Yea, Grobb I didn't really think of; our melee do go in but they run in and out of course so just seemed like alot of work. Maexxna my pet dies way easy; hunters are always on the wall till 30% so I've actually mended pet on him before (teehee). I've used him on Noth a few times when decursers got the warning that pets would be out but because of our strat it's virtually impossible to place the pets in an area where they aren't taking some kind of damage but still remaining a benefit.

Wasn't really sure about Anub as I hadn't tested it, I just thought a death would be very bad. ><

Now see this i disagree with... I know a really great rogue that tops the damage meter (1) on about 60% of the fights. I can put forth effort, use consumables, and have a great shot rotation and still not break top 5 (on some fights), simply because of the limitations of the fight, and the limitations of my damage.

Hunters are not top damage dealers, and its silly to say that. If we WERE top damage dealers, something would be wrong, as we do stand at range and have some limited raid utility. Only fights that cater to us will let us scale to the top of the meter, much like elind has said for saph, kel, horseman etc.

The real question is, what is equal footing? How can you compare damage meters on fights and classes across fights when hunters function completely different than any other class. Hunter DPS is fine as far as i can tell, its not the best and its not the worst, but certainly you cant make an umbrella statement like we are the top damage dealers.

It's actually possible to keep your pet alive for the entire heigan fight if you've got a good handle on keeping yourself alive. You just have to stay exactly in the middle of the bursts so that your pet doesn't run ahead of you or fall behind and get creamed. On Faerlina, you can just hide them behind that wagon in the back of the room and they won't take damage the whole fight.

Back on topic, how a hunter places on the damage meters is most heavily influenced not by fight, but by how much your other dps classes are putting out. I'll get some meters from our runs up as soon as I can, and I wouldn't be surprised if our top 10 are doing a lot more damage than lost anarchy's, since it's completely unheard of for a hunter to get top 5 in Illumination, and getting top 10 requires a lot of luck or a hunter-favoring fight. I think all our hunters are pretty much as awesome as elendril, although not quite as geared, the key difference is that our mages are freaking machines.

The problem is its impossible to tell unless you get on a test realm and parse shot cycles on blasted lands mobs to really tell if one hunter > another. One guild may have terrible rogues with awsome gear, another may have great rogues with horrible gear, yet both end up doing the same damage. Saying i top the damage meter in my guild in naxx doesnt really mean anything more than if you said otherwise. Anecdotal evidence is at best, fun to look at. Hard numbers taken from many tests done under specific constraints would be required to really answer the question, which is both impossible and time consuming to do in naxx.

The reality is though, if you get a fair number of people saying we do good on damage, and a fair number saying we are doing terrible on damage, it means were pretty average and dont really need that much work to be viable. Rest assured, great hunters will place well on the DM respectivly to other great players. Being 15th on the DM isnt bad if your guild just happens to have 15 exceptional other classes that can do amazing dps. At the same time, being 1st is meaningless if you happen to be one of the last few people alive and have the very best gear in the guild. We dont seem to be hitting any artificial wall of DPS or any limiting factor, so i tend to think everything is fine :)


EDIT: Spelling

He speaks the truth. Our mages give us all a run for our money. They're pretty god damned good...Ogglop is just unmatchable, regardless of how close you think you are :P (In regards to the other mages/rogues). The only time a hunter/shadow priest/anyone in the guild can touch him is when he's dead...xD

Kel, I agree - hunters can do well. However, a hunter has never been remotely competitive to my dps (shadow priest) or a mage's dps on Saph. However, they rock on Kel xD. The rogues generally beat the hunters as well depending on how the blizzards fall, but it's usually a mage or two, me, and then some rogues in the top 5ish on Saph. Avellyr can come in top ten usually - but that's a lot of effort to be honest.

I know this is not quantitative or anything but i find the best way to work out if a hunter is doing a decent job is to take a look at his SWstats skill and damage breakdown for a fight/run

Typical things to look for:
Arcane shot - if it appears more than a token emount on the skills profile then your hunter needs some serious reeducation

Damage breakdown percentages:
Some people may disagree and ot a certain extent using a clipped cycle may screw these numbers round a bit but:
Autoshot - roughly 55% of total damage - if a hunter has more than 60% of his total damage coming from autoshot i would tend to worry, he's either not using his abilities when cooldowns are up(slacking) or he is using lower damage abilities, thus skewing the percentage of autoshot upwards as a total(read: arcane shot)
Aimed shot - the key percentage here, from experience i would say a good hunter will have about 25% of his damage coming from aimed
Multishot - roughly 20% - Hunters should be hitting Multi whenever its up(cycle permitting) and if you are getting lower numbers here then something is seriously wrong

The disclaimer here is that these results get fairly skewed if taken at various points throughout an instance(taking damage percentages just after the suppression rooms would be a good example when you have a disproportionately high value for explosive trap, skewing the other results downwards)

Apologies for the anecdotal nature of this but when i do a breakdown of someone i know is a crap hunter(the kind who drool at Strikers Mark) then i see the same clues in their breakdown over and over and over again so thought i'd share.

Greenpiggy I've done the same thing as you in the past. Just look at their damage breakdown, if autoshot is causing more than 60% of their damage they are just lazy, if there is lots of serpent sting and arcane damage in there then they are seriously misguided.

As for stacking up to other classes, I find its more a matter of the environment, most guild have stronger and weaker classes so it's practicallly impossible to measure. I can say that at various times throughout my guilds progression I have had close dps 'contests' with mages, rogues and even warlocks at one point. Most of the time I'd say its just different classes progressing differently both in loot and skill.

Anyhow, I guess that doesn't help all that much, but maybe you will be able to pick out which hunters arent even close.