O.o Even with the interuptions on Vael, Aimed shot still comes out ahead. And IMP Serpant sting? Have you ever sat down and evaluated the other debuffs available? The day that serpant stings pushes off an ignite, would be the day that your mages beat the crap outa you. Besides, the mana it takes is rediculous.

Praetorian, would this (Magmadar learning) have been before or after the 1.4 patch btw?

It was early February 2005, so I'm assuming before. I realize that ranged skill vs. defense mechanics changed then, so that anecdotal evidence may not have any bearing upon things today. But I know that in every single thread we've had on these forums about hunters and +hit, people with +skill claim that they can achieve "never miss" status with values of +hit that are lower than 9. Even if it's just 8, that would suggest that +ranged skill has more of an effect than the basic +0.04%/point that might otherwise be assumed. I'd love to know the real value.

I remember those days back when only MC was the only game in town and the +hit cap was generally accepted to be ~5%. 2x tarnished elven rings and the surefooted talent were your best friend.

BWL/AQ/Naxx, most definately have higher level bosses for +hit calculations tho.

No they don't. Gluth is the same level as Magmadar.

Well, after doing a lot of testing (using Maraudon pants in BWL / AQ ftw), I kinda came to the conclusion that +1 skill for ranged = 0.24% hit and 0.04% crit. This also fits the 8.6% miss rate for ranged vs level 63 mobs. 15 skill difference * 0.24% hit / skill --> 3.6% additional miss.
Base = 5%, so...

Well, that's the numbers I'm using, atleast.

My testing also backs this up.

(This is all for ranged combat, which is calculated slightly different from melee.)

5% base chance to miss against an opponent of the same level.
Additional 1.2% chance to miss for every level the mob is higher than you (which gives you an 8.6% miss rate against a level 63 boss.)
+5 skill comes out to be equal to +1.2% hit (which is the same thing as the 0.24% = +1 skill that Lactose used above.)

Now just need to muster the energy to present the "Hunters should be getting DFT" argument. BWL today...wonder what'll happen! :)

GL, I fought that fight for a long time... I'm sitting at 9% right now (using a xbow so no +guns) and could really use DFT to free up +hit for Band of Reanimation etc.


Or I could just pick up more CS... *shrug*

well this really does intrique me becouse I could bet anything that my chance to hit cap for raid bosses is 6%. When I started raiding (trolls had +5 bows already) I though that I needed 5% chance to hit to not miss at all. After I reached this I still noticed very very rare "miss" occasionally and that was in mc. So I always though that the chance to hit cap is 6% and the last 4-6months when I never have missed a single hit, tranq shots included. I never had the need to doubt that either. Now after I started to read about some forums I realized that majority of hunters agrees that its 9% chance to hit what is needed. with so much of miss information around I though that this was just another hurricane is the best bow type of information. After fellow hunter missed tranq shot on huhuran I started to think that why do I have this miss rate.

so my stats are:

6% chance to hit
305 bow skill
0.0000000000...% chance to miss so far

my theory is that either that 8.6% miss rate doesnt exist anymore or the bow skill gives 2.6% chance to hit (how obvious).

there u go I hope this gets solved

edit: to the guy who laughed at my imp serpent sting and imp arcane shot. those are trash talents I agree but have their uses.

There was already some discussion about this in this thread, doesn't give a definitive answer to how much %hit comes from +skill exactly, but it seems to definetely be over 0.04. Using Lactose's estimate, 5 ranged weapon skill will give approx 1.2 %hit.

mm I'll try to do this over the next few weeks on my troll hunter tbh, assuming I actually take it to a raid given how much I am playing druid and priest atm.

Yeah, sorry. I was being a bit of a smartmouth. I'm just so very much for RWS and barrage, 'cause I've seen the damage it has added to my hunter. I'm specced 2/31/18 atm. 'cause I only have +6% hit. (No DFT for a LOOONG time, and we don't have that many hunters for Huhuran usually, so misses are BAD, mmkay! ;) )

Anyway 5/5 Imp. AotH adds something like 4-5% extra dps. I'd assume it adds even more with a faster bow, I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the talent description. "Normal ranged attacks".

I'm specced 5/31/15. Typical cookie cutter for the most part, but I'm hoping I can drop IAoTH in the expansion as I've never been a fan of procs as they can be too streaky, and well...good for some situations, or really bad for others.

Oddly enough this is the same reason I don't use mouse acceleration. I prefer constants ;)

I admit most of the hunter math is just simply over my head. However, I've often heard that agl past a 'certain point' makes LR > MM, though that point is significantly above what was available.

Has anyone ever worked out the math to figure where (buffed or unbuffed) that agl point is?

Or am I missing something on the math?

What they're referring to is the point that LR adds more attack power than Trueshot Aura, usually. It's something lie 450 agi if I'm not mistaken.

