutes trying to determine the benefit or non.  I'll need to be much more scientific and do it without any equipment that can proc with a nice quiet target dummy cluster. 
5. In addition to macroing in Bestial Wrath with my BM's MultiShot, I also have it engage the enemy, send in my pet so it doesn't want to smack something else for a second or two, and kick off Rabid if it's off CD.  I also have it not complain noisily.

#showtooltip Multi-Shot
/startattack
/petattack
/petassist
/cast Multi-Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Rabid
/cast Bestial Wrath
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1

What Else Can BM Do for AoE?

1. Remember to drop the explosive trap.
2. Line up a nice barrage or glaive attack.
3. If you have a DPS worm, you might experiment with burrow.
4. Use Focus Fire conservatively as it drains your pet's Frenzy stacks. 

Eager Cleaver

I saw a fair number of requests for it in the official feedback thread.  I made my case here and requested it somewhere in the 100+ pages in the thread.  I think it's been pretty universally requested.  And GC is making something happen:

Beast Cleave - damage increased from 30% to 50% of original damage.

The Beast Cleave change was because we felt Survival's multi-target damage was too far ahead. We don't mind good AE as a spec niche, but it shouldn't be so high that you feel like an absolute idiot for not swapping to that spec.

I'm not sure I'm happy with the number -- as it seems a bit low -- but I am happy with the sentiment.  We've certainly seen very rough numbers thrown around before.  MM and SV buffs were stated at nice high round numbers and then got cleaved down ... to lower very round numbers.  The "50% of original damage" value sounds incredibly round and subject to change.  We'll have to see which way it goes.  If it goes up then we will not be compelled to have an SV spec.  If it goes down or isn't a noticeable change to our AoE capability, then we may feel that is a requirement.  Beast cleave is one source of our AoE damage, but hardly all.  So a +20% to it may not be meaningful.

FWIW, I either have my alternate talent as either a pet-tank setup or a PvP setup.  I haven't done too much with either since MoP, but I am starting to line up a pet-tank suit.  On many somewhat challenging boss fights I'm swapping talents or glyphs -- but never specs.

The Rise of MM & SV and the Decline of BM

Very very interesting PTR hunter buffs close to release.  Marksman is getting a ton of love.  Overall, I'm pretty excited to see these changes.  It's been a while since I played MM.  It may be what it needs to get back in the playlist:

- Aimed Shot damage +10%.
- Chimera Shot damage +50%.
- Steady Shot damage +20%.

I am a little concerned.  The issue I have is that these numbers look extremely round.  That means lots of changes ahead -- probably as hotfix nerfs since they wouldn't hotfix buff other specs/classes.  Steady Shot is just a straight-up win.  Chimera as well.  But Aimed Shot is still a bit of a puzzler;  It isn't clear if just +10% damage turns it into a win or not -- over say Arcane Shots.

Of course nothing for BM.  No spill-over buffing of Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot or the signature KC/BW.  But Survival is also getting some extra love for [mostly!] single target: 

- Black Arrow damage +15%.
- Explosive Shot damage +15%.

So where do I get off calling the "Decline of BM"?  Sure perhaps there's some hyperbole there.  But consider: if MM and SV are looking to be made on equal footing as BM for single target damage then BM will be behind overall -- as it lags on AoE fights.  I'd suggest that perhaps BM could get a Beast Cleave buff as BM AoE is anemic.  BM is an important role for 10man guilds as we can bring most every buff and debuff.

And it's also mentioned by GC that Power Shot is wonked in PvP.  I'm thinking the following may be in regards to stuff like what Braindeadly shows on YouTube.

- Hearing lots of concerns about Power Shot in PvP, so we may need a PvP-specific tweak there.

Picking the Best DoTm Up Approach

With the recent hotfix buff(*) to Serpent Sting (SrS) I'm considering what to change to best take advantage of this.

I have three thoughts on this so far.  If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.

1) Do nothing and enjoy a small lift in damage.

2) Go back to SV.  This might be harder to stomach than I originally intended once I flipped to BM.  I really like the ability to spirit mend myself and my pet.  That said, Serpent Spread would be quite attractive on some fights especially if (and only if!) it is close to BM on single targets.

