On mana, mana pool and mana efficiency: Anybody got a good reference where one can look up mana use per second on typical damage cycles for mana classes, along with typical mana pool and mana regen?
From personal experience I'd say that we sit at the low end of all mana users in terms of mana pool and likely also in terms of regen, but it'd be nice to have actual numbers and see by how much.
Also an average damage per mana for a typical shot cycle would be good to know.
My suspicion is that we aren't actually that far off in terms of longevity compared to other mana DPSers, but that it's the way skill-based regen options work that hurt us. But I could be wrong.
On mana, mana pool and mana efficiency: Anybody got a good reference where one can look up mana use per second on typical damage cycles for mana classes, along with typical mana pool and mana regen?
From personal experience I'd say that we sit at the low end of all mana users in terms of mana pool and likely also in terms of regen, but it'd be nice to have actual numbers and see by how much.
Also an average damage per mana for a typical shot cycle would be good to know.
My suspicion is that we aren't actually that far off in terms of longevity compared to other mana DPSers, but that it's the way skill-based regen options work that hurt us. But I could be wrong.
Just looking rougly at the mana values of fireball and frostbolt spam it looks like mages mps will be in the 120-150 range depending upon spec. I didn't include clearcasts or all of their mana recovery talents in that though.
Just interweaving steady between auto will have a 110/weaponspeed mps unaltered by efficiency. So that will be a bit less than 50 mps generally. However, spamming steady alone isn't maximal for damage, so if you replace one of those steadys with an arcane and a multi in there somewhere it is closer to 90 mps.
Hunters use less mana than mages and I would assume the other casters, but of course we have less of it and less unobtrusive ways to get it back. This also suggests why shadow priests and JoW are such a big deal for hunters, as they have a relatively much greater effect on our mana consumption than for casters.
Arcane shot - 230/7.2(3 autoshots - rounded up from 6s) - 110/7.2(The steady shot we replaced in cycle) = 16.74
Multishot - 275/12(5 autoshots, rounded up from 10.5) - 110/12(Steady shot replaced) = 13.75
Added all up thats just under 80mana/s - or 400mana/5
Now given that(as discussed earlier) most hunters will not stack any mana/5 given the better statpoints to be had elsewhere, that will deplete a 6k mana pool in 75 seconds
1 minute 15s of full dps with no potting is probably a *lot* less than most mages out there
I've lurked a while and sifted through the many pages on hunter mechanics, and this thread as well. I had a good handle on things before patch 2.0/TBC expansion, but now I am just not convinced I have things under my belt correctly.
I'd like to really nail down the appropriate shot rotation but finding the info on what is consistantly doing well for damage is like a needle in a haystack. Last night was our first attempt on Gruul and despite being one of the shaman tanks and in heavy heavy resist gear, I ended up top six for the night. It was one of my better performances, but I am just fully enchanted up and such now, so that might have helped.
I hear some say the rotation should be an auto/steady weave - I am thinking that has to mean more than just ending up with alternating shots in your combat log. How do I not clip one? Sometimes it feels like they are coming off fast and smooth, other times it feels lagged up. I've also heard that you should throw in arcane and multi as well - but what ranks, and under what circumstances?
Any suggestions would be awesome. My gear on armory should reflect my normal raiding gear, and I make use of all my AP boosting trinkets. (Earthstrike, Core of Arkelos, etc etc.)
I've lurked a while and sifted through the many pages on hunter mechanics, and this thread as well. I had a good handle on things before patch 2.0/TBC expansion, but now I am just not convinced I have things under my belt correctly.
I'd like to really nail down the appropriate shot rotation but finding the info on what is consistantly doing well for damage is like a needle in a haystack. Last night was our first attempt on Gruul and despite being one of the shaman tanks and in heavy heavy resist gear, I ended up top six for the night. It was one of my better performances, but I am just fully enchanted up and such now, so that might have helped.
I hear some say the rotation should be an auto/steady weave - I am thinking that has to mean more than just ending up with alternating shots in your combat log. How do I not clip one? Sometimes it feels like they are coming off fast and smooth, other times it feels lagged up. I've also heard that you should throw in arcane and multi as well - but what ranks, and under what circumstances?
