Sweathog wrote:
ANY spec of hunter will do all they can to keep pet up, it is still a significant DOT on the boss. EZ mode BM dps is dead, L2survival or you are not doing everything you can for your raid.
This is true if dps is all you consider 'doing your best' for the Raid. It's a rather monolithic approach to the game and what it means to play it.
I would say in complete truth that if your Raid group regularly 'just barely' kills the Boss before you wipe, then the statement fully applies. You need every spec of dps you can muster to down that Boss. That is, of course, assuming you can play one spec as well as another.
If you are blowing the Boss away with a ho-hum, "what's next" regularity, then the difference of DPS between any Hunter spec will be mostly irrelevant because even now it's not THAT large. DPS at that point is more of a matter of e-peen pride. "Darn, I wasn't #1 on the Damage meter but #3"...
A well built, well played BM hunter should be as good or better than some other DPS "classes" out there, and can still out dps a mediocre played SV hunter so spec isn't everything.
Hunter is still a great dps class but it's not the only thing we do. I feel we've become pidgeon-holed into that 'thought' process because of the monolithic approach to the game. The mini-maxxers seem to be dominating the debate at this point and because of that, it appears actual game enjoyment for some players is suffering because of the stress to perform to the maximum and have the numbers to prove it. It causes some elitism issues that actually hurt the game a bit from what I can see. We've witnessed this 'argument' here in this forum from time to time and the Admins have slapped us for it as well.
In my opinion, the Hunter should be one of the preminent classes but due to 'huntardism' and 'elitism' (opposite ends of the spectrum there) we can end up being mocked a great deal of the time by others, no matter how 'good' we are. "It's too easy to be a Hunter.", "You guys are all Huntards.", "Your pet wipes Raids!"... on and on ad nauseum, we've all heard it.
I personally would like to see all 3 specs within 3% of each other in dps damage (doing it different ways) and specializing in different kinds of 'other' things they bring to a Raid or Instance. At that difference, it would be far easier to have Raids not only look at what they can afford to bring along, but actively seek different spec Hunters to cover certain situations that arise in a Raid. Then spec would be almost irrelevant and player ability would shine more.
Edited, Jan 29th 2009 5:04pm by sloshot