3) Make a mouse-over SrS macro.  I'm thinking this would need to be a different key instead of a target/mouseover multi-type macro.  I use my mouse a lot and wouldn't want to accidentally SrS a random mob while the other part of my brain is doing a normal opening rotation on a mob!  Unfortunately, like most BM hunters, I'm a bit loaded on keys and keybinds.  I have F1-4 almost as finger twitches for disengage, fetch, spirit mend (me), and tranq.  I have 1-9,0,-,+ all full.  I also have 'r' for arcane shot and 't' as an ingrained twitch for interrupting.  I already feel full as far as buttons go, so I'm thinking of looking at special mouse buttons and mouse-over.  I could give up fetch, but it is pretty damn handy.  A mouse-bind seems logical.  I probably should have it for other things as well (i.e.- fear beast, tranq, spirit mend, master's call).  Unfortunately, I have an over-sized ergo mouse(**) without a lot of button options.

No matter which routes we chose, we will all want to make sure our enemy health bars show SrS in some easy to consume way so we can keep the stings up.


(*) - "Serpent Sting’s damage has been increased by 100%, and its cost has been reduced to 15 Focus (was 25)."  Th ere is also a normalization for SV's ISrS but it looks like Serpent Spread is still good.

(**) - Moderate to severe carpal tunnel in both wrists will put you on that path.

Hunters are Healers Too

Updated for Mists of Pandaria here.

Spirit Mend is a nice little spirit beast heal with an Achilles heal.  It has a 28 second cooldown.  An anonymous commentator suggested chaining those pet heals by using multiple pets.  I spent a few days off and on checking and Kheldul now has five spirit beasts.  Spirit mend is based on ranged attack power (RAP) and he has about twenty-three thousand RAP.  This lets him get up to about 4,800 HPS.

It took me about half an hour to get a nice elegant macro that accomplishes what we would need to make a mediocre healer.  It uses mouseover macros for the heals.  This mirrors how I work on my healer alt.  Use raid frames and hover over a name and click the macro button.  You'll want to start out with your first pet already out (and attacking!).  Adjust the castsequence for the number of spirit beasts you have and which stable slot they're in.

#showtooltip
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/petattack
/cast [@mouseover, pet][pet] Spirit Mend
/cast [pet] Dismiss Pet
/castsequence Call Pet 2, Call Pet 3, Call Pet 4, Call Pet 5, Call Pet 1
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I was stoked enough about this to grab the demo version of Fraps and ffmpeg -- made a movie clip.  Unfortunately my mic died a week ago and hasn't been replaced.  Otherwise, I would have been more motivated and gotten the pay-for-version of Fraps...  In any case, I hope you enjoy.  The video is when I only had four spirit beasts and it has been noted that I was suffering from a bug.  (Details below.)

In the above video I cycle through the pets pretty quick.  There is a drawback that hits a Blizzard bug; Like a pet's stamina, the pet doesn't inherit the hunter's RAP immediately.  If you wait until the pet has full health and then hit the heal you will get a much bigger heal.  The problem is that it's not a fixed amount of time for the pet to inherit the hunter's stats.  It can be 80ms, 500ms, or even two seconds.

If you have five spirit beasts and you pause a little bit while waiting for your pets stats to snap in you can pretty much cycle through all five pets without needing to wait for the 28 second CD to return.

You can check the numbers I ran on spirit mend with five spirit beasts for healing hunters with spirit bond and for non-hunters.  It shows a hunter with 23,000 RAP can sustain around 4,800 HPS on a non-hunter and about 10% more for a hunter with the spirit bond buff.

Chain Spirit Mending

I did some more work and have amended all my previous remarks.
Here's the new story.
Here's the update for Mists of Pandaria.

Spirit Mend

Updated for Mists of Pandaria here.

Because of talk of a cross-realm all-hunter raid, I started asking myself, "How good is Spirit Mend?"  I have four of the exotic spirit beasts that provide that pet ability, so I did some experimentation.

First off some basics.  I had my normal raiding gear on without any buffs.  I was of course BM-talented so there are a few tweaks there.  Most notably the BM bonus of Animal Handler, the BM-only talent of Longevity and the trans-tree mandatory talent of One With Nature.  This gives me 22,771 Ranged Attack Power (RAP) and makes the cooldown of spirit mend 28 seconds. The formula for Spirit Mend is:

(1237 + ((RAP * 0.35) * 0.5)) plus an additional (475 + ((RAP * 0.35) * 0.335))

So filling in for 22,771 RAP we get:

5,222 plus 3,145.

Now of course I did some practical tests.  Those tests demonstrate that I am missing a few components and that I don't understand HoTs.