Any suggestions would be awesome. My gear on armory should reflect my normal raiding gear, and I make use of all my AP boosting trinkets. (Earthstrike, Core of Arkelos, etc etc.)
Steady Shot, Auto Shot is pretty much stupid unless you are OOM using Viper and waiting for your mana pot cooldown to be up. All those people on the forums who advocate it as a way to catch up to mages and warlocks are idiots.
A shot rotation I would reccomend to you is to try and fit in arcane and multi inbetween autos with steady shot.
Also, always use Steady Shot before multi and arcane, it allows your auto to go off during the GCD. There is currently a thread on the hunter forums saying it should be like multi, steady, auto, arcane, steady, auto, steady, auto but that is wrong.
Now this is where it takes some thinking. GCD is going to screw you. If you feel your steady shot start late after the previous Auto Shot, do not use your arcane or multishot in that rotation, save it for the next one. This may take some practice to get used to. Also, if both Multishot and Arcane Shot cooldown are up, you can get by without steady shotting that rotation and using both multi and arcane.
For a Marks build, the shots in terms of damage done is Multi-shot > Arcane Shot > Steady Shot. So in an infinite mana situation that is the order you would want to shoot/weave them. Multi-shot, then Arcane Shot, and then use Steady Shot in between autoshots until one of the other 2 is no longer cooling down, and then weave it in. If mana is an issue, simply spamming Steady Shot and using Rank1 Multi-shot and Arcane Shot will stretch your mana pool out much longer (if you aren't using max consumables or have a shadow priest, JoW, Mana Tide Shaman, etc.)
For you clipping autoshots concerns, go grab zHunter or Big Trouble, which are mods that give you an autoshot castbar, which makes it quite easy to see if you are delaying your autoshots at all. A cheap way to fix this is: /castsequence Steady Shot, Autoshot
Make a macro of that, and spam it. It will keep your second Steady Shot from firing too soon. It is affected by lag though, and eliminates the ability to compensate by hitting steady shot a tenth of a second before the autoshot fires and (due to latency) not interrupting your autoshot.
All of your questions are answered in much more detail in this thread over in the Class Mechanics forum.
One of the side-calculations you can do concerning the testing I did on Dr. Boom is that I posted the average DPS, the shot rotation, and the gear I used, along with how long I lasted until my mana bar was either fully down or at >300 mana or so. With the Mark of Conquest (~33 mana per 5 seconds), a self-buffed Markmanship spec with 6583 mana can DPS for about 78 seconds nonstop before going OOM. A self-buffed BM hunter can go about 88 seconds before going OOM. Note that I actually have more mana than many hunters, since some opt to go with leather or pure DPS gear that contains very little INT/MP5. The rough estimate of about a minute is probably accurate, given the variance in gear, shot rotations, and specs.
Hmmmm, hunters already have physical dps synergy though, and in each tree at that. There's ferocious inspiration in BM, imp mark and trueshot in MM, and expose weakness in the survival tree. Only expose weakness and mark are especially raid friendly, but survival is less than stellar in PVE.
TSA isn't really a reason to put hunters into melee groups anymore; not with battleshout adding ~380ap, unleashed rage adding 10%, windfury etc... none of which work on hunters. You're usually better off just slotting in another melee dps to benefit from some real buffs instead of giving a few people 125 ap.
Expose Weakness and Improved Mark are at least raidwide so they're still effective when we get relegated into "the leftovers group". Really, the only class we benefit from grouping with is a shadow priest (shamans to a lesser extent, they usually seem to have up windfury tho).
TSA isn't really a reason to put hunters into melee groups anymore; not with battleshout adding ~380ap, unleashed rage adding 10%, windfury etc... none of which work on hunters. You're usually better off just slotting in another melee dps to benefit from some real buffs instead of giving a few people 125 ap.
Expose Weakness and Improved Mark are at least raidwide so they're still effective when we get relegated into "the leftovers group". Really, the only class we benefit from grouping with is a shadow priest (shamans to a lesser extent, they usually seem to have up windfury tho).
it was easy in old raids, if you had 4 hunters in your 40 man raid, throw em in a group with a shaman and they were happy, nowadays...we get only half of the things we could ever want.
Arcane shot - 230/7.2(3 autoshots - rounded up from 6s) - 110/7.2(The steady shot we replaced in cycle) = 16.74
Multishot - 275/12(5 autoshots, rounded up from 10.5) - 110/12(Steady shot replaced) = 13.75
Added all up thats just under 80mana/s - or 400mana/5
Now given that(as discussed earlier) most hunters will not stack any mana/5 given the better statpoints to be had elsewhere, that will deplete a 6k mana pool in 75 seconds
1 minute 15s of full dps with no potting is probably a *lot* less than most mages out there
I hope every raiding hunter has efficiency...it doesn't matter what crazy spec you are. Yes it only adds 10% (8 more seconds of dps) but as gear scales, your mana pool will rise too.
Originally Posted by Trifle
Expose Weakness and Improved Mark are at least raidwide so they're still effective when we get relegated into "the leftovers group". Really, the only class we benefit from grouping with is a shadow priest (shamans to a lesser extent, they usually seem to have up windfury tho).
hmm, I hope you just forgot feral druids and didn't ignore them on purpose :P If I could in a chosen group with 5 players, it would be shadow priest, shaman, feral druid, and bm hunter if you have one, otherwise the 4th slot is just a filler.
I know its kind of a side note but I know some people just look here for plain stats. I've done a ton of dr. boom'ing and these are my results, and the gear I wear is boss fight stuff, if you want to check it out.
7628hp
7813mp
2178AP
19% crit
27 mp5 while casting
108 mp5 w/ viper while casting.
I've gone 4 minutes on dr. boom with just steady arcane and auto - no multi because its kind of cheating your dps. Using cooldowns twice in that 4 minute period, I sustained 675 dps self buffed (using macros which kind of degrade our class as a whole, but they work) w/ viper I could probably dps for a straight 10 minutes, granted it would be lower.
A couple opinions - mp5 is underrated. think of a 10 minutes boss fight and just plain 5 mp5.. thats 600 mana over 10 minutes, which is 45 int. A good chunk of kara epics give a small sum of mp5 but once you really need it, you could basically end up having a double blessing of wisdom, something around 100 mp5 while casting w/ hawk.
---For everyone attempting to test their characters longevity, hit up swstats and check the damage per mana tab. It's been posted here before but it varies for each persons gear.---
A large problem with i'd guess 50% of the hunters everywhere is frames. WE NEED GOOD FPS TO DPS, its just a fact. We sit there and stare at a steady shot cast bar, learn our lag and weapon speed and all this other nonsense, but if you have 5 frames, it makes things much harder. Turn graphics down, focus on what you do, spend mana wisely, and you'll see improvements.
Obviously if you dont get good group assignments you cant be expected to perform at 100% - like NR aura on hydross will drop your dps by such a large chunk you dont even know.
Arcane shot - 230/7.2(3 autoshots - rounded up from 6s) - 110/7.2(The steady shot we replaced in cycle) = 16.74
Multishot - 275/12(5 autoshots, rounded up from 10.5) - 110/12(Steady shot replaced) = 13.75
Added all up thats just under 80mana/s - or 400mana/5
Now given that(as discussed earlier) most hunters will not stack any mana/5 given the better statpoints to be had elsewhere, that will deplete a 6k mana pool in 75 seconds
1 minute 15s of full dps with no potting is probably a *lot* less than most mages out there
Including other things like casting Rapid Fire, keeping Scorpid Sting up half the time, keeping HM up all the time, and misdirection, my mana consumption after Efficiency on a full DPS cycle is 105 mana/s (115 m/s if keeping up Scorpid constantly). That doesn't account for increased steady shot costs when under Quick Shots, Rapid Fire or other haste effects though. On my character, Viper amounts to 13 mana/s regen, but I wouldn't be using it in a full burn rotation anyway.