This reminds me of something I've wanted to ask for some time:
What's the best way of modelling Improved Aspect of the Hawk, as a formula able to account for varying number of shots fired (possibly with time per cycle?), with overlaps taken (as much as possible) into consideration?
What I'd like is basically something like:
[Damage gained by iAotH per cycle] = [Chance for iAotH proc per cycle] * [Damage gained per iAotH proc]

As for [Damage gained per iAotH proc], I'm basically using... 1 proc (that's not refreshing a previous proc) = 1 free Auto Shot per cycle.
This would "just" leave the [Chance for iAotH proc per cycle] part. This should be the part including overlapping procs, and that's what's making it a bit too hard for me to get something I'm happy with.

Any ideas or ways of thinking would be greatly appreciated =)

Edit: Oh, and LR adds more RAP than TSA at 333 agility. 333 * 1.15 = 382.95. Gain = 49.95 agility --> 100 RAP.
I never really understood where the "450 agility is the breaking point for LR > MM" came from. Confusing :P

I've never tried to really model Improved aspect of the hawk mathematically. But I did build a simulator to simulate it and the results were pretty interesting. You can find the code for simulator here: http://www.kotikone.fi/quenta/wow/HunterSimul.java

The rules I used in the simulator were following:

1. If aimed shot is not on cooldown then autoshot
2. If less than 3 autoshots are fired after last aimed shot then autoshot
3. If 3 or more autoshots fired and aimedshot cooldown gone, then aimedshot

Iaoth proc chance was calculated on every shot, and aimed shot casttime was modified with iaoth haste when it was on. That magic number 3 came from Lactoses tables in wow-europe.com, where it seems it's always the best bet. If your clipped shots are 2, then use full cycle and if your clipped shots are 3 or more, then clipped.

Simulate it 1 million times for every weaponspeed between 2.5 and 3.4 seconds with and without iaoth.

I had multishot simulated in there for a while. I dropped it out after it looked like it doesn't really make any difference. Just too much extra logic to take care of.

End result?

Time spent in iaoth proc was pretty consistent 23%.

For weapons with 3.0 - 3.4 speed the increase in both autoshots and aimedshots was always 1.7%.
2.8 - 2.9 speed weapons had 7-8% increase in autoshots and 1.7% in aimedshots.
2.6 - 2.7 speed weapons had 10-11% increase in autoshots and 1.7% in aimedshots.

I really felt like I've done an error somewhere, since that 1.7% is nowhere near the 4-5% people are claiming. :O

Tho it does make sense in some level. Since with 3.0 or slower weapons imp hawk does really nothing else than speed up your aimed shot casting. You won't shoot any more autoshots between aimed cooldowns there.

But when your weapon speed is 2.9 or faster, you suddenly can fit 1 more autoshot inside aimed shot cooldown.

I always thought that was a myth created by hunters who want to keep their PvP-spec inside a raiding guild. Just like shadow priests insist they can DPS like a mage.

A past calculation here came to the conclusion that you'd need >700ish Agi to outshine MM, still not counting what TSA does for your groupmates.

Another point I'm wondering about is what are they gonna put into the trees in BC? I can't imagine much they could include that would beat a 0/31/30 spec (except if they suddenly come up with a BM-tree that's worthwile for a raiding spec :zoid:).

speculation of that sort is a bit pointless given that they have said many times that the new tiers of talents will be *very* attractive.

What if, for example, the 41 point talent in MM is a talent called "Boom! Headshot" that has a chance to one-shot anything?
(this is a joke btw before anyone tells me how imba that would be....)

And if you had 61 points to spend right now I'd probably end up something like 15/31/15... but let's really really not go down that discussion route...

I have an excel macro which calculates most of the stuff a hunter would like to see. You can download it at
http://homepage.mac.com/ibug/.Public/Hunter.xls.zip

According to that, survival build will outdamage marksman build even with base agility at 400. And there's not a barrier of agility where survival takes over. That's just bullshit. That kind of a barrier can only be calculated according to your +agi and +AP ratios from your gear. +AP benefits more in MM build because of RWS, +agi benefits more in survival. So you can download the macro and take a look at yourself. Improved aspect of the hawk bonus is calculated assuming the best scenario where all the procs happen at different 12 second intervals, which won't happen most of the time.

The reason survival does more damage is crit. And that's the extent of it. Your autoshot damage will always be higher with marksman but the crit bonuses you will get from aimed/multi does make survival a winner.

Lots of errors in that.
1) RWS effects ammo
2) Barrage exists, and most 31 marks hunters have it...
3) Aimed Shot bonus is effected by RWS
4) Attack Power is effected by RWS

Fixing these errors makes the spreadsheet say the same thing as every other spreadsheet -- 5/31/15 is the best spec.