• Arawethion

Was just thinking about something. We've all read about how, all other things being equal, a 3.4 weapon will do much better DPS than a 3.0 weapon, for example. Even the 3.0 weapon has slightly better listed DPS, the 3.4 weapon might have a better damage range, and both get the same number of autoshots in a 9sec cycle.

My question is--is it possible that a longer cycle, with lower average DPS, might make up for the difference because of mana efficiency? If the assumption is that, over a long fight, the number of Aimed shots you can cast is roughly capped by mana rather than time, then why not use a longer cycle that has 4 autoshots per cycle (with, say, a 2.8 or 3.0 speed weapon)? You're no longer wasting time on partial autoshot cooldowns, and not losing a large number of specials.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Kalince

Wouldn't you just want to still go all out on a long fight then FD drink?

 

• Arawethion

*shrug* no idea. Doesn't that take a while? Also, I don't the details of FD. Depending on the timing of the boss's combat pulse, are you guaranteed to get a drink in?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

◊ Gwaihir

If you really need to, you can use enough consumables to remove mana as a DPS limiting factor. it will only get better with the extra mp5 on T3. FD+ drink is reliable enough to be guaranteed to work, combat pulse regardless. The only thing that can muck it up is getting hit with damage right as you FD. (dot, random target skill, AoE, whatever)

 

◊ Lactose

Albeit damn expensive (atleast for Horde), mana problems can be mitigated / removed by proper use of consumables.
While mana most certainly is an important factor, factoring in mana is a bitch.
In addition, you have some other interesting options... like Feign Death, equip Black Grasp gloves, Rapid Fire with fast weapon. Cryptstalker bonus seems awesome as well, and it might be the start of some interesting stats... Imagine mana per pet crit, for example ;)
Feign Death + drink is less consistant damage than having mana available. By a lot =)
To gain full mana, I have to wait the full duration of the water, as far as I can remember. That's a lot of damage lost...

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

◊ Shalas

FD/drinking is nearly always lower dps than autoshooting while regenning mana (although maybe only for alliance).

With a 10.5 second cycle (such as with Rhok'delar), you're using 5 less mana/second on aimed shot, and the same amount on multishot, which is a pretty minor difference.

 

◊ Lactose

Regarding Feign Death, you can Feign, you hit the ground, then you just spam your drink button until you start drinking.
Combat pulses don't interrupt the drinking, so works quite nicely, although I've had some trouble getting out of combat on Patchwerk... spent ~40 seconds there without getting out of combat, with no pet summoned.

Was a wipe, I'm not worried about aggro, just so you know ;)

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

dojke

The length of the cycle is only one part of the delay issue. You also have to deal with more auto-shot lossage at lower delays due to aimed (aimed is 3.0, but delay will be around 2.6 vs. 2.96), and the loss in dps on multi and aimed (roughly 10% less dps on equivalent weapons, so that's a 3-5% net dps lossage there).

You could extend the cycle to be as long as you want, but the mechanics will still heavily favor a slow weapon. There's nothing stoping you from extending your cycle using a chromag xbow as well, but as pointed out to the people above, that's surely not optimal, either to fd/drink, or to multi-shot downranking.

 

dojke

I'm not sure why you would want to do this, even if it is true (which i somewhat doubt).

You can get way more dps out of spamming multi-1/aimed-1 when you're near oom - as alliance you can sustain that indefinitely with no consumables. I can't see regenning being better than that, not with my 97 unbuffed spi.

 

Phorac

As an alliance hunter, I can tell you that with BoW, JoW on the target mob, Spirit buff and Black Grasp equipped, that I can almost maintain an aimed shot cycle when nearly OOM. However, the only way I maintain it without going OOM, is to wait for a 3rd autoshot before casting (using Rhok'delar) in the cycle. I tested this on one of our Anub fights where he evaded from 18% back to 65%.

FD/drinking probably catches auto-shot/regen in total damage output at some point for horde. The whole issue is total time for the encounter.

 

• Erongg

For horde, isn't FD/drink the only option at low/no mana, given that you can't regain mana from low rank shots with JoW? If the fight isn't important enough where you want to use Major Mana pots, but you still want to do the best DPS you can (of course), how do horde hunters cope with their mana situation? An example fight might be Nefarian, where your guild will surely beat him but as a hunter you run out of mana long before the fight is over. Is there a clear answer as to what provides the best DPS?

Finite Simple Group of Order Two

 

Gonkish

On Nef I typically feign and drink on the yell warnings, since I'm unequipping my bow anyway. (Fucking dragon will not break my shit. :angry: ) I generally never sit there and drink to full but if the warning is early I'm usually somewhere around half, then I just re-equip and go to town. It works well enough.

For fights like Ouro I feign and drink on the burrowing phases. For C'thun I pretty much only drink if I'm low (and I usually am) prior to a vuln.

Basically, I would kill for the JoW/BoW combo. (Nerf, etc.) :(

Why Hunters suffer...
Benefactor's Bar learns you some goodness quicklike...