I consistently got more than the initial 5,222 heal on random people in the city.  (Specifically, not me or my pet.)  I got 6735, 6469, 7200, and 6546.  They are around 30% better than expected. The only thing that I can think of is that the RAP shown on the character sheet doesn't include Animal Handler or One With Nature, or they are double-dipping somehow.

The HoTs I got were 4159, 3945, 4436, and 4033.  Again more than expected.  What I don't quite understand is that those numbers are per tick and it ticks every 2 seconds for ten seconds.  So five applications of a 4K+ HoT.

I was able to go a bit nuts.  If I popped an agility trinket (worth +2290 agility) and cast it on myself (with the healing talent buff Spirit Bond, I got a nice crit for 14402 + (4435 x5).  The initial heal appears to be a crit and the HoT is not.

When I added in roar (+549 agility) on top of casting it on myself, and popping a long CD trinket I got two decent numbers and a crit (exactly double one of the values):

18028 + 5650x5
7552 + 4671x5
9014 + 5650x5

In the best of circumstances and pulling all the plugs, Hunters have very very weak heals.  If the heal is applied to a pet-tanker pet they'll get +10% from Spirit Bond and +40% from Blood of the Rhino.  Those are nice bonuses and mixed with Mend Pet will keep a pet-tank up for a nice long time.  The problem is that a Spirit Mender will only kick out those heals once every 28 seconds.  So they will usually be on the pet-tank or themselves.  The rest of an all-hunter raid will need to be self-sufficient with Marksman self-heals.  A 6.5K heal with a 4K 5 tick HoT every 28 seconds will not be helping much at all on a raid-damage fight.

Tame Beast

Tame Beast is how hunter get new pets.  The channel time is ten seconds.  This is the challenging part and it's what makes some pets challenging to acquire.

In theory it could be used as a [bad] form of CC.  Yes, let me state that again with more specifics.  Before a pull a hunter could not have an active pet out and could have a spare stable slot.  If one of the mobs was a beast, she could in theory tame it and use it like a normal pet.  The issue of course is that Tame Beast doesn't work like CC.  The start of the very long channel initiates combat.  That channel is broken from any damage.  It is also broken if the pet focuses its attacks on someone else.

So in theory, a hunter could start a tame, lead it to a trap and then once tamed, use it to finish off the other mobs. (Or immediately dismiss it.)  The problem is that this theoretical and not

Let's pause for a moment and think about heroes from movies who were "hunters" or "beast masters".  They could soothe pets to sleep.  They could exert mental control over beasts and get them to do things.  They didn't simply tame one and "train" it or "tame" it and keep it forever.

Priests can Mind Control humanoids.  Druids can Hibernate Beasts and Dragonkin.

Hunters need a Control Beast ability.  What should it look like?

Hunter 4.3 PTR Buff

For Beast-Mastery:

Focus Fire is going to last 20 seconds instead of just 15 seconds. I would guess that the CD also becomes 20 seconds. Yes, a longer buff is nice. But it says one thing to me: BM hunters were blowing it as soon as it was available and not trying to get more stacks of Frenzy. So now BMs have more time for additional Frenzy stacks to pile up. When they get a large stack they should blow other CDs to multiply the effect. So yes, this is an easy buff, but in the right hands and care it could be used as a larger buff.

I've always felt there was more to be gained there.  But I couldn't see how to squeeze it much more without adding a huge amount of complexity.  This was greatly reinforced when Kripparrian said that he just macro'd them into all his shots when he did Heroic Rag in a BM spec.  (So he just got whatever stacks he got every 15 seconds.)  Of course that's about as top-line raid awareness as it gets, so over-complex application of abilities isn't that desirable.

For Survival:

T.N.T is going to proc much more of the time. It will go from a 12% chance to 20% chance. That's a beautiful thing for improving single target DPS.

It will fix the issue with just waiting and waiting for abilities to come off CD.  And it might even help some of the focus starvation.  It will certainly give SV hunters a little more to think about in balancing out their attacks and ensuring the DoTs keep being applied.

Pet Tanking Ideas

Eidotrope over at outdps.com suggests a number of ways to make hunter pet tanking a viable tanking option.  I do truly like the notion of pet tanking.  I have a mostly 378 item level pet tanking set gemmed and enchanted for mostly stamina for raid tanking.  But pet tanking is in a sad state.

One of my main concerns is that one tree would become a tanking tree.  This seems like a wrong move.  It would inevitably be the beast master tree, and I don't think that is a perfect match.

