Bm vs MM

[Caarcharoth 0]

I'm sure there are a million other posts about this, but oh well. 

I am potentially re-rolling to my hunter as we progress through Nighthold, and I can't decide on which spec. I'm not the best at reading logs, but it seems that the two (BM/MM) are quite close on many of the fights. But seems to fall away the further into mythic we go. Maybe this is due to a lack of parses, I don't know?

If one was to be looking to max their potential dps (I am not good enough for this but I can dream), is MM really the way to go? I'm looking at it as MM fits my vision of the hunter, but the rotation is crappy if things go wrong, or if there is heavy movement. BM is slower and pretty brainless, but has better utility imo with some pet abilities, can move freely. 

 

Thanks to anyone willing to leave their thoughts!

[Luthixx 138]

Well, it really depends on the player; you can get a lot of information from warcraftlogs about what spec works better on what fight etc, but that means nothing if you can't play the spec well. I can go on and on about my experiences but to be honest, the MM rotation is far less forgiving for screwing up, especially the meme build. BM is a lot more fun and to really max BM requires as much effort as it does to perfect MM. 

Just go with what you find the most fun, if you don't find BM fun and would rather the MM rotation then go with that, you'll play better in a spec you enjoy more and want to dedicate more time to learning.

Of the hunters I raid with, we're generally even, and have been all through normal, heroic, and now in the first half of mythic. However when I pug (M+ and EN or N NH) I find myself constantly outdpsing any hunter as BM, despite ilvl, by a significant amount. 

As long as you play your class well and read the icy-veins guide word for word and memorise it like it's all you know, you'll do fine.

 

[Oggmarr 1]

I think it really does come down to personal preference this tier, the encounters are a nice mix of add fights/cleave fights/pure single target and each spec (and even different talent builds within them) all have a moment to shine. If you don't have any legendaries yet pushing you towards one spec in particular, the stat balance between MM/BM is close enough that you can spend a little time on target dummies or LolLfr to see what feels best to you. 

I try to keep fluent on both BM and MM, in case scaling does favor MM whenever we progress to mythic and because I fully expect Blizz to totally screw around with the specs again and upend everything for 7.2 if not before. (Just please don't try to make us play SV by buffing it to the heavens...)

I find that I can get within 95% of Sim DPS/Warcraftlogs rankings as BM with my real world DPS, whereas I can only do in the low 80% range with the Meme build. That and snagging the BM belt has mostly locked me in for this tier, and I enjoy it well enough. It's doing better on single target, very competitive on cleave, and I enjoy not being frantically tunneled on my rotation so I can watch out for boss mechanics, priority adds, raid calls or interrupts which got missed, etc. I don't see any special virtue in playing a "harder" spec which you can only drive with mediocre precision when you can do just as much or more damage with the "easier" one.

I do want to see what the MM/Meme build can do in some higher level Mythic+ dungeons soon too, it does seem pretty fun for that.