 

Elendril

feigning to drink is really a last resort, or a tool that is useful on specific encounters with downtime. when you're running out of LOS on firemaw, nef yells (including paladin yell for alliance), during ouro's burrow, or during quick tentacle clears on c'thun. outside of these, realistically there's two kinds of fights as far as mana usage is concerned - those in which you need to do as much damage as possible as fast as possible, in which you're going to use consumables to keep up that damage rate, and fights in which your damage rate isn't nearly so crucial, in which you can slack somewhat and regen some mana by autoshotting. if you REALLY want to put out the damage you can, and to do it you want the perfect rotational weapon.

btw, nerubian slavemaker is definitely 3.2 speed. :-P

 

dojke

Ok 'indefinitely' was definitely a bad choice of words.

With a mix-mash of bwl/aq gear my calculations were showing that I can go for 19 minutes with aimed/multi 1 with black grasp. My calculations were showing 412dps for those 19 minutes before oom. In contrast, going all out (multi6/aimed5) resulted in 512dps for 93 seconds, but after factoring in drinking dropped down to 401.8dps per super-cycle. (These are some calculations i did on my own, so they probably won't match that of the spreadsheets or whatever).

However for the context of this post, I guess you would need to switch to it when you're around 50% mana, rather than at 0. Then, as pointed out in the other hunter thread (one of the ten hunter threads i guess), the next logical improvement is to downrank only enough to oom exactly as the mob dies. Either way any one of these really does seem superior to extending a cycle purely due to mana reasons, which I guess was what the original post was asking.

 

• Arawethion

That is what I was asking. Once we concede that mana is a limiting factor at all, it seems one of the first things to do would be to eliminate the autoshot dead time.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Dozer

Okay, I'll bite. how do you know this? -_-

 

Shik

Elendril is quite well connected, as well as being a good hunter.

 

Tors

I personally like using lower ranks of MS/Aimed once I hit the bottom of my mana pool. I have a secondary bar for those times with different ranks of MS/Aimed. With my current gear and raid buffs I am able to shoot off a rank1 or 2 aimed and then a rank4 or 5 MS on a ~10 - 12 second rotation.

I'm assuming once we get full cryptstalker sets running out of mana won't really be an issue... :)

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

Keltan

Actually it is much better to keep Aimed Shot at higher ranks and downrank Multi (unless you are hitting multiple mobs) DPM-wise, Tors.

Using Aimed Shot Rank 6 + Multi-shot Rank 1 is still more efficient (damage per mana) than going from Aimed Shot Rank 6 down to Rank 5.

 

Steelfleece

At most endgame levels of gear, Aimed Shot rank 1 is more mana-efficient than Aimed Shot rank 6. For me, rank 6 is about 4x the mana cost for almost 2x the damage compared to Rank 1.

affect –verb (used with object) 1. to act on; produce an effect or change in
effect –noun 1. something that is produced by an agency or cause; result; consequence
Know the difference.

 

Tors

The only problem with doing the highest / higher ranks of Aimed Shot when bouncing off 0 mana is that you have to wait even longer for the mana to regen, but if you can stick close to the cooldown of multi-shot using the lower rank AimedShots you'll be able to get more shots off per minute. I'm not certain if it yeilds more DPM- just a hunch. One day I'll crunch more math, or just read through that post one post about manaregn the WoWHunter forums when I have time ;)

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

Keltan

There are definitely situations where you may want to downrank Aimed Shot. I'm just saying that from a DPM standpoint, you want to downrank Multishot all the way down to Rank 1 before you start downranking Aimed Shot (as opposed to downranking Aimed Shot first and using higher levels of Multishot.)

 

Xaeroflex

I've got this information from a spreadsheet that I've created, this is largely an independant extension of Zeboim's work from the WoW hunter forums thread on mana regeneration. It's not user friendly, if anyone cares to go through it I'll be more than happy to provide a link to it.

Using a modest 1298 AP/~28.5% crit rate and 1 point into efficiency, adjusting for crits:

Multishot Dmg/Mana
Rank1: 5.82
Rank2: 4.56
Rank3: 3.97
Rank4: 3.57
Rank5: 3.44

Aimed Shot Dmg/Mana
Rank1: 9.07
Rank2: 6.58
Rank3: 5.39
Rank4: 4.97
Rank5: 4.72
Rank6: 4.59

From my limited testing (Golemagg primarily), using an Aimed->Multi shot rotation (being careful not to have multishot wasting time on aimed shots cast), using Rank 6 Aimed, Rank 4 Multi until I hit ~200 mana, then using Rank 1 Aimed/Multi until I had regen'd enough mana to cast a higher rank Aimed, yielded a higher sustained DPS than going all out Rank 6 Aimed/Rank 4 Multi, then FD/Drinking up.

These are the numbers I got for raw DPS values based off my spreadsheet, accounting for 1xFD/Drink time, with some mana regen buffs. This is derived from:

(DPS*Time spent DPSing) / (Time spent DPSing + Time spent Drinking)

Rank 6 Aimed, Rank 4 Multi: 367.9 DPS (sustained for 208 seconds)
Rank 6 Aimed, Rank 1 Multi: 373.3 DPS (sustained for 439 seconds)
Rank 1 Aimed, Rank 1 Multi: 320.7 DPS (indefinately sustainable, regening ~130 mana / rotation)

I'd expound more on what I've managed to derive from the spreadsheet, but its late and my pillow calls -_-.

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