I would more envision it as another hunter aspect that works along the line of other class stances -- and with a redesigned Tenacity tree.  e.g.-

Aspect of the Beast (redesigned) is a hunter aspect that can be used with a tenacity pet.  When activated, it switches your bars, and has the character "ride" the pet.  All tenacity pet abilities are still possible through direct control.  In this aspect, the hunter is completely focused on controlling the pet and  takes no direct actions.  Because the hunter is not firing his weapon they are able to much more actively handle their pet; They help the pet cause more damage and threat with a better understanding of their opponent's weaknesses and they help the pet avoid a substantial amount of damage similar to druids.

Some pet abilities that are currently from pet talents would need to become baseline pet abilities.  Other abilities would need to be strengthened for proper tanking and boss tanking.

Which Hunter Spec Is Best? (OMFG!)

Despite my inner voice yelling, "OMFG! Don't go there!" I'm feeling the need to "help".  Sure you wouldn't want to "help" a random stranger and suggest things they should be doing in a 5man or PUG raid.  It won't be taken constructively.  My rational side however is telling me that people visiting a site called "Hunter DPS" want to know these things.

The below graphs show the average DPS of hunters of a given talent tree over the course of the last 180 days.  The data comes from all the public combat logs uploaded to worldoflogs.com and is parsed and prepared by raidbots.  This data is from all raid bosses.  DPS increases as gear increases over time. The graphs are a breakdown by raid size.

I include the 10-man and 25-man raid data here.  I'm excluding all the heroic raids.  There isn't enough data there to be fair to beast mastery.  And for the most part, heroic raiders have already leveraged information like this and skew the scales.



In the 10-man normal raid DPS chart we can see that all the specs were very competitive with each other in patch 4.0.x and 4.1.x.  But then 4.2 happened.  MM and SV received nice benefits from 4.2 in talents and gear.  BM continued to plug away on its previous course without much benefit.



When looked at in 25-man normal raids, we see a different picture.  SV appears to be at the same level it is in 10-man normal raids.  It appears to receive no significant synergy benefit from being in a larger raid with every buff covered.  BM however does benefit significantly more in 25-man.  But far and away MM leaps to new heights.

Then I looked at what T12 fights MM is not top dog.  I was surprised.  MM is top on every fight even the AoE-heavy ones like Beth'tilac and Lord Rhyolith.  10-man or 25-man ... it doesn't matter.  Mind you, SV is close and very much able to top a particular MM hunter, but the majority of MM hunters do better than the majority of SV hunters in the parses.

Then I looked at the main stand-and-fight boss, Baleroc.  SV hunters are doing about 4k DPS higher than BM hunters.  And MM hunters are doing about 4k DPS higher than SV hunters there:

			31,844.5
			27,329.0
			23,379.5

Take Aways

1. It was true that BM, SV, and MM were all quite close in damage dealing back in the end of June.  
2. Since July, taken as a whole, MM hunters are topping SV and BM.  Often by a lot.
3. MM hunters can pump out enough AoE damage to top SV hunters on AoE-heavy fights.
4. If you're looking at spending time with a target dummy, you might try swapping out one of your talent trees and try MM.
5. But as always, you should always play what you know best and feel best playing. On normal fights, the boss is going to die if everyone is playing well and you are doing reasonable damage.

Beastmastery in 4.0.6 Post-Hotfix

I show BM as vastly more potent than it was.  I also show it besting SV by a small margin (without factoring in AoE).

BM is Too Fun

I fully plan to keep BM as one of my talent trees.  The pets are just too damn fun.  The issue is that I'm doing far less DPS with them.

I'm often using my Ghost Worm, "Tequila Shock".  I don't even need to use Misdirect with him.  He's got two AoE abilities.  And between Kill Command, Growl, and his Acid Spit he generates great single target threat.  Add in the on-demand never-on-cooldown Misdirect-to-pet glyph and they are pretty amazing.

I also got back Fluffy, my Molten Core core hound who can now do Heroism.

I picked up three of the four different devilsaurs, each with a unique smile.  I tell the kids that somehow I found Chuckles again.

I have the cat and bear spirit beasts and I love their ability to toss out heals.  But wow are the spirit beast spawn points camped!

I still have my handsome wolf.  And my Ghost Hydra, Malcolm.  And my silver fur, green-eyed gorilla, Jason.  And Flash, my hyper-resilient turtle.

To round out my "ghost pet" theme, I got my "Ghost Cat".

Looking at all those pets, only a third of them are usable if I'm MM or SV.  These days you can use a different pet between each pull.  I guess I just need to work on doing more DPS as BM ... and layoff the tenacity pets.  They're just too fun.