I did some asking around in one of the mage threads, and apparently their consumption after gems and passive mana consumption comes out to 85-98 mana/s. Apparently they go OOM in 4-6 minutes depending on spec (and given infinite mana they could do a pure Arcane Blast cycle, but they're adamant that there's no source of regen in the game that would make Arcane Blast spam sustainable). They apparently have a lot of choice in how they can spend mana, so talking them them I'm never really sure they're actually talking about max-DPS mana-be-damned rotations or not. I somehow seem to have started a discussion of whether frost is better raid DPS due to mana efficiency in their thread :S
edit: actually I screwed up and assumed Efficiency affects spells like RF, HF and MD - it probably doesn't, and I haven't checked in-game. Very small difference though.
hmm, I hope you just forgot feral druids and didn't ignore them on purpose :P If I could in a chosen group with 5 players, it would be shadow priest, shaman, feral druid, and bm hunter if you have one, otherwise the 4th slot is just a filler.
Yeah I completely forgot about them until a while after I posted, then I was too lazy to go back and edit.
Yeah, followed some of the discussion in the mage dps thread, faf. Thanks for bringing it there. I think there are a number of differences to note. First we get a lower mana/s reading on the damage cycle though I agree it wasn't quite clear. Second they look at gems (GCD delay) and evocate at 8 seconds lost to DPS, but that's after a larger mana pool is drained.
So basically lower mana/s over a larger mana pool makes for just more more longevity. Add to that that there are regens that have minimal impact on damage (8 seconds evocate over 2-4 minutes of damaging isn't a whole lot of damage lost (3-6%). Factors are though that canneling can be interrupted etc, while viper is easy.
Really it does seem to me that the problem is as simple as too low a mana pool (missing 2k at least to mages), and slightly too high mana cost, and slightly too low max rotation DPS. Larger mana pool via int also translates to a more desirable AotV mp5. Slightly higher max rotation DPS might mean that for long fights it is actually acceptable to go viper for longevity.
The easiest, and probably least drastic (in the eyes of Blizzard) way to buff hunter DPS in PvE raiding without affecting PvP or solo PvE play drastically is to reduce the mana cost of our shots. I'd imagine they would look into this before doing anything huge like altering the mechanics of our class. It says something when hunter DPS goes from mediocre to competing for top spots just by putting in a Shadow Priest in their group so they don't have to worry about mana...
I also think this would be a good solution. Currently Blizz seems to be solving our huge mana issues by loading our gear with int and mana regen and giving us AotV. This easily lets us dps to our max potential without running oom in 2mins. However, think of all the ap/crit/agi we could have instead.
The class, as a whole, has serious mana issues. So while fixing these issues through itemization is a decent fix, it still gimps us quite a bit. So doing something like making Thrill of the Hunt available to all hunters or lowering the cost of our shots would probably be enough to allow us to compete with other DPS classes on an even footing.
@OP: Like everyone else seems to be saying, mana issues are probably what's killing your hunters. Give them a shadowpriest if you can, or keep up JoW at all times if possible. Here's some anecdotal experience from last night:
Illhoof(bad comp) attempts lasting 8-10 mins. On the initial attempts I went with might/kings and hawk, and simply used fel mana pots. I had about 308 int and 24mp/5 at that point. Mana generally wasn't an issue until about 5+ minutes into the fight, and at that point I could simply switch to AotV.
On our later attempts I finally convinced our paladins that it was incredibly important for them to use JoW(one was OTing kil'rek, so why not). I then switched to viper and wisdom(over kings) as well since I was out of mana pots. I stayed between 95% and 98% mana nearly the entire fight for 10mins(wiped to enrage).
So what I'm trying to get across here, is that if you give your hunters things like shadowpriests, or mana tide, or JoW, they can adjust their abilities quite a bit. For example, with a shadow priest and JoW, I could probably go with hawk(+155 rap) and kings(+1.X crit and +50ap or so). They can also switch out to more pure dps gear, such as some rogue leather drops, instead of the int and mp/5 hunter gear. Additionally, they'll be able to use max rank shots the whole time as well. This is another huge buff to their dps. So like others have pointed out, I would agree that hunters should be given serious consideration when you're deciding who to put with shadowpriests and whether or not to use JoW. AFAIK, all other mana using classes are more efficient and have many more ways of regenerating many than hunters do, so it can help us quite a bit. Especially if your hunters are undergeared and don't have a good deal of regen gear.
You may call me Nostradamus! The change to Hunters mark is exactly the type of change I was looking for back in my previous post (#180). Clear improvement to PVE dps without interfering with PVP burst.
Someone posted to the effect that each ranged attack will add something like 11 AP, stacking up to 440-ish AP when fully applied. A nice increase IMO.
However the issue (a rather pressing issue at that) of mana consumption still remains unaddressed... Shadow priest or bust ;(
You may call me Nostradamus! The change to Hunters mark is exactly the type of change I was looking for back in my previous post (#180). Clear improvement to PVE dps without interfering with PVP burst.
Someone posted to the effect that each ranged attack will add something like 11 AP, stacking up to 440-ish AP when fully applied. A nice increase IMO.
However the issue (a rather pressing issue at that) of mana consumption still remains unaddressed... Shadow priest or bust ;(
IMO, this change along with Cobra Reflexes (which any pet can get now ;-) ), Changes to glancing blows and removing KC from the GCD will be just exactly what hunters need to achieve reasonable DPS. Now our sustainability needs some work. Que up the QQers on the WoW Forums, Ready, Set, Unleash the tiers.
Cobra Reflexes is clearly the way to go for BM hunters for having more procs up, but it reduces Kill Command damage so I wouldn't take it in a MM build.
I'd also take Cobra Reflexes if PvPing for increased interrupts on casters. (Utimately this may lead to the ability's downfall though; we all know what happened to hunter pet attack speed... hi normalisation!)
Not right off the bat, you have to build up to it. It takes 30 total ranged attacks to max out the RAP benefit, which is something like 10-30 seconds, depending on the number of Hunters you've got.
This is something I just threw together as soon as I saw the patch notes obviously taking advantage of the new survival talent buffs and KC going off the GCD. The main variation from the norm is Focused Fire and IAotH + 1 talent point in survival vs GFtT and Mortal Shots. With such a high crit rate that comes with being a survival hunter KC will almost always be ready to cast every 5-6 seconds so the increased crit chance on that spell will be a great boon. On the other hand since you are criting so often are you just losing too much dps by not taking mortal shots or all the insane amount of focus your pet is getting from GFtT?
I am eager to try a BM build with these new pet changes*. Leveling up as BM, and doing the first few weeks of lv70 instances as BM I miss it sometimes. However, I am concerned with either ...
1) Losing 41 yards for mortal shots.
2) Losing mortal shots for 41 yards.
(btw, which ... :[)
3) Losing Thrill of the Hunt (ugh).
At the moment, I am unable to decide what is more important to me. 41 yards vs Mortal Shots. Beast spec i'll have probalby 22% crit. Obviously I have to give up TotH either way (Q_Q :[).
Obviously, due to Expose Weakness buff / Survival Instincts help, if the dps doesn't improve, and I am having mana problesm w/o TotH, back to survival spec for me.
One thing that bugs me is...these changes are nice and all for hunters...but it could possibly be a bandaid.
Depends on how well we scale next to other classes.
Anyone know how much a rogue gets from 14 AP or a mage/warlock get from 7 spell damage?
It seems a hunter gets about 3.5 DPS from 14 AP with 20% crit.
The way spell damage coefficients work, you get 100% from spells that are 3.5seconds untalented. Shadowbolt/Frostbolt is 3.0 untalented, so with a talented 2.5 second cast you get 83% of the +damage. .83*7/2.5 = 2.324 DPS from 7 spell damage, but that doesn't take into account crits, other scaling talents like Shadow Mastery or Empowered Frostbolt, or debuffs like CoE/CoS/ISB/winter's chill. That kind of math gets too complicated for me, but it probably works out to about the same.
04/10/07, 4:42 AM
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