Can survival actually outDPS MM?

[Aslan]

This is not true at all

Facts: Hunters are needed to tranq. Most guilds feature a hunter per melee group in their raids, simply because 100AP is a lot at low-tier content and therefore not really worth throwing out for an additional dps and switch a hunter alt in to tranq and then back out for the other bosses. For now hunters do solid dps but time will come when switching to hunter alts might be the most optimised and tryhard method, unless you happen to have godlike hunters and mediocre melee.

Now its commonly assumed that survival hunter cant bring more raid-dps than TSA on 3 or 4 melee depending on faction, and tsa for your own pet and MM dps combined. Hence the burden of proof lies upon your shoulders who claims otherwise. Id like to see the math and how wide the gap is... Always talking about raid dps, I couldnt care less about personal dps when raid dps goes down

[Zarant]

Survival is not a thing. Even in the best possible T3 gear setup with full consumes and world buffs, and even leaching someone else's TSA (lol), you will never out dps a PvE specced Marks hunter. There simply doesn't exist an attainable break-even point where LR and KI is enough to make up for losing TSA, RWS, Barrage, iAoTH, Unleashed Fury and Ferocity.

This is not true at all

Yes it is. I don't know what kind of math people did to get that 450 agility treshold, but its not accurate at all, the agility treshold is way too high to be attainable with any kind of gear.

[Zecov]

Survival is not a thing. Even in the best possible T3 gear setup with full consumes and world buffs, and even leaching someone else's TSA (lol), you will never out dps a PvE specced Marks hunter. There simply doesn't exist an attainable break-even point where LR and KI is enough to make up for losing TSA, RWS, Barrage, iAoTH, Unleashed Fury and Ferocity.

This. Pet dmg and Hawk procs are too strong for survival to ever compete with. Not even having a Feral for 3% crit and an Agility totem can make up for it

[Bravethestone]

What's the difference in DPS in Naxx runs between a MM vs Survival hunter?

For hunters that enjoy PvPing as Survival, whats the difference in raid efficiency if he specs MM/BM vs full Survival? Is 100AP for melee that big of a deal? Will bosses die that much faster - enough so to give MM hunters first dibs on raid slots when filling the 2 - 3 slots designated for hunters needed to tranqshot (and to put hunter loot to use)? Otherwise the hunter that wants to PvP has to either PvP as MM/BM raid spec or suck it up and pay for respecs in order to PvP as Survival spec.

I guess guilds become more elitist and spec discriminating going from BWL -> AQ40 -> Naxx? I've raided through most of AQ40 and a bit of Naxx with full Survival wearing full T2/Ashj and my DPS wasn't horrid, but I'm guessing some of our DPSers werent that exceptional or ideally geared enough to make my DPS look insignificant. This was all on a low pop server so less competition.

For a class that scales so poorly at DPS at higher level raid content is it really worth trying to optimize DPS speccing a way you don't enjoy for just PvE viability / e-peen glory? If not for tranqshot we would be replaced anyways! The respec costs would get ridiculous if you did it on a weekly basis while raiding Naxx to get full T3 and T3 weapon.

If Naxx is the end game whats the point of making players that enjoy PvP miserable for the sake of optimizing their damage a little more by pigeonholing them into a spec they hate? If that were the case I would get my gear and quit raiding after and have no loyalty to raiding. Just some questions. I realize raiding requires we all have to sacrifice to get the best gear and the other DPS classes have the same concern. They could probably out DPS us in their preferred PvP spec vs hunters raid speced, hah.

[Zarant]

Damage dealing is all about crunching numbers, you do the math and you figure out which spec does more damage.
You can still kill raid bosses as survival anyway, some people are okay with that, but if you care about doing the most damage as you possibly can in a raid environment you should never spec into a LR build.

[Irachkom]

The question is when +15% agi become better than +5% dmg...
On practice at full naxx BiS agi gear Surv still worse than 20-31-0.

Leave Surv spec for PvP or naked hunters(to get 3% hit)

P.S. while raid fully buffed, T3 geared hunter with pet can deal DPS compaired to good rogue dps(~1100-1200 dps) =)

[Bravethestone]

P.S. while raid fully buffed, T3 geared hunter with pet can deal DPS compaired to good rogue dps(~1100-1200 dps) =)

Interesting

I guess I'm just questioning whether the DPS difference is worth raid leaders being nazi over.

[Irachkom]

P.S. while raid fully buffed, T3 geared hunter with pet can deal DPS compaired to good rogue dps(~1100-1200 dps) =)

Interesting

I guess I'm just questioning whether the DPS difference is worth raid leaders being nazi over.

But hunters can deal such good dps only with pet =)
So its only for few bosses.

[Boaris]

Survival is not a thing. Even in the best possible T3 gear setup with full consumes and world buffs, and even leaching someone else's TSA (lol), you will never out dps a PvE specced Marks hunter. There simply doesn't exist an attainable break-even point where LR and KI is enough to make up for losing TSA, RWS, Barrage, iAoTH, Unleashed Fury and Ferocity.

This is not true at all

Yes it is. I don't know what kind of math people did to get that 450 agility treshold, but its not accurate at all, the agility treshold is way too high to be attainable with any kind of gear.

This Math is easy, especially if you are only comparing TSA vs LR for the raw AP gain.

Facts:
TSA Rank 3 gives 100 AP.
1 Agility gives 2 AP.

So just from this, Lightning Reflexes would have to grant 50 agility just to be considered on par with TSA. Which makes this equation

x * .15=50

Where the value of x is the minimum amount of agility that is needed to gain >100AP.

333 * .15 = 50

Meaning LR would be considered equal to TSA when the Hunter has 333 agility or greater.

Now this doesn't consider other MM/BM talents; Ferocity, RWS, IAH,, UF, and a full Barrage. Or the Surv talents; MS, HS, Surefooted and Killer Instinct, all of which represent formula that is both in favour and against MM/BM and SV/MM specs. But to simply say the agility threshold is not attainable is not accurate at all. It easily is, and there is a lot of math posted out there that supports both specs in circumstantial situations. Many of which fall back to raid comp and if the pet is self sustained.

I personally raid MM not because it is the best DPS choice, but because it is the better choice for what we bring to a raid. Given the opportunity to have grace of air, mana spring, leader of the pack, tsa already provided. I could easily make the case that Survival would be the higher DPS spec .

Keep in mind the questions was never, "Which is better to raid with?". It was, "Can survival out DPS MM?"

[Cornholi]

With BIS everything, according to my spreadsheet, MM(20/31/0) clocks in at ~847 dps. That is of course without Imp AOTH, Ferocity, Unleased Fury, and pet dps.

And Surv(0/21/30) clocks in at ~892 dps without pet dps.