...and *gasp* survival.
My true hunter roots go back to Marks. When 1 agi = 2 rap, MM was king.
I fell in love with beast mastery however. My pet was more than just extra hit points, it actually contributed to DPS. The groups buffs were nice (what dps class turns down 3% more damage?).
Ignoring my Pet bias and my want for BM to top meters, survival is pretty damn sweet.
After I respeced (0/10/51) I had a base crit chance of 28% (up from 24 and some change as beast), and 2100 RAP with hawk up. Yummy.
When everything proced (besides my sso trinket for some reason) I had 38% crit chance and 2800 rap. Cherry on top please?
For rotations, I started out on the dummy with explosive. Then proceded to spam steady and rapid fire whenever it was up. Making sure to work in exlposive whenever the cooldown was ready (sadly, shares the cooldown with arcane, with talents however you could therotically hit with both at the same time). Serpent was also pretty easy to work in there, and hunters mark gave me extra rap (now up to 300 base). Overall I had ~ 1200 dps over a 3 min testing period.
Not too shabby for a post - craptastic spec (for the most part anyway).
I had to respec back to BM, 61/10/0, and had my corehound handy. My crit was back down to 24% (28ish with procs), but my sustained dps was up, and mana was also going down slower. I don't need to explain BM here I hope. Anyway, I had ~1200 dps.
Yes, I said it.
1200 as survival
1200 as beast mastery.
Lets look at some different things though
1) Survival has higher base stats, and REALLY nice procs
2) As Survival pet = ~8% of total damage (used a cat, ferocity specced)
3) As BM pet = ~ 24% total damage (corehound)
4) Survival has one more shot to work into rotations
5) BM procs are more controlled, once every 2 mins (less with talents) you get more deepz.
6) Explosive shot hits nearby enemys. Great for boss fights / AOE, not so good on trash pulls with CCed mobs.
7) Pets are basically useless as survival (curious as to how well a bear will work for leveling though)
Final conclusion: Both specs are great. They both do amazing DPS, and they both are insanely fun. BM focuses on the pet, like it should, but provides some nice group buffs and fun abilities. Survival is focused on Hunter buffs with a touch of group ups and is great burst damage.
As for release, I'll be sticking to BM for awhile. I'll switch to survival for some kara runs or heroics, and might level as a survial spec come LK.
So for now, blizzard has accomplished their goal with specs. You can spec how you want, and do equivilant damage. Meaning skill actually matters now. Major thumbs up.
For future hunters - Spec how you want, you're guild will appreciate the sustained DPS either way.
Enjoy.
P:S - My dps was generally low because I wasn't spamming the crap out of buttons, and the lag made CDs and GCDs interfere immensely with testing. Also, the test dummies do not have armor. Testing is skewed.
