Sir Lucius
Veteran XX
Beast spec will be fine in the expansion. There's still 10 levels to grind, and there probably won't be a single thing more powerful than beast for leveling. I mean shit, abilities like animal handler are like a tractor upgrade for the farmer.
Were I to go beast spec, I would do a 46/15/0 build. Some things to keep in mind. Improved hunters mark is like giving your pet a trueshot aura. Focused fire and ferocious inspiration (or humanoid slaying, if that's your thing) will give the same benifit as ranged weapon specialization. Serpent swiftness will give a 20% boost to white dps. Compare this to master marksman on a 1000 AP hunter (weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee theory crafting time!).
71 base DPS (rap/14), 86 Beast DPS (base dps * 1.2), 78 marks DPS (1000 * 1.1 / 14). This follows what's been said in beta about beast having a higher listed dps than marks builds (source). Of course that doesn't mean the real dps will be higher, because a great majority of the hunter dps comes from the improved abilities in the marks tree (mainly massive critical hits off multishot). But the point is, beast mastery has ways to compensate for the fact that its damage is weak. Much in the same way survival uses a higher crit rate to compensate for its weakness, beast mastery uses higher white dps instead.
But you must also consider orange damage. The reason you're going into beast in the first place is so your pet can hit harder. We can no longer say pets will be outgeared, since they scale, and no matter what they will always be weaker than an actual player of equal level. But if we use them like we should, a distraction to stay at range we can back them up, and combine our lower damages to create steady dps. Currently my hunter is beast specced. I did it as a joke, but ended up really liking it even though I had gear to support a marks spec. I think of my pet as a steady dot, and as long as I can stay out of range of what ever's going after me, I end up doing damage the entire time. This played well into my node defense, where my objective was never to kill the enemy, but only to keep them from capping.
Were I to go beast spec, I would do a 46/15/0 build. Some things to keep in mind. Improved hunters mark is like giving your pet a trueshot aura. Focused fire and ferocious inspiration (or humanoid slaying, if that's your thing) will give the same benifit as ranged weapon specialization. Serpent swiftness will give a 20% boost to white dps. Compare this to master marksman on a 1000 AP hunter (weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee theory crafting time!).
71 base DPS (rap/14), 86 Beast DPS (base dps * 1.2), 78 marks DPS (1000 * 1.1 / 14). This follows what's been said in beta about beast having a higher listed dps than marks builds (source). Of course that doesn't mean the real dps will be higher, because a great majority of the hunter dps comes from the improved abilities in the marks tree (mainly massive critical hits off multishot). But the point is, beast mastery has ways to compensate for the fact that its damage is weak. Much in the same way survival uses a higher crit rate to compensate for its weakness, beast mastery uses higher white dps instead.
But you must also consider orange damage. The reason you're going into beast in the first place is so your pet can hit harder. We can no longer say pets will be outgeared, since they scale, and no matter what they will always be weaker than an actual player of equal level. But if we use them like we should, a distraction to stay at range we can back them up, and combine our lower damages to create steady dps. Currently my hunter is beast specced. I did it as a joke, but ended up really liking it even though I had gear to support a marks spec. I think of my pet as a steady dot, and as long as I can stay out of range of what ever's going after me, I end up doing damage the entire time. This played well into my node defense, where my objective was never to kill the enemy, but only to keep them from